A prison transport ship heading to the Raft has crashed in New York’s meat packing district and the Lethal Legion (Grim Reaper, Living Laser, Radioactive Man, Whirlwind) is loose. The Avengers rush to the scene and engage the fugitives in a pyrotechnic brawl. A mysterious watcher on a roof shoots down the Falcon and carries him off to his lair. When Captain America follows Redwing to a docked freighter, he finds Falcon in a stasis tube and his enemy Cable gets the drop on him….
In a time slide we learn that Cable died before his daughter Hope’s eyes and he found himself in a New York devastated by nuclear winter. There, his old ally Blacquesmith explained that the world was destroyed because Hope was not there to save it. And the reason she was not there was the Avengers. Cable has twenty-four hours to save his daughter by assassinating the Avengers before his own techno-organic virus kills him….
Cap and Cable fight (at one point with Cable using Cap’s shield to protect himself from Cap firing Cable’s gun) until the desperate time traveler overpowers the Living Legend. Cap awakens immobilized in an inhibitor chair, where Cable announces his plan to destroy the Avengers—then Cable fires….