Adam looked at Coulson's innocent expression and decided the man had zero sincerity.
"Coulson, we may not be friends, but I'd still prefer you didn't try feeding me weak lines."
Adam gave him a strange look. "You're S.H.I.E.L.D. An ancient organization whose operations have shaped human history for centuries. You're not the mid-twentieth-century startup the public thinks you are… So do I really need to spell it out?"
Adam had done his research on this world. Mutants complicated everything. Once you factored in the Eternals and Deviants, things became even messier.
Across most of the multiverse, the origin of mutants was the same: Deviants.
Therefore, unless this was one of the rare exceptions, Adam had every reason to believe the mutants of his universe also descended from the long-extinct Deviants.
The Celestials conducted experiments on countless life-bearing planets, creating two opposing races... the Eternals and the Deviants. Every so often, they would pass judgment. Successful races survived. Failures were wiped out.
The Skrulls were a classic example. As another branch of Deviants, they had eliminated the Eternals on their homeworld, passed the Celestials' test, and risen to become one of the three great interstellar empires dominating the galaxy.
Then the Skrulls got cocky. They and their Skrull gods tried to do to the Kree what the Celestials had done to them. It backfired spectacularly. The Kree used that same power to rise at an astonishing speed and became their greatest enemies.
The same story had played out on Earth. The Eternals and Deviants were both created by the Celestials.
Before Ikaris and his group, there had been even older generations of Eternals and Deviants... races that had dominated Earth long before humanity, building advanced civilizations over twenty thousand years ago and leaving their mark on the planet's history.
Many years ago, when humans were still primitive, the Celestials had chosen Earth as a major testing ground. They created the Eternals... possessors of perfect genes, ancestors of Thanos... and the Deviants... beings with unlimited mutagenic potential, distant forebears of what would become mutants.
Twenty thousand years ago, Earth belonged to the Eternals and Deviants. Back then, the Deviants were intelligent, capable of developing technology, building cities, and constructing starships. They were nothing like the more animalistic "Deviants" that Ikaris and the other eleven Eternals had fought, which resembled oversized wild dogs.
The two races waged war for dominance of the planet.
The outcome was eerily similar to the Skrulls' story... the Deviants with their unlimited mutagenic genes emerged victorious.
The genetically perfect Eternals were defeated. Most fled Earth for Titan, only to be attacked en route by the Kree Empire. Many were captured and experimented on, eventually giving rise to another human offshoot... the Inhumans, now ruled by the T-type powerhouse Black Bolt on the Moon.
The Deviants won, but before they could truly enjoy their victory, the Celestials declared them a failed experiment and wiped them out.
Though the Deviants were exterminated, their mutagenic genes somehow survived in the then-weak humans, passing down through generations and eventually becoming the X-gene of modern mutants.
This was a cataclysmic event from twenty thousand years ago that had shaped the entire course of Earth's history. Without it, there would be no mutants today. Conversely, the existence of mutants meant that a race of Deviants with unlimited mutagenic potential had once existed here... and had been eradicated.
The chain reactions that followed were numerous: the power vacuum left by the two races' downfall allowed hellish demons like Chthon to invade Earth. To fight back, vengeful spirits descended with rains of fire. One of those spirits later bonded with a certain motorcycle-riding man, creating the Ghost Rider…
Events like Apocalypse's rise, the gods of the World Tree battling a squadron of Celestials a thousand years ago, Zhang Heng helping a Celestial give birth during the Eastern Han, Da Vinci forging solar armor to drive a young Celestial from the sun, and the split between the Spear and S.H.I.E.L.D. could all ultimately be traced back to the conflict between Eternals and Deviants.
Thanos's near-genocide of the Titan Eternals... descendants of Earth's original batch... fit the same pattern.
So the moment Adam learned that mutants existed on this Earth, he had prepared himself mentally and begun collecting every scrap of data he could find, searching for traces hidden in the corners of history.
An organization like S.H.I.E.L.D.... one of the two major branches of the ancient global supernatural group known as the Sacred Shield Brotherhood, founded during the Eastern Han by figures like Zhang Heng... could not possibly know nothing about the Deviants.
Even if they somehow lacked records of the true Deviants wiped out twenty thousand years ago by the Celestials, how could they claim ignorance of the more primitive, dog-like Deviants that Arishem had deployed over the past several thousand years?
These eleven Eternals were manufactured tools, their memories repeatedly wiped and reused as weapons against the lesser Deviants. S.H.I.E.L.D. expected anyone to believe they had detected nothing and kept no records?
Don't be ridiculous.
Coulson's expression changed completely.
"This doesn't add up." Coulson frowned, staring into Adam's eyes. "I don't understand. We've gone through every file we have. You're an intelligent scientist, but there's no way you should have access to information at this level!"
"Why not?"
"Because of your platform. You've never operated on a stage big enough to uncover things buried so deeply in history."
"Then, Coulson, is it possible that everything you found about me is exactly what I wanted you to find?" Adam asked with a half-smile.
Coulson fell silent. He still believed Adam was bluffing, but that clashed with the undeniable fact that Adam possessed highly classified knowledge.
After a moment, Coulson realized he wasn't going to extract Adam's personal secrets today and shifted focus. "If I'm not mistaken, Ikaris isn't one of those giant reptilian Deviants?"
"If you're referring to the batch that appeared over the last few thousand years, then no, he's not the same," Adam answered in a way that seemed deliberately vague.
But Coulson understood immediately. His eyes filled with shock.
That was insane. Adam even knew about the Deviants who had briefly ruled Earth? Those events were from twenty thousand years ago. Even S.H.I.E.L.D., with its long legacy, had only fragments of that history.
"I'll report our conversation exactly as it happened. So this is part of your confidence. I'm curious whether you have a stable source of intelligence… or whether you personally lived through many of these major historical events."
Coulson's interest in Adam had been fully piqued. Once he returned, he planned to comb through every S.H.I.E.L.D. archive looking for any trace of the man.
Yes, he suspected Adam was some historical figure with an extremely long lifespan who had survived into the modern era.
It wouldn't be unprecedented. The demon-linked mutant Nightcrawler, whom Magneto valued, was an old monster who had lived five or six thousand years, from the time of Apocalypse to the present day.
Adam shrugged and gestured as if to say "be my guest."
Coulson chose his words carefully. "Since Ikaris isn't a Deviant, that's the best possible outcome. Otherwise things would get complicated. You know what I mean, right? The true Deviants from ancient times were wiped out. It's much better if we're only dealing with the lesser ones that appeared over the last few thousand years... the ones we can call 'Deviants' for convenience."
Adam nodded in understanding. If Ikaris had been one of the true intelligent Deviants with unlimited mutagenic potential from twenty thousand years ago, the situation would have been far more serious.
After all, Earth still had a dangerous population of mutants. They would inevitably search for their own origins to argue their superiority over humanity. Some might have already found clues.
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