* SHANG-CHI GUEST APPEARANCE

Spider-Man plummets from the SHIELD Heli-Carrier, his body numb from being hit by the Silver Samurai's energy sword. Inside the massive aircraft, the Black Widow, Nick Fury, and Shang-Chi are battling a horde of SHIELD agents hypnotized by the Viper. Quickly, the Black Widow fights her way to a porthole and leaps after Spider-Man. As she falls, she snags his ankle with a wrist cable, and then she attaches another wrist cable to the Heli-Carrier. Although the strain on her body is terrific, she manages to hold on to both Spider-Man and the Heli-Carrier, and then she swings Spider-Man up toward the aircraft. But then the Silver Samurai slices through the conduit that the Widow's cable is attached to, and she begins to plunge toward the ground. Looking death in the face, the Black Widow reverts to her Nancy Rushman persona and screams in terror. Fortunately, Spider-Man's swing carries him to the Heli-Carrier, where he clings to the hull. Gouging a handhold, he braces himself against the sudden jerk as the cable holding the Black Widow tightens. He holds firm, but the effort leaves him barely conscious.

Meanwhile, the Viper and the Samurai head for the Heli-Carrier's bridge, where she orders Clay Quartermain to seal all security bulkheads and flood the ship with knockout gas. The hypnotized SHIELD soldier obeys her orders, and seconds later, as Fury and Shang-Chi are leaving the storeroom after defeating the SHIELD squad, steel walls suddenly box them in and their enclosure fills with gas. Shang-Chi holds his breath, but Fury, still wearing Boomerang's costume, says that a single drop of gas anywhere on the skin will put a person out for a week. Confident that Spider-Man and the Black Widow have fallen to their deaths and that Fury and Shang-Chi are helpless, the Viper tunes in the President's address to Congress. Practically all the high officials of the United States government are in attendance, and the Viper smugly declares that before his speech is over they will all die. She will crash the Hell-Carrier into the Capitol Building and grind it into rubble, leaving America leaderless. Into that vacuum, she continues, will step her "revolutionary brothers and sisters." But her gloating abruptly ceases when Fury and Shang-Chi smash through the door into the room. They escaped the trap through a maze of airtight passageways that only Fury knew about, which were designed for just such a situation. Shang-Chi quickly knocks out several SHIELD troopers, but Fury has only one narco-dart left in his gun, and he uses it on Clay Quartermain.

Unfortunately, the almost equally skilled Quartermain gets off a shot that wounds Fury in the shoulder. As Shang-Chi heads toward the Silver Samurai, he sees Fury fall in a pool of blood.

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