Uncanny X-Men #525

An enraged Hope confronts Cyclops over his decision to send X-Force on a suicide mission into the future to stop the Sentinel invasion of Utopia at its source. Cyclops tries to calm her down, but Hope will have none of it, and furiously states that she hates him and runs off. Emma remarks sarcastically how well dealing with the situation went, but Cyclops ignores it and asks Emma if she had taken note of Hope's eyes, which had been glowing red with energy during the argument.

Meanwhile, the Fantastic Four arrive outside of Bastion's dome and confer with the X-Club and the Avengers to formulate a strategy to disable it and to aid the X-Men. On Utopia, Cyclops conveys a status report to the other X-Men via Emma's telepathy and instructs them to use their familiarity with the neighborhoods and surrounding areas of San Fransisco to their advantage and to fight the Nimrod Sentinels more effectively. As he breaks contact, another Nimrod approaches Utopia and breaches its outer wall. Cyclops quickly shuts down several levels of the complex except for those most crucial and the resulting explosion from doing so destroys the Nimrod.

Within the city, Storm, Surge, Iceman, Psylocke and Fantomex manage to destroy several Nimrods between them through coordinated efforts, while at the Port of Oakland, Namor fights several more by himself, but calls in for assistance as five more suddenly appear. Elsewhere, in the future, Cable, Cypher and the rest of X-Force find themselves in the middle of the Sentinel Processing Center. Cypher then notices a wall with a large poster spread across it, tallying the status of dozens of mutants as “Slain”, including all of them. Horrified and furious, Archangel tears the poster down. As Wolverine and Cable try to calm him, X-23 declares that the only way to prevent this future from coming to past is to kill everyone responsible, then return to the past and prevent it from happening again. Wolverine states that if they are supposed to be dead in this future, then the Sentinels will have no idea how to fight them effectively. Before they can react further, an anti-mutant assault team arrives and attacks, but they are quickly dispatched before they can report back to the Sentinels. After analyzing one of the assault unit's vehicles, Cypher determines that the Sentinels are sending the Nimrods back through the portal five at a time. Cable then says that they will fight their way into the processing center and will not come out until the future is razed and the past is saved.

Back on Utopia, Cyclops asks Professor Xavier to work with Legion as part of a larger plan and then charges Rogue of finding and protecting Hope. Outside, the Thing's and Thor's efforts to destroy the dome have met with very limited success and pressed them both to the brink of exhaustion. Mister Fantastic tells them that their attacks on it have only weakened it by fifteen percent. Iron Man further states that between all of them, they are at least a day away from getting inside. Doctor Nemesis grimly declares that within a few hours, every man, woman and child inside will be dead and the mutant race will be extinct.