After telling his "replacement" to take care of his cat, Slade and Miami travel to The Hand's headquarters. Slade is told by his superior officer, the enigmatic Mother Dirt, that he has been brought back to help maintain "Status Q", and to ensure that Slade's friend and former agent Spartacus Hughes fails in his attempts to disrupt the "Status Q". Slade sets out to stop Hughes from helping a perverted billionaire control a new form of life called I-Life (created to become a new immune system for humans). With the aid of Miami and Comrade Dmitri-9, a misanthropic former Russian chimpanzee cosmonaut and assassin, Slade confronts Hughes and manages to distract him so that Dmitri-9 can shoot him.