It’s Christmas Eve and the X-Men gather in their
civvies at Rockefeller Center to celebrate! The group splits off to pursue
various activities, with Nightcrawler and Colossus intent on chatting up two
passing ladies, while Banshee and Moira MacTaggert head out to show each other
the sights. Wolverine and Storm each go off to do their own thing, leaving us
to follow Cyclops and Jean Grey as they head to a planned dinner outing. Jean
tries to get Scott to forget about the encounter with his brother from last issue
and just enjoy the Christmas season. She plants a huge kiss on him (witnessed
by an amusingly indignant Stan Lee and Jack Kirby). The two cannot enjoy their
night for long however, as the roof is then lifted off by two Sentinels,
revealing that the mutant-hunting robots have returned! Jean knocks one off
balance, allowing Scott to blast it apart. However, the second sentinel uses
that time to dose Jean with knockout gas, flying away with her after blasting
Cyclops and leaving him hanging from the roof for dear life!
Banshee and Moira become aware of the Sentinels and
Banshee tells Moira to warn the others as he flies off with Wolverine to
intercept them. Storm flies up and spots Scott hanging from the roof, managing
to catch him before he can fall. Scott reveals that he witnessed Banshee and
Wolverine get snatched by some Sentinels, before yet another one arrives to
attack him and Storm. Storm creates an enormous hurricane high above the city,
sucking up the Sentinel and utterly obliterating it in an extremely impressive
display of power! Scott then realizes that Professor X has to be warned about
the Sentinels and we cut to the man in question, on his “vacation”, fishing in
the Bahamas. Xavier is out with his friend, Dr. Peter Corbeau, trying to see if
he can identify the binary system Xavier has been seeing in his dreams. A Sentinel
then arrives to abduct Xavier and though he manages to drive it back, he gets
captured as well after the ship is destroyed, leaving Corbeau stranded out at
sea.
Days later, Dr. Steven Lang, the man behind the
Sentinel attack, checks in on the four captured mutants in his lair. One of his
technicians tells him about some solar radiation storms going on and says
they’ll have to shut down the Sentinels for the time being. Lang details his
plans to exterminate mutants, by cutting out the heart of the known mutant
population, the X-Men, particularly Xavier. After Jean compares Lang to a Nazi
he slaps her, causing Wolverine to furiously break loose from his shackles, carving
up workers and Sentinels alike. He frees the others and they try to decide how
they’re going to move Xavier. They then get ambushed by Sentinels, and resort
to hitting them hard and fast before they get overwhelmed. They realize they’ll
have to leave Xavier behind for now and Banshee grabs Wolverine and Jean,
tearing through the base with his sonic scream and blasting through the wall
before his scream is suddenly and mysteriously cut short!
Back at the institute, we find a frustrated Cyclops,
who has been searching high and low for his captured teammates to no avail.
Nightcrawler comes to check on him, worried that Scott has barely rested or
eaten this whole time. Just then, they get an intruder alert near the back wall
of the mansion and Nightcrawler teleports out to intercept the intruder. Turns
out it’s Peter Corbeau, as he finally made it back to shore and he and the
X-Men compare notes. Cyclops reveals how Cerebro can’t pick up any trace of the
captured X-Men which could only mean they’re dead, which he won’t accept. After
Cyclops says it’s like they just vanished off the face of the earth, Corbeau
remembers that he heard one of the Sentinels talk about solar flares. Corbeau
realizes that the captured X-Men aren’t on earth at all and we see why
Banshee’s scream was cut short as after blasting through the wall, they’re now
floating out in space, seconds from death! To be continued!