X-Men #198 - Marvel

This is another one of those world devouring emergencies that the X-men seem to have to deal with, every other story-arc. I will say that I like the story that Mike Carey is scripting here. It's a little complicated. And we're being force fed some continuity here. But, that's ok. The characters and the break-neck speed of the action, more than makes up for it. Also it seems that Chris Bachalo is back in form. Maybe it's just Tim Townsend's inks, but I think Chris' stuff looks a lot better with Tim's help than without it. But that's just my opinion. Anyways, last issue, Lady Mastermind found a parasite hidden in her brain. It is called the Mummudrai. It then jumped in to Mystique. They thought they were going to have to battle it, but it's actually there to warn them. Warn them of a coming danger in the form of the Hecatomb. Basically this is a psychic kind of bomb that the Shi'ar built 1000's of years ago. It's designed to kill and erase the minds of all the population on a planet, but leave the buildings and infrastructure in tact. What they hadn't counted on though was that the billions of souls that it took, didn't get erased. Instead they're trapped inside the bomb. Trapped and angry. So when the Shi'ar went to shut it off, all they did was make it more angry. The Mummudrai took off to get away from it, but the Hecatomb followed it. And in between it took the souls of everything that it came across. Well, now it's come to Cable's island nation of Providence. And it's still hungry. Cable is attempting to mind-meld with the Mummudrai to gather the knowledge he needs to beat it. And the rest of the team is attempting to fight it while he's doing that. But they aren't making much progress. The Mummudrai tells Cable that with his help they can beat it, but in order to do so they need to be permanently linked. Cable doesn't want to do this, so they're trying to find alternatives. But they don't have much time, because this island and all it's inhabitants are about to go down like a lamb fed to a lion.