Synopsis / Summary / Plot
The previously page starts with Mr Fantastic's "Everything dies" speech again, and outlines the basic incursion problem as described by Black Swan. It ends with telling how the Illuminati are using Reed's Bridge to view incursions in alternate realities.
The Illuminati are gathered in the Wakandan Necropolis, still without Dr Strange and Sub-Mariner. Maximus and Lockjaw are with them. They have apparently watched many more incursions than the 2 we saw in the last 2 issues. They have basically seen 3 types of outcome:- The 2 colliding universes die, or the Black Priests destroy 1 Earth to protect 1 of their own, or the Mapmakers seek out Earths to destroy.
But Beast and Reed claim to have seen another pattern. The further away the timeline is from their own, the further back in time they are seeing. Except sometimes they see the future, but not very far. Tony Stark immediately thinks of looking far enough back to see the event that started the whole thing off.
But Henry McCoy and Reed Richards have tried another tack. Most of what they know comes from what Black Swan has told them. But she's not necessarily a reliable narrator. So they changed the Bridge programming to search for Black Swans. They found some, always coming through a door from their mysterious Library of Worlds, including 3 younger versions of their own prisoner.
In #5 we learned how 3 older Black Swans took Yabbut from her Earth as the Black Priests came to destroy it. They trained her to be 1 of them, and save universes by destroying Earths.
Now we see the young girl return to her Earth with a Swan at the time of its destruction. The Swan kills a Black Priest, while pointing out that they aren't actually alive. Our Swan finds the body of her brother Dadingra and drains some of his blood. The other Swan saves her from another Priest, and they escape back through the Library door. The Bridge can't see beyond the door. But it turns out neither can the Priests, nor can they go there. But they realise that they now have a Key to the Door to the Library.
A short fragment shows our Swan sacrificing someone on an altar, watched by 4 other Black Swans.
The 3rd vision is our Swan with an older Reed Richards and Tony Stark on another Earth (and this Reed has the Human Torch power). The 2 heroes have done unconscionable things to save their Earth and universe, but they have only delayed the inevitable. But now they have found their world's equivalent of the Avenger Manifold, and they can use him as he should be used. But the heroes refuse, so she and Manifold kill them.
The Illuminati decide they can't trust Black Swan anymore. So they put her back in her transparent cell. Now she shows her true face, and says her god Rabum Alal will save her and kill them. The Illuminati leave her.
In another cell is the alternate universe Terrax from #4, who claims that their prisons are ideal places from which to watch the dying multiverse. He points to a different cell, where Thanos and Proxima Midnight are frozen in 'amber' since the end of the Infinity event. But Proxima at least has moved (and strangely seems to be fighting a skeleton). And he predicts that the Illuminati's plans will fail eventually.