New York, NY

{All clear, Dominic. You ready for this?}

Dominic Petros sighed as he slid the silver helmet onto his head. “Girl, I’ve been doing this since you were in diapers. Now get the hell out of my head… please.”

Stepping out of the back of the unmarked van, Dominic stretched his arms forward, cracking his interlocked fingers through the thick leather of his gloves. He smiled slightly as he started the walk forward, his destination the glass doors of a building sandwiched between a school and a church. Collateral damage was something he’d have to watch out for, but he couldn’t force himself to be too concerned. He’d murdered children for fun back in the old days, and while he had changed since then—well, old habits still died hard.

As he approached the glass, a woman’s muffled gasp inside was prompted by the raising of his open hand. The glass shuddered and then exploded, sending a flurry of razor shrapnel in all directions. Confidently, Petros strode inside, his eyes scanning over the lobby that was filled with frightened and confused humans.

“I’m looking for Jeryn Phelps,” Dominic announced to the assembled employees of CNN Studios, “and I’m feeling pretty impatient.”
“Stop right there!” a security guard ordered as he emerged from the opening elevator door, gun drawn in shaky hands. Three more guards entered the lobby through various points of egress, each one armed and advancing one step at a time. “Put your hands up, buddy,” the first guard ordered again, “don’t do something we’re all gonna regret tomorrow.”

Petros smirked, his mouth the only visible facial feature due to his steel helmet. “Funny,” he said as he raised his hands, seemingly in acquiescence to the guard’s order, “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

Pushing his hands forward in a fluid motion, Dominic unleashed his power. To the surprise of the four guards, the concrete floor buckled and flowed toward them, almost like a wave of water. Out of fear more than anything else, the guns still held began to fire forth bullets, all bouncing harmlessly off the approaching wall of rock. At the last moment, the wave flattened back out beneath the guards’ feet, leaving them to look down in astonishment.

“Now, get out of my way,” Dominic requested as he turned his palms outward and stretched his arms. The floor buckled again, this time splitting down the middle directly beneath the area upon which the guards stood. The four men were tossed to the side like toys discarded by a small child, each of them colliding hard with the floor and walls of the building.

With a confidence backed up by strength, Petros walked through the devastation caused by his hand. Reaching one of the huddled young girls that worked as a receptionist, he knelt down on one knee and lifted her head to his by her chin. “What’s your name, girl?”

“Vanessa,” she whispered, close to tears.

“I’d like you to tell me, Vanessa,” he said, his voice calm and steady, almost tender, “where to find Jeryn Phelps. Please?”

“25th floor,” she said before averting her eyes from him, “he’s on the 25th floor.”

“Thank you,” Dominic said as he stood. With a glance at the ceiling, he raised one hand skyward — and the ceiling of each floor above him exploded upward, creating a vertical tunnel all the way to his destination. Then, with his other lowered hand, the floor beneath him began to crack and shake. Suddenly, the floor erupted, lifting him rapidly through the path he’d created via a column of solid earth.

Within moments, Petros was on the 25th floor of the studio, his pathway sealed off by the column he’d ridden to the top. More guards came toward him, but were blown backward by another shockwave released from his hands. Glancing at the map of offices affixed to the wall, Dominic located his target and walked forward. As he reached the room he was searching for, he balled his hand into a fist. In response, the walls surrounding his target dissolved, turned to dust by the mutant.

“Oh my god!” the grey-haired man sitting behind the desk exclaimed, standing quickly. “What is the meaning of this? Who are you?”

“Jeryn Phelps,” Petros began, the homo-sapien before him floored by another burst of pure force that caused him to mate violently with the wall behind him, “last month you aired an episode of your news show. As a pundit, you used your influence to denounce the cause of homo-superior. You claimed that we were a disease, a virus that needed a cure…is this correct?”

“Yes, yes it’s true,” Phelps replied, trying hard to keep his voice from cracking or wavering, “and I was right to say such things. Look at you, coming here to intimidate and threaten me! Your so-called ‘mutation’ makes you think you’re superior to me, when all you are is a mistake of nature.”

“Well, you’ve made a fatal mistake, Mr. Phelps,” Dominic answered as he raised his hands once again. “Because the X-Men won’t let you slander our species. And by the way, I don’t just think I’m superior—after all, it’s in the name of our species. Homo superior… and you are just a talking monkey.”

“No, please,” Jeryn Phelps, CNN reporter close approaching his 15th year on the air, begged for his life.

Dominic Petros, the mutant also known as Avalanche, narrowed his eyes and spread his fingers toward the defenseless man before him. The floor beneath Phelps cracked like a whip, throwing him backward with tremendous force — throwing him through the dissolved outer wall of the building. Dominic listened to Phelps’ screams as he fell down all 25 floors of the CNN Studio building…

And knowing that it was time he took his leave, Avalanche turned to leave the calling card — the most important part of his mission. The floor and walls twisted and crumpled under his power, and after a brief moment of shaping Petros was satisfied with his creation.

As a tidal wave of stone carried him away from the building, he allowed himself a final look back. Carved out of the concrete, glass, and steel of the building — displayed larger than life on the edifice of the CNN offices — was a large single letter that represented the new cause to which Dominic had pledged himself to.

“X”

IRON HELL

Part I

By Chris Munn

Jeryn Phelps screamed as fell, passing each floor of the CNN offices on his way down to meet violently with the pavement. In his terror, his primal fear of dying buried deep within his racial memory, he quickly thought of the old idea of one’s life flashing before their eyes at the moment of their death. All he saw was the onrushing concrete that promised to turn him into a blast of red paste upon brutal contact. So he closed his eyes and began to pray.

{Please relax, Mr. Phelps} the girl in his brain advised, {you’re in good hands}

“I’m not dead?” the pundit mumbled as he cracked open his right eye, only to find himself hovering somewhere between the second and third floor of the skyscraper, the pavement like a widened maw beneath him. “I’m not dead!”

That’s when he saw her, floating in a halo of crimson flame, her arms folded across her breasts. Through the wayward strands of red hair in front of her face, he could see her glowing eyes — narrowed eyes stabbing deep with hate and accusation. {That’s still up in the air} she said without moving her lips {pun really fucking intended}

“Please, please, please,” Phelps pleaded, his arrogance from before replaced with stark terror, “don’t kill me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

{The X-Men only warn you once, Mr. Phelps} she spoke, her voice like a symphony in his mind {and we’ll be watching you}

And with that said, the young girl named Rachel Summers moved her eyes over to the closest window — causing the glass to warp and distort as it shattered inward. With a casual toss, the older man was sent flailing inside, expressing his frightened gratitude with as much air as he could muster. Once he was safely inside, she lifted herself higher into the sky and increased her speed of flight in the direction her teammate had escaped.

{Avalanche, this is Phoenix} she said as her brow furrowed in annoyance {you weren’t supposed to kill him. We were only here to scare him}

When no mental reply came, Phoenix gritted her teeth and continued on, determined to make her point crystal fucking clear when she caught up with him.

Northern Australia

Sweat had began to bead and roll down his bare arms, his long black hair beginning to stick to his face and shoulders due to the thick humidity in the air. Slowly he crept through the large patch of fauna, knife held blade down and ready to strike at a moment’s notice. The man’s dark brown, almost red, skin glistened in the Outback sun, but his most striking feature was the black war-paint adorning his face. The symbol of the eagle was to be worn with pride, and James Proudstar was nothing but proud of his heritage.

As he approached the small glade at the edge of the brush, James moved slow and cautiously, his body gliding with a grace belied by his large muscular form. James was a mutant blessed with an abundance of physical skills, but nothing made him happier than the ability to track and hunt—a practice first started alongside his older brother, John. John Proudstar, also called Thunderbird, had been dead and gone for years, noted as one of the first X-Men to die in battle. James had cursed the creators the day the news of his brother’s death reached him and his tribe, but that was only the precursor to the tragedy to come.

James was the last of his people, his once fierce tribe of Apaches slaughtered to the last child by the mercenaries of a madman called Stryfe. He’d flailed around wildly following that heinous act, bouncing from group to group in an effort to find a new tribe to call his family. Most recently, he’d become part of the Australian branch of the X-Corps—but even here, in one of the most savage places on the face of the Earth, he felt unfulfilled.

But all thoughts of his past were pushed away as he descended into the waist-deep water, his movements causing the river inlet to ripple and wave. His prey was close—the saltwater Estuarine crocodile, known for attacking humans with little to no provocation. No sooner than he spotted the reptilian predator, the giant killer leapt from the murky depths, razor jaws bearing down on him.

With supernatural speed, James caught the monster’s lower jaw with his outstretched palm, snapping its mouth closed while the beast’s weight slammed against him. The crocodile, realizing that its newfound prey would not go down easily, went into what had been coined the “death roll”, twisting Proudstar’s body as it attempted to drag him under the water.

With a flex of his immense bicep, James snapped the crocodile’s neck—while at the same time his hunting knife found itself jammed deep into the animal’s underbelly. Crippled and injured, the still-fighting reptile was disemboweled by the upward thrust of Proudstar’s knife, releasing torrents of blood into the salty water.

As James emerged onto the shore, the dead lizard drug behind him, he threw back his head and allowed the piercing war-cry of his people to escape his throat. Once again, as the creators intended, the Apache had proven its dominance over the majesty of the animal kingdom—and James gave into the grim knowledge that the only thing he had ever been good at in his life was violence.

“Very good, Jimmy,” a voice said from a few feet away, punctuated by a rhythmic series of hand claps, “it’s good to see you haven’t lost your touch.”

James sheathed his knife and turned toward the newcomer, his voice immediately recognizable. His name was Alex Summers, brother to the first X-Man, Cyclops, and a fellow member of the inter-continental X-Corps organization. “You’re a long way from Europe, Alex,” Proudstar said, casual indifference to the visitor evident in his tone, “so something tells me this isn’t a social call, is it?”

“Actually,” Alex answered, “what could be more social than two men talking about the future? I’m not with X-Corps anymore, James. I’ve started a new group of X-Men, and I hope you’ll take a walk with me so I can persuade you to join us.”

James stared at his fellow mutant with cold, dead eyes for several long moments before he finally replied. “Let’s take a walk, then…”

New York, NY

Rain had started to fall on the city, only a handful of square miles and a full revolution around the clock’s minute hand away from the X-Men’s attack on the CNN building. As the humidity began to climb with the descending moisture, the pedestrians littering the crowded sidewalks along 10th Avenue quickened their pace to reach their respective shelters.

It was the small boy, led in hand by a mother more attentive to her cell phone than her child, who noticed it first as his eyes drifted to the darkening sky. Contrasted against the black storm clouds high above the towering buildings was a figure composed of crimson, crackling flame—a trail of fire setting oxygen molecules alight behind them.

“Mom!” the boy exclaimed, pointing up while tugging on his mother’s arm. “Look, Mom! It’s the Human Torch! MOM…!”

The boy’s mother shushed her offspring as she cupped her palm over the phone receiver, irritated at her child’s interruption. At his insistence, she jerked her head up to catch what had excited him so thoroughly. The Fantastic Four were a common sight in the city, especially in Manhattan, but she could still begrudgingly accept why the thought of seeing a real superhero would thrill a young boy. As the flaming figure neared closer to the street, however, the mother’s brow furrowed in worry and concern.

“Daniel,” she said as she took a few hasty steps backward, pulling him with her, “that’s not the Human Torch…”

Cackling, seemingly inhuman laughter tore free from the throat of the flaming being as it streaked overhead, the heat from its body enough to press down on the onlookers like a physical force. Beneath the corona of flame that surrounded the monster’s entire body was nothing but a charred, blackened skeleton of burnt bone. While its sex was indistinguishable, the creature was actually a young woman—her name, the only one she allowed others to know, was Fever Pitch.

She was a mutant, and she had a mission to fulfill.

With her dramatic entrance having scattered the assembled throng of passersby, the young mutant lass flew toward the glass doors of an adjacent high-rise hotel. The glass and metal of the doors melted and bubbled into blisters as she approached, providing her with an egress fully opened by the time she flew through. The concierge and desk staff for the lodge freaked out appropriately as the flaming skeleton landed in the center of their foyer, her feet causing the tiled floor to pool into steaming liquid.

“Hey sexy,” she addressed the young, male desk clerk, her voice—while unmistakably feminine—sounding like a roaring furnace, “I heard that there’s a guy named Douglas Gross staying here?”

“The Senator…?” the concierge, a timid female hiding partly behind her information podium, asked.

“Room 1102, but he’s not h-here right n-now,” the stunned and stammering clerk—Roy, as named by the tag on his shirt—said, his shaking hand lifting a room key toward the freakish mutant in front of him, “k-k-key?”

“No thanks,” Fever Pitch answered as she lifted her skull to look at the ceiling, “I’ll make my own way in.”

With that said, the pyrokinetic mutant exploded into the air, her flame burning a tunnel through each floor of the hotel until she reached the eleventh. Turning fluidly after emerging from the melted floor, she flew down the hall, singing wallpaper as she streaked by. When she finally arrived at room 1102, she stopped on a dime and extended her hand, index finger pointing toward the oak door. Flame burst from her fingertip, the heat that struck the door so intense that it vaporized the wood into ash near instantaneously. As she entered the Senator’s room, each footstep causing small fires to break out on the carpet, she chuckled to herself.

“Too bad you’re not here,” she remarked to the absent politico, “so I could do this to you instead of just your room. Hope you get the message, fucker.”

She stopped dead center in the hotel room, and after raising her arms in a Y stance she allowed her unnatural flame to flare outward from her body. The effect was akin to a small bomb being detonated in the room, incinerating every stitch of furniture and personal effects. Following this, she stretched a skeletal arm back behind her while walking toward the window. Another jet of flame shot forward, burning her carrying card into the already-charred floor.

Exploding out the window and taking flight, she allowed herself a look back at her handiwork and the symbol she’d left behind.

“X”

Northern Australia

She watched their approach from the small table on the edge of the pool, the harsh sun blocked from view by the large umbrella ascended into the sky above her. She didn’t mind the heat, as her scaled reptilian skin provided her with adequate protection from the environment—no, what was making her sweat was the rather large hunk of man striding toward her table like a lion.

“James, I’m sure you remember my traveling companion,” Alex said while waving his hand in the direction of the young woman sitting beneath the umbrella. Proudstar nodded and took the girl’s outstretched hand in his, shaking it cautiously so as not to accidentally snap her thin arm like a twig.

She smiled, while James felt a slight electric sensation shoot up his arm from the point where her hand made contact with his. “How could he forget?” Stacy said with a wink, “Nice to see you again, handsome.”

“Down, girl,” Summers ordered, a slight smirk on his face, as he sat down next to his female partner, “James here doesn’t need any more reasons to kick our pitch to the curb.”

“I’m not professing to even be interested, Alex,” James interjected as he, too, took a seat, across from his two visitors. “While it’s true that I’m not all that happy with X-Corps, what makes you think I’d sign up for the X-Men? No offense to you or your brother, but the X-Men as a concept seems a little—hrm—outdated, maybe?”

“You’d be surprised how much I agree with that statement,” Alex began, his hand reaching for the pencil and small pad of paper resting on the table between them, “and—with all respect to Scott—what I’m proposing is about as far out of the X-Men’s realm of perception as the Shi’ar Galaxy is to the modern New Yorker. This world doesn’t need mutants as superheroes anymore, James; not even as soldiers like the X-Corps. The face of the planet is changing, growing darker for our kind, and I’m afraid of what the future will become if someone doesn’t stand up and draw a line in the sand.”

“And that someone is you?” James countered.

Alex smiled and nodded, scribbling a bit on the pad of paper as he began to speak again. “Scott isn’t interested in taking this to the next logical level. He’s happy just burying his head in the sand, naively hoping that one day humanity will just wake up and realize mutants are their brothers. I’m more afraid of being herded into a gas chamber or winding up the subject of another mutant super-soldier experiment. You know it’s possible, and I know that it’s only a matter of time before the world governments decide to stop fighting us with kid gloves on.”

“You know who you sound like, Mr. Summers?” James asked as he crossed his fingers together, elbows resting on the table. “This is something I could imagine coming from Magneto, not the brother of Cyclops.”

Havok’s tone, his expression, changed with that statement—the jovial, nice façade slipping in the form of eyes narrowed into a stare at the scribbled sketch on his paper. “Charles Xavier is dead, James—killed not by an evil mutant, but by his own hand. He realized that his dream was actually a nightmare, and that revelation shattered him. If the man that brought us together couldn’t handle the truth, why should we be expected to follow in his footsteps?”

And to his surprise, James sat in silence—unable to argue. Slapping down the pen onto the glass tabletop, Summers spun the slip of paper over to the Apache warrior. Drawn on the sheet was an X enclosed in a circle, the points of the X protruding from the outline as lightning bolts.

“What say you?”

New York City
Exact Location Unknown

His mind was shining like a snow-capped summer day, the truth of his thoughts illuminating the psychic and physical planes like a million watt spotlight. With his legs crossed, Kuan-Yin Xorn floated several feet from the floor of the dimly-lit warehouse, held aloft by a negation of gravity surrounding his body.

When he was but a child, the Asian man now called merely Xorn experienced the birth of his mutation—the activation of the x-factor gene ingrained within his body. His brain transformed into a star, bright as any in the heavens, and his head exploded into a floating orb of skull and tissue fragments. Gravity was his to control, but with his healing gifts came a terrible curse—to look upon the face of Xorn meant death.

So, out of fear as much as anything else, the communist government of his country locked him away inside a prison deep within the wilds of China. It was called Feng-Tu, and it was there that Kuan-Yin spent the majority of his life, his beautiful star trapped beneath a mask of iron. It was to the thanks of his American brothers that he was now free to walk amongst the flowers and fresh air once again. His only regret that, in return, his pacifist nature was forced to betrayal with each battle he fought.

With luck, that would change.

“In the teachings of Buddha-Dharma,” he said to the three individuals making their way down the staircase behind him, “there are Four Noble Truths. The fourth of these speaks of Marga, the path that leads one out of this impure material plane and into nirvana. This is the Noble Eight Fold Path.”

“Is that the path we’re on now, Xorn?” Rachel Summers asked innocently as she took a seat in a folding chair pulled telekinetically from its resting place against the farthest wall.

“The second Rule is Samudaya, that the cause of all suffering in this mortal world is desire,” Kuan-Yin answered, the blue luminescence of his star shining through the eye-holes of his skull-like mask. “Though our desire to help our fellow mutants is virtuous, it nevertheless is leading us farther and farther from nirvana. This disturbs me greatly.”

“And here’s to spirituality being a huge crock of shit,” Fever Pitch said, a snorting laugh punctuating her offensive statement.

“Respect the man’s beliefs, girl,” Avalanche advised as he moved past the flaming skeleton, helmet resting cradled in his right arm, the sweat on his brow dripping furiously onto his leather uniform. “I may not prescribe to them any more than you, but he’s got as much a right to believe as we do not to.”

“My thanks, Mr. Petros,” Xorn stated as he unfolded his legs and allowed his feet to touch the ground, “how went your missions?”
“Great!” Fever Pitch exclaimed.

“5 by 5,” Avalanche agreed.

Rachel sighed loudly and stood with her hands placed on her hips, cocked to the right—her body language and posture telling her opinion before she even opened her mouth. “You two could’ve killed people out there today,” she shouted, “and Jeryn Phelps would have died had I not been there to save him. What’s wrong with you two? Alex said to just scare these people, not send them away in body bags!”

“What good is terrorism,” Dominic answered, “if we don’t back up our threats? You signed onto this group with the same mandate as the rest of us, Ms. Summers—don’t get squeamish now that you’re finally finding out what this mission calls for.”

“I’m sorry I’m not as good at indiscriminate terror as you, Avalanche,” Rachel spat. “I’ve seen more horror than you can imagine, in the future world where I grew up—a world where mutants were exterminated like cattle by Sentinels! Keep in mind, I have you—and Mystique and the rest of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants—to thank for kicking off that nightmare future.”

“Please, my fellow X-Men,” Xorn interrupted while stepping between the growing anger of his two teammates, “we have more important things ahead of us.”

“Yeah, what have you been doing while we grunts were out keeping it real?” Fever Pitch asked, her tone intentionally mocking.

“For decades,” Xorn continued, “I was held captive in a prison for mutants. It was called Feng-Tu, and it was a facility created by my own country of China to hold those they feared. My friends, Feng-Tu was not the only—nor the worst—place of imprisonment for mutants in the Asian countries. I have learned of a death camp, a house of slaughter where those of our genome are imprisoned, in Cambodia—founded by the Khmer Rouge.”

“So a rescue mission, then?” Dominic asked.

Xorn shook his head slowly. “I am sorry to say, X-Men, that vengeance for all murdered within those walls must be ours to deliver…”

Westchester, New York
Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters

While the student body of the only mutant-exclusive school in America wandered by, some rushing to make it to their next class before the ten minute travel period expired, a television was being watched in the common area. Domino, one of the X-Men who was not known for lingering amongst the students, sat on the couch with her legs held up to her chest.

“This really doesn’t make us look good,” she commented to the man sitting next to her.

The national news, broadcasted by CNN, was reporting a scene of destruction witnessed only hours previous in the station’s own offices. While a reporter droned on about the miraculous survival of a pundit caught in the eye of the terrorist strike, the camera focused on the edifice of the building. A giant X had been formed on the building’s face—and, understandably, the reporter came to the logical conclusion.

“This act was seemingly perpetrated by an agent attached to a group of mutants known only as the X-Men.”

“What are we going to do?” Domino asked. When no reply came, she turned her head away from the television. “Scott, did you hear me?”

Scott Summers leaned forward, watching the television intently through the ruby quartz of his glasses. “We’re not going to do anything, Domino,” he finally answered, “not until we know more.”

Cambodia
The Cardamom Mountains

Slowly his eyes fluttered open. He felt the pain in his wrists first, deep cuts carved along his flesh where the manacles had held his unconscious body in a vertical position. No blood was visible, despite the massive amount of raw wounds covering his half-clothed body—but that was no surprise, at least not for him. For his captors, his torturers, it was assured that his lack of blood had proven quite the “scientific” interest.

Science, to his captors, consisted of horrific experiments. He’d re-grown three fingers since first being imprisoned, satisfying their desire to see him regenerate the missing appendages. Naturally, his status hadn’t been helped when they learned of his nationality—he wasn’t an American, true, but they seemed to hate Europeans just as much.

The door to his cell creaked open, stabbing his eyes with harsh strikes of light from the hall. “Are you ready to begin again?” the voice, coarse from years of smoking, asked him. It wasn’t a blessing that he was able to understand Khmer language—it simply meant that he knew every time they insulted or laughed at him.

Too weak to utter a sound, the prisoner simply nodded his head in reply. They may have broken his body, forcing him to endure more pain than any man should, but they would not break his will. Compared to what he had already experienced in his relatively young life, this small slice of Hell wasn’t quite so bad.

After all, Jon Starsmore thought to himself, he’d died and come back to life once already. What was a little more pain on top of that?

NEXT: “Iron Hell” continues on with the X-Men’s investigation of the Khmer Death Camp in the mountains of Cambodia! Unfortunately, nothing could have prepared them for the man awaiting them in the camp — a man called Khimaera!

WAITING TO X-HALE

Hello. My name is Chris Munn. That thing you just read? That was the all-new, all-disturbing X-Men—a book that ended quite a long time ago. By this point, you may be questioning the sanity behind Ryan Krupienski for allowing me to take up the reigns of a series that had quite naturally evolved into the present-day X-Corps book. Suffice it to say, the series couldn’t continue on as just another “hey, let’s chill in the mansion until Juggernaut shows up” type of X-Men series. This book, were it to happen, would have to be dramatically unique.

So say hello to the new face of the X-Men—who, for lack of a better word, are terrorists. They’ve seen the future through the eyes of Rachel Summers, a future where mutants are (if they’re lucky) exterminated on sight or imprisoned in concentration camps. They’ve seen the atrocities that humanity is willing to inflict upon them, and they’ve decided that it’s time to fight back by any means necessary.

Will this be a fun, happy-go-lucky book? No, I’m afraid not. Will it be exciting? Damn straight it will be. Will this book make you think? I certainly hope so.

In the coming year, you can expect to see some old characters returning and some new ones debuting. Fans of my last run on Generation X can look forward to a continuation of the ideas first started there, and readers of my old Uncanny X-Men series (written with the incomparable Ian Astheimer) at the now-defunct Revolution X site can expect to see a few familiar faces make their debut in the Omega-verse. I’ve also got some stories lined up with Uncanny X-Men writer Ryan Krupienski that will make sure the core X-Men titles remain tight and focused in their continuity.

So sit back and enjoy, and if you feel the desire please write me some letters to let me know how I’m doing.

Prepare to get X-Perienced.

-Chris Munn
07/01/06