Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Last issue Iron Man told the Avengers that he and the X-Men were finally ready to confront Orchis so the team including him set out to raid various Orchis bases and send any mutants freed to their orbiting base the Impossible City. Disgruntled ex-Avenger 3-D Man had been tasked to predict and counter their moves. He wasn't doing well until he decided to send a fleet of Iron Sentinels to attack the City. Only Captain Marvel hadn't been sent out on the raids, but that's because her current personal circumstances meant she had to swap places with Yuna Yang in the Negative Zone.
Now Yuna and the City's AI have to deal with the Sentinels alone. The City is shooting the robots down as fast as it can but they'll get through in approximately 12 minutes. It could dimensional-shift out of the way but the D-Shift engines will take 16 min to spin up. And it daren't take computing power away from the defences to mass evacuate the mutants.
In Orchis base Juno 3-D Man is gloating to his holographically-present boss MODOK that he located the City despite its stealth screen and frequent orbit changes. MODOK complains that Orchis can't afford to lose that many Sentinels because they are required in other areas of conflict.
The active Avengers have been running as 2 different teams with the City teleporting them between targets. Black Panther, Captain America (Sam Wilson) and Scarlet Witch have reached target #9, Mutant Re-education Centre K-19, and destroyed the prison and ported the mutant inmates to the City. The attack on the City is aimed to disrupt all this teleporting. It turns out that the Avengers know about 3-D Man's involvement and T'Challa says he underestimated Delroy Garrett's competence. Wanda Maximoff will go to help defend the City while the other 2 will be ported to Juno base.
The heavy-hitter team Iron Man, Thor and Vision are ported into the midst of the attacking Sentinels where they join the Witch in destroying them while the City aims where they aren't. But the robots are built to adapt to the powers of attackers, which Vision computes will take 6 mins. So they concentrate on maximising the damage before then. The City estimates it won't be enough so Yuna clashes her Nega Bands together to initiate the swap with Captain Marvel. Carol Danvers says it will only give her 3 minutes so she goes outside to make them count. While the now 4 battle she tells the others that in a few minutes she'll be replaced by vulnerable Yuna. Wanda promises to protect her.
In Juno base an alarm signals that BP and CA have arrived. 3-D Man claims to have planned for this and cuts MODOK's holographic link. He faces the pair and rants about how they threw him off the team (an older version) and now he's shown them he's better than them. BP admits to having underestimated Delroy who *told* him that he'd attack them to the *best* of his ability. Garrett doesn't understand that and thinks T'Challa's trying to trick him. But BP says that it's Garrett who was the trick and it's time for him to wake up, and he speaks something in Old Wakandan.
We now see a memory where Panther sends Delroy deep undercover as an embittered ex-Avenger, hypno-conditioned to *believe* that he wanted to help Orchis against his old teammates, with the code phrase above to snap him out of it. While under he will consciously try to defeat the Avengers but subconsciously he will pass them information (such as where the targets they hit were).
Meanwhile some Sentinels get past the City's defences. IM and Vizh head in to take them out. Carol gets pulled back to the Neg Zone and Wanda keeps Yuna alive in space. Then 3-D Man comes back to his sense and calls off the attack. BP infects Orchis' computers with a virus and he, CA and 3-D Man are teleported to the City.
The remainder of the issue is an epilogue days later after the fall of Orchis. The team are celebrating while scooping up bits of Sentinel. Delroy Garrett has gone off on his own business. But then Vision alerts them to a problem with many huge black whirlpools in the atmosphere down on Earth.