The Factory, outside Merle, Alaska:
The Vanisher teleports a group of armed armored ONE soldiers called shrikes in, then sniffs in disgust about the X-Men living here. The shrike team spring into action. The leader reiterates their orders. He stresses, no casualties. Lindqvist has them playing touch with the muties. Not a real nice word, Vanisher mutters. The leader orders him to shut it. He does his job, Lindqvist will get him what he wants. He’s cool, Vanisher replies, but how are they gonna get past the X-Men? Easy, the leader replies. They vanish, thanks to the stealth mode of their armors.
Unaware of all this, Cyclops is driving from the Factory to Merle and is on the phone with Rogue. He asks her to stand down, but she has already terminated the call.
Scott swears, then calls Beast at the Factory. He informs Hank that, while Rogue didn’t explicitly say it, it seems to be clear her group is going to move on Graymalkin. With what resources? Hank asks. Gambit, Wolverine and Jubilee. That’s it. Scott tells him they are living in the woods and just took in four strays, which means… They are going to get punched if not killed, Hank finishes. Them and their new kids, Scott stresses, as he parks the car in front of a diner. He adds that, if she is moving, they need to move their plans forward. Makes it dangerous for everyone, hers and theirs. Beast asks if he cannot change their mind. Scott points out that those are possibly the four most pigheaded mutants in existence, then announces he has to end the call, when he sees Chief Robbins waiting for him. Give his love to agent Lindqvist, Hank jokes.
Scott greets Chief Robbins, who wryly asks if this is going to be a regular occurrence in her town. She refers to the armed O.N.E. team surrounding them. Scott sighs and apologizes. He’ll talk to him.
He enters the diner and addresses the powerfully built, blond, bearded man who is sitting over his burger and fries. So that’s how it’s going to be? Scott asks. Making him look bad in front of the entire town? Lundqvist assures him that’s how it’s going to be. Summers made him look bad in front of the entire country.
Back at the Factory, Idie Okonkwo (aka Temper) stands outside on a balcony in the snow. Magneto, in his wheelchair, has joined her and asks if she isn’t cold, addressing her as “child.”
She doesn’t get cold, she corrects him and orders him to call her “Temper,” not “child.” Temper, he muses. So called because she cannot be burned by ice or fire, only be made stronger. Like glass. Like steel. And she has been tempered, hasn’t she? She has, Idie seethes. As he well knows.
He replies he knows what it’s like to be tempered by tragedy and, as she knows heat, he knows steel. And he knows his own part in her tempering. Yeah, when they sentenced Nekra and her to the Pit, Idie agrees acidly. He reminds her their law was “kill no man.” Does she hate him for his hypocrisy?
With an angry face, she informs him that of all of them here at the Factory she is the only one that doesn’t miss Krakoa. Why does he think that is? Hank misses it, although he has never seen it, but not her. She was made to see Krakoa’s utopian moralizing for what it was. And she sees his for what it is: Brittle steel. Easily broken. She demonstrates it with her power on the steel railing.
That moment, Kid Omega telepathically calls them and regretfully admits that Cyclops was right.
Merle:
In the diner, Cyclops has sat down and has a cup of coffee. He observes the pie-eating agent is upset. He assumes this is about San Francisco. Lundqvist replies that, when the US government kindly gave Summers and his people the Factory, the understanding was they would stay there. Cyclops corrects him: there was no understanding, only an implication. And he doesn’t deal in implications. Does Lundqvist know what was understood? That he did the government a favor by taking the Factory. Because it wasn’t a gift. It was a settlement, or did he forget his court case? The agent glares. Hard to forget, he imagines, with the name and all, Cyclops continues. Scott Summers vs. the United States.
Angrily pointing his fork, Lundqvist interrupts, ordering him to listen. “No, you listen to me!” Scott shouts and slams his fist on the table. Orchis killed scores of his people! Unlawfully imprisoned many, many more! He was held, tortured, readied for a show trial and execution. His eyes were sewn shut, his wife was murdered! All this with the tacit permission of the United States. All with an understanding. So, when he settled for the Factory for the damage done to him personally, that was a gift. Because he could have won so much more!
More calmly, he asks if the Office of National Emergency – ONE – is picking up the check. Because their cook is vegetarian, which means they are all vegetarians, and he could use a BLT.
At the Factory, Quentin crouches over the unconscious Beast and telepathically informs the others they are under attack. He dumps the last two minutes of Beast’s memories into everyone’s brains and they learn that he was hit by an energy blast from the front but didn’t see who shot him. Invisibility, Psylocke concludes and, if neither she nor Quentin picked them up, they are psi-shielded. Quentin announces that they have to be after Magneto or… Psylocke sends orders not to speak out Ben Liu’s name. They do not need to give their enemies information!
Looking around, Juggernaut wonders aloud how to hit something he can’t see. Magik runs past him and explains she spent her formative years with demons. Can their foes hide their souls?
In the diner, Scott has gotten his BLT and Lindqvist stresses his unhappiness. San Francisco was a disaster and the X-Men were right in the middle of it. Cyclops points out it was a disaster the X-Men defused. One person died, a person who was one of theirs. Sure, let’s talk about that, Lindqvist changes his tack and shows him a video on his cell phone. The video shows Scott talking to Ben Liu to calm him down and indirectly admitting that for some reason adults are now activating as mutants. People are saying mutants are contagious, Lindqvist stresses. That there is a mutant disease.
The Factory:
Magik senses two soulflames and points them out to Juggernaut.
In another part of the building, Quentin marks two more foes with color, allowing Psylocke to take them out, nonlethally, since their foes haven’t tried to kill them yet. They pass that suggestion on to Magik and Juggernaut. Psylocke reads her prisoner’s mind and passes on the intel that they are here for Cerebro.
The diner:
Lindqvist stresses they have their own X-Men now. Scott scoffs that he knows about X-Factor and his brother leading them and he knows Alex has never been able to operate on his level. He announces he and his team are going to continue to do what they are doing. And Lindqvist and O.N.E. are going to let them.
Is he threatening him? Lindqvist demands. Of course, he is threatening him, Cyclops replies, and he is doing him a favor! Kid Omega, Psylocke, Magik. Juggernaut. An assassin, a terrorist, a supervillain and Illyana is half demon on a good day. Plus Magneto. You want them to be busy because he will want them to be Cyclops’ X-Men. Not his Brotherhood.
The Factory:
Two Shrikes have reached the Cerebro chamber. The world’s last, apparently. They prime explosives to destroy it and clip the X-Men’s wings. Temper has entered the room. Calmly, she states that’s what they want, to keep them from finding each other. Keep them separated. Divided. Fractured. The men are unimpressed. As far as they are concerned, Temper is the one without a rapsheet and, while they were not supposed to kill anybody, Lundqvist used to be an operator. He understands collateral damage. Burn her! one of them orders. They toss the thermite grenades at Idie.
She catches both grenades. They are going to burn her? she asks. She doesn’t burn, idiots! she scoffs. She moves heat around! She encases them in ice by using the heat from the thermite. And she does have a rap sheet! she snaps. She killed men just like them. Men who came into her home with weapons like they did! And she was made to pay for it!
She walks toward them, then past them and out the door. Lucky for them, she is done being collateral damage…
Back in Merle, Cyclops and Lundqvist have moved their argument outside the diner. Lundqvist demands if Cyclops thinks a handful of them can fight the entire US military machine. If they make him, Cyclops retorts. And if it comes to it, he can always call his wife! In the meantime, Magik has teleported in the rest of the team and their prisoners, the Shrikes, kept in Quentin’s telekinetic bubble. Cyclops suggests Agent Lundqvist tell his bosses they don’t want Scott Summers versus the United States to kick off for real. He orders Psylocke to handle the prisoner transfer. He needs to wash his hands after dealing with him.
Scott walks back into the diner. Panting, he races into the washroom and orders himself to keep it together, while clearly suffering from a panic attack.
