Kate Pryde has led Chrissie and Cameron to the caves beneath Centrum, in which a huge Lockheed is slumbering. She tells the kids he won’t hurt them. There is a rumbling noise above them. Kitty explains the situation to Lockheed. The Sentinels have found Centrum… the last mutant refuge is under attack.
She tells the kids when they were captured that she sent Lockheed away with Angel. President Kelly’s Sentinels briefly used radiation-based technology. It mutated him. Made him huge, half-blind. He sees better in the dark now and defends Centrum from raids by Moloids and Mole Men. Centrum’s little security system.
Petting him, Kate laments she thought she was giving him his freedom. She never dreamed it would come to this. One more battle, she asks of him, while they get the people to safety. Ready? Fly!
Lockheed take to the sky and attacks the Doom Sentinels. One Sentinel takes him in a death grip, only to be electrocuted by Storm, who announces they won’t be the Sentinels’ prisoners anymore. Leading the refugees to the surface, the other X-Men are happy to see her. Rachel joins them too and helps with the refugees.
Christina worries about Lockheed. Kate tells her she and Cameron are more important than the rest. They must get to safety.
Storm and Lockheed decapitate a Doom Sentinel but still the head manages to shoot deathrays at Lockheed and the dragon falls, causing a shockwave. Cameron is about to be buried by a falling wall. “Not my son!” Kate shouts, grabs him and phases the two of them.
The two look at each other in silence, as the meaning of her words sinks in. Colossus tries to explain. They tried to give him a life beyond the fences…
The ceiling caving in heralds the arrival of more Sentinels. Kate tries to reach out to Cameron and is rebuffed. Colossus tells Kate and the kids to go - they will search for Lockheed and find them again. Take the children to the last sanctuary! Chrissie asks Cameron if he is okay. No, he replies.
Later at the former amusement park on Coney Island:
Kate tries to address Chrissie and is rebuffed. She asks what this place is. Doom is God and his church is untouchable, Kate explains. Not even President Kelly’s minions could violate this final sanctuary: The Doom Cathedral. Kate continues, the priest who keeps the Doom Cathedral is frightening at first glance, but he’s harmless, an ally, Father Kurt Wagner… Nightcrawler.
Kurt teleports outside to join them. He greets Kate as little sister and urges them inside, calling her “Kitty” despite her protests. Kate begins to introduce the kids. Chrissie interrupts they are her kids, both of them. Kurt asks about Colossus. Kate replies he will join them soon.
Kurt welcomes them in the house of God Doom. His penance does not cause Doom to intervene on their behalf, it seems. No matter how much he repents, mutantkind still suffers. As he thinks Kitty and her family do. He tells them to rest, perhaps in here answers can be found. He leaves them.
Kate again talks to the kids. What they and Logan did, they only had the best intentions. How dare—Chrissie begins. Exactly, Kate cuts her off. How dare she become this? How dare she forget what it’s like to be so young and saddled with something so impossibly brutally big. She is sorry. For both of them. Cameron was just an infant when they were captured and Logan escaped with him, and Chrissie was born in the camps, in secret. Kelly had already begun his mission to end mutant births forever.
Chrissie tells her she can’t listen to this. How can she trust anything she says? She stalks off. Cameron tells Kate to let her go. She’s just unnerved. Kate tells him she can understand if he doesn’t forgive her. But he does forgive her, Cameron replies. Because she doesn’t ask him to. He gets it. It’s too big a secret for a little kid. Chrissie might have said something in front of a guard. Or they might have tortured her. If they had thought there were kids among the mutants still at large, it would have been a massacre. He gets why they didn’t tell Chrissie but he doesn’t understand why Wolverine wouldn’t tell him. It’s been hard. Being his kid, knowing somehow he wasn’t. Wolverine never spoke about Cameron’s mom. He couldn’t figure it out. He talked about Jean, about Storm, about all the women heroines he’d known, but he never talked about her or Colossus. They were the black holes in his stories and now he is realizing why: They put all the values of their mutant think tank into Chrissie and all their fears into him. An heir and a spare. The hope of mutantkind and the other one if everything goes mushroom cloud-shaped.
Kate insists that’s not true. Can he imagine how agonizing it was knowing he was outside the fence, knowing she couldn’t protect him? To be near him today and not even have a moment to tell him the truth? To see him for the first time in years in that battle with Mystique? To know her absence was as much to blame as—
He tells her to stop. Chrissie isn’t the only one who needs some alone time.
He joins Chrissie. So, siblings, huh? she remarks bitterly. Siblings, he agrees. Very Star Wars. She doesn’t get that reference. Well, at least there hasn’t been any unresolved sexual tension, right? he jokes. She makes disgusted noises but can’t help smiling, then admits this all got so messy and confusing. He looks outside and tells her growing up is messy and confusing. You think your life is going to be a heroic rebellion adventure, but instead it’s two kids growing up in the post-industrial military complex.
Chrissie complains everyone is trying to teach her lessons about war and media and death and duty and it all gets jumbled up. Every adult thinks they know what to tell you to keep you from the same hell they went through but they can’t! And you’re just confused and well-meaning and scared, and you know adults are doing brutal things and a lot of them are wrong, but all in life is what they taught you.
Cameron understands. You try to make sense of all these huge beliefs and responsibilities, she continues. You want to be a force for good. But you’re fourteen. And at fourteen you’re old enough to read the Communist Manifesto and Brave New World but young enough to watch cartoons, cry over Harry Potter and eat cereal for every meal. Everything is just love and terror in absolutes. You’re in a rush to do the right thing, be the right person… and everything is just so hard. He knows, Cameron assures her and hugs her, calling her little sister.
A moment later, Nightcrawler teleports himself and Kate in. Kate announces they have something important to show them. The community propaganda, Kate continues, the flyers, the campaigns that encourage you to wear your identification letter with pride— it is time for them to see for themselves what “separate” and “second class” really mean. They take Nightcrawler’s hands.
He teleports them to part of the church roof, which has a view of mutant internment camp 1432. Kate explains mutants, abnormals, political prisoners, undesirables. They have to unite. With whispers of mutant reform in the wind, they can put a stop to this. They can pull their domain back from the brink if they work together.
Kurt continues that, for years he tried to save the mutants in there… the inner walls are impenetrable to all but military technology. Even he cannot teleport within. If the prisoners can make it to the doors of the cathedral, the laws of sanctuary can protect them… but at this moment… he cannot.
Chrissie insists they can’t leave them there. Did she hear what Nightcrawler said? Cameron asks. Look at their artillery. She’s just manifested. Kate hasn’t used her power in years. They’ve got security against Nightcrawler, and he…
And he? Chrissie repeats. He won’t do it, he finally announces. Even if they rescued those people, what would they do? Ask starving broken people to take up weapons and fight against Doom’s appointed Baron, President Kelly? They would get them butchered. If they threw open the gates, he doubts even a handful would follow them. They’ve been abused too much. She can’t ask that of them. She doesn’t think she knows what they want either, Chrissie replies. What were they just saying? How messed up is this?
He scoffs. He thought they agreed to back off, regroup and not jump in with the fuzzy memory of some philosophy she’s read like half on Wikipedia. Chrissie doesn’t get the reference. She doesn’t get a lot of things, he points out. She asks him for help. He sighs and promises to help, when the time comes. Good, she replies, powers up and jumps down toward the camp. No time like the present!
The guards open fire at her. Cameron phases downward to join her. Kurt teleports himself and Kate down, and together they attack the guards. The guards stun Nightcrawler and mock if he never wondered how they got the tech against him. Kurt understands and shouts at Kate it’s a trap.
Chrissie has cut holes in the fence, walks inside and announces they are here to save them. Oh little one, Destiny, flanked by Pyro, Avalanche and more armed guards states. Who told her they needed saving?
