Amidst the Hell on Earth, a youngling clenches its tiny fists and wails into the night. Wrapped only in a crimson cloth, the infant has been left out in the cold. Jerusalem, as it has now become, has been overtaken by a great desert. The holy land is now nothing but a desecrate area. Sand blows across the land, into the baby's already tired lungs.

The sound of feet scrunching against the sand frightens the baby. A man wearing a tattered black rags and a long black coat kneels down into the sand to pick the infant up into his arms. The man's face was rugged and his hair was frizzy. His eyes were dark, but his pupils glowed like the fires of Hades.

"Don' worry, le petit, I've got you," the man says with a somewhat raspy voice. He spoke in a quiet, calming tone. "Who left you out here? So close to the Gate o' Hell, no less?"

There was a certain charm to the man and the baby suddenly stopped crying. The man's eyes widen with fear when he looks at the child's face. It looked like--

"What're you doin' out here at this time o' night, pup?" a voice asks from the shadows.

The man carrying the baby shifts his body to the right to protect the child, "Who's dere?"

An elderly man with long silver hair tied into a ponytail walks out of the darkness and into the eerie orange tint of the moonlight. He wore a brown trench coat which fell down just to about his calves. The man wore rags as well. He smiles, "You the one dey call Gambit, hein?"

Gambit's eyes flash, "Who sent you? Look, just let me find someone t' take dis kid. The thing could die out here!"

The old man smiles yet again. A few of his teeth were yellow. Liver spots speckled his wrinkled face. There was something strange, Gambit noticed. He had his same eyes.

"You ain't gonna take de child no place," Witness says with a commanding tone. He coughs. "Excuse me...need my medicine...been hard to find some..." Witness mutters as he wiggles around, digging in his trench coat pockets. He pulls out a pack of cigarettes. He quickly pulls one out and it seems to light itself. Witness takes a slow drag and exhales smoke, "Oh yeeeaaahhh..."

"Sorry, old man...I've got more important things to do than take orders from a withering ol' windbag," Gambit says as he carries the child past Witness.

The elderly man coughs again, "Wait."

Gambit turns around with a look of fretfulness. The baby was shivering, so Gambit pulled him tighter.

Witness pointed off into the distance, where a large tear in the very fabric of reality stood. It glowed like a second sun during the night, though much dimmer and rust-colored. "You gotta take dat kid into Limbo an' raise him dere," the old man explains.

"Why?" Gambit asks. The baby started to cry once more at the sound of hostility in Remy LeBeau's voice. Gambit began to cradle the child by bobbing up and down slowly. The old man remains reserved.

Witness smiles as he takes a playing card from his trench coat, and using sheer skill, flings it towards Gambit. He catches the card, giving Witness a weary look. It was the Ace of Hearts.

When Gambit looks back at the mysterious man, he was gone. After a few moments, the baby's cries become louder as Remy notices the card was beginning to glow with a pink energy. Gambit lets out a shout as he flings the card into the sand, where it explodes, creating a small crater.

The baby continues to cry, but the stunted silence coming from Gambit causes the young boy to abruptly become silent as well. Gambit looks down at the child and begins to walk through the sand, his feet enfolded in nothing more than torn wrappings scrunch in the arid ground. He and the child continue through the darkness, heading towards the portal leading to Limbo.

"If you are not watchful, I will come like a thief, and you will never know at what hour I will come upon you." -- Revelation 3:3

Elsewhere.

"Hahahaha!" a man covered in gray fur laughs as he uses his uncanny agility to keep a family of the human chaste surrounded by bouncing around them like a leopard cornering its prey. "Ever wonder what an injection of ammonium nitrate does to a human?" The man known as McCoy laughs, "Want to find out...?"

By-standing citizens of the city of Jericho, which was more like a prison for the humans, simply try to act as if they had more important things to do. The people were all dressed in thin cloth. Patches of dirt and soot covered their faces. They were strong enough to survive the culling by the demons of Limbo, but they still weren't mutants. And that made them the minority, even though humans outnumbered mutants on a grand scale. Lord Apocalypse had tipped the social ladder in favor of homo superior.

A blonde man drapped in a black smiles at this, "Look at them. Pitiful." His blue eyes seem to pierce the family, "You are pitiful!" His name was Prelate.

"Wot's the matter with ye?" a man who seemed to be half-plant shouted. He fired a blast of heat at the bystanders. "Mind yer own business! For Black Tom says so!"

A muscular woman with pink skin, wearing a blue bodysuit with yellow shoulder pad approaches the grandmother. The woman pulls a bone sticking out of her back and points the sharp edge at the elderly lady, "I wonder if you have the same colored blood as the rest of us?"

The citizens simply bow their heads, feeling sorry for the family. At least every day, these servants of Apocalypse would torment them. Some of them knew what it was like, some have yet to experience the humiliation and feelings of inferiority.

The victimized family consisted of a husband and wife, the grandmother, and three young daughters. Two of the daughters clung to their father's legs while the other was buried in her mother's chest. The grandmother catiously stood behind the mother.

"Come now, Marrow," a man with silvery armor and a skullcap on his head smiles. He hold out his hands as the very Earth beneath the family begins to shake. The land around the family forms a circle as it rises ten feet off the ground. "Behold, the genetic scum of Jericho!" Avalanche shouts.

A misshapen man crawling on all fours, dressed in what appears to be a jester's costume, bounds to the top of the pillar Avalanche formed. Toad smiles as he grabs the two daughters clinging to their father's legs. He tosses them off of the pillar, "Ey, Marko! Catch!"

"No!!" the mother shouts. Toad spits a goo-like substance over the woman's mouth. The husband quickly comes to her aid, ripping the goo off of her face so she can breathe. He looks angrily at the jester.

"Hold your tongue, witch!" he growls. Toad bounds down to ground level, where a large man in an oxide-colored armor holds the two human girls literally in the palm of each hand.

"I can't remember the last time I played juggle the flatscans," Juggernaut laughs through his gigantic helmet.

"Let me inject them with this compound I created," McCoy cackles. "Let's see if they grow fur over their body like me...then I'll have some playmates."

"You're sick, you know that, McCoy?" Juggernaut grumbles as he begins to toss the young girls in the air, each of them screaming as they nearly miss each other and are caught in his hand once more. "Juggle the flatscans! Juggle the flatscans...!" he sings while juggling the two young girls.

A man wearing a navy blue torn cloak over his body approaches the mutants from within the crowd. "Back off, that's enough," he speaks gruffly.

Prelate turns around, amused, "Or what?"

As Juggernaut tosses the two girls into the air, they seem to be pulled towards their family, still on the pedistal. "Hey, what the--?"

Prelate points to the cloaked enigma, "Get him!"

Toad tries to pounce on the man, but he just performs a roundhouse kick to the jester's stomach, sending him into a brick wall.

Marrow pulls out two bone dagger from her ribcage, screaming savagely as she leaps into the air. The man grabs both of her forearms and drives her own weapons into her intestines. She coughs up blood as she collapses onto the ground.

"Tha's it!" Black Tom shouts as he fires multiple blasts from his hands, partially composed of cellulose and chlorophyl. The cloaked man reaches within his cloak and pulls out a hilt of some kind. He presses a button, and the ends of a strange-looking spear shoot out from both the top and bottom of the hilt. The man then skillfully bats the blasts of energy away with this spear, promtly generating a blast of invisible force with the weapon into Black Tom. Tom is flung backwards. When he looks up, he realizes his hands have been torn off.

Avalanche growls as he kicks his seismic powers into overdrive, creating a pulse in the ground, which causes it to ripple as it heads for the man with the spear. The man points his weapon at the ground and blasts it, blunting the force. The whiplash causes Avalance to fly backwards into Black Tom, who was about to get up.

Unknown to the cloaked man, there was another of Apocalypse's servants that had gone unseen to the bystanders. He had green skin and had the power to create illusions. The man simply twirls his weapon behind him and jabs it into an invisible assailant. Energy encircles the wound as Mesmero's illusion is dropped.

"How did you know--?" he utters before dropping to the ground like a bag of bricks.

All that remained were Prelate and Juggernaut. Marko stomped his feet as he approached the cloaked man, "I'm the Unstoppable Juggernaut!!"

Yellow energy encircles Juggernaut as he is flung twenty feet into the air and brought crashing into the ground headfirst. This happens ten more times. Finally, Juggernauts helmet is crushed. The bolts securing it on his head pop off and the spherical helmet falls on the ground with a klang. Juggernaut grips his head in agony as his mind is burned by a psionic bomb. The nine-hundred pound Juggernaut falls face first before the feet of the cloaked man.

"I hope you didn't patent that name," the man says.

Suddenly, a blast of blue energy knocks the cloaked man over. Prelate laughs as he blasts him again and again. Suddenly, there is a force field of some kind around the man. The man charges Prelate and delivers a left hook. Prelate's eyes roll back into his skull as he falls over. He grips his jaw, which was horribly bruised.

"That's what!" the cloaked man shouts.

Prelate scurries to rise to his feet and takes off.

The man holds out his hand and the family on the pedistal is lifted with telekinetic force safely onto the ground. The family and the other bystanders begin applauding the man's efforts.

"...did you see that...?"

"...is he a mutant...?"

"...someone from New York named Mary Weather spoke of a man like him...!"

"...he handed them their asses...!"

"...is he starting a rebellion...?"

The father of the family, with two of his daughters in his arms, tells the mystery man, "You're our Savior! Thank you! Thank you..."

The mother, carrying the youngest daughter, asks, "Who are you, kind sir?"

The man takes the edges of his cloak, and pulls it down off of his head, revealing short-cut, silvery hair and a scar over one of his eyes. His other eye seemed to glow. He begins to walk off and mutters, "I don't know..."

A large door twenty feet tall rolls open, allowing just enough room for the man known as Prelate to get through. He trips on the stone floor. He swears, as he picks a pebble from the scrape in his knee. A large man with yellow crystaline armor is there to greet him. His name was Holocaust, son of Lord Apocalypse from a reality that no longer exists. Prelate is from that same place.

Holocaust walks over and picks Prelate up by the back of his cape, "What happened? Where is the rest of the Brotherhood?"

Prelate growls, "Let me down!" Holocaust complies by dropping him on the stone floor once again. Prelate sighs, struggling to get to his feet. The bruise on his jaw spread to the entire side of his face. "I believe it was the Askani'Son who stopped us."

The skull of Holocaust within his life support armor bubbles with fiery energy. Holocaust leaves Prelate to lick his wounds as he walks down the corridor to a hovercraft. He steps onto the craft and speaks to the operator, a human slave. "Top floor," Holocaust mutters. The human, dressed in bronze coverings, presses a button as the craft rises to the six-hundred and sixteenth floor of the Citadel. It was the only skyscraper in the world. It was shaped like an unusual spire, just as Apocalypse wanted it.

The craft stops and Holocaust steps off. The operator quickly descends to ground level.

The throne room was dark. In the large chair that sat atop the set of thirty stairs was Apocalypse himself. His skin was aged gray. He wore a loin cloth, gauntlets, and boots decorated with gold designs. Around his neck was a traditional pharoah's neckpiece, made entirely of gold. Apocalypse had applied grape juice around his lips, tracing the line up to his temples. He also applied these lines to the bottom of his eyelids. He also had blue lines on the very top of his bald head, save for his black ponytail which fell onto his shoulders.

"Welcome, my son. What brings you here?" Apocalypse asks as he gets up from his throne, walking towards Holocaust.

"I'm afraid, my Lord, that I have words to pick with you," Holocaust mutters. He folds his arms.

Apocalypse smiles, placing his hand on the shoulder of his son's armor, "Very well. One moment, if you please? I want to open the roof to gaze upon the stars and the moon." Apocalypse waves his hand, and the computer system lodged in the stone wall to the side of his throne hums to life. Various diodes flash as the roof seems to crumble as it slides open, pouring the orange moonlight into the room. "Now, what is it, my son?"

"I believe it was rather...unwise to let Cable live, m'Lord," Holocaust speaks, uncrossing his arms and stepping away from his father.

Apocalypse smiles, "You know better than most that only the strong will survive. My eternal enemy has proven himself strong. Therefore, he was allowed to live. I have mindwiped him along with the rest of the world. There should be little memory of what happened before my New Order."

Holocaust looks sternly at his father, a worried tone in his voice, "You're playing with fire. You realize that, don't you, father?"

Apocalypse raises his knuckles to his lips, "I know, child. Keeping Summers alive is the best way to test myself to be among the strong."

Prelate takes the hovercraft down to the confines of the Citadel, located a half-mile below the ground level. Prelate steps off the craft and proceeds to go into his quarters for a rest. He sees a person strung up with thick chains and various wires connected to his chest keeping him alive. He looked visably old. His breathing was labored. His eyes, however, had a look of sadness to them. His name is Nate Grey - the X-Man. He's seen Apocalypse come to power twice now.

A man with a black cloak monitored the prisoner. He was Alastaire, Katan of the Apocalypse Dawn, having a shaved head and a goatee at the tip of his chin.

Prelate rubs his face, asking, "Who is that? Why is he here?"

Alastaire simply responds, "He's the key."

The man known as Cable has been travelling for months now, battling the denizens of Limbo, servants of Apocalypse, and other scavengers along the way. Finally, his travels have led him to the portal leading to Limbo, located just above what was once Jerusalem.

Cable stabs the last of the demons in the chest with his psimatar. The demon shrieks as it explodes into dust.

Cable looks at the portal. The sight of the brimstone from the other side rekindles something within his mind. A vision begins to take shape...

An old man with a trench coat is alongside someone who looks like a younger version of Apocalypse. They're surrounded by tens of thousands of demons. The vision ends with the face of the Lord of Limbo's crimson visage grinning sinisterly.

"What was...?" Nathan asks himself, but there are voices in his head that interupt his thoughts. Was it someone trying to contact him telepathically? No, it couldn't be. There was no one in Jerusalem. No one in their right mind would live near the Gateway to Hell. They were voices echoing in his memory. Voices of the past...

"Try it, Nathan. Again." a woman in a blue robe with her red hair tied into a ponytail says.

"But it's painful. I can't, Redd, I--"

"Shhh. Concentrate. Again." Redd commands calmly.

Cable's eyebrows raise in shock. What was this? A woman is talking to a young boy with a metallic left arm like he does. The voices continue.

"...for today, we have among us, the last, the best hope for our planet. He who we anoint as The Chosen One, Nathan Dayspring, the Askani'Son!"

"HAIL DAYSPRING! HAIL ASKANI'SON!!"

"Rejoice, my faithful flock! And let me tell you of the last action of our lost Mother Askani on the day of our tragic fall. How she plucked a child from an era long, long gone and delivered him unto us..."

"Askani...?" Cable whispers.

"NO!"

"Nathan, don't look at her!"

"Jen...? Lord no, she's still alive..."

"Nathan...oh, Nate...it hurts..."

"Don't talk, Jen. It'll be...it'll be all right."

"Aliya...?" Cable utters as a tear wells up in his eye.

"No, when I said I wanted you to be my chronicler, I meant that I'd send you back the information while you stayed secure at one of my safehouses."

"I'm a reporter. I have to be there to report."

"I want you safe."

"Then find yourself another writer, because I won't be what you want. I realize now...I have to be a reporter...a true reporter in the field. I'm done with hunting through celebrities' garbage. And done with playing it safe."

Cable chuckles, "I know her...she's...Irene?"

"The Twelve...do not....forget......who they are.....more importantly....do not forget......what they mean to you.....your destiny......."

"Blaquesmith..." Cable sighs.

Suddenly, there is a vision of a giant sundial or clock. The hands point to the "XII." A large fist smashes through it. Cable peers into the darkness and sees the fist belongs to none other than Apocalypse. En Sabah Nur laughs hysterically.

The visions end and Cable slumps to the sandy ground. Smoke eminates from his skull. He breathes heavily. His left eye beams with psionic energy. He speaks shakily, "I remember! Oath...I remember everything..."

Picking up his psimatar, Cable, now fully whole again, telekinetically lifts himself into the sky, heading towards the portal to Limbo...