The snowcat crawled across an endless white canvas. Not a penguin in sight.
Black Widow drove. Daisy took the passenger seat. The two men occupied the back. No heater—running one would increase their detection risk—so the cabin was cold enough to cure meat.
"You're really not cold?" Daisy finally asked, her composure long gone. She'd pulled herself into a compact, slightly desperate ball against the door.
The moment the question left her mouth, she knew it was stupid. Of course they were cold. She at least had her enhanced constitution propping her up. The other three were running entirely on willpower. She told herself she wasn't going to fold, and by repeating that to herself like a mantra for the rest of the drive, she made it to the target coordinates.
There was nothing there.
Ice. More ice. A ridge of ice in the distance. Nothing else.
If you were just passing through, you wouldn't look twice. But if you were looking for something—really looking—the inconsistencies started to surface.
"The light refraction is wrong." Hawkeye scanned the emptiness, then said it with certainty.
The four of them crouched in a hollow in the ice, pointing at thin air like they'd lost their minds, and worked out their approach.
"How do we get inside without alerting whoever's on guard?" Fury asked.
The structure ahead was hiding something, but they needed to confirm it was actually Nazis before making a move. If they blew open a secret facility that turned out to belong to some major government, S.H.I.E.L.D. would have an international incident on its hands.
The plan came together fast. Hawkeye fired an arrow at maximum range to draw attention. Black Widow planted four jamming devices to knock out the cloaking system. Daisy teleported the team in.
Three seconds later, it played out exactly that way. Hawkeye's arrow struck a distant glacier with a thunderous crack that rolled across the ice. Black Widow moved—fast and precise—assembling a compact jamming network that killed the cloaking field in seconds. A corner of a massive black structure emerged from the white.
Daisy plugged the remaining variables into her calculations, identified a section that looked unoccupied, and pulled everyone through.
They came out weapons-first, spinning to cover every angle.
They were in a warehouse.
No enemies. Daisy's math had been clean.
All around them, iron shelves rose toward the ceiling in orderly rows—pharmaceutical crates stacked with military precision, every label aligned.
"The architecture is definitely that era." Black Widow moved along the shelves, lifted a box, held it up to the faint light filtering through the ceiling. "The drugs are modern."
"Let's move. Daisy—anyone outside?"
She was already functioning as a living radar. She extended her senses and pointed northeast with some hesitation. "Out the door, take the left corridor. There's something—some kind of life signs. A few people. Hard to be certain from here."
She stayed put. She'd locked in the spatial coordinates; she could pull them back to this exact spot when they were ready.
The scouting job went to the other three. They moved in tight formation, and in under five minutes they were back.
Fury's expression was neutral. Black Widow and Hawkeye were practically vibrating.
It wasn't any personal grudge against Nazis. It was simpler than that: in this era, legitimate mission credit was hard to come by. And striking a blow against active Neo-Nazi operatives—from any political angle, in any country, argued to any oversight body—was unimpeachable. Both of them were quietly delighted.
Daisy snapped them back along the same spatial thread, retracing the teleport to the outside. They sprinted for the snowcat, gunned it back to Snowstorm Base, shed their cold-weather gear, and were wheels-up in a jet for HQ within the hour.
——
"Agent Johnson." Fury caught her just outside his office. "Walk with me. We're meeting the World Security Council."
Face time with oversight? Daisy had exactly zero objections. She fell into step.
Hidden panel. Elevator. Classified floor. Twenty minutes of walking corridors she committed to memory. They entered a wide, austere office; four holographic projection rigs dominated the center of the room.
Within five minutes, Alexander Pierce materialized—former Director, current World Security Council member, a man who radiated earned authority even in semi-retirement. He'd received no advance notice of the meeting—no message from S.H.I.E.L.D., and certainly nothing through HYDRA channels. Fury had simply summoned him.
Pierce kept his nerves off his face, wearing the easy warmth of a distinguished elder statesman instead. When he spotted Daisy, he turned that warmth on her like a benevolent grandfather regarding a promising protégé.
She'd grant him this: compared to Fury's permanent funeral expression, Pierce was downright charming. He greeted her with genuine-seeming enthusiasm, and—considering that he'd indirectly helped her secure the Terrigen crystals—she gave him a polished, civil response.
One by one, the video feeds connected. Four Council representatives settled into their respective frames.
"Fury." The first one in—a sharp-eyed man with a close-cropped head—didn't waste time. "You're not here asking for more money again, are you?"
"Yes, where does it all go, Commander? We deserve a full accounting."
"We support what S.H.I.E.L.D. does for the world, Nick, but you have to give us something to take back to our own governments."
All four of them launched into it at once—a coordinated audit of grievances, every line of dialogue circling back to the same core complaint. There is no money.
Fury let a slight smile settle at the corner of his mouth. After being on the receiving end of this particular performance for years, it felt good to finally flip the script.
He tilted his chin toward Daisy. She pulled up the evidence they'd gathered and broadcast it to the Council members' feeds, then handed her tablet to a visibly confused Pierce.
The four faces on the holographic displays went still. Pierce stared at the screen with unfeigned shock.
HYDRA's internal factions barely communicated with each other. He genuinely hadn't known there were Nazis still operational in the field. There were no shared channels between the two organizations—and in any case, HYDRA had broken from the Nazi movement back in the Red Skull's era. They weren't the same entity. They hadn't been for decades.
Pierce ran the calculus quickly and kept his face composed. The four Council representatives were less controlled.
The white-haired woman's voice had a slight tremor in it. "Commander Fury—are you absolutely certain these photographs aren't fabricated? Some kind of production your media contacts put together to mislead us?"
Fury let out a dry laugh. Daisy glanced at him sideways. The thought had probably occurred to him at some point—she'd put money on it.
"Every image you're looking at," Fury said, "is authentic field documentation. I led the team that collected it personally. Still think S.H.I.E.L.D.'s operational budget is excessive?"
On the flight back, he and Daisy had worked out how to frame the origin of the intelligence. Citing the Yashida Corporation directly risked touching off an international incident given the chaos already unfolding in Japan. Daisy wanted to minimize any trail pointing back to her as the source; Fury wanted the entire discovery attributed to sustained S.H.I.E.L.D. fieldwork under his leadership. The arrangement suited both of them perfectly. He gave her a visible performance opportunity—the promotion and pay bump were incidental. The Nazis, for all official purposes, were a collective S.H.I.E.L.D. triumph under Fury's command.