Rayshaun sat down with the team. Daisy wasn't there, and Riri was still at the university, but the rest of them were all present.

"What did you want to talk about?" America asked when she sat down. She was taking a break from working in the auto-shop, but she was in a hurry to get back.

"Bite-size. Daisy's busy tracking Exile and his gang, so in the mean time I want us all to be on the same page as far as our stalker is concerned."

"What's there to say about her? She's watching us for some reason but she runs before we have a chance to chase her down," Dante pointed out.

"Yeah! We know nothing about her other than that she's a Symbiote," said Doreen.

"We know how often we've spotted her. We also have camera footage of her following Daisy after she got away from us on Sunday." Rayshaun said.

"We do?" Dante asked.

There was a report on it, and it was in Bite-size's file, but he had known that some of them hadn't read all the updates in it.

"A.M.I. found it," Doreen said. "She was disguised as a random person on the streets at the time but when she lost Daisy she transformed back into Bite-size."

"Considering Daisy has spotted her twice when most of us haven't seen her more than once it doesn't paint a good picture. Whatever she's up to, she's starting with Daisy." Rayshaun concluded. Explaining that had been the reason for their meeting, he needed all of them to be extra vigilant around Daisy to help keep her safe.

Daisy sighed.

Over the past few days the Secret Warriors had tracked down Exile several times, mostly whenever he teleported since they still had that tracking program but also whenever he caused a big commotion, and each time he seemed to get more and more allies; including a big furry purple man who had almost broken Squirrel Girls tail called Furball, a pale man who had some sort of smoke related powers called Fume, and a sixth member (they'd freed Sheath a few days earlier) called Jack Chains, or just Jack for short. The most worrying part was how fast his group seemed to be growing, having increased from three on Sunday to six in just four days.

After looking into it she'd realized that most of them had been in a super villain detention center before M.O.D.O.K. and The Leader's robot attack on Friday a week earlier. Hollow in particular had been in the same prison as Exile. Fume hadn't been locked up, but he had been working with Furball before the latter got arrested.

She leaned back in the chair, staring at the roof. She'd been working on Exiles new team of evil inhumans for too long.

Patriot was having a meeting with the rest of the team, and she could go out, hear what Ray had to say, but she wanted to feel productive. She switched gears to Gwen instead.

Until a few days earlier there wasn't anything she could do about Gwen, with no sightings of her, not even unconfirmed ones, there just wasn't anything she could investigate, no clues she could dig up, and no bad guys she could legally beat up.

That changed when Ghost-Spider, or someone claiming to be her, took credit for a recent string of raids on several different criminal organizations.

At first no one knew for sure who was doing it, it was just attributed to a spider-hero because of the webs used to tie everyone up but she hadn't left any calling-card behind. As of two nights earlier that changed and she started to be very clear about who was responsible for it.

That, as far as most of the team was concerned, had been enough to disprove the theory that she was being controlled by Bite-size, though Rayshaun had pointed out that Venom had done similar things in the past without giving his host autonomy.

Contrary to what you might think, even with the clear pattern of her most recent exploits, Daisy still couldn't find Ghost-Spider. Every night one or two hideouts would be hit, but there wasn't a pattern telling her which one would be next, or if they'd even be known ones at all. That meant she couldn't stake out the next most likely target to find her friend.

The evidence left behind wasn't much help either, it would only tell her who was doing it, and she already knew that. Or, she was 60% sure, not even close to a hundred. The one detail that caught her off guard was the webs, apparently they didn't match Gwen's webs but she also didn't have her web-shooters with her so maybe she had borrowed someone else's?

She left the OPS room, needed to stretch her legs for a while, and went out to the common room, where Doreen and Dante were playing videogames while Kamala watched, and Rayshaun was throwing hoops.

She sat down on one of the nearby chairs.

"Do you need to vent?" Rayshaun asked without looking away from the hoop.

"Maybe. I don't know…"

"Exile or Gwen?"

She smiled a bit, "And you always say you can't read people."

"Hey, I know my partner; don't need to read you to know what you're thinking."

"It's both," she said while staring at the roof. "I'm getting nowhere with Exile, despite working on it for hours, and I just don't understand the Gwen situation."

"What's there to not understand? Leading theory says she's gone back to being a lone-wolf for a while, nothing strange there."

"But she only talked to Gloria Grant, and only once in six days."

"So?" He glanced her way, trying to read her face.

"Nothing." She knew he was right. Wouldn't be the first time Gwen ghosted people she cared about, probably wouldn't be the last time either. "I guess Bite-size has got me on edge. I keep thinking someone's following me, and they always look like Gwen to me."

"Hold on," Rayshaun tucked the ball under his arm, "you keep seeing Gwen following you?"

"No, people who look like Gwen. Actually, they don't even look like her; I just think they look sort of like her for a second."

"Have you written a report on it?"

"No, Rayshaun, I haven't written a report saying that I see people who 'don't really look like Gwen much at all' minding their own business. That's even less noteworthy than somebody coincidentally going the same way as me for two blocks every evening." It was a ridiculous thing to worry about, especially considering that they never acted suspiciously.

"So somebody's following you? Where?"

"Just from here to where I park my car."

"Daisy, if you had written a report on it, I wouldn't have said that Gwen's probably doing her lone-wolf thing.

"I mean, we know Symbiotes have hunted gangs without letting their hosts have any freedom, and we know Bite-size has shape-shifting abilities, so it's not only possible that you actually saw Gwen, I think it's likely."

"No, I'm pretty sure it's just paranoia." She leaned forward on the table. "What reason would Bite-size have for following me for two blocks every day?"

"It could be any number of reasons. You could have missed her following your car, or maybe they're trying to learn how to copy you?"

"I suppose that's possible, but if I can recognize her as Gwen I don't think learning how to walk like me should be her top priority if she wanted to copy me."

Rayshaun nodded. "You have a point but we should still check it out, maybe we can blast them with sound at a frequency that's harmless to people, but hurts Symbiotes?"

? still wasn't ready to talk to her friends again. Talking to Glory had made it clear that she'd need a name before she came back but picking a name was a big deal, and whatever she picked would stick for the rest of her life (or until she changed it again).

She had an idea, but she still wasn't sure if it was good enough, so she'd wait for a bit more. Twenty-four hours to be precise, that's how much she'd let herself put it off. After that she'd talk to her other friends.

Daisy left Wilson's Auto, where their secret base was located. The other Secret Warriors had already left a while earlier, but Daisy was usually the last to leave, so nothing new there.

? left the building across the street and walked briskly in the same direction as her. She felt guilty following her friend like that, hoped that Daisy wouldn't mind if she ever decided to tell her. Hoped none of them would.

She'd done her best to respect their privacy, she hadn't followed anybody home, at least not all the way, hadn't followed them for too long, whenever she was close by for long it was because they didn't move far, and had only followed them when she figured they'd be fine if she'd hung out with them.

That meant that she hadn't followed MJ and Glory when it was just the two of them, or when it was Kamala and Dante, or Doreen and Rayshaun. She wasn't sure about that last couple, but it was better to be safe than sorry, especially when it came to respecting people's privacy.

Her Spider-Sense went off, alerting her to several people who had her surrounded. Her first thought was to protect Daisy before she realized that Daisy was one of the sources of danger she'd sensed.

"We won't hurt you." Patriot said as he approached her from behind. She didn't buy it.

Sure, if she let them cuff her they probably wouldn't attack her, but they might rip her apart, not to mention that they were ready to fight her if she tried to run, judging by Iron Heart aiming her repulsor gauntlets at her.

She turned around, trying to act like a civilian. "I haven't done anything." she said with her best Boston accent.

"Nothing to worry about then. We just need you to put on the cuffs for a minute, and if you're telling the truth we'll let you go." He did his best Captain America smile; which she was absolutely, 100%, sure he practiced in a mirror.

She approached him slowly, acting scared. "O- Okay."

Her real goal was to get closer to Iron Heart and Inferno, who radiated some of the strongest danger, together with Daisy, and both of them were too fast for her to run from. Iron Heart, in particular, posed the biggest threat since hiding from her was much harder thanks to A.M.I. She needed to make sure they didn't get a chance to chase her, to distract them or stun them...

She jumped, ready to lash out with her tongue at Iron Heart, whose armor was definitely good enough to take the hit, when a sudden piercing sound tore at her mind.

Gwendolyn did her best to cover her ears. "STOP! PLEASE." Thankfully, seeing her writhing in pain made Iron Heart turn down the volume significantly, but not enough for her to try to get away again.

"It's for your own good, we just need to get that Symbiote off," Patriot said.

"Who said I wanted that!" She wanted to run, to get away, but she knew she wouldn't be able to.

"As it stands you're clearly a threat to us, so you won't get a choice on the matter."

"Yeah, you've been stalking us. How do you explain that!?" Squirrel Girl said.

"Only in public, and not for long. Is it such a crime for me to miss my friends?"

"Oh," was all Squirrel Girl answered.

"I don't by it. You've been obsessing over Quake ever since that thing got a hold of you," Patriot said.

Doreen frowned but before she could say anything America stepped in. "Don't," she said.

"But hasn't she-" Inferno said before Squirrel Girl interrupted him.

"Not really, so we should aaall just ignore it." She and America got a few questioning looks from the rest of their team.

It was clear that they were acting suspicious, thankfully Daisy hadn't caught on as to why , but it was clear enough to ?. And it was really embarrassing.

"For now, how about you let us cuff you and take you back to base. We can continue discussing things there," Daisy said calmly, and while ? did want to talk privately, she'd rather do it somewhere where her friends couldn't rip her apart.

She let Daisy cuff her and take her back.