At the Nextin airfield, Machinesmith, in his guise as Myron Smith, is holding an auction among representatives from several terrorist-supporting countries, offering the recreated Super-Soldier Serum to the highest bidder. On his way to stop the sale, Steve Rogers consults Hank (the Beast) McCoy about the best way to defeat this formidable enemy. Hank has a plan and it will involve the android Anita Erskine….
As the auction progresses, Anita arrives at the base and bullies her way past the guard. The suspicious guard calls ahead to warn Smith she is coming. Further inside the compound, she releases Steve from the trunk, assuring him that her sacrifice will not bother her as she isn’t real….
Warned, Machinesmith divests himself of the Myron Smith shell and battles Steve Rogers in his flexible robot form. After Steve decapitates the robot, the villain sends his consciousness into each mechanized weapon on the base in succession, firing at Steve to keep him off balance. For his part, Steve reacts with everything he has to distract his foe from the plan. When Machinesmith suddenly finds himself helpless, Anita steps out of the shadows and reveals she has shut down every electronics system on the base, leaving the villain nowhere to go…. Except Machinesmith can think of one: he enters the Anita robot and seizes control—which was Steve’s plan all along. Trapped in her reconfigured body, he is unable to escape when it self-destructs….
The ext day at Secret Avengers Roaming HQ, Sharon Carter comes upon Steve pondering his wartime romance with Cynthia Glass. She relays news of a problem found by Hank McCoy; Beast explains to Steve that the Super-Soldier Serum he recovered from the auction is a fake, the chemicals are worthless. Puzzled, Steve wonders what the mission was all about…..
In Detroit, Jacob Erskine tells Aloysius Thorndrake, Director of the Shadow Council, that he has perfected the Super-Soldier Serum now that he has obtained a sample of Steve Rogers’ blood; meanwhile, the mission against Machinesmith has convinced Rogers that the threat is over. They continue with their project: checking up on test subjects, duplicates of Steve Rogers, part of a scheme to create an army of super-soldiers for the sinister Shadow Council….