Synopsis / Summary / Plot
It's 2 weeks later than last issue. Nick Fury is in his secret base #7 Pieta deep under Rome having a conference with holograms of his 3 team leaders Daisy Johnson (Quake), Alexander Pierce and his son Mikel Fury.
10 days ago the leaders of Leviathan arrive at the Hydra financial base the Crown in Kyoto for the meeting they arranged last issue (3 days before). Baron Strucker and Kraken prepare to greet them. They are expecting 3 guests:- Orion, Magadan and the traitorous Madame Hydra/Val de Fontaine. Wolfgang von Strucker says it will revive old memories to have 4 of the original 12 members of the Great Wheel (he, Kraken, Orion and Magadan, see Dark Reign: The List: Secret Warriors 1-shot) together in the same room again.
But for now we divert to another flashback to 2 years ago. A man visits another man in a hospital bed. He refers to the dying man as an old friend, and says he found his Kraken diaries in his London house - a litany of the most evil deeds imaginable, including his involvement with Zodiac. He takes the Kraken helmet and puts it on, and it expands into body armour. He says he'll take over the role, and the helmet seems to transform him both physically and mentally to fit. And then he switches off the man's life support.
Back at the Crown the Leviathan 3 are led to a conference room to face Strucker, Kraken and Gorgon. Then Hive enters with the transformed Viper. She forgives the Contessa for shooting her (#14) because it led to her new form. (Hive revived her last issue and gave her a large tentacled parasite on her head.)
Orion had asked for the meeting to discuss an alliance between Hydra and Leviathan. But now he demands that Hydra be subservient to Leviathan. But they will allow Strucker and the rest of his council to pretend to their troops to still be in charge. The Baron of course rejects this out of hand, saying he should have killed Viktor Uvarov long ago. Orion points out that he *did* try.
Strucker sics Gorgon on him and Tomi Shishido plunges his sword through Orion's chest. But Viktor bats him back with a large mallet that he magics up out of nowhere (is this guy really Slapstick in heavy disguise?!) and then withdraws the sword, saying it'll take more than that to kill him. Valentina calls in a strike and a squad of Leviathan jets and armoured flying troops attacks the base. Meanwhile the occupants of the conference room battle each other.
Now back to Fury's hologram conference in the now. He tells his team leaders that 4 days ago Hydra and Leviathan went to war against each other. (That day count doesn't add up.) He reports that large numbers of troops were killed but the leaders all escaped with injuries. The Crown base was destroyed. Fury tells them to prepare their teams for action because it's time to hit the enemy while they're wounded. When the holograms fade we see that 3 other figures are *really* in the room with him.
Daisy takes her VR headset off in Fury's Providence base and tells her boyfriend JT James (Hellfire) that Nick is going to mobilise her team in a few days. So they start to enjoy what free time they will have left.
We then see Fury and the other 3 in his Pieta base sitting round the Great Wheel/Zodiac table. The others are Dum Dum Dugan, John Garrett (from #7-9 and DRL: SW) and a new player called the Professor (but in DRL:SW they were all listed as members of the Great Wheel). He tells them that what they've been planning for has reached it's moment, so now is their last chance to back out. The Professor says everything is in place. Dugan says he's tired of waiting so let's end it. Garrett asks Fury if *he*'s having 2nd thoughts. Nick denies it but says they'll all pay a price.
Later that night JT gets a message to meet someone. He leaves Daisy's bed and 20 minutes later he's in the Black Atlas bar passing info to someone. JT reminds him he promised nothing would happen to Daisy, and regrets taking the money (#7) from the fortune Nick stole from Hydra. He's talking to Baron Strucker, and all that money was trackable by Hydra so Strucker is blackmailing him.