Synopsis
It's 1952 and Peggy Carter, Howard Stark and Woodrow McCord are with Russian teens Tania Belinskaya and Mikhail Uriokovitch in an alien spaceship hurtling towards the aboveground entrance to an underground Hydra base in Russia. Inside the base Anton Vanko is trying to control energy building up in a portal while the German Hydra guards threaten his friend Shareen who wrecked the control console last issue.
Howard tries to control the ship but it is dragged to crash into the base as though by extreme gravity. The guards try to get Shareen to betray her (nonexistent) accomplices, but the glowing-eyed woman just worries about someone she says is coming for her. Vanko says the portal is gaining mass, and then a large negative-image man starts to come through, calling for his beloved Shareen.
The spaceship crashes into the base and through to the portal room. Stark tells Woody to stay with Peggy, Mikhail and injured Tania while he goes to see what's what. McCord gives him 5 minutes. Stark meets Vanko and they recognise each other as scientists and combine intellects to try to stop the big guy coming through the portal.
Tania starts to recover and Peggy tells Woody and Mikhail to go help Howard. McCord doesn't want to take the teenage boy along as a liability, but Carter reminds him that Mikhail can turn into a bear. Woody grudgingly agrees. He rips off his coat and shirt to reveal his body armour, grabs the boy and jetpacks his way out of the ceiling of the ship - not bothering about any knocks the kid might get.
Woody and Mikhail bond a bit over the boy's rough life after his werebear status emerged at age 12 and his people threw him out. Suddenly Mikhail recognises a scent, changes to bear and races off. He finds a babbling woman prisoner who's probably going to turn out to be his mother.
Meanwhile Woody uses an alien rifle to shoot his way through some guards and free some more prisoners.
Peggy and Tania leave by an easier exit and see a Hydra guard shooting at hiding Shareen. Carter shoots the guy and helps the woman up. Shareen mutters about how she escaped and hid, but she's not talking about the recent events. She considered herself to be free and useful in Hydra's enslaved workforce.
The 3 women find Carter and Vanko. The big negative guy is still trying to come through the gateway. Shareen calls him her love. She tells Anton her story.
Xanth and Shareen were explorers but Xanth got infected by a dark energy. To save Earth(?) Shareen agreed to stay with him in the 'negative wastes' (Negative Zone?). But she grew weary of their plight and escaped to Earth - that was the energy signal that started the joint Hydra/Soviet investigation into a possible energy source. Shareen got herself into the investigation team so she could make sure they never succeeded.
When Stark and co found Shareen's spaceship and activated it, that enabled Xanth to locate her. Now the only way to stop him coming to Earth is for her to go back to him. (But at the moment he seems stuck in the doorway.)
Tania chooses this moment to collapse. There are no doctors in the base, but Shareen says she can heal her internal injuries. She tries to add a 'but' to that, but Peggy insists she tries. The alien woman picks up the teen and starts to glow. The energy suffuses Tania, who wakes up. But at that moment alien-hunter McCord bursts in with gun blazing.