After the existence of Pleasant Hill, a top-secret community where Maria Hill incarcerated various supervillains (after brainwashing them to believe they were regular civilians via a sentient Cosmic Cube named Kobik), is exposed and subsequently shut down, the Red Skull's clone used the subsequent backlash in the intelligence community to assemble a new version of Hydra, starting with Sin and Crossbones. Although his efforts were still focused on rebuilding the organization, he had already scored a significant victory, after the sentient Cosmic Cube, having been "raised" by the Red Skull in the form of a young girl, to see Hydra as a great organization, altered Steve Rogers' memories so that he believed he had been a Hydra sleeper agent since childhood.