Beak and the worker tech-drone stand in front of the gallery of fallen heroes, particularly by the part of the wall that houses Heather Hudson. Heather lies dormant and asleep in the stasis gallery and is looked upon by Beak, who hopes that she is able to brace herself for the shock. The tech-drone begins the preparation to release Heather. In seconds, the part of the wall that contains Heather dissolves away. Heather gasps for air and then collapses on top of Beak, who is unable to hold the woman up. Heather, barely together, begins to question Beak on what is going on. Beak, however, interrupts her and tells Dr. Hudson that they need her help.
A short walk and brief explanation later leads Beak and Heather to the “infirmary” of the Panoptichron. Beak explains that the Timebreakers did not have an infirmary before, so they had to make one. They have pretty much done everything the Exiles have asked for since they saved them from Hyperion. Heather sees three makeshift beds, all made out of the crystal that makes the Panoptichron. One the first one is the injured Mimic, whose metallic body is shredded. He is watched over by Blink and Sabretooth, while the tech-drones carry on their duties. Mimic sees Heather and tells her that it is good to see her up and about. Heather wishes she could say the same to Mimic, and then asks how it happened.
Mimic explains that he flew top-speed into an immovable object named Hyperion, and his body was shredded badly. He has been afraid to transmute back to his flesh form ever since. Smart move, comments Heather, but she tells him that he cannot stay like this forever. Heather then looks at the next station to see the horribly burnt Morph, who is not moving. Scared, Heather asks if he is gone. Blink explains that Morph hasn’t moved or responded since being flash-fried by Hyperion, but he is generating heat. Other than that there are no life signs. Heather surmises that since Morph’s physiology is different, that may not be a bad thing.
Heather then looks at the last station and sees a body covered by a blanket, with a blue, horribly burnt hand sticking out. “Namora,” says Heather flatly. Yeah, replies Blink, sadly. Sabretooth explains that Namora went down fighting. A warrior-queen like her brother wouldn’t want it any other way. Heather shakes Sabretooth’s hand and learns that he is the same one from that reality with David Richards and the Sentinels. The Exiles picked him up a few missions before they wound up at the Panoptichron. Heather notices that Sabretooth has the Tallus, and asks if he is in charge. Sabretooth informs Heather that Blink still leads, but the Tallus is pretty much useless and insignificant, since they can now go their separate ways.
Blink glares slightly at Sabretooth and tells him to take things one step at a time, as they have to help their wounded first. Heather agrees, but she needs some special equipment and would like a second opinion. She then turns to Beak and asks if that dimensional-hopping equipment he used to fetch the good Hyperions still works.
In another universe, a surgeon finishes closing an incision on his latest superhuman patient, and tells his colleagues that it looks good. Their patient will the stable, or at least as stable as he will ever be. As the doctors and nurses begin to clean up the mess from the surgeon’s surgery on the incredible Hulk, there suddenly appear two strangers behind the good doctor. Heather Hudson, standing beside Beak, apologizes for suddenly arriving like this, but there is a mutant medical emergency and, after searching through fifteen hundred realities, he is the best superhuman specialist there is. The doctor is confused and asks Heather to repeat herself as he removes his surgeon’s mask. “I am addressing Dr. Stephen Strange, am I not?” asks Heather?
After and explanation and examination, Doctor Strange finishes looking at Morph’s body in the Panoptichron. He tells Heather that he finished his tests and there is some mitochondrial activity. However, the overall cellular dormancy seems induced by the shock of thermal disruption. If they remove the carbonized tissue, then Morph should start to heal on his own. He recommends a cortical stimulator to speed the recovery. They can retrieve one from his office if they’d like.
He then smiles and asks Heather if she is also a metamorph. Sort of, replies Heather, with a smile on her face as well. She used to turn into a big hairy monster, but that ability is gone permanently and probably for the best. Is he just a medical examiner? Does he have any mystical expertise? Strange is confused, so Heather asks him if he has ever gone to Tibet. “No,” replies Strange, “Cancelled a vacation there once.”
“Ah,” replies Heather, knowing that this reality’s Dr. Strange never became the hero and mystical practitioner he is famous for in other worlds.
Mimic overhears the prognosis on Morph and asks how his situation is. Dr. Strange admits that his case is trickier. In his organic steel form, he does not require his internal organs, so he doesn’t need to breathe or eat. That is fortunate, as his insides are smashed up. How badly, asks the scared Mimic. Strange relates Mimic’s plight to an elephant stomping on a bag of potato chips. Even with the healing factor he mimicked from Wolverine, he would still die faster than he could heal in his human form. However, his healing ability is a start, and he and Dr. Hudson will look for ways to boost that power. Mimic asks the doctors not to take too long, though, as he has been staying in his steel form for some time and he is not sure that he can keep it up much longer.
Sabretooth wonders if Mimic can copy his healing factor, so that could perhaps boost up the recovery. Mimic admits that he is surprised that Sabretooth would volunteer, especially since they have not gotten along since he joined the team. However, his plan won’t work. He has been trying to Mimic Sabretooth for days now. Sabretooth shows a bit of anger over Mimic trying to copy his powers without asking, but Mimic ignores this and explains that he can only keep five sets of powers. He was trying to swap Beast’s agility for Sabretooth’s all the while gaining his healing factor, but whenever he tries nothing happens. Perhaps he is too much like Wolverine and Mimic’s body cannot mimic Sabretooth due to the redundancy in power.
Beak wonders if Mimic could have both the powers of Polaris and Magneto, but Blink reminds them all that though it is all fascinating they need to help him right now. Heather, who is much more serious, has an idea to buy Mimic more time while they search for a treatment, but she is afraid he will not like it.
After some time, the heroes prop Mimic into the stasis gallery, where he tells Heather that she is right; he doesn’t like this idea. Heather tells Mimic that she knows, but at the same time if he is in stasis he can remain metallic indefinitely. Once they find someone with a healing factor that he can mimic, they will wake him up from the stasis gallery. Mimic, knowing that this is the only option, asks Blink to come over to him for a minute.
Blink comes to Mimic’s side and tells him that he is going to be fine. Mimic tells her that he knows, but they have had a chance to catch their breath. He wishes he could keep her life from being one crisis after another. Blink kisses Mimic’s hand and tells her lover that he is the only thing that has kept her sane though all of this. He has done enough. Mimic closes his eyes and tells the Exiles that they should get this over with. The tech-drone presses a few buttons on his handheld device, and then the walls to the stasis gallery seal once again, keeping Mimic in suspended animation. The Exiles look at Calvin with sorrow.
Heather tells Dr. Strange that she will show him the control room. The scanners will allow them to review candidates from different realities. It is how she found him in the first place. As they walk, she explains that, in her reality, she kept a database of known super-humans with fast-healing abilities. Dr. Strange asks her to name one good practitioner of meta-medicine who doesn’t. Heather continues and explains that in her database she had her ex-husband, Wolverine, as well as the Green Goblin, The Red Skull, Blackheart, Mr. Sinister and etc. As they walk past the bodies of Storm, Angel, She-Hulk, Sunfire, Iron Man, and Deadpool, Strange explains that he has not encountered anyone in his reality like Mimic. Can he only mimic other mutants or can he copy anyone with special abilities?
Five hours later in the control room, Heather nears completion on their research. Sabretooth looks at all the monitors depicting other worlds and asks how they could start sifting through all the worlds to find the best candidate for a healing factor? Heather explains that she helped the Timebreakers update their search engine on their temporal scanners. They are smart bugs, but they are not great innovators.
Strange enters the room and announces that he has finished Morph’s surgery and removed ten percent of his tissue, but he has already started healing. How has the search gone? Heather tells all that she has found three finalists. The first is the Red Skull, who gained an instant healing factor from the super-soldier serum. However, the serum runs through his veins and they would have to get past the Skull’s Cosmic Cube to get a blood sample. Next is Mr. Sinister, who is nearly as resilient as the Red Skull, but Mimic would have to spend some time with Sinister to mimic his powers, and considering the hostile environment she doesn’t think sending Mimic there is a good idea and she is not keen on bringing Sinister to the Panoptichron.
Finally, there is Dr. Curt Connors, whose attempts to restore his lost arm usually turned him in the Lizard in most realities. However, in this reality his healing formula worked. Now he leads a ‘science squad’ to battle the giant monsters that plague his world. Sabretooth states that Dr. Connors seems to be the way to go, to which Heather agrees. Beak, however, reminds them all of a little problem that they are all ignoring. Whenever they visited other realities, things got complicated. However, the Timebreakers would let them know what they had to do to make things right. A lot of their equipment was damaged in the fight between the Hyperions. They don’t know what effect the Exiles will have on realities now. What if by approaching Dr. Connors they mess up his reality?
Annoyed, Blink tells Beak that Mimic is counting on them. He shouldn’t start thinking of reasons as to why they should not help him. One member of the sovereign cast asks Blink to listen to Beak, and reminds her that the uninformed excursions that they made were the cause of the broken realities to begin with. Blink snaps at the bug and tells him to be quiet too. They kidnapped all of them and lied to them. Once they tie up their loose ends this whole operation is being shut down. Heather interrupts and asks if they can go home. There are still more realities that need to be fixed. Sabretooth tells her that those worlds will just have to get along without them.
Heather turns to Sabretooth and reminds him that the Timebroker told them that their worlds are broken as well, so they can’t go home until the job is finished. Sabretooth reveals to Heather that the Timebreakers made that all up so the Exiles and Weapon X members would listen. He and Blink saw their home reality and it is fine. Angered, Heather turns to one of the sovereign cast workers and asks if it is true, to which the bug replies that it is and they lied to compel the heroes. Beak, elated, exclaims that they can all go home. However, the bug tells him that there is too much damage that needs to be fixed. Angered, Sabretooth tells the bug that it is his fault. The universe won’t collapse if they don’t clean up every last bit of their mess.
Heather, trying to figure out things to the end, suggests that perhaps if they leave the Timebreakers will just recruit new Exiles. Blink, not caring about anything at the moment other than Mimic, tells her that they will make the Timebreakers go home too. Heather then tells Blink that they cannot leave the Panoptichron empty. Who knows who will find it and what will happen. Blink tells Heather that they will just destroy it. Not pleased, Beaks wonders how the destruction of the Panoptichron would affect the multiverse. Strange also reminds Blink that the observatory is a unique scientific resource. A dangerous one, adds Sabretooth.
Heather asks the team what would happen if whoever built the Panoptichron came back and found it destroyed. Sabretooth asks Heather why she is even arguing. Doesn’t she want to go home? Suddenly, the healing Morph stumbles into the room and in an angry tone tells the group that maybe they will close down the place, but they better get their priorities straight. Heather rushes to Morph’s side, whose body is still healing the burned parts of his body. She tells him that he should rest, but Morph tells her that there are more important things to do and he is not missing them.
They are going to take care of their own and if that means taking risks then so be it. Since when did risks stop them in the past? He saw Mimic in the stasis gallery on his way to the control room and they are going to do whatever they can to heal him. They will also help Thunderbird and whoever else is in that wall buried alive. After that they will return Beak back to his home with his wife and kids. “Wife and kids…?” whispers Dr. Strange to Heather, surprised that someone like Beak would even have any. “He got an early start,” whispers Heather back.
Morph then turns his angry glare to the Timebreakers and tells them that, though he hates this life and them for forcing them into servitude, there is a reason he stayed when he could have gone home. There are dozens of messed up realities that might die without help. Can any of them really go home with that on their conscience? None of the Exiles can look Morph in the eye. Morph tells them that he could not go home either. Now, there is one more thing he needs done and he insists that they do it now.
In a very familiar world, a gravestone is place for Mariko Yashida, better known as the deceased long-time Exile called Sunfire. As the priest finishes the last rights, the Exiles stand to the side in silence, while also gathered are Mary Jane Watson, a.k.a Spider-Woman, as well as the surviving heroes of her reality after they were once saved by the Exiles from an out of control techno-organic virus that nearly consumed their entire planet.
After the priest finishes, the crying Mary Jane thanks the Exiles for brining Mariko back to her. However, as much as she loved her, if it was up to her, she would have taken Sunfire back to her home reality. Blink tells Mary Jane that she wanted too as well, for she felt that Mariko’s parents should have a right to visit her grave, despite the fact that they did not approve of who she was. However, Morph insisted on bringing Mariko there and he would not take “no” for an answer.
Mary Jane goes to Morph and tells him that, a few months ago when the Exiles were all split up in different realities, Mariko returned her and stayed for a few weeks; thirty-nine days to be exact. Morph tells Spider-Woman that he knows. Mary Jane continues and relates how it was a gift to have extra time with Mariko. She learned a lot about Mariko and learned that Morph had feelings for her. Morph turns to Mary Jane and apologizes. He couldn’t help it and it didn’t mean anything. There was no doubt that Mariko loved Mary Jane.
Mary Jane puts her hand on Morph’s shoulder, telling him that he loved Mariko so much to make sure that she spent eternity with Mary Jane. That has to be the most unselfish thing she has ever heard of. It is a comfort to have someone else that loved Mariko to share the hurt with. The two begin to cry and hug at Mariko’s grave.
In another reality, a woman named Sakata sits in an observation station and calls in to the Science Squad. Her sat-scans confirm that the power spike detected is from the atoll ahead of them. For some reason, though, the GPS readings on the location keep on changing.
In their jet, the Science Squad receives the message. Hank Pym tells the others that this wouldn’t be the first time a kaiju was mistaken for an island. Do they remember that leviathan case? Another crewmember tells him that Krakoa is an island that was first mapped in the 19th century. The U.S. even performed atomic tests there in the fifties. Suddenly, the island below forms into a massive ugly shape and calls out the jet to come closer. “You were saying…” states one of them aboard.
Dr. Connors orders that they fire the missiles, which do not seem to affect Krakoa. The island reaches out and tells the jet to come closer. It grabs the jet out of the air, much to the horror of the four men aboard. Connors orders the others to turn on the retro-rockets and lasers. Krakoa is about to eat the jet when, suddenly, in a “blink” of an eye it disappears.
Dr. Connors, whose eyes were closed shut, opens them as he wonders why he hasn’t been eaten yet. He and his companions turn around to see Blink, Sabretooth, and Morph as the Red Power Ranger in their ship. “Sorry to startle you, Dr. Connors,” says the smiling Blink, “We’re the Exiles, and we’re here to help.”
