Using a sewage treatment transport, the Clan Chosen, now once again led by Cable, break their way into the Niagara Falls Tinex. Upon landing, they rush the guards in a fierce firefight. Kane, is amazed how what to him is such an astonishing adventure, is just another battle to the Clan Chosen. With Cable in command, the Clan easily blow their way through the opposition. While the others fight, Boak and Eleven hack into the front door’s computer system and open it.
After they make their way inside, Kane makes a comment on how easy the operation has been so far, at which point Cable tells him not to get cocky. Hope however, believes that the team is wasting their time and risking lives needlessly, when it would have been so much easier to crash a transport with multiple warheads into the Tinex by remote. As if to stress the point, they are soon confronted with the remaining Flatliners, and a contingent of armored guards.
Back in Applecrust:
Elsewhere, General Parraidan Haight has called together a meeting of the Canaanite Commission on Strategic Maneuvers. Haight explains that he is using Kane, who he knows is a temporal anomaly that Cable had brought back to the future with him, to draw out Cable, and that it’s only a matter of time before they take a crack at the new Tinex. He explains that he has already sent back Sinear, in order to eliminate the “other”.
The Tinex:
Meanwhile, Cable and company are literally surrounded and outgunned. Dawnsilk reopens fire, while Boak activates an absorption field which will temporarily absorb the enemy blaster fire. Boak soon exclaims that fields are absorbing more energy than his systems can handle. Eleven emits an Empulse sizzle, which destroys the surrounding guard’s battle armor. Boak, who is by now glowing bright red from the enemy he has absorbed, drops the shields at which point the Clan makes a break for the Tinex. Unable to escape the Flatliners, Cable orders Boak to redirect the energy he has just absorbed into a massive blast, directed at the Flatliners. Boak complains, saying that it better not take another year for them to reconstruct him, and soon complies.
Despite a protest from Hope, Boak blasts the Flatliners in a massive blast that seemingly destroys him in the process. Hope, upset that Cable would force such an order, punches him across the face. Cable points out that Boak is a bioorganic construct, that he was not really human and that he can be reconstructed again later. Hope doesn’t agree, stating that he was more human than Cable.
The team then makes their way into the Tinex core. Once there, Hope accesses the security door and opens it, while Cable orders Tetherblood and Dawnsilk to gather Boak’s pieces so that they can reassemble him again later. Once inside the core, Hope hooks up Eleven to the computer, and quickly begins her work into finding the proper coordinates to send Cable back. But before she can, she informs Cable that she has detected that the Tinex has already been used.
(The Past)
Sinsear has tracked down Tolliver’s castle in Juttenberg, Austria, and politely knocks at the door. Tolliver’s assistant, Foley, answers at which point Sinsear demands to speak with the one known as Tolliver. Foley, very scared by Sinsear’s appearance, exclaims that Tolliver he has been deceased for several weeks. Sinsear, of course, knows otherwise and impales Foley with a long blade extended from the back of his hand. He drops the dead assistant to the floor and proceeds into the castle.
(The Future)
Cable begins to become impatient, telling Hope that she is cutting things a bit close. Hope, however, is still tracking down the correct timeline, telling Cable that it’s going to take time to narrow down the billions of temporal possibilities. However, when she arrives at a possible timeline, Hope can isolate a reception signal. Cable informs her that Graymalkin was designed as an orbital base to make the timejumps easier, and that she will need to keep scanning for it. The computer informs her that the time displacement coordinates are inaccurate, and that the central core has been displaced. Hope continues the program anyway, obviously unconcerned about Cable’s safety.
Cable then informs Tetherblood and Dawnsilk that he’s going back in time with Kane. Tetherblood argues that “the boy as ascended” and no longer needs his protection, at which point Cable argues that Haight has already sent someone else back, and that after everything that had happened with Stryfe, he couldn’t allow any loose cannons at such a critical juncture in time. Tetherblood understands and shakes Cable’s hand. Before they leave, Cable offers to let Kane stay, that he fits in more with this timeline that with his own. But Kane still wants to help find a way to cure Hammer’s paralysis,
In agreement, Cable and Kane step onto the time platform and are then teleported back through time in a flash of light. The Clan Chosen then set the explosive charges and make their escape. After reaching the sanitation car they infiltrated the Tinex in, Dawnsilk pilots the shuttle away, just as Hope activates the explosives behind them, destroying the Tinex. Tetherblood informs the remainder of the team that it will take the Canaanites years to build another one. Dawnsilk is sorry that Cable is gone once more, but Tetherblood attempts to console her that somehow, Cable will find his way back. Hope can’t help but feel a little guilty about sending Cable back to such an uncertain timeline.
(The Past)
A flash energy and a circle of light herald the arrival of Cable and Kane in their native timeline, however they are greeted by absolute darkness. But what’s worse, the Professor (Cable’s sentient A.I. program) won’t answer Cable’s calls. Unknown to either, Graymalkin has self-destructed, and the Temporal Displacement Core now rests at the bottom of the ocean.
