April 5, 1994:
Lee Forrester sits crouched in the kitchen area of her trawler. She holds a flare gun in her left hand. Tears stream down her face. Her ship has been attacked and all of her crewmembers killed, their skin torn from their bodies. Lee knows he’s coming for her next.
Lee quietly recites a Hail Mary, but is interrupted by Senyaka’s psionic whip smashing through some silverware. Lee lets out a scream and dives for the doorway. Senyaka tells her it’s her duty as captain to go down with the ship and as she breaks for the door he mockingly accuses her of mutiny. Lee manages to evade his whip and turns the corner.
She’s not so lucky, though, as Senyaka manages to lasso her around her neck. He tells her that mutiny is a hanging offense. He emerges from the kitchen keeping her suspended in the air with his whip wrapped several times around her midriff. Senyaka tells her she’s guilty of conspiring with the enemy and for her crimes she will be sentenced to a slow and painful death. Lee wriggles her arm partly free and fires her flare at Senyaka as she tells him she has a few charges of her own. It impacts on his chest and he yells in pain. Lee is flung overboard and ends up in the water. Senyaka yells that she is proving to be as difficult to kill as he is.
Lee sinks to the bottom of the bay. She swims away as fast as she can in the hopes she can lose Senyaka within the murky depths. Something wraps around her ankle and pulls at her. She panics and thinks he’s got her, but then realizes her ankle was caught up in a plant. As she pulls free a shadowy figure can be seen waiting above the water, a shiny glint coming his left eye.
Cable reaches into the water from some sort of hovering disc and pulls her out. She screams between breaths and asks him who he is. Cable tells her to relax and that she’s safe. Lee jerks her arm from his grip and tells him he must be joking. She tells Cable how they threw everything they had at that guy, but he kept coming. Cable asks her whom she’s talking about. Lee jokingly apologizes and says she didn’t have time to ask for his calling card. She pleads with him to take off, but Cable wants her to answer his questions first. He tells her how he intercepted her distress signal to the X-Men and wants to know who she is and what her connection to the X-Men is.
Senyaka’s psionic whip comes forward and smashes the center of the hover-disc. Cable and Lee are knocked off and onto the ground. Senyaka informs Cable that she has very little to do with the X-Men. He steps out of the water and onto the ground. He tells Cable that Lee is the beloved of the man who almost killed him, Magneto.
Lee realizes what this is all about and can’t believe it. During her brief association with Magneto he was a kind and loving man, she remembers. Cable tells Senyaka he received intel from X-Force that he was killed. Senyaka tells him that he did almost die as all of his bones were crushed and most of his organs too. However, he was taken to a S.H.I.E.L.D. medical unit where one of the physicians there touched his body and he immediately siphoned his energy. When two security agents busted in he took their lives too. Cable cuts him off, telling him he can figure the rest out.
Senyaka fires his whip at Cable, which wraps around his wrist. Cable yanks his arm to the side causing Senyaka to go flying. Cable postulates that Senyaka is now seeking revenge on an innocent woman who once held a relationship with Magneto. Cable stands over him and tells Senyaka he should have stayed dead. He points the barrel of his gun a few inches away from Senyaka’s head.
Lee can’t believe what she is seeing. She knows of Xavier’s principles and she doesn’t think he would condone a killing in cold blood. It never gets a chance to happen, though, as Senyaka’s coils emit a psionic backlash that sends pain coursing through Cable’s arm. His gun pops and fizzles after getting fried.
Senyaka releases his whip from Cable’s arm. Cable falls over onto the grass. Senyaka asks Cable why he felt some of his essence through his metal arm. Cable tells him he recently explained this to the other Acolytes and to go ask them. He tells Cable he will have far more to discuss with them when they meet again. Instead, he tells Cable, he will just absorb his psionic essence and find the answers there. He moves in for one last taste, when a log-swinging Lee Forrester hits him from behind. Senyaka hits the ground, unconscious.
She helps Cable up and when he calls her Ms. Forrester, she tells him to call her Lee. She suggests they get out of there, despite Cable’s protests to finish off Senyaka. She asks him where his boat or plane is and he tells her he has neither. Lee asks him how he got there and he tells her about bodysliding. Unfortunately, he tells her, Senyaka’s psionic backlash messed up the communications with his central computer, Professor, and they won’t be able to teleport.
They walk for a bit and take cover near some trees. Cable sits down and gets out some medical supplies to bandage up his wounded arm. Lee asks him where the rest of the X-Men are. She asks him why he didn’t have backup. Cable sarcastically tells her he didn’t want her to die. Lee apologizes for getting mad and hugs him for saving her life.
Lee asks him if it is true what Senyaka said about Magneto trying to kill him. Cable tells her the Magneto she knew is not the same man he read about in his history books. He grabs some nearby tree branches and starts snapping them into smaller pieces. He goes on to say that maybe Magneto was responding to the faith the Acolytes had in him and that he was empowered by having people who believed in him.
Lee can’t believe it. She is in extreme anguish. She tells Cable how she spent months with Magneto and that everything he did was out of love for his own people. Cable tells her Magneto’s different now and is surrounded by a bunch of psychopaths like Senyaka who are eager to kill in his name. Lee begins pounding on Cable’s chest telling him to stop and calling him a liar. She starts crying and asks how everything could have gone so wrong.
Lee gazes into Cable’s eyes and realizes that he possesses the same noble qualities she shared with someone she once loved. She thinks of Magneto and her father, but neither of them fit. Nonetheless, she suddenly feels a trust and mutual respect for Cable. She strokes his cheek as they sit together surrounded by the broken tree branches.
Without warning, Senyaka’s coils snatch Lee away from Cable. He lifts her into the air and drives forward kicking Cable across the face. He tells Cable not to worry about Lee, as he won’t be around to watch. Cable goes flying backward and hits the ground with a thud. Senyaka tells him that after he kills Lee he will continue searching for anyone Magneto has called his own and kill them. He stands over Cable and tells him how the Acolytes had studied him and found that without his big guns he was worthless.
Cable struggles to his feet and rhetorically asks Senyaka about their studies. A half-dozen broken tree branches lift to the air and impale themselves into Senyaka. Cable tells him he must have been a lousy student. He admits to Senyaka that although his telekinetic powers aren’t as advanced as some of his family members, they are still quite effective.
Cable catches the falling Lee Forrester. Senyaka drops to his knees and lets out a gasp of air. Lee hugs Cable around the neck and thanks him, asking him if it is finally over. Cable says they’re both alive, while the bad guy is as dead as he will ever get, however they’re still about a hundred miles from civilization, with no food, supplies, weapons or a way to contact anyone. He tells Lee things have only just begun.
