DOCTOR NEMESIS: Page 3 of 4

Publication Date: 7th May 2020
Written By: Gremlin.
Image Work: Gremlin.
Biography

BIOGRAPHY - Page 3

Back on Utopia, Nemesis returned to work and one of the many projects was helping David Haller, aka Legion, catalogue and control the many personalities that resided in his head. Despite reservations from David’s father, Professor Xavier, Nemesis developed a way to separate and then erase each of the unwanted personalities in the boy’s head. Nemesis was pleased with how the procedure was going, but Xavier tried in vain to point out that David’s mind would start to fight back. Not interested in a consult, Nemesis continued with his task of removing the personalities and, sure enough, David’s mind fought back. Using his immense power, a reactive new personality from David's mind called X warped reality and moved all the X-Men into a pocket universe, wiping their minds in the process. Everyone that was, except Doctor Nemesis.

Instead, Nemesis and his entire lab were seemingly frozen in time and he remained hidden from the rest of Utopia, now called Fortress X, while everyone else went about their lives. Soon enough other people began to question the new pocket reality they were in and started to investigate, eventually finding Nemesis frozen in his lab. David was soon confronted with the truth and he altered reality back to the way it should have been, freeing Nemesis from his stasis and leaving him to pick up the pieces of his failed experiment. [X-Men: Legacy #244, Age of X crossover]

Doctor Nemesis’ experiences with alternate dimensions wasn’t over yet and he, once again, became stranded in one alongside the Fantastic Four. The X-Men had received word that an old ally was stuck in the dimension and needed help, so they teamed with the Fantastic Four to go assist. Doctor Nemesis and Mister Fantastic immediately butted heads over the scientific aspects of the mission, with both sides letting their egos get in the way. Eventually, the two managed to work together long enough to build an inter-dimensional gateway, which allowed everyone to get back home safely. [X-Men (3rd series) #16-19]

When Cyclops and Wolverine developed a schism over the way the X-Men should be led, Wolverine left Utopia and invited many members of the X-Men to join him in Westchester. Nemesis and the rest of X-Club chose to stay with Cyclops so they could continue their experiments. Their next scientific pursuit involved them working with a company called Stratocorp to build an elevator into space. After much hard work, the elevator was ready for launch and a press conference was called to mark the occasion. Nemesis paraded his scientific genius to the crowds, knowing full well none of them knew what he was saying. However, his gloating was short-lived when a group of Atlanteans began protesting the elevator and Stratocorp. When one of the Atlanteans seemingly mutated and exploded before everyone’s eyes, Nemesis and Kavita Rao leapt into action to figure out what had happened. The cause was quickly identified as Terrigen-242, an unstable isotope that also caused much of the sea life around the elevator to develop remarkable powers.

The situation for Nemesis turned rather awkward when a telepathic starfish latched itself to his head and began broadcasting his inner-most thoughts for all to hear. While it was initially a scientific curiosity that spurred Nemesis to find a cure, having his secret desire for Kavita revealed gave him a greater urgency to find out what had caused the situation. Pinpointing the greatest concentration of Terrigen-242 at the bottom of the ocean, Nemesis travelled down in a diving suit to investigate the area. As well as finding an abundance of mutated sea creatures, he also discovered that the fabric of reality was warped, with numerous dimensions overlapping each other. Navigating through the area, he soon found the root cause of the whole event, a cargo of Terrigen-242 leaking from a sunken vessel. When he found Stratocorp’s logo on a nearby salvage vehicle, he knew something was up but, unfortunately for him, the head of the company had been monitoring his dive via cameras. Giving the order, he had the men on the surface try to murder Nemesis by cutting the airline to his dive suit. They all under-estimated his resourcefulness, though, as Nemesis commandeered a mutated hammerhead shark, rode it to the surface and then flew it to Stratocorp’s floating base.

Sneaking into the base, Nemesis discovered that Stratocorp was actually run by Nazis and they had been after the Terrigen-242 lost at the bottom of the ocean during WWII. When they found the Terrigen, they also discovered a Nazi scientist had survived alongside it, as it caused him to mutate and become half-phased out of the dimension.  The Nazi, Dr. Frederik Heiden, went insane from the experience and now planned to use the dimensional warping capabilities of Terrigen-242 to rewrite history in favor of the Nazis. Having tricked Nemesis and X-Club into building the space elevator, he intended on using it like a beacon to enact his plan. In an unusual move for him, Nemesis put the fate of the universe before himself and forced Kavita to inject him with the Terrigen. He began to mutate in the same way Dr. Heiden did and was able to access numerous dimensions.

Finding the crazed doctor in the space between realities, Nemesis did what he did best… kill Nazis. Putting an end to Dr. Heiden, Nemesis made his way back to the regular reality and accepted his fate. Fortunately for him, Kavita wasn’t giving up and soon found a cure for the Terrigen in his body. Before she injected him, Nemesis decided to take a cue from the telepathic starfish and declared his feelings for her, or at least his growing tolerance of her presence. After everything had died down, the starfish was removed from his head. Nevertheless, Nemesis did decide to keep it… for scientific purposes of course. [X-Club #1-5]

The X-Men’s time on Utopia came to a close when the team went to war with the Avengers over the threat of the Phoenix Force. Doctor Nemesis found himself in the middle of the action, fighting off the Avengers as well as hunting down the potential Phoenix host Hope Summers. In the end, Cyclops took on the full power of the Phoenix and, in his destructive rampage, damaged the island so much that it began to sink. The X-Men and X-Club all went their separate ways, with Nemesis setting up a lab on his own again. His solitude wasn’t to last, as Cable burst in one day, voicing his dire need for Nemesis’ skills. Cable was suffering from painful headaches that coincided with prophetic visions and they were getting worse. Nemesis decided to help but soon regretted his decision when he discovered Cable’s base was a junkyard in Nebraska. After some initial tests on Cable, Nemesis created an implant that would reduce the intensity of the visions. However, when he went to insert it, he discovered that Cable’s brain was swelling up. With no immediate cure, Nemesis told Cable that he was living on borrowed time.

Thanks to the implant, Cable could see his visions clearer and knew that a deadly event was about to take place in a meatpacking plant. Knowing that something must be done about it, Nemesis was drafted onto Cable’s latest version of X-Force. Cable informed them that the threat in the meat plant was due to a virus, something with which Nemesis was more than adept at dealing with. Despite not knowing anything about the virus, he created a cure that covered as many bases as he could think of. Nemesis and X-Force set off to infiltrate the meat plant but, when they arrived, they realized it was too late and the virus had already been unleashed, infecting all the workers there. Nemesis’ potential cure went out the window and he had to try to develop an antidote on the spot. Knocking out some of the infected, he did a series of experiments on them but all failed. To make it worse, one of his treatments managed to cause the virus to mutate even further. Unable to cure the infected workers while keeping them alive, he only had one option left and that was to completely destroy them. His teammate Colossus objected to the workers being killed, but Nemesis administered his solution nonetheless. The virus was stopped but the workers died as predicted. Surrounded by dead bodies, X-Force was unable to flee the area before the Avengers showed up, looking for answers. Knowing how it looked, Nemesis and the team escaped but were labelled as terrorists and became wanted criminals. [Cable and X-Force #1-4]