Synopsis
The opening interview this time isn't a flashback, it's Tony Stark grilling Pepper Potts over what went wrong with the Order's mission. She recaps how they tracked SHADOW to their base near the Salton Sea and then she lost contact with them. She and Kate Kildare contacted Stark and SHIELD last issue.
When Iron Man and SHIELD got there they discovered that the team had lost their artificial superpowers to an EMP. This had killed Heavy/Dennis Murray (last issue). SHIELD rounded up the broken SHADOW Softly robots, Cut/Wendy of the Black Dahlias (the other Dahlias are dead), Infernal Man and Maul. But Ezekiel Stane and Mulholland Black were missing.
Since then SHIELD has been trying to handle something that has happened to Los Angeles because of Holly. And the remaining unpowered Order members have sneaked off the SHIELD Helicarrier in a shuttle. Now read on.
The team go back to their Bradbury Building HQ where James Wu gets fitted with normal prosthetic legs of the Oscar Pistorius type. Milo Fields' repaired paraplegia, cured when he merged with Becky Ryan to form Hybrid, was apparently not undone by the EMP. Everyone agrees to go find Mulholland.
She's in a car driven by Stane. Her out-of-control amplified powers are driving Angelenos insane, and the city has erupted in riots and flames. Zeke also has at least 1 of the Gen'l Softly robots out stirring up discord between Angeleno factions (they listen to him because he's an authority figure!). His mad scheme is still to give Tony Stark a problem too big to fix.
Zeke takes Holly to the Watts Towers and carries her up to the top of the tallest 1. (He claims along the way that her original mutant power hasn't returned as she thought. Instead Stane super-boosted her artificial Order power.) Then he leaves her there to get on with his life while she fuels Los Angeles' craziness until she burns out.
The Order are on their way, heading for the worst of the chaos, expecting that's where Holly will be. But they stop to save a pregnant mother from a mob. And only just escape with their own lives. (Mullholland is apparently automatically shielding them from her brain emissions.)
Then they arrive at the Watts Towers, wreathed in energy discharges. Henry Hellrung leaps from the shuttlecar to the platform where they see Holly. He almost doesn't make it, but Holly stirs from her pain to save him.
Henry tries to calm and comfort her as Holly begs him to make the agony stop. Then he shields her from the view of the other Order members in the shuttle. And I guess he breaks her neck.
In the morning the city is calm as Iron Man and SHIELD restore order. The unknown Ezekiel Stane steps out of a crowd and pretends to be a fan of the Golden Avenger. But under his breath he mutters that his vengeance (for the suicide of his father Obadiah) isn't over.
2 days later Tony interviews Pepper again. She accepts the offer to come work for him again. He says he's going to turn the Order into 1 of the ordinary Initiative superteams, with existing super-people rather than creating them witrh artificial powers. But he agrees to leave Henry and Kate in charge.
Then Stark talks to Hellrung, but this time he offers the team their artificial powers back. Henry accepts for them, but on the condition that they be allowed to hunt down Stane. But Tony says that there is no trace of Ezekiel Stane's existence - he's living off the grid.