Chapter Summaries

Lynn used a deliberately flawed circuit proposal to get Howard Stark to design an energy circuit for Dr. Horton’s experiment, then witnessed the successful creation and activation of Human Torch. Jim Hammond awakened with an imprint of Lynn as his sole authority and proved immune to a sustained blast of fire.

• Lynn presented Howard Stark with a flawed energy circuit, prompting Howard to devise a near-lossless design and solve Horton’s energy-transfer problem.
• Lynn offered Howard a position as Foresight Company’s chief technical adviser, but Howard refused and Lynn left.
• Half a month later, Horton showed Lynn Jim Hammond, a heat- and radiation-powered body capable of manipulating flames, and named the final step of the experiment as imprinting.
• Horton activated Jim Hammond while Lynn stood before him, and Hammond imprinted on Lynn before declaring that he awaited orders.
• Lynn ordered Hammond to stand and tested Horton’s claim of fire immunity as Hammond remained unharmed by a minute-long flamethrower blast.

Lynn gave Human Torch a fabricated identity and purpose, then staged his fiery arrival before a crowd in New York to convince America that a guardian angel had descended. After the spectacle, Lynn told Colonel Phillips that he would send him the obedient Human Torch.

• Lynn told Human Torch that his name was Jim Hammond, that he came from a higher-dimensional world, and that Lynn would guide him in human life.
• Lynn used Stars and Stripes to announce a prophecy about a fire-wielding guardian angel, drawing reporters and onlookers to an open area outside New York.
• A blazing object crashed into the clearing, and Human Torch rose from the crater as the crowd watched and reporters took photographs.
• Lynn watched the staged arrival from a nearby hillside and called Colonel Phillips to say he would send him a courteous, obedient new guest named Human Torch.

Red Skull responded to the Allies’ new Human Torch by ordering Hydra to capture him and turn Valentin’s creations into disposable Tesseract-energy bombs. The chapter ended with Zola facing the task despite the plan’s extreme risks.

• Red Skull flew into a rage after a Stars and Stripes cartoon mocked him as a jealous clown.
• Professor Pyg, Valentin, presented a stitched-together doll, but Red Skull rejected it as proof of the newspaper’s insults.
• After a report showed Human Torch emerging from a meteor near New York, Valentin called him perfect raw material and demanded laboratory resources.
• Red Skull summoned Arnim Zola and asked whether Tesseract energy could be injected into Valentin’s biological creations.
• Zola warned that the energy could overwhelm the tissue, but Red Skull ordered him to make disposable bombs and capture Human Torch alive.

Lynn convinced the Pentagon to pair the Human Torch, Jim Hammond, with Captain America, Steve Rogers, under the guise of teaching him justice and humanity. Jim joined Steve’s patriotic tour, where their first performance thrilled the crowd and broke war bond sales records.

• The Pentagon debated how to handle the Human Torch and asked Lynn to explain his origins and intentions.
• Lynn described the Human Torch as a conceptual entity born from public emotions and proposed that Steve Rogers mentor him.
• The Pentagon agreed in principle, and Lynn introduced Jim Hammond to Steve backstage at the patriotic tour.
• Steve welcomed Jim and promised to teach him about love and justice, unaware that Jim obeyed only Lynn.
• Jim performed alongside Steve, forming the Stars and Stripes with flames as the audience cheered and war bond sales set a record.

Steve Rogers defied orders to rescue Bucky and hundreds of prisoners from a Hydra factory, with Lynn Morris arranging support and publicity that transformed Steve from a stage idol into a battlefield hero. As Steve joined the front lines and the Human Torch and Soldier Boy fought Hydra elsewhere, Red Skull watched his forces suffer defeat after defeat.

• After learning that Bucky and the 107th Regiment had been captured, Steve asked Lynn for help, and Lynn arranged a transport plane and Jim Hammond's assistance.
• Lynn arranged for Tom to send a reporter to document the rescue as a fire diverted Hydra guards at the Austrian-border factory.
• Steve broke into the prison block, freed hundreds of prisoners, and led them toward safety while Jim used flames to stop their pursuers.
• Steve rushed back into the factory to search for Bucky as the reporter photographed the rescue.
• The published report made Steve a celebrated battlefield hero, and he requested assignment to the front lines.
• As Soldier Boy advanced on the Western Front and the Human Torch was sent to the Eastern Front, Red Skull smashed a monitor displaying Hydra's defeats.

Steve Rogers and the Howling Commandos, Soldier Boy and his squad, and the Human Torch struck Hydra positions in France, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia at the same time. As Hydra’s forces fell across all three fronts, Johann Schmidt watched his defenses collapse and smashed his last intact monitor.

• Steve Rogers led the Howling Commandos toward a French Hydra base to destroy its command system and retreat.
• Soldier Boy and the Blood Debt Repaid in Blood squad attacked a Hydra banquet at a Belgian manor, killing the officers there.
• The Human Torch descended on the Winter Wolf fortress in Czechoslovakia and began attacking it as Hydra’s antiaircraft fire burst around him.
• Johann Schmidt received reports of devastating losses on all three fronts and smashed the last intact monitor in front of him.

A Hydra report documented the Perfect Being Project, which used Tesseract energy to create controllable bodies and shared consciousness. The PZ-21 experiment caused a catastrophic facility collapse, but the report suggested some of its energy patterns survived and resurfaced in later Hydra projects.

• The Red Skull ordered Dr. Arnim Zola and Dr. Lazlo Valentin to develop programmable life forms at an underground Alpine facility.
• The researchers modified prisoners and volunteers into doll bodies, then used Tesseract energy to inject digitized consciousness.
• The PZ-21 group developed a hive consciousness and declared, “We are perfect. We no longer need a god.”
• The PZ-21 energy surge caused spatial distortion and destroyed Level 3, while some surviving experimental remains shared identical brainwaves.
• A later S.H.I.E.L.D. archive recovery found unknown energy traces and suggested PZ-21 patterns appeared in later Hydra bioweapon projects.

Captain America and the Howling Commandos were overwhelmed by Hydra’s Perfect Beings, and a newspaper reported Steve’s apparent death. Red Skull ordered his forces to converge on Soldier Boy and Human Torch as he prepared Ragnarok, while Lynn Morris insisted the war had only begun.

• Soldier Boy fought wave after wave of Perfect Beings but could not protect the soldiers behind him from their explosive attacks.
• Human Torch remained the Allies’ bright spot on the Eastern Front because his intense heat could destroy the Perfect Beings.
• Steve and the Howling Commandos were surrounded in an abandoned French village, and Steve lost consciousness after a Perfect Being exploded beside him.
• Stars and Stripes reported Captain America’s apparent fall, spreading fear and grief among the public.
• Red Skull ordered every legion of Perfect Beings to converge on Soldier Boy and Human Torch and announced his plan to stage Ragnarok.
• Lynn Morris told Colonel Phillips that the game had only just begun.

With the Allies collapsing and Captain America gravely wounded, Lynn Morris offered the military medical and weapons breakthroughs in exchange for control of wartime supply channels. After securing the deal, he said he would go bring Captain America back himself.

• The Pentagon learned that Captain America was unconscious, Soldier Boy was exhausted, and Human Torch was isolated as Hydra overwhelmed the Western Front.
• Lynn Morris presented biostabilizing gel, repulsion-field grenades, Sentry exoskeleton armor, and an offer to double penicillin production.
• Lynn demanded priority access to wartime supply chains for every Foresight Holdings subsidiary, and the secretary of defense accepted his terms.
• Lynn promised the first shipments would reach the front within twelve hours and said he would bring Captain America back himself.

Lynn Morris used Foresight Holdings’ control of military supplies to expand his power and take Steve Rogers into Foresight’s care. He sent Soldier Boy and the Human Torch to attack Hydra’s perfect-form plants, treating the raid as a weapons test while the war’s outcome remained uncertain.

• Lynn had Steve moved into Foresight’s Cradle life-support pod, where his condition stabilized under the care of Foresight Pharmaceuticals.
• Lynn’s assistant reported that Foresight’s repulsion field grenades had reached the Western Front and its Sentry armor was ready for mass production.
• Lynn ordered Colonel Phillips and Peggy Carter to send Soldier Boy and the Human Torch on a joint raid against Hydra’s perfect-form plants with Foresight’s new weapons.
• After hearing Lynn’s message, Soldier Boy decided to prove his superiority by attacking Red Skull’s plant.
• Peggy Carter relayed Lynn’s decree to the Human Torch, who flew toward Hydra’s plant to destroy the perfect forms.
• Lynn watched the battlefield and told his assistant that he was the arms dealer, customer, and sole shareholder, awaiting the combat data report.

Lynn’s new equipment helped Soldier Boy and Jim Hammond attack Hydra’s Perfect Being factory, where they faced the Fenrir Giant Wolf. Soldier Boy and Jim destroyed the mech together, leaving Red Skull’s factory in ruins.

• Colonel Phillips gave Soldier Boy repulsion field grenades and told him Red Skull was using him to test the Perfect Beings; Soldier Boy took the grenades and left for the factory.
• Peggy Carter gave Jim Hammond the Sentry Armor and relayed Lynn’s instructions to purify Hydra’s factory; Jim put it on and flew toward the target.
• Soldier Boy used a repulsion field grenade to neutralize a Perfect Being’s spatial blast, then charged through the factory while Human Torch attacked from the sky.
• Red Skull ordered Hydra to activate the unstable Fenrir Giant Wolf, which rose from beneath the factory and opened fire on Human Torch.
• Soldier Boy tore open the mech’s leg armor, and Human Torch poured concentrated flames into the gap, triggering the Fenrir Giant Wolf’s core overload and destroying it.

After the Allied victory over Red Skull’s Fenrir Giant Wolf, Lynn Morris used Foresight’s wartime debts and the public’s enthusiasm to secure influence over reconstruction and launch profitable Victory Bonds. He prepared to wake Steve Rogers and turned his attention to Hydra’s last stronghold in the Alps.

• The Allied command centers celebrated as Soldier Boy and the Human Torch destroyed the Fenrir Giant Wolf, and news of their victory sparked public adoration for Lynn Morris and Foresight.
• The Pentagon received Foresight’s enormous wartime bill, and Lynn Morris proposed that the military award Foresight’s subsidiaries postwar reconstruction contracts, threatening to suspend production and the Cradle System if the military refused.
• Lynn Morris announced Victory Bonds whose returns would be tied to Foresight Holdings’ profits, prompting Americans to rush to buy them.
• Lynn Morris asked Dr. Horton about Steve Rogers’s physical data, learned the analysis was complete, and prepared for the next step in waking him.
• Lynn Morris studied the map marking Hydra’s last stronghold at Valkyrie’s Rib in the Alps and prepared his grand finale against Red Skull.

Howard Stark discovered that Lynn Morris had turned Howard’s theoretical energy-field design into a mass-produced repulsion field grenade, while Lynn used a new serum to revive and enhance Steve Rogers. Steve survived the painful transformation and returned stronger, ready to face a world that needed him.

• Howard Stark examined Lynn Morris’s repulsion field grenade and recognized his own theoretical design perfected and mass-produced in its circuitry.
• Howard berated the Secretary of Defense, insisting the grenade was a masterpiece far beyond the military’s ability to reproduce.
• Dr. Horton presented Lynn with Rebirth, a gene activator developed from Steve Rogers’s gene fragments and Hydra’s Perfect Being cells.
• Lynn injected Rebirth into Steve, whose body convulsed and screamed as the serum purged his cellular damage and rebuilt him.
• Steve emerged from the life-support pod healed and stronger, then accepted Lynn’s hand as Lynn welcomed him back.

With the Allies’ victory secured by Foresight’s weapons, officials tried to turn Steve Rogers into a symbol for their planned assault, but he chose to return to the front. Lynn supported Steve and returned his shield, then received a new Lord of War draw opportunity for Foresight’s profits.

• Soldier Boy and the Human Torch destroyed Hydra’s Fenrir Giant Wolf, while Foresight’s equipment helped the Allies rout the Perfect Beings.
• The generals ordered Steve Rogers to lead a public return ceremony and an assault on Red Skull, but Steve refused and chose to rejoin the Howling Commandos.
• Steve told Lynn Morris that he had rejected the generals’ plan and was returning to his unit.
• Lynn gave Steve his shield and encouraged him to fight alongside his brothers as himself, promising to handle the generals and media.
• After Steve left, Lynn received a Lord of War reward for providing superhuman power services and exceeding $10 million in annual profits.

Lynn drew Motoko Kusanagi and summoned her to serve as Foresight Holdings’ chief security officer and his personal secretary. After her attempt to resist his authority failed, she accepted the assignment and went to her new office.

• Lynn drew the Motoko Kusanagi character card and recognized her hacking, command, and security skills as a fit for his needs.
• Lynn summoned Motoko Kusanagi, whose abilities synchronized with him and who immediately scrutinized the electronics in his office.
• Lynn revealed that he had imposed an unbreakable authority over Motoko Kusanagi, and she abandoned her attempt to sever the link.
• Lynn ordered Motoko Kusanagi to investigate the Allies, Hydra, and Washington politicians, and to manage security and reports for Foresight Holdings.
• Motoko Kusanagi accepted the role, requested an office, and headed to the office beside Lynn’s.

Lynn used Motoko Kusanagi to purge spies and corrupt employees from his company, then renamed Foresight Holdings as Vought International. After registering Superhero Interactive Entertainment, he drew Selina Kyle (Catwoman) and considered how her skills might serve his growing empire.

• Motoko Kusanagi exposed a research executive leaking design flaws to Stane Industries and a finance employee embezzling military funds, and Lynn ordered her to handle such cases independently.
• Lynn purged spies, parasites, and incompetent staff from Foresight Holdings with Motoko Kusanagi's help.
• Lynn unveiled the name Vought International at the opening of the company's new Manhattan headquarters, with officials and Howard Stark in attendance.
• Lynn received a system achievement reward for establishing Superhero Interactive Entertainment and used it to draw Selina Kyle (Catwoman).
• Lynn questioned Catwoman's strategic value, then considered using her to steal physical intelligence and possibly keeping her as his personal secretary.

Lynn recruited Selina Kyle to steal Peggy Carter’s treasured photograph of Steve Rogers before he enlisted, and Selina accepted in exchange for choosing her own payment. Peggy discovered the photograph missing from her locket in the heavily guarded Allied headquarters and realized someone had infiltrated her quarters.

• Lynn summoned Selina Kyle and offered her the challenge of stealing a photograph from Peggy Carter without being detected.
• Selina read Peggy’s profile, accepted the assignment, and negotiated the right to choose her own payment.
• Peggy briefed the Allied generals on an offensive against Hydra, with Steve Rogers and his allies leading the assault.
• Peggy opened her locket to look at Steve’s photograph, then left it beside her pillow while she washed.
• Peggy returned to find the photograph gone, while her weapon, battle plans, and money remained untouched.

Lynn recruited Selene to infiltrate Hydra’s last stronghold and steal its plunder and Tesseract research, offering her a Silencer device to aid the mission. Selene chose Lynn as her reward for her previous job, while Lynn burned a photograph of Steve Rogers.

• Selene delivered Lynn a photograph of Steve Rogers and asked to choose her reward.
• Lynn restrained Selene and told her Hydra’s stronghold contained immense wealth and Howard Stark’s desired Tesseract research notes.
• Lynn gave Selene a Silencer device and ordered her to infiltrate Hydra’s base while his product testers drew attention elsewhere.
• Selene agreed to steal Hydra’s legacy and named Lynn as her reward for the previous job, which he accepted.
• After Selene left, Lynn burned the photograph of Steve Rogers.

Howard confronted Lynn after discovering that Steve Rogers’s physical abilities had improved by 15.3%, but Lynn persuaded him that keeping the upgraded serum secret was necessary to protect them from the government. After Howard left with a promise of sanitized research, Lynn ordered the creation of Compound V and resolved to ensure Steve died as a martyr in the coming battle.

• Howard rushed into Lynn’s office with reports showing Steve’s abilities had increased by 15.3% and accused Lynn of upgrading the serum without telling him.
• Lynn warned Howard that his loose tongue and the government’s fear of their technology would put them and their companies in danger after the war.
• Lynn told Howard that the serum technology must be sealed away once the war ended, and agreed to provide him with a sanitized theoretical report.
• After Howard left, Lynn ordered Motoko to combine Dr. Erskine’s notes with Dr. Horton’s Rebirth drug research and create a classified project file called Compound V.
• Lynn decided Steve’s death in the Alps would turn him into an enduring martyr and protect Vought’s interests.

Steve Rogers confronted Soldier Boy over civilian casualties, but Soldier Boy dismissed his morals and defeated him in a brutal fight. Steve was left battered in the command center as Soldier Boy walked away.

• Steve Rogers accused Soldier Boy of causing more than a hundred civilian deaths in the attack near Dresden.
• Soldier Boy defended his methods and mocked Steve for his morals and inexperience.
• Steve punched Soldier Boy, but the blow barely affected him.
• Soldier Boy seized Steve by the throat and threw him through the conference room wall.
• Soldier Boy stomped Steve’s Vibranium shield into the floor, taunted him, and left the battered Captain behind.