Matt Murdock and
Heather Glenn mingle at a country club party hosted by industrialist Edwin Cord. The
shady Cord tries to enlist Matt into his team of lawyers, promising many
benefits that the IRS doesn’t have to know about. Matt refuses his offer and tries
to find Heather to leave when a man in a mech-suit calling himself the Mauler
suddenly arrives and attacks Cord! Cord’s bodyguards run to assist him, while
Matt slips away to change into Daredevil. The Mauler makes easy work of Cord’s
bodyguards until Daredevil intervenes, though Matt quickly finds himself
overwhelmed by the mech-suit’s defenses. Daredevil is rescued by the arrival of
the police and the Mauler flies off. Cord refuses to talk regarding the
situation and presents a security clearance card showing that he doesn’t have
to answer any of the police’s questions.
Later, Cord returns to
his heavily guarded home to find Daredevil waiting for him. Daredevil demands
answers about the attack and Cord reveals that the man in the mech-suit is a
disgruntled ex-employee named Aaron Soames who was let go over a clerical issue.
He stole the mech-suit that Cord Industries was designing to use as revenge
against Cord. Daredevil promises to be back if he finds that Cord has lied to
him and over the next day, the situation continues to eat at him. That night,
Daredevil sneaks into Cord’s company to look for more answers and his senses
quickly alert him to danger.
Daredevil finds the
Mauler apparently attempting to kill Cord and intervenes. Cord flees the scene
and Daredevil stops Mauler from chasing after him, smashing the Mauler’s
faceplate in the process. Daredevil then discovers from his now-unmuffled voice
that Soames is a much older man than he thought, 63 years old in fact. Soames
explains how he diligently worked for Cord for 35 years until he was replaced
by a computer that could do his job quicker and cheaper. When Soames went to
collect his pension, he found that his entire record with the company had
accidentally been erased. Cord denied him his pension, and seemed to find the
whole situation amusing, and so Soames stole the suit to make Cord pay.
Daredevil and Soames are
then surrounded by guards, before Soames takes out the lights, allowing them
both to slip away in the dark. Daredevil quickly finds Soames about to kill
Cord and moves to stop him. It’s then that Soames reveals he never planned to
kill Cord, instead destroying his ID, credit cards, anything that proves Cord’s
existence, essentially putting him in the same boat as Soames. Soames moves to
leave when Cord’s guards arrive with a prototype weapon called a vibramace.
Daredevil is just too late to stop them from firing and the weapon kills
Soames. Cord claims that he didn’t do anything illegal and that exposing the
Mauler armor would be a breach of national security. Realizing he’s right,
Daredevil has to make do with angrily punching Cord out. Some time later, Matt
attends Soames’ funeral, one of only a handful of mourners. He leaves flowers
at Soames’ tombstone, that he donated for the funeral, which reads, “He was…and
that is enough.”
Issue also contains a
section detailing Daredevil’s apartment, powers, and billy club, only a few
pages long.