X-Men (7th series) #5

A wooden cabin in the Alaskan wilderness:
Lying in a bed, John Greycrow watches his lover Kwannon get dressed. He tells her she doesn’t have to go. She does, Kwannon insists. Why? he asks, enjoying the view. Because of what – who she is she replies, getting into her X-Men uniform. Like him, she was made to be a tool – a weapon. That’s behind her now but a tool will always need a purpose. And that is what the X-Men provide her.

She doesn’t have to go, he repeats, He doesn’t have to stay, Kwannon shoots back. He doesn’t have to live here alone, paying that awful Amy Voght to teleport him around the world, so he can rob banks. She asks him to come to the Factory. She has a psychic rescue scheduled this morning and will be damned if she lets Quentin Quire tell her she is late.

Later at the Factory, Quentin upbraids her for being late. Annoyed, she points out she is on time. Early is on time, he insists. On time is late! She promises, when he exhausts her patience, she will not even bother to make his murder look like an accident. Because no one will care! Nonchalantly, Quentin points out that Sabretooth cut his head off and carried it around in a box, so her death threat doesn’t exactly have him quaking in his kicks. She reminds him that Sabretooth had no subtlety. She is a trained professional.

They enter the room where Ben Liu sleeps, and Cyclops asks them to not take whatever this is with them into this man’s brain. Psylocke asks for a mission overview. Wake Ben Liu from his coma. Stabilize his mental state. And bring back some hard intel on what activated his X-gene!

They both sit down next to Liu’s bed and hold hands. They begin their psychic journey and find themselves in Liu’s mind, a seemingly alien place with strange buildings and UFOs hanging in the sky.

Quentin sends that this is weird, even for a psychic rescue. Kwannon chides him; they are not to talk during a psychic rescue. Quentin scoffs. He wonders if Liu was actually abducted by aliens. She replies that this is hiding his trauma. They need to go deeper. She slams a psychic dagger into the representation of Liu’s brain. Everything shakes and they fall past flashes of Ben’s memories, showing he used to be a successful businessman.

They enter a memory of Ben driving along the Pacific Ocean highway when what looks like a UFO appears in the sky. Ben is abducted, examined, tortured. While they cannot see who exactly does this, they realize it is people, not aliens. But then one of those people – shadowed, but clearly bald – greets them as ducklings. What is he? Psylocke demands. Something left behind, the shadow replies. To punish any nosy ducklings who might come looking into 3K’s business.

Suddenly, they find themselves drowning in a flood of maggots. Quentin wants to lash out but Kwannon warns him he is too strong. He would fry Liu’s brain.

Next it is Sabretooth who grabs a panicked Quentin and grins that they are going to have some fun.

In reality, Quentin begins bleeding from his eyes.

Kwannon finds herself separated from Quentin and suddenly finds John Greycrow crouching in a corner. She too begins to bleed.

Sabretooth leers at Quentin, noting he should have known he wasn’t done with him. Everyone else leaves Quentin Quire. Wolverine joined the other X-Men. Phoebe went to New York. Even his own parents threw him away like thrash. But Sabretooth will never leave him. He will never get him outta that brain of his. So let’s get that head of his off his neck and back into a box where it belongs!

Elsewhere, Psylocke walks toward Greycrow, crouching on the ground and asks what this is. He tells her this is where they were always going to end up. She was right. They were both made to be weapons. But she was also wrong. There is no getting better for them. The only way a weapon gets better is by killing more people. They are broken… useless. And there is no place in the world for a broken weapon. He holds a gun against his temple. Not far away Quentin hears the gunshot and he realizes this isn’t real. This is all her. He sends to Psylocke that they are trapped in their black bug rooms.

Kneeling next to Greycrow’s body, she sends back she isn’t strong enough to break out. Quentin replies that he is strong enough but not controlled enough. If he uses his power at full scale, Ben Liu dies. He needs her help. He joins her and they work together to put things right.

Reality:
Quentin and Kwannon stagger out of the room, bleeding from several orifices. Quentin tells Beast and Cyclops that Ben Liu is awake. Kwannon adds that they are called 3K. They’ve figured out how to activate the X-gene in abducted flatscans. And Cassandra Nova is one of them.