Reaver Virus

In a devastated alternate future nineteen years from the present, monitored by Cable and visited by Magneto,^[1] a scientist named Kirk Jansen created a program that grew and evolved into coded hate, a synthetic plague eventually dubbed the Reaver Virus.

Anyone infected by it became cyber-organic atrocities redesigned to hunt down and exterminate mutants, along with anyone else that got in their way.^[2] The Avengers, the X-Men, and all the other superhero teams of the world mobilized to stop its spread, but because they were unwilling to kill the robotized hosts in order to eradicate the virus plague, they all fell and died one by one. The only people left behind to fight for mutantkind were the Brotherhood lead by Magneto.^[3]

Alternate Reality Versions[]

Prime Marvel Universe (Earth-616)[]

After Magneto returned from visiting an alternate timeline in which the carriers of the Reaver Virus pushed mutantkind to the brink of extinction,^[2] he scheduled a visit to scientist Kirk Jansen's lab, killing him and all of his employees to seemingly prevent the Reaver Virus from coming to pass;^[3] however, during his days as an inverted mutant criminal in service of Emma Frost and her cabal, Havok had an encounter with the bionic future Sentinel; Bastion, who implanted a form of nanobionic code into his biology and erased such an encounter from his mind.^[4]

Some time after his moral alignment had been fixed, Havok would soon find trouble with both the Office of National Emergency and the Reavers, the latter of whom the former had betrayed and attempted to execute after they had been dumped at the doorstep of O.N.E.'s anti-mutant commanding officer, General Callahan, by Alpha Flight when their attempt at defiling the grave of Wolverine failed.^[5][6]

After a heated battle following a temporary alliance with Havok's allies, the nanite code fell into the hands of Donald Pierce and his bionic crew,^[7] who then proceeded to utilize Bastion's creation to gain technoforming abilities. Pierce and his Reavers use it to assimilate Sentinel Squad O*N*E tech that he had been forced to help upgrade, then attacked the Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach, but were defeated by a devastating redirection of Banshee's sound-waves by Ali Blaire.^[8]

Effects[]

The program was initially designed as a simple technoforming upgrade which enabled Cyborgs and Robots the ability to take over and integrate any form of machinery they come into contact with;^{[citation needed]} however, it soon transformed into an extension of the host, as well as mechanomorphed into anything the user of the virus desired,^[7] such as the Reavers taking over Sentinel Squad O*N*E mechs as new bodies or regenerating bionic limbs by assimilating any nearby machinery and reformatting it into whatever the host saw fit.^[8]

The Virus initially had no capacity for affecting organic entities other than the cyborgs using it,^{[citation needed]} but in the distant future, it evolved to encode the Reavers' hatred for mutantkind onto other beings infected with it.^[1] It is unknown if the pathogen-created cyborg killers possess the same technoforming abilities of the Prime Marvel Universe's strain of the pathogen seen in the Reavers, but what is currently known is that many of the humans infected with the Reaver Virus would often adapt biomechanical extremities and killing appendages, such as spider-like lower abdomens, arm cannons, and chainsaw limbs.^[3]