Layla is stuck in the future, specifically, in a mutant internment camp some time in the future. It is not super-desolate, just a police state in which mutants are not the norm and have almost been wiped clean or completely interred so as to eventually die out. They are deemed as a threat. And Layla has been standing still for 10 days in the dirt, no food, no water (except for snowdrops on her tongue periodically) and sleeps standing up.

Why?

The funny stuff is sprinkled throughout. Like the guards betting on when she keels over and can't stand any longer. Or the exact next second when a Sentinel explodes above her and starts to rain down bits and pieces of itself, taking out large portions of the encampment, the fences, and the guards.

Funny right? Even better is the fact that the right guess was ten days and Layla had dug an X into the ground right where she needed to stand. Quite classic Layla, cold, calculating, but such a great character.

But the bits don't stop there. She happens a mutant named Linqon who is on the run from police, helps her get away, and proceeds to smash and grab so as to cover her M tag on her face. Then she goes to a rally being held on what appears to be a college campus and mentions to one of the guys not interested that the government will make a very big turn toward Big Brother territory and start cataloguing and testing each and every person who has mutant blood in their heritage, all the way back 10 generations. That of course then leaks onto the ethernet or whatever they call it and the government is forced to show their hands.

But one small moment that is quite great is the moment we see Layla make her way to the pier with this young gentleman and get trounced by Cyclops, completely beaten down, part cyborg like his son now, old, and his eyes no longer need the visor. He rails against her for never telling him that the things that would happen would happen and she says she only knows certain things and can't know everything or tell everyone about everything as they sometimes have to happen, like her getting captured, tortured, and marked.

She meets Ruby, Scott's daughter who has a body that is completely red and diamond-like and has the same blasts he has only she can focus them from her hands, and proceeds to tell them that she knows what she has to do to get home. They take her picture (very Terminator-esque) and she is on her way. That leads to the beginning of the Summers Rebellion as the human numbers have grown and Ruby and Scott take their fight to the streets, and Layla is on her way.

Seriously a big wow. This book is everything you could ask for. They touch on continuity. They maybe find a way to bring Layla back to the main book, and Peter David continues doing his fantastic work with this seemingly throwaway character. Taking her to heights never imagined, and putting her into a stratosphere of great X-characters that aren't given their rightful place in the X-mythos (Havok, I'm looking your way).

He is met ably by Valentine De Landro who does some of his best work with this issue. His characters are flesh and blood and it takes cues equally from Pablo Raimondi, Ryan Sook, and Dennis Calero and takes his art in a different way. He fits the look of this universe very well, and it makes me a little sad to think he might not be dealing with this part of the Marvel-verse for awhile.

I just hope that Marvel keeps Peter David kicking ass on these one-shots. I will buy each and every one belonging to this cast of characters, I just hope the next one deals with where Longshot really is since the Skrull started to impersonate him or what Rictor is really like. Just great.