Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Last issue the team split over their attitudes to doing whatever is necessary, triggered by revelations of some of the extreme past actions of Wolverine's Uncanny X-Force.
The bad-ass bunch Rogue, Sunfire, Thor and Wolverine have tracked down Apocalypse's ex right-hand man Ozymandias in Cairo. They want to know where the Apocalypse Twins are hiding. Ozy dares them to do their worst - his sandy form will just rebuild itself. But Sunfire fuses his arm to glass. Now if Logan chops it off, it'll *stay* chopped.
In #8 the Twins destroyed the polar Akkaba city. Havok and Scarlet Witch find another Akkaba base in Guatemala, but it's inhabitants have been massacred too. Wanda blames hereself because the Akkaba clan were some of the mutants who she depowered at the end of House of M.
Wanda is glad that Alex supports Captain America's ideals, and Prof X's dream of humans and mutants peacfully coexisting. Havok says they don't have the option of escaping from humanity. The Witch agrees, but fears the dream will fail and wishes there was such a way out. (Ane we know that is what the Apocalypse Twins are going to offer.)
There musings are interrupted by the dead Banshee, one of the new Four Horsemen. His sonic scream knocks them both out, and he flies off with Wanda.
Wonder Man is coordinating things (that pair plus Cap and Wasp) from Avengers Mansion. He's attacked by his dead brother Grim Reaper. Pacifist Simon refuses to respond to Eric's blows and taunts.
Cap and Wasp are in another Akkaba death-site in the Himalayas. Jan is bemoaning the months she spent trapped in the Microverse. She manages to get Steve to tell her how he has just spent 10 years in another dimension, while only a few hours passed here. His short fuse with Wolverine was partly due to the trauma he experienced there.
This conversation isn't interrupted by a Horseman. Instead Cap suddenly realises what the Immortus hologram meant by 'a unique evolutionary island' last issue (actually he said 'an isolated isle, an evolutionary offshoot'), and that's where the Twins' base must be. Presumably Steve has in mind Socotra Island, where isolation has produced unique flora and fauna. Because that's where Wolvie's team have gone - their threats to Ozymandias must have worked.
Logan and pals find a town full of hologram people, and somehow detect the entrance to the Twins' hideout. (While Rogue and Thor appear to flirt with each other.) Inside they find (as we learned last issue) the Twins' spaceship on a planet in a whole shrunken galaxy.
Without warning the dead Sentry bursts out of the ground and carries off Thor (who killed him during Siege). Sentry doesn't blame him but just takes him to another planet many light years away (withing the shrunken galaxy). He wants to keep Thor alive, because he'll be needed after the 'mutant rapture' the Twins have planned.
Back on the original planet Sunfire rescues Rogue from the earthquake Sentry left behind. But Wolverine is swallowed by a giant worm (Dune sandworm anyone?). This delivers him to a palace where the 4th dead Horseman awaits - his son Daken.