Powers of X #1 (2019)

Powers of X, increasing in scale and complexity. X0 - Year One, the Dream. X1 - Year Ten, The World. X2 - Year One Hundred, the War. X3 - Year One Thousand, the Ascension. X0 Charles Xavier is walking through a fair. He is enjoying himself on a beautiful day, sitting down on a bench to people-watch. Here, he is approached by a young woman, Moira Kinross, who makes cryptic remarks about a fortune-teller. As the conversation goes on, Xavier mentions a beautiful dream he had, which he is trying to work out in his head, so it can be a story he can tell people. Moira remarks that a dream ceases to be a dream once it becomes real. Xavier realizes that something is not quite right about this, so Moira asks him to read her mind. Puzzled, he complies, but is surprised by what he finds... X1 Mystique emerges from a Krakoan gateway onto Krakoa accompanied by Toad. Telling Toad that he is off the clock now, she carries on alone to the House of M, where she meets Magneto. She tells him that her partner, Sabretooth, was captured during the heist, but she got the target - a memory stick. She will hand it over, but says her demands have increased. Xavier steps into view, and counters that they will ask more of her in return. Mystique mocks his seeming lack of humanitarianism. Xavier merely says that he is building a world safe for mutants, and that everyone will owe something to live there... X2 The war between the mutants and the Man-Machine Supremacy has gone on for years. A four-person squad of X-Men, consisting of three products of Mister Sinister's mutant breeding program - Rasputin IV, an unnamed Cardinal, and Percival - as well as one defector from the Ascendancy's black brain program - Cylobel - are on a mission to extract something from the Nexus in the Northern Territory. Their mission has been discovered, leading to the death of Percival. The Cardinal plants a Krakoan seed to be the exfil point, but Cylobel is captured alive and Rasputin struggles to free her. Additional forces arrive, and Cylobel demands that Rasputin leave her behind to complete the mission. Anguished, Rasputin retreats. There is a description of Mister Sinister's mutant breeding program which he ran from the Sinister Breeding Pits on Mars. The mutant leaders would only endorse the program because constant fighting made it difficult for mutants to find the time to have children. The program lasted through four iterations: * The first generation were designed to be divergent copies of a singular DNA source with an uncompromised X-Gene. They were the fodder that were trained until the age of 16 when they would be sent to defend Krakoa, which fell 30 years later. * The second generation marked the beginning of the "Chimera" process. They had DNA comprised of two separate X-Genes resulting in a mutant with the predictable power set of both of the sourced mutants. * The third generation produced mutants with amalgamated DNA featuring up to five X-Genes. These generations were universally successful against the Man-Machine Supremacy. ** However, this generation had a 10% failure rate. These failures, with nonthreatening powers and pacifist dispositions, rejected individuality and refused names, thus collectively were called "Cardinal." * The fourth generation suffered a systematic failure and were produced with a corrupted hive mind that was responsible for the destruction of Krakoa and 40% of the mutant generation. They committed mass-suicide, collapsed Mars, the Sinister Breeding Pits, and themselves into a self-singularity. It was also mentioned that Mister Sinister was executed by the Man-Machine Supremacy after defecting. Cylobel is taken to the Human-Machine Monolith, to stand before Nimrod the Lesser. Nimrod, recognizing her as a black brain, offers a faux-apology: Black brains like her were created by the Man-Machine Ascendancy to serve a purpose, but so many proved defective by defecting to join mutantkind. Her very defective existence is a mark of the Supremacy's failure, and his tribute to that failure - her - will be to ensure that no-one like her is allowed to survive. The Supremacy wants to question Cylobel for information, but she is resistant to torture, and thanks to her status as a black brain, she is immune to telepathic reading. So, the Supremacy is forced to follow Nimrod's suggestion, which makes him briefly giddy. Nimrod orders that Cylobel be placed into a device of his construction - a coffin-sized tube of femtofluid, where she will drown as her body and mind will be rendered down as data, which, once the process is completed after an unknowable length of time, can be turned into a database to help the Supremacy win the war against the X-Men. There is a description of the Sentinel mutant breeding camps called the SalCen Khennil where they were used to breed mutants that were intended to fight other mutants. The first version of the program aimed to produce Hounds, fearsome man-hunting wretches who would evoke disgust and pity in the targets. This was a failure because the Hounds proved too psychologically submissive to be viable agents. The second version of the program aimed to produce black brains - infiltration agents, immune to telepathy, who could be inserted into mutant groups, and would then betray them to the Ascendancy. This too was deemed a failure, as the agents programmed to betray would very frequently betray the Ascendancy instead. The SalCen Khennil was destroyed 10 years ago, along with "all their biological and research material." Emerging on Krakoa - now on Asteroid K - the Cardinal apologizes to Rasputin IV, saying that, as a Cardinal, he is psychologically incapable of violence. Rasputin is inclined to hate him in the moment, but they have a mission to complete. The rest of the X-Men, including an aging War, are there for her to speak of the successful extraction of the target item, at the cost of Percival and Cylobel. War says they need to take it to "the Old Man..." There is a description of mutant demographic data: * With the deaths of Percival & Cylobel, the mutant population of Asteroid K is 8. * The majority of the mutant population lives on Benevolence, a converted transit station located on the fringe of Shi'ar space which serves as a buffer between the Shi'ar Empire and the wildness of the Brood breeding territory. The mutant population there is around 8,000. * The Shi'ar homeworld of Chandilar has a mutant colony of just under 2,000 souls, by a treaty with the Shi'ar Empire. Most of them are used as warrior stock for the Imperial Guard. Currently, there are six mutants that serve as superguardians while 57 are under the subguardian classification. X3 The Librarian laments that the minds in the database are beginning to fade to digital decay. Nimrod the Lesser has given way to Nimrod the Greater, who admits that the database was not meant to survive for so long. The database was intended as a tactical advantage to let the Supremacy win the war, but the world changed so much that the war became unnecessary. Homo sapiens and its subspecies are over and past, but a habitat is maintained in the Nexus, a sealed biosphere containing some preserved mutants living wild in a pristine wilderness. A museum piece, to prick the curiosity of younger minds. To give them a sense of wonder at the long story of life on Earth - and to give an idea of the horror that could ensue if such creatures ever ruled Earth again...