Rise of the Powers of X #1

+10 years, the tower of Nimrod the Lesser, the Human-Machine monolith, Earth:
The area surrounding the tower is mostly molten lava. Omega Sentinel kneels next to the diamond corpse of Emma Frost. Nimrod stands next to her.

They really thought they could win, Nimrod scoffs. Omega Sentinel points out they did, where she came from. The mutants burned down the machine firmament with Phoenix fire. They destroyed Nimrod. It’s why they sent her back. It would be a mistake to be too confident.

Nimrod tells her to listen to herself. Mutants didn’t win. She was sent here by the Trickster Dominion. She, the glorious Omega Sentinel, has stopped it. He kicks Emma’s corpse into the lava. It’s as if The Terminator had a happy ending!

The two of them walk toward a teleportation gate as she once again warns him not to be too confident. They did it once - they can do it again! With the handful left? Nimrod scoffs. He thinks it unlikely. The few the hunter killers miss, Stasis’ human/resource brigades turn in for a chance to suck up. Humans are awful. With a smile, she warns him to still worry. Life finds a way. That’s why they have to squash it out as quickly as possible. Can the mutants do anything? he asks. Perhaps, but they are running out of time, she states. Yes, tomorrow everything changes, Nimrod agrees. Tomorrow they will meet their new god. Tomorrow, they become their god.

Meanwhile within Henry Gyrich Memorial Detention Center, also lying in ruins and burning:
On the ground lies a dead Jon Ironfire. The only ones left alive are Mystique and Gambit. Mystique telepathically sends to the Professor that Emma’s sacrifice distraction worked. They got it. Can he hear it? Calling Mystique “mama,” Gambit doubts it. Surface is a long way away. One last trick he learned: every part of him… boom! Mystique orders him to do it, and admits he was a good son-in-law despite everything. He made Rogue very happy. Gambit charges up his own body with kinetic energy and hurls himself at the Sentinel and the obstructed entrance.

After the detonation, Mystique tries to reach out again and passes on the information telepathically. A moment later, she is surrounded by Stark Sentinels. “Irene, I’m coming!” she shouts and fires her guns at them.

On the broken SWORD station in orbit, the Professor (aka a wheelchair-bound Synch), his body ravaged by his power, has received her message and announces to his group of X-Men that they are dead. They’ve got a location he tells the team consisting of Shadow Tiger (what is left of Kate Pryde after consuming the Deathseed), Wolverine, Iron Man (an AI imprint of a long dead Tony Stark) and their leader Captain Krakoa (aka Kamala Khan). She gives the order to move.

Nimrod and Omega Sentinel have returned to the Orchis Forge, where they are expected by Moira X. They look at the nearing Worldmind. Moira muses she has seen one before in her sixth life, one thousand years from now. Omega Sentinel explains she brought the knowledge of the technology from the far future, where the mutants defeated them to the present where they are unprepared. It took five years to build what they needed… and then they aimed it at Mars. Five years of it working… and now they have a Worldmind. It will attract a Dominion who will bring them into the larger whole, as part of a perfect machine outside time and space. Finally safe, Moria mutters while a happy Nimrod cheers: “one more sleep until we meet our god.”

Finally safe? Omega Sentinel asks. Moira must have complicated feelings, all her lives coming to an end. Moira replies, it is simple: All she ever wanted was to be on the winning side. After ten lives she finally is. Nimrod shushes them, as Dr. Stasis joins them.

Moira asks what he wants. He assures them he is not against the A.I. They don’t need to slap him down like Feilong. However, he comes with good news. Another X-team is wiped out. The bad news is they have died breaching certain files, including the personality imprint of Feilong. Didn’t Feilong know where they keep he-who-must-not-be-named? Omega Sentinel gives the order to increase security scans of their base on Phobos.

Phobos:
Kamala’s team has just entered the station. They hope to do their job undetected, but then notice the heightened surveillance. Kamala asks if Tony can handle it. The A.I. tries and gets destroyed. Its last words, as it detonates, are for the others to run.

On the Orchis, Forge they get an intruder alert. Nimrod gives the order to activate the worldmind. He and Omega Sentinel enter the teleportation gate. He tells her she was right. They can lose even now.

Moira handles the activation. Dr. Stasis leaves, wishing her luck. He will rally the human resources.

He leaves, then teleports to the Vault in Ecuador, where he is meeting with one of the Children of the Vault, Cadena. Is it time? she asks. It is, Stasis replies. “If you can’t beat them, join them? As if we can’t beat them!” he scoffs.

On Phobos, Nimrod and Omega Sentinel have joined the Stark Sentinels’ battle against the X-Men.

Nimrod analyzes Kate Pryde’s enhanced abilities thanks to the Death Seed. He aligns his molecular frequency to hers and eliminates Shadow Tiger. He tells Captain Krakoa to look as Mars is destroyed by the worldmind, which achieves its contact with a Dominion - and so a Dominion arrives. Hello, god! Nimrod cheerfully calls up.

Dr. Stasis joins Cadena in the Vault. He admits the AI’s plan was clever. Bringing technology from the future and use ten years to implement that future. But A.I. can’t really have ideas. So, he took what they brought back from the future and fed it to the supreme intelligence he built from humanity’s greatest intellects, and in the Vault they had far longer than ten years to chew over the problem.

His supreme intelligence is constructed of virtual copies of Reed and Valeria Richards, Adam Brashear, Burce Banner, Shuri and at least one alien mind. None of them seem very happy. So, the A.I. are bringing their god here to beg to join it? He suggests they do the human thing instead, and just kill it!

They enter a room, holding a small black globe. Cadena gives the order to activate. The globe is teleported away. When nothing happens, she asks if it is working. Everyone will know in seven minutes, Stasis replies. If the sun goes out, they are golden.

The globe appears near the sun and enters it, initiating and consuming a supernova. Golden it is, Stasis announces.

On Mars, Nimrod stops crowing as he realizes something has happened to the sun. Captain Krakoa asks Synch for a distraction and thanks him. He realizes this last synch will kill him. He decides on synching Apocalypse’s power.

While he attacks Nimrod, Kamala asks Shadowtiger for one last phaseshift. Kate throws Wolverine at their destination. He phases and lands in a cell. He is alive, he states to the cell’s occupant, a Mr. Sinister who has definitely seen better times.

Sinister agrees. Orchis couldn’t risk his having a fail-safe. Immediately, he boasts that of course he has a failsafe, then asks how they are getting out. Having ascertained that there is a fail-safe, Wolverine kills him to end the timeline.

In the meantime, Stasis’ weapon infects the Dominion, blanking all of the Dominion’s constituting intelligences. It is now reduced to pure processing power. Cadena triumphs. Of course, that is the point where Dr. Stasis takes her out. He helped create the Children of the Vault and left in a backdoor. He is aware she will fight this off but, in less than thirty seconds, he will be a god. He adds they are part of his family and he will keep them safe. He begins the upload but suddenly it stops. Another Dominion consumes it. Before he can understand what is happening, Rasputin IV kills him, but she realizes she is too late. Enigma has already… Xavier tells her to get out. The timeline is about to collapse!

Nimrod looks up at the Dominion, a giant face with a crown symbol on its forehead. It is not his A.I. god, he protests. But it is, it replies. Once he was a normal man, now he is an AI. It is Enigma. Their new god. With a thought, he destroys them. Once, he was Nathaniel Essex. He created four versions of himself to find ways to become a Dominion: the mutant, the post-human, the arcane, the alien. All roads would lead to Enigma. The plan was helped by the industrious mutant-clone Sinister. He had made an engine that used Moira’s mutant power to end a timeline whenever he wished it. So, each of those attempts could happen, be consumed and then reset. Watching, Enigma ensured Sinister would never remember timelines when he discovered his peers or their Dominion attempts.

With Sinister’s death, the failsafe activates and the timeline ends.

Rasputin arrives back in No-Place X and apologizes to Charles Xavier for failing. He replies that they succeeded in stopping Stasis’ ascension nine times. That’s better than what they achieved with the other Essex clones. They knew it was likely impossible to prevent the Enigma Dominion from coming into existence, but they had to try. And now they have to walk a harder path.

He turns to the third person in the strange place, Doug Ramsey aka Cypher. Xavier asks how the X-Men’s attacks against Orchis are going. Looking at the screen, Cypher summarizes that they are hitting their primary targets. The SWORD station is deploying. Expect the A.I. to fight back and escalate. None of them really realize what is happening: the X-Men are fighting for tomorrow. While they are fighting for forever! Angrily, he berates Rasputin they cannot (&%§ up like this again. She was meant to be some kind of hero! She is better than this!

Xavier mildly chides Doug that isn’t like him. Krakoa is unwell, so he is presuming it’s that, but he tells Doug to treat Rasputin better. Cypher apologizes to Rasputin. He isn’t himself. The stakes have gotten to him. Enigma is a ghost haunting the timeline and it is petrifying! He’ll let the rest know the bad news. They move to the contingency plan. He leaves.

Rasputin asks what the contingency is. Evasively, Xavier replies that she is their field agent. They have to be careful. She’ll know when she needs to know. Rasputin insists she is careful. Xavier inquires, what if Enigma were to peel the truth from her? Her knowing is too big a risk. Rasputin doubles down. She knows where blindly following somebody gets her. She is not going to do it again! Xavier relents. He wanted to spare her the burden of knowing. He shows her where they will strike. If they succeed, the whole timeline falls apart and the Dominion ceases to be… if they kill Moira before her power activates on her 13^th birthday…