Laura’s dream:
X-23 dreams of floating, like an embryo in space, until she sees a strange, dagger-like energy symbol, surrounded by a row of teeth.
Reality:
She awakes in a cab in New York. Gambit asks if she is okay and suggests she take it easy. Look for that name on her list. See some shows. Eat good food. Has she ever spent much time in the city? He knows she spent time in Westchester… She lived in the city first, she tells him. What was she doing? he asks. She was a prostitute, she tells him matter of fact. Remy is speechless. Laura announces she smells blood. His wounds have reopened.
A little later, Cecilia Reyes hears a knocking at her door. Grabbing a baseball, bat she opens the door to find Laura and Remy outside. Just a stitch or two, Remy announces. He is bleeding from the groin, Laura specifies. A very careful stitch, Remy adds. He’s had worse.
Cecilia shuts the door, unlocks the bolt and opens again. Oh, they are still here. If they bring hell into her home, his bleeding groin will be the least of their concerns, Cecilia warns them.
While getting ready to treat Gambit, Cecilia complains she needed some time away from Utopia for just this reason. Stupidity! That is a good reason, X-23 mumbles. Gambit calls her a very cranky woman. She warns him she is also the woman who is about to take a needle to a very sensitive region of his body. She orders him to take off his pants and get on the bed. When he hesitates, she remarks that, if he’s shy, she might throw up.
Laura sniffs and states that Kiden Nixon and her friends were here. She knows them? Reyes asks. Homeless mutants her age, she explains to Gambit and asks where they are. Cecilia doesn’t know. Before she left for Utopia she told them they could stay here. When she returned, though, they were already gone. Did Laura come looking for them?
Gambit replies that Laura is looking for a boy named Alex Cimini. He has some information she needs. Laura leaves, announcing she has to go somewhere. She orders Gambit to rest and get fixed. He tells her she knows he’s here if she needs him. She knows he is her friend, she replies and she is his friend.
She walks the streets, musing that the first time she came to New York she had no friends. She did not even have herself. She was a thing. A puppet who needed someone to pull her strings. So someone pulled. She made it easy. When a man leers at her in the subway, she vows never again.
She gets some hot food and looks at the list again. When she was an assassin for the Facility, she made choices. She simply did not realize it at the time. On one occasion, she chose not to kill. She defied her conditioning. She looks at the picture of Alex Cimini. She does not know why the boy is different but needs to understand.
She enters a university physics department. In a lab, she sees a group of students, among them is Alex, working. Laura is about to enter but hesitates, then leaves.
Something strange happens in the lab as a device begins to glow. One moment later, Laura moans, her head aglow.
In the sky above the physics department, the dagger-like symbol from her dream manifests. Laura is hit by a car and others try to drag her away. She quickly recovers and declines the offer of an ambulance.
Suddenly, an earthquake starts and the people run away panicked, all except one man standing in the center of the quake, smiling, the red sigil from Laura’s dream on his forehead.
In front of her, a building collapses. She tries to get people clear and finds a woman is trapped high up in one of the semi-collapsed houses. Laura uses her claws to climb up to her and the old woman is surprised a child came to her. Laura orders her to hold onto her. When the scared woman refuses, Laura warns her that the building is coming down. Luckily, before a piece of debris can hit them, it is held back by webbing, courtesy of Spider-Man (in his white FF costume).
He suggests he could finish the rescue. Laura announces there is no need, they are fine. Others need him more. Spider-Man sighs at her stubbornness. She is so related to Wolverine.
A little later, he brings the woman and a sulking Laura down in his webbing. See how easy this is, he tells her. He’s like a source of pure Spider awesome. As she glares, he asks she is not going to cut him. He’s very delicate…
They look up to again see the sigil in the sky. Spidey remarks he dreamed about that while she admits so did she. This morning, she saw it on the forehead of a man with red eyes. He is the one responsible for the destruction… she knows it.
A cop asks Spider-Man to help. Down the block there are some kids… Laura asks to be taken along. He agrees, revealing he knows her name as he swings along with her. A little hirsute bird with claws told him.
Together, the two of them help the firefighters with the caved-in kids. Afterwards, Spidey stretches. What a day! he announces. Sorry to bring it up to him but it’s not over yet, Reed Richards of the Future Foundation announces.
