Years ago, a young Toni Ho listened in class as her teacher taught her about the use of resistors in an electronic circuit. In the middle of the lesson, though, Ho is summoned to the principal's office to hear news of her father. She watches a broadcast in which Tony Stark says he managed to escape from a group of terrorists which the help of a mysterious armored figure called 'Iron Patriot' (really Stark in disguise). Stark adds that he had been imprisoned with Yinsen Ho, Toni's father, and Yinsen died saving him. At home, Ho asks her mother if Stark killed her father and she says that was the fault of the terrorists, and that Stark did all he could to save him. Ho says that Stark should've done more, and as she starts her electronics homework, she vows to do better when she grows up.
In the present, Ho reflects that her father was a good man, and that even after he and her mother were divorced he still kept in touch with their family. After he was killed, Ho blamed Stark and also Yinsen himself, even though she knows that was wrong. She also wondered what she would have done in her father's place. But now that she's been captured by HYDRA and is stuck in a cell with the dying Roberto Da Costa, she knows it's time to find out. Da Costa was shot with an energy pulse and managed to survive but his powers activated, and because of his M-Pox infection his powers will continue to grow until he incinerates himself. HYDRA isn't interested in saving him, so she'll have to do it herself, even though unlike her father she wasn't lucky enough to be imprisoned with a bunch of parts she could use to build a weapon.
Ho starts by trying to figure out how she's being watched. The patrols aren't frequent enough for the guards to be monitoring her, meaning there's cameras somewhere, but she doesn't taste any signs of nanotechnology in the air so the cameras are likely big enough to see. She eventually works out that the telescreen on the wall probably has cameras built into it like in Literature/{{1984}}. As an experiment she drapes a jacket over the screen and then starts counting off the seconds; after about sixteen minutes (during which she discovers a cache of foil-wrapped protein bars and chewing gum in the food dispenser) a guard arrives and removes the jacket. The guard says that exercise period starts in two hours, then leaves as Ho tries to figure out how she'll construct an escape plan in the thousand-second (or sixteen-minute) window she'll have between blocking off the security camera and the guards coming to check on her.
In Paris, Doreen "Squirrel Girl" Green and Aikku "Enigma" Jokinen have joined with several European heroes: Brian "Captain Britain" Braddock, Jeannine "Guillotine" Sauvage, Dr. Faiza "Excalibur" Hussain, Alain "Peregrine" Racine, and Ares. Racine notes that they have badly beaten the local HYDRA forces and now HYDRA is concentrating all their remaining strength on seizing Paris. According to intelligence from the last member of their team, Nigel "Outlaw" Higgins, the building they are spying on is the local HYDRA armory. The team attacks the two HYDRA guards, with Racine knocking down one and Hussain using her powers to open up the chest of the other one. This paralyzes the guard, but is nonlethal and doesn't even hurt. Ares offers to just kill the guard and Hussain turns to shut him down, saying the guard is under her protection. She then draws her sword Excalibur, which forces the guard to see and understand the hope, dreams, and love of all those he hates. As the guard falls unconscious and Higgins drives up, Hussain says that she hopes the guard will have a change of heart when he wakes up. Sauvage notes that her sword would have just killed the guard and the two note how their blades don't get along, but Racine says they need to get moving. Braddock kicks down the door and the heroes move into the HYDRA hideout. Unfortunately, they find themselves looking at a small army of HYDRA soldiers as well as eight HYDRA robots with nuclear armaments. Braddock is worried, but Green leads the team in a ferocious assault.
In deep space, an alien slaver tries to sell off Sam "Cannonball" Guthrie but has no luck. Guthrie demands to be allowed to call the Shi'Ar embassy and wishes his power dampener were removed. At that moment, a British man named Howard Mason arrives and asks if Guthrie had ever considered a career in education.
Back in the HYDRA detention facility, Ho notes that their 'exercise' is just walking in a circle for two hours. There is a better gym as well as a spa, but to gain access to it the prisoners have to say 'hail HYDRA,' and Ho (as well as all the others walking in the circle) have refused. Ho is behind Philip Nelson Vogt, a former member of a superhero team called the Troubleshooters. She sees that one guard keeps checking his phone, but when she begins whispering to Vogt, he warns her that any escape attempt from their position would be suicidal. He sighs that things would be different if he still had his powers, but the Troubleshooters had obtained their psi powers from Emmett "Psi-Hawk" Proudhawk and Proudhawk left, taking their powers with him. Ho cuts Vogt off as Vogt begins to reminisce, then asks to borrow his glasses. When he gives them to her she snaps one of the temples off.
When Ho gets back to her room she opens up the telescreens and begins to rewire it, using the temple as a makeshift screwdriver, chewing gum for solder, and foil from the protein bars as electrodes. As she works she notes that while she only has sixteen minutes to build her weapon, she had plenty of time that day to design it in her head. Her plan is to try to draw off the excess power that Da Costa's body is producing by adding artificial resistance, like her teacher had mentioned long ago. Specifically, she wants to use capacitors from the telescreens to channel and even vent Da Costa's extra power, similar to how Hieronymus Machines were supposed to work. She finishes building her device, which is in the shape of a headband, and puts it around the head of the dying Da Costa. She then calculates the device will need two minutes to work but is surprised by guards, who arrived before she anticipated. Panicking, Ho tries to think of what her father would have done, and then decides to act as he had and stall for time by making the guards focus on her. She goes into the corridor and demands the guards focus on her, saying she's the threat and Da Costa is nothing but a dying suit. The guards are incredulous that she's a threat, but Ho goes on a rant about how Tony Stark was never really a threat to HYDRA when all he did was build weapons, but her father made Stark into their nightmare by convincing Stark to fight for peace. She boasts that even if HYDRA does shoot her, it's too late because she and her father have been spreading the idea of battling to fight evil and protect innocents, and HYDRA cannot withstand that idea. At that moment, Da Costa gets up, glowing with power and ready for battle.
Tropes:
- MacGyvering: Ho builds a machine to drain Da Costa's excess power out of telescreen parts, chewing gum, and foil wrappers.
