At the Mansion, Jean calls out to the other X-Men to stop Wolverine, who has gone on a muderous rampage, starting with Cyclops. Wolverine opens Cyclops's visor and uses the eye beams to cut Jean in two, then he twists Cyclops's head all the way around. Beast appears and gets a few good kicks in, but leaves an opening for Wolverine to stab him with all six claws. Storm, Colossus and Iceman arrive to help, but are sliced open in rapid succession. Xavier congratulates Wolverine on his performance, at least in a primal sense, but reminds him he was only supposed to wrestle his teammates, not slaughter them.

Then the simulation ends.

Beast is manning the controls of what is apparently a highly sophisticated virtual reality system. Wolverine takes off the helmet and Xavier asks why he's still with them, given his loner nature. Cyclops concurs, as Wolverine recalls Magneto's orders in his mind. Wolverine looks at Jean and responds "the scenery." He's saved from "drinking the next six weeks' meals through a straw" by Iceman, who bursts in with news from the TV: the Brotherhood has captured the President's daughter and will kill her if the Sentinels are not recalled.

A debate ensues. Storm, for one, feels that this could be the one chance they get to ensure that the Sentinels are stopped. Helping the President will only allow the Sentinels to continue killing mutants. Professor X disagrees, saying that they must help the humans, or they become as bad as the Brotherhood. Cyclops agrees, as does the rest of the team, and Wolverine also opts to join the mission.

Croatia: The X-Men have tracked the Brotherhood to a small town. Inside the "safehouse," Toad, Blob, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Mastermind are watching the First Daughter and annoying each other. Outside, while Wolverine takes a leak, Cyclops gives the word. The safehouse's floor shakes as Colossus hefts a support beam from below. Beast bursts through the window and get the President's daughter out and down to their car via an ice slide.

Quicksilver takes off and snatches the keys out of the car's ignition, taunting Cyclops with them as he kneels on the hood. Cyclops let him have a full blast. Quicksilver recovers and is about to pursue the X-Men, now on foot, when Wolverine appears from his bathroom break and stops him cold.

Meanwhile, Beast reports to Cyclops that Blob and Mastermind have been taken down, just as Toad leaps in and slams Cyclops to the ground, then does the same to Storm. However, Iceman encases Toad in ice during mid-leap, and then Storm drop-kicks him. Cyclops notices that the girl is gone, but Wolverine has picked her up in another car. Wolverine contacts Jean and projects his idea to her, as he swerves to avoid the Scarlet Witch's hex bolts. Marvel Girl calculates the speed his car needs to reach and he floors it. The car goes off a cliff - and right into the hold of the Blackbird.

The rest of the X-Men are racing to get to the plane, but Colossus sees that Magneto has arrived. Cyclops tells everyone to move it "while they all still have a pulse," but Storm radioes in that it may be too late - Beast has been crushed by a collapsed building and appears to be dead...

Review: A really good issue, with great art too, of course! Let me deal with the art first. One of the great things about Adam Kubert is he puts in the little touches that tell you so much, but are so subtle you hardly think about them consciously. Case in point: the birds sitting on the flying Sentinels on the first page. A few quick lines for the artist, but a picture is truly worth a thousand words. Having birds on the Sentinels tells you that the Sentinels have been flying for quite a while, and also that they move in such perfect formation that it doesn't even disturb the birds on them, who sit as if they were an unmoving trees. You automatically get the sense of time passing, and the precise robotic nature of the Sentinels, along with their war machine-like determination is revealed so eloquently all at once. That and the anti-mutant graffiti all over the place paints a really scary "Big Brother" picture for this new reality that chills me to the bone. I'm surprised the humans aren't scared of the Sentinels, but I guess they look at them as the good guys who are protecting them from the "evil mutants."

Another cool thing I noticed came from Mark Millar. In the opener, it's clear that the idea of being "reborn" with a name representing your abilities, not some ancestor's, is being taken to heart. Storm, Colossus and Iceman refer to each other and to their teammates by their codenames ONLY. They never use the given names. Later on, Wolverine says "Jean," but that's the only one. Most of the others appear to have given up their real names (for the most part). Very cool.

Now for the plot. The slaughter at the Mansion was obviously a sim from the start, but it was still pretty brutal. Good dialogue and heavy action worked well. I was gratified to see that Beast had come up with the VR tech, as was implied last issue. It's interesting that it's VR with the "standard" helmet, not full holographic rooms. I wonder what it will look like with more than one person? Or will Beast do an actual "Danger Room" for team exercises? Anyway, I enjoyed this re-interpretation of this classic tech.

Wolverine's personality was a big factor in making this issue work. First off, I loved seeing the "Bub" so often. Classic. Second, I was amazed at how easily he switched tempers, from killing all the simmed team one second to joking with Beast about "over-18" versions of the VR tech. I found it a little strange that the Prof, Cyke, Jean and Beast were so casual with him after his display of agression in the sim. Or was it just that they knew that he knew it was a simulation, so they figured he was just playing? Strange. I mean, Storm was certainly freaked out by him, so why not the others? Maybe it goes back to the switching tempers. One second he's a berserker and the next he's flirting. The flirting was great, BTW. An interesting situation has been created here, in which Jean has both Cyke and Wolvie to choose from at the start, before she's locked into a relationship with one. So she flirts with him too, which is strangely exciting.

Magneto's tactic was very clever, almost putting him in the position of "freedom fighter" rather than full-out terrorist. Given the anti-mutant sentiment that's rampant, it's a great move, because it will build support among the mutant community. I liked seeing the Brotherhood members (finally). Toad was cool in his grotesqueness, even better than the movie. Blob looked interesting, though I would have liked to have seen more of him. I was suprised that Mastermind looked so cool, but it's probably a projection like the Jason Wyngarde persona. I want to see more of him too.

Finally, the battle. Good stuff all around, especially Wolverine's Evel Kinevel manuever. Think he actually hurt Quicksilver? Doubt it. But what happened to Beast? Things seemed to be going well on his end. Is it a projection courtesy of Mastermind? Someone's supposed to defect to the Brotherhood next ish. Could it be a captured Beast? Or will it be Storm? I can't wait to find out!