Coulson left to go and have a talk with Senator Ward and Daisy made her way down to the basement cell.
"Where's your body guard?" He asked her.
"She's not my bodyguard. And she doesn't know I'm here, neither do my parents." Daisy said.
"Camera's off." Ward pointed out.
"Let's have a chat. Why does Hydra want me so bad? What makes me so special?"
"You have something inside you, something they can bring out. It'll give you all the answers you want, who you are, where you come from."
"I know where I come from, I have my parents."
"You don't know what you are, they don't either."
"And what? Hydra can help me discover myself?"
"Yes. That's exactly what they can do. Daisy," he stepped forward, "I know you've spent your whole life wondering who you are. I know you found your parents but that still doesn't tell you everything about your past. Why you were abducted as a baby, why you never were able to find your parents and why they couldn't find you. I can help you, you don't need Hydra."
"Thank you, Ward." Daisy said, playing emotional. "It's time to get you out of here."
"Really?" Ward asked.
"Yes. You're being transferred Ward. Your brother wants you in his custody."
At that moment, the door opened and Natasha walked in.
"Get everything you wanted?" She asked, staring down Ward.
"Yes." She backed away from Ward.
"What?" He asked. The two women began walking away from each other. "Daisy! Wait!"
"No." Natasha turned around and left Daisy on the stairs. "You don't speak to her, she got what she wanted and now you're going with your brother. You will never see or hurt her again."
She whipped around and pulled a stunned Daisy by the hand out of the cell.
Ward was heavily handcuffed and escorted out. On his way, he saw Daisy.
"Daisy." He called out.
Natasha used a hand to protectively sweep Daisy behind her, keeping her face neutral. Daisy let it happen, she didn't know why but it felt nice for Natasha to be this way with her.
A hood was placed over his head before he exited.
But it didn't take long before he escaped. He was literally still in the van with armed guards when he somehow got loose.
"You're not leaving this base. I'm going out and finding him." May declared.
"Are you kidding me?" Daisy was frustrated.
"She's right. He's made it clear he wants you." Coulson read through Ward's old file.
"So I can draw him out." Daisy said.
"Absolutely not." Both of her parents said in unison.
Daisy threw her hands up in the air.
"Your father has to stay here because the impulse to carve is coming more and more, I'm not putting you in more danger." May declared.
Natasha walked in at that moment to add in some more information to the report on Ward.
"Perfect timing." May said.
"What? Oh right, I'm coming with you." Natasha set the file down.
"I need you to stay here, make sure Daisy doesn't do anything drastic." May said.
"What?" This time Daisy and Natasha spoke in unison.
"You both heard me." May pointed at them.
"You realize she's your kid, not me right? Stop treating me like that." Natasha told her.
"I don't care. Daisy needs to be here to look after Coulson, you need to be here to look after her. I'm going to find Ward." May said.
"You can't kill him. Remember that." Coulson reminded her.
May looked at him with an irritated expression. "I know. His brother still wants him. We need to keep SHIELD in a good light. I won't kill him."
Natasha walked out of the meeting and ran into May around the corner.
"You've got to stop doing that." Natasha said.
"I need you to take care of Daisy." May said bluntly.
"I don't think she needs to be taken care of." Natasha pointed out. "Besides, Coulson's here."
"You and I both know he's going downhill. Daisy's going to be looking after him and I need you to do the same for her. Please, Nat." May plead.
Natasha sighed, May only asked for help when she truly needed it.
"Okay. Just try to hurry back, to be honest she's been having a hard time. And now she's not sleeping with Ward out there." Natasha said.
"I know, that's why I'm going to find him." May said.
May, Bobbi, Hunter, and Tripp went after him with Coulson communicating from his office.
Meanwhile, Daisy went back on the alien writing and found it but not in a very good way. It had been carved into a woman who was found dead in her home.
Whoever had done it to her hadn't been caught.
"This is a SHIELD agent." Coulson said.
"No she's an art teacher from Iowa." Skye was confused.
But Coulson explained that he had seen her before. So he, Daisy, and Natasha went to the crime scene to take a look.
Everything seemed normal, she appeared to be an every day woman, until Coulson found a room full of artwork.
She had been painting the alien writing, one even said "a beautiful place" on it.
"We were definitely working on the same design, but she had some pieces I was missing." Coulson said back in his office.
He had taken pictures of all of the artwork, his carvings, and the ancient painting and pieced it together. It all fit.
Then Daisy discovered that she was indeed a SHIELD agent, level 6 and stationed at the Triskellion. She was supposed to have died of cancer but here she was now, murdered.
Mack and Fitz got ahold of her body and Simmons performed the autopsy. While the cuts were deep she died of cardiac arrest, shock from the pain. And the killer had continued to carve long after she died.
This was disturbing to Daisy and Coulson on all levels. The only one it didn't seem to bother was Natasha who observed quietly.
And to add on, they found blood and tissue samples under her nails. She had put up a fight. Both he victim and the killer had GH325 in their blood.
"Hypergraphia is one of the side effects they tried to treat with memory replacement. Have either of you felt an impulse to carve?" Simmons asked Coulson and Daisy.
Coulson lied and said no but that one TAHITI patient was out there murdering others and they needed to find them. The problem was the files were destroyed.
Coulson proposed going into the memory torture machine Raina had used on him. Daisy was completely against it, saying it was a horrible ideas and the memories were erased for a reason. And that he had been getting worse lately, this was a horrible idea.
"Mom would never-" she tried to say.
"You're mother's not the director, I am. And as your father and director in telling you in doing this." He shut her up. "Those people are my responsibility, if this saves even one life it's worth it. I was the head of this damn project."
"Nat, help me out." Daisy tried to get Natasha to weigh in.
The other woman seemed to think for a second before responding.
"If he thinks it can work, I trust him." She sided with him.
Daisy sighed but was defeated, all she could do was help. She readied herself with a clipboard to write names down and had Mack nearby to hold Coulson down in case he started screaming.
There were a total of 6 patients all acting normally at first. But eventually they all had the compulsion to carve or write the alien symbols. So they were all given the memory wipe and given new lives.
His vitals began spiking so he had to get their names and be pulled out before any damage was done. So Daisy began researching names as he gave them out.
One patient was in the church when it was purposely set on fire, three others had died of unnatural causes in the last six weeks including the woman who had been killed having the symbols carved into her. Two were left and one was the murderer.
Daisy begged him to find any clue to find the murderer and he began to scream.
"I need to know!" He yelled over and over.
"Get him out!" Natasha yelled.
"Shut it down! Shut it down!" Daisy told Simmons before she went to call her mother.
"Daisy! We have a Ward issue that's about to get really bad for all of us." May said.
"Dad went into the memory machine." Daisy told her.
"What?! And you let him?" May demanded.
"It wasn't my call."
"Lock him up and keep him under observation until I get back." May said through gritted teeth.
Mack held Coulson down so Simmons could sedate him but he knocked her back.
"What did you do to him?" Mack asked.
"Dad!" Daisy yelled, and they all turned to see her with an icer in her hands.
"Don't make me do this." She said. Coulson stopped, and calmed down.
"I'm sorry." He said.
"Mom wants you locked up until she gets back." Daisy told him.
"That's probably a good idea." Coulson agreed.
Daisy escorted him down to Ward's basement cell while he told her who the killer was. Everyone else waited upstairs. The last TAHITI patient was only a few hours away, Daisy would be sending agents to protect him from the killer.
"That won't be necessary." Coulson said before he shoved his daughter in the cell and made it so no one could hear her yelling.
Daisy waved around at the camera for what felt like hours before the others came in and found her.
"Did you dad do this to you?" Nat asked as soon as she was out.
"Ya think?" Daisy responded.
"Is he going after the killer?" Simmons asked her.
"Not the killer." Daisy said.
He went to the home of the last remaining patient.
Mack, Daisy, and Natasha drove like hell to follow him, on edge the entire time. When they found him he was strangling the murderer.
"Let him go!" Mack yelled, aiming a gun at him.
"It's okay! I'm okay now!" Coulson yelled back.
"That's what you said before you threw me in a cell." Daisy accused.
"Fair enough but I'm not trying to kill him I'm trying to save him." Coulson claimed.
"I'm giving you to the count of three. And my gun's real." Mack said.
"It's here Daisy. Everything we've been looking for." Coulson told his daughter.
"One!" Mack yelled.
"He's not kidding! Let him go!" Daisy said.
A moment later, the murderer finally stopped struggling, staring down at the train set the last TAHITI patient built. It was a 3D model of the alien writing. Him and Coulson stared and finally found what they had been looking for.
"I don't believe it." Daisy said, staring down.
"It's not a map, it's a blue print." Coulson explained. "It's a city."
"Holy hell." Natasha said, climbing up the stairs to look too.
They turned the murdered over to answer for his crimes and told the last TAHITI patient what all of this had been about before taking him back home. And Coulson's compulsion to carve was finally gone.
May and Daisy were both relieved, having been terrified of him going the way of Garrett.
Ward hadn't been caught, but he had oddly gifted them a man named Bakshi who worked for Hydra. He was currently in the basement cell. Daisy would be searching his phone to find what she could.
Coulson had to finally reveal to all of the agents what was happening and why he had almost gone crazy. And that the writing was a blueprint of a city that Hydra was looking for all well as them. They needed to get to it first.
Daisy and Natasha found an empty office to hack into Bakshi's phone and see what they could find. They had just plugged it into the computer when it rang.
"Hail Hydra." Daisy answered, making Natasha smile.
When she jumped up out of the chair, Natasha's smile went away.
"Where are you?" Daisy said into the phone.
"Who?" Natasha quietly asked.
Daisy just stared, horrified, at her. She was listening.
"Like a cat bringing dead birds? No thanks." Daisy regained her composure.
"Is that a threat?" She said after another moment of the person on the other end talking.
Natasha felt a surge of anger. She had a feeling she knew who Daisy was talking to.
"How about you tell me where you are and we can talk about it." Daisy said to him.
"What did he say?" Natasha asked as soon as the phone was set down.
"He said, he said..." Daisy was taking deep breaths.
"Hey." Natasha put her hands on Daisy's arms to steady her, "It's okay. Just tell me what he said."
"He said he has a few things to send to us, and that he'll be seeing me soon." Daisy said a little shakily.
"Listen to me." Natasha leaned in to look Daisy in the eye. "He won't get his hands on you. We need to tell your parents now."
Daisy nodded and they left to tell May and Coulson.
Their next mission took them to Hawaii. May stayed on the base and Coulson took Skye, Tripp, Fitz, and Nat.
"I'm unclear on how I'm stuck running the base and you're off to Hawaii." May said over a video chat.
"Don't get too jealous." Coulson smirked. "I won't even see the tarmac. There's too much work to be done. Ward's still out there. Get any response from his brother?"
"He has his own men on the manhunt." May said. "We're politically toxic and he demanded that we stay away from the case."
"They'll never find him. I'll signal a few assets to be on alert. How's Agent Morse handing Bakshi?"
"He wouldn't talk for the first 8 hours but she's working him. I'll send you any developments. Aloha." She finished not so happily.
Coulson sent Daisy and Tripp out to drop a couple of things off, and tasked Fitz with taking apart and putting back together a transceiver as fast as he could despite his brain injury. Nat was there in case anything went south.
Literally as soon as Daisy and Tripp were back Coulson said to fly to Australia. They were going to steal a satellite network. Just like that they were off again.
They had to hack a satellite network controlled by the government in order to try to find the city. At this point, they would all be going. The small station in Australia came on whenever the one in Hawaii went down, much easier to infiltrate.
Fitz was providing the transceiver for Daisy to back the satellite and Tripp and Nat were there as backup.
Coulson, Tripp, Nat, and Fitz went in while Daisy stayed on the plane to hack.
Before long, Daisy heard a gunshot and comms went down.
"Dad? Nat? Anybody?" Daisy yelled.
She began to panic, but Fitz got his work done and she was able to back the satellite. Once the rest of the team was back on the plane, Daisy felt like she could breathe.
"What happened?" She hugged her father.
"Hydra, they knew we were coming. We're all fine." He explained.
Natasha walked up the ramp with a wound on her arm.
"Fine?" Daisy questioned.
"For the most part." Natasha shrugged.
"You need to clean that." Skye pointed out.
"It's a graze wound it's fine." Natasha rolled her eyes.
"Come on." Daisy grabbed the other woman by the arm.
"So it's up and running?" Nat asked as she cleaned her wound while Daisy searched for something to cover it with.
"Yep, we'll find that city." Daisy found bandages. Natasha reached for them.
"I got it, I have two hands to do it with." Daisy smiled slightly.
Natasha swallowed and watched as Daisy carefully wrapped her upper arm. When she was done, the other woman set the bandages down and sighed.
"What?" She noticed Natasha staring at her.
Natasha got down from the table and approached Daisy.
"Thank you." She smiled, staring at her for a few more seconds before walking away.