X-Factor: Big Brother Everywhere

A Blueprint Of Deception

1

Even without knowing who Havok had intended to use as a way to bond with a group of mutants, he knew for a fact he had watched die—some of that his own doing— somewhere else, Hutchison thought the more he considered it, the better idea it was compared to his own. The whole time Alex spoke, he made it a point to register the look on his other teammates faces. He wanted advance warning if there was already someone to be worried about.

It never crossed his mind for an instant that these were mutants, and they've been subjected to their behavior being read like a book for most of their lives and that as a human, he wasn't real high on their list of trusted people.

For his part, he would institute mandatory daily meetings with him so that he could begin to get a feel for them, and more importantly, he needed to know if Alex did something that really pissed them off. In addition, he had every intention of ensuring contact off-compound was as flawed and completely non-functional as often as he could get away with.

He had never managed mutants at all, never mind in a team environment while trying to ensure the lies are believed and the truth almost nonexistent. Luckily, he was a SHIELD officer and the truth was always considered hypothetical and deception a part of the handbook. Unfortunately, he had decided Havok was going to be given as much misinformation as he could get away with, as long as he didn't catch on. It had to be done, because this Alex needed to understand he was not in charge. That he thought Hutchison and him a conspiracy of two was too easy not to take advantage of.

The primary reason for his decision to give Alex a lesson in politics was because he thought he seen this as his own personal vendetta on the governments dime, and while he happened to agree that the Marauders—scratch that, he thought, the imposter Hellions— hidden safely away on Krakoa was frightening, he also knew his superiors expected things from this team—things that, Cooper had told him, were it very much like when she was X-Factor's liaison, would run counter to the teams official function.

After all, SHIELD always had their agenda to push forward, that agenda always in flux, sometimes from unit to unit. Which was why he would be taking them all on their very first mission together, off planet, immediately upon the end of the meeting. While it made every bit of sense to go where they were, because of who the focus would be on in the beginning, he had argued just as adamantly as he dared that couldn't they do anything els? Because he also knew, if this whole operation was going to implode and any piece of it should backfire, he wanted it to happen now, before he worked too hard to force the situation.

He had decided—which mean he was ordered to decide—off planet, just because he thought Alex might think it as his way of showing that they were seeing eye to eye, but it wasn't. The perfect mission for exactly the tale he seen the team's leader weaving, waited as they spoke. And it was a ticking clock that Alex would understand without his team knowing about at all. He felt a hard knot of anxiety in his chest, and it hadn't even begun yet. The reason was simple: each time he dedicated his mind to assembling a list of concerns and cautions, more details he hadn't quite concerned were there, and each one spidered into even more to consider.

He had been given the orders before Val had brought him to meet Alex and hold this meeting. It had everything to do with SHIELD and their delusional task for this time: get Havok on the side of humanity in their war against Krakoa. And that meant manipulation of that mission. It meant they would be going to Mars to make sure the Alex all of Krakoa was hunting wasn't in the most obvious place. Just for fun they would try to get the small group of psychotic, murderous Hulk lookalikes under control.

If at all possible, he would show Havok no trace of the logo slapped on anywhere some vain bastard figured they could place it, identifying where they escaped from so he didn't realize it was SHIELD who had been using them to scare the mutant civilizations there into Krakoa that had been the origin of the whole mess. His purpose was not to allow Havok to think the very organization on his side was the enemy of mutants, since he thought it was already obvious—this was of real concern to those same beauocrats who had decided to start promising the imposter things in a non-stop fashion until he decided to align their missions . It was to stop those damn clones from being discovered by Krakoa. The gate was destroyed for now, but he was already a little suspicious Storm and the team of mutants who previously lived there would return and discover that if the chaos continued. He had been briefed in loud, angry fashion that Krakoa gates needed only a small seed and precious little time to be back where the last one had been. And then they would have full circe once more.