"Try contacting the Commissioner," Daisy suggested. "Commissioner Stacy has a solid reputation outside the department — he's senior enough that dirty money shouldn't be able to touch him."
Brett blinked. Him? A beat cop reaching out directly to the Commissioner of the NYPD?
The department ran seventy-seven precincts, twelve Transit Bureau districts, nine Housing Bureau police service areas — over thirty thousand sworn officers. In the Commissioner's eyes, Brett was nobody.
And going over everyone's head was no small thing, no matter how he looked at it. He had to weigh what this could cost him.
"If the Commissioner doesn't believe me… I'm done," he muttered to Daisy, worry threading through his voice.
Daisy knew George Stacy was a good man — but Brett didn't, and she couldn't exactly explain how she knew. She said nothing, letting him work it out for himself.
After a long pause, something shifted in him. "Alright. This is the right thing to do. It's my duty." His voice had found its footing. "But you're coming with me when I go."
Daisy had no objection. Getting connected to the Commissioner was Brett's problem to solve. All she had to do was show up and tell her story again.
Over the next few days, Daisy stayed cautious — no more wandering the streets. Instead she signed up for an intensive karate course and drilled for two days straight.
The fight against those gang members had exposed a glaring weak spot: she had no close-quarters combat ability whatsoever. Relying on her shockwave powers wasn't sustainable.
New York, a city of ten million, naturally had no shortage of places teaching Eastern martial arts — Wing Chun, Xingyiquan, Hung Gar — she could find any of them if she tried. But time was short, so she went with something fast and practical.
She chose karate over taekwondo.
On the third evening, Brett found her.
"Dinner at the Commissioner's house?" Daisy said, eyebrows raised. "Brett, you work fast. Impress him tonight and you'll be up for a promotion in no time." The two of them had been thrown together by circumstance long enough that the awkwardness had worn off.
On the walk over, she listened to his account of the past two days and couldn't help but admire his nerve.
He hadn't touched the department's internal mail system — smart. Instead he'd played the oblivious rookie to perfection, ignoring his colleagues' stares as he jogged up and slapped a ticket on the Commissioner's official car.
The Commissioner had been baffled. How did someone this clueless get onto the force? Out of some paternal instinct toward his subordinates, he'd pulled Brett aside for a talk — and before he could finish his lecture, Brett had jumped in and rapid-fired the whole story at him.
Commissioner Stacy wasn't the type to act on rumors alone. Reaching his position hadn't been a matter of passion — it took calculation. An operation of this scale would have connections running in every direction; he needed more evidence. That was what led to tonight's dinner invitation.
The Commissioner seemed genuinely clean. He lived in a high-rise in Upper Manhattan. The two of them stepped out of the elevator and rang the bell for unit 2016. A middle-aged man opened the door.
He was lean, blond, sharp-eyed, and wore his seriousness like a second skin — still in a suit and tie even at home. He studied Daisy with a measured look before stepping aside to let them in.
The Commissioner's wife was warm and immediately called everyone to the table.
At dinner, Daisy met the other members of the Stacy household. First was the famous Gwen — a blond girl who looked about eleven or twelve, well put together, with a faint hostility in her eyes when she looked at Daisy.
Beauty sizing up beauty. That was Daisy's read on it, at least.
There was also a half-grown boy who looked around four or five. Daisy recalled that another son was still in the future.
The table also held the Stacy family's famous lemon-herb sea bass.
Honestly, the cooking here was the stuff of nightmares. Two months in this world and Daisy hadn't had a satisfying meal — except for her maid's "Chinese cooking," which barely counted. Bread and vegetable salad, day in and day out. So the moment she got the nod to start eating, she went at it without restraint.
Bass or no bass, she wasn't precious about it. She came from a land where people ate crocodile — a sea bass was barely a warm-up.
Mrs. Stacy tried to make small talk at first — Are you settling in all right? Do you have many friends? — but once she saw how happily Daisy was eating, she let it go.
Karate burned energy. So did using her powers. Despite having brought it up before, her maid still cooked on the dainty side, and Daisy had been holding herself back at every meal to avoid looking like a bottomless pit. She let go of all that tonight.
Beauty is its own excuse. A pretty face could get away with a lot worse than eating with enthusiasm.
She sat completely at ease, no pretense of manners or decorum — and somehow that directness won the Commissioner and his wife over.
A person with something to hide doesn't eat like that. That was the Commissioner's thought.
This poor girl looks like she hasn't had a proper meal in weeks. That was his wife's.
Gwen, who had been holding herself to careful ladylike posture, stared at Daisy in disbelief. Did she just escape from somewhere? Who eats that much?
By the time Daisy set down her fork, she'd put away somewhere between a third and nearly half the food on the table. She dabbed her mouth with a napkin, looking genuinely satisfied.
Little Gwen was left scowling as she helped her mother clear the table. Daisy and Brett followed the Commissioner into his study.
"Miss Johnson," Commissioner Stacy said, taking the lead. "Can you walk me through how you first identified the target?"
Daisy wasn't about to tell him she'd been targeted by a deranged old woman and turned the tables on her — and that now she needed the police to help clean up the mess on her behalf. Instead she gave him a cover story: someone had asked her to help locate a missing acquaintance. Then she pivoted.
"Commissioner, I have strong reason to believe there are a large number of Chinese victims being held and abused in their underground facility."
"This is the evidence I've gathered. It's circumstantial, but it adds up."
She pulled a stack of materials from her bag: utility consumption records, delivery truck logs, several missing persons posts from online forums. She wished she could just show him a photo of the old woman's face. That's her, officer. Shoot on sight. She genuinely wanted an APB issued — preferably one that authorized lethal force — but the old woman was paranoid, had never been caught on camera.
Commissioner Stacy went through the documents carefully, once and then again. Anyone with a clear head could see this was something big.
The operation's operators apparently felt bulletproof with a crooked precinct in their pocket — they'd barely tried to hide their tracks. Half the evidence was the kind any random citizen could have dug up.
Not knowing the full backstory, the Commissioner found himself grudgingly impressed by the young woman across from him. The girl had guts and a sense of justice.
Women, he thought — a little amused, a little resigned. In his experience, most of the civilians who went chasing after criminals out of sheer principle turned out to be women.