Gal on the Run!

• Writer - Chris Claremont
• Penciler - Billy Tan
• Inker - Jonathan Sibal
• Colorist - Brian Haberlin
• Colorist - Avalon Studios
• Lettering - Virtual Calligraphy
• Lettering - Joe Caramagna
• Ass't Editor - Sean Ryan
• Associated Editor - Nick Lowe
• Editor - Mike Marts
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada

Wand'ring Star

Summary

  Africa: Logan meets Ororo in the ruins of a village raided by "freedom fighters." A mutant had protected the place before M-Day; they made an example of her by tying her to a cross, and the vultures arrived long ago. The X-Men bury the body; Ororo is furious that mutants are no longer feared or respected, just slaughtered; she intends to kill the perpetrators.

  Westchester: Rachel grew up in a concentration camp and hates being caged. She looks out the window at a Sentinel and then goes to take a shower. She's a rebel at heart; better, she's got an equally rebellious friend who can make image inducers. Her image in the shower disappears.

  Lucas sees Betsy stretching on the lawn, teasing the Sentinel pilots; Cooper arrives with coffee and donuts, trying to be friends. She challenges Lucas to a game of chess, without a board, just in their heads.

  Rachel is in Chicago, to visit a psychiatrist Kitty recommended, Dr. Lyszinski (Mekanix '02 LS).

  Val concedes the game to Lucas; he says she's good, on a par with Xavier; she says next time, it's poker. His excursion to Manhattan has been approved, and she asks him to check on the captured Shi'ar Commandos; she doesn't trust the jail. Sam flies past, chased by a Sentinel, playing with it. Val sees he's faster and more agile than before, and she says that's why they put pilots in the Sentinels: the machine adapts to all it learns, and the human "provides inspiration to cope with the unknown." She says national security can't depend on the kindness of the X-Men, and Lucas admits he agrees.

  Rachel says little to the shrink, who says she has the same haunted look as Kitty, veterans of the same war.

  Lucas tours District X, which has no mutants now, and Wannabes has shut down. Officer Jones is with him; she says playing mutant is now like dressing up either as a terrorist or a Holocaust victim. She asks about the Sentinel towering over them; Lucas says it's their bodyguard. She asks about the Shi'ar who killed the Greys; he says they're in the Metropolitan Correctional Facility, where he's going now.

  Rachel says everyone around her are ghosts; within Lyszinski's lifetime, they'll all die, and although she came back in time to prevent it, it still happens. In her past, the Sentinels killed the Greys; now the Shi'ar have. The wheel of time just keeps turning. Lyszinski asks what she wants for herself.

  Val works late, looking at a monitor. She's got Kurt to meet with her privately; she knows Forge's work (X-Factor I:93) and shows him Rachel's image inducer image. She asks him where she really is.

  The Shi'ar have located Rachel through the Deathmark; she's alone and far away, so Black Cloak has SeGa become gas and knock out the guards, and Colony's bugs to eat away the pillars supporting the laser fences. They're free.

  Kurt calls Lucas, saying Rachel's gone; Lucas sees there's something wrong at the jail, and he and Jones attack the Shi'ar alone. Jones orders them to surrender, wondering why she keeps following the X-Men into these things.

  Devo and Colony are quickly put down; Warshot shoots Jones, and Hypernova blasts Lucas, but that just makes him stronger, so he blasts Warshot and Flaw. Offset is about to bite Jones, but she shoots him with her pistol, but then Black Cloak opens his cloak and swallows her. The guard Sentinel opens the roof, saying he's lost Jones's biosign, and then it freeze-blasts SeGa. Black Cloak teleports his team out before they lose any more; the Sentinel can't chase him but says the transmit beam came from orbital space. Kurt arrives with the Blackbird; they know where Rachel is and race to get there in time.

  Rachel says she feels helpless; despite her best efforts, her family's dead and everything's turning out worse than her future. She thinks about giving up but then manifests the Phoenix power, remembering her mother never gave up. She decides she wants them to be afraid, for all Shi'ar to burn. Just then the Commandos burst in.