1944: Captain America returns to
Brooklyn to confront Elisa Sinclair; she asks sweetly whether he has
come to kill her....
In the present, Sinclair, now revealed
as Madame Hydra, is out recruiting villains for her purposes. She
finds Hive alive and well in Egypt and offers him Violence....
She finds Viper smuggling drugs in
Madripoor and offers her Belonging....
To Dr Faustus, a psychiatrist in Los
Angeles, she offers Influence....
To Gorgon in Japan, she offers
Vengeance....
In Dimension Z, she offers Arnim Zola
Discovery....
And in Scotland she gives the Kraken
suit to a man to whom she offers Meaning....
These seven together are the new High
Council of Hydra....
1944: Cap accuses Eliza Sinclair of
being the one who betrayed the late Baron Zemo to the Allies, as told
him by Helmut Zemo. Instead, she reveals herself as Madame Hydra, a
tentacled creature which has existed for centuries, and assures him
that if she meant them any harm, it would have happened
differently....
Now Cap arrives in time for Captain
Marvel's test of her new planetary defense shield. He tries once more
to persuade her to drop the project but she is adamant that the world
needs this device. Nukes are fired at the shield and it withstands
their force. The second test involves Thor (Jane F.), Spectrum, Blue
Marvel, Hyperion, and Star Brand unleashing their greatest powers
upon the shield simultaneously—and it holds firm. Cap brings out
his biggest gun: Avril Kincaid, the new Quasar. She bombards the
shield with all the power her Quantum Bands can muster and she ends
up fainting from the exertion, and the shield holds. Cap seeks out
Rick Jones and asks him to find a way to hack into the shield as they
have to make sure it never goes up....
1944: Having convinced Cap of her
loyalty, Eliza Sinclair reveals the name of the true enemy of
Hydra...the Red Skull....