Warlock briefly fell under the control of the Red Skull when the Skull's desperate use of a Cosmic Cube took him somewhere safe where he could gain power over others, this wish taking him to Warlock's location, where he was able to force Warlock to help him take control of a SHIELD helicarrier and the agents on board. Fortunately, Nick Fury, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler and Colossus were able to infiltrate the helicarrier, and Warlock was able to use his connection to the ship to activate the currently-captive Machine Man. He attempted to stop the Skull by programming the also-captive Deathlok to kill him (unable to make Deathlok kill the Skull himself as that would go against his current programming), but Kitty delayed this long enough for Fury to destroy the Skull's control unit, although the Skull got away with a group of independently-programmed agents in a damaged Helicarrier.