Because I like to shake it up, this title's a line from the recap page. I couldn't pass it up, honestly.
The cover to this, X-Men Noir: Mark of Cain #2, interests me, in that it's a picture our dear esteemed warden Emma Frost posed like a pin-up model in her underwear. "XOXO love, Emma Frost" is signed in the bottom right corner. I wonder who the picture's for...
Yeesh. The variant cover is our big guy Colossus taking a mighty swing at Logan with a bloody pickax.
Anyway. We open with Tommy being processed in Genosha Bay. Emma conducts a full cavity search personally! After being given a cup for his meals, Tommy gets a little surprise: the letter "M" tattooed over his eye, so that if he's ever transferred to another facility it will be clear that he poses a "Maximum" risk. This is based on a mark given to mutants in the Bad Future 616 Bishop hails from.
Warden Frost thinks this is strictly necessary. She studied at Harvard with Professor X, but her theories differ from his in one key area - she believes sociopathy is communicable, thus the need for this facility to keep the worst of the worst away from the rest of America's prison population.
We get a little history lesson from Frost as Tommy is guided to his cell. Genosha Bay was built by Quaker missionaries, who thought that isolating prisoners would facilitate proper contemplation of their sins. In a larger sense, this is where the term "penitentiary" comes from; "penace", root word "paenitentia" - "deep regret." Frost says that she, however, doesn't care about whether Tommy deeply regrets his actions. He can't be rehabilitated - "The devil in your biology can't be exorcised." Thus he's to be kept here not for his own good, but society's.
He will have no contacts with other prisoners and very little with the staff. He's not allowed writing materials, visitors, or communication from outside. A guard will let him out in his private exercise yard for one hour a day... weather permitting. This, Frost says, describes every day for the rest of Tommy's life. She asks if he has any questions. "No. I'll see you soon, Warden Frost." She scoffs at the idea that he thinks he's getting out. He says he knows he is, and he already knows how. The cell door slams shut and she leaves without a word.
Damn, I really didn't remember them re-using panels this often. Sorry, I'm just disappointed, I guess.
We're shown several key locations around the prison in the dead of night before being taken to Warden Frost's own room. Evidently she lives on site. A children's song playing on her gramophone ("a tisket, a tasket..."), she idly dances before being surprised by... an escaped Tommy, asking her who killed Cain Marko. She demands to know how he got out of his cell, but he insists that isn't important - Cain Marko is. She claims to have no idea what he's talking about, even though his body's in the morgue. He keeps pressing the issue, but she says she doesn't know anything about a gem or anything like that.
Tommy notes that Cain didn't have the mark over his eye, which to him implies that he wasn't a prisoner here, but Frost says the nearby military base has been known to use their facilities - including the morgue - when necessary. She didn't know about it because it appears the military decided she didn't need to. She asks Tommy how he got out again, but he says he's pressed for time and ties her to a chair. She begs him to do it tighter.
Sneaking his way outside the prison's walls, he gets accosted by the masked devil from the end of last issue, who kicks him in the back. When Tommy tries to engage him one-on-one, he's interrupted by the masked man's mohawked gal pal, who comes after him Dual Wielding knives. She cuts him in the face, but he soon catches her and judo tosses her at her masked compatriot. As he makes his escape, he runs into a wall. Well, it felt like a wall - it's the last of Professor X's new X-Men, a giant who puts Tommy in a vicious Bear Hug. He squeezes the life out of him until he passes out.
On the Mariko, Eugene is worried. Tommy was supposed to radio for a rendezvous after he escaped. He asks his captain what they should do. Logan drunkenly slurs that they should agree with him that it was a stupid plan to begin with. Eugene thinks he should probably radio Cyclops in New York for advice instead.
Tommy is woken up by dozens of blindingly bright lights and finds himself tied to a pole. Professor Xavier and Wanda are stand before him. Xavier says it's good to see Tommy again - that is, if Tommy is the one he met. In any case, he's sure Tommy's familiar with Wanda Magnus, daughter of the late Chief of Detectives, and his latest group of X-Men ("if you'll forgive the narcissistic phrase.") Extraordinary criminals, he says, from all around the globe, captured on American soil and imprisoned here. Xavier says Genosha Bay is a fascinating place for study; a giant petri dish of depravity.
The masked Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler) was a circus performer before he became Europe's top second-story man. The colossal Piotr Rasputin, contrary to what his size implies, is actually in prison for his "artistic talents" - he's an expert forger of official documents and artwork. Ororo's skills at thievery are so renowned that she's quite literally worshipped by the underworld in Cairo.
Now, Xavier is happy to say, he also has Tommy. Tommy claims he's no sociopath, but Xavier says it tends to run in families... and after all, didn't his brother Robert kill a girl? Tommy decides it's his turn to ask questions. Why does Frost let him study here if she thinks sociopathy isn't curable? Simple: what better way to be proven right than to watch your old teacher fail. Still, she doesn't let him use the facility for free, and wants to know how he managed to get out of his cell. Tommy tries his old "I'm multitalented" explanation, but it's not going to cut it. He's still not talking. After all, what's Xavier going to do, torture him? They teach that at Harvard?
Fortunately for Tommy, no. As a scientist and humanitarian, Xavier isn't going to lay a finger on him. As Wanda wheels him out of the room, however, he says in a week Tommy will be begging him to. "Welcome to Project: Wideawake, Tommy", he says, leaving Tommy to face the giant blinding lights.
Trying to keep his mind occupied, Tommy sings "Danny Boy" for a while, and around sundown the lights go out. As he's about to fall asleep, a deafening siren sounds and the lights come back on. He mumbles about not being able to save Anne-Marie, and it happens again.
At some point Xavier switches the lights off and has him waterboarded, threateningly demanding to know the location of the gem. Some time later, Xavier comes back to talk to Tommy. "72 hours without sleep... Have you started hallucinating yet?" "Stop. It's been a week. I've been counting. I've been here a week... haven't I?"
Xavier says he's barely lasted a weekend, and if he knows what's good for him he'll start talking about how he escaped. After all, the membrane between sanity and madness is fragile and irreparable. Xavier mentions Robert, and Tommy goes off on him... but Xavier seems to have disappeared. Then he hears a voice, saying Xavier's got a point and he needs to get out of here fast. Tommy's hallucinating his dead brother Robert, wearing the Angel costume. "All right, Robert, you win. What did you have in mind?"
End of Mark of Cain issue #2.
