"There's no Kree data in my database—everything I've derived has been back-calculated from your own genetic profile. Based on my analysis, the probability that the Kree genome is present is 93%. The cosmic radiation appears to have granted you the ability to shift freely between several distinct genetic segments."
So what good is a Kree form?
Daisy turned it over in her mind and couldn't come up with much. The Kree had hit a ceiling on biological self-enhancement centuries ago—they were a purely technological civilization at their core. Ronan was a freak outlier within his own species and didn't factor into any general assessment. Strip Ronan out of the equation and the average Kree was physically about twice the baseline of a normal human. That was it. As a transformation option, it was underwhelming.
But CRISIS had mentioned something. Genetic segments. The word caught her attention. Her eyes lit up. She focused, reached for her ability, and triggered the shift again.
Three minutes this time. Her height and weight held steady. The skin was rougher than her normal state—but actually above the Kree standard—and her overall physical performance came out at roughly half what she usually operated at. Vibration ability: completely absent.
"Run the test again." She held out her arm for CRISIS to draw blood.
Two hours later, the report came back, and Daisy stared at it with a flat expression.
This transformation had turned her into a pure baseline human. No Inhuman lineage. No Kree genetics. Just a perfectly ordinary person—the most ordinary person possible, in fact. The only meaningful difference: the heart-shaped herb enhancement was still in effect. In Kree form it wasn't.
"This seems pretty useless," she muttered.
She'd spent most of the day running tests and had gotten exactly two transformations for her trouble. The raw power was intoxicating when she was in it—but thinking about the alternatives just made her depressed. One form cut her strength in half. The other cut it by ninety percent. The only practical application she could imagine was infiltrating Kree-controlled space, and that was a stretch. Everyone complained about not having enough power. Nobody turned into something weaker on purpose.
CRISIS, apparently registering her deflation, produced something rare—a faint undercurrent of warmth in her usually flat delivery: "There is, in fact, an additional force present within your bloodline that I have been unable to fully analyze. It forms the connective tissue between the Kree and human genetic strands—the structural foundation on which the Inhuman bloodline is built. It's simply too deeply embedded and present in too small a quantity to be observed directly."
Daisy's eyes narrowed. Another force in her bloodline? When had that happened?
She left the lab and walked down the hall to check on Maki. The maid was still unconscious—no signs of waking, though her vital signs remained stable and strong.
With nothing urgent to attend to, Daisy slipped out through the side door and followed the small path into the trees to spend some time with the little lion.
The rhinoceros was where he always was—sprawled out in the garden, asleep. The gardeners had been nervous about him at first, but after watching him lie motionless day after day like a very large, very content rock, they'd stopped paying him any attention. As fellow Africans, the little lion had a particular fondness for the rhino and had a habit of sneaking over to poke at him. Daisy followed along into the garden.
The pay was good, the work wasn't hard, the employer was approachable, and there was no casting-couch nonsense—the household staff had nothing but respect for her, at least on the surface. When Daisy walked in, the staff acknowledged her warmly, and she greeted them each in return.
She was watching one of the gardeners trimming an unnamed purple flower when something caught at the edge of her mind.
"Don't bother me—I just thought of something." She pushed the little lion's head aside, sat herself down on the rhino's back, and tried to chase the thought. Something had flickered through her just a moment ago, a flash of intuition—
She was still sitting there when Little Lorna got home from school. The girl walked over, peered at Daisy's vacant expression, and snapped her fingers in front of her face.
Purple. Snapping fingers. Thanos.
The Eternals.
The Eternal genome is the foundation on which the Inhuman bloodline was built.
It wasn't Kree. It wasn't ordinary human. It was through the Eternal genetic material that the ancient Kree had engineered the Inhumans as a weapon—one that ultimately grew too powerful for them to control.
In the primitive days of Earth, the Celestials had descended.
They had created the Deviants—the mutated common ancestor of both mutants and baseline humans—and the long-lived Eternals.
The two species had gone to war almost immediately. The Eternals, vastly outnumbered, had been routed. Fractures opened within their own ranks not long after; roughly half the remaining Eternals had retreated to Uranus. During the evacuation, a small number had been captured by the Kree—and from those captives, the Inhuman experiments had begun.
The genetic segment CRISIS had identified almost certainly belonged to the Eternals. The ones who had stayed behind, too few to survive independently, had folded themselves into Earth's various mythological pantheons over the centuries. They were now known as the Eternals.
Daisy walked back toward the villa, patted Lorna's cheek to show she was fine, and nodded along to the girl's stream of chatter about school while mentally cataloguing what she actually knew about the Eternals.
The most famous member, by a significant margin, was Thanos—born deformed and abandoned at birth. After him, the most recognizable names were probably Hyperion, one of Marvel's four major Superman-class figures, and Athena of the Greek pantheon, who Daisy vaguely recalled was also an Eternal, though she couldn't remember her actual name.
In the loosest possible sense, she and Thanos were distant relatives.
After dinner, she brought the question to CRISIS immediately: could external genetic material still be incorporated into her existing profile? Her physical ceiling was approaching again, and all the theoretical knowledge in the world wouldn't move it. Vibration didn't run on knowledge—it ran on raw power.
"I'm afraid not. Your enhancement has already reached a very advanced threshold. Forcing additional external genetics into the current sequence would risk destabilizing the existing structure..." CRISIS paused—a pause that in any other system would have suggested processing load—then continued: "However, if the Eternals you're describing are the source of those genetic fragments, there is a reasonably high probability that their material could integrate into your current sequence without collision. Would you like to attempt it?"
"Ha." Daisy let out a dry sound. "CRISIS, just tell me when Maki is going to wake up."
Taking on Thanos head-on. Or Hyperion. If she could win those fights she wouldn't need to bother integrating anything—and if she couldn't, what was the point of talking about it?
She did attempt it, though—the technique she'd privately named Bloodline Regression.
Unlike the shift into Kree form or human form, her ability could barely detect those particular genetic fragments at all. Not "regression" — she couldn't even see them. There was nothing there to reach for.
She pushed until she was sweating through her shirt with nothing to show for it.
"Human genetics and Eternal genetics are quite structurally similar," CRISIS offered. She had records of many mutant power-development methods on file. "Perhaps approaching the transformation from a baseline human state might produce different results."
Daisy's eyes lit up. It was a good idea—irritatingly good. Daisy switched into the baseline human form. The Inhuman bloodline went completely dark. The loss of vibration ability—something that felt as natural as a reflex—was deeply uncomfortable, like a phantom limb. She breathed through it.
This time, she got something. Not much—not touch, exactly—but a sense of presence. Before, it had been like standing in a sealed room with no light at all, the darkness total in every direction. Now, switching into human form, it was like stepping outside under a night sky: she could see stars. Ancient, remote, impossibly distant stars.
She could see them. She couldn't reach them.
But it was the first contact.