Nathanial Essex thought himself to be immune to pain. As the mad geneticist called Sinister, he thought he was immortal.

He thought wrong.

Sinister came here for one purpose--to discover what secrets this space pod carried. He was confronted by the team of young mutants called X-Force, and defeated them easily in battle. Then, before he could destroy X-Force and take their teammate, Siphon, with him, he was attacked.

The masked assassin called Weapon-X, who aided X-Force in their battle with Sinister, saw the blast come from something inside the pod. Now, he watched on, curious as to what was actually happening.

A man stepped out from the pod, one hand crackling with white energy, the other with black.

"The power..." Sinister muttered. "If he is strong enough to harm me with a single blast, imagine what he could do..."

The man glared at Sinister, his fists clenched. He slammed the two glowing fists together, and the resulting blast was enormous. When the dust cleared, Sinister was gone.

"My God..." Siphon muttered. "How could he... uh-oh..."

"Who... who are ye?" Siryn asked, slowly getting to her feet.

"Radian," he replied. He observed the group before him, and the X symbol on Wolfsbane's uniform caught his eye. "You... are the X-Men?"

"Try X-Force," Moonstar stated. "Why?"

"I spent all my life in Shi'ar slave pens," Radian replied. "But, as far as I know, I'm a Terran. Recently, I escaped. And I'm going to find out the truth about my origins. And nothing will stand in my way. Not even you."

Somewhere in Canada...

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!" a man in a labcoat exclaimed.

"I'm going to have to ask you to lower your voice, sir," an officer stated.

"Who are you?" the man asked.

"Commander William Ryerson, sir," he replied.

"Well, Commander Ryerson, the name's Dr. Franklin, and I'm the one in charge of this operation!!"

"Not anymore, sir," Ryerson replied.

"Excuse me?" Franklin asked. "Could you run that by me again?"

"Your latest Weapon-X subject has escaped," Ryerson began. "I've been ordered by Department H to take over this operation."

"He's... escaped?"

"Yes," Ryerson continued. "And I have my orders. Shoot to kill."

"No, you don't understand!!" Franklin exclaimed. "This Weapon-X isn't like the others!!"

"How so?"

"We noticed that in the past, using full-grown individuals resulted in disaster," Franklin explained. "So, we attempted to use a more... submissive subject."

"What do you mean?" Ryerson asked.

"This Weapon-X isn't full-grown..." Franklin replied. "He's 17 years old. And, he has a latent telepathic ability."

Ryerson grabbed Dr. Franklin by the collar, and pulled him up to his face.

"You bastards make me sick, you know that, right?" he stated. "Experimenting on CHILDREN for god's sakes!! And now that you've screwed up, it's my job to clean up YOUR mess!!"

He threw Franklin to the ground, and turned to his troops.

"Fan out!!" he ordered. "This assassin is armed and extremely dangerous!!"*

(* For more on this, check out the Weapon-X limited series, coming soon!-Dino)

"Come again...?" Warlock asked.

"I was raised in the Shi'ar slave pens," Radian replied. "Since I was a child, I was living there. Recently, I found out that I am possibly a Terran. Using these new powers which recently surfaced, I escaped from the pens and commandeered an escape pod."

"Why did you do that to Sinister, though?" Siphon asked. "Just to help me, or..."

"My instincts told me that it was the best plan of action," Radian answered.

"Well, thank ye for yuir help," Siryn stated. "We couldnae have done this without ye. Is there anything we cou--"

"Just stay out of my way," Radian warned, walking off in the distance.

"I dun like 'im," Rahne noted.

"That makes two of us," Dani stated.

"What about you?" Siryn asked, turning to Weapon-X. "Ye tried tae kill us not too long ago, an' now, ye helped us against Sinister. What is yuir plan?"

Weapon-X looked over all of them, then extended his hand.

"Does this mean ye wanna join us?"

He nodded.

From a hidden location, Sinister watched these events unfold. Radian had evaded him for now, and he had teleported away just before the blast struck.

But, Radian would be his eventually.

NEXT ISSUE: Weapon-X and Siphon--who are they and why are they with X-Force?