Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Last issue Rogue recruited a new Unity Squad to go to Counter-Earth following Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. The mutant twins have come to find the High Evolutionary seeking the truth about their parentage, after discovering during Axis that Magneto isn't their father after all. But Rogue's team arrive scattered throughout a city (or world?) of evolved-animal New Men.
Sabretooth has actually run into the Evolutionary but has been attacked by his guards. Since being turned to the light side during Axis, Victor Creed doesn't want to fight back and hurt them. The HE ends the fight, so he expects, by mentally punching a hole through Creed's chest. He doesn't want humans to find out about his New Men colony.
Herbert Edgar Wyndham addresses the assembled populace of Anushia. He tells them they represent his best work so far, but they aren't perfect. They are still subject to emotions like love, anger and greed. Some of them are born physically imperfect. It seems he regularly wipes out his creations and replaces them with hopefully better ones. And it's that time now.
Sabretooth's healing factor has done its job, and he now leaps to attack HEW who has shown his colours as a genocidal villain. But the Evolutionary stops him in midair, intending to keep him as an useful specimen. Victor tries to talk him out of the mass killing - he knows how the memories of all those he himself has killed weigh on him now. But HEW is inured to it. The civilian New Men panic but he wipes them out with a gesture.
Pietro and Wanda were captured by person unknown last issue. They now awake unrestrained to hear an argument in the next room. It's a revolutionary group led by someone titled the Low Evolutionary. A female rebel blames him for rescuing the twins rather than saving New Men from the cleansing. The LE says they never have enough warning of HE's action, so they can never save many and they lose many of their own. The female counters that her son died to give them warning this time.
Brother Voodoo was met last issue by an animal spirit who led him to the Council of the Restless Dead. Now he is bombarded by the anguished voices of those killed in High Evolutionary's earlier culls. Jericho Drumm commands them to show themselves, and then to choose someone to speak for them. A human ghost takes on the role. She is HEW's daughter Doniva who was killed for asking him to stop the genocide. And now she senses the latest wave of deaths.
Up above the HEW calls on the Green Ones, and (leafless) tree beings rise up out of the ground to consume the bodies of the dead New-Men. 1 of them wears the costume of Captain America. We saw Sam Wilson get converted to wood last issue.
1 of Wyndham's guards named Dhrovo is torturing Sabretooth imprisoned by energy chains. HEW takes over and extracts his nervous system (?!). He calls on his Master Scientist who appears in hologram form. As they confer about Creed''s healing and tracking abilities, HEW mentions the ''fraternal twins who masquerade as mutants''. The scientist assures him that he detects no mutants (isn't Sabretooth 1?). He ''neglects'' to mention that he secretly captured Rogue last issue.
High Evolutionary wants Sabretooth's tracking skills to locate his son (presumably the Low Evolutionary). And he turns to a female called Luminous, saying he wants her to kill her brother and sister (presumably Pietro and Wanda).