Captain America's investigation into the earlier attack on the decommissioned SHIELD base leads him to Machinesmith's old hideout, but he can't find any sign of activity. He's back at Avengers Island offering Fabian Stankiewicz a job as their resident inventor when the 4th Sleeper reappears in the spot it had phased out years earlier. It appears inactive, so Cap has it transported back to the special holding facility at Avengers Island, but that's when Machinesmith reveals his hand, having tricked his enemy into taking the body housing his mind into the presence of other powerful robots in the Avengers' custody. Even though the Sleeper goes berserk, Cap is able to get one of the facility's stasis field generators onto it to incapacitate it.

Meanwhile, Battlestar has been looking into the suspicious circumstances of John Walker's death and found that the gear belonging to the Watchdog assassin wasn't authentic. He lets Val Cooper know, but the CSA soon doesn't need to wonder if Walker's death was faked as their own General Haywerth comes clean about orchestrating it in a ploy to deal with their agent's tarnished image. Haywerth calls the rest of the Commission to a demonstration of Walker's new image as U.S.Agent, wearing the black costume Steve Rogers had just abandoned. While U.S.Agent fights and defeats an Iron Monger loaned from Stane International for the demo, Haywerth explained he kept the rest of the CSA in the dark so their reactions to Walker's death would be convincing and spent the rest of the time retraining Walker so he could pass as a different person. U.S.Agent wordlessly and methodically puts the Iron Monger down, impressing the Commission, though Raymond Sikorsky wonders what what to do with him.

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