On the Riviera,
Spider-Woman glides through the air to the building housing the Mediterranean
branch of SHIELD. She reaches the roof unseen and enters stealthily. She is on
a mission for Hydra: kill Nick Fury….
Fury has been called to
the site to interrogate a captive Hydra Agent named Jared. As he beats the
captive trying to extract information from him, Spider-Woman enters and fires
non-lethal venom bolts to take out everyone in the room but Nick Fury to rescue
the man she loves….
Flashback: Arachne’s
earliest memory is of being driven out of a small Alpine village because of her
strange powers. She was taken in by Count Otto Vermis who was an area commander
for Hydra. After they used a mind probe on her to uncover her full memories (to
be revealed later in the tale) she was trained to use her various powers, given
a costume and code name—and she fell in love with her trainer Jared. And then
Jared was captured by SHIELD and Arachne was assigned to kill Nick Fury and
rescue Jared…
…and now that’s what she
is doing, firing venom bolts at Fury who is dodging them and then she
accidentally wounds Jared in the fight. Then she sees Jared’s file on the video
screen, revealing that he, like all Hydra agents, is a ruthless killer. The
dying Jared tells her he never loved her but was assigned to pretend so that
she could be more easily duped into this mission. Angered by the deception,
Arachne returns to Hydra HQ in her flyer, which she sends crashing through the
roof, shooting down bad guys—and SHIELD is right behind her to mop up. She
pursues and captures Vermis who offers to tell her of her real identity if she
lets him get away. They go to his secret rocket plane and he fills her in on
her origin: she was an actual spider, turned human by the High Evolutionary.
The other New Men hated her so she fled to a nearby village where she fell in
love with a guy but accidentally killed him with her venom powers. This trauma
is what caused her amnesia, leading to her recruitment into Hydra. While she is
agonizing, Vermis hurls a poison gas pellet at her and takes off. But her
natural venomous nature makes her immune to the poison and she flies after the
ship, bending its tail so that Vermis crashes into the mountain as she glides
to safety. Back at the HQ Nick Fury can’t find Spider-Woman who has run off
into the woods to come to terms with her strange nature….