WARNING: The following contains spoilers for X-Factor #1, by Leah Williams, David Baldeón, Israel Silva, and VC's Joe Caramagna, available now.
X-Factor Investigations is back with a Krakoan twist. While several different X-Men-related groups have been called X-Factor, the latest incarnation of the group has assembled to give readers their first real glimpse of the politics of what goes on behind the curtains of resurrections on Krakoa, and it proves that bringing the dead back to life isn't as easy as it might seem.
X-Factor #1 opens with Northstar sensing the death of Aurora, his sister, and demanding an immediate resurrection from the Five. However, he quickly finds out that's not how it works. In order to resurrect someone, the Five need proof that they're dead, which leads Northstar to assemble the group that forms the basis of the new X-Factor.
Aurora was created by Chris Claremont and John Byrne in X-Men #120, and she served alongside her brother as a member of the Canadian super-team Alpha Flight. As twins, they share a strong bond, down to light powers that work in tandem.
Unlike Northstar, her association with the X-Men has been relatively limited. She's never been a prominent member of the team, although she has been their regular ally, especially during crossover events like Secret Invasion. She was a member of the Weapon X Program, which has amplified the powers of many different mutants like Wolverine and conscripted them into service. Like her twin brother, Aurora has superhuman speed and can fly. She also has a dissociative identity disorder, which has been the target of many different villains over the years.
Like many mutants, Aurora immigrated to Krakoa, but she wasn't killed there. Together, Northstar, Polaris, Daken, Eye-Boy, Prodigy and Rachel Summers use their powers to find out more about what happened to their fallen fellow mutant. Prodigy is able to trace Aurora's steps to a motel she was staying at. Rachel Summers uses "chrono-skimming" ability to telepathically see her last moments in her room. And her pet Warwolf, Amazing Baby, picks up Aurora's scent from a hairbrush.
While the rest of the team is busy in Aurora's room, Daken is using his ability to control pheremones to get information from the hotel's front desk clerk. The clerk tells Daken that he thinks Aurora was having romantic rendezvous at the motel. X-Factor eventually tracks Aurora's scent to a bridge, where her car crashed and went over. Summers and Eyeboy work together to pick Aurora's car out of the many submerged at the bottom of the river. Polaris dredges all the SUVs they can find until they ultimately discover Aurora's car and body.
After Northstar speeds off, the rest of the team figures out that Aurora didn't die in an accident. Instead, they realize that she perished in a crash caused by an anti-mutant bigot named Eddie Avidan.
X-Factor pieced together enough information to come to the conclusion that Avidan cut the breaks in the SUV that Aurora was driving and left a trap in the middle of the road to make sure she'd crash. After placing him at the scene of the crime, Prodigy speculates that he was lying in wait to dump Aurora's body in the Puget Sound. Unfortunately for him, Avidan chose the wrong hiding spot. and he was standing in front of the guardrail Aurora crashed through. Avidan's death means X-Factor is left without answers to some crucial questions about Aurora's fate.
X-Factor still doesn't know why Aurora abruptly left Krakoa for Washington, much less why she was driving a car that Avidan tampered with and how he enough to orchestrate her crash. Without a suspect to question, the team is still in the dark as to how Aurora met her fate.
While Aurora's resurrection is all but certain, there are still some lingering questions about her death. And after being officially recognized by the Krakoan government, X-Factor learns that there are a staggering number of missing, presumed dead or otherwise unaccounted for mutants, which means this team's investigations are just beginning.