New York, 1931. The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. have followed the Chronicoms back in time, and the mission is simple in stakes if not in execution: stop the robotic aliens from erasing S.H.I.E.L.D. before it ever exists. A reactivated Coulson LMD wakes into a world of speakeasies and Prohibition, the Chronicoms steal the faces of local police to blend in, and everything seems to point toward an assassination attempt on FDR, the man credited as the spark behind S.H.I.E.L.D.'s creation. A visit to Patton Oswalt's Koenig and a tense party set the stage for the hit, only for the team to discover the real target is Freddy Malick, a low-level worker whose survival is the thread that leads to the founding of Hydra. To save S.H.I.E.L.D., the team has to save Hydra, and that wild contradiction is left hanging as the first half of a two-part story.