The present:
Enraged and holding on to a few bodies, Colossus breaks through a wall. Domino, her gun still smoking, warns they got incoming. Dr. Nemesis gathers a few of his syringes from dead bodies. Standing in a factory, surrounded by dead bodies, the three of them and Cable calmly wait.
“Freeze!” Havok, who has arrived with his team of Avengers, orders and is horrified to see it’s his nephew Cable. Tell him he is not seeing what he’s seeing here! he orders. Tell him those men aren’t dead! What the #%$§, Nate?! Please tell him he didn’t just kill a bunch of unarmed--
Captain America urges Havok that they need to bring them in. Now. He can have the conversation on the-- With all due respect, Havok orders Cap to stand down.
His dad just set the damned world on fire, Havok tells Cable. This is not a good PR moment for their family. He knows Nate. He knows this can’t be what it look like. For the record: it looks bad. Cold-blooded terrorist bad. He needs Nate to explain this to him. Give him something to work with here.
Can’t explain it away, Cable replies curtly and fires his energy gun at Havok. Wishes he could. Evac! he orders as he blasts the Avengers. Now! His team is teleported away.
Stand down? Cap asks Havok who admits that was a bad call.
Days earlier:
Hope Summers is in session with her therapist, Dr. Townley, and complains about school. There’s a closeted mutant girl in physics class. Low level X-ray. She just sits there giggling into her stupid hand all period. Hope accidentally picked up her power and had to spend the rest of the day trapped in naked town. Does she have any idea how ridiculous teenage boys look under their clothes?
The doctor laughs and reminds Hope that this is what she wanted. She was stupid, Hope seethes. Dr. Townley reminds her it’s been only four weeks. Hope is a battle-hardened, time-hopping, teenage, mutant icon. She’s carried the cosmic fire of the Phoenix and she just got done saving the planet from certain doom. Should they be surprised that high school will take some getting used to? She’d imagine someone “Avengery” has told her these sessions are mandatory or they wouldn’t be talking. But she agrees with Hope. She does deserve a chance at a normal life.
Is it normal her foster parents watch 27 hours of television a week? Hope scoffs. Sitcoms mostly. And they smile something like eighty per cent of the time. It’s unsettling! Dr. Townley gently points out they are good people. But Hope can’t expect them to live up to her father. Hope agrees. There’s only one Cable.
Outside, said father is eavesdropping on the conversation. Then he rides back on his motor bike to a certain airplane graveyard in Nevada. He enters a bunker below where Forge is expecting him. Forge suggests he stop checking in on his daughter. Lost those daddy privileges the day he tried to kill the Avengers. “Evening, Skitch,” Cable greets him, pissing off Forge with the strange nickname.
Forge continues he needs a little bit of direction over here because this is not working for him. He’s done hiding in a bunker. He needs to get back to doing some good. Or at least own up to all the bad. Take his lumps and be done with it. He knows Cable always has some plan going. They’ve reached the point where he would like to hear what that is exactly.
Cable changes the subject and inquires after the new arm. Wanna try it out? Forge asks. Seeing the oversized artificial arm, Cable is not impressed. He asked Forge to make his arm work, not strap him to a howitzer. Forge orders him to shut up and put it on.
This is the silliest thing he’s ever worn, Cable complains, and they both know that’s saying something. Forge tells him to lift his arm and make a fist. And the arm fires small missiles. Yeah, okay, Cable admits impressed.
Forge suggest he also has some ideas for the eyepatch. Cable trails off and screams from a sudden headache. It’s fine, he fends off the concerned Forge. He’s taking the bike back out again. Someone he needs to see…
Elsewhere, Domino enters a hotel lobby, dressed in a stylish red dress and talking to someone – apparently her former teammate Boom Boom – on the cell. A new client she tells her contacts her out of the blue, maybe two days after she turned in her yellow tights. He’s one of the all-business richer-than-God types. Tells her his college professor brother started hanging out with some AIM geeks. Disappeared from MIT and ran off to join the science circuit. Guy thinks the prof’s been brainwashed. He wants her to break into this AIM facility.
She enters a room labeled employees only and changes into her uniform.
They have a HQ ”hidden” down underneath the Wilshire Hotel, she explains. So she hems and haws a little bit.
She opens an elevator door.
Tells him about the nine levels of state of the art super villain security she’ll have to go through, she continues her story. The three dozen armed security officers stationed on every floor. The genetically enhanced cybernetic attack dogs she’ll have to take out. She had him to her triple standard rate before she even got to the part of the high caliber motion activated sentry guns.
Domino is unaware that all of these have been taken out.
She may have forgotten to mention the massive elevator shaft that leads from the hotel lobby directly to the center. She jumps down the shaft. She knows, right? Easy money.
Given her luck, Domino of course lands softly. She’s confused to find the AIM people taken out and tells Boom Boom she’ll call her back.
What the hell is she doing here? she addresses Hope Summers. Hope has the professor tied up and explains she hacked Domino’s files. She understands he is worth a lot of money. Now the place is pretty crackerjack and obviously she did most of the work. But she hasn’t had much luck finding her dad. She shoves her prisoner at Dom. How does she feel about a trade?
Don’t feel bad, Domino tells the professor. Neither of them stood a chance. She is exactly like her old man.
Said old man is currently threatening Dr. Nemesis in his lab, informing him he needs a doctor. And he’s obviously in no position to argue, comes the reply, but he does realize there are whole buildings full of physicians who don’t have insane security systems and defense drones? (Which Cable has now wrecked.) He needs a weird-science super-genius brain doctor, Cable clarifies. Nemesis grabs his fedora. In that case he’s his man.
They return to the aircraft trash heap as Nemsis calls it, referring to is as a lovely home.
This is where he is? Hope snaps. Seriously? Hi Nate, Domino greets him. Hope continues her rant. She beat her head into the dirt flying all over the stupid world trying to find him and he’s hiding under a junkyard in Nebraska! “I’m your daughter, you old jerk!” she shouts, mimicking his telekinesis and beginning to unconsciously levitate the debris around her.
Nervously, Nemesis points that out to Cable, as well as the possibility she might start throwing things.
She’s supposed to be the first person he calls when he wakes up from his future-coma science death-cocoon, or whatever the hell! Hope snaps. He doesn’t get to watch her from the shadows like a creep!
Forge comes hurrying up, asking what the hell is going on. Omega level temper tantrum, Nemesis replies. Duck and cover!
You come find me! You come get me! Hope shouts. What the &$§? He’s supposed to care! Say something! she orders. “I missed you too, kid,” Cable replies. Every damn day. Hope hugs him and the debris comes crashing down.
He begins to praise her powers but is hit by another excruciating headache. As Hope touches him, she shares his vision of a freighter hitting a coastline and something horrible spilling out.
Later, Hope and Domino watch as Dr. Nemesis and Forge examine Cable. Any ideas what’s wrong? Nemesis is asked who rants that Cable is a terrifyingly powerful telekinetic who’s been unstuck in time since birth. He wouldn’t be surprised if they told him his brain is made of dark matter, calls itself “Nagillium” and tastes like chocolate chip cookie dough. They’ll know more once he’s run some tests, but brain afflictions have all sorts of bizarre symptoms, headaches and psychotic delusions among them.
Hope announces what she saw in Cable’s head was something else. Something big and bad… Domino interrupts that Cable will pull through. He doesn’t say die even if he’s already dead.
Forge adds that, from what little Cable said, he thinks it’s something to do with losing his T-O Virus. That “cure” gummed up his works something fierce. His right eye’s gone, his left arm still there but atrophied bad and when he tries to use it, it flings around like a marionette. Something about always having to use his power to work it under the virus. Now the arm’s just meat and bone, his brain doesn’t know what to do with it.
Cable regains consciousness. Don’t they ever shut up? They’re just headaches, he announces. He changes his tune when he sees the news on TV: a ship has stranded on Miami Beach and some weird matter is spilling out, attacking the people. Why is his fever dream on the news? Hope asks.
