History
Nitika Gaiha was a scientist working for Orchis.[1] When Ms. Marvel's mutant lineage and ties to the X-Men were publicly revealed at Empire State University, Nitika and Officer Kroll blamed each other for allowing a mutant to be undetected on the campus. Omega Sentinel executed Kroll but spared Nitika for the mishap as she found the latter more useful but accused her of being sympathetic towards Ms. Marvel due to both of them being South Asian, to which Nitika quickly denied. Over Nitika's objections, Omega Sentinel ordered her to implement the untested Trojan Horse program.[1]
Nitika's drones were unable to identify Ms. Marvel amongst ESU's student body and under threat by Omega Sentinel she adjusted their search parameters to detect frequencies containing encryption, which would occur if Ms. Marvel made contact with the X-Men. With this method, the drones were able to find Ms. Marvel while she was contacting Synch but they were destroyed by Ms. Marvel and Iron Man, who avoided detection with his stealth armor. Despite this, one small drone managed to embed itself inside Ms. Marvel's scalp without her knowledge, which Nikita gained remote access to when Ms. Marvel fell asleep.[2]
The drone was armed with a psychic bomb rigged to detonate if Ms. Marvel made telepathic contact with any of her fellow mutants, killing her and any mutant she was psychically linked with. As the bomb will only be armed if it could get past Ms. Marvel's telepathic firewall, Nitkia activated the drone's Trojan Horse program, which would manifest itself as a familiar form within Ms. Marvel's subconscious in her sleep. When Omega Sentinel questioned the bomb's effectiveness, Nitkia briefly activated a psychic bomb she secretly planted in Omega Sentinel's head as insurance, warning her if she died, Omega Sentinel will too. Bruno Carelli discovered the drone in Ms. Marvel's scalp and hacked into it, forcing Nikita to temporarily shut down her lab's systems and sending more drones to locate Ms. Marvel among the sleeping students. The drones failed to locate Ms. Marvel, who was able to fully resist the Trojan Horse program in her mind.[3]
Nikita defected from Orchis before Ms. Marvel destroyed their campus laboratory with a damaged Stark Sentinel sent after her. As it turned out, Nitika had intentionally sabotaged Orchis' efforts in hunting Ms. Marvel in order to test Ms. Marvel's abilities for her own unknown purposes. While in Kerala, India, Nikita received a threatening message from Omega Sentinel over her treachery. She ended the call and began analyzing Ms. Marvel's extracted DNA, while commenting "Why crush a caterpillar before you get to see its butterfly wings?"[4]
Nikika traveled to Mumbai to meet with her associate Rishi, who had tailored a replica of Ms. Marvel's original suit for her. Rishi correctly deduced that Ms. Marvel was Pakistani rather than Indian due to her being previously spotted with the Pakistani vigilante Red Dagger in Karachi, Nitika said she wasn't interested in her nationality but knew there was something special about her when she thwarted Orchis' operations at ESU. Nitika took the suit and returned to her personal office, showing that she had been analyzing Ms. Marvel's dormant X-Gene and monitoring her activities around the world for quite some time.[5] Despite her betrayal of Orchis, several of Nitika's contacts within the organization provided her with several mysterious packages that she extracted from the Atlantic Ocean.[6] The packages were revealed to be the duplicated corpses of Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Jubilee and Cannonball, which had been left behind by the mutants of Krakoa due to the Resurrection Protocols. Nitika was able to scientifically reanimate them as Zombies that could still use their mutant powers. From her secret lab in Jersey City Nitika controlled the Zombies into attacking Ms. Marvel and Red Dagger, who were able to fight them off.[7]
However, Nitika had one more trick up her sleeve: the corpse of Ms. Marvel's original body. When turning the corpse into a zombie, Nitka activated the body's mutation, which was revealed to be be ability to generate "hard light" constructs. After dressing her in Ms. Marvel's duplicate suit, Nitika controlled the zombie Ms. Marvel into attacking the Islamic Masjid of Jersey City to attract the real Ms. Marvel's attention. Nitika formally introduced herself to Ms. Marvel and explained how her dormant mutation worked. Believing that Ms. Marvel could activate her mutant power in her resurrected body through instinct, Nitika had the zombie attack the mosque's inhabitants to provoke her, which gravely injured Sheikh Abdullah. Ms. Marvel ended up defeating zombie without activating her mutant power when the zombie ended up overwhelming itself with its constructs. While Nitika lamented the lost opportunities Ms. Marvel could have accomplished if she had awakened her mutation, Ms. Marvel pointed out how Nitika's actions proved how dangerous it was in the wrong hands. Disappointed with this response, Nitika stunned Ms. Marvel with an electric blast and fled into the night.[8]