It is a week after the deaths of Yellowjacket (Rita DeMara) and Marilla in Avengers: the Crossing, and Gilgamesh in Avengers #391. Iron Man and Giant-Man are trying to breach the baffling door in the basement of the abandoned Avengers mansion. The door through which Gilgamesh's killer Neut escaped. But it is resisting their attempts as it has all previous ones.
Giant-Man has a tapping headache, and finds it difficult to change size. This is probably supposed to be door-related, and possibly connected to Scarlet Witch's headaches in Force Works. But nothing more is made of this.
Suzi Endo arrives in L.A. for the new job Tony Stark hired her for in Force Works #16. A woman is following her, an alternate future version of herself.
Stark asks Moonraker (the mysterious addition to Force Works in #16, whom everyone treats as if he has been a member for a long time) to prepare the team for a meeting the next day, when Stark will introduce someone to them. This someone is Suzi Endo, but it will be the alternate copy who turns up in Force Works #17.
He also phones the Avengers at their temporary home at the Van Dyne estate, and tells Hercules of the lack of progress with the door. Hercules mentions the warnings he got from a mysterious blonde girl in Avengers: The Crossing. This reminds Stark of the blonde who appeared to him with a cryptic message in the blackout at the end of last issue.
Stark works on salvaging information from a damaged security tape, which should show Marilla's murderer. The semi-clear version we see plainly indicates that Iron Man himself was Marilla's murderer. When he finally gets the image clear enough to be certain, his reaction shows that he didn't know he'd done it. He has another blackout, which seems to wipe the memory from his brain again.
When he recovers he finds Giant-Man's dead body, before being attacked by Marianne Rodgers, who escaped from Stark's private mental institution last issue. Marianne claims her mental breakdown was caused by her telepathic access to the 'black stain' in Tony's mind. Masque pops up, having witnessed Marianne's escape last issue, and tasers Marianne to stop her killing Stark.
Giant-Man wakes up alive, and alone in the mansion.
The Crossing continues in
FORCE WORKS #17.
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