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Released by: Dark Horse Comics
Released on: Mar. 26, 2014
As the team is split up, trying out the slim, few leads they have, Lyme and Duncan end up at the home of Jim, a tall man who is also an ex-operative that might be re-recruited.
But Jim, like so many other ex-agents in the story, is tired of the game and thus explains why to them (well, to Duncan as he doesn't care for Lyme at all). Jim details his story, the lab tests run on all of them and how Duncan secured their release and placement. Jim and a few others end up as part of a circus traveling around Europe, with the mysterious Right-Hand Men - albino conjoined twins who may have been both deaf and mute - giving them very innocuous missions to carry out, such as handing out fliers.
But Jim and the others begin to suspect something more sinister at hand when people start turning up dead after these missions. After a particular mission ends with strong-armed Chip murdering some official and then nearly getting killed by the Russians himself it's clear what's going on and that they all want out. Jim, while he's talking, leads Lyme and Duncan to the “retirement home†in the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He apologizes, confusing the two men until they realize that the group calling themselves the new MIND MGMT are there waiting for them.
The story then jumps to Meru, Billy and Dusty at another safe house, a bar with Chip as its bartender, finishing Jim's story. At the same time, though, he's hitting an alarm button underneath the bar, alerting the Right-Hand Men sipping coffee in an adjacent room with a flashing red light, them grinning madly as they pull out their knife and open the door to the bar.
What cuts in abruptly next is a shot of Perrier, a young woman who is apparently typing out this story as it unfolds and including the items not yet shown. A closeup of what she was typing is in script format, detailing shots about showing the dead bodies of Lyme and Duncan…
The issue ends with another short story, this of Meru and Billy at an old safe house in New Orleans. This one had been used primarily by MIND MGMT's discontents, their stories and the longevity of the place seeping in from everything inside of it. But they just want to forget it all, to leave it all behind, a constant theme of this book with characters trying but seemingly unable to ever fully escape their past.
Matt Kindt continues his free-form storytelling and really drives it all home in high dramatic style here, leaving the reader yet again with more questions than answers and the desire to keep reading.
