Journey to Puerto Rico

Daisy ran back to her rental, lay down on her own bed, and felt completely drained.

Toying with an agent was something neither the former failed webnovel writer nor the little hacker she had once been had ever experienced. Her adrenaline had surged at the time, but now that it had faded, all that remained was lingering fear.

Once the relief passed, exhaustion washed over her. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she could not help but sigh. She had clearly been an easy-on-the-eyes beauty who scored above eighty, yet after being put through the wringer these past few days, she looked utterly unkempt—probably only a sixty now.

Heaven knew, she really did not know how to dress herself up. The original Daisy's memories did not offer much to go on, either.

Other transmigrators woke to someone slapping them awake, to pretty maids calling for them, or to the sounds of battle and slaughter. Not her. She had been awakened by a fragrance—the scent coming from her own body.

The previous Daisy had been an orphan. She left the orphanage at ten and went through four foster homes in a row. Each month, the government provided the families with a subsidy, while they covered her tuition. Both sides got what they wanted, and their relationship was as cold as one between strangers.

Daisy had been destitute. After years of scrimping and saving, she had finally bought a secondhand laptop, leaving no spare money to fuss over her appearance. On top of that, the church school had strict checks on perfume. One undeniable fact lay before her: the scent that had woken her was her natural body fragrance...

Fortunately, the scent was not strong, and her nose gradually got used to it.

Faced with immense pressure just to survive, Daisy first had to make sure she stayed alive. She could worry about those trivial matters later, when she had the time.

The hardest step was complete. The Obelisk was in her hands, and Baldy, the only one who knew about it, had gone home to wait for his promotion, raise, and rich, beautiful bride!

After taking a sip of water to steady her emotions, she opened her backpack. The Obelisk lay quietly inside.

Without Inhuman blood, the Obelisk would turn any intelligent life-form that touched it into stone. Daisy knew it was time to find out whether she was truly an Inhuman.

Though she believed there was more than a fifty-percent chance that she was, what if she was not? Turning into stone was not her goal.

She took out a small knife and gripped it in her hand, prepared to cut off her little finger the moment petrification began.

She stuffed a towel into her mouth to keep herself from crying out afterward.

I can do this! Nothing should go wrong! She kept encouraging herself. It took a full ten minutes before she finally made up her mind.

Her left pinky trembled as it reached toward the Obelisk. Ten centimeters. Five centimeters. One centimeter.

Her finger was just a hair away from touching the Obelisk.

She hardened her heart and pressed her finger down hard.

Her eyes widened as she stared without blinking at both the Obelisk and her finger. There was no petrification. The Obelisk merely seemed to grow warm for an instant.

Still unconvinced, she grabbed it with her entire left hand. The Obelisk remained unchanged, and so did she.

"I knew I could do it!" Thrilled, she buried her face in her pillow so as not to alarm her roommate, then grinned to herself for ages.

She pressed a hand to her chest and took a long while to calm her excitement.

She had confirmed her true bloodline and obtained the Obelisk, but gaining powers still required an activation ritual. The ancient Inhumans had been extremely strict in selecting their own kind. They believed only those with the finest genes could gain superpowers; the better the genes, the stronger the ability. At the same time, the strength of one's powers would also cause some of the original genes to be damaged.

What genetic defect had Quake possessed in the original timeline? Daisy truly could not see one. She could only comfort herself by thinking that perhaps her genes were simply tough!

At present, Tony Stark was still selling his Jericho Missiles. There were at least four years before Quake, in the television series, placed the Obelisk in the Underground City of Puerto Rico. Daisy had moved ahead of her own life's trajectory.

The consequence of not following the original script was that she was all alone now, without a single helper. Pulling the tiger's skin over herself as a banner once was enough; she had no desire to go back to matching wits and nerve with those agents.

She needed to set out alone with the Obelisk, head to Puerto Rico, find that Underground City, and activate her bloodline.

Relying on a single anti-wolf stun gun to travel all the way to Puerto Rico did not seem reliable no matter how she looked at it.

Her appearance, soft yet heroic, did not quite fit the local beauty standards. Not knowing how to dress was another strike against her, but she still had to stay cautious. Drunks and racists were everywhere.

Although Puerto Rico had always been clamoring to become the fifty-first state of the United States, the locals were dirt poor, and public safety could not be guaranteed at all.

She needed skills to defend herself, which made firearms her top priority.

After counting her savings, she found that only nine hundred dollars remained after the past few days of fooling Baldy. She temporarily gave up on traveling far.

No matter what she did next, she had to get some money. Daisy's hacking skills were good, but the golden age of hackers had already passed. Tampering with the Banking system was simply asking to die.

Fortunately, she was equally skilled at programming.

A day later, she took on a freelance job, helping a company design a database entry system. During the day, she muddled through classes; at night, she burned the midnight oil doing the programmer's work, a job with little future.

After working for seven days, she earned three thousand dollars and went to look around a gun store.

Rifles, hunting rifles, and shotguns were easier to buy. These guns had all been adjusted to semi-automatic mode, and their magazine capacities had been reduced accordingly. With identification, anyone could buy them.

The handguns she was more interested in because of their portability had much stricter purchase requirements. Applications had to be submitted in advance, followed by a wait for approval.

New York law allowed eighteen-year-olds to own long guns, while the minimum age for buying handguns was twenty-one. Daisy had just turned eighteen; there was no way she could carry a rifle to Puerto Rico.

Besides, guns were not permitted on either planes or ships. There was no spatial ring among her transmigration benefits, so even if she bought one here, she could not take it with her. She could only figure something out locally.

Buying a gun was difficult, but practicing and learning to shoot was not. Major chain gun stores all had places to practice shooting, and there were even more professional ranges offering a complete service, from choosing a gun to instruction and training until customers became proficient.

Of course, customers only needed money and a brain that was not too stupid.

She found a fairly large chain gun store, showed her identification, filled out forms, and finally rented a handgun, bought two boxes of ammunition and two targets, and rented a shooting lane. The handgun rental was ten dollars, the ammunition cost thirty-two dollars, the targets were one dollar, and the lane rental was eighteen dollars.

After hesitating for a moment, she still hired a supposedly professional instructor for sixty-eight dollars an hour.

Making full use of her spare time, she practiced for a full half month. It had to be said that there was a reason the future Quake could become Director of S.H.I.E.L.D... Her physical fitness was a little better than an ordinary person's, her eyesight was a little sharper, and her reactions were a little faster. With advantages piling up in every aspect, her starting point was already higher than that of ordinary people—and that was without counting her powers or the physical enhancements of an Inhuman body.

The training cost a total of three hundred dollars, most of it spent on ammunition. She did not dare claim she could hit every shot, but she felt it was enough to handle ordinary people. She found a small factory and borrowed its X-ray equipment. The Obelisk's dominance was truly astonishing: it did not show up under X-rays at all, as though it were a mass of air. Daisy was completely relieved.

She changed into travel clothes, slung on a backpack, put on a baseball cap and sunglasses, and said goodbye to her roommate. Her reason for requesting leave from school was to search for her missing parents, and the school happily granted her a month off.

After a full four-hour flight, the plane finally landed at San Juan International Airport in Puerto Rico.

She first looked for somewhere to stay. This Caribbean island mainly spoke Spanish, but in order to throw itself into the embrace of Uncle Sam, English was also an official language. Daisy quickly checked into a local hotel that claimed to be the safest around.