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241 timeline

10-01-2046

(uncharted area of modern-day) America

Summers returned home to find that the 241 timeline was nothing like what she remembered of her childhood. True, this reality was still in tact, as her existence had been erased, but it was an empty world, to say the least.

100's of years after Rachel's time, the Egyptian mutant-cyborg, En Sabah Nur, also called Apocalypse, took command over all the Earth. With his survival-of-the-fittest policy, he introduced an era of crime and poverty to humans and mutants alike. As expected, natural selection favored the mutants. But some would say the humans were lucky to have died, rather than live through "The Dark Age".

Now 4 years into Apocalypse's reign, Rachel scavenged for signs of life throughout her world. She searched endlessly, soaring 1,000's of feet above what had once been America. After almost 3 full days of travel, she spotted a cluster of androids running through the forest, training laser-aim rifles upon trees, obviously looking for some hiding prey. She sped forward, to find 24 women sprinting desperately. Excited, Rachel lowered her altitude to get a better view. 1 of the women stopped abruptly, resting her hands on her knees and spitting a large amount of blood to her side with a grimace. "Sanctity," she hissed toward her right, "we must stop! We can't keep this up for long."

A teenage girl, whom Summers assumed to be Sanctity, shook her head, panting. "If we stop, and Apocalypse's forces reach us, we'll never be able to resist." The rest of the females circled around them.

"'If,' yes," the first woman retorted. "But, there is no 'if' in this route. We will die of exhaustion. Come, we can stay by the riverbank; there'll be plenty of game. Just 1 night, and then we can start again at dawn, with renewed energy."

The teenager shook her head. "Dead men have no energy. Replenish yourselves with thoughts of the Chosen One. He would not wa—" But before she could finish her sentence, the robot assassins had caught up with the group, and began unleashing an attack of lasers and plasma rifles upon the small troupe. The massacre was astounding. In the short moments it took Rachel to come to a landing among the warfare, 5 or 6 women had already been slain. They were greatly outnumbered, and the androids were more efficient than even the Sentinels.

Rachel concentrated a small TK shield around each of the humans in her midst, while showering the clearing in an immense haze of light and smoke, which looked much like the explosion of an H-Bomb. Once the blinding ray of light had dimmed, she turned to Sanctity, who she assumed the leader of the group. "Are you okay?"

But the girl simply stared at her, eyes wide in shock, her mouth half open. "How did you do that?" she asked in awe. She didn't even look mildly shocked at the corpse lying a few feet from her.

Rachel pointed at it. "Don't you want to examine your losses before we begin introductions?"

Sanctity glanced down with a shrug. "She has only been amongst us for a few days. I knew upon our first meeting that she would not last long. I don't believe I could tell you her name if I tried."

241 timeline

10-02-2046

(uncharted area of modern-day) America

Sanctity turned out to be Tonya Trask, daughter of the Bolivar Trask who'd invented the Sentinels. She and Rachel exchanged life-stories over firelight for hours, well past midnight, as they had volunteered for watch duty, while other women slept. Trask's experiences were somewhat similar to Summers', and they got along unnaturally well. Within 10 minutes of introducing themselves, they'd already started to finish each other's thoughts.

As she finally summarized how she'd come to the 241 timeline, Rachel looked from the heart of the flames before her to Sanctity's face. They were both lying upon sleeping bags that Rachel had formatted from thin air. Tonya, who kept nestling herself deeper into the bag, looked like she hadn't slept upon anything soft in years. She narrowed her eyes in thought. "So what are you going to do now?" she asked. "Will you try to go back in time and prevent Apocalypse's rise to power?"

Rachel shook her head. "That never produces clear results. Besides, the X-Men have tried it numerous times in M.E. and Apocalypse inevitably comes to power anyway. It's almost like fate." She surveyed Sanctity, measuring her confidence, before saying, "I think I'm going to try to fight him."

"Fight Apocalypse?" Tonya bellowed. "You are insane!"

"No," Summers said calmly. "And you're going to help me."

Sanctity's face dropped into an incredulous gape. "Apparently, you don't hear very well. I told you, my only mutant ability is timetravel, and I have no control over it. None whatsoever!"

"From what I can tell, you've survived 18 years of scraping an existence for yourself in this cold world. And you don't realize it yet, because your abilities are still undeveloped for some reason, but you are actually a psi."

"How would you know that?" snapped Trask.

"I know everything," came Rachel's smug reply, and Tonya rolled her eyes with a smile.

"Alright, hypothetically," she suggested, "should I decide to help you, how would you do it? You may be invincible, but Apocalypse cannot die either. It does no good to simply fight him; we'd need to kill him."

"Yeah, I've actually been thinking about that since I came here." Rachel looked into the fire for thought. She'd only known Trask for a short while, but she felt secure with her nonetheless—so secure, in fact, that she was willing to risk the biggest mission of her life in order to recruit the girl. "In the late 19th century," she said, "there was a young mutant by the name of Destiny. She had suffered a sudden loss of physical vision, only to find that she had instead gained the ability of foresight. She had many premonitions of a dark world centuries into the future. These visions haunted her, until she began to record them in what is known today as Destiny's Diaries."

"I think I've heard of these Diaries before," Trask said in a whisper. "Everyone thought they were just a myth!"

"For some reason," Summers continued, "the more she wrote into that small notebook, the less she was plagued by her gift. One day, the visions faded altogether. But before she died, Destiny traveled throughout the world, scattering the pages of her diaries, afraid that the force behind the evil in her dreams would take advantage of the knowledge they contained. Some believe that force is Apocalypse. We also believe that the secret to defeating Apocalypse is scattered across the globe in those pages." Rachel looked up. "We have to find those pages."

"You're out of your mind. How are we going to search the entire globe for a few small pieces of paper?"

Summers grinned. "I'm confident and ingenious; that combination is always mistaken for insanity."

But Sanctity didn't seem amused. She was slowly coming out of her sleeping bag. "Answer the question," she snapped.

Summers sobered. "We're going to build an army."

"An army?" Tonya repeated in disbelief. "And where are you going to find soldiers? There are hardly any living creatures left who don't serve Apocalypse. And the rest of us are merely running for our lives—you expect us to stand up to them? That is suicide."

"I'm going to start recruiting here."

Tonya's eyes grew even wider. "You're not serious?" Rachel nodded again. "You do realize," Sanctity asked, "that most of these girls are cowards and whores, who'll do anything to save their own skin? This is the last place you'll ever find soldiers."

"But if I could recruit them," Rachel said, "will you help me?"

The other teenager was also staring into the fire. Finally, she gave her a defeated look, saying, "Let me think about it." When her friend's face returned to a grin, Trask hastily added, "I'm not saying 'yes'."

Summers simply answered, "You're not saying 'no', either."