Synopsis / Summary / Plot
When the Watcher's Eye exploded a building full of people with drug-expanded minds absorbed loads of the secrets released. The villain Hood persuaded Hulkling, Marvel Boy and Prodigy of the Young Avengers to help him extract the secrets, saying that hidden among them could be stuff like cures for diseases. However he double-crossed them by uploading the data to the internet, encrypted with a key only he knew. He intended to make a load of money out of some of those secrets. When Marvel Boy detected this partway through processing the druggies the YA turned on Hood. But he used his demonic powers to KO Hulkling and Noh-Varr and then he made Prodigy continue the processing.
Now David Alleyne is dealing with the last 1 with the cut-down Cerebro he created. Hood hasn't noticed that MB is awake and just waiting for Teddy Altman to recover. Which he does now and the pair subdue Hood. Parker Robbins reminds them that he's set a dead-man's switch to release the decryption key to the world so that everybody's secrets will be available to everybody else, including their enemies. But Prodigy figures that he'll have set quite a long time before that happens so they'll bank on beating the location of the switch out of him before it goes off. However Hood turns demon-face again. MB starts to beat him but he uses his magic cloak to turn them both invisible. Hulkling dives on where they were but of course winds up grabbing Noh, and Hood escapes.
Prodigy lets the other 2 wallow in their defeat for a minute before revealing that Hood *hasn't* won. He expected (just as they all did) Hood to betray them, so he prepared for it. While he was creating the Cerebrat out of the equipment the villain provided he had plenty of time to examine it and discover the built-in encryption and change it. But not to a different key. With enough computer power even military-grade encryption can be cracked, and the whole world would be trying to crack this. Instead he used a 1-time pad, adding a different random number to every piece of data, so it's uncrackable.
Later Hulkling imitates Agent Phil Coulson again and calls SHIELD to look after the junkies. And Prodigy goes home. But when he gets there we learn that he's memorised all those random numbers so *he* can decrypt the data. And now he can search it for cures, even 1 for Hood's mom.
Story 1:- How The World Works featuring Nick Fury
Script Al Ewing. Pencils Butch Guice. Inks Scott Hanna. Colours Matthew Wilson.
Nick Fury's in his secret Man On The Wall space station trying to torture Watcher's secrets out of the Orb, but Dum Dum Dugan interrupts him. Fury's age has caught up with him now he no longer has the Infinity Formula in his blood, and he's dying. Dum Dum points out that *his* Infinity Formula is still going strong so why don't they do a blood transfusion. Orb laughs because DDD obviously doesn't know the truth.
Nick leads his old friend to room TACD-66 with passcode Strongman. (TACD stands for Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader Dugan and we'll now learn what the 66 means. And he used to be a circus strongman.) He shows him an LMD under construction labelled Dugan Unit XIV. And he tells Tim that he died in 1966 while the 2 of them were stopping Count Otto Vermis of Hydra using a death ray on Fort Knox. Fury was already the Man On The Wall then and he had alien tech which enabled him to create LMDs much superior to SHIELD's. So he revived him as an LMD to be his conscience to keep him from going too far. And kept doing it each time an LMD died.
Dugan tries to shoot Fury but finds he's preprogrammed not to. He declares that he's not Fury's conscience just his hairshirt. He makes Nick feel guilty each time he does stuff like torture or execution without trial, because Fury thinks that feeling guilty means he's still 1 of the good guys. He can't afford to hold the morals and values and rights they fought for in WWII because that's not how the world works. He suggests that Fury himself is the worst threat humanity faces. Then he shoots his own LMD brains out after begging Nick not to revive him again. But Nick says he's sorry, that's not how the world works.
Story 3:- The No-Sin Situation featuring lots of people
Script/Pencils/Inks/Colours Chip Zdarsky
Nick Fury interviews lots of Marvel chars asking them what secret of theirs the Watcher's Eye may have revealed. He promises them whatever they say will be off the record (despite having a stenographer present). (And he also breaks the 4th wall to say it won't be considered in-continuity.)
Gambit admits he's not really French, he just uses the accent to be cool.
She-Hulk says she never passed the bar.
Rick Jones says he knew about the gamma bomb. Playing his guitar while in danger is his secret fetish.
Luke Cage hates sweets and Christmas.
Punisher admits it was his idea to go to the park where his family died. And he still likes parks.
Storm says that after a romance with a weatherman ended she ruined his career.
Magneto admits he doesn't really control metal he just asks it to do what he wants.
Black Panther claims to be above regretting actions, even after Fury shows him the Avril Lavigne CDs they found in his possession.
Kingpin says he likes Matt Murdock and feels bad about stuff.
Beast says he's writing a pitch for a TV cop show called Stars & Garters which he drops hints about by using it as a catchphrase.
Teen Jean Grey (currently here from the past) knows that her future self will murder a race of aliens and sleep with Wolverine.
Hawkeye says he once claimed to be good at boats when he wasn't.
Silver Surfer admits to having snacked on a few planets when he was Herald Of Galactus.
Sub-Mariner admits to peeing in the ocean but clams up when Fury suggests he might take a dump there too.
Scarlet Witch says she meant "No! *More* mutants!".
The Watcher claims to have faked his death.
Squirrel Girl says she hates squirrels.
Blade admits to sometimes killing people who aren't vampires because he likes killing.
Dr Strange says his real surname is Strangowski but he changed it because he wanted to be in a heavy metal band.
The real Nick Fury enters and shoots the other guy who's an LMD with the eye-patch on the wrong eye.