The moment her chaotic consciousness reassembled, pain struck from the darkness like lightning. Daisy Johnson snapped awake. Her throat was painfully dry, but she still gulped in air desperately, like a drowning person taking their first breath of fresh air. She could see nothing. Every inch of her body was being tortured by pain, as if every bone had been broken—especially her arms. It felt as though every nerve in her body had been wired to high-voltage cables, the repeated shocks of pain battering her brain until she nearly went mad. She could feel herself sitting in a chair, her hands restrained behind her by some heavy metal device, her feet bound by the same kind of apparatus. The icy metal raised goosebumps on every patch of skin it touched.
Daisy Johnson took a few more breaths and forced her eyes open, confirming that she had neither gone blind nor been blindfolded. She smelled a familiar, pungent odor of mildew, like the temporary shelters where she had stayed before. That allowed her to determine where she was. She forced herself to ignore the bloody taste in her sandpaper-dry throat, ignore the waves of pain that made her want to cry out, and focus on calming her chaotic thoughts. I've been trained. I'm an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., she told herself. I have a way to get free. Nothing in this world can stump me.
But the moment she tried to struggle and figure out what exactly was restraining her, a high-voltage current discharged from the device and immediately paralyzed her nerves. Her strength drained away like air escaping from a punctured balloon. The intense pain finally broke her. A scream squeezed through her clenched teeth, and tears reflexively welled from her tear ducts, smudging her black eye makeup. But she immediately