Synopsis / Summary / Plot
In the Texas State Penitentiary Hector Bautista will be executed tomorrow and he gets visits from his lawyer, a priest and his parents.
Captain Marvel (Phyla-Vell) and Moondragon (Heather Douglas), who both arrived from an alternate reality during Infinity Wars, survey the ruins of planet Xandar (destroyed a while ago in Annihilation: Prologue) which was the original base of the Nova Corps. Members of the Fraternity Of Raptors turn up and demand to know where the Infinity Stones are. (They think the pair must know because they were present at the end of Infinity Wars.) The duo enjoy fighting their foes alongside Moondragon's manifested Dragon Of The Moon.
Later the lone survivor reports back to the Fraternity leader Talonar and tells him that Moondragon let slip confirmation that there was a new Infinity Watch. Talonar rewards him by having him thrown out of their spaceship into space. The boss then checks a recording from an Earth-orbit satellite they've hacked and sees the coloured trails of 5 of the Stones leaving Earth, which means 1 of them remains there. And he vows to find all the new Stone-wielders.
We then slip back to where Adam Warlock had the 6 Stones in IW#6. He used the Soul Gem to give souls to the other 5 Stones so that they could decide there own individual destinies. They streaked off into the sky but now we see that the green Time Stone elected to crash into Hector Bautista's jail cell.
Guards hear the noise and enter Hector's cell to see a hole in the ceiling. They assume he was trying to escape and threaten to beat him up. But Hector, who now has a green glow in his chest, begs them to stop ... and they freeze in time. Seizing the opportunity he gets into bed and when they recover he pretends to have just woken up. They are confused, but 1 with more brains points out that the hole in the roof was made from outside.
Next day Hector eats his ceremonial last meal. He tells the priest again that he is innocent of the multiple murders he was convicted of. When the guards come to take him away he tries stopping time again. And then cleans the rib sauce off his fingers on the head guard's shirt. Cue more confusion.
Now he knows that he's been given this miracle Hector stops time a 3rd time and runs to the main office. Time has unfrozen by the time he gets there. But he freezes it again to get out of the back door to the outside world. Then he steals the van of a TV news crew and drives off.
That's where we leave him and pick up with Loki and Flowa who have returned from IW#6 to Flowa's library in Omnipotence City. The Asgardian Trickster God won't tell the Librarian what he learned in IW#6 in the Quarry Of Creation, so she throws him out onto the deck of the Asgardian ship Skipblabnir.
Where he's assailed by the future Phoenix-Wolverine riding Thor's chariot drawn by the 2 goats Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder. Who tells Loki that he won't remember their previous meetings (and neither do we apart from the recent Avengers #8 and IW#4) but tells him to get into the chariot because they have to save the universe.
To be continued in Wolverine: Infinity Watch (and probably the new Guardians Of The Galaxy series)