Black Widow is naked and shackled to a chair in a meat
locker while she is questioned by a Sumi android, controlled by Imus Champion.
She spars verbally with him as he assumes he is in the superior position. The
functionary enters and Nat finds him very easy to insult. She flips the chair
backwards, which breaks the shackle holding her neck and then the lights go
out. Nat escapes and seizes the functionary by the neck, telling him that
Champion doesn’t care if she kills him or not. She forces the fat guy to reveal
who he is working with and reveals she has a tiny recording device in the palm
of her hand (seen being installed without comment at the safe house in issue
#2). She also reveals that with the activation of a code over the phone (seen
at the hospital at the beginning of issue #2), every computer the secret data
was downloaded to is about to implode, including the one in Champion’s
head—which now “kills” the android. She takes the functionary’s clothes and
departs, gunning down the guards outside. She is met by Captain America (Bucky)
and Wolverine, according to plan. Outside she dresses in her usual jumpsuit and
gives Bucky and Logan the recorder in her palm and goes on to confront Imus
Champion…
…at his refuge in the California mountains. He shows her
Ivan Petrovitch’s brain in a jar and then the fight begins. She clouts him with
the brain in the jar. She is more limber but he is bigger and stronger. She
taunts him while he throws her around the room, smashing into everything. She
pokes his eyes, kicks him in the face then holds a gun to his head. He begs her
to finish him—and she realizes, from the medicine bottles on the table, that he
is dying. And that he wants her to kill him so that his mind is downloaded into
an android body. She mocks him for his weakness and departs….
Later, she has Lady Bullseye exhumed and buries the black
rose in the forest while musing on matters of love….