Daisy had no idea the Commissioner had mentally filed her under "doomed protagonist with a death wish." She was still waiting for him to make a call.
"We move tomorrow. I'll have someone assigned to protect you, Miss Johnson." Commissioner Stacy took her seriously enough, at least.
Daisy's faith in New York's finest — who seemed to clock out of this world in groups of three per episode — was limited at best. She pushed for something practical: "Could I get a carry permit? A gun in hand would go a long way toward protecting myself."
For the Commissioner of the NYPD, that was a small ask. He agreed without hesitation. The official permit would arrive by mail within a week; until then, she had provisional authorization to carry.
The next morning, Daisy skipped the protection detail and watched from the shadows instead.
This wasn't about catching Spider-Man — Spider-Man didn't kill people, so the Commissioner could afford to sit in the back of a cruiser looking important for cameras. Drug kingpins were a different matter. The Commissioner planted himself at the command post, calling it "tactical coordination."
The 10th Precinct and the Midtown North Precinct weren't touched. Brett, who'd blown the whistle, was told to take a personal day and go home. The Commissioner pulled personnel from other precincts entirely — five hundred officers fanned out and encircled the target location, waiting.
Night fell.
The blind man who delivered the "laundry detergent" shuffled out on schedule.
"Take him down!" Commissioner Stacy's voice crackled over the radio.
One blind man against two officers — there was no contest. They stopped him, searched the bags: three packs of the real thing.
Evidence confirmed. The Commissioner exhaled and gave the order: "All units, move in."
Snipers took out the door guards first. Then the doors went in.
Inside, the space was vast. Six rows of people — over a hundred Chinese men and women, blank-faced, moving through a mechanical routine of sorting, weighing, and packaging at three metal tables. Around the perimeter, gang members stood watch with automatic weapons.
The sound of boots on concrete alerted the guards. They were trained — they opened fire on the entrance immediately.
Gunshots cracked back and forth. Officers went down. But the numbers kept pressing in, and one by one the gang members were neutralized.
The roar of gunfire sent the blind workers into a panic. They stumbled in every direction, crashing into each other, into tables, into walls.
Officers split into two groups — one to guide the blind workers out, the other to sweep the remaining gang members. The Commissioner had the full weight of the NYPD behind him; he'd opened three fronts simultaneously. The old woman's main production facility and two satellite distribution points were all hit at once.
The scene yielded over 3,500 kg (roughly 7,700 lbs) of product. Between all three locations, a hundred and thirty gang members were killed or captured.
The old woman herself was gone. No trace of her on-site.
But there were always people willing to talk. Several of the captured gang members gave up her name, and working with a department sketch artist, they produced a composite that was maybe seventy or eighty percent accurate.
City-wide warrant. No matter how much dirty money had changed hands at the precinct level, no matter what deals city council members had cut with the gangs, in public everyone had to keep up appearances. Politicians and cops alike were falling over each other to announce they were hunting the ringleader.
The hundred-plus blind survivors found at the scene sent the media into full meltdown. True congenital blindness was rare among them — most had been blinded deliberately: poisoned over time, or in some cases, physically damaged. The sheer brutality of it dominated every front page for days. Calls for attention to vulnerable communities, for an end to racial discrimination, surged back into public conversation.
Across the city, blind people, mute people, deaf people suddenly became objects of concerned attention.
Matt Murdock — not yet Daredevil, still grinding through law school — found himself surrounded by well-meaning classmates who kept trying to help him with things he didn't need help with, and had absolutely no idea why.
Stick — the blind old swordsman hiding in New York, quietly preparing his campaign against the Hand — got surrounded by a crowd of worried citizens and nearly drew his blade before he realized what was happening. He spent five days in a nursing home, inundated with visitors, before he managed to slip out while no one was looking.
Two weeks later, Daisy was back in the Commissioner's office.
"Your carry permit," Stacy said, sliding it across the desk. "The ringleader is still at large, so stay cautious. For what it's worth, your name only exists in my records — no one else knows you were involved." He set a bank card beside the permit. "This is the department's formal compensation. One hundred thousand dollars."
The middle-aged man looked slightly uncomfortable — the guilt of letting the main target slip through was written on his face.
Daisy didn't hold it against him. Expecting the NYPD to take down the Hand was a fantasy. The old woman was a survivor of four hundred years — caution had kept her alive this long. It was a virtue and a flaw at once. After the sweep, she wouldn't risk setting foot in New York again until every condition was perfectly arranged. That much was certain.
Daisy accepted the card with good cheer, stayed for dinner, and said her goodbyes.
On the way home, her well-informed friend called.
"Wait — the school's not being demolished anymore?" Daisy said, surprised.
"Word is United Construction's funding chain collapsed. They paid the breach penalty this afternoon. The company's going into liquidation."
Her friend sounded genuinely relieved about not having to transfer schools. Daisy needed a moment to process.
Funding chain. Right. The real story was that the old woman had run, the city-wide manhunt had spooked every gang operation in the borough, and they'd all gone to ground. For the next few years, nobody would be coming after this patch of Hell's Kitchen. History had taken a detour and landed back where it started.
I wonder if those board members waiting on their demolition payoffs are weeping into their hands right now. She savored the thought.
She wasn't going back to school anyway — not unless those teachers could teach her how to use her vibration powers. That seemed unlikely.
With cash in hand, the logical next step was to invest. She needed income that didn't require scraping by.
Real estate had briefly seemed viable — buy property and wait for United Construction to buy her out at a premium. But those cowards had folded, and buying now would be pure stupidity. Based on her read of this world's trajectory, the subprime mortgage crisis was coming. Timeline: next year. 2007.
Stockpiling real estate right now would be handing money to the void.
That left something more cerebral: building a company.
She lacked her predecessor's instinct for hacking, but she had foresight and solid foundational knowledge. One idea in particular surfaced quickly.
Big data analytics.
The idea wouldn't go mainstream until around 2008. Practical applications would take another two years after that.
It wasn't technically difficult. The key was the idea itself — any person with normal intelligence would understand it immediately once it was laid out. Collect, process, analyze information through rigorous data modeling. Raw and blunt, not particularly sophisticated — write an algorithm, let it run, let it crunch.
She filed her leave of absence from school that same afternoon and threw herself into planning.
In honor of her predecessor, she named the company: Skye Data Analytics, LLC.