(Rachel’s dream)
New York presents a devastated landscape with an infuriated Wolverine hunting Rachel Summers down. Rachel is back to her future timeline where mutants where exterminated or put in concentration camps. Logan leaps on Rachel and cuts her arm, he really intends to kill her. Rachel runs away and wonders how to deal with her friend. Telekinesis will only slow him down and his healing factor will save him no matter how badly she hurts him. Additionally his advanced senses allow him to track her, so hiding is useless. In a window, Rachel sees a reflection of herself and is shocked to see that she again wears a hound costume. Rachel wonders what happened. Maybe she transported herself back to the future, or maybe she never left, but only dreamed her life with the X-Men. Right then Wolverine catches her unaware and kills her.
(present)
Rachel wakes up screaming - it was only a nightmare, but she still wishes she was dead. She thinks that it is not fair that off all people only she survived. The bed she is lying in is a Morlock bed. In a mirror Rachel sees her reflection – her hound scars are visible and she angrily smashes the mirror. Kitty Pryde and Colossus rush in Rachel's room as they heard her scream. Rachel apologizes that she had a bad dream and that she must have lost control, but Kitty reminds her that the X-men are currently guests in the Morlock tunnels and the mirror she just broke is a prized possession to the underground community. After the two left, Rachel tries to repair the mirror, but the shards fall out of the frame.
Elsewhere, hardly recovering from his battle against Lady Deathstrike and her fellow cyborgs, Wolverine awakes from the nightmare he shared with Rachel, and wonders what his teammate is up to. Logan gets up and wants to stop Rachel from whatever she is planning, but he collapses. Rogue and Nightcrawler come in and get him back into bed. They are worried to see that his wounds have reopened and know that his regenerative powers have reached their limits. Logan‘s recent battle with Lady Deathstrike after the X-Men clashed with the Beyonder was simply too much.
Rogue flies across the Alley to inform Storm of Logan’s condition. Along the way she thinks about how the team brought Wolverine to the Morlock healer and he did as much as he could. Also she wonders about possible aftereffects of Rachel absorbing the X-Men’s life essences while they were in San Francisco. Rachel joins Storm, Colossus and Callisto, but they give her the cold shoulder. Rogue explains that they are resentful of her using their life-forces against their will. Granted she and Shadowcat agreed, but Piotr and Logan were sleeping and Storm even denied Rachel’s request. And now, Kitty too is wondering if she really made the decision herself, or Rachel telepathically influenced her, as she was fanatically sure of what she was doing. Rachel doesn’t know what to say.
(another nightmare)
This time Rachel finds herself in a japanese setting and she is amazed of the peace and the beauty. She takes in the japanese smell, but the calmness doesn’t last. Dressed in a kimono, Rachel stands on a balcony as she sees Wolverine below. While climbing his way up, he says that since Rachel stole his life essence they are now linked. Rachel tries to run away, but Logan chases her up to the roof and again kills her with his claws.
(present)
Rachel abruptly wakes up in a backstreet of Manhattan. She barely recalls that she wandered up to the surface and fell asleep. Rachel gets up and walks around. Seeing the many humans Rachel thinks how they still hate mutants despite the X-Men having saved the world time and again. Rachel reminisces about the past weeks and still thinks she was right to take the X-Men’s essences, as she had a good intention. Rachel thinks that it would have been better if she never survived her timeline and died along her friends. As she walks off into the streets, Rachel theorizes that her mindlink with Logan got intensified because she tried to supercharge his healing factor.
(another nightmare)
Rachel finds herself in a desert and is again running for her life. She falls off a mountain and lands in a pool of water. In the surface she finds a reflection of her face again with hound marks. It’s too much for her and she rams her fingers into her eyes, intending to rip off the face. Incredibly there is no blood, but her skin simply peels off, revealing another Rachel underneath, a Rachel, that might have been if she had never been reprogrammed into a hound. Rachel is happy and when Logan arrives she tells him that she is a different, better person now, but he thinks otherwise. Wolverine leaps in for the kill, but Rachel lashes out with her telekinesis.
(present)
Rachel wakes up in a subway train with a nice cop trying to help her, mistaking her for a runaway. Once more Rachel runs away, telekinetically tripping the cop, and she makes her way to Soho. She remembers this part of the city from when she first arrived in the present. The police officer reminds Rachel of the nightclub owner who tried to help her that fateful night, but got killed by Selene. Hard as she tries, Rachel is unable to remember his name and she decides that it’s time to set things right.
Meanwhile, in the Morlock tunnels, the X-Men discover that Logan has again left his bed, and Rachel too is nowhere to be found. Rogue tells the others that when she last spoke to her, Rachel was pretty bummed out, and truth to tell, none of the team were making things easier for her. Storm wonders if the double disappearance is coincidence and the team rushes to search for both their missing friends with obliging help from the Morlocks.
By night, Rachel arrives at the apartment of Friedrich von Roehm and telepathically convinces him that she is an acquaintance of his “goddess“ Selene. She demands to be taken to her, and shortly afterwards Rachel and von Roehm arrive at the Hellfire Club. She puts von Roehm to sleep in one of the Club’s quarters and then rings for a maid, whom she telepathically knocks out as well. Rachel takes the maid’s uniform and slowly makes her way to the upper floor, where Selene lies asleep in her room. Standing by her bed, Rachel gets reminded of her mother, as Jean Grey was seduced to become the Black Queen the Black Queen before Selene took the title. To prevent anyone else from being manipulated or killed by the Hellfire Club, Rachel wants to kill Selene.
Rachel powers up, transforms into costume and attacks the ancient witch. Selene immediately recognizes her opponent and tries to defend herself with a few counter-assaults. She transforms the ground and tries to warp Rachel in it, but the X-woman remembers this trick from the last time they fought and burst free. Rachel angrily screams that this is the revenge for every single person Selene killed, especially the night-club owner. Much to Rachel’s surprise, Selene remembers the name – it was Nicholas Damiano. Selene explains that she honors all her victims, as they had a meaning to her, and apparently he meant nothing to Rachel or she would remember him herself. The redhead answers with yet another series of attacks, and finally gets the upper hand as she holds Selene tight in a fist of telekinetic energy.
Just at that moment, Wolverine gets inside the room, aware that Rachel is only a few moments away from killing Selene. Logan tries to convince Rachel to let Selene go, stating that the X-Men aren't executioners, but Rachel won't listen. Logan continues his argument that although the X-Men have killed and might do again, Rachel is about to commit murder. The X-men are heroes and have to play by the rules, but Rachel says she makes her own rules and won’t allow anybody else to suffer at Selene’s hands. The only way to stop her from killing Selene is to kill her. So, Logan does the unthinkable and rams his claws into her gut. Snikt !
