Daisy reached out with her senses. The intruder had already shed her outer clothing and was closing the distance in slow, deliberate steps.
Not Mariko. Not Yukio. Not any of the women who belonged in this estate. There was only one person who could show up here, at this hour, and set off every threat alarm in Daisy's body.
Viper.
Shouldn't she be busy poisoning Wolverine? What's she doing on my side of the house?
Daisy had never quite grasped how significant she'd become in Nick Fury's eyes — and she certainly didn't know her name had already surfaced on a HYDRA kill list.
Her value was rated on par with Wolverine's.
The information gap had just bitten her hard.
But she wasn't a helpless lamb, either.
She had two options. One: sit up and engage immediately. Two: wait for Viper to close in, let her think she had the upper hand, then turn the tables.
The decision was easy. She'd counter.
Daisy knew Viper's toxins were lethal — but Viper didn't know that Daisy's physiology was well beyond baseline human, and more importantly, Daisy had an ace. A power that produced a devastating effect on women.
To make sure Hope van Dyne hadn't been a fluke, Daisy had quietly tested it on two other women since then. The results were overwhelming.
Viper thought she was walking in on a lamb. Daisy was equally confident she could end this in a single move. Time to find out who was more dangerous.
Viper was famous for being able to seduce any man alive. Daisy Johnson had just discovered something equally useful: when the right frequency hit the right biology, it didn't matter who you were.
Slender fingers brushed across her shoulder. Their bodies drew close. A strange unease stirred in Viper's chest — some instinct whispering that something was about to go very wrong. She hesitated for just a fraction of a second, then pushed it aside. Green mist curled from her lips. She leaned in.
They were centimeters (less than an inch) apart. One breath away from ending S.H.I.E.L.D.'s rising star — and then Viper felt it. An indescribable kinetic charge spreading through her body with frightening speed.
Daisy's palm pressed flat against Viper's abdomen. The woman wore almost nothing — skin smooth as polished marble beneath her fingertips, flawlessly shaped. Under any other circumstances it might have been worth appreciating. Right now it was irrelevant.
She activated her power.
Vibration doesn't need to be fast. Too fast and it just numbs. The right frequency is everything.
Viper's body detonated. The force of it was beyond any deliberate control — she tried to clamp down with sheer will, to suppress the wave, and in doing so she reflexively swallowed, drawing the green mist back into her own lungs.
Daisy was already moving. She lunged upright, one hand locked around Viper's throat, the other still pressed against her abdomen.
The room was dim, but Daisy had enough night vision to see clearly.
Viper had a habit — almost compulsive — of undressing before she moved in for the kill, as though being clothed somehow diminished the achievement. And right now, she looked every bit the part: golden hair spilling over her shoulders, eyes hazy, red lips parted around a beauty mark. Her pale face wore an expression of three parts fury and seven parts bewildered confusion — a contrast that, infuriatingly, only made her more unsettling to look at.
Whatever effect Viper usually weaponized against her targets lost most of its potency on Daisy. She was effectively immune to the charm.
One hand locked around her throat, the other maintaining contact — steady, clinical, controlled. From the outside, in the dark, the scene would have been difficult to read. From the inside, it was anything but ambiguous: every organ in Viper's body was absorbing a relentless assault.
Viper was a senior HYDRA leader. She would one day earn the title of Madame HYDRA — the name alone told you where she stood in the organization. She ranked above even Alexander Pierce.
No point trying to interrogate her, Daisy decided. The logical move was to finish this while she had her. But—
"Hn—?"
The White Tiger amulet detonated with a warning so intense her entire body locked up. The signal was clear: kill Viper and something catastrophic follows. Immediately.
It hit her out of nowhere. But the intensity was undeniable — cold sweat broke across her skin, every hair on her body standing upright.
Daisy went still and probed inward. There, inside Viper, she found it — a thread so faint it was nearly invisible, yet rooted with the strength of a centuries-old tree. In mystical terms: a spiritual mark.
She tried to sever the connection between them. She couldn't. If Viper was a great tree, Daisy was an ant at its roots. The gulf between them was immeasurable.
The presence on the other end sensed her probing. What came back was a surge of darkness — cold, ancient, utterly unhinged — and with it, a name. Delivered with the absolute certainty of something that expected the world to tremble just from hearing it.
Chthon.
Daisy closed her eyes briefly. The being was genuinely terrifying — one of Earth's oldest entities, the Elder God of black magic and death. Even figures like Mephisto and Dormammu were said to give him a wide berth. The Scarlet Witch's reality-altering Chaos Magic traced its roots to his power. Even that was just scratching the surface.
She backed off immediately. If she kept pushing toward killing Viper, the next second would bring a transdimensional elder god levelling Tokyo with black magic. Not a gamble she was willing to take.
She pulled her vibration away from the vital organs. The dark impulse receded as instantly as it had appeared, as though it had never existed at all.
Daisy exhaled. She couldn't touch a piece placed by that kind of patron — Viper was clearly someone's critical asset. But she couldn't let her go either. She stood there for a moment, feeling like she'd walked herself into a corner.
She needed a way out. Ideas weren't exactly flowing freely, so she did the one thing she could: she kept the vibration going. Varying the rhythm — faster, slower, higher, lower — never letting it stop.
Viper knew she'd walked into a trap. Rage flared in her. She fought it. But under wave after wave of unrelenting sensation, the last of her concentration finally shattered.
And still Daisy couldn't release her. Viper felt like a rock pounded by surf on all sides — every time one wave receded, the next was already crashing in.
The air grew thick with warmth and the unmistakable chemistry of a body pushed far past its limits. Daisy felt the effects too — her breathing grew heavier — but her mind stayed clear. Bitter medicine or not, she had to hold on.
Time crawled. Just when Daisy was nearly at her own limit, Viper's iron-trained discipline finally gave out. She drifted into a half-conscious place between existence and oblivion, and her brain's shutdown protocol took over. She went completely limp.