“Taking us in was just a lie! You humans never intended to let us live here at all!" Gravik roared, his voice full of fury as he lashed out at the shalessness of mankind. To treat refugees from space this way, kicking them while they were already down, was beyond cruel.
"Are you trying to guilt-trip ?" Deathstroke asked, his voice calm. "Too bad. Like my boss says, I don’t have morals. So there's nothing for you to pull on."
He wasn’t swayed by Gravik’s outrage. Even if a human begged him for rcy, he’d still take the shot if it was part of the job. And Skrulls, in his eyes, weren’t even carbon-based lifeforms; they were sothing less.
‘Damn it. I can’t die here!’ Gravik thought as panic surged through him.
Now that he knew the truth—that humans never really intended to accept the Skrulls—he began to look for an escape. A head-on fight wasn’t an option. The Skrulls lacked the numbers, the weapons, and the resources. Fighting humans directly would only lead to extinction.
There was only one path left.
He had to break away from LexCorp’s surveillance, hide inside human society and wait patiently while their people grew in numbers again.
With the Skrulls' superior physical traits, it would be easy to live a normal life as long as they stayed disguised. If they could keep their identities hidden, survival wouldn’t be difficult at all.
As Gravik watched Deathstroke approach with both blades drawn, he didn’t hesitate. He turned and ran toward a narrow alleyway nearby.
He had no idea if more traps were waiting in the dark, but there was no ti to think. His only chance was to dive into more complex terrain, use his shapeshifting abilities, and switch appearances over and over until he lost his pursuer.
Unfortunately, the truth was, from the mont he stepped onto Earth, he never really had a chance.
Just as he had feared, Deathstroke had indeed made other preparations. But these weren’t hidden traps or weapons waiting in the shadows. It was sothing much simpler.
A single switch.
"If you step into the shadows," Deathstroke said, his voice echoing in the air, "every one of your comrades will be blown sky high."
Gravik froze. The mont he heard those words, he stopped in his tracks and slowly turned around. His eyes locked onto the small button in Deathstroke’s hand, his face twisted in rage.
"Bombs?!"
"You're not too dumb after all. Sha it won't help you now."
It was a simple tactic. So simple that it hardly seed worthy of a tactician like Deathstroke. But sotis, the simplest plans were the most effective.
Especially when Reid had already prepared for every possibility. If a group of Skrull refugees still managed to cause trouble under those conditions, that would’ve been the real surprise.
"You could’ve killed us right after Carol left. Why wait? What do you humans actually want from us?" Gravik finally started to catch on.
Humans could’ve refused Carol’s request from the start. Or taken action the mont she left Earth. So why go to the trouble of building all those underground shelters for the Skrulls?
"Good question," Deathstroke replied. "But not one I need to answer."
While speaking, he stepped closer.
But suddenly, Gravik made his move. Banking on his superior Skrull physique, he launched a surprise attack, trying to close the final ter between them.
"Die, you filthy human!"
Deathstroke didn’t flinch. He just stood there, completely still. No counterattack. No movent.
But before Gravik’s punch could land, his strength vanished. His face turned a sickly shade of green, and his body collapsed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
"What did you bastards do to ?!"
"This has nothing to do with anyone else," Deathstroke said, walking over to stand above him. "I just coated the arrow tips with a poison made especially for Skrulls."
"You…!"
Gravik’s eyes burned with fury and regret. In his mind, if he hadn’t been poisoned, if he hadn’t walked into an ambush, he could’ve killed this man. He could’ve warned his people, told them to disappear before humans completely tightened control.
But it was already too late.
With a heavy kick from Deathstroke, everything went black.
……
When Gravik woke up, he found himself inside a high-tech lab, deep within the LexCorp facility.
The first thing he saw was two familiar faces.
One was Reid, whom he had seen earlier that morning.
The other was soone he had only heard of through Talos’s warnings. A man he’d been told to be very careful around: Lex Luthor, the real leader of LexCorp.
"You…" Gravik’s voice was hoarse.
"In just one night," Reid said, stepping forward, "we detected forty-six attempts to break surveillance across fifty settlents. What do you think about that, Gravik?"
Before coming to this world, Reid hadn’t watched Secret Invasion, but he’d read enough comntary to rember a few important facts.
According to Talos, there had only been a few thousand Skrull survivors scattered across the galaxy in 1995. And yet, by the ti the events of Secret Invasion began, less than thirty years later, more than a million Skrulls had made Earth their ho. And during the five years Fury vanished, they had taken over leadership positions across multiple countries.
With that kind of reproduction rate, Reid was sure that Fury—if he had any sense—would’ve tried to control their numbers. So the only explanation was simple.
The Skrulls had started plotting long before the invasion ever began. That was the only way to explain why they secretly expanded their numbers behind Fury’s back.
And everything that happened tonight confird his suspicion.
Day one. On the very first day they arrived on Earth, dozens of Skrulls had already tried to slip free from human oversight. This wasn’t how refugees acted. This was the behavior of greedy invaders.
Maybe the Kree-Skrull war had beco one-sided in recent years. Maybe the Skrulls were being hunted now. But long ago, when the war first began, the Skrulls were no innocent victims.
"So now humans are justifying their cruelty?" Gravik snapped.
He completely ignored what his own people had done, refusing to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
That was the Skrull way. Always playing the victim, never taking responsibility.
Reid thought back to the beginning of Secret Invasion—to Talos’s daughter. The sa Skrull child saved by humans from the Kree cruiser, only to later join the resistance against humanity.
That alone made Reid despise the Skrulls even more.
He wasn’t a good man, but he was human. And as far as he was concerned, whether they were Skrulls or Kree, the mont they set foot on Earth, they lost the right to be called people.
The only ones worthy of that na on Earth were humans.
As for the Skrulls?
They were just tools. Creatures with shapeshifting abilities—nothing more.
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