Siberia

Cable’s face contorted in disgust when he looked at the mindless body that floated in a giant tube in a nutrient bath. Its large, combined red eye stared out, the blue lips on it haunting. A disturbing combination of the genetic material of both En Sabah Nur and Cable’s own father, Scott Summers.

“Cyclopalypse?” asked Cable. He looked to Quietus, the creator, and his eye flashed in anger. “Are you out of your mind?”

“You’re not the first to suggest that,” said Quietus.

“Absolutely not,” said Cable. “We’re not putting Apocalypse in such a dangerous body. We’ll find something else and then we’re going to destroy this abomination.”

“It’s dangerous and a risk, I am well aware of that,” said Sinister. “However, Apocalypse finds this body…appealing. He won’t resist our efforts to place him in it. And once he is there, we can destroy him far easier than if he remains in his present form.”

[Wouldn’t he know of your plan?] asked Prosh.

“Yes, but Apocalypse’s own arrogance makes him believe that he can defeat us if anchored in a form,” said Sinister.

“With a body like this, he may be right,” said Cable.

“You fret more than my grandmother,” said Quietus.

“I’m a hair’s breadth away from disassembling your body atom by atom, so I’d keep my mouth shut if I were you, Quietus,” said Cable.

Quietus grinned and opened a fresh bottle of gin. “You don’t scare me, Cable. I know all about your little virus. Do something like that and you’ll find it raging out of control.”

“This is the only way, Nathan,” said Sinister. “You know that.”

Prosh placed his hand on Cable’s shoulder. [I don’t like this, Nathan. We don’t have to go this route. We can wait things out, find another way.]

“No, he’s right,” said Cable. “If we’re going to stop Apocalypse, we need him anchored in another form. And the only way to do that is to find a form Apocalypse is willing to inhabit. His will may prove too powerful to force out if he doesn’t want to leave.”

[Is there anything you require of me?]

“Just keep a sharp eye.”

Cable then approached Sinister, holding his hands up beside the geneticist’s head. His left eye crackled with his identifiable energy signature, and the entire world began to warp as Cable projected his consciousness inside the mind of Nathaniel Essex, like falling into a dark and dank abyss.

APOCALYPSE TOMORROW

Part III

By Hunter Lambright and Dino Pollard

Once Cable opened his eyes, he found himself standing on the streets of Victorian-era England. He stood up, walking along the cobblestone street. Despite being dressed in his combat uniform, no one who past him on the gaslit streets gave him a second glance.

He came to a crossroads, with a sign for the intersecting road reading “Artisan Alley.” Cable turned and began to walk down it. He passed by several vendors, selling anything from antique dolls to paintings to woodcraftings. But it was the last stall that caught his attention. Several bodies hung in front, many of them of people Cable recognized—Scalphunter, Vertigo, Arclight, Harpoon, Blockbuster and so on. All of them the Marauders. Strung up and lifeless as if they were mannequins.

Cable entered the stall and inside, he saw Sinister as he once was in the Victorian era, wearing a white apron stained with blood and thick, black rubber gloves. He wore glasses over his face as he cut into one of the bodies on the table before him.

“So this is how you see yourself?” asked Cable. “As an artisan?”

Essex looked up at him. “We don’t have time for this. It took you long enough to get here.” He set down the bloodied hacksaw.

“Wait,” said Cable. “You’ve only got your old Marauders strung up here. What happened to Vulcan and the others? Your new Marauders?”

Sinister frowned. “They were failures.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means, Nathan, that they became expendable,” said Sinister. “I have retained their genetic material, perhaps I’ll find use for it at some point in the future. But as for the new Marauders themselves…they outlived their usefulness.”

Cable grimaced. “You mean you killed them.”

“Death is never the end, Nathan, just the beginning of something else. I understand that better than anyone.” Essex pulled the clone’s body shut, sewing it up and then stood, removing his gloves. As he pulled the last glove off, Essex transformed into the familiar visage Cable recognized him by. He stepped out onto the cobblestone street and gestured further into the darkness, the light growing dimmer down the road.

“Come, I implore you to lead the way.”

Cable moved first into the darkness, slowly making his way down the path with Sinister by his side. “Your mind is a very strange place,” he said.

“It is simply my domain, nothing more, nothing less,” said Sinister. “No more strange than any other mind I have ever encountered.”

“Interesting that you chose Victorian England as the way you view yourself in here. Why is that?”

Sinister gave no change in expression. “You are the psychic, Nathan. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Maybe this was the only time you can remember being happy. Back when you still had something resembling a soul.”

“You think me a monster, I understand that. But I am not an evil man, Nathan. I am simply driven by scientific curiosity.”

“And unrestrained by morality or ethics.”

Sinister waved his hand in dismissal of Cable’s statement. “Morals and ethics are nothing more than man-made constructs. They serve no purpose other than to restrain progression. To learn more about this world and what our place is in it, we cannot allow ourselves to be shackled by these chains you call morality.”

“As a scientist, you have a responsibility to your people,” said Cable. “A responsibility to find the truth, to show us what we can be.”

“And that is exactly what I do. If not for my work, many of your so-called superheroes would not be here today. I helped give birth to this Age of Marvels.”

“…what do you mean by that?” asked Cable.

Sinister offered a slight grin. “I suspect you will discover soon enough.” He looked at Cable. “However, do you not see the irony in this discussion?”

“And what would that be?”

“You are a soldier, Nathan. You bring death and destruction. I create life and progression. Which of us is the true monster?”

“You’re oversimplifying,” said Cable.

“Am I? Tell me, why have you agreed to help me?”

“Because Apocalypse is too dangerous to live in any form and I want to see to it he’s destroyed once and for all,” said Cable.

“Now who’s guilty of oversimplification?” Sinister smiled. “Be honest with yourself, Nathan. After Apocalypse’s death, you had no purpose, nothing to fight for. And now that the X-Corps have been disbanded, you have even less of a purpose. You were raised in this belief that you would be a messiah. And now that you have conquered your devil, what’s left for you?”

“You’re insane.”

“Am I?” asked Sinister. “Tell me, how is your old friend Blaquesmith these days?”

Cable winced at that remark. His mentor, Blaquesmith, went a little mad following Apocalypse’s destruction. He began to believe in a false prophecy involving twelve mutants meant to battle a mythical Japanese entity called Amatsu. They began spying on these so-called Twelve, even kidnapping some of them and holding them in stasis against their will until Cable finally had enough.

He had not seen Blaquesmith since, but the old man’s final words, that he would continue alone, still haunted the Askani’Son.”

“No response, I see,” said Sinister.

“We haven’t spoken in some time,” said Cable.

“Don’t live behind delusions, Nathan. You want Apocalypse back, you need a war to fight. Otherwise, you barely find reason to get up in the morning, isn’t that true?”

Cable felt a change in the terrain and looked down, seeing sand beginning to appear on the cobblestones. As they continued to walk, they found themselves in the desert. Cable looked around in surprise but Sinister appeared unfazed.

“The desert expands continuously here,” said Essex. “My mind is evidently divided in half now. We have entered Apocalypse’s domain.”

They continued through the desert until something appeared in the distance, a broken statue of Ramses II. Sinister began to speak, reciting the lines from Shelley’s famous poem: “’I am Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.’” He looked at Cable. “Seems appropriate for one such as Apocalypse, does it not?”

Cable continued over the sand, noticing something large and blue at the base of the statue. As he came closer, the figure of Apocalypse looked up at him and snarled. Cable resisted the urge to draw his weapon and instead noticed the chains which kept Apocalypse restrained. However, the links of the chains were not made of iron, but rather of interlinked tea cup handles.

“What is this?” asked Cable.

The chains rapidly rose from the sand and the scenery seemed to change again, to an image directly out of Lewis Carroll’s imagination. They stood in a garden with a large table that had a tea pot and cups lined along at each of the seats.

“Wonderland,” said Apocalypse.

“Oh dear, it seems my mind took that part literally…” Sinister looked off to the side. “And it also seems there are some other residents.”

Cable followed Sinister’s gaze and saw several warped versions of characters from Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. Among them was a grinning Cheshire cat the size of a tiger, a mad hatter with the rim of his hat made from a buzz saw, a white rabbit swinging a watch from a heavy gold chain, and a queen of hearts with a sledgehammer.

The Psimitar flew into his hand and extended to its full length. Cable threw a glance at Sinister. “Aren’t you going to help?”

Sinister smiled as he took a seat at the table and sipped from one of the teacups. “Nathan, this is your fight. I am simply a guide through the recesses of my mind.”

“You’re a lot of help,” muttered Cable.

The white rabbit struck first, hurling his chain out. Cable jumped to the side, the massive watch like a boulder as it struck the ground. Yet the rabbit raised it effortlessly once more, twirling it for another swing.

Cable moved to strike at the rabbit, but the mad hatter came at him from the side, throwing his hat like a Bond villain. Nathan bent backwards, his hands flat on the ground and his chest pointing towards the sky as the hat with the buzz saw rim flew overhead. Once it was gone, Cable rocked back on his hands and sprung up to his feet and saw the mad hatter already removing a second hat. Beneath it was a third, impossibly the same size.

Cable blasted the hat out of the air as it flew towards him, vaporizing it. He jumped when he caught sight of the rabbit’s watch flying towards him out of the corner of his eye. Cable leapt onto it, clinging to the watch as it spun around and them jumped from it at just the right moment. He raised the Psimitar and brought it down in a stabbing motion, plunging it through the rabbit’s head. The anthropomorphic animal shrieked in pain before vanishing.

The mad hatter prepared for another strike, but gagged. Cable turned to him and saw Apocalypse standing behind the hatter, strangling the psionic construct with his own chains. Apocalypse pulled harder on the chains and soon enough, the hatter collapsed and vanished.

Next came the Cheshire cat, leaping directly at Cable. He fell back, holding his Psimitar up, the staff lodged inside the cat’s mouth to prevent it from biting down. Cable’s eye flashed and the cat went flying right into the queen of hearts. As Cable approached them, the white rabbit’s discarded watch rose into the air and he began to spin it with his psionic abilities. It flew at the cat first, crushing it.

The queen was gone and Cable could not detect any of their presences in Sinister’s mind. Then came a war cry and Cable turned, raising his Psimitar to defend himself from the queen’s sledgehammer. She pulled back and swung at Cable’s side. Each strike he managed to deflect with his own weapon, before he moved in and struck her with the blunt end. She brought the hammer down again but Cable blocked it and then used his Psimitar to guide the hammer crashing to the ground. Then, he twisted and snapped the hilt loose from the hammer.

The queen turned and ran but Cable raised the Psimitar and unleashed a powerful burst of psionic energy, striking her in the back and eliminating her from the battlefield. He heard a slow clap and looked at the source.

“Brava Nathan,” said Sinister. He relaxed and raised his tea again, sipping from it once more. “However, I think you have other problems to worry about.”

Cable saw others rushing towards the battlefield, other denizens of Sinister’s mind. He went to Apocalypse and raised the Psimitar, slamming it down on the cup handle chains and shattering them.

When Nathan awoke, he was on the floor in Quietus’ laboratory. He got to his feet but saw no trace of Quietus, Prosh or Underhand, Quietus’ bodyguard. It was just him and Sinister, who still remained unconscious. And in the tube, the monstrosity Quietus called Cyclopalypse remained motionless and Nathan detected no brain activity.

As Cable moved into the next room, he was greeted with a shock. Quietus, Prosh and Underhand were each surrounded by members of the Clan Akkaba, including the two Cable had faced off against—Anais and Decibel. The other figure was large, clad in golden armor with what looked to be a mohawk. Looking at the man’s visage, it didn’t take Cable much to discover why he was here.

“Askani’Son, you have one chance to live,” said Armageddon. “Where is my father?”

KRSH

Cable just smiled at the sound of breaking glass and then, he erected a shield around himself and Prosh as the wall behind him was destroyed by a burst of concussive energy. Armageddon looked up in shock at the figure who now inched menacingly towards him. Crimson energy seeped from the creature’s large, single eye and he smiled as he said:

“Apocalypse lives!”