X-Force # 18 - Ghosts In The Machine

Part 12 of the X-Cutioner's Song, the climax, the big showdown between Cable and Stryfe. This issue came bagged with a Stryfe's Strike File card.

Stryfe and Cable battle on the moon with Cyclops and Jean Grey looking on powerless in an energy field that only those with the Summers gene can penetrate. Stryfe asserts that he is superior to Cable, that Cable was a clone and a mistake.

Psylocke psionically detects that Apocalypse is dying. Archangel finds him near death, defeated by his own Dark Riders. Apocalypse expects Archangel to kill him, but Archangel refuses and leaves him to die.

Meanwhile Havok, having entered Stryfe's energy field awakes after being knocked out by it. He attacks Stryfe who loses his concentration allowing Cyclops and Jean Grey to escape his hold on them. The Summers family pleads with Stryfe to let them help him but he can't trust them and believes they will betray him again.

Cable gives Cyclops a device that activates a time vortex, Cyclops activates it while Stryfe and Cable battle. Both are sucked into the vortex, to what is believed by Cyclops to be their deaths.

The epilogue features Mr. Sinister's assistant Gordon unwittingly opening the cannister that contains the Legacy Virus believing it to contain the Summers DNA.