11

Mordo opens a portal. On the other side, Carson runs to it, and waits. A man straggles. He has a very large and very bald head.

He makes it through. Carson does too. Mordo closes the portal. He shakes the other man's hand.

"Welcome to the team," Mordo smiles, "Dr. Sterns."

Sterns gawks at their surroundings. He can't believe this is really a pocket universe...

Carson is tired. He shakes his head at Mordo, recounting that it was one of the hardest prison breaks of his career-and he was breaking people out of prisons long before he ever wore the Black Ant suit for the first time.

Jones, Walker, Wing, and Knight are all being held captive in here. They have no memory of how they got here, and no clue about how to escape.

Jones tries pounding against the transparent walls. They're stronger than her.

Walker becomes Bloody Mary, and sees if she can't rip the walls of her cells apart-as she did when she escaped from that POW camp in Sokovia all those years ago. Alas, even the worst of Walker's three alternate personalities are no match for this cage.

Wing summons her Iron Fist, and tries to smash her way out. She knocks herself unconscious instead.

Knight tries a lot of weaponry in her arm. Alas, Carson damaged a lot of it when he raped her. And the ones still intact are too small-caliber to do a lot of damage to her cage walls. Power Woman, Typhoid, and the Daughters of the Dragon are all helpless POWs.

Jones pounds against the walls of her cage with her arms. They vibrate-but they don't give. She keeps it up. She gets tired.

She sees a man through the vibrating wall. She can't tell who he is while it's vibrating. It takes a while for it to stop. She is both shocked and not shocked to see who her captor is.

"Lee?! You're...you're working with Davos?!"

"And company," Owlsley admits. He reaches his finger out towards her. Her cell wall vibrates as he drags his finger in romantic circles around Jones's face. Jones loses it, and pounds the center of the circle with her fist; she squalls in pain.

"You can save your strength, Jones. I don't know the man who made them, but I trust him."

Jones asks him why, of course. Or rather, she asks him what.

Here, Owlsley tells her the truth. His father was Leland Owlsley. He was a great accountant in New York finance. Lee looked up to his father...despite the sorrowful fact he was never around as often as he would've liked. But then, one day, his father got thrown from the top of a building, and killed. Nobody saw it, but Lee's pretty damn certain that a vigilante did it-and he thinks he knows which one.

The news calls him the Daredevil-or the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Lee recounts his last fight with him. He's fast, and his reflexes are hard to follow. He's always where he's supposed to be when he is-and to think that he fights blindfolded.

Jones chuckles when Owlsley says this. She recalls the time Murdock didn't have a blindfold of his own, and borrowed her scarf for the occasion.

Owlsley notices her chuckle, and asks about it. Jones shrugs, and admits that she's fought Daredevil before-which is a slight truth.

Daredevil killed Owlsley's father-so he says. And he wants revenge. And he's found a brotherhood of men who're willing to help him get it, all while ridding the world of a dangerous minority of its population. And he's the one signing all their paychecks-with all the necessary help from a couple of ladies named Carbone and Meachum.

Jones warns him that he's wasting his time. Daredevil isn't a killer, and doesn't plan to start anytime soon.

Owlsley pounds his fist against the wall of Jones's cell, and sneers that Daredevil has killed many-with his father being part of the proof. And one way or another, with or without Jones's cooperation, Daredevil's horned helmet WILL appear on a silver platter that he gets out of this job-and Daredevil's head WILL be in it when he dumps oil all over it, roasts it, and throws it into a flaming barrel of liquor.

Jones chuckles, and remarks that he'll need some REALLY potent booze to turn Daredevil's head into ash. And if such a booze ever existed, Jones wouldn't drink it-because she respects herself too much.

Owlsley tells Jones that she can sing Daredevil's praises all she wants to. But until then, his team has plans for all four of her. So if he were her, she'd start conditioning herself. He wouldn't know it-because he's always been too rich to need to join the U.S. Army Reserve-but life in a reserve army is a LOT harder than the movie In the Army Now makes it look-especially since all four of her will be spending most of their conscious moments of it in cages that make the barracks in that movie-if there ever were any-look like eighteen-room mansions.

He starts to leave. Jones reminds him of all the intimate moments they've shared, and asks him how the hell they're not influential enough to let her and her-female acquaintances, and occasional coworkers-go.

Owlsley shrugs, and reminds her that he's known his father longer than he's known her, and that she shouldn't be too upset if a man she likes chooses his own family over love-especially if love is a girl they've just met. He starts to leave again.

Jones yells at him, and admits that she doesn't know what sucks more: that she fell for a chicken who thinks that his father was the Holy Chickenhawk, or that the Holy Chickenhawk never hunted that chicken half as much as Henri Hawk ever hunted Foghorn Leghorn. At this, Owlsley hesitates...but storms away.

In her cage, Wing makes a disgusted face, and shakes her head. Knight smiles, recalling when she looked Black Mariah in the eyes, and accused her and Shades Alvarez of being cougar and cougar bait, respectively-or "a fawn," as she remembers calling Alvarez.

"There are no barracks in In the Army Now." Walker appears to loathe Owlsley as he leaves. "Seriously; the movie was about the Army Reserve. Who taught that man Army lore, and why aren't they dead?!"

"Which Walker are we talking to," Wing asks. "Innocent, Typhoid, or Bloody?"

Walker scoffs. "It's Typhoid now." She studies the walls of her cage. "And based on the fact that we're all still in here, something tells me that none of us are escaping anytime soon?"

Knight nods sadly. Jones slaps her hands against her cage walls in rage.

"Just one thought," Wing shares. "If Bloody Mary had been able to bust out of her own cage, would she have come back for the three of us?"

Walker shrugs. "I don't know them. I've never met them. I just have to live with them. They communicate with me, but it's always unclear. But above all this, I'm sure of one thing: I worry about Innocent Mary all the time."

Jones shakes her head, and asks about what this is. Wing and Knight explain that Walker is three different people on one body.

Jones scoffs. "First wizards, then dragons, then hell-damners who drive Dodge Chargers, then twins from different realities, and now vets with different personalities. What's next? Dragons from space?"

"I sure hope not," Wing admits. "It's hard enough dealing with Shou-Lao's brother from another Earth."