This should be a victory. Genomex as we know it is gone. It is the reason I formed Mutant X. This conclusion is what we have fought for all these years. Eckhart is finally subdued, the captured New Mutants are free and the government is no longer turning a blind eye to their own covert operation. Then…why do I feel so hollow? So unsatisfied?

“It is the best of times, it is the worst of times” to paraphrase Charles Dickens.
Perhaps my feelings are eclipsed by the fact that Mutant X had little or nothing to do with Genomex’s downfall. After all the confrontations, battles and stalemates it fell to a third party, an unexpected player, to take out Mason Eckhart: Gabriel Ashlocke, the original New Mutant. And he did it with such a relative ease that we looked like amateurs in comparison.

Somewhere in my head must have lurked the romantic notion that my team would be the ones to break open the security gates, unlock the stasis chambers and remove the subdermal governors from all those who had been imprisoned. It was a way to balance my own guilt for putting them there, I suppose. Or perhaps it was a petty desire of my unchecked ego. Dr. Breedlove always said that was my chief Achilles heel. How I hate to admit he was right.

Still, there is something else: the feeling of failure. Genomex may be a thing of the past, but Mutant X cannot rest. Ashlocke is no hero and his presence unleashed on the world could have apocalyptic repercussions. The enemy New Mutants must now face is no longer an intolerant race of human beings, but one of their own. He is a twisted prince of dark power with the combined abilities of them all to wield: Elemental, Molecular, Psionic and Feral. Ashlocke is a god in the worst sense of the word. He is Rome as it burned or the crush of Viking raiders. He is the slave trader, the senseless bloody sacrifice, the new Third Reich.

And he walks among us.

Eckhart almost seems preferable now. I wonder if he’s dreaming in his frozen state? Was it just I, or was our rivalry and hatred merely a front? A mask that men wear when they are too much alike. When both are capable of winning and know that only one can. And now that Mason is gone…did I win? The fact that I have to ask the question should be my answer.

Genomex was just the first act in Mutant X’s drama. A prologue, even. Now we are accepted, if not publicly acknowledged, by the government. They want us on their side to fight Ashlocke…and others. There is always the threat they could turn against us again, which leaves Mutant X little choice but to play along. How ironic. We are the new GSAgents. Our mission is to protect the very forces that once hunted us like animals. The New Mutant future remains in doubt.

And I am still responsible for most of it.