(astral plane)
Nathan Summers stands in the mind of Magda Ramirez, convicted mutant murderer, due to be executed for her crimes. In the landscape of her mind he appears to be near Magda's apartment building, which is covered in crosses. The skies are a deep red, and the shadows of angels can be seen darting around. Some of the angels, the ones that can be seen, appear to be only ugly midgets or deformed babies with wings. To reach the building, however, Nathan must pass a trench filled with mines that have, instead of spikes, crosses sticking out of them. There are also crucifixes decorated with human skulls, which are strung up with barbed wire. "Now this...is different," Nathan comments on the scene before him.
(present)
Both Magda and Nathan are still in her cell at the Belgrade Maximum Security Prison. Magda tells him to get out of her mind; it's trespassing. He tells her he has no choice if he wants to find out the truth about her parents, as Magda refuses to talk about it.
(astral plane)
Nathan proceeds to dash across the mine field, dodging explosions from the left and right, barely surviving. He finds Magda crucified. She tells him to mind his own business, almost begging him not to continue and find out the truth. He tells her this is his business, and continues. A bit further along Nathan stops. He is confronted by several large, vicious looking dogs that Magda has created to stop him from getting to the apartment building and thus the truth. The dogs attack him.
(present)
Magda sadly looks down and says she is says sorry. It takes all of Nathan‘s strength to maintain the contact and battle her mental defenses, but ultimately, he gets through, and in return tells Magda that he is sorry.
(astral plane)
Nathan holds up the dead dogs and, quite easily, continues towards the building. He enters Magda's apartment. Magda tells him he has no right to be here, which he knows, though he stays and watches the events. Replaying in front of him is the scene mere minutes before the death of her parents. He watches as Carmen Ramirez defends her daughter for being a mutant as her husband tells her their daughter is cursed. Nathan notes how much Magda and her mother loved each other as Jose gets a gun. Nathan is shocked as Magda explains that her father was just scared, and that she tried to calm him down with her mental powers, but it didn't work.
He pointed the gun at her and was about to kill her when her mother flung herself in front of her, taking the bullet instead. It was her father that killed her mother, not Magda. Both Magda and her father were shocked by the sight of the dead woman. Nathan tells Magda, as she turns away, unable to watch, that it was just an accident. Then he watches as Jose pushes the gun in his mouth. Magda tried to stop him and wrest the gun from his grib, but he fires the gun and kills himself. Magda sat alone, with the gun in her hands, next to the bodies of her parents.
(present)
Nathan asks Magda, as their minds return to the jail cell, why she didn't tell the authorities she was innocent and wonders whether she wants to die. Magda only expected to spend the rest of her life behind bars. Nathan tells her this is her father's responsibility. She isn't so sure, telling him if she hadn't been born a mutant none of this would've happened. She'd rather die than have her father remembered as part of a murder suicide. Nathan asks her why she isn't bothered that she didn't get a proper trial and wasn't found guilty by a jury of her peers. "Why won‘t you fight for the will to live?" he asks her. She tells him it's God's will that she pay for her sins. Nathan thinks it's more man's will.
Nathan opens the door; he shows her the guards, all comatose. He tells her she's free to go. She asks him what happened to this "being judged by peers" stuff he was telling her. She has been judged by a peer; a mutant, him. Magda thinks she can't change what has already happened. Nathan disagrees, and breaks away from the girls' painful memories and takes her into his own.
(astral plane)
Nathan and Magda find themselves in a huge metallic laboratory/cathedral type place. She asks who he is. "Nathan Dayspring Summers," he replies. They hear a baby crying. Magda deduces the place is a nursery, and goes over to the crying baby in it's cradle. She is shocked by what she sees; the baby has metal tubes growing out of it's face. Nathan tells her that it's him. He explains to her that, when just a few months old, he was subjected to a techno-organic virus. She thinks this is insane. He shows her his metallic arm, explaining that he has to use 20% of his telekinesis to stop the virus from spreading. Magda is confused; she tells him that virus' like this don't exist. "No, not yet," he tells her.
Magda is confused and asks where they are. Looking outside she sees a war torn futuristic landscape littered with skulls and destroyed buildings. “The future“, Nathan explains. She doesn't believe him at first, saying that people coming from the future is stuff from movies. "The memory is real. You know I'm being sincere. I can feel it. You're not the only one who's ever known pain, Magda. I hated this world. I fought against it, and it killed just about everyone I ever loved. It broke my heart. So when I found the tech that would allow me to travel into Earth's past, I didn't hesitate to use it for a second. It became my mission to prevent this world from ever coming to be."
(present)
Magda asked whether he succeeded. He tells her yes, but there isn't a way he can find out for sure, and it wont bring back his loved ones. He lost a wife, and a son, and now it's as if they never even existed. Magda wonders why he's helping her if he's been through all this pain. Nathan still has a mission, he tells her. When his powers first manifested he believed they were a gift, and with his power he got control over his illness and the ability to help those too weak to help themselves. He sees that Magda can help with her power too; the world needs people like her. She's scared though. He tells her he's here to save her, and they prepare to leave.
But Magda hesitates and says she can’t go. If she just walks away then people will believe mutants can get away with murder; that mutants are beyond the law. By walking away they will be feared even further. Even though she is innocent she can't go; as long as people think she is guilty. Nathan offers to change people's minds for them. "The whole world?" she asks him. Even he could not have that much power.
(eleven hours later)
Nathan levitates in his hotel room in Miami, thinking about Magda, as TV's around the country report that it's only 30 minutes to her execution. The newscaster claims the country, indeed the world, is uttering a sigh of relief. Magda is asked whether she has any last words. In her mind, she is talking to Nathan, while being led to her execution, a metallic sphere encasing her head. Still Nathan manages to make telepathic contact, and Magda thanks him for coming. He didn’t want her to be alone, it "Was the least I could do," Nathan tells her. "Really." Magda tells him not to worry, as she is no longer afraid. "I know Magda, I know." They tell each other a last goodbye, and Nathan curls up in his hotel room, grief stricken – Magda is dead.
(six months later)
In an isolated cabin in Juneau, Alaska, a message arrives on Nathan's phone from Domino. She's tried all of his safe houses, trying to find him. She figures something bad must've happened for him to vanish off the face of the planet. No one in their old circle of associates has seen him either. She has news for him; mutants are disappearing all over the country, arrested for terrorism based on their unique abilities, then taken to debriefing camps. Nathan, who had been listening but couldn't be bothered to answer because he had a hangover, grabs the phone. He tells Domino that he'll rendezvous with her inside of twelve hours. He also advises her to bring very big guns.
