Nighthawk, still reeling from the Defenders' last battle, visits an old flame to try and get back on his feet - only to run into even MORE trouble! What dark secrets does Mindy Williams hide?
Gargoyle and Clea use their mystical abilities to treat Kyle Richmond's paralyzed legs, but it will require treatment over many months. Richmond is glad for the help but still doesn't want pity. His nurse Luann is unsure of all this magic and wants him to get real medical treatment.
Kyle and Luann go off on a trip to a sanitarium, where Kyle's first love, Mindy, is under care. Kyle tells Luann how he badly hurt Mindy in a drunk driving incident. His father, worried about scandal, paid for her recovery and also to never see Kyle again. Kyle thought she was dead until she recently attacked him with a bunch of human-like robots. She hates him for her injuries, and he feels incredibly guilty.
When they get to the sanitarium, it seems very fancy, but they don't trust the overly-friendly doctor. Mindy spends all her time painting pictures of people in love, but can sometimes go into wild rages. When Kyle finally sees her, she laughs to see that he is now also in a wheelchair, like her. She threatens to kill him.
When Kyle and Luann leave, Clea contacts him and says that the mysterious energy that crippled him was not from the demonic Six-Fingered Hand that they have been fighting recently, as they had assumed. It was actually a psychic bolt from the sanitarium.
That night, Kyle investigates the sanitarium as Nighthawk, since he regains the use of his legs at night. He is confronted by a group of orderies with high-tech weapons, confirming that something weird is going on. He defeats them and finds the head doctor, August Masters. He reveals that the whole thing is a scheme of the CIB--Central Information Bureau--a government spy agency. They are developing a group of psychics in the basement of the sanitarium, using a lot of tech gear, to fight the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Mindy is the most powerful of these psychics.
The doctors then activate Mindy, making her psychically attack Kyle. She is on the verge of killing him but then remembers the good times they had, and attacks the doctors, their machines, and the other psychics instead.
Masters survives and cooly tells Richmond that he'll fix all his problems with the IRS if Richmond keeps it a secret. Kyle tells him to stuff it and leaves with Mindy. He tries to use his own influence and money to tell the papers, but the CIB covers it all up anyway.
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