Prisoner of Fire

Past Lies

Summary

  Lucas is hanging upside-down, chained by Manacle. Bogan, inhabiting a female telepath, forces him to drink a vial of Rave. The drug enhances his power, and he bursts the chains; broken links fly everywhere, piercing the cell walls, and Manacle, standing guard outside, has to guard himself.

  Lucas easily defeats the others: Rolling Thunder, Bludgeon and Cudgel, but he unthinkingly rushes Bogan, passing right through his form and allowing him to catch his brain. Bogan looks at it, the Rave having lowered all defenses, and starts to remake Lucas from a boy up.

  Rogue reads the traces of Lucas's battle on the beach, as Remy taught her. She realizes Lucas intentionally made himself a target.

  Sage scrolls through all the telepaths she knows and then takes a call from Ororo, who's still setting things right in Tokyo. Sage says Bogan somehow gained access to Cerebra, although it's guarded with physical and telepathic protocols, most of which are new. Sage has a suspect (Emma Frost, see iss. 22), but the transmission is cut off.

  Rogue has attacked Sage, knowing she planned the ambush with Lucas. Sage, having let herself be surprised, now reacts instinctively, pulling a gun and tussling with her. Remy enters, and though Sage holds a knife to Rogue's throat, Remy gets the pistol.

  Sam returns to the house with Magma, who's happy to be an X-Man again, when called on. Their teammates have calmed down after their scuffle; Rogue accuses Sage of trashing her house, and Remy accuses her of keeping them in the dark about Lucas's plan. Sam says keeping it secret was a mistake, but the plan makes sense: they need to get to Bogan and can't trust X-Corp L.A., so Lucas made the first move. He's probably got defenses against Bogan's main weapons: Rave and telepathy, but all this could be wrong and Lucas could really be turned. Sam wants to split the team: one to keep Lucas busy while the others go after Bogan.

  While talking, Sam has cleaned up, putting a smashed coffee table into a garbage pail, and Magma uses her power to burn it to ashes. Ororo reestablishes contact and makes sure Sage is okay; she has confidence Sam can handle things without her, but he says the team all has to be on the same page. He gets Sage to explain her history with Bogan: she can block her mind from the influence of any telepath, but this removes her own psionic abilities; Bogan is the cause. As Tessa of the Hellfire Club, she helped Shaw win a card game against Bogan's pawn Ryland, winning his fortune and keeping Emma Frost in his stable. Bogan took the next opportunity to attack Sage; Ryland marked both her cheeks, and Shaw refused to ransom her. Ororo flew in an rescued her, although she had always appeared to be an enemy. There is evil in the world; she bears Bogan's mark and will oppose it to death.

  Sage has done a records search but can't determine if there are catacombs beneath X-Corp L.A.; Magma can use her power to sense every deformation in the earth's crust, and can burn a way in. Ororo, still listening on the comm-link, is impressed with Sam. She asks Sage if she's ever haunted by the Dark Phoenix (X-Men I:129-137); Sage is, wishing she had found a way to stop the transformation, but rather than avenging the dead, it's more important to save the living.

  Lucas is armored and armed; Bogan announces he's the perfect killing machine to use against the X-Men.