...
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
A booming explosion tore through the lab where the Sentinel was kept, like tons of TNT going off at once inside the huge building.
It happened in a split second.
The ground shook and trembled... the noise filled everything, breaking the silence.
A few black-ops soldiers guarding the perimeter didn't even have time to notice the noise or turn around before the shockwave vaporized them on the spot.
A powerful shockwave blasted outward in a violent, visible sphere. Wherever it hit—the ground cracked open into a web of chasms.
Right now, after only two years, Quantico was thrown back into a nightmare.
Soldiers and mutants near the banquet hall rushed for cover from the wind, staring in horror at the huge mushroom cloud rising from the underground laboratory.
The cloud twisted with flames and thick black smoke.
But inside the fire, a huge shape started to appear.
Suddenly... A lofty figure, radiating with a strange, pulsing blue light, took its first step out of the smoke.
With one step, it moved past the smoke and came into full view.
It was here—
The Sentinel.
But unlike the quiet, matte-black machine from before, this Sentinel was full of power. Its reactor burned inside its chest, radiating with its eyes in a harsh, electric-blue light.
"It's that robot."
"Did it come alive, or did someone boot it up?"
"Damn it!" Beast, standing with Storm and the other X-Men, suddenly realized what had happened. He looked from the awakened Sentinel to the smoking crater of the lab, his face going pale.
"Charles!"
Storm and the others quickly turned toward the ruined remains of the underground complex.
Their faces grew serious at once.
Their leader, Professor X, had been in that very room.
But now...
With the whole facility destroyed, how could Charles have survived?
"He's gone."
"..."
Storm and Cyclops turned quickly toward the voice and saw Hawk and Wanda standing just outside the banquet hall. They had come out without anyone noticing.
It was Wanda who had spoken.
Wanda glanced at the scorched crater and saw the twisted, melted remains of a wheelchair among the debris. She turned back to Hawk. "I thought their backup plan was to use Professor X as a peacemaker if things went sideways. Did they seriously just murder the only guy trying to play nice with them?"
Hawk shook his head, looking a little amused. "No, that really was their plan."
Charles wasn't supposed to die.
In Washington's original plan, Professor X was supposed to stay alive until Hawk was taken care of.
If their prized Sentinel failed to stop Hawk, Charles would have been the only thing standing between them and total destruction.
But right now... Charles was dead—and in the most gruesome way imaginable—atomized completely, without so much as ashes left behind to bury.
"..." Wanda narrowed her eyes.
"The dwarf."
Hawk suddenly understood what must have happened. "Bolivar Trask designed this thing from scratch. The only way this happens is if that little bastard built his own trap into it."
That was the only explanation that made sense.
After all, Bolivar Trask had always been obsessed with building the ultimate weapon to wipe mutants off the face of the Earth.
Hawk couldn't understand where that hatred came from. But he knew for sure that Trask held a grudge against Washington.
The government had kept him locked up in a secret prison for ten years. If they hadn't come back to him two years ago, he would have stayed there until he died.
"Wait... what did you say this was?"
Hank McCoy heard every word exchanged between Hawk and Wanda. Before he could even start to grieve for Charles, certain words struck him hard.
"Bolivar Trask? That's impossible—that dark future was wiped clean!"
During the Days of Future Past crisis, when Logan had traveled back through time, Hank had stood right beside Charles.
He knew everything about the original timeline and the apocalypse that followed.
Including the Sentinels.
But like Charles, he only knew them as a terrifying idea. He had never actually seen one in real life.
Now, hearing that the nightmare machines behind mutant genocide were standing over them in broad daylight, he froze in fear.
After clearing the rubble, the Sentinel stood still, as if it was waiting for a signal to adjust itself.
Hawk shifted his gaze away from the colossus, glancing at Beast with a smile. "How long has it been since you last checked in on Mystique?"
Hank's expression dropped.
Jean's eyes narrowed at the name. "Raven?"
Wanda turned to Jean, reassuring her softly. "Don't worry. She's banged up, but she's alive. A little rest and she'll be back on her feet."
Jean met Wanda's steady gaze and immediately felt relieved.
Wanda looked back at the silent giant.
"It's powered up, so what's it waiting for?"
"Waiting for its handler to log on."
"Trask?"
"Yeah."
Hawk nodded casually. He stepped forward into the air, floating up until he was eye level with the Sentinel, looking straight into its glowing blue visor.
Jean watched from below, her face full of worry.
"Mom... is Dad going to be..."
"Before, maybe. Now? He's fine."
"Oh, good... wait, what?" Jean nodded on reflex, then did a double-take, looking at Wanda in confusion.
Wanda just smiled, offering no further explanation.
After all, Hawk had first planned to fake his own death at the hands of the Sentinel. That would have looked truly catastrophic.
But when the Celestials appeared, everything changed.
As Hawk put it: Change of plans. It's time to go on the offensive!
——————————
Right then.
A turbine-like whine came from inside the machine. The Sentinel shook as the blue light in its eyes grew into a blinding glare.
Suddenly, a synthetic voice with no human tone boomed from the machine's speakers.
"Hawk Phoenix!"
"Shorty?"
Hawk raised an eyebrow, not surprised at all, and a mocking smirk appeared on his lips. "Or should I say, Mr. Bolivar Trask?"
Hidden in a bunker, Trask wore a device resembling a Cerebro neural-link headset. He stared at Hawk through the Sentinel's visual feed. Hawk hovered in front of him in crimson armor, and Trask's voice became a sinister rasp.
"You lack manners, Mr. Phoenix."
"Do I?"
Hawk chuckled. "And if I didn't, would you pack up your toy and go home?"
Bolivar Trask let out a raspy chuckle.
"Of course not."
"Don't take it personally, Mr. Phoenix. You won't be alone. Every mutant on the face of this planet will be purged beneath the heel of my Sentinels."
"Got a question for you."
"Enlighten me."
"I understand why William Stryker hated mutants—his wife died because of his mutant son, so grief twisted him into a monster. But you? What made you this bitter?"
"BECAUSE YOU DON'T DESERVE THIS WORLD!"
"Huh?"
"Earth belongs to mankind! It is not your birthright, and it will never be your inheritance!"
"...I get it now."
Hawk scoffed as it finally clicked. "This isn't some crusade. You're scared—and all that fear's curdled into petty rage."
William Stryker was driven by vengeance.
Ordinary bigots hated mutants out of envy and insecurity.
The suits in Washington hated mutants because they needed a scapegoat to control the masses.
But Bolivar Trask?
Driven by pure terror, he knew as a top geneticist that mutants were not an anomaly but the next step in human evolution. He understood that Homo superior would eventually replace Homo sapiens, just as modern humans had wiped out the Neanderthals.
At the heart of his fear lay a sad truth: he was just an ordinary human, not a mutant.
In the evolutionary system he supported, he was just dead weight, an outdated relic. That realization fed both his fear and his rage.
Bottom line:
If Bolivar Trask had been born with the X-gene, he would have been the first fanatic preaching mutant supremacy.
Too bad for him, he wasn't!
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