New Mexico, the escaped X-Men: Cyclops, Jean, Cannonball, Storm and Logan walk up to a shabby trailer park camp in the middle of the desert. A blind man by the nickname Mustang offers them a place to stay and some food. Jean scans Mustang's mind to see if he is lying, he wasn't. Storm calls on the winds, which blow their footprints out of the sand, so they couldn't be tracked. Logan smells Mustang and asks if he is a android, but Mustang reveals all the constructive surgery that he's had, like most of the other people in this camp that were benefiting from treatments being offered by a professor in a nearby clinic who was helping them replace defective body parts in exchange for artificial limbs. They eat by the campfire and Mustang tells them that they are mutants because Logan was able to smell his prosthetics, he felt Jean's mind probe, and felt Storm call up a wind in a calm desert. Mustang tells them he isn't going to turn them in and ask if any of them could fly. Cyclops tells Mustang that 3 of them could fly, but Bastion had sensors that could pick up mutant powers. Mustang tells them his story.

Mustang used to be a Navy Tomcat pilot, when he got out he bought a P-51 Mustang and flew in stunt shows. In a show in Iowa when Mustang pulled out of an immelman the engine gave out, the stick went dead, his instincts told him to bail out, but he could live with himself if he let the plan crash into the stands, so he rode it out and crashed in a field. Mustang nearly died but with a lot of reconstructive sugary, metal and plastic joints he was able to live again, but he never got he's eye sight again.

Outcast camp, Mustang tells them the professor at the clinic might even be able to get his eyesight back again. They all go to sleep under the stars and next to the camp fire. after everybody fell asleep Logan sneaks off in the night to find the clinic Mustang talked about, nobody heard him leave, except Mustang who had learned to live by his sense of hearing.

The next morning, the X-men wake up Mustang to tell him what Logan found at the clinic. Using Jean's telepathy powers, Mustang was able to see and experience what Logan saw during that night at the clinic. Mustang sees the clinic surrounded by a laser fence. Then sees Logan as he jumps onto an incoming truck, that went into the clinic. The truck contained prosthetic skulls, eyeballs, and various limbs of the human body. Mustang tells them that he doesn’t care if their robot eyes as long as he can see again. Jean tells Mustang that he doesn’t understand, the professor wasn't interested in helping him see, the professor was doing was turning him into a mindless mutant killing cyborg. Mustang sees what Jean is talking about in her mind. Suddenly Cannonball yells that their is a plane approaching. The X-Men realize that they must hide. Mustang reveals a hidden bunker under the campfire. The X-Men hide inside the bunker. The aircraft flies over. A bus pulls up to the camp with the patients from the clinic, Mustang tries to tell them that they are being experimented on, being turned into killing machines.

In the aircraft, Bastion ask the professor Harper if they have searched the camp below. Professor Harper tells Bastion that there is no need to because it is a camp for sleeper units, that will activate if mutants are near. After detecting a previously uncharted atmospheric disturbance, Bastion sends the activation codes down to the camp to activate the sleeper units so that they would be morphed into a full sentinel once contacting a mutant signature.

Elsewhere, Senator Robert Kelly makes a visit to his wife's grave, to make a tough choice about whether to continue with Operation: Zero Tolerance or not. After thinking, he decides to shut down Zero Tolerance, and tells his agent, Gyrich to obtain help from G.W. Bridge of SHIELD to carry out the shutdown.