In Chicago, Steve Rogers and the three
change agents, Skinz, Becca, and Malik, with the latter’s protectors, Guardian
and Julie, prepare to board a plane for New York. Steve boards the plane and is
directed to an envelope that mysteriously appeared. It is a letter from Lyra,
containing a set of rings which will help the group complete their mission. The
letter also details her feeling that her brother Death has assumed physical
form to join the battle personally and warns him appropriately. He is
interrupted by Julie who asks to speak to him privately. Elsewhere Becca feels
like a traitor for working against the group. Julie reveals why she follows
Malik and asks Steve whether he really thinks he can defeat Death. Steve
explains that he agrees, the battle is hopeless, but as he learned from the
War, sometimes you know you can’t win so the goal is to ensure the other guy
doesn’t win, in this case, delaying Death while Lyra searches for a solution
since Death intends to wipe out the human race….
In human form, Death walks the
street of an ordinary American town, plants dying when touched by his shadow
and bringing death to a random stranger, presented as the gift of freedom from
the pain and struggle. He recalls the Pale City, a paradise where he and his
sister Lyra were to serve humanity, Lyra to aid, heal and bestow hope, Death to
guide from this world to the next. And there were evil people whom he took to
the Hall of Shadows to suffer for eternity. He loved humanity—until the 20th
century when the horrors of two World Wars, the Stalin regime, the Holocaust,
the Maoist Cultural Revolution, led to overwhelming numbers of deaths. Death
himself was horrified and decided that the human race did not deserve to live….
On the plane, Steve, having donned
his Captain America gear, distributes the rings—and Becca is burned by hers.
Cap ponders the second half of Lyra’s letter: she revealed that Cap is not a
man out of time but a man forever trying to come home. Therefore, he must make
a choice and be at the Front Door when the others arrive, and then Lyra will grant
him peace or the option will be lost forever. Arriving at a small private NY
airport, Cap arranges them in a formation designed to maximize their chances of
survival….
At the Front Door, Lyra has sent
messages to summon everyone to the cabaret; she addresses them all, advising
them not to leave the building, to fight the instinct to go out to help their
compatriots….
Outside, as a news crew is doing a
weather report, Death passes over the crowds in the street. Power is passed on
to the people, a power that, it they kill Death’s enemies, will pass away
harmlessly and should they refuse, that power will destroy them….
When Cap and company turn a
corner, they discover the streets barricaded and filled with hundreds, if not thousands,
of deadly enemies….