The ragged figure claiming to be Steve Rogers walks through the woods with the woman he rescued from the serpent society in the previous issue. The woman notes that she's been poisoned, and the figure says he'll find her help. The woman asks him what he means when he says he's trying to get home, but the figure doesn't know. He woke up in the forest with no memory except for the name, rank, and serial number he had during boot camp in the 1940s. He feels that he needs to go somewhere and help people, but when the woman sags, the figure puts that aside and offers to carry her to a stream about an hour away. The woman says she won't make it, but Rogers tells her not to give up.
On a foreign planet, Peter Quill, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot ask aliens for help saving Earth from HYDRA. They note that the shield is keeping them trapped in space and at the mercy of endless waves of Chitauri. The aliens, however, reveal that they hate Earth and they plan to use this opportunity to destroy it. They shout 'hail HYDRA' while attacking Quill and his teammates, who retreat in a hurry.
Quill radios Carol Danvers and said the mission didn't go well, but Danvers cut him off, saying she has to get back to fighting. When she and her depleted forces manage to drive away the next wave of Chitauri, Monica Rambeau tells her the waves are coming more frequently. Danvers responds that she knows and also notes that their satellite base is crumbling even as the Chitauri pick off her forces. Rambeau says they can try asking Galactus for help again, but Danvers says there isn't any point and nobody is coming to help them. The only hero they have who might have a chance of taking down the shield is Quasar, but while they recovered her body and found she isn't quite dead yet, they haven't managed to bring her out of her coma.
In Newark, Natasha Romanoff approaches Fred "Boomerang" Myers and notes how his fortunes have improved. Myers was a low-level supervillain, but after most of the country's biggest crime lords got trapped in the Darkforce Dimension bubble surrounding Manhattan, he's been able to expand and claim a large chunk of territory in New Jersey. The two banter a little until Myers says that he arranged the meeting Romanoff paid him to set up. He leaves and Romanoff goes into the back room, where she meets Maria Hill. Romanoff challenges Hill on her choice of allies but Hill says that terrorists tend to get along well with organized crime figures like Myers. Romanoff points out that Hill is calling herself a terrorist, and Hill acknowledges it, saying she's doing whatever she can to take back the country. They discuss a recent terrorist attack Hill initiated in St. Louis which killed a lot of innocent people, and Hill says the attack was justified both because it killed four HYDRA generals and also because it shifted the Overton window in favor of violent anti-HYDRA resistance.
Romanoff says they should get down to business and Hill gives her a copy of Rogers' social calendar. Romanoff wants more but Hill insists that she did the best she could, especially as most of her informants are trapped in a prison run by supervillains Sin and Crossbones. Hill tells Romanoff the calendar she provided will allow Romanoff to assassinate Rogers, and the only payment she wants is photos of his corpse. Romanoff says Hill is disgusting, but Hill just says that Romanoff has no grounds to criticize her when she's training kids to be assassins in her new Red Room.
Back in Romanoff's training facility, the Champions (Miles Morales, Viv, Riri Williams, Nadia Pym, Amadeus Cho, and Joaquin Torres) try to stop a suicide bomber who has injected her heart with nanite fission bombs. The bombs are pumping into her bloodstream and will have enough power to kill a lot of people. There are too many people to evacuate and the bombs are too strong to shield, so Pym decides she'll shrink down and deactivate the bombs before they can explode. However, time runs out on the simulation before she finishes, and the simulation ends with the bombs detonating and all civilian lives lost.
The Champions complain that the simulation was impossible, but Romanoff tells them they could have just stopped the suicide bomber's heart. The Champions protest that they aren't killers and they thought Romanoff was just going to teach them spy stuff, but she insists that she sees her mission as teaching them how to kill. When there's a monster threatening to kill innocents, she says, a true hero can't always find a way to save everyone—sometimes they have to gun down the monster. She leaves, telling them they have to give up their childish ways and adapt to the harsh new world.
In Montana, Sam Wilson tells Ant-Man that he won't help the Underground superheroes escape the country. He says he's done with fighting supervillains and he just wants to help smuggle people to Canada so they can escape from HYDRA. He also adds that nobody is fighting HYDRA; people seem to like the new fascist regime and he's tired of going against the public. Hercules says that Sam should want to save Steve Rogers, if nobody else, and the Tony Stark AI adds that he thinks he can fix Rogers if they can reassemble the cosmic cube.
Rogers and Sharon Carter walk through a HYDRA-sponsored science fair, with Rogers approving of one kid that built a portable Inhuman-detector. Rogers muses that test scores and school performances are up now that HYDRA is in charge, but Carter grumbles that Rogers probably does horrible things to underperformers. She says she won't act happier and tells Rogers to have Elisa Sinclair walk with him if he needs someone to smile and look pretty. Rogers tells Carter not to insult Sinclair, but then trails off, sighs, and says he just wants to project unity. Since Carter is widely respected, he would appreciate it if she acted happier to be with him. Then one of his bodyguards tells him that he's needed in the situation room.
Rogers greets his council and then asks Kraken for an update. Kraken says that they think they've found a Cosmic Cube fragment inside an Atlantis temple. They'll have to fight through some of Namor's priests to get to it, but nobody thinks that will be a problem for Baron Zemo's Cosmic Cube recovery team, even though Zemo was defeated the previous week when his team tried to get into Wakanda and encountered T'Challa. Rogers authorizes the attack and Zemo leads HYDRA's Avengers into battle; these include Scarlet Witch, Black-Ant, Superior Octopus, and Taskmaster. They fight through the priests, after which Scarlet Witch uses her magic to read one of their minds and find the actual fragment. When they recover it, however, it turns out to be a fake, and Rogers realizes that Namor has planted fake cosmic cube fragments to delay him. He orders the Avengers to destroy the temple. An advisor tells him the temple is Atlantis's holiest site and Namor will consider it an act of way, but Rogers insists that Namor needs to learn what happens when people get in HYDRA's way. Kraken tells him Hive and Gorgon are ready to move on to the next shard, but Rogers says he will get it himself.
Wilson leads the Stark AI's team through the woods to take them out of the country. Pietro wants to know where they're going but Wilson refuses, saying they'll have to follow his lead. He won't give them information that will let them go on ahead, or split off to help more people and come back to rejoin him. He says he's done being a hero and his only goal is to fulfill his contract of getting the team to Brazil. Bobbi Morse murmurs to the Stark AI that the shard isn't actually in Brazil, and the AI says he lied to Wilson because Wilson would never agree to take them to the real location of the first shard.
In a large cave, the Hank Pym/Ultron hybrid reminisces about his days of being a superhero. When his butler Jarvis tells him multiple warships are approaching, he grins maniacally and tells Jarvis to open the gates so he can give the intruders a suitable welcome.
Back in the forest, the figure claiming to be Rogers puts the woman down by a beautiful waterfall and river. She tells him again she doesn't have long, and urges him to not lose heart, saying his strength and goodness will enable him to break free if he just holds true to his beliefs. She whispers that he'll make it home and then passes away.
Myers wakes up in Newark and sees a bomb attached to his wall. It explodes, knocking him down, and someone steps on his head. Myers says he has money but the figure only wants to know what was said in the conversation between Romanoff and Hill. The figure turns out to be Frank Castle, and he says "Hail HYDRA" as he holds a gun to Myers' head.
Tropes:
- The Kobayashi Maru: The Champions explicitly compare Romanoff's danger room simulations to this, although Romanoff notes that they are winnable if the heroes are willing to kill.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Hill gives a short one to Romanoff, referencing her training child soldiers in a new Red Room.
- The Reveal: Frank Castle is working for HYDRA (or claims to be.)
