Biography - Page 5
Mister Sinister continued his own experiments, unleashing a mutating virus aboard a commuter train. He was hoping to artificially engineer new mutant test subjects, but the effects were unstable and generally faded after the victims fell unconscious. A team of X-Men including Bishop, Gambit and Beast arrived to deal with the situation, and Sinister took the opportunity to capture them for study. He was intrigued by Bishop, an X-Man whose history was unknown to his genetic record. A psychic probe uncovered that Bishop was from an alternate future and had recently spent time in the same divergent present that produced Sugarman and Nate Grey. Gambit faked having contracted the virus to catch Sinister off-guard, allowing the trio to escape. (Gambit barely 
managed to keep his history with Sinister a secret in this encounter, but no one realized how close Sinister came to catching another alternate reality mutant. The Dark Beast of the Age of Apocalypse was posing as this world’s Hank McCoy at the time, and was the secret progenitor of the Morlocks as well.) [X-Men (2nd series) #51-52]
A major new threat emerged known as Onslaught, an independent and twisted gestalt of the minds of Charles Xavier and Magneto. Among other pursuits, Onslaught sought to claim the power of Nate Grey and add it to his own. Mister Sinister could not allow this and planned to retrieve Grey from his protectors in X-Force before Onslaught could do it first. Fortunately for Sinister, Grey had acted as he anticipated and entered Threnody’s mind. Sinister had known all along about Threnody’s plans to betray him, and so he programmed the neuro-locks on her powers to install a back door into Nate Grey’s mind when the psychic interacted with them. This allowed Mister Sinister to shut down Grey’s powers temporarily when he confronted X-Force. 
Xavier’s children carried another unexpected threat, however, in the form of the former Horseman named Caliban. It seemed Apocalypse had programmed Caliban with countermeasures specifically for Sinister, delaying Essex temporarily. Still, Mister Sinister used his connection to Nate Grey and invited a psychic assault from Grey after the young man marshaled his strength, only to turn it back on X-Force as a devastating backlash.
After bringing Nate Grey to his tesseract laboratory, Mister Sinister was eager to learn what he could about this parallel version his work. Sinister tried to sway Nate, believing him to be an ideal alternative to Cable when the inevitable fight against Apocalypse began. The absence of the techno-organic virus meant Nate was far closer to Sinister’s original concept than Cable was. Essex had recently uncovered Apocalypse’s empty hibernation sarcophagus and knew the Eternal One was approaching his endgame. Sinister wanted to hide Nate from Onslaught and let others deal with the current threat, so that they could prepare for Apocalypse’s rise. Nate would never trust Sinister, however, and revealed that the Sinister of his reality killed his father figure before Nate killed him in return. Moreover, he recognized Sinister’s trick at the mansion had been a one-time strike and his mind had already built-up psychic defenses to prevent Sinister’s “back door” from being useful again. Still, Nate was so desperate to get away from Mister Sinister that he fell into a psychic trap set by Onslaught and was whisked away from Sinister’s lab before the geneticist could stop him. [Onslaught crossover]
Onslaught was defeated, as Sinister expected, and Apocalypse began the final maneuvers for the Gathering of the Twelve, the culmination of all his planning for the past century, if not longer. Worse, Cable had recently suffered injuries that severely hampered his psychic abilities. Essex needed his cat’s paw in prime condition but knew Nathan Christopher would never accept his help readily. Mister Sinister came to Cable, and openly admitted the engineering of the Summers-Grey bloodline that produced Cable was not merely an experiment of his, but a deliberate attempt to create a weapon against Apocalypse. The Askani who raised Nathan Christopher in the far future had dubbed him the Chosen One in the fight against Apocalypse, and Sinister hoped his own revelations would provoke Cable’s sense of duty to prepare for the fight by any means necessary.
Sinister offered to help restore Cable’s damaged telepathic and telekinetic abilities to full power, but Cable still resisted his aid. Sinister also forewarned Cable that the Emissaries of Apocalypse would seek him out before the final conflict, hoping to remove him from the board. Sure enough, these Emissaries soon assaulted Cable on the streets, and Mister Sinister stepped in to save him. With Cable’s friends Irene and Blaquesmith in danger from the Emissaries, he accepted Sinister’s aid in rekindling his powers. Cable saved his friends but, as he suspected, then unmasked the 
“Emissaries” to reveal Sinister’s Marauders in disguise. Cable battled Sinister directly for trying to manipulate him, until Sinister’s “cure” faded and his powers reverted to their weakened levels. Blaquesmith later confirmed that not only was Sinister’s work temporary, but it would have killed Cable eventually if he continued to rely on Sinister’s treatments. Once again, Essex overplayed his hand and lost control of his greatest weapon. [Cable Annual ‘99]
The Gathering began as Apocalypse allied himself with the alien Skrulls. He managed to capture Wolverine and brainwashed the X-Man into becoming his latest Horseman of Death, while leaving a Skrull imposter in the X-Men’s ranks. Charles Xavier became convinced he couldn’t trust his own X-Men and disbanded the team. Gambit was suspicious about Xavier’s motives, and uncovered clues that Xavier didn’t believe all the X-Men were who they said they were. LeBeau decided to make a deal with Mister Sinister to uncover the type of genetic device necessary to verify the identity of the X-Men if needed.
Mister Sinister needed the X-Men in play against Apocalypse to stop the Eternal One from ascending to ultimate power in the Gathering. Consequently, he was willing to do anything possible to aid Gambit at this time, and likely already knew the false Wolverine’s true identity. However, Essex played his cards close to vest after being so honest with Cable (well, relatively), and presented himself as a disinterested negotiator willing to make a deal if the price was right. 
Still, it was probably difficult not to laugh when Gambit offered Sinister a new mutant sample for his genetic database… his traveling companion, Courier. In exchange for the genetic scanner, Sinister accepted one of Mr. Gavin’s fingers in trade. Gambit perhaps thought he was being devious when he had Courier remotely kill the cells in his finger after the deal. Only weeks later, though, Le Diable Blanc and Courier would travel back to 1891, completing the time loop Sinister had known about for over one hundred years. [Gambit (3rd series) #8-9]
The Gathering of the Twelve came and went. Cyclops and Jean Grey and Gambit and Polaris and Mikhail Rasputin and Cable and Nate Grey and Ahmet Abdol all played their parts, the final reckoning of Sinister and Apocalypse’s scheming for and against each other for the better part of a century. In the end, Sinister contributed in his own small way to Apocalypse’s defeat. The Ascendance of the High Lord failed, Apocalypse was truly destroyed, Cable’s future was averted and Nathaniel Essex was as free as he had ever been. [Gathering of the Twelve crossover]
With Apocalypse out of the picture, Sinister felt emboldened to move forward with plans of his own. In the guise of Professor Essex, he renewed his acquaintance with his former student Herbert Wyndham, now the nearly god-like geneticist known as the High Evolutionary. Under the subtle guidance of Essex, the High Evolutionary decided mutants had become too dangerous for the stability of the planet Earth. He orchestrated the positioning of a series of satellites around the planet, controlled by his personal space station, which broadcast a signal that neutralized the unique energies of the X-Gene. In a matter of minutes, every mutant on Earth lost their powers and those with physical mutations even reverted to an unmutated state. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #379]
Professor Essex encouraged the High Evolutionary to stay the course with his mutant suppression satellites, while secretly making his own modifications to their work. Instead of merely suppressing the traits of one gene, the satellites now enabled the controller to play a concerto on the genetic material of man, artificially and remotely enacting changes on the genetic level to anyone on the planet below. When the High Evolutionary discovered this secondary transmission, Essex acted and shut down Herbert's containment suit, incapacitating his former student and his powers. Mister Sinister was ready to turn all life on Earth into his personal laboratory. [X-Men (2nd series) #99]
The X-Men inevitably detected Mister Sinister’s influence behind the High Evolutionary’s actions and found a way to reach his orbiting space station. Sinister gathered the Evolutionary’s New Men and released them on the powerless heroes to defend his work. However, the longer the X-Men were above the satellites’ broadcast field, the more their powers returned. Mister Sinister discovered this at the worst time, as Wolverine regained the stamina needed to press his attack on Essex despite grievous injuries. Sinister was forced to flee as the X-Men dismantled the satellite and convinced the High Evolutionary not to recreate it in the future. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #380]
Mister Sinister’s actions haunted him from unexpected avenues for months after the satellite fiasco. A mutant sub-species known as the Neo had lived in secret on Earth, distinct from their Homo superior cousins but still susceptible to the High Evolutionary’s transmission. Their society was based entirely around use of their abilities, causing mass death and hysteria among their people when those powers failed. The Neo Warclan’s leader, Domina, strode forth from their secret community in revenge. She destroyed at least seventeen of Sinister’s installations, killing multiple cloned bodies of the geneticist as he ran from her until her rage was directed towards other concerns. [X-Men (2nd series) #102]
Sinister next assumed the role of Doctor Robert Windsor, a geneticist. The Weapon X Program had been reformed to contain the threat of mutantkind and bend them towards the needs of the shadow government operation. It amused Sinister, as Windsor, to join the program that was initially started thanks to the journal of Nathan Essex recovered from Auschwitz, making Weapon X his stepchild, in a way. [Wolverine (2nd series) #173-175] The Director of the Weapon X Program created a concentration camp of his own, called Neverland, where mutant prisoners were taken for imprisonment, experimentation, and execution. Reenacting his previous pattern from Nazi Germany, “Doctor Windsor” pretended to help various mutants escape from Neverland by requisitioning their transfer to his private laboratory. Once there, they simply became more fodder for his own work. [Weapon X (2nd series) #4-5]
Doctor Windsor was unable to operate completely beneath the radar, however. His old associate Sabretooth was able to parse out Sinister’s scent, regardless of his appearance. Sinister had little to fear from Creed (or even the Director, for that matter) but he chose to assist Sabretooth in escaping from Weapon X’s control over him so as not to interrupt his ongoing research and 
access to test subjects. Sabretooth fled Weapon X during an internal coup assisted by Cable and his Underground, removing the Director as well before he became too suspicious of Windsor’s work. The new Director Brent Jackson was too worried about consolidating his power to focus on Doctor Windsor. [Weapon X (2nd series) #8-16]
Mister Sinister eventually got the data he needed from the Weapon X Program and abandoned the project as Brent Jackson took Weapon X and Neverland underground. Instead, “Doctor Windsor” opened the Center for Homo Superior Research and Medical Care to continue his work. 
With more samples from patients at the Center, Sinister cultivated a new Chimera-engineered class of artificial mutant with his prototype Hans and the Children. Each of the Children supported a full set of mutant powers like strength, speed, flight, optic beams and a healing factor. Essex believed he had finally perfected evolution with the Children, but his faith in his work was shaken when Sabretooth intervened. Creed had been hired by Michael Grand, CEO of Megacorp, to hunt down Nathaniel Essex for his atrocities in Auschwitz. Hans fought Sabretooth to a standstill when Creed uncovered the Clinic but was ultimately beaten by Sabretooth’s ferocity.
Sinister retreated, concerned by the experimental data showing his “perfect mutant” had been unable to defeat Creed. Scalphunter became concerned that Sinister was showing too much favoritism towards Hans and the Children, so he gave Creed intelligence to find Sinister’s new base. Sabretooth realized Sinister would never have missed the opportunity to add telepathic genes to his Children as well, and he had Megacorp concoct a weapon that would broadcast his thoughts, overwhelming the Children with the violence of his mind. Sabretooth departed, leaving Sinister captive in the clutches of Michael Grand. In fact, Grand was a false identity for John 
Sublime of the senior Weapon Plus Program, looking to bring Weapon X back under his control. Mister Sinister considered the Children a failure after their defeat, but Sublime saw a practical application for them as shock troopers in his upcoming war with Brent Jackson. In exchange for some secret files on mutant data already liberated from Weapon X, Sinister agreed to cut his losses and cede control of the Children to Sublime. [Weapon X (2nd series) #26-28]
Mister Sinister remained aware of the bloodline of Grigory Rasputin, tracking the development of his great-grandson Colossus and his siblings. He visited often with Piotr Rasputin’s mad uncle Vlad, a lunatic living in the wilderness. To his surprise, Vlad one day addressed Essex as Grigory once did. Apparently, Grigory Rasputin had not been metaphorical when he said he would live on in his children. His essence survived, disseminated throughout his bloodline, but now it could be consolidated into a single host. Sinister assisted Rasputin in killing off his descendants, allowing the mind of Grigory Rasputin to grow stronger in those that remained each time. After the death of 
Vlad, only Colossus and his brother Mikhail Rasputin seemed to be left. Sinister tried to influence Mikhail into serving as the final host, but Mikhail broke free of Sinister’s control and exiled himself to an extra-dimensional Dark Zone, condemned to eternal life without escape even through death, preventing Grigory’s return. [X-Men: Colossus Bloodline #1-5]
[Note: Bloodline #5 indicated Sinister was aiding Rasputin because his own powers were fading. This was not picked up on in later stories, though.]
Sinister maintained a number of plans percolating in the background as he pursued his goals. Early on in the X-Men’s career, he had hired Kraven the Hunter to collect DNA samples from the original team during a fight alongside Spider-Man. Impressed with Kraven’s skills, Essex even threw in a bonus after the successful mission for some of Kraven’s own DNA. He had another encounter with Spider-Man and the X-Men years later when he gathered a sample from the Carnage symbiote at Ravencroft. The symbiote material’s inherent adaptability allowed him to improve his Chimera mutant design, creating a new hunter under his control called Xraven, possessing the original’s skills as well as abilities copied from the X-Men. As always, though, Sinister under-estimated the human element when he sent Xraven out to collect remaining mutant samples after the Decimation. In a confrontation with Spider-Man and the X-Men, Xraven’s pride derived from the original Kraven led him to reject being Sinister’s puppet. He destroyed his samples and returned to confront his creator as a man, not a clone. [X-Men / Spider-Man #1-4]