God Loves, Man Kills II

• Writer - Chris Claremont
• Penciler - Igor Kordey
• Inker - Scott Hanna
• Colorist - Liquid!
• Lettering - Tom Orzechowski
• Ass't Editor - Stephannie Moore
• Editor - Mike Raicht
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada

O Absalom

Summary

  Note: this is God Loves, Man Kills 2: Part 4.

  Paul carries Kitty into the church and gives her to Cybill, who starts running tests on her in the underground lab, but Kitty's almost like a ghost. She hasn't reacted like the others, and there's a war in her central nervous system, and she cries in pain and then jumps through Cybill and escapes. In the next room she finds decaying corpses scattered all around. Shocked, she turns to find that her phasing has somehow killed Cybill, and now Paul is shocked. Then he's hit from behind and collapses.

  Sam scouts the town from a treetop; Lucas watches mutant kids playing soccer, and he's surprised to see Sage smiling; when the ball comes toward them, she kicks it back, and then a gelatinous mutant, Bubble, engulfs her, complimenting her moves and flying her into the game. Sage has never flown before and is happy to have made a new friend; they win.

  Mt. Haven isn't on the map; they soon realize there's no adults there; Sage feels mutant children need a safe place like this, and the team should provide protection while Xavier takes care of the schooling. They find the surveillance truck with two dead men inside (iss. 26).

  Stryker is the one who attacked Paul; he's been tracking her in stealth mode, and she led him to his objective. He sees the command center's computers are down and threaten to kill Paul, forcing Kitty to fix it. He quotes the Bible to her, and she quotes some back; she asks why he hates mutants, and he says they're not the same as humans. They debate without convincing one another; Kitty proclaims the computers totally dead; Stryker is about to do the same to Kitty, but Paul has recovered and zaps him with a bolt from his hand.

  Ororo flies above the town, and Sage reports the truck was from Oyama Heavy Industries. Ororo also wants a report on the sky football game, but then Bubble comes out of the sun and engulfs her. This time it's an attack, and Ororo brings the lightning. Lucas realizes something's wrong as Sage kicks him; he knew Sage would never have let him see her smile. He blasts her, but then Ororo swoops down and blasts him into the truck and the truck into a nearby hotel. When the women find the wreckage, Lucas isn't there.

  Deathstrike and Logan face off in the woods; she warns him her neural net has been compromised, and she really doesn't want to fight. Logan won't surrender, so it's a fight to the death; she draws first blood, but he just rushes her, forcing her to continue slashing him.

  Sam can see his teammates' status in his glasses; all are gone, very quickly. He decides not to run for reinforcements.