In Georgetown, near the White House, Val Cooper
introduces Crimson Commando and Stonewall as the newest members of Freedom
Force. Mystique is unimpressed but nevertheless lays down the ground rules,
play by the Federal rules and get pardoned. Blob and Pyro express their own
dissatisfaction with their new team members when suddenly Spiral senses an
intruder approaching! Outside, Avalanche is gardening when he’s knocked off his
feet by said intruder, who turns out to be Super Sabre. Spiral blindsides him and
is about to kill him when she’s stopped by Crimson Commando and Stonewall. The
two ask Super Sabre how he isn’t dead and he just responds that he’s always
been hard to kill. Suddenly, all hear an anguished cry from back inside and
rush in to find a very distraught Destiny. She reveals that she had been using
her powers to see the future to check in on Rogue but found nothing! She then
checked every possible timestream and future and discovered that soon in all of
them, the X-Men are going to die!
Elsewhere, in the Rocky Mountains, Storm and Naze
continue their quest to locate Forge. Storm catches a fish for dinner for the
two of them when Naze suddenly passes out. Storm can feel him burning up from
fever and takes him to a hut they found. Naze tells her that he was poisoned by
the Eye Killers they fought last issue and that she may have to continue their
journey alone! Elsewhere still, in Queens, a reporter questions a bunch of
patrons at a local bar about their thoughts on mutants. One man in particular
expresses his thoughts that mutants are dangerous monsters and that honest,
hardworking people have every right to fear them. The man even goes so far as
to say that he’d kill his own child if he turned out to be a mutant! Back in
San Francisco, Rogue returns to where the X-Men are laying low on Alcatraz
island after a fruitless search for the Marauders. She reports her less than
stellar findings to Psylocke as each feels frustration for how things have been
going.
In the courtyard below, Dazzler and Longshot engage in
a training session. Dazzler deflects Longshot’s blades, when one manages to
sneak through. She’s narrowly saved by Rogue and Wolverine, who had been
watching over everything, admonishes her for being careless. He says that as
X-Men they need to be ready for anything and demonstrates this by suddenly
lunging at them, claws out! The three react quickly enough to allow Rogue to
pin Wolverine down but he’s still able to flip her over, planting his fists under
her chin, forcing her to surrender. He says she shouldn’t celebrate victory too
early but still praises her on a job well done. He asks how Madelyne is doing
and we find her on a nearby cliff. Madelyne thinks of everything that’s
happened, from marrying Scott, having their child, to him walking out, and the
Marauders attacking her, stealing her baby, and wiping every record of her
existence. She wonders how her life got to this point, caught in the crossfire
of the war mutants face despite not being one herself, feeling utterly
depressed and alone. Down below, Havok is jogging and sees her at the edge of
the cliff and rushes to her, thinking she’s going to jump!
Back in the Rockies, Storm feeds Naze and herself some
of a healing concoction he instructed her to make, when suddenly an enormous
bear rips its way into the hut! The bear swats her off the cliff and down into
a frozen lake, all in the midst of a blizzard that Storm notes popped up in the
last few minutes. In the lake, Storm also finds herself contending with a
demonic snake in the same vein as the bear. She stabs its eye and leaps out of
the lake, making her way up the cliff when suddenly the snake is shot by heavy
artillery. Right before her eyes, realities seem to merge as a Vietnam warzone
overlaps with the blizzard raging around her! She makes it to the top of the
cliff to seemingly find Forge, all of this apparently his doing! He attempts to
reshape her too, turning her hand metal like his, forcing her to stab and kill
him! In an instant, Storm is back at the hut none the worse for wear, and Naze
reveals that it had all been a dream-like trial to test her! She admits that
she knows that she must kill Forge when they finally meet again, causing Naze
to let out a terrifying grin of victory, unseen by Storm!
Back at Alcatraz, Havok makes it up the cliff to where
Madelyne is and asks what’s wrong. She vents all her frustrations, after having
thought she found someone to spend her life with, now suddenly being alone in
the crossfire of the insane life he leads, a casualty of the mutant war. Havok
admits his own stresses about how he doesn’t know if he’ll ever get Lorna back
from Malice’s control. He reminds Madelyne of her child still out of there and
says that the X-Men are a family that look out for one another. They embrace,
trying to remain positive that everything will be okay in the end.
Excelsioring your collection