Cambodia
The Cardamom Mountains

The air was dry, as if all the moisture had been sucked from the area. They were in the middle of a bloody jungle, she thought to herself, where the hell had all the humidity gone?

The woman affectionately named Ecstacy crept through the underbrush surrounding the Iron Hell complex, following the stealthy movements of her partner. James Proudstar, Warpath, was leading her in the search for their kidnapped comrades, and she had learned to trust the man’s instincts. When he held up a hand, signaling her to stop, she froze in her tracks.

It had been only two, maybe three, minutes since the night sky had been illuminated by the explosive outburst of the Phoenix Force. Guards were scrambling across the compound, panicking and far from in control. How long had it been since a mutant had even attempted escape, Proudstar wondered. He waited until the crowd of guards passed by, and then chose the one straggling at the end.

A curved hunting knife flew out of the jungle, a cord tied around its handle, and lodged forcefully into the fleeing man’s thigh. The guard screamed something unintelligible before Proudstar yanked back on the cord, sending the Cambodian flying backward into the pitch black foliage. When he finally landed, Warpath pounced, straddling the whimpering man he’d reeled in.

“Where are the mutants you kidnapped?” Proudstar asked, his voice nearing a shouting volume with each ascending word. “Answer me before I start cutting pieces off of you!”

The terrified guard stammered a few words in his native tongue before fainting dead. “Figures,” Warpath commented, releasing his hold on the man’s shirt, allowing his head to smack down on the ground beneath.

“So what now, sexy?” Stacy asked as she made her way closer through the brush.

“Now we wait for the diversion before breaking across open ground,” James answered, pointing with one of his blades toward the still-smoking building on the far side of the compound.

As if on cue, the night sky was again illuminated by an expected display of cosmic energy. This time, however, the burst came from outside the camp – a beam of ringed force exploded into the base from the nearest hillside, striking a tanker truck parked and forgotten. The truck exploded, sending more guards scrambling for cover, while on the hillside Alex Summers released another plasma blast. It hadn’t been that many years ago that Havok had agonized over the potential deaths his power may one day cause. Today, those thoughts barely brushed the surface of his mind as he released beam after beam into the Iron Hell facility.

“That’s our signal,” Warpath shouted as he and Stacy leapt from their cover and broke into a run across the open grounds of the complex. Somewhere inside this concentration camp were the rest of the X-Men…heaven help anyone who would get in their rescuers’ way.

IRON HELL

Part IV

By Chris Munn

She walked out of her cell, each step causing the stone floor to catch fire underfoot. The flames danced across her golden skin, her dark red hair flowing in and out of the inferno surrounding her. It had been way too many years since Rachel Summers had felt the power of the Phoenix affecting her as strongly as it was at that moment…and with a malicious smile she decided with little hesitation that she wouldn’t let such a wondrous gift go unused.

Moments before she had allowed the Phoenix Force to explode outward, a phalanx of Iron Hell bulls had arrived to dissuade her attempt at escape. Now those same guards shrieked in agony around her, each man fused into the concrete walls and floor of the cell block. Most were dead, but the few that still clung to life suffered like few had suffered before. Only one, whose left leg had disappeared in a bloody smear into the nearest wall, held onto his wits long enough to pull the firearm from his side.

“Silly little man,” Rachel/Phoenix said as the guard drew down on her, “one should know their place when in the presence of a God.” She opened her hand then quickly closed it into a fist. Her telekinetic power caught hold of the guard and crushed him like a vice, snapping bones and tearing muscles as he folded unnaturally into a ball of ripping flesh.

{{Stop wasting bloody time, gel}}

Summers raised her head and turned her neck, the psychic communiqué echoing in her mind. “Where are you, telepath?” she asked, flaming eyes darting between the many cell doors surrounding her.

{{Five doors down on the right}} the voice answered.

With nothing but a scowl, Phoenix ripped the door to the aforementioned cell from its hinges, sending it flying down the hallway. She stepped confidently inside, though what she found gave even her pause. The beaten and starved Englishman chained within raised his head and forced a smile. “Jon Starsmore at yer service,” he said wryly, “care to give me a hand?”

“Something’s not right…”

Warpath and Ecstacy crept silent as ghosts against the wall of the closest building, the shadows hiding their movement while explosions echoed around them. The Apache hunter stopped suddenly as he neared the corner of the building, causing Stacy to stop short as well. “What’s the hold-up, man?”

“I can sense someone else,” he answered, “but I can’t pinpoint where they are.”

Suddenly, a thin leg spun out from behind the corner of the building, the toe of the woman’s foot striking Warpath across the bridge of his nose. He recoiled on instinct, nearly toppling Ecstacy down with him as he stumbled backward. The serpentine Stacy sidestepped, barely missing her massive teammate, and turned toward their attacker.

The young girl, by all appearances a teenager, danced and flipped into view before landing directly in front of Ecstacy. The Cambodian’s leg shot out again as she fell into a crouch, catching Stacy at the ankles in a sweeping motion. “What the fuck?” Stacy yelled as she landed on her ass. She rolled as she hit the ground, recovering her footing with a fluid motion belied by her abrasive personality.

“You are trespassing on the grounds of the Khmer Rouge,” the girl said as she easily stepped away from Stacy’s counter strike. Ecstacy continued to press the attack, but found herself missing each blow by too wide a margin. She was an excellent hand to hand fighter, so how could such a little girl dance around her with such ease?

The Cambodian girl who moved like a figure skater frowned as she easily evaded the older woman’s attacks. Kachenh Domnur was one of the two free mutants in the employ of Iron Hell, one of the defenders of their twisted Headmaster’s house of corrections. She flipped backward like she had been raised by strings, the toe of her boot striking Stacy in the chin.

Warpath, the stars dancing in front of his eyes having finally subsided, watched from a few feet away as the teenage girl made a mockery of his teammate. “Fuck this,” he said as he removed one of his Vibranium knives from the sheath on his back. He took aim and released the blade in a motion almost blurry to the human eye, his aim preternaturally accurate even in the worst of cases.

Imagine his surprise when the blade zipped past the girl’s head, missing by several inches. Unknown to the two X-Men, the girl’s mutant ability controlled, among other things, perception of location. With one aspect of her mind consciously scrambling the location of Iron Hell from the prying eyes of others, her body unconsciously surrounded her with a spatial shield of differential locale.

In other words, where she stood and where her enemies thought she stood were two different things entirely.

Removing his second blade, Warpath leapt forward, but found himself as unable to touch the girl as his fallen teammate. His massive arms swung like tree trunks through the air, missing her by a mile with each swipe of his knife. “Aaarrrggh!” he shouted, frustration growing with each missed blow of his own and each connecting blow of hers.

Unaware of the battle being waged above them, a group of five Iron Hell guards nervously stalked their way through the subterranean caverns that made up the complex’s gulag. They were the rear guard, and for all they knew they were the last men standing against the rising mutant escapees. Though scared, the men were still trained murderers, and their captain led them via silent hand signals to the flickering lights of the occupied cell corridor.

The five men ratcheted their rifles and entered the hall, shouting incoherently as they advanced. Surprisingly, as they made their way through the fog of smoke in the narrow hallway, only one man stood between them and their destination. The silver metal helmet that had long been his hallmark was now once again safely placed upon his brow, and a wicked grin smeared itself across his mouth.

Avalanche raised his hands in seeming surrender as the guards approached cautiously. He waited until they neared closer, ever closer, then swung his arms together. His outstretched hands clapped together, and a shockwave of seismic force exploded outward. The shockwave hit the men like a solid object, shattering their guns as it sent them flying backward into the cold, hard stone of the wall behind them.

“The path is clear,” he said to the emerging X-Men behind him. Xorn and Fever Pitch, both recovering from the tortures endured during their stay at Iron Hell, fell behind the stone-like figure of Avalanche. “Any sign yet of the others?”

“None,” Xorn answered as he moved forward, his hands cautiously checking the seals of his iron mask, “it would seem that whoever freed us has departed before our gratitude could be expressed.”

”It had to have been Phoenix,” Avalanche replied, “judging by the state of some of the guards back there. Why wouldn’t she wait for us? Does the stupid girl think she can bring this place down all by herself?”

Fever Pitch, her charred skeleton slowly regaining its fiery robustness, outstretched a skeletal finger to point forward. “Sorry Dom,” she said, “looks like you missed one.”

A long figure strode through the broken bodies of the defeated guards, stepping with a cocksure confidence through the smoke and rubble. Tuong Hun, the Cambodian torturer known as Khimaera, relaxed as he stopped his advancement, a cigarette held stylishly between his ring and little fingers. “You will return to your cells, mutants,” he ordered, “or I will kill you.”

“Petros, Xorn,” Fever Pitch said as she cracked the bones of her flesh-stripped fingers, “take a powder.”

“Come on, Xorn,” Avalanche said as he stabbed his hand toward the ceiling, “let’s get some air.” The ground above them split with the sound of a thundercrack, exposing the night sky, while a pillar of earth wrenched forward like a wave, carrying Avalanche and Xorn upward away from the catacombs.

“You should have fled with your peers,” Khimaera advised as he stabbed his cigarette out on the wall beside him.

“Don’t mind me,” Fever Pitch said as the flame surrounding her grew brighter, “I like it hot…”

And with that, an inferno of flame exploded from her skeletal body – an inferno that enveloped the entirety of the corridor in which they stood.

Though she hated to admit it, Kachenh was having fun embarrassing the two X-Men with whom she fought. She had toyed with them for far too long, though, and while they were battered and bloody (though, irritatingly, still standing) she was starting to become winded herself.

Ducking under another of Warpath’s incredibly swift punches, Domnur stabbed her fingers into the X-Man’s solar plexus, causing him to go down with a rush of wind escaping his lungs. “A pity you have to die,” she said as she removed a pistol from the holster on her leg, “I’ve enjoyed our dance.”

“Enjoy this…” the voice said from behind her, causing her to spin on her heels in time to see the cosmically charged Havok. He erupted with the plasma blast that had long been his curse, and while he still missed his direct hit on the girl the resulting shockwave rocked her off her feet.

Her concentration painfully broken as she attempted to push herself up from the singed grass beneath, Kachenh realized that, for the first time in her life, things weren’t going to fall into place for her. She felt the gentle touch of a fingertip on the back of her neck, and a wave of euphoria rushed through her body. A full-body spasm locked into her muscles at Ecstacy’s touch, her mutant pheromone ability sending what amounted to an electrical jolt throughout the girl’s body.

“Not so tough now, huh bitch?” Stacy asked while wiping the blood from her nose. Domnur sputtered and drooled onto the ground, all motor control of her body lost.

Suddenly, surprising the three X-Men, the ground began to shake as if the compound was being hit by an earthquake. Several yards to their left, the earth split down the middle, allowing the geomorph Avalanche and his teammate Xorn to finally reach the open air they so desperately sought. As they exited the catacombs, a geyser of fire escaped the tunnel at their heels, sending both men diving out of its way.

“Xorn!” Havok shouted as he ran toward the two exhausted mutants.

“You must go back down,” Xorn said as Havok helped him to his feet, “Fever Pitch remains below with the enemy.”

“Don’t sweat the small stuff, Buddha,” Fever Pitch’s crackling voice announced as she emerged from the tear in the earth, floating up slowly on drafts of heated air. She touched down onto the ground, her fire catching the grass alight, and placed her hands on her bony hips.

The other X-Men in front of her relaxed into relieved smiles…before their faces contorted into expressions of horror. A hand grasped violently over Fever Pitch’s neck, raising her skeletal frame into the air. Khimaera had survived the firestorm intended to cremate him, and there was a look of blood in his eyes. The dragon tattoo on his exposed chest began to glow a bright crimson, and with all his strength he inhaled the flame that covered and sustained the life of the pyrokinetic X-Man. After every inch of fire on her body had been inhaled, Tuong Hun crushed the skeletal remains of the now-deceased Fever Pitch and allowed the broken shards of bone to fall to the ground…

“X-Men…!” Havok began to shout, each of the heroes moving forward at once.

…and Khimaera released the nuclear fire he had absorbed, expunging it from his mouth like the mythical beast illustrated on the flesh of his chest. All but one of the X-Men dove backward or to the side – James Proudstar surged forward, the dragon-breath of his enemy melting the flesh on his arms that were used to cover his face. Warpath fell into Khimaera’s waist with a football tackle, breaking several of the Cambodian’s ribs before they both fell backward into the tunnel created by Avalanche.

“Oh god, James,” Alex Summers muttered as he regained his footing. He was unable to execute any commands, just as before when an X-Man had died in front of his eyes, when the psychic strike hammered him – and every other assembled X-Man on the complex grounds – to his knees.

As the X-Men fell, the Headmaster of Iron Hell emerged from the shadows behind them. Clutched in his fist was the scalp of Rachel Summers, her defeated body drug behind him as he advanced. “My beautiful plans,” he whispered while his telepathic power kept the four mutants unable to move, “naught but dust now.”

Warpath clinched his teeth as the fiercely sharp claws of Khimaera’s lion arm scratched against his midsection. Proudstar returned the gesture with a kick to the Cambodian’s knee, snapping the bone and cartilage beneath his heel. Neither man would allow the other to hear them scream, even as they felt each broken bone and bloody cut.

“You kidnap and torture your fellow mutants!” Warpath shouted angrily as he fell backward into a roll down the tunnel leading to the prison ward. He steadied himself as he hit bottom, the crumbling dirt giving him anything but sure footing. “I’m going to take great pleasure in sending you to Hell, friend.”

“Haven’t you been paying attention, X-Man?” Khimaera asked as he swiped again with his claws. “We are in Hell already!”

Hun’s killing stroke missed by a hair, while Proudstar spun and brought his elbow crashing hard into the back of his opponent’s skull. As he fell forward, Khimaera caught himself with his right hand and balanced himself upside down. The dragon tattoo on his chest began to glow again, and he sucked in to produce another billowing spout of fire. Warpath struck first by slamming the top of his head into Tuong’s inverted midsection, causing him to collapse in a heap on the floor.

James wrapped his arm around Khimaera’s neck and wrenched him upward while squatting on his back. His knife was pulled from its holster and placed to the top of the Cambodian’s head. “My people have a tradition that even you may have heard of,” the blood-drunk X-Man stated, “called scalping…”

A moment away from death, the snake tattoo on Khimaera’s free arm began to glow a sickly yellow. He reached backward and felt his fingers brush against Warpath’s cheek, but that momentary contact was all the torturer needed. The nerve endings in Proudstar’s face began to scream, causing him to finally cry out in pain while releasing his grip. In that single moment, the positions of the two men were reversed – now it was Khimaera who was at Warpath’s back, his left hand never once leaving the X-Man’s cheek.

“You will die in a place where no one will mourn you or even remember your name,” Khimaera taunted as he increased the pain caused by his left hand. James could feel himself slipping into unconsciousness, which he knew would quickly be followed by death…and it was then that inspiration hit him. The Vibranium knife still clutched in his grasp, Warpath locked onto the wrist of his enemy with his free hand and spun out. Before Khimaera could move, James slashed with his knife, scraping the flesh off the inside of the Asian’s left arm – removing the snake tattoo that seemed to be the source of his power. The feedback of his synaptic disrupting power shot up the length of his arm and released itself explosively, knocking the two warriors to opposite lengths of the tunnel.

Warpath was on his feet, though admittedly stunned and disoriented, the moment he ceased flailing through the air. His hyper-keen eyesight searched the smoky corridor, but it was a wasted effort.

Khimaera had disappeared.

The Headmaster lifted Rachel up by her hair, her eyes open only as thin slits. “You, little whore, thought you were my equal as a telepath. But it seems that your limits have been reached. I studied under the heel of Amahl Farouk himself, little whore, and perhaps I should start my own harem in his honor. You would enjoy that, would you not…pleasuring the man you thought you could defeat?”

“Sorry, chubby,” Rachel said as defiantly as she could, “I was just the diversion.”

“…what?”

“Evenin’ guv’,” a voice thick with a British accent said from behind the startled Headmaster. Jon Starsmore stood on weak knees, so he steadied himself by grabbing onto the back and shoulders of the Headmaster. Once Rachel had fallen from the man’s grasp, Jon smiled. “I walked up on yer blind spot, mate,” Starsmore said as the Headmaster began his psionic retaliation, “and trust me when I say you had this coming.”

And with that, the mutant known as Chamber allowed the psychic energy contained within him to explode outward, erupting from his lower jaw and ripping itself down into his lower torso. The burst of energy violently tore its way free, though both the flesh of Starsmore and that of the Headmaster clutched tightly against him. The two men fell to the ground a moment later, but it was only one of them that stirred afterward.

“Jon?” Alex Summers asked as he crawled toward the young mutant that had believed to be dead for so long a time. “Jon Starsmore?”

{{I don’t feel so good}} Chamber answered telepathically as he rolled onto his back, the psychic fire billowing from the hole blown in his chest and lower jaw. There was no evidence of his body working to repair the damage done by his power, as had happened in the recent past. Starsmore passed out in Havok’s arms as the rest of the X-Men – including the returned Warpath – surrounded them.

Iron Hell was dust beneath their heels…and it was time to go home.

Cambodia
The Capital City of Phnom Penh

“Wake up.”

The voice – an American, speaking English – wrenched him from his sleep, causing him to sit up in his large bed. The night mask covering his eyes was ripped away by a frightened and startled hand, revealing the bleary eyes of Sun Hen, the current Prime Minister of the Republic of Cambodia. “Who is there?” he asked in broken English, answering in the vulgar language of the intruder, before clicking on the lamp positioned beside his bed.

The blonde-haired man standing before him crossed his arms, the leather of his black coat sounding loudly in the empty room. Beneath the coat was a large red X, kept visible despite the arms folded across the stranger’s chest. “My name is Havok,” the intruder informed, “and I’m here to speak about a place known as Iron Hell. Are you aware of it?”

“My young friend,” the Prime Minister answered with a smile, though the quiver in his voice betrayed his feelings, “you have made a very large mistake. Even now, the Royal Guards are approaching. I will grant you one request before they kill you, so choose wisely.”

“Your guards are dead,” Summers replied coldly. “Now, we were speaking about Iron Hell…”

“I have nothing to say to a terrorist,” Hen responded, though the fear he was experiencing was beginning to build further.

“You and your government sanctioned a death camp for mutants, Mr. Prime Minister,” Summers continued, his body beginning to ripple with rings of cosmic energy, “and as far as I’m concerned, that act is punishable under death for crimes against my people.”

“Death…?”

Alex smiled. “Consider this me at my most merciful…”

And the cosmic energy building in Havok’s body exploded outward, detonating in the center of the large house with the yield of an atomic bomb.

The School For Gifted Youngsters
Westchester, New York

Four individuals sat on opposite corners of the X-shaped table, monitors buzzing with electronic life behind them and on all sides. Each sat silently, taking in the news report displayed for their information, showing the violent destruction of a house in the Republic of Cambodia…a house belonging to the country’s Prime Minister.

“Prime Minister Hen was found a few hours later, several miles from his destroyed home,” the group’s leader said as he clicked off the television monitors. “He was delirious, rambling about a man exploding like a bomb and a girl who was able to steal his memories. On his chest, someone had burned an X into his skin.”

Scott Summers, Cyclops of the X-Men, sighed and lowered his head. After a moment of silence, he raised his visored face and looked at his three comrades – Henry McCoy, the Beast; Domino; and Martinique Jason, Mastermind. “I think we all know what this means,” Cyclops continued, “but I’d like for someone else to say it out loud. I don’t think I have the heart right now.”

“Alex,” Henry said solemnly, “seems to have reverted back to his Brotherhood modus operandi. It also seems he’s taken several of our friends with him on this road to chaos.”

“From what we’ve established,” Domino interjected, “there’s several former X-Men that have signed up with Havok – Rachel Summers, Xorn, James Proudstar, and a few others. Apparently, Summers went on a corporate raid of X-Corps over the last few weeks.”

“We have plausible deniability for the authorities,” Mastermind stated, “based on the fact that they’ve been watching us around the clock for the past several months. They’ve been looking for the next Cassandra Nova, and I think Havok may have just given them the excuse to start throwing us into gulags at their earliest opportunity.”

“Alex is my brother,” Scott interrupted, “and regardless of his history and the evidence we have here, I’m not going to put him through a witch hunt until I have all the facts. I’ll keep the military off our backs, but at the same time I’m going to do whatever it takes to track these rogue X-Men down. I’m sick of our name being smeared through the mud, especially after all the hard work it took after Nova fucked us over.”

None of the X-Men had anything else to say following their leader’s diatribe, and with another sigh he turned his back to them. “Dismissed, people.”

As the X-Men filed from the War Room, a phone nestled in the oak desk began to ring. Cyclops watched as his friends left the room before he cautiously reached for the receiver. “We’re secure,” he said softly, “go ahead.”

“Keeping the natives from getting too restless?” the voice on the other end of the phone line asked in a joking nature.

“Don’t underestimate the seriousness of this,” Scott warned. “I didn’t expect you to get quite so bold quite so quickly.”

“We lost one of us in Cambodia,” the caller answered, “so I didn’t really feel like being subtle.”

Cyclops sat down in the leather chair beside the phone and rubbed a hand through his tousled brown hair. “I’m worried that this may have been a bad idea. I didn’t think lying to the others would be so difficult.”

The caller laughed slightly. “Since when has your baby brother ever let you down, Scott?”

Cyclops smiled in reply. “Just try to keep the body count down next time, Alex,” he said to his sibling.

Havok sat back in his own chair, phone cradled between his ear and shoulder. “I promise nothing, Scott…”

Next Issue: In a special interlude story before the next arc begins, Jon Starsmore adapts to the world of the living following his death and rebirth – and along the way runs into an old friend! Don’t miss Chamber’s spotlight story, “Mad Dogs and Clergymen”…