Synopsis: This issue begins with the words “London: Then”. Get ready for some flashback action, Usual Suspects style. An important personage is escorted into a shiny car and motored through the streets, right before James puts paid to its progress by slamming, feet-first into the car’s engine. Security steps out of the car to put him down, but Jesse takes them out with bio-emp. James rips off the car door and inquires of the important personage, “Alistaire Stuart?” At the affirmative, Jesse buzzes him unconscious and James takes to the air with them both under each arm.

Now. A roughed-up Domino lights a cigarette and sighs regretfully over the snatching of Stuart, the head of the British intel unit, The Department. She pinpoints that as the beginning of the end. Very Usual Suspects.

Back to then. Stuart is searched for tracking devices before being allowed to see the rest of the team. He exclaims, “Pete Wisdom!” upon seeing Sam. Oh. I see. That’s why he was the only one to attempt a disguise. Because it wasn’t. Because he wanted to look like Pete. For some weird reason which is not explained here. Anyway, Sam tells Stuart that he’s not Pete but that a “long time ago, in ‘nother life, I used t’be Sam Guthrie”. What?! If he isn’t Sam anymore, and he’s going around looking like Pete, why’s he saying he isn’t Pete either? Geez, dude can’t even do schizo properly.

Sam confirms Stuart’s guess that they’re X-Force, but denies that they died in Russia six months ago (duh), clarifying that they dropped out of sight for a while. Stuart looks pleased as he figures out that they’re the ones who’ve been causing such chaos in the spook world, using Pete’s files and training, and changing m.o.s constantly to avoid detection. Sam finally cuts to the chase, asking Stuart for information on British intel. Stuart refuses. Jesse threatens to get the info out of him anyway, but Sam appeals to Stuart’s better nature, confessing that they’ve “discovered something big and bad” but that they can’t tackle it on their own. Stuart says, “Convince me.”

Cut back to Dom. She recaps what Sam told Stuart, beginning with the history of X-Force, their entanglement with Niles Roman and Pete’s subsequent death. After Dom rejoined the group, seeking their help with a piece of alien technology grafted to her side, they encountered Romany Wisdom, Pete’s sister, who removed the device from Dom. Soon later, they met Val Rychenko, who helped them find Roman again, then turned out to be an LMD packing a vibranium bomb. Jesse (not Sam. Hmm.) shielded them from the blast that destroyed the complex. The team then decided to drop out of sight, but were tracked down by British intelligence in the guise of Agent Corben. She gave up the name of her boss: Romany Wisdom.

Turns out Romany is so high up in intel that no one knows what exactly it is she's doing or where. The team figure they can use Jesse’s powers to lock onto the biomagnetic signature of the device Romany took out of Dom to find her. They get into Romany’s complex with relative ease, as she orders her people to “deploy conventional deterrents only.” The ground troops don’t stand a chance. There’s a cool montage of the team taking out the troops, and it ain’t for dinner and dancing either (sorry, lame.)

They then turn to Jesse for directions, but he admits that the signal they were looking for can’t be pinpointed, as it’s all around them. Which is when Romany makes her appearance, telling them to either surrender or die. Tab gets pissy, choosing to “kick [Romany’s] skinny British ass back into a previous life!” You go, girl! Heh.

Romany pretty much rolls her eyes as she explains that the team can’t shut down either her or the complex. Even if they shut her down, the work would continue, and the only way to stop the work would be to destroy the installation. Unfortunately, said installation is huge, powered by a geothermal reactor and houses six thousand employees and their families. “Kill[ing] them all and tear[ing] a hole into the world” would be the only way to shut the place down. Romany snarks that this would probably satisfy X-Force’s “comic book logic”. Ha!

She then offers them an alternative: why not join the complex instead of fighting it? She offers to show them something before they decide, and the team STUPIDLY follows her into the complex and down various corridors. Jesse figures out that the reason he couldn’t get a lock was because the entire place was built of the same material as Dom’s implant. Romany asks whether Roman explained what the complex was attempting. Sam replies that they were told the complex was “creating spontaneous mutations in humans so they can be harvested for spare parts for some alien ship.” Once more, Romany rolls her eyes, saying that the truth is a matter of perspective, as she lets them into a chamber that makes Roman’s bio-lab look like Santa’s Workshop.

Disgusted, Sam (and how come Romany said nothing about his adoption of Pete’s appearance?) points out that the forms half-embedded in the walls are people. Romany coolly tells him that all those people are criminals, the dregs of society finally making a useful contribution to humankind. Tab points out that ‘useful’ here means “helping some alien nightmare turn our world into its new vehicle.” Romany tries playing the blame game by reminding the team of the families of the people they killed in #114, which makes no sense whatsoever in the context of this conversation (Mr Edginton, I know you were trying to cram in a lot of stuff before your run was cut tragically short but, dude. Logic should not fly out the window as a result.)

Romany gets back on topic, asking Sam if what the complex is doing is indeed wrong. Fully rebuilding the “world engine” will take half a million years with their present technology, so the complex was growing the required tools, “subtly improving the human race to make them more compatible symbiotes.” The benefits would include the eradication of “disease, genetic disorders, genetic predisposition to crime and gender disorientation.”

Sam rightly asks about choice and free will, and Romany insists that they’re luxuries humanity can no longer afford as, if left to their own devices, they’ll be wiped out in a thousand years. Jesse realizes that Romany herself isn’t quite human any more, as he detects “alien junk where her vital organs should be.” She admits that she volunteered to be the “interface between humanity and the world engine.” She was prepared to make the necessary sacrifices. She asks: is X-Force?

“Hell, no” is the (paraphrased) answer, and Romany shrugs then walks out of the room, leaving the team to the mercy of the massed symbiotes. Much as the ground troops were easily taken down by them, the team is swarmed by the creatures. Dom tells her still-hidden interrogators that Tab was the first to go, pulled down by five of the monsters. Sam dove in after her and disappeared. The rest of the team’s last hope was Jesse: if the base was the device, and the device was bio-organic, then Jesse’s powers could blow up the entire place. And they did.

James threw Dom clear and the next thing she knew, she was being evacuated in a medicopter. She was told that no one else survived, and that’s all she knows. The scene pulls back to reveal that she’s been talking to a two-way mirror all along, behind which Stuart asks a shadowed figure, “Well?” The figure confirms that “there’s a crater in the Oxfordshire countryside” bigger than St Paul’s Cathedral, but is cagier at confirming whether there were any survivors. The figure steps out of the shadows and, horrors, it’s Pete. He tells Stuart not to write nasty old Romany off as dead, as he’s been dead before, too.

Stuart asks Pete if it was all worth it, and Pete reminds him that they saved the world. Stuart asks about X-Force, and Pete grins. “They’ll be back, you mark my words,” is his parting sentence. “Back when you least expect it.”

Review: Damn straight. I have defended this issue to the ground in the Boards. Save for the one blip in Romany’s debate with X-Force, it made perfect sense. I also appreciate that Edginton didn’t treat us like morons by having Pete say what he did at the end. I’m sick of having characters die, and caring about it, then finding that their death is cheapened by some miraculous reappearance. As to the new team taking over next issue? So what. This team is coming back, and they’re coming back with a bang. Hopefully, they’re gonna clean up after the new team makes a hash of things...it’ll be nice to see the new team at work, though. Variety is the spice of life etc. Seriously, though, X-Force has always been supposed to be the edgier book, heavily involved in rogue operations and dirty work. I know I’m in the minority of people who’re looking forward to Milligan and Allred’s run (and that, too, is tempered by how much I’ll miss Edginton and Lucas), but I really want to see how M&A deal with the black sheep of the X-Family.

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