MARROW: Page 5 of 5

Publication Date: 4th May 2017
Written By: Peter Luzifer, Jason and Gremlin.
Biography

BIOGRAPHY - Page 5

It’s unknown whether Agent Zero ever attempted to make good on his threats, but soon after Marrow had something different to worry about. When the Scarlet Witch depowered most of the world’s mutants, Marrow was one of them. Unfortunately for her, even though she had now lost her powers, she still retained her bony appearance, marking her as an ex-mutant. Marrow soon retreated back to the sewers and her family of Morlocks, many of whom had also lost their powers and ventured up to the surface to make lives for themselves. About a third of the Morlocks remained either because they still had their powers or the fact there simply wasn’t a life for them above ground. With mutants on the verge of extinction, the various anti-mutant factions began killing any that remained. Even former mutants were targeted, so Marrow decided to stay and protect those that stayed behind. When a news reporter sought Marrow out, the former mutant was unusually calm about the situation. She told the reporter she had hopes that humans and mutants could live together and that she would stay until the end. [Generation M #4]

Marrow’s tranquil outlook wasn’t to last. When Callisto was seemingly repowered by Quicksilver, Marrow assumed he could do the same for her. She gathered together a bunch of other depowered mutants and restarted her X-Cell organization. Quicksilver had set up shop in Mutant Town, which was where X-Factor Investigations were also located. The various sides naturally came to blows and eventually Quicksilver sided with X-Cell, which in turn had kidnapped Rictor from X-Factor to use as a conduit for the repowering process. Some of X-Cell was indeed repowered but, when Callisto, who had been repowered by the same process, had a bad reaction, she urged Marrow not to go through with it. Before Quicksilver could do anything, X-Factor showed up and a fight broke out. Marrow was stabbed by Quicksilver and subsequently ushered away by Callisto. In the end, Callisto was proved right as the repowered members of X-Cell began to spontaneously combust. [X-Factor (3rd series) #18-20]

Marrow wasn’t to be deterred by Callisto’s words, though, and her mind was set on being repowered. She eventually found an experimental program run by a man named Volga who was able to give her powers similar to before. However, things became more complicated when Marrow discovered that she was pregnant. She went along with the procedure anyway and it turned out a success. Her new powers were very similar to her original mutant abilities but now she could produce extensive bone growths at will and shape them to her desire. Unfortunately, the baby did not survive the experience and the weight of what she had sacrificed to regain her powers quickly dawned on her.

To make matters worse, Volga had simply been using Marrow as a test subject and, now that he had proved the procedure could work, he had no further use for her. Volga dumped her off in the city of Alexandria, where he was also enacting another of his schemes. He was looking to become a major player in the underground arms market and Alexandria was playing host to a convention of weapons and other associated paraphernalia. Volga sent another test subject into the city and triggered her pyrokinetic abilities, wiping out most of his potential competition and killing thousands of people. By chance, Cable and his daughter Hope were there and they barely managed to survive the explosion. In the chaos they found Marrow in a depressed and traumatized state and decided to take her with them. Marrow was virtually catatonic from her recent experiences, so Cable’s X-Force teammate Dr. Nemesis decided to restrict her ability to access recent memories. The procedure worked and Marrow came back round, although with a new upbeat and slightly psychotic personality. Marrow was still able to recall fragments of the past few weeks and kept on referring to someone she called “Baby,” but she did not know what any of it meant [X-Force (4th series) #5]

The explosion in Alexandria soon became worldwide news and the blame was put squarely on a mutant. Cable tasked X-Force to deal with the situation and they managed to identify some of the perpetrators to the incident. Marrow proved her worth soon enough by unleashing her upgraded powers on a plane, bringing it down. X-Force managed to steal a weapon off the plane, which just happened to be a young girl called Meme. She told them that she was one of a number of mutants that were captured and weaponized by Volga, the same man who repowered Marrow. [X-Force (4th series) #1-2]

Marrow’s new personality was starting to grate on a number of people, Psylocke in particular. After a heated exchange, the telepath snapped and used her powers to stop Marrow from constantly swearing. The hunt for Volga continued but he proved elusive. The team soon discovered what Volga’s business was and they eventually tracked down one of his associates. However, as they were interrogating him, Volga appeared and killed the man, and then subsequently vanished by superhuman means. Once again the team was left tracking Volga but they managed to locate him to floating craft in a desert. Marrow led the charge in and easily took out the first line of defense. Volga and some super-soldiers showed up and Volga hinted at Marrow’s pregnancy, with a snide remark about Marrow losing weight. Marrow had already been questioning the few memories she did have but Volga’s words were enough to allow her to break through the memory block and remember what had truly happened. She had a breakdown in the middle of the battle as the horror of her loss came flooding back to her. She, along with the rest of her team, was captured but Cable managed to free them. After Psylocke helped Marrow think straight again, the young girl used her upgraded powers to destroy Volga’s army of super soldiers and put an end to his experiments by destroying his laboratory. Volga’s body was destroyed too but unfortunately his consciousness managed to survive.
[X-Force (4th series) #3-6]

During the confrontation with Volga it, was discovered that the process he had used on Marrow and the other test subjects was volatile and unstable. As a result many of the others had died and Dr. Nemesis predicted Marrow may only have a year left to live. It was worse for Cable though as he had also undergone Volga’s treatments but the effect was so severe in him his body would burn out within a day. To remedy this Cable cloned himself every night, so the next day a new one would be giving Marrow orders. [X-Force (4th series) #7]

Tracking down Volga was proving difficult and so, with few leads to go on, they started hunting down his customers. Marrow and the team travelled to the Middle East to find a group of soldiers who had undergone the experiments. They ended up running into Peter Wisdom and MI:13, who were also on the trail of the soldiers. [X-Force (4th series) #8-9]

Whilst they didn’t get any luck with finding Volga, they did discover another secret organization, the Yellow Eye, was spying on them. Marrow and the group infiltrated Yellow Eye’s base and attacked their leader, who turned out to be the villain Mojo. Their plans went awry when Fantomex, one of Marrow’s teammates, turned on the rest of his group and attacked them. Taking some of the formula Volga developed, he became even more powerful and unstable than before. Marrow and the others escaped but now they had a real need to find Volga, as Fantomex was going on a killing spree across the world. [X-Force (4th series) #11-12]

Volga was eventually found and captured by X-Force but he refused to reveal any information about his experiments. Marrow watched over him as he was tortured and delighted in the pain being inflicted on the man who had caused her so much trouble. After many long hours of torture he cracked and told her that the only way to undo his procedure would be to completely purge every cell in the body of his formula. By now Volga was begging for death but Marrow and Cable purposefully ignored him as he was too useful alive. Instead he tried a different approach and he told Marrow that when she volunteered for his experiments it was only for some minor tests. It was he who decided to give her the formula and kill her unborn baby for the stem cells. Realizing that she hadn’t willingly given up her baby’s life came as a relief to Marrow, but a wave of anger quickly washed over her. Before Cable could stop her she brutally stabbed Volga to death, ending his miserable life and finding closure for herself. [X-Force (4th series) #13]

Over the next few weeks Fantomex travelled the world looking for X-Force and laying waste to numerous black-ops squads. Marrow was feeling better about her recent ordeals but she still couldn’t fully forgive herself for what happened to her child. During a period of downtime as they tried to figure out a way to take down Fantomex, they found out that Cable had been manipulating the crazed mercenary for his own ends. He had been communicating with the man and tricking him into attacking rival black-ops bases. Knowing that there was a clone of Cable ready to be thawed out, Marrow stabbed the current Cable in the head, killing him instantly. X-Force communicated with Fantomex and told him where to find them, and the team then went and prepared for battle. Despite the upgrades Volga had done to her powers she was still no match for Fantomex, who simply shrugged off the numerous bone shards she stabbed him with. Realizing that she would probably die in battle brought a certain clarity to Marrow’s troubled mind and for the first time since she joined the team she looked to the others for help. Coming up with a new plan, the team decided to attack Fantomex from all fronts and Marrow was tasked with taking him on physically. Using her bone growths she managed to rip his body apart and leave it a bloody pulp, something that they knew he could grow back from but it would provide enough of a distraction so he could be taken down psychically. The plan worked and X-Force prevailed but the team was in a bit of a flux afterwards. Marrow and the rest of X-Force decided to stay together to continue the work they were doing, but they kicked Cable off the team as he could no longer be trusted. [X-Force (4th series) #14-15]