WARNING: Minor spoilers for X-Force #27 ahead!
The mutant strike team X-Force might have met their match, with a recent Marvel Comics announcement revealing that the brutal X-Men group will come face to face with a murderous sentient Cerebro machine, called Cerebrax. The Cerebro technology has become an integral part of the Krakoan mutants' continued success as a nation, so it is clear that defeating Cerebrax will need to be a top priority for the X-Force team, before the technology is able to enslave them all.
The latest Krakoan incarnation of the X-Force team collects a group of violent mutants who are not afraid to fight to the death, with the entire team dying time and time again over the past two years. The main members of the group are Wolverine, Beast, Sage, Black Tom, Domino, and Kid Omega, with the mutant creator Forge serving as the group's version of James Bonds' Q. In recent memory this X-Force team has fought against the anti-mutant group XENO, battled the vicious Omega Red, and stopped a massive mutant cloning operation. But nothing has prepared them for the psionic enemy that is Cerebrax.
In a press release, Marvel announced that the events of X-Force #27 - written by Benjamin Percy with art by Robert Gill - will spin out of the upcoming X-Lives/X-Deaths of Wolverine event, which will also prominently feature the Cerebro technology now synonymous with Marvel's mutants. The synopsis for the issue reveals that as Wolverine returns to Krakoa, he and the X-Force team must deal with the "mind-melding threat of Cerebrax" because of a security breach. However, no one knows where Cerebrax came from! The sentient machine is apparently also deeply interested in the mutant Forge, which makes sense seeing as he is intrinsically connected to both mutant and Krakoan technology.
The Cerebro technology is so important to Krakoa because it is the system by which mutants' consciousnesses are uploaded and saved, which then allows any mutant to be revived through the Resurrection Protocols and the powers of The Five. So any threat to Cerebro (or from Cerebro) is an existential threat to ALL mutants. This is not the first time that the X-Men have faced sentient forms of their own technology, such as when a Cerebro machine gained sentience and became The Founder in 1998's Uncanny X-Men, or when the mutant training room gained sentience and became the character Danger in 2005's Astonishing X-Men. The comic's writer Benjamin Percy had this to say about the upcoming issue:
"There has never been an easy time for X-Force, but the year ahead is going to be particularly chaotic and challenging. I can't get into too much detail about X LIVES OF WOLVERINE/X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE—because Beast has listed those files as classified—but I will say that there are repercussions. For some of the characters of course. But also for one of the Cerebro units, which has become sentient, and it's hunger for intelligence and power is quite literal. Cerebrax is coming."
The two covers for the issue that Marvel shared show stunning depictions of the X-Force team battling Cerebrax, one showing them fighting against a clearly Cerebrax-possessed Forge and the other foreshadowing the terrible fate of the team if they fail in their mission, with the entire team being psionically enslaved to do Cerebrax's bidding. The avenues by which Cerebrax could endanger the mutants are endless, from attacking them individually to literally destroying their resurrection technology. To check out the start of this epic new X-Men event make sure to pick up Marvel Comics latest X-Force #27 when it debuts in April 2022.
Source: Marvel Entertainment