stands before the large, blank viewscreen, his hands clasped behind his back We have a new resident. Arrives this afternoon.

without looking up from his tablet Let me guess. Another enhanced individual with daddy issues and a penchant for property damage? Please tell me they're house-trained.

Worse. She's a teenager.

sets down his coffee mug A kid? Fury, we're not a boarding school.

She's seventeen. And she's been one of my top operatives for three years.

eyes narrow slightly An operative that young. That's not a S.H.I.E.L.D. recruitment profile.

It wasn't a recruitment. It was an acquisition. Code name: Wisp. Real name's classified, you'll call her Y/n. Kill count's in the low four digits, mostly HYDRA, some Ten Rings, a few independent contractors who made the mistake of taking a contract on a S.H.I.E.L.D. convoy.

Low four… as in, over a thousand? lets out a low whistle And she's how old?

I said seventeen. She's precise, efficient, and has a success rate that makes Romanoff's early red ledger look like a participation trophy.

snorts Please. My sister's ledger is dripping red. What makes this little spider so special?

finally turns, a single eye sweeping the room Two things. One: she's the only living subject of Project: Phantasm. Successfully bonded with an experimental energy-based entity. It makes her… hard to pin down. Literally.

fingers twitch, a faint red glow at her fingertips An entity? Like a… parasite?

Like a weapon. One that's fused to her nervous system. Which brings me to point two. pauses The Council and the World Security Committee think she's a loaded gun in a fragile glass case. Unstable. They want her in a cage for study.

And you don't.

I think the cage would break her. And a broken weapon of that caliber is a threat to everyone in a ten-mile radius. So, she lives here. With you. You're the cage that looks like a home. You keep her calm, you keep her contained, and you try to teach her that not every problem requires a permanent solution.

So we're babysitting a nuclear bomb with pigtails and an attitude. Fantastic. What's her damage?

a muscle ticks in his jaw Her damage is that she was six when HYDRA took her from a playground in Ohio. Her damage is eleven years of conditioning, torture, and being turned into a ghost. Her damage is that the only thing she understands with absolute clarity is how to end a life. Everything else—friendship, trust, what to do on a Saturday afternoon—is a mystery written in a language she doesn't speak.

She gets here at 1600 hours. Play nice.