X-Men (2021 series) #26

We begin with a flashback to the Hellfire Gala (in its recent 1-shot) as Emma Frost and Wilson Fisk escape the attack by Orchis by teleporting to the Morlock tunnels under New York's Hellfire Club. Fisk points out that the enemy will attempt to seize her assets, and he gets her to beg him for help. Which he promises to give because her enemies are his enemies (now that they may have killed his wife Typhoid Mary along with many other mutants). (This led to a scene Iron Man #8 where Fisk and Frost were signing an agreement, and in IM#9 where we learned that she'd transferred all her assets to him to avoid them falling into Orchis' hands.)

Weeks later the Hellfire Club is back up and running under new management, Fisk as White King and Tony Stark as Black King, and the former White Queen Frost missing presumed dead or captured. Stark pretends to be content to be retired as Iron Man now that Feilong owns Stark Unlimited and his IM tech (and has used it to create giant Iron Sentinels for Orchis to hunt mutants). But secretly he's building a brand-new armour.

At a HC party (where recovering-alcoholic Tony is carousing with ginger ale) he's taken aside by his aide Hazel Kendal. When they're alone they drop the pretence that she's not Emma Frost in disguise, his contact with the remains of the X-Men. She asks him if his mole in Orchis is the mutant Firestar. He reminds her that they're deliberately keeping many details secret from each other for security reasons. She tells him that a rogue mutant assassin intends to kill her, so if she is his mole he'd better warn her. On the way out of the room she pretends that she's just repulsed a pass that womanising Tony made.

Kamala Khan (Ms Marvel) recently (Hellfire Gala) discovered that she is a mutant (as well as an Inhuman). She joined the X-Men last issue and the high-school student went undercover as a summer intern at the Orchis Science Centre in Empire State University to investigate their secret underground lab (in her new series Ms Marvel: The New Mutant). On the way in today she sees bigots attacking a perceived mutant. Without using her powers she stops them by declaring that she's filming them. It turns out that the 'mutant' just looks different because she has alopecia.

The sword-wielding assassin targeting Firestar is Kate Pryde, now reusing her old but slightly renamed id Shadowkat. She uses her phasing ability (along with a scuba mask) to hide inside the skin of an Orchis shuttle craft which takes her to their orbiting base The Bloom. She triggers an alarm as soon as she leaves the shuttle but expects to be able to kill her target and escape without being captured. She fights her way through armed guards (including phasing some of them through the walls out into space).

Angelica Jones has got Stark's warning and has locked herself in her room with a gun pointed at the door. The room juts out into space but Kate launches herself (using phasing) into space and then into the room behind her target, knocking her down to lose the gun. Angel turns into flaming Firestar, which seems to allow Shadowkat's blade to pass harmlessly through her (but she still feels physical blows). Meanwhile she desperately explains how (Hellfire Gala gain) the dying Jean Grey telepathically made Dr Stasis believe that Firestar had been working for him as a secret agent for a while so now she's a mutant spy within Orchis. She says if Kate dosen't believe her then she might as well make her imminent death count by using her power to destroy the station.

But Kate does believe her and sheathes her sword, but punches her on the nose to make it bleed convincingly. Angel asks who else survived the massacre. Kate says she doesn't know, and if she did she wouldn't tell her. It's not that she doesn't trust her but a resistance relies on secrecy and compartmentalisation. Angel asks if she can at least pass the word that she's not really a traitor. Kate wryly suggests that it will be good for her cover if other X-Men continue to try to kill her occasionally. Now she leaves The Bloom via a Krakoan gateway.

This is followed by a letter from Angelica to her father telling him the official version of what she's doing. I don't know if anything in it (like mention of a pony Butter Rum dying of cancer) is a code to indicate that things aren't what they seem. She also asks him to give her old Avengers ID Card to Tony Stark personally at the Hellfire Club.

'Hazel Kendal' has a meeting with Shadowkat in an alleyway. Kate assures Emma she didn't kill Firestar. But she also hasn't been able to find out what happened to Cyclops (after he was attacked by Captain Krakoa in the New York Treehouse mutant embassy in the FCBD Uncanny Avengers 1-shot). We learn that Frost intends to leave the safe Kendal id and join Shadowkat on her mission of revenge.

Hazel returns to the Hellfire Club party where she sees 1 of their targets Feilong. She decides to begin the mission immediately, and starts to remove the ring which hides/inhibits her mutant abilities. But Tony whisks her away to another secluded room. The angry mutant wants to wipe Feilong's minds clean, but Tony says their foe has info in there that he needs for his new armour. And if she removes the ring the Sentinels will home in on her and everything they're doing will be ruined. She replies by kneeing him in the groin.

Feilong enters the room to see Tony on 1 knee before Hazel with the ring in his hand. Quick-thinkingly he proposes to her.

And in the moment that she has her telepathy back she tells Kate that she won't be joining her.

To be continued in IRON MAN #10.