p class="MsoNormal"Mary Sue's first real hack is when she is eight. She's not sure she can do it, but it's not the first time she's crept in through the window of Sister Pauline's study. That's where they keep things they confiscate, and everyone's done it once. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Daisy has done it a full half-dozen times over the years. This time she does so with a memory stick clutched between her fingers. If they knew what kind of ideas she'd get from it, they would never have given her emHacker /emto read, probably, but it hadn't taken long to figure out how to copy the ideas from it on one of the library computers. The hardest part had been stealing the memory stick from the cupboard at school she'd gone to at the Murphys'. She stands in front of Sister Pauline's chair. Twitches the mouse. Watches the screen glitter into life. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emI can do this. /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"The Murphys don't want her. Like the Andersons didn't, and the Liangs didn't, and the Sutcliffs, the Hills, Duhigg-Kleons. Someone must have. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emI can do this./em/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"It feels like it takes hours, even if years later she'll know the security was laughable. The acquisitions- emacquisitions, like she's a new order of bed linen-/em are listed in an excel spreadsheet. Mary Sue Poots is on the list, between Tara Packham and Mickey Rodriguez. Half the boxes next to it were blank: parents' names, date of birth, place of birth. Under 'Status at Intake', there's a hyperlink instead of an answer. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"When she clicks it, it opens Sister Pauline's browser to a page that doesn't look anything like the login for the computer, despite the recognisable boxes asking for an ID number and password. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Mary Sue scowls, trying emadmin /emand running the same program that had gotten her into the computer in the first place. Nothing happens. The logo looms above the two boxes, its birdy eye seeming to wink smugly at her. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal""You'll see," she says. The library has lots of books on computers, in the grownups' section, and one of them must tell you how to understand the others. She logs out and jumps back out the window with the memory stick in her skirt pocket. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"***/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"She's called Skye when she manages it. Six and a half years later, moved past the books in the school library and the public library, onto learning from other hackers in forums she reaches from internet cafes. That's safer, they say, people can't find her when she's hacking. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"She's started to hack the kind of things that mean people might want to find her, now. She's not sure if that's scary or awesome. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Well, okay, it's definitely awesome. The nuns still call her Mary Sue, but she's not some little girl nobody wants Skye, she's a hacktivist, and she's got a stupidly long hyperlink written down on the inside of her stupid anti-bullying wristband so she can copy it out without anyone knowing and wipe it off later. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"She's maybe a little bit scared. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emI can do this. /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"This is a new internet cafe, and its ages away from the Sullivans, where she's staying. Skye does feel kind of bad for doing this while she's with a family, but it's not like she'll be there long. She smiles brightly at the woman sitting opposite her. Fingers the USB- ancient and battered, she has others, but it feels right to use this one- and slams it into the slot hard enough that for a moment she thinks she's broken it./p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Okay, maybe she's a little tense. That wasn't necessary. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emI can do this. /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"The login screen pops up, splitting the screen with her own flickering lines of code. She shouldn't really watch it, anyone might see, but she can't resist, not even going through the motions of trying to pass unnoticed. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"The screen changes. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Skye has to bite back a yell of delight, fingers twitching over the mouse. Opens opens the first file in the folder. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Nothing. There's nothing there, nothing new, just a brief paragraph, heavily redacted, referring her to a serial number. She copies it into the search field, taut with fury when nothing comes up. Nothing, again. She's in, maybe, but not in deep enough. Skye pulls out the thumbdrive and shoves it into her bag with almost enough force to rip the seam. Logs into a chatroom. Maybe getting even this far into SHIELD's servers will be useful to someone. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"***/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Daisy Johnson has never bought a computer in her life, but she's never been far away from them either. The one she uses now, she won in a game of pool in some dive bar in Seattle, two weeks after she fled SHIELD. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"She thinks Mack is on her case. He'll laugh when he hears about that, wonder if she'd even had to use her powers. She hadn't, any more than she had against him in a dozen different games at the playground. Hunter had been the first to accuse her of it, horrified at losing his own game of choice in front of Bobbi, and the conversation might have died there if Mack hadn't clearly thought it was the funniest thing Hunter had ever said. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Bobbi and Hunter. Mack. Coulson. emLincoln/em. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"The clicking of balls and cue is never really as good as the rhythmic stutter of keys under her fingers, but it has the same soothing edge. The world fades to a collage of colours and sounds, and Daisy can focus on nothing but the task at hand. Sitting in a park in the dead of night, using the wifi from a nearby gym. Her hair is starting to grow out, brushing against her shoulders as it catches in the breeze. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"She mostly uses the laptop to keep up to date- with SHIELD and the ATCU, mostly, since the programs that scan for Inhuman activity run in the background. She's improved them, now, and manages to beat anyone else to the scene more often than not. It's been weeks since she saw an agent. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"She isn't looking into SHIELD right now. Not pouring over news sites for a familiar face or name. Daisy's mission, for the first time since Hive had died, is a matter of pure self-indulgence. After all, she's never seen it before. She's always wanted to. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Alright, she always pictured it differently. In a graveyard in New York, maybe, tearing open an official-looking envelope as she kneels before a joint headstone. Or in some understaffed office building, the paper crinkling between her fingers. Not a cold, littered park, shooing away pigeons before they can ruin the moment. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Hit enter, heart in mouth. Stare. Then burst out laughing. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"It's in Chinese. All that panic, and she can't even read the damn thing. Well, nearly half of it is in English, really, but the details, the names and weights and words, are in characters. All but one of them. Two words jump out at her in recognisable lettering./p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emCalvin Johnson/em. Right there, above 'full name of father'. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"And there, above 'full name of mother' must be Jiaying's name. Daisy traces over them. There are three characters, though she doesn't know any of them by sight. The rudimentary Chinese she had started learning after Jiaying had died had been cast aside when Joey had signed on, and then Yoyo, tripling her determination to learn to speak their language. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emLearn Spanish!/em/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Daisy shakes herself, hard, not willing to fall back there. The first character is probably Jiaying's family name, or at least the one she had been using when she met Cal. The two on the right must be "Jiaying". /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Daisy traces them out on her thigh. The order is probably wrong, but she can almost imagine she's holding a pen- filling out a form, maybe even a college application, and insisting on writing her mother's name in characters even if she has to spell it out as well. She thinks she would, anyway. She can't imagine that that wouldn't be important to her. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"A birth certificate. One that doesn't say emMary Sue Poots/em, and doesn't have yawning gaps where the things that matter should be. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"This one says Daisy Louise Johnson. Right there, at the top, next to a character that she thinks- hopes- might be her Chinese name. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Four names. Daisy, Louise, Johnson, and now another. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emI can do this. /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"She was only ever looking for one, really. She could have dealt with only knowing Johnson. Skye Johnson sounds kind of pretty. Even Mary Sue Johnson would have done. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Daisy Louise Johnson. And now another one. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Daisy opens a Chinese dictionary, the corners of her lips tugging up as she deciphers the navigation. Fingertips emclicker-clack/em against the keys. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emI did it. /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"strongemNotes:/em/strong/p
p class="MsoNormal"Daisy having a Chinese name is a complete invention, but I headcanon it as span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'MS Gothic'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'MS Gothic';"font face="Nimbus Mono L, monospace"span lang="zh-CN"菊/span/font/span (Jú), which means Daisy. I don't know, I feel like Cal and Jiaying would have liked the symmetry. Louise, however, is Daisy's middle name in the comics, which I purloined for this./p
p class="MsoNormal"Also, I apologise for my complete lack of understanding of how computers work./p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Daisy has done it a full half-dozen times over the years. This time she does so with a memory stick clutched between her fingers. If they knew what kind of ideas she'd get from it, they would never have given her emHacker /emto read, probably, but it hadn't taken long to figure out how to copy the ideas from it on one of the library computers. The hardest part had been stealing the memory stick from the cupboard at school she'd gone to at the Murphys'. She stands in front of Sister Pauline's chair. Twitches the mouse. Watches the screen glitter into life. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emI can do this. /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"The Murphys don't want her. Like the Andersons didn't, and the Liangs didn't, and the Sutcliffs, the Hills, Duhigg-Kleons. Someone must have. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emI can do this./em/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"It feels like it takes hours, even if years later she'll know the security was laughable. The acquisitions- emacquisitions, like she's a new order of bed linen-/em are listed in an excel spreadsheet. Mary Sue Poots is on the list, between Tara Packham and Mickey Rodriguez. Half the boxes next to it were blank: parents' names, date of birth, place of birth. Under 'Status at Intake', there's a hyperlink instead of an answer. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"When she clicks it, it opens Sister Pauline's browser to a page that doesn't look anything like the login for the computer, despite the recognisable boxes asking for an ID number and password. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Mary Sue scowls, trying emadmin /emand running the same program that had gotten her into the computer in the first place. Nothing happens. The logo looms above the two boxes, its birdy eye seeming to wink smugly at her. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal""You'll see," she says. The library has lots of books on computers, in the grownups' section, and one of them must tell you how to understand the others. She logs out and jumps back out the window with the memory stick in her skirt pocket. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"***/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"She's called Skye when she manages it. Six and a half years later, moved past the books in the school library and the public library, onto learning from other hackers in forums she reaches from internet cafes. That's safer, they say, people can't find her when she's hacking. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"She's started to hack the kind of things that mean people might want to find her, now. She's not sure if that's scary or awesome. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Well, okay, it's definitely awesome. The nuns still call her Mary Sue, but she's not some little girl nobody wants Skye, she's a hacktivist, and she's got a stupidly long hyperlink written down on the inside of her stupid anti-bullying wristband so she can copy it out without anyone knowing and wipe it off later. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"She's maybe a little bit scared. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emI can do this. /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"This is a new internet cafe, and its ages away from the Sullivans, where she's staying. Skye does feel kind of bad for doing this while she's with a family, but it's not like she'll be there long. She smiles brightly at the woman sitting opposite her. Fingers the USB- ancient and battered, she has others, but it feels right to use this one- and slams it into the slot hard enough that for a moment she thinks she's broken it./p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Okay, maybe she's a little tense. That wasn't necessary. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emI can do this. /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"The login screen pops up, splitting the screen with her own flickering lines of code. She shouldn't really watch it, anyone might see, but she can't resist, not even going through the motions of trying to pass unnoticed. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"The screen changes. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Skye has to bite back a yell of delight, fingers twitching over the mouse. Opens opens the first file in the folder. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Nothing. There's nothing there, nothing new, just a brief paragraph, heavily redacted, referring her to a serial number. She copies it into the search field, taut with fury when nothing comes up. Nothing, again. She's in, maybe, but not in deep enough. Skye pulls out the thumbdrive and shoves it into her bag with almost enough force to rip the seam. Logs into a chatroom. Maybe getting even this far into SHIELD's servers will be useful to someone. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"***/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Daisy Johnson has never bought a computer in her life, but she's never been far away from them either. The one she uses now, she won in a game of pool in some dive bar in Seattle, two weeks after she fled SHIELD. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"She thinks Mack is on her case. He'll laugh when he hears about that, wonder if she'd even had to use her powers. She hadn't, any more than she had against him in a dozen different games at the playground. Hunter had been the first to accuse her of it, horrified at losing his own game of choice in front of Bobbi, and the conversation might have died there if Mack hadn't clearly thought it was the funniest thing Hunter had ever said. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Bobbi and Hunter. Mack. Coulson. emLincoln/em. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"The clicking of balls and cue is never really as good as the rhythmic stutter of keys under her fingers, but it has the same soothing edge. The world fades to a collage of colours and sounds, and Daisy can focus on nothing but the task at hand. Sitting in a park in the dead of night, using the wifi from a nearby gym. Her hair is starting to grow out, brushing against her shoulders as it catches in the breeze. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"She mostly uses the laptop to keep up to date- with SHIELD and the ATCU, mostly, since the programs that scan for Inhuman activity run in the background. She's improved them, now, and manages to beat anyone else to the scene more often than not. It's been weeks since she saw an agent. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"She isn't looking into SHIELD right now. Not pouring over news sites for a familiar face or name. Daisy's mission, for the first time since Hive had died, is a matter of pure self-indulgence. After all, she's never seen it before. She's always wanted to. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Alright, she always pictured it differently. In a graveyard in New York, maybe, tearing open an official-looking envelope as she kneels before a joint headstone. Or in some understaffed office building, the paper crinkling between her fingers. Not a cold, littered park, shooing away pigeons before they can ruin the moment. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Hit enter, heart in mouth. Stare. Then burst out laughing. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"It's in Chinese. All that panic, and she can't even read the damn thing. Well, nearly half of it is in English, really, but the details, the names and weights and words, are in characters. All but one of them. Two words jump out at her in recognisable lettering./p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emCalvin Johnson/em. Right there, above 'full name of father'. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"And there, above 'full name of mother' must be Jiaying's name. Daisy traces over them. There are three characters, though she doesn't know any of them by sight. The rudimentary Chinese she had started learning after Jiaying had died had been cast aside when Joey had signed on, and then Yoyo, tripling her determination to learn to speak their language. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emLearn Spanish!/em/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Daisy shakes herself, hard, not willing to fall back there. The first character is probably Jiaying's family name, or at least the one she had been using when she met Cal. The two on the right must be "Jiaying". /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Daisy traces them out on her thigh. The order is probably wrong, but she can almost imagine she's holding a pen- filling out a form, maybe even a college application, and insisting on writing her mother's name in characters even if she has to spell it out as well. She thinks she would, anyway. She can't imagine that that wouldn't be important to her. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"A birth certificate. One that doesn't say emMary Sue Poots/em, and doesn't have yawning gaps where the things that matter should be. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"This one says Daisy Louise Johnson. Right there, at the top, next to a character that she thinks- hopes- might be her Chinese name. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Four names. Daisy, Louise, Johnson, and now another. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emI can do this. /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"She was only ever looking for one, really. She could have dealt with only knowing Johnson. Skye Johnson sounds kind of pretty. Even Mary Sue Johnson would have done. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Daisy Louise Johnson. And now another one. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"Daisy opens a Chinese dictionary, the corners of her lips tugging up as she deciphers the navigation. Fingertips emclicker-clack/em against the keys. /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"emI did it. /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"strongemNotes:/em/strong/p
p class="MsoNormal"Daisy having a Chinese name is a complete invention, but I headcanon it as span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'MS Gothic'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'MS Gothic';"font face="Nimbus Mono L, monospace"span lang="zh-CN"菊/span/font/span (Jú), which means Daisy. I don't know, I feel like Cal and Jiaying would have liked the symmetry. Louise, however, is Daisy's middle name in the comics, which I purloined for this./p
p class="MsoNormal"Also, I apologise for my complete lack of understanding of how computers work./p