Ultimate Nightmare Vol. 4

This is Volume 4 of the Ultimate Nightmare series, corresponding to issue #4 of the original Ultimate Nightmare (released December 29, 2004, cover date January 2005). It is the fourth part of the five-issue limited series written by Warren Ellis and drawn by Trevor Hairsine (with Steve Epting also contributing art to this issue); the series is also the opening installment of the "Ultimate Galactus Trilogy" (Ultimate Nightmare, Ultimate Secret, Ultimate Extinction). The story follows the crisis in which global communications are hijacked by a terrifying broadcast: televisions and computer screens fill with images of death and destruction, and thousands take their own lives, a wave that also reverberates on the psychic level. S.H.I.E.L.D. and Professor X each trace the signal to its source, the Tunguska wilderness of Russia, where something massive struck a century ago. Nick Fury leads Captain America, Black Widow, and Sam Wilson to investigate, while Professor X sends Jean Grey, Wolverine, and Colossus; neither team knows of the other. Beneath the ruins they find an abandoned Soviet-era facility and a group of deformed experimental subjects transformed by an old super-soldier program. In this volume, Black Widow pieces together the truth from the base logs: what fell was no ordinary meteorite but a device; after the war the Soviets dismantled and studied it, transplanting its components into volunteers in an attempt to replicate Captain America. She thus makes clear that the monsters Fury's team faces are the abandoned Russian super-soldiers, left in the dark and forever "screaming." On the other side of the tunnels, the X-Men are also fighting these experimental subjects at close quarters, and Jean Grey's telepathy is growing increasingly uncontrollable. This volume is the fourth part of the five-issue series, closing at a tense moment just before the core of the truth is reached, with the true source of the signal left to be revealed in the final issue.