Given Peggy Carter's legendary history with HYDRA, the blonde across the hall was almost certainly Fury's plant — assigned to watch Daisy. She'd seen it coming. She just hadn't expected him to deploy the heir to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s founding legacy as a surveillance asset.
Sharon, for her part, had arrived at nearly the same conclusion from the opposite direction. This civilian woman is obviously here to monitor me.
As Peggy Carter's great-niece — which she absolutely was, whatever she'd claimed in the hallway — Sharon occupied complicated terrain. The Carter name carried weight, but weight cut both ways. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s upper ranks had long resisted the idea of Peggy's descendants joining the organization. The age gap between great-aunt and great-niece was nearly seventy years, which might suggest the family line had narrowed — but the Carters were a sizable family. Other relatives had made attempts over the decades. Every one of them had been turned aside by a string of convenient events.
It had taken until Peggy's ninetieth year, her generation-spanning network finally worn too thin to shield anyone further, for Sharon to get through — and only in this same intake cohort as Daisy.
Sharon had learned to live with it. She'd had watchers her whole life: household staff, neighbors, teachers at school. One more observer in the mix barely moved the needle. She pushed the flash of irritation back down and kept her expression steady.
Daisy had caught it, though. Just a flicker — but it was there.
Where did that come from?
They wrapped up their session. The warmth between them held, unchanged from the beginning. They rode the elevator back to their floor, exchanged nods and smiles at their respective doors, and went inside.
Daisy stood in her room and finally let her face relax. That had been a lot of sustained smiling.
Women's friendships are something else, she thought. She waited until she heard Sharon's door close and then turned back toward the elevator. This time, she was going to eat an actual meal.
Sharon Carter, ear pressed close to the gap in her doorframe, tracked Daisy's retreating footsteps. As the sound faded entirely, she felt her suspicion settle into certainty: Daisy had gone to file a report — off to brief whichever senior contact had assigned her to keep tabs on Sharon Carter.
The blonde exhaled slowly and stared at her ceiling.
She genuinely wasn't sure if coming to S.H.I.E.L.D. had been the right call.
Daisy had no idea she'd created that particular misunderstanding. She walked into the cafeteria, loaded a tray with an unreasonable quantity of fried chicken wings and drumsticks, and retreated to a quiet corner to eat.
In the interest of presenting herself as someone with at least a minimal claim to dignity, she also grabbed a plate of donuts — an officially documented favorite of powered individuals, apparently — to display at the table. When someone walked past, she ate the donut. When the coast was clear, she went back to the chicken.
She supplemented this with five slices of cake, fifteen squares of chocolate, and a large bowl of mashed potatoes.
Trainees moving through the cafeteria that evening occasionally noticed the woman in the corner. Several found it pleasant to watch, an observation they might have reconsidered if they'd known she'd been sitting there for a full hour.
When the last of the chocolate was gone, she leaned back and felt the warmth of consumed fuel spreading from the center outward.
Perfect.
There was no word she knew that adequately described the satisfaction of a full stomach after a long burn. She'd given up trying to find one.
She was just getting up to leave when a voice reached her from a few meters away.
"Eating that much in one sitting is a reliable path to gastrointestinal problems."
She'd already noticed the speaker but hadn't paid particular attention. She looked over now.
A Chinese-American woman in black tactical gear was approaching — studying Daisy with open, measured interest.
A familiar face, in the way of someone Daisy recognized without having met in person. She extended her hand. "Daisy Johnson."
The woman glanced briefly at Daisy's hand — checking for grease, apparently satisfied — and then shook it. "Melinda May. Do you speak Mandarin?" The last question came in Mandarin.
Daisy suppressed a small wince. Everyone she'd encountered here seemed to have a noticeable regional accent, and Melinda May was no exception. Madame Gao had sounded the same way.
If she responded in clean standard Mandarin, it would raise questions immediately. She'd thought about this contingency in advance. She rounded her vowels the way an English speaker would, tucked her back teeth in, let the tones flatten, and said with obvious effort: "Little... bit."
In any other context, that level of Mandarin would barely count as conversational. Here, it would pass.
May's expression warmed at once. She launched into genuine praise for Daisy's commitment to cultural heritage.
Daisy kept a neutral expression.
After a beat, May switched back to English with characteristic directness. "Fury rates you. He sees real potential."
Daisy deflected politely — said there was a lot she still needed to learn.
"Finished eating?"
"...Yes."
"Training room. Let me see what you've got."
May was already moving before Daisy had fully processed the question. Daisy looked down the hallway, calculated the social cost of simply turning around and going to bed, and concluded it wasn't worth it.
She followed.
They picked an open mat in a quiet section of the facility.
"What's your style?" May asked.
"Karate."
"Anything else?"
"...No, that's it."
May's brow tightened slightly. "Karate is surface-level at best. Come at me. I'll show you what real technique looks like."
Daisy had her own view on this. The world did have genuine high-level practitioners — the sacred sites of K'un-Lun and Penglai were real, and the people trained there were the legitimate article. Madame Gao, four hundred years old and expelled from the former, was a living example.
May, for all her considerable skill, belonged in the category of "excellent fighter." Not the same league.
Still, Daisy didn't underestimate her. She settled into a karate ready stance. "Watch yourself."
She stepped in — one motion, closing range — and threw a straight right at May's face. May shifted her head cleanly, caught Daisy's wrist with her right hand, and swept low with her foot.
Daisy's foot had already moved, tracing a half-arc to evade the sweep. Her free hand reached back to catch May's forearm.
"Not bad." May studied Daisy's footwork as she spoke. "You've put in real time on this. Footwork is the foundation — no amount of hand technique covers for poor positioning."
Two exchanges in, she had genuine interest.
May shifted to a Xingyi tiger form — left hand redirecting Daisy's attack, then a forward palm strike on a direct line.
Daisy tried to circle out to the flank. The palm tracked with her, following May's step-adjustment like it had its own momentum. No clean exit angle. Daisy raised her forearm to absorb the impact.
Weight shifted back simultaneously, and she launched a side kick at May's midsection.
"Flashy." The dismissal was precise and brief. May stepped back twice. The kick missed. So did the spinning heel follow-through Daisy had already loaded.
"That kind of movement looks good. That's most of what it does. You need a deeper foundation."
Daisy knew she was right. The karate instructor she'd trained under briefly had been mediocre — she'd surpassed him within a week, which said more about his ceiling than about her progress. At the time she hadn't had many options. Watching May operate at this level now, she leaned in and started absorbing what she could.
May's teaching instincts were nearly nonexistent. She could execute at an elite level, but converting that into transferable language was a different skill entirely, one she hadn't developed. Most of what she conveyed came through demonstration. Whatever Daisy took away, she had to take by watching and feeling.
Fortunately, Daisy had a workable base, processed information quickly, and her body — fully fed, fully recovered — was performing at its best for the first time in a while.
They worked through the session together. Half sparring, half instruction. By the end, Daisy's repertoire had grown in ways she hadn't anticipated walking in.