In his New York neighborhood, Steve Rogers demonstrates to a boy the proper way to take down the flag, the symbol of the country’s ideal. But as Captain America, he finds it difficult to explain that ideal when the nation’s leaders have corrupted it for their own ends. Later he receives a crate delivered to Steve Rogers.…
In the undersea kingdom of Lemuria, the Interrogator, a cold disfigured man who speaks through a delicate cyborg hand, outlines to his daughter his plan to capture and interrogate Captain America. She balks at the idea, as Cap is a force for good in the world. Her father insists that good and evil are relative, all is really gray…he relates his own story from many years ago. He was an American scientist, Seevers, in an Arctic expedition studying Atlantean technology discovered at an abandoned base; in the pay of an enemy power he betrayed his colleagues and admitted an invading force to steal the undersea high-tech. Namor, the Sub-Mariner, arrived to demand they leave the island, a sacred place. As he awaited their response he walked around the island and discovered the body of Captain America frozen in ice. Intending to give his old friend an honorable burial, he chipped Cap’s body out of the ice block—but was interrupted by the enemy troops. The resulting battle set part of the island aflame, the heat reviving the dormant Cap. Namor proceeded inside the building where he found Seevers clutching his prize, an Atlantean cyborg hand, and struck with a killing blow—which was intercepted by Cap’s shield. Acting by instinct as his mind was still recovering, Cap fought Namor to protect the human; the sea king calmly took Cap’s shield and used it to slice off Seevers’ hand. The two former allies battled that day and Seevers set the island’s self-destruct codes and fled. Cap would be discovered by the Avengers minutes later and the injured Seevers would eventually find his way to Lemuria where the cyborg hand he struggled so intently to possess was welded to his bloody stump. This hand he now uses to implants a probe in his daughter’s brain, bringing her under his power and dispatching her to capture Captain America and bring him there….
Back in his apartment, Cap has opened the crate and is now watching film of his frozen body being placed on that island…by US troops….