While
Doctor Strange is lost in meditation for hours, Clea tries to calm the
impatient Defenders downstairs. Wong admits the agitated Jack Norriss who is
worried that Valkyrie (whom he wrongly considers his wife) is missing. Nighthawk
sets up a plan to search for her. Norriss will phone hospitals, Luke Cage and
Red Guardian will look around the site where she was last seen, while NH
follows up on some leads of his own….
Meanwhile,
we know where Val is: in prison for wrecking the restaurant in issue #35. She
is called into the Warden’s office where he gets a little touchy-feely so Val
clobbers him and she is sent back to a labor detail….
Cage
and Tania look around the squalid Times Square of the 1970s for signs of Val.
Cage mistakes a woman with a similar hairstyle for her and a tough guy accuses
him of preying on white women; Cage and then Tania must discourage him,
violently, from bothering them….
In
prison, Val is ordered to mop all the floors; she refuses as she has done
nothing to warrant punishment. The watching inmates applaud her. The Warden
again touches her and she decks him and is sent to solitary for it, which she
welcomes. After several hours, though, she becomes fed up with the entire
prison experience, knocks the door off the cell and discovers that the
prisoners have revolted and taken the Warden and other staff hostage.
Elsewhere, Kyle Richmond has met with the Police Commissioner and discovered
what has happened. At the prison, Val is listening to the complaints about the
place from her friend Shirley; she knows nothing constructive will happen with
the bullying Felicia in charge and so confronts the woman, asking to use the
phone to contact her friends. Felicia sees this as a challenge to her authority
and attacks Val who is able to defend herself and render her foe helpless
without a great show of violence. Outside, Clea creates a blinding fireball in
the sky to distract the police while the Defenders break into the prison. They
discover Val in charge and she promises to intercede for the inmates in
reforming the place….