BIOGRAPHY - Page 8
In the year 2043, Cable began his quest to raise the child quietly in isolation. His resources were limited. The psychic awakening he had received from Urizen had worn off, leaving Cable with only residual telepathic and telekinetic abilities still active, and once again devoted to regulating his techno-organic virus from spreading. Although his timesliding technology was functional, he could 
no longer bodyslide, which meant they could jump in time but not space. Thinking he would move towards Westchester, Cable spent five months bartering passage from Muir Island to East Orange, New Jersey.
Unfortunately, Bishop was tracking him too. Recovering from Muir Island with his own bionic arm and time machine, Bishop followed Cable's trail back and forth through the timeline until he found him in East Orange, 2043. Their fight with each other and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority drew the attention of Cannonball, now the elderly last X-Man. Cable restocked at the mansion's ruins thanks to Cannonball, but the struggle was costly. Bishop proved his mania when he killed Sam and everyone else who got in his way. Bishop had decided this entire future timeline wasn't "real" and would reset when he killed the girl and kept her from creating the future he knew. Therefore, no murder he committed would count, no act was heinous enough to avoid, since it would all be undone if he were successful. [Cable (2nd series) #1-5]
Cable and the baby jumped forward to 2093 to avoid Bishop, but his bionic arm took damage in the fight and cost him an advantage. His time machine was now partially broken and would only 
allow them to jump forward in time, not backwards. Under these new mission parameters, Cable was forced to change tactics. He made allies as he traveled, seeding history with false stories and sightings of him and the baby. These sightings became traps in the hope of catching Bishop when he came looking for them. Bishop nearly caught them in the Rocky Mountains in 2276, investigating a report of Cable's death. In fact, the report was correct but Bishop's presence inadvertently saved Cable and the baby. Bishop learned from this near miss, however -- he learned he could alter the timeline he was hunting in, and realized why Cable was only traveling forward in time. With that, Bishop began setting his own trap. [King-Size Cable Spectacular #1]
Once his trail was suitably obscured with false leads beginning from several different decades, Cable made his way to the isolated community of New Liberty. Like Roanoke before it, New Liberty was a colony that vanished from the outside world and even its ruins remained hidden 
until Clan Askani uncovered its history in Cable's era. Feeling secure that New Liberty was a secret from Bishop, Cable used his knowledge to pierce the protective and obscuring force field around the colony. Nathan made a place for himself among the colonists, allowing them to believe he and the little girl were father and daughter. He even met a woman named Hope, and they eventually began a relationship and lived together as husband and wife. After two years of relative peace, Nathan almost began to relax. The messiah child was five years old by this time, although Nathan still hadn't named her, feeling it wasn't his place to do so. Hope often chided him about this silliness, but she accepted the little girl as her daughter.
Unfortunately, outside of New Liberty, Bishop had been busy. In an effort to contain Cable and limit the number of avenues for escape, Bishop unleashed a series of weapons of mass destruction, wiping out most of South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia. A humanitarian refugee crisis altered the history of North America, leading to New Liberty being discovered contrary to Cable's recorded history of the colony. A subspecies of humanity crossed with cockroaches to survive any extreme environment had claimed rule over America, and wanted the food supplies of New Liberty as well. When the so-called “roach President of the 
United States” pierced the force field, Cable and Hope were forced to fight back against the cockroach people. Nathan angered the bugs and lured them back out of New Liberty, allowing their friends and neighbors to reseal the force field and block out the cockroaches, though Cable, Hope and the child were unable to return.
Cable's family made due on the road for more than six months, during which he came to realize just how much America had changed during his isolation. The world no longer resembled any version of the future with which he was familiar. They encountered the roach President of the United States, who nearly killed them if not for the little girl stabbing him with a knife. As they traveled, aiming for Westchester again, food became scarce and Nathan struggled to keep himself and his family healthy. During one ambush by attackers, Nathan was too slow to stop them all, and Hope was killed by gunfire in the exchange. With the passing of his wife, Cable finally gave his adopted daughter a name: Hope, after the only mother she had ever known. [Cable (2nd series) #7-10]
Nathan and Hope joined up with a human resistance against the cockroach people, and they spent two years aiding the militia in their planned defenses. The time came, however, when Cable disagreed with the resistance's strategies. They planned to unleash a bio-weapon designed to 
wipe out the cockroach people. The weapon was intended to spare normal humans, but it hadn't been effectively tested. Cable argued as long as he could but, when the leaders of the resistance launched the weapon, he timeslid with Hope to avoid the fallout. Sure enough, nothing but a wasteland was left 100 years in the future after the weapon went off. Cable and Hope jumped further into the future, as well as crossing the wasteland on foot, but could find no end to it in time or space.
Their trek across the wasteland from Texas to Westchester was long and arduous. Cable grew delirious and fell, forcing Hope to scrounge water for him on her own. They finally reached the ruins of the mansion, restocking with numerous supplies for clothing, food and weapons. They also found faith. A genetically coded "message in a bottle" reacted to Nathan's presence, disclosing a message from Cyclops in the present. In addition to data about Bishop's activities, Scott also told Nathan he had faith in his son to do what was best for the girl and for the mutant race. Revitalized in body and soul, Cable and Hope prepared to jump again. [Cable (2nd series) #11-12]
[Note: The dates and passage of time for Cable's travels were frequently inconsistent, especially when compared to Messiah War #1. The King-Size issue had his encounter with the mutated bear in 2276, but Messiah War #1 called it 2190. Cable (2nd series) #10 said the catastrophes on other continents happened one right after another, while Messiah War #1 said the events happened centuries apart. In #11, Cable and Hope time-jumped at least 1100 years into the future, but Messiah War happened in 2973, less than 1000 years in the future. Finally, Hope was reportedly seven years old when Messiah War started, but when it ended less than 48 hours later, she was suddenly nine years old.]
Once they hit 2973, however, Cable and Hope's timesliding failed. Some temporal net kept them from time traveling any further from that era. This was Bishop's endgame, blockading Cable from traveling elsewhere in time or space. Bishop had formed an alliance with Stryfe, whom he had found in an alternate future in his travels. Bishop helped the chaos-bringer kill Apocalypse and establish his own civilization in the remains of Westchester in preparation for Cable's arrival. Stryfe believed Bishop was after Cable, as the former X.S.E. officer kept his true target Hope a secret from his "ally."
Cable and Hope received some unexpected aid from the past when Cyclops and Beast sent Wolverine's X-Force into the future to home in on Cable's time-travel signature. They also met the local 30th century Deadpool, who was technically employed by Stryfe but tended to forget that. As they battled with Stryfetroopers, the chaos-bringer himself arrived and kidnapped Hope and Warpath. Cable and X-Force split up to infiltrate Stryfe's Celestial City, locate the captives and disable the temporal net. During the struggle that followed, Cable overexerted his remaining telekinetic power while fighting against Stryfe. Eventually, the net came down and the Apocalypse of that era was revived by Archangel to defeat Stryfe. [Messiah War crossover]
The time-jump equipment used by Wolverine and X-Force was unstable, killing his team if they didn't quickly return to the present. As Cable tried to time-jump himself and Hope further into the future, Hope kicked against him to stay with her new friends. They separated in transit and arrived 
in two different eras. Hope landed two years before Cable did, and was forced to survive on her own in one of two cities populated by the remnants of Stryfe's people. Bishop located Cable first and, realizing Cable and Hope had been separated, left Cable to pursue the girl. For his part, Nathan was suffering from an outbreak of his techno-organic virus. The telekinetic assaults he made against Stryfe left him vulnerable to the virus spreading further. Technically, his body was actually getting stronger, as techno-organic material assimilated and replaced his flesh, but his humanity was being consumed in the process.
He eventually recovered enough to search for Hope in the Unclean City. This city and their neighbors, the Clean City, had been at odds for over a century, engaged in war and a race to scavenge enough technology to build a starship, leaving behind the dying planet Earth. Cable's presence in the Unclean City was reported to the hierarchy of the Clean City and then to Bishop, who had made camp there to search for Hope. Like ships passing in the night, Cable came to the Clean City as Bishop went to the Unclean City to find him. Cable reunited with Hope and assumed control of the Clean City's ship and crew, finishing their vessel and declaring himself their lord Stryfe reborn in order to leave the planet. Hope had befriended a boy named Emil in her two years alone, and refused to leave without him. Emil, in turn, refused to leave without his father, who had gone with Bishop to the Unclean City. Cable forced Hope aboard the starship, leaving Emil behind. [Cable (2nd series) #16-17]
The starship Ensabahnur I traveled through space for an unknown period of time, possibly years, looking for new worlds to terraform. Cable maintained control over the crew by force of personality alone, using the legend of Stryfe to keep them in line. Unfortunately, Hope slipped up and called him by the wrong name, spoiling his charade. Cable was locked in the brig for a time until Bishop and Emil caught up with the Ensabahnur I in their own vessel, the Messiah II. Bishop's obsession had reached new levels, as he was prepared to detonate a thermonuclear explosive hidden in his arm the moment he had Hope in his sights. The situation became even more complicated when an Acanti space-whale filled with Brood assaulted the two ships. Emil got Hope to the two terraforming pods the ship held in order to escape, knocking her out and loading her into one pod when she wanted to go back for Nathan. Cable found them, however, and convinced Emil he was better suited to protect Hope wherever they ended up. Emil reluctantly agreed to give Cable the second pod, and refused to squeeze in with him or Hope, because it would lower their chances. [Cable (2nd series) #18-20]
Having found no other survivable worlds, the pods were apparently programmed to return to Earth. Cable and Hope spent two years in near-stasis as they blasted back across space to their homeworld. Hope was in her mid-teens by the time they reached Earth, and began showing signs of manifesting her mutant powers. Hope thought it was time to fulfill her destiny for the mutant race. Cable agreed it was time to return her to the present. Bishop still pursued them, but Cable managed to disable their nemesis and remove the time machine from his bionic arm. However, 
Bishop's arm contained a secondary relay that remained linked to the primary temporal terminal. As a result, when Cable and Hope tried to time-jump back to the present, Bishop was pulled along after them.
The time machine was damaged, causing the trio to skip forward and backwards from the present with each jump, off-target but slowly getting closer to their intended date and time. Cable and Hope dodged through the centuries as they attempted to evade Bishop one final time. Ultimately, Cable restored Bishop's time machine to him and sent him on a one-way trip into the distant future, rigging the time machine to explode when he landed. Thus Bishop was trapped in the 68th century, and the long nightmare of his pursuit was over. Having come to rest in the 1990's, Cable's own time-jump mechanism was now sufficient to leap them forward to the present, and return Hope to the X-Men. [Cable (2nd series) #21-24]
As they emerged in the present, Cable and Hope found the mansion in ruins, following the events of Hope's birth and the Cooperstown massacre. They were immediately set upon by the forces of Bastion, a Sentinel hybrid forged partly from the future Sentinel Nimrod, which had possessed foreknowledge of Hope's birth and destiny. Bastion had used the techno-organic virus to reanimate and control a number of anti-mutant human activists and their organizations, such as the Right, MRD, Friends of Humanity, Sapiens League and more. Fortunately, Cable and Hope defeated their attackers and fled, hoping to find the X-Men's current whereabouts. Learning of their return, Cyclops sent out a team that reconnected with Cable in the field. They soon learned Bastion was tracking them through Cable's own T-O virus, so he and Hope separated. Hope made it to the X-Men's new island home of Utopia off the coast of California, but only after the death of several X-Men.
Cable and Hope bunkered down with the X-Men while Bastion launched another attack. He sealed Utopia and much of San Francisco behind an impenetrable dome, then began feeding Nimrod-class Sentinels into the dome from the future every few minutes. The X-Men faced death 
by attrition, so Cyclops and Beast keyed Nathan's time-jump mechanism to Bastion's future, hoping Cable and X-Force could jump to that time and eliminate the Nimrods at their source. The damage to the time machine meant that it was a one-way trip, however -- Nathan said good-bye to Hope, expecting to never come back or see her again.
In the future, Cable and Wolverine's team targeted the Master Mold pumping out Nimrod Sentinels. Cypher of the New Mutants interfaced with and rewrote the Master Mold's programming, disabling it and all the Sentinels down the timeline. The time-sphere used by the Nimrods was still active, but the energies involved were deadly to organic matter, only letting the Nimrods through. Cable saw an opportunity to save his friends and allies, though. By allowing the techno-organic virus to consume him utterly, Cable interfaced with the portal as a link between the organic and the inorganic. With Nathan incorporated into the portal, Wolverine, Domino, Cypher and the others were able to return to the present unharmed. Nathan only had time to briefly lock eyes with Hope before he was seemingly consumed entirely by the portal, vanishing from existence and leaving behind only his techno-organic arm. [Second Coming crossover]