Diamanda LaSalle was an outcast mutant in the year 2099, looking for the promised food credits at the Floodgate, the holding area and cover for the Theatre of Pain, until her friend Quiver was captured and faced torture and mutilation by their medtechs. Diamanda, known as Sham, entered the Floodgate with her friend Quiver, but when Quiver became nervous and started creating tremors with his mutant power, he was tagged as a mutant and sent to be an organ donor. So that when Sham was processed, she asked about him, and when she found his intended fate she created an illusion with her mutant power to distract the worker and turn his hypo-gun back on him. Quiver was being held in another room and tortured to extract his adrenaline to sell to paying customers. Sham found and freed him, using her illusions again to distract, and the hypo-gun to knock out the technician. On their way to the transport bays, to find a ship to leave in, Sham and Quiver ran into Cerebra of the X-Men, who recognized Sham’s illusions as fake with her own mutant powers. At first Sham was distrustful of her, but they parted from their brief meeting amicably. They both eventually found the transport bay, and hotwired a speeder, which Sham drove through a closing security door.
Outside, they were attacked by the Theatre’s security, which intended to return them to the research labs. But Sham used her illusions to distract them briefly, until the X-Men’s Meanstreak appeared and disabled them. The X-Men explained that they were going to go in and try to bring down the Theatre, which Quiver was hesitant about. But when the X-Men entered the Theatre and faced Zhao’s remaining, unthawed X-Men, known as the Chosen, Sham snuck in with Quiver to help. She used her illusions once again to distract the flying Wingspan, long enough for Bloodhawk to overpower him and throw him through the window into the auditorium where the X-Men’s former leader, Xi’an Chi Xan, then known as Controller X, orchestrated a massive broadcast of suffering. Xi’an and the Theatre were soon beaten, and Xi’an returned to his old self. President Doom then appeared and offered the X-Men refuge in Halo City, built as a safe haven for all of the Theatre's victims. Both Sham and Quiver excitedly followed the X-Men there, and called it home.
Sham joined the X-Men’s Protectorate, a security force designed to safeguard Halo City against outside and inside disorder. As a member, she fought against the Undead, using her illusionary powers to aid the rest of the X-Men. Sham also attended the Disinterred concert, along with some of the other Protectorate, which was attacked by the Graverobber’s Undead. She briefly faced off against her fellow Protectorate, Skullfire, who had been killed and brought back from the dead. But with nothing to use against him, he swatted her away. She continued to assist them against the Undead, until Morphine Somers, the acting governor of Halo City, stopped the Graverobber with a bomb attached to his hostage, Zail Haddad. Sham was with Metalhead, Rosalinda, and their baby when Vulcann sent his pets to take the child. But when she tried to distract one of the animals, it saw through the illusion and knocked her down.
When the world-wide flooding began to drown Halo City, Sham and Quiver fought their way through the escaping crowd to try and reach one of the escaping boats. But Vulcann and Darkson captured them along with the rest of the X-Men and chained them to the mast of a ship. Xi’an freed them using his mutant power to destroy anything his left hand touched, breaking the ropes and spilling them into the waters. Only after Vulcann was stopped by Metalhead and Bloodhawk, and Darkson was convinced to stop his rampage by Skullfire, did Sham and Quiver make it safely to the last boat, headed out to the only surviving spot of dry land on the planet, the Savage Land.
