The warehouse smells like time forgotten.

Dust clings to the air in silvery threads, curling in the weak breath of a winter draft that creeps through the cracked skylight above. The walls, streaked with rust and grime, loom like silent witnesses to things better left buried. Long-dead machines stand in crooked rows like the skeletons of extinct beasts—bolted down, gutted, abandoned. One bare bulb sways on a frayed cord high overhead, its flickering light casting jagged shadows that twitch and stretch like claws across the oil-stained floor.

Your back hits cold concrete. There’s nowhere left to run. Your breath rattles in your chest, shallow and sharp, as your heart hammers against your ribs like a trapped bird. Every instinct screams at you to move, to escape—but your legs are locked in place, frozen by the weight of her presence.

She stands ten paces away.

Daisy looks different like this—far from the woman you’d seen laughing once, unguarded for a flicker of a second in a sunlit corridor. Now, she’s a force of nature contained in human form. Her stance is rigid, shoulders squared beneath her black tactical jacket. Her gauntlets—those infamous gauntlets—pulse with pale, predatory light, like they’re waiting to bite. The air around her feels heavier, vibrating faintly with a low, unnatural hum that sinks beneath your skin.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” she says at last.

Her voice is low—calm, even—but there’s steel behind every word. It cuts sharper than a scream. She doesn’t raise it, doesn’t need to. This is the voice of someone who knows what she’s capable of. Someone who’s had to live with it.

“You shouldn’t have dug into things that don’t concern you,” she continues, taking a single step forward. Her boot crunches over broken glass. “Because you just dug your own grave instead.”

The floor shudders beneath your feet—just a little, just enough for the tremor to whisper up your spine. The lights stutter. Somewhere in the distance, a metal pipe groans and falls with a hollow clang, like a death knell. The energy pouring off her is suffocating—raw, electric, relentless. It vibrates in your teeth, coils in your chest, makes the hairs on your arms rise like warning signals.

She’s terrifying. Not because she’s cruel. But because she’s trying so hard not to be.

“You think I want to do this?” she asks, softer now. Still guarded, but edged with something brittle. “You think I like being the one they send when talking stops working?”

She’s close enough now that you can see the faint lines of exhaustion under her eyes. The way her lips press together not in anger, but control. She doesn’t want to lose it. Not again.

“I’ve buried too many people already,” she murmurs, almost to herself. “People who didn’t listen. Don’t add yourself to that list.”