Terrigen Crystals

The Terrigen Crystals are objects of Kree design, and they carry the trigger for one of the oldest experiments ever run on human beings. Thousands of years ago, Kree visitors experimented on Earth's population, seeding certain bloodlines with a dormant gene, and the crystals are the key that turns it: they give off Terrigen Mist, and exposure to the Mist sets off Terrigenesis, the transformation through which a carrier of the gene emerges changed, with an ability all their own. The Kree housed the crystals inside containment devices called Diviners, built with a cruel selectivity: a Diviner opens for the descendants of the altered, and kills an ordinary human who touches it.