Chapter V: Post-Apocalyptic Earth

Cable trained with Shin, who warned him to beware the Dark Sisterhood, a secret organization of murder, extortion, blackmail, bribery, kidnapping, and slavery. They controlled criminal cartels throughout the world.

Irene Merryweather delved into Cable’s past by speaking to the Beast about the battle on the moon against Apocalypse when Cable was a mere infant [[[[[Sections 1 & 10]]]]]. Beast told her that a healthy clone (Stryfe) could not have been made from Cable’s cells without a cure for the techno-organic virus. Irene questioned why the cure would not have been used for Nathan’s benefit.

Cable discovered a member of the Dark Sisterhood that was spying on him. Wielding a psimitar, she attacked him and then fled. Cable forced the truth behind the organization from Blaquesmith, for he reasoned the old man must have some connection with them because of the psimitar, a link. Blaquesmith told him what he knew (CABLE #89).

Due to Bonita’s premature attack on Cable when she was discovered spying on him, twenty members of the Dark Sisterhood gathered around Cable’s safe house in preparation to attack. They had been given instructions by the Dark Mother to take Cable alive, if possible, but to kill his friends, Irene Merryweather and Blaquesmith. Blaquesmith and Irene prepared to depart through an underground passageway. Blaquesmith bestowed upon Irene a psi-shield to cloak her from the sisters’ telepathy. They made it to a getaway car and escaped.

With a certain degree of stealth, Cable conquered several sisters hunting him inside the safe house, while at the same time setting explosives about the base. Within the safe house, Cable saw an image of Aliya, which beckoned him, “The fifth force, Nathan…” Cable defeated the leader of the assault, a sister referred to as “the Seventh,” with martial arts moves learned by his trainer Shin. He pilfered secrets from the Seventh’s mind. That achieved, Cable detonated the safe house and prepared for open conflict with the Dark Sisterhood (CABLE #90).

The Dark Sisterhood, whose members disguised themselves as police officers, led a car chase after Irene and Blaquesmith on their way to the closest of Cable’s back-up safehouses. Fleeing their pursuers, they were tragically routed to the docks of the river, which they crashed over. The sisters, crowding around yet not sensing their thoughts, took them for dead and fled the scene before they could be discovered. In truth, Irene clenched to a wooden pillar below the boardwalk, so as not to drown. The device that Blaquesmith had given her to shield her mind had saved her life. Blaquesmith was no longer with her. He’d pulled a disappearing act. Alone, Irene’s primary concern was to immerse herself underground until she could communicate with Cable.

Casper and Wendy, two spooks that claimed they owed their lives to Cable, picked her up within minutes. After rescuing her, this covert “clean-up crew” planted a cadaver in the driver’s side seat of her car beneath the docks. Wendy manipulated Irene’s fingerprint records to match those of the corpse. She forged a will for Irene stating that she was to be cremated at once. With the cadaver disposed of, there was a chance that the sisterhood would continue to think her dead. The police agent of the Dark Sisterhood who was responsible for driving Irene into the river did some computer hacking of her own, creating past convictions for Irene for drinking and driving. Thus the accident was covered up.

When she recovered, Irene was informed by Casper, Wendy, and another, Spooky, that she had important decisions to make. To evade the sisterhood, her only chance would be to have her physical and vocal characteristics altered. She’d become black, a woman by the name of Margaret Brundale, and would be an insurance investigator.

At the X-Mansion, Phoenix received a telepathic alert from Cable that was succinct in warning her to “beware the Dark Sisterhood.” Phoenix went to Xavier with this message, and Beast came with news of the destruction of Cable’s safehouse. Xavier had no luck in contacting Nathan mentally. Where Phoenix and Beast felt the need to lend assistance to their fellow X-Man, Xavier questioned Cable’s allegiances and ethics. With the evidence that Cable recently attacked Nightcrawler in a lamentable rage, and with a whopper of an accusation that Cable killed Senator Kelly, doubt was instilled. In the news, it was revealed that the student that shot the senator was found dead in his jail cell, a blood-written message on the wall that read, “Cable made me do it.” His heart was crushed to a pulp, the work of a telekine. [[[[[His death was recently retconned]]]]] Could Cable have manipulated the boy’s mind to fire upon the senator? The world had no qualms in believing a mutant was capable of such actions.

Rachel Summers, in college, was asked by friends to attend an S.A.M. rally. S.A.M. stood for “Students Against Mutants,” and it would seem to be a burgeoning hate group akin to the Friends of Humanity. Rachel became aware of the news that her brother killed Senator Kelly and the student previously accused to be his killer. She decided to investigate the S.A.M. rally that night, and so she armed herself to deal with any threat that might present itself.

At the rally, a not-so-subtle probe on Rachel’s end revealed that Connie Moore, the group’s founder, was a low-level telepath of the Dark Sisterhood sent to stir anti-mutant sentiment. Knowing of the Dark Sisterhood’s involvement, Rachel attempted to scare pertinent information from the girl. Rachel knew that her time out of the spotlight was at its end. She had to take center stage and locate her brother. She left school.

Clarity, along with Lea and Greg, fled their headquarters for Australia when the Dark Sisterhood penetrated its walls. While Clarity once had a truce with Finality, its time was passed. Fearing him, she could not allow him to survive. Through him, the sisterhood sought to get hold of Cable.

A week later, contacts for the sisterhood that were placed in Washington, D.C. took the first steps to court martial Commander G.W. Bridge of S.H.I.E.L.D. for his association with Cable and lack of dependability in placing the perceived terrorist under arrest. When official documents and data banks regarding Cable and Bridge vanished without a trace, and therefore could not be produced against him, he was let off without penalty.

The next day Bridge was called back to the general’s office, where he was told he had two choices, the first to be transferred to Alaska, the second to be court marshaled. According to the general, this was the decision reached the night before. Bridge accused the commanding officer of lying, at which point the general flew off the handle and pulled a gun on him. He withdrew it, saying that he’d been on edge since the night before, after the meeting, when the other generals investigating Bridge were victims of two separate accidents. The Dark Sisterhood eliminated those that could verify Bridge’s claims. Bridge accepted to be transferred to Alaska.

Cable stormed the Dark Sisterhood’s mansion, at first without the use of his psi-powers, as a precaution taken against alerting them to a surprise attack. In this assault guns became a necessity, and Cable returned to his roots, although he displayed them in a somewhat more stealthy form than he’d done in the past. Gaining forced entry, he interrupted a meeting between the heads of crime families and a representative of the sisterhood, who extorted from them a greater percentage of their profits in exchange for their protection. The Dark Mother made a semi-personal appearance, as she materialized as a psionic presence.

Having something to pronounce, Cable delivered a soliloquy stating his views. “There’s a war going on—a secret war, a battle that will determine the course of human history. There are four powers in this war. The first power is passive mankind. They fear mutants, but have neither the resources nor the drive to act on their fear. Then, there are the humans who hate mutants. They will do anything to destroy us. They are the second power. Next are the X-Men and those mutants who believe in peaceful coexistence. They are hampered by their morality—they are the third power. The fourth power are those mutants who believe mankind and mutants can never coexist. Magneto and Mystique and the Dark Sisterhood. [Their] dream is a nightmare, a world ruled by mutants, with humanity as [their] slaves. These four powers are at war. Most people don’t realize it yet. A few, like the X-Men, try to deny it. Others revel in it. It’s a war equally balanced with two powers against two others. It’s a war that must come to an end before it destroys all life on this planet.”

Cable went on to call attention to a discovery that he made. “I had visions of my dead wife, Aliya. My subconscious at work or something more, I don’t know. In these visions, she said ‘the Fifth Power.’ Now I understand what she meant. There must be a fifth power. One that believes in the X-Men’s ideals, but realizes that achieving the dream demands breaking the rules. A power that brings the battle to the enemy. The time for negotiating, the time for talking, the time for peacemaking is over.” He unleashed a psi-burst in his image on the Dark Mother’s substantial form, hidden behind a computer monitor somewhere, and proclaimed himself as the fifth power.

A soldier, Cable was far from defenseless. Though his friends and allies were either killed or chased away, he had plans, a decade in the works, that would lend themselves to his war on this organization that numbered in the thousands.

Thereafter he struck the sisterhood at its foundations, setting off on a campaign to defeat its members one by one, by attaining close proximity and then mindwiping them. It was in this fashion that Cable left over a hundred members of the Dark Sisterhood with the dispositions of preadolescent children. With these acts he left behind the biblical message, “You have been judged and found wanting.” The Dark Mother, hidden away and tired, showed signs of apprehension.

Cable, through his subversion, downloaded encrypted filed from high-ranking sisters, each appointed by Secretary of Defense Gina Anderson, giving him the names of all the sisterhood’s members save that of the Dark Mother herself. Remaining anonymous, Cable sent echoes of his findings to G.W. Bridge in Alaska.

Irene, while chasing after Cable by peering into the medical conditions of the mind-wiped sisters, was visited once again by Alecto, her contact in the group of three witches that patrol time. In another form, that of “Cyanide Jane,” Alecto admitted that the witches were manipulating Cable to act the way that they wanted him to, for the benefit of over a trillion alternate timelines. Irene was sworn to keep this secret, from Cable and others. Along the lines of this promise, Alecto scrambled her thought patterns to keep away telepathic eavesdroppers.

Cable called Irene to join him at his hideout. From his operations, Cable learned much about the origin of the Dark Sisterhood. “They want to establish a global matriarchy, a world where women rule and men—who in her mind, have possessed the planet—are slaves. In 1660, a fiery meteor fell to the ground near Hamburg, Germany. Six children on holiday found the stone. Within six months, five of the six children died. Only one, a boy named Hans Knoblach, survived seemingly with no problems. Hans came from a wealthy German merchant family. In 1670, he married Lady Gertrude Hunter, daughter of an English lord. A year later Hans and his wife were awarded a large tract of land in Virginia and moved to the New World. In 1673, Gertrude gave birth to a daughter, Gloria. Two years later saw the arrival of her second child, a boy she named William. Her third and final child, Fiona, was born in 1680. Tragedy struck in 1692. Gloria went to visit one of her mother’s relatives living in Salem, Massachusetts. She was accused by one of the village children of being a witch. Gloria was judged guilty and hung in June of 1692. In 1695, apologies for the witch trials were sent to the relatives of those executed. It was little comfort to Gloria’s parents and siblings. Their daughter was dead and no apology could bring her back. Fiona was especially bitter. The final straw was when William Stroughton, the most rabid witch-hunter of the trials, was elected governor of Massachusetts. Fiona was so enraged over the election that her parents feared for her sanity. She was confined to the family mansion for a year. Her only visitor was a minister who read to her from the Bible. When she emerged, she never spoke of her sister again. In 1700, William traveled to Europe on a business trip, selling tobacco for his father. He never returned. Rumors had it that he was studying the occult in India or Tibet. During that period, he changed his name to ‘Clarity.’ In 1705, Hans and Gertrude died in a family boating accident. Only Fiona survived. She inherited an estate worth millions. Newspapers described her as incredibly beautiful and extremely strong-willed.” Clarity returned to her as soon as he heard of his parents’ deaths. He knew that Fiona was responsible, so he brought with him his bodyguards. The siblings were immortal, his power to absorb and analyze knowledge as fast as he gets it, her power to gaze into the future and sense the results of every action. Rather than kill each other, brother and sister agreed to a truce. After all, she’d invited him there to join her. Fiona foresaw success in most possible futures but for a few in which a man and a woman, Cable and Rachel, stood in her way. “In a world where most women were considered property, Fiona had little freedom. She married John Jones, a wealthy landowner in 1707. She gave birth to three children, all girls, before Jones died under mysterious circumstances five years later. Fiona remarried soon after to another millionaire, Andrew Benedict. Fiona gave birth to three more children, again all girls, before Benedict perished in a strange fishing accident in 1718. In 1720, Fiona married Vernon Reaves, and extremely wealthy shipbuilder. Like his predecessors, Vernon died within a few years, but not before Fiona gave birth to her seventh child, another girl. All seven of Fiona’s children scattered throughout the United States and married. All of them had children, mostly girls. In time those children got married, settled down throughout the growing country, and raised families. By the time Fiona supposedly died in 1780 at the age of one hundred…she had twenty grandchildren and more than sixty great grandchildren. No body was ever seen and the service was private. One of Fiona’s grandchildren took control of the estate. She was described as looking exactly like her grandmother. Fiona became ‘Finality.’ She’s an extremely powerful mutant seeking revenge against all men for the death of her sister. After ten generations, Fiona has nearly thirty thousand descendants. Every member of the Dark Sisterhood is one of her descendants.”

From what information Cable could gather, which showed that Finality had been sending members of the sisterhood to infiltrate Washington, Irene was able to surmise that Finality’s aim was to kill the president, vice-president, Speaker of the House of Representatives, President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Secretary of State, and Secretary of the Treasury, thereby leaving her agent in the sisterhood, Gina Anderson, the Secretary of Defense, to inherit the presidency. Cable and Irene reasoned that if the Dark Sisterhood killed the president and the rest of his successors at an emergency cabinet meeting the next day, the Dark Mother would gain a foothold into the presidency of the United States.

It was at this point that G.W. Bridge returned to the game. With the information given him by Cable via fax, Bridge stormed the military offices that employed Henry Peter Gyrich. Presenting him with these files, the Dark Sisterhood’s bid for power was at once ended. Gina Anderson, en route to Washington to arrive after the president’s planned death, was apprehended at landing.

Cable, with Irene at the sisterhood’s headquarters, posed to attack with no foreseeable plan. Rachel appeared as from nowhere to assist her brother, but Cable expected aid from elsewhere. He gambled on Bridge’s resourcefulness, hoping to head into a battle fronted by all the legions at S.H.I.E.L.D.’s disposal. He got his wish, but staked much on its delivery.

The Dark Mother, within the compound, refused to flee. She knew that if she killed Cable and his sister that day, the one joint obstacle in her plans, whose actions she could not predict with her mutant powers, the future would be paved for conquest.

Their psi-powers evenly matched, it was a physical battle that was waged between Finality and Cable, the Dark Mother and…the son? Cable uncovered the Dark Mother’s hood, revealing the face of Jean Grey, his mother. She claimed that the resemblance was due to Jean being her removed granddaughter. Marvel Girl would have been made an asset to the sisterhood at maturity had it not been for the guidance of Charles Xavier.

This news, that Cable was the Dark Mother’s grandson, shocked him to the extent that he dropped his guard, leaving him open to his opponent’s dagger. Irene, from the side, shot her. With no possibility for victory in the future, her bid for power was ended, and so the Dark Mother retreated into her own mind, becoming catatonic.

Rachel assured Cable that Finality’s claim to being Cable’s relative was unlikely. The leader of the Dark Sisterhood could have altered her looks to appear as she did. But what would make Rachel so sure?

The Dark Mother was left to S.H.I.E.L.D. to be hospitalized (CABLE #s 91-95).

Section 26: The Hundred Days of Apocalypse