Martinez and Foster, President Kelly’s aides, make their way through the ruins of former mutant refuge Centrum, wanting more footage on mutant-on-human violence before President Kelly’s address in just a few hours. The mutants are gone, but they figure they can paint the battle as the product of an underground mutant conspiracy. They hear a rumbling noise and flee.
Moments later Magneto, Storm, Rachel, Angel and Colossus rise up, followed by Mystique, who helps up Wolverine. Fifteen years they kept her in a lab and this is what they let the future come to? Mystique complains. Wasn’t his job to play the maid? he retorts.
The X-Men happily greet the freed Storm. Rachel announces where the refugee groups have taken shelter. Colossus adds that Kate has taken Chrissie and Cameron to Sanctuary. Rachel is angry about them arranging this without informing the rest of them but Magneto is grateful. The children are too precious to risk. They have much work to do. Rachel agrees. If they were to lose even one of them… Magneto points out that they raised that girl. Taught her Nietzsche with her alphabet and Sun Tzu with stuffed animals. They must protect her. Time for their endgame? Angel asks. So to speak, Magneto replies. Their last gift for Chrissie, the last hope of their kind.
Chrissie and Cameron have breached the mutant internment camp but find the former Brotherhood members Pyro, Destiny and Avalanche attacking them.
The other prisoners marvel at how young Christina is. She turns human and asks them not to be afraid. They can escape their captors together, win and make a better world. Are they prepared? The people look scared. Then let’s fight their way to freedom, she shouts and the people follow.
Chrissie is distracted and Destiny kicks her in the face. Chrissie wants to say something about her Uncle Erik. Destiny orders her not to speak his name. That coward sold them out years ago to protect his plans but, as she can see, they have made deals of their own.
Chrissie demands why they are helping their captors. They are killing mutants! Her parents were captured, Destiny points out. They served. It was that or die, Chrissie rejoins. Exactly! Destiny agrees and tosses her to the ground. Serve or die!
Avalanche is about to bury Chrissie, unaware of the tower toppling behind him. Kate phases through him and protects Chrissie while Avalanche is buried.
Pyro tries to burn Cameron to find he is phasing. Turns out he got more than his mother’s eyes, Cameron jokes and goes for Pyro’s throat and phases him into the rubble. Now, what were they protecting? Pyro tells him not to. They had to give the humans something. They gave them different collars, let them keep their powers. They would have killed them if they hadn’t—
Cameron walks into the building and finds the bodies of tortured dead mutants. They gave them their own people, he realizes. He hears a cry from outside.
Destiny has gotten the army as reinforcements. They threaten to shoot the mutant prisoners. Chrissie hears Magneto call her name via comm. As there is a rumbling noise, he informs her that he brought the gift he promised. He’s afraid it is not a pony. But he thinks it will do.
He is holding together and controlling a Sentinel. Moments later, the robot and the other X-Men attack the soldiers who wisely flee.
Nightcrawler teleports in to usher the mutant prisoners to the Cathedral, where they will have sanctuary.
Magneto and the Sentinel land. Wolverine explains Storm powered it, Rachel and Angel reworked its wiring; Magneto did the rest. Worth the wait? Magneto asks Chrissie. Worth the wait, she agrees.
Logan and Cameron greet each other tensely. When Logan wants to explain, Cameron interjects that Kate already beat him to that plot point. He’s Kate and Piotr’s son, not his. There’s work to do on the mech. Logan leaves.
Storm reminds them all that President Kelly will be arriving at any moment to rouse the humans against their kind. Soon he will activate the virus in one of his Sentinels to stage the attack against himself— and blame mutants. When it is safe, they will call for Chrissie to come to Kelly’s aid. Wolverine will be her guide. Kate asks Chrissie if she is ready. To save their people? Yes, she agrees.
Storm takes off. Wolverine asks Chrissie what she thinks of war. She is shaken by the deaths. Logan reminds her she has the chance to save them all.
Cameron interrupts them, holding a tablet computer. He tells Chrissie to get away from them. This is the Sentinel from Centrum. He reminds Kate when she studied the Sentinel she found three sequences programmed into it – targets. The Sentinel was an old model. Kelly didn’t know they had the damn thing. He’s staging the attack against himself. But they intercepted it. They are pulling the strings. Kelly thought he was firing blanks but they loaded it with ammo. Angel gave Rachel the data on the Sentinel for her to design her fake “virus.” From the base where they were imprisoned. One was Kelly’s DNA for the attack.
Kate asks about the other two DNA sequences. They share genes, he replies. One of them is off the grid… no file… but the other… they already know. He shows Chrissie the tablet, which confirms her as the target, meaning logically the other one is Cameron.
They made them targets of a real attack. They are not meant to save President Kelly. They are meant to die for him.
Magneto glares. “You bastard!” Kate hisses and attacks Magneto, who magnetically grabs Destiny’s suppressor collar and puts it around Kate’s throat. Wolverine is next to attack, but Magneto tosses him away. He isn’t sure how many apocalypses they must endure before he remembers he has a metal skeleton, Magneto sighs. At least a few more, it would seem.
Surrounded by his Sentinel, he turns to Chrissie and assures her he doesn’t want to hurt her, so stay out of his way!
Kate shouts at Chrissie to run. He doesn’t want to hurt her but he’d send a Sentinel to kill her, Chrissie snaps. She was never meant to be burdened with that knowledge, he replies. She was raised innocent. She was never supposed to know the end was coming.
Did the others… Chrissie begins. Rachel, yes, Magneto admits, the others did not understand the aid they were providing. He asks her not to hate Rachel. They love her. It had to be Chrissie because she was the light of their people. But to be a martyr to the cause she has to die.
He magnetically freezes her and his Sentinel grabs for Chrissie, then flies away with her. Cameron merges with the Sentinel, phases through it and phases his fingers through Magneto’s brain, killing him. The Sentinel breaks apart and Chrissie falls. Uncle Erik! she cries, realizing he is dead.
He didn’t feel it coming, Cameron assures her. He slipped his hand through the back of his skull. Shut up! she shouts. He reminds her that man wanted to kill them. Him, Wolverine, their parents, they’ve done nothing but use them. Pawns or sacrifices for their endgame— Shut up! she repeats, armors up and hits him in the face.
They are things to them, Cameron continues on the ground. If he could hurt her, kill her… if that think tank of mutants was the best that was left of their kind… mutants don’t deserve to exist anymore. He assures his sister that this isn’t some revenge quest. He isn’t a final-level villains. Listen: Think about the mutants in the camp, how she rallied them to fight. She is exactly what she was born to be. An inspiration. Hope for the future.
But he’s lived in the hell of this world. The cruelty, the starvation, the purges. The cesspit of what it’s become. What he saw in the camps… mutants don’t deserve a future!
What is he saying? Chrissie asks. Hundreds of thousands years of human progress in a human world, he continues – and then mutants came onto the scene. And within three generations they went form civilization and golden ages to this. They thought this dystopia was an adventure. But it’s natural selection. The Earth purging itself of what upset the balance. Mutants, superhumans, they don’t belong here. Only when they are gone can the world return to what it was meant to be. Course correct. Heal.
In her metal form, Chrissie tries to hit him. He phases through the rubble and comes out behind her. He urges her not to do this. He loves her. How can she want to fight after all the horror they have seen? If she plays her part, she won’t save them, she’ll only inspire more suffering. Better, mutants should die.
Trying to get him with her claws, she mocks his monologue. He replies he is going to kill Robert Kelly. And then the humans will wipe out the mutants once and for all. If she wants to save the world, then this is the cost of peace.
Chrissie replies every person she loves has told her what to be, what to do, how to act, what to become. Time to grow up! She goes for his stomach. If he is going to try to destroy their own people, he is going to have to go through her!
