Tony's gaze drifted to the star map, a faint smirk playing on his lips.
"Second—we play the long game. Empires don't panic over a decade; they panic over centuries. If we can buy ourselves enough quiet time, we can grow way past their wildest projections. By the time they look back at Earth and realize we aren't what they thought we were, it'll be too late for them to do anything about it cleanly. We don't have to beat them today. We just have to make sure that by the time they notice us, waiting was the biggest mistake they ever made."
The map shifted again to a golden nebula. The atmosphere in the room lightened noticeably.
"Then we have the Nova Empire," Aryan said. "Centered on the planet Xandar. They are the polar opposite of the Kree. They are a multi-species coalition governed by the Nova Force. They are the galactic police."
"If we ever manage to reach the stars properly," Aryan continued, "the Nova Corps are the ones who would offer us a seat at the table. They are a civilization of law and order. If we are attacked by a rogue element, we can petition them for help. They are the only ones who keep the Kree in check through diplomacy and sheer defensive might. They are our potential allies."
The hologram suddenly turned a pulsating green. The faces of everyone in the room tightened as the data showed a nomadic fleet.
"This," Aryan said, his voice becoming a whisper, "is the Skrull Empire. And they are why we need the Illuminati more than any other reason. The Kree come with ships and guns. The Skrulls come with your face."
Wanda's scarlet energy sparked at her fingertips. "What do you mean, 'our face'?"
"The Skrulls are reptilian humanoids, but you will never see them like that," Aryan revealed. "They possess Omega-level biological shapeshifting. They can imitate anyone—their voice, their DNA, even their recent memories. They invade planets like ships sink into water. They could be your neighbor, your general, or the person sitting next to you."
A heavy silence fell over the room. Everyone instinctively looked at each other, a flicker of suspicion crossing their minds for the first time.
"Don't worry," Aryan said, his voice dropping an octave to steady the room. "Nobody at this table is a fake. Wanda can feel the signature of a human mind, and the bio-scanners built into these seats are looking for cellular inconsistencies that shouldn't exist. Between her intuition and my tech, this room is the only truly safe place on the planet."
He paused, letting the tension bleed out before hitting them with the harder truth.
"But I'm not just guessing. I'm reading the receipts."
He tapped the matte surface, and a blurred S.H.I.E.L.D. logo flickered into a stream of decrypted logs.
"I went digging through the files Fury thought he'd buried for good—stuff buried under layers of black-site encryption. It all goes back to Carol Danvers' final debrief in the mid-90s. When she left Earth, she didn't just leave to punch holes in Kree warships. She left with a promise to a group of Skrull refugees."
Sharon leaned in, her brow furrowed. "What kind of promise?"
"A temporary home," Aryan said. "She told Fury to let them hide here while she stabilized the front lines and found them a permanent planet—a 'New Skrullos' where they could finally stop running."
He let that sink in for a moment.
"The problem is, she never came back."
"That was almost fifteen years ago," T'Challa noted, his voice low and calculating.
"Exactly," Aryan replied. "It's 2009. Whatever deal Fury made was built on trust and the idea that they were just passing through. But trust has an expiration date. Especially when people feel abandoned."
The hologram shifted from text to a jagged map of orbital paths and pulsing signal bursts.
"Over the last year and a half, Umbrella's satellites have been catching anomalies. These aren't standard radio waves; the encoding is organic, almost like it's written in living math. It's Skrull architecture."
"Can we crack the code?" Pietro asked.
"Not yet," Aryan said bluntly. "And that's the part that keeps me up. When we cross-reference these signal pings with energy spikes and 'ghost' sightings across the globe, the math points to a terrifying reality."
He leaned forward, his shadow stretching across the table.
"Our best estimate? There are at least a hundred thousand Skrulls living among us right now. They're quiet, they're patient, and they've stopped waiting for a rescue ship that's clearly not coming. We don't know if Fury still has them on a leash, or if they've decided to stop being guests and start being owners."
He looked at each of them in turn.
"That's why we're here. Because if the world is going to be infiltrated, we're the only ones who can see through the mask."
"So we have a ghost in the house, a bully on the street, and a cop three blocks away," Pietro summarized, leaning back. "Great neighborhood."
Aryan extinguished the hologram, leaving the room in the natural light of the setting sun.
"The public will be told about the Kree and the Nova Empire," Aryan said. "We want the world to look at the stars with hope and caution. We want them to know we have friends and foes. But the Skrulls? That stays with us. We cannot have a global witch hunt where people start killing their neighbors to see if they bleed green."
"Agreed," T'Challa said, "We are no longer just protecting cities or tribes. We are protecting a realm."
"And we have the time to do it," Namor added, his hand resting on his trident. "Five hundred years to build a shield that even the Kree Supreme Intelligence cannot calculate."
Tony stood up, walking to the window and looking out over the sprawling Hive. "The Illuminati Council is a survival mechanism. Aryan, you've given us the map. Now let's build the wall."
Wanda walked over to Aryan, her hand slipping into his. "Whatever comes from the stars, they have to get through us first."
Aryan smiled, looking at the assembled council—the first and last line of defense for Earth. "Then the meeting was adjourned. Next stop: Geneva. It's time to tell the world that the era of hiding is over."
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