The Last Innocent Mind

• Writer - Mark Bernardo
• Penciler - Rick Leonardi
• Inker - Dan Green
• Colorist - Mike Thomas
• Lettering - Comicraft
• Lettering - Richard Starkings
• Editor - Jaye Gardner
• Editor in Chief - Bob Harras
• Lettering - Albert Deschesne

Summary

  Nate he rescues a young boy in West Virginia, who is standing in the ruins of his house in a storm, and whose parents were attacked by the X-Men, who then attack Nate.

  He wakes, not understanding this recurring nightmare. He helps an old man who was shoved by kids in Washington Square Park, and in a newspaper sees a picture of the same boy. He goes to West Virginia and manipulates the cops into telling him the story:

  After the boy's family was killed, a farmer found him, and he was put in an orphanage, schizophrenic, amnesiac, and seemingly possessed. Then the orphanage blew up, and he was the only survivor.

  Nate senses that the boy is a mutant, with a psionic force field, then goes to the institute in up-state New York where the boy was sent. The boy welcomes him, and Nate enters his mind and finds that Dire Wraiths had invaded earth, one had been stranded and taken the form of a human, married, and had a son, Jimmy, who the Wraiths trained to kill his parents.

  Nate has reincorporated its mind, and it reveals itself as Hybrid, previously defeated by the Spaceknight Rom. It gloats over having tricked him and attacks him with TK. Nate fakes defeat, then reenters its mind, trying to reach his human side. He realizes it's long gone, so he just pulverizes the thing.