X-Men: From the Ashes Infinity Comic #5

Sally Floyd is in the office of her boss, Ben Urich, trying to convince him of her theory. She tells him to look at the names on the Agnew’s crew list. Urich sighs that she is reaching. So Xavier had a thing for Arthurian romances. Some of the Agnew crew had similar names to some of those authors. It’s weird, sure, but he is not seeing the Watergate Tapes.

She begs him to look again. Every one of the bridge crew has one of those fancy “ren faire” names. And the names aren’t similar; they are exactly the same!

Urich orders her to stop. That wasn’t the assignment. Saly snaps back, you don’t hire someone like her for a hack job. He does if she is a drunk! he shouts and slams his fist on the desk. He adds that Worthington called him this morning, revealing she came to their meeting an hour late, reeking of mouthwash and quote: “sweating like a senator who’s just seen the polaroids.” He’s worried about her; they are all. Sure, Sally mutters. He knows she wants to forget Hydra, Minnie’s death, all of it. As he continues talking, she begins to sob. He warns if she is not careful, she will forget herself.

Leaving the building, Sally now knows Ben gave her the job out of pity. Word gets around fast. She is unhireable. She is not mad. Ben is a good friend and boss, but he has forgotten who she really works for.

She gets a message by an anonymous source, telling her she was right about the Agnew, and to meet them by the 69^th street transfer bridge at 2 pm.

She works for the truth!

Finally, at the meeting point, she is expected by a shorthaired blonde with glasses, who remarks skeptically that Sally looks different than her picture. Sally sighs, she gave her stylist a day off and demands who she is. Captain Alice Bakker, the woman reveals. She is a medic for air force space command in DC, then announces she and Sally have been emailing for two weeks.

More blackouts, Sally realizes horrified, as if half her life were lived by another person.

Trying to save face, Sally pretends to know what the woman is talking about and asks her to tell her what she has.

Alice repeats what she has told Sally before: her team was responsible for assessing the Agnew’s crew’s fitness to fly. But, when she tried to pull the physical and psychic assessments for Sally… poof… all gone - erased. Amateurishly, she might add. When Alice recovered the data, she assumed it had been corrupted, because the assessments weren’t as she remembered them. Not even close. Not even… human. She’s seen more gray matter in chihuahuas! But if the brains were impossible, the bloods were unthinkable. Identical mitochondrial DNA in every sample! As if every crew member was related down the matrilineal line. She kept asking herself: how could they have forgotten all this? Then she found out who erased the files.

She did it herself, Sally guesses. Something’s wrong here, Alice pleads. She can’t eat. She can’t sleep. She begs Sally to find out what happened.

Staten Island:
One ferry trip and a taxi ride later, Sally is outside the home of Agnew’s security officer, Gail Dryden. She looks at the derelict house but sees no sign of life.

She is about to ring the doorbell, when from nearby a woman addresses her and shouts that a real astronaut used to live there. Sally asks if she knew Gail Dryden. She’d like to ask her a few questions. The woman repeats what she said before. She starts to grin creepily and her nose begins to bleed.

A moment later, two feral dogs appear and seem to attack Sally out of nowhere. But Sally has had enough psychic training to realize those dogs aren’t real, though her body can’t help reacting with terror. She turns away and the dogs are gone.

Later at home, Sally calls Alice Bakker to tell her that the address she gave her was a derelict home. The other woman is surprised and asks who she is. Sally reminds her and gets told off before the other woman ends the call.

While drinking, Sally tries to figure this out. She can explain her own memory gaps, but those of other people? She notices something on the ground and looks under her couch, finding several bloody tissues. She recalls Urich had a whole wastepaper basket of those. Warren had a nosebleed, as did the creepy neighbor.

That moment, Charles Xavier stands behind her and suggests it is about time they had a talk.