BIOGRAPHY - Page 6
Moira was emotionally exhausted and vulnerable after her ordeal. She struggled to come to terms with having lost control of her senses to the Shadow King and the devastation of much of Muir Island. (There's also a strong possibility she began questioning her actions regarding Kevin and his fate all over again, uncertain how much of her decisions in that encounter were born of her own mind.) Moira returned to Westchester with Banshee, Xavier, and the X-Men for a time to recuperate and rebuild the team, but fate had other ideas. Magneto had gone into isolation at Asteroid M in recent weeks, and a new group of mutant terrorists called the Acolytes presented themselves as his loyal vassals against the flatscan humans, hoping to spur him back towards his more radical days. After hearing that the X-Men and Magneto were exchanging blows again for the first time in months, Moira correctly feared that her genetic manipulations of Magnus when he was an infant in her care would be revealed. Indeed, the Acolytes' leader Fabian Cortez detected an anomaly in Magneto’s genetic code while using his powers to heal Magnus, leading Magneto to the discovery that he had been altered against his knowledge and consent. Before Moira could fully confess her concerns to Charles, they were captured by Magneto. In a display of magnetic might, he lifted and preserved the boathouse on Breakstone Lake up into orbit so that their chat would remain private.
On Asteroid M, a furious Magneto forced a confession out of Moira regarding her process, wrapping her in a sensitive sheet of liquid metal to restrain her actions and sense signs of deception. To Magnus, her efforts to “correct” the potential for magnetic instability in his system were a violation of the highest order. He compared her directly to Josef Mengele and considered his every thought and behavior since her invasion to be 
suspect. Magneto regressed fully into his role as a mutant supremacist, even forcing Moira to use her process on a captive X-Men strike force to compel them into joining his Acolytes. In time, Moira revealed that her process had been a failure, as any mutant’s use of their abilities would progressively reverse any alternations she made over time, reverting them to their normal personality. By that point, however, Magneto had been betrayed from within by Fabian Cortez, and remained behind to die on an exploding Asteroid M with his loyal followers. [X-Men (2nd series) #1-3]
Moira’s shame and regret consumed her almost beyond rational thought. Even in her private journals, Moira X reflected that she had become as bad as those who she had been fighting against. [Powers of X #6] Sean and Charles tried to get through to Moira, but she was unwilling to accept their pity or forgiveness. Nightmares of Kevin and Magnus plagued her for days after Magneto’s apparent death. Too distraught to reconcile her feelings, Moira left Banshee and the X-Men behind to seek her own council alone for 
the foreseeable future. [X-Men (2nd series) #4] She was unable to stay away for long, though. Only weeks later, Charles was shot in the head by the time-traveler Stryfe, leaving him on the verge of death as the slug infected him with a techno-organic virus. Moira consulted remotely with Hank McCoy as they desperately tried to arrest the breakdown of Charles’ system. In the end, the X-Men’s foe Apocalypse aided them for his own reasons, lending his knowledge of techno-organic bio-tech in order to purge the foreign elements from Xavier’s body. [X-Cutioner’s Song crossover]
Doctor MacTaggert was also called in as a consultant for the Genoshan government due to her expertise in biogenetics. The Extinction Agenda affair had forcibly ended the apartheid of Genoshan Mutates and put the new government under strict United Nations sanctions and scrutiny. Therefore, it was a political and public health crisis when the Mutates contracted a mysterious disease that struck many of them with lethal symptoms. Moira was brought in by the Genoshan President and Genegineer to provide humanitarian aid, but even her expertise left her hard pressed to find any treatment for the Mutates. Worse still, Moira’s research determined this was not a disease unique to the genetically-engineered biology of the Mutates – they were merely more vulnerable to contracting it. The mutant race was on the brink of a pandemic of epic proportions.
Moira’s attention was diverted by the arrival of America’s new government-sponsored X-Factor, which now included her old staff Havok, Polaris and Multiple Man, and her ward, Wolfsbane. Moira had been neglectful towards Rahne, in part due to the Shadow King’s influence. Wolfsbane had been forcibly converted into a Mutate during the Agenda, leaving her free will dependent on remaining in wolfen state and not reverting back to full human form. Rahne had been having other emotional troubles, and so Moira and the newly-appointed Genegineer Sasha Ryan took the opportunity to compare notes while assessing Wolfsbane in the lab. They determined the previous Genegineer had forced a master/slave bond between Rahne and Havok, back when he was 
amnesiac and serving with the Genoshan Magistrates. Wolfsbane was furious that her “feelings” for Havok in recent weeks had been forced upon her mind. She turned to Moira for comfort, perhaps even a cure based on her biogenetics knowledge, but the Mutate virus took precedent in Moira’s studies. Moira made it clear she had greater responsibilities than her guardianship of Rahne and left the distraught child so she could meet up with Charles Xavier regarding the Mutate issue. [X-Factor (1st series) #88-90]
Unfortunately, X-Factor’s liaison Valerie Cooper was secretly under the control of the reformed Acolytes at the time. She passed on Moira’s movements to Fabian Cortez, and Doctor MacTaggert was kidnapped before she could meet with Xavier. The Acolyte Milan used their equipment in an effort to forcibly extract information from Moira’s mind. Cortez hoped to improve upon Moira’s old process to brainwash others into serving their cause. It was a dangerous game, for Moira was there when Fabian crippled Magneto and left him to die on Asteroid M, using the Master of Magnetism as a martyr so he could gather other Acolytes to serve him in Magneto’s name. In fact, Moira got the young Neophyte to question Cortez’s version of Magneto’s death, and he learned the truth. Neophyte met with the X-Men after being attacked by Cortez and helped them enter the Acolytes’ castle, freeing Moira. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #300]
Back in Westchester, Doctor MacTaggert shared her data on the Genoshan Mutates’ condition 
with Charles. The mutagenic anomaly found in the Mutates’ DNA mutated and adapted to each victim, causing mutant abilities to become unstable and flare out of control, and was inevitably terminal in all cases regardless of how early it was caught. Studies of the disease convinced Charles and Moira that it was a manufactured plague, deliberately engineered to attack the mutant race. Thinking back to files uncovered from the time-traveling chaos-bringer, Stryfe, Xavier realized this virus was the “Legacy” which Stryfe often rambled about in his personal journals. Worse still, this “Legacy virus” had already struck close to home. The pre-adolescent Illyana Rasputin, sister of Colossus, had contracted the virus despite her X-Gene not even being active yet. Advanced knowledge of bio-genetics and Shi’ar technology could not arrest Illyana’s condition. Charles and Moira could only watch and chronicle the complete degeneration of Illyana’s genetic structure. Soon, too soon, the child in their care died despite all their efforts to prevent it. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #300-303]
Illyana was not the first to die from the Legacy Virus, nor was she the last. Other mutants soon emerged as victims of the Legacy Virus. Former foes like Mastermind, Pyro, and Infectia contracted the virus, as did the X-Man Revanche and still more cases from around the globe, with no clear pattern or vector of transmission. Moira and Charles brought in Hank McCoy on their research, but his efforts were as inconclusive as their own. Cyclops brought them some confirmation from Mister Sinister, who admitted he was tricked into releasing the initial strand of the Legacy virus by Stryfe after the madman’s apparent death. As Moira continued her work in Westchester, she had a bittersweet reunion with Sean Cassidy. Banshee had left the mansion to find her shortly after the Magneto affair. They reconnected, but their relationship would never again be what it was, and in the days to come, Moira’s work would consume her like never before. [X-Men (2nd series) #24, X-Men Annual (2nd series) #2, Uncanny X-Men (1st series) Annual #17]
Unfortunately, Moira was unable to focus her attentions fully on the Legacy Virus research. Gabrielle Haller contacted her on behalf of the international Magneto Protocols. Reports had begun to circulate about Magnus’s return and counter-measures were being prepared. Moira reluctantly lent her research data on Magneto’s biology to the Protocols, as they sought to build weapons and defenses against him. [X-Men Unlimited (1st series) #2] Even with Moira’s aid, the Magneto Protocols failed to deter Magneto’s assaults on Earth, including a worldwide electromagnetic pulse disrupting all electronics on the 
planet. The X-Men struck back at his new space station, Avalon, and Xavier left Magneto in a catatonic state using his telepathic powers. Before this final blow, however, Magneto ripped the Adamantium out of Wolverine’s skeleton. Moira did what she could to arrest the trauma Logan experienced, as his healing factor could not compensate for the sheer volume of damage done to his system. She helped him stabilize, but little else. [X-Men (2nd series) #25, Wolverine (2nd series) #75]