In the mysterious hide out, Rachel begins to feel a bit weird. Almost as if everything is coming back to her, including powers. But the Mystery Mutant arrives just then, saying she’s only feeling what he wants her to feel, and uses some of his powers to release her from he weird bonds, causing her to drop to the floor. Scott tries to yell at him even more, but MM says he isn’t hurting her, remember, he needs her. Now he turn his attention to her, saying to not try anything and she just might get through it, and places a glowing hand on her head.

Back at the institute, Beast and Emma are fending off interrogation by a one officer as soldiers stand all around. The interrogator isn’t buying their story of the super powered individuals getting their ship stolen from right under them. Emma especially isn’t happy with his attitude, especially since they lost one of their own. Havok is overlooking this from the upper floor, but has enough and leaves. However, when he passes by Xavier’s old office, he hears voices from inside. When he opens the door, he’s shocked to see ghostly forms of Xavier and Corsair, Alex’s father. He begins to freak out as the illusions talk about something that Alex and Scott are not to know about. As the figures fade away, Lorna comes up behind him to see if he’s alright. He asks her if anything’s happened to her, and she says no, and he can only hope the others are so lucky. However, some of them aren’t as we see Iceman trying to ice slide away from giant Pterodactyls and Colossus being confronted by Russian soldiers, and we also see this is apparently being caused by whatever the MM is doing with Rachel. Meanwhile, the interrogator still is trying to bust the X-Men and not listening to what the others say when Kitty sweeps in to save the day. Thankfully, when the Blackbird was stolen, she was able to file a theft report on it, and it proves they had nothing to do with the crash. Later, the interrogator is finally leaving, and Beast congratulates Kitty on her smart thinking, unlike other members. Emma knows, but she’s on edge and it’s more than just the current situation. She’s been sensing someone creeping into her thoughts, and she thinks it’s Rachel.

At the airport, some fires are still flaring when Nightcrawler and Wolverine teleport into ground zero. They see the cockpit of the Blackbird, but can’t get to it due to the soldiers swarming the place, which Logan says he’ll take care of. He sneaks up behind two soldiers that are by themselves and jumps at them. The rest hear the gunfire the cause, and head for the sound, leaving Kurt open to get to the cockpit. A little bit later, Logan joins him, with only a couple bullet holes, and asks if there’s any sign of Scott and Rachel. No, but an equally gruesome scene. Banshee’s broken body is lying on the floor, having crashed right through the windshield, what had to have been hitting a brick wall and a tremendous speed. He’s dead.

The Mystery Mutant has finally released Rachel from whatever he was doing with her, congratulating her on just how powerful she really is. She tries to show him just how by turning for an attack, but he blasts her right down, and throws her up against the wall where she was held before and the shackles move themselves to lock her up again. He tells Scott to remind her when she wakes, that when he is done with her, she should try to stay on his good side.

Kurt and Logan are still searching for whatever Sean was bringing with him, cutting it close with some more soldiers, and as Kurt reminds him that it will be daylight soon, Logan finally comes across a case with the name Muir Island written across it.

Rachel has finally woken up, and Scott wonders just what happened. She tells him what he had her do, but noticed that he seemed to be looking for stuff about the professor. However, when he was connected to Rachel, she was able to do some of her own digging in his head, and found out that he has an old link to Xavier. He trained with him!

The case has been brought back to the institute and Beast is working on the getting it working with Logan. He finally gets it running, but it’s a bit choppy, but we can still make out some of what she says. She curses Xavier again, saying he came to her for help with the X-Men went missing, and she says she gave him ones who were just children, and he got them all killed!

Backup Story: The story opens on a grisly crime scene. David and Emily Chen have been shot to death while out walking. The only survivor of the incident was their daughter, Suzanne. The police detective tries to get her to answer a few questions as she sits in the back of an ambulance, but she can only repeat about how she stopped the bullets, which they just say is due to shock. Of course she was, due to just seeing her parents killed in the crossfire of a gang war when they only came to the city to prove that she would have been safe to go to school there. The forensic guy is saying that the situation doesn’t make sense, there are bullet holes everywhere, and some should have been in the girl. She still can’t answer any questions, as we flash back to just how she survived. She didn’t understand, but she had the power to stop time in a small radius, and ran out of the path of the bullets, but it didn’t last long enough for her to save her parents.

She was put in the hospital for a couple days observation, and when she got out, the police still had no concrete leads, and she was left on her own. She ended up just wandering the streets until she came to the scene of the murder, still not knowing how she survived. Suddenly, she was able to see the whole scene play out again. Ghostly forms of her parents and herself were before her as well as the gunmen in their car. The car took off just like before, but this time she followed, passing other ghosts of the past, as if she held sway over time. She followed the phantom car right up to where it was parked, where the killers were inside partying. She called the detective and the police came right over, but the killers weren’t about to go easily, as they come out with their guns firing. But Suzanne, or Sway, could let it happen, and she froze the killers in time so the police could take care of them with no one getting hurt.

She later explained everything she learned about this power she had, and the detective takes leave to make a phone call. She knew he was going to tell someone about her, but she trusted him. Later, who should walk in but Moira MacTaggert. She says she wants to help Sway with her powers and asks if she’s ever heard of the X-Men.

Review: I am really, really loving this series. The mystery is really unfolding at a nice pace. Even though I think I have the bulk of the mystery figured out, that Xavier sent another team of the mutants we’ve seen in the back up stories to their deaths to try and save the original X-Men, there’s still a lot we don’t know and I think we’re still in for some genuine shocks later on. One thing that I really hope Brubaker is able to do, if not in this LS then when he takes over on Uncanny, is to somehow bring back Petra, Darwin, and Sway. It’s clear the fourth member of the team is supposed to be the Mystery Mutant, but I’m also really interested in these other characters. I know it doesn’t seem like there was much we have been given to get attached to, but these characters are all really interesting as well as their powers. They may have powers somewhat similar to characters we already have, Petra to Avalanche, Darwin to Lifeguard, and Sway to maybe Kiden Nixon, but there are enough differences to make them special in their own right. Petra can actually shape the earth into whatever she wants, Darwin can adapt to absolutely any situation, and Sway can adjust her time stopping powers to affect only certain people as well as that ability to see the events of the past, which could really come in handy. Also, what’s really endearing about these characters is the really sad back stories that they all have. One thing I notice that seems to be a common thread through them so far is how they lost their families, also because they weren’t able to control their powers enough to save them. Petra could have made the rocks avoid her family and Sway could have gotten her parents out of the way of the bullets had they known. Darwin’s mother may not have died, but he still “lost” her directly due to him being a mutant. They’ve just had very bad times, and for them to end up dead at the end of it is rather depressing. There is a ton of potential that exists in these characters, and, especially because of the Decimation, they could really have a chance to shine in future X-stories, and not necessarily even as heroes.

I was sad to see Banshee was confirmed to have died in this issue. He’s really gotten the short end of the stick over the last few years, and it was a really crappy way to go out (the death itself, not Brubaker’s writing of it), but I really hope this isn’t the last we see of him. Here’s hoping he gets a really good send off at least, for now.

The art, I feel, is also improving issue to issue. Hairsine and Hanna keep it nice and dark, but make some of the designs friendly and but with enough variation to make them interesting without going against other versions of them that are out currently.

Really can’t wait for the next issues to come out.