A bitter Captain America surveys the wreckage of the train destroyed by the Animus in its attempt to kill Cap (issue #223). Nick Fury approaches him and tries to persuade him to abandon this search for his identity which is only distracting him from his primary duties. Cap counters with his new plan: contact the nation’s leading expert on mind science, Mason Harding—the inventor of the Madbomb. Arriving at the SHIELD Helicarrier, Dum Dum Dugan presents Cap and Fury with the file on the mysterious Veda, whose mother was Agent R, present at Cap’s creation. The photo of Agent R reveals a woman with a horribly disfigured face, hinting at some dark event after 1941…. A short time later, Cap arrives at the penitentiary where Harding is imprisoned for treason and taken to see the scientist. Cap explains his problem of missing memories and Harding suggests that his mind-probe device might unlock the hidden knowledge….
At Corporation headquarters, Veda is ushered in to see her boss, Kligger. As she has brought the attention of SHIELD upon herself, she is now a liability to the Corporation. Kligger presses a concealed button and deadly beams are fired at her, reducing her to ashes….
Though Nick Fury does not trust Mason Harding, he arranges for the scientist to be released from prison temporarily so he can subject Captain America to his mind-probe. Cap is hooked to the machine and his missing childhood comes back to him…. Steve was the son of diplomat Walter Rogers and his wife Elizabeth. He had an athletic older brother Mike but Steve tended toward artistic and intellectual pursuits. This caused quite a bit of tension in the family as Walt openly favored his manly son and despised the more sensitive one; his mother naturally defended Steve, causing friction in the marriage. The family was proud of Mike when he graduated from the US Naval Academy at Annapolis but Steve’s pacifist sentiments only called forth his father’s anger and contempt. This led to Steve making a break with his family and moving to New York to attend art school. When, in December 1941, Steve heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor, he call home and learned that Mike had been killed…but his father refused to speak to him. Steve decided to reject his pacifist views and join the military to stand against the forces of Hitler. But he was rejected by the army for his small stature…leading to his being chosen for the Super-Soldier Project…. Seeing Cap’s near-panic on reliving his past leads Fury and Harding to shut down the machine. Then they receive a shock: something has neutralized the Serum in Cap’s body…he sits there a scrawny little man, his Captain America costume hanging loosely on him….