Synopsis / Summary / Plot
The previously page reminds us how Captain America lost the Infinity Gems preventing 1 of the 'incursions' in New Avengers that threaten to destroy this universe. Without them the Illuminati would have to use harsher methods to protect the Earth and save the multiverse - methods that Cap couldn't countenance. So Dr Strange made him forget about the incursions and about the Illuminati. But in #29 he remembered. However the Time Gem returned to take him and some other Avengers on a tour of the future. #30-32 each showed a stop on the way, and each time some of his companions were sent back to the present. Now only Steve Rogers is left. At +422 years on Planet Ultron a bomb was implanted in Cap's eye. At +5045 years Franklin Richards told him that the Illuminati will fail to save Earth and the multiverse, because the task is impossible but also in part because Cap will oppose them.
Now it's Betrayal + 51028 years, and Cap finds himself alone in the dark until a lighted path leads him out and towards a tower that reaches to the sky. At the base of the tower a voice asks him to place his hand on the wall, which identifies him as an untypical human from the past. Once inside he is greeted by a holographic being which insists that he place his hands on a bar for further identification. Then spikes of solid light(?) pass through him painfully, until the hologram addresses him as Steve Rogers and shows familiarity with his role as Captain America.
The hologram has reduced to a female head which claims to be an AI that survived Planet Ultron, and has now become the Worldcore. She manifests versions of his companions (Black Widow, Hawkeye, Hyperion, Starbrand, Thor and another Captain America, but very different from the originals) to make him feel more at ease as his consciousness is uploaded into the Worldcore. This will unfortunately kill his body. (There are no humans left on Earth.)
But before that they need to get the foreign object out of his brain. The hologram head has become a solid egg-shape on the end of a snaking metal spine, which now merges with the Black Widow hologram. But Steve breaks free of the hard light spikes and starts to fight the hologram Avengers.
Worldcore tells him that resistance is useless, his fate is pre-ordained. She also explains that this future is at war with the past. She/they grew from a seed in Planet Ultron, but this is a flaw in their otherwise perfection. Accordingly they hatched a plan to change their past.
But reaching the past is difficult. They enlarged and combined some local supergiant stars to create a big enough singularity, and used it to send anachronauts back. Somehow their mission failed, and Planet Ultron started sending suicidal terrortron AIs forward. They think Cap is 1 such.
Hawkeye's light-arrows freeze Cap, and Worldcore/Widow approaches to examine his head. Something bursts out of his eye and invades her being. Suddenly the holograms and tower crumble apart, as the Worldcore system is fatally corrupted.
As Captain America stamps on the inert head of Worldcore/Widow, the Time Gem reappears and takes him to fractured temporal space. As he expects he begins to painfully disintegrate, as his companions did before. But someone pulls him back to life in the FTS. (It looks like a version of Iron Man.)