Synopsis / Summary / Plot
We begin with the earliest history of life on Earth as a proto-cell divides into 2. But then 1 of the pair devours the other and the result is different. And from this cell follows all cells in living things.
Then we move to Absolom College in Texas where Scarlet Witch and Vision came by quinjet last issue seeking help from the Robotics Department with improving the synthezoid's rebuilt body, ie returning him to the more human state of the person Wanda Maximoff married. The Dean Jeremiah Random had the android taken for some tests but then revealed that they were really interested in the mutant Witch and they allowed her to be engulfed by a black goo they called the Assimilator.
Now she's floating in a containment tube, now matt black all over her body apart from her head. It seems that the 1st paragraph was part of a history of what the staff of the College refer to as 'us' that they are feeding into Wanda's mind. And last issue we learned that they want her as a bridge to allow them to bypass the genetic lockout that keeps them from assimilating mutants.
Last issue SW&V's quinjet was secretly destroyed, but that triggered an alarm in Avengers Mansion in New York. And now Captain America and She-Hulk are coming to investigate in another quinjet. They land at Absolom and are greeted by Random who tells them that Vision is still here but Scarlet Witch left in their quinjet.
Now we look in on an event that will be relevant for some upcoming issues of the (East Coast) Avengers. Starfox of the Titanian Eternals has been seeking Nebula, who claims to be the granddaughter of his evil brother Thanos. She was supposedly lost in the timestream in Av#297 but there are rumours that she and her pirate starship are active, and Eros has traced them to an ancient ruin on a dead planetoid. And he indeed sees Nebula and her Rigellian henchman Gunthar examining an inscription on some stone tablets. She says that the formula written here will enable her to become more powerful than her dead grandfather.
Another interlude sees a woman named Mrs Raymond in a homeless shelter in Denver. Doctors there are worried about her because she just keeps mumbling about getting to some people in Los Angeles. The only clues they have are some newspaper clippings in her wallet. We see that 1 of them is about the Avengers confirming that Vision isn't the WWII Human Torch.
In Absolom Cap and Shulk are suspicious, even after Vision comes to confirm that he's OK. But he doesn't knows where Wanda has gone. Random's people are worried and up the rate at which she's being fed memories. We see images of ancient cycads, an early lizard, brontosauri, t-rexes and an early mammal. Meanwhile Random shows the Avengers around the robotics lab until he's called away on something urgent. Our duo concur that Avengers' own stuff is more advanced than this, and the place seems more like a mock-up. They decide to leave and sneak back overnight.
Yet another cutaway takes us to the Seattle hospital where the West Coast Avengers saw Prof Phineas Horton, creator of the WWII Torch, last issue. Wonder Man just stands around while Wasp and Dr Pym ask about Horton's claim that he didn't help Ultron turn HT into the Vision (nor did he die in the process). And in fact that the synthezoid Vision is totally different from the android Torch because Vizh is part mechanical. Henry Pym admits that he should have twigged when he saw the evidence in Av#93. But now he wonders why Immortus lied about it when he showed Vision his HT origin in Av#133.
But we see Immortus watching all this from his Escher-like palace in Limbo, saying that his lies served a cosmic purpose which involves the Scarlet Witch. And he also watches Wanda being helped out of the containment tube.
Random's techs tell him that the (accelerated) assimilation has been successful. Wanda is led away to rest, and Random celebrates the fact that they can soon abandon Homo Sapiens like they did the dinosaurs, and move into Homo Superior. In her quarters Wanda, still completely covered in black apart from her head, remembers with new understanding how her father Magneto always claimed that the Homo Superior mutants should be the masters of Homo Sapiens. But now she understands that Homo Sapiens will instead die out, and only 'that which endures' will remain.
That night Cap and She-Hulk creep into the College, Steve Rogers' experience and finely-tuned senses enabling them to avoid tripping alarms. Once inside the central tower they take the stairs to Random's 20th floor office which they find unlocked, and his computer terminal has no password. Cap's suspicious that it's all too easy. They learn that Scarlet Witch is being held in a sub-basement of a smaller building just south of the tower. So Jen Walters jumps across and then plummets through several floors of that building. Cap follows down the hole and uses the shock absorbing quality of his shield to cushion his landing. Then they race down more stairs and find a huge blockhouse structure in the basement with an imposing door which they assume is to keep Wanda and her hex power contained. Shulkie charges the door ...
... which gives way easily and the black-clad Witch welcomes them in and says it's time for them to join 'us'. The heroes assume this is the standard hero turned against her comrades scenario. But Wanda says she's just been shown the truth which has 'dwelled within all living things since the dawn of time'. A hex gesture brings a load of masonry down on the pair, and SW promise their unconscious bodies that they'll understand when they've been assimilated.
Things are looking black. But in Milwaukee Hawkeye is despairing of successfully training the Great Lakes Avengers. However Mockingbird runs in to tell them she's detected a quinjet emergency signal in Texas, so the team rush to the rescue.