[ Movie Set, Costa Rica Island ] [ Few Days Later ]
After a few days of mild irritation, Mr. Ward decided this new assignment wasn't so different from his last. Previously, he had played the part of a reckless, loyal agent. Now, he was playing the role of a charming, vaguely misunderstood leading man. Different script, same smug face.
When Daisy arrived on set, filming was well underway and running like a well-oiled camera dolly.
The current scene was set in the lab — minimalistic, high-tech, and thoroughly fictional. The cast was gathered around a prop velociraptor egg, pretending to witness the birth of a genetically engineered predator. The dinosaurs, of course, would be rendered digitally later, so the actors had to perform with thin air. It was cinema magic or mass hallucination — take your pick.
The center of the scene was Leo Fitz, playing the second male lead — a mathematician vehemently opposed to cloning dinosaurs. His performance had clearly consumed him.
Gone was the buttoned-up engineer. Fitz now sported shaggy hair, black-rimmed glasses, a faded leather jacket, and various trinkets that suggested either a rebellious streak or poor impulse control. He looked like a rock band dropout who'd majored in chaos theory.
Yet beneath the punk-scientist aesthetic lay the same analytical brilliance. He played the part with a sincere intensity, masking his nervousness under a layer of faux swagger.
Facing him was a Chinese agent who was playing Henry Wu character — stiff-backed, serious, and full of exposition.
Fitz stammered slightly, leaning into his real-life awkwardness as he delivered his line to the geneticist with dramatic irony:
"How do you know they're all female? Did someone go into the park and lift up the dinosaurs' skirts?"
The Chinese agent, facing away from the camera, replied matter-of-factly, "It's not hard to control chromosomes. All vertebrate embryos begin female. They require external hormones during development to become male. We simply don't give them those hormones."
Fitz perched on a piece of equipment like it was a bar stool in a jazz club, but his face was deadly serious.
"Your control will fail. If evolution has taught us anything, it's this — life is not confined. Life adapts. It breaks barriers. It endures. It's painful, even dangerous, but—"
He clasped his fingers together, then flung them apart in a sudden burst: "This is life."
The Chinese scientist scoffed, radiating disdain. "You're saying a bunch of females can reproduce?"
Fitz gazed through his glasses, straight into the camera, as if addressing the audience — or maybe just one person in particular.
"I can't guarantee anything... but I know this — life will find a way."
"Brilliant!" Coulson called out as he halted the scene. A round of applause erupted from the assistant director, crew, and cast.
Fitz, usually shy, gave a sheepish grin. He could quote math formulas for days, but compliments still made him feel like he was being graded without a calculator.
He cast a furtive glance at Simmons. The girl who occupied too much of his CPU.
And Simmons looked back.
Their eyes met for a second — awkward, electric — then both looked away like two teenagers caught by their own hormones.
Coulson turned to Daisy, curiosity written all over his face. "That last line — 'life will find a way' — that's a classic. Seriously, Daisy, how did you come up with that?"
Daisy blinked, smiled innocently, and crafted a perfectly believable lie on the spot. She described how she'd once attended a church school but always felt more drawn to Darwin than divinity. An artistic girl who found beauty in chaos theory — it was poetic, plausible, and utterly fabricated.
To be fair, it was a line borrowed from a previous life. But this wasn't the time to explain that to Coulson.
Coulson bought it with a nod of approval. As someone who'd danced with death more times than he cared to admit, he appreciated a grounded worldview. To him, Daisy embodied the best of modern youth — skeptical, sharp, and never boring.
The quote meant something different to everyone.
To Fitz and Simmons, it was a cautionary reminder that science isn't infallible.
To agents like Coulson, it was a warning wrapped in truth. If their film could make people question unchecked ambition, maybe it could do some good in the world.
To Grant Ward— Hydra's not-so-covert liaison — it was something worth flagging. He passed the quote up the chain to his shadowy handlers.
What insight the higher-ups might squeeze from it, Ward didn't know — and didn't care. He'd done his part.
Dr. Hank Pym, spent two days correcting equations from the previous experiments. He handed Daisy a dense file of calculations.
According to Pym, Earth's current technological ceiling meant humanity wouldn't reach the space age for at least a hundred years — unless a disruptive force, like Daisy and her abilities, changed that trajectory.
Daisy's powers made the impossible... well, testable.
While Hank Pym buried himself in equations, he also occasionally joined the filming, hoping to unwind his overstimulated brain. Daisy, meanwhile, took over his lab and started running experiments with the obsession of a caffeinated mad scientist.
This, unfortunately, wrecked Ward's plan to seduce her for intel. It didn't matter how many slow smiles he gave — Daisy wasn't coming out of the lab, and she sure as hell wasn't watching him smolder.
Being the male lead came with perks, but freedom wasn't one of them. He was constantly in the spotlight, which meant his movements were limited. Even with half a dozen bugs planted, all he picked up from Daisy's lab were explosions, scribbled equations, and static interference.
Hydra got bomb residue and garbled audio. Ward got frustrated.
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[ 1 Month Later ]
A month passed quickly. The team found their rhythm, and the lab scenes were wrapped just in time for the holidays.
"How stable is your control?" Hank Pym asked Daisy as they walked out of Yale.
"If I have clear coordinates, I can jump within a ten-kilometer radius. Beyond that, the margin of error gets a little... terrifying," Daisy said proudly.
She wasn't wrong. Within a ten-kilometer range, she could outmaneuver almost anyone. Couldn't win every fight — but she could sure as hell vanish before things got ugly.
Pym frowned slightly, unconvinced.
Daisy raised her arms in mock defiance, revealing her bruises. Her pale skin was a roadmap of dark blotches from the micro-resonance feedback. It wasn't visible under clothes, but it hurt like hell. She needed to let her body recover.
"Resonance issues... Either you boost your strength or find a way to reduce the shock." Pym rubbed his temple, clearly adding this to his growing mental whiteboard.
Daisy gently patted his arm. "Relax, Doc. I've got S.H.I.E.L.D. backing me — all the gear, tech, and weird funding I could ask for. You? You need a break. Go home. Rest. You look like you've been fighting equations in your sleep."
It wasn't a joke. Pym had lost his wife, was estranged from his daughter, and had been unceremoniously booted from his own company. Holidays weren't exactly joyful for him.
She gave the rest of the company staff some much-needed time off.
David Lieberman — the reclusive genius — went home to be with his pregnant wife.
The Ms. Maki boarded her flight, off to see her aging parents.
Sir James Wesley jetted to Spain to catch up with his former boss.
Angela, her real best friend, was with her own family. She'd invited Daisy to join them, but Daisy declined.
Sharon Carter, her fake best friend, flew to the UK to visit her Aunt Peggy.
And so, for once, Daisy had the holiday all to herself.
No noise. No drama. No one monitoring her every move.
She loaded a duffel bag into the car, slid behind the wheel, and drove herself back to New York.
For the first time in weeks, the silence felt like a gift — not a warning.
To be continued...
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[ POWER STONES AND REVIEWS PLS ]