I agree Brand's gotten way less subtle but I think that's largely intentional on her part. Just conserving her scheming energy, lol. I mean, look at the page where she does the next closest thing to straight up admitting she spaced Gyrich....she's like 'assuming I stopped giving a crap about covering my ass there, do any of you really care?' And they were like no ma'am. Except for Cable who was like literally the only person I care about in this room is my gun so that's where my attention is are we done here yet?
But my point being....I think Brand's just savvy enough to know when its not worth it to keep up an act that the other person isn't really buying. She knew Eden was on to her, so she was like, yeah, I'm not gonna put in the effort to try and fix that....he's a smart dude, it is what it is, time to just roll with it.
Same thing with Ororo. Honestly I think by the end of SWORD Brand was just like....yeah this woman is never going to be my patsy and the ship has sailed on her ever genuinely trusting me because well, I'm shady as hell and she knows how to spot shady. Storm may not have been specifically clued in to Brand's allegiances and intentions as of the end of SWORD or even as of now, like I don't think she expects that Brand is allied with Orchis of all groups....but she's long past the point of actually trusting Abigail and Abigail I think is just the kind of person who's like yeah I see that, I respect that, I'll keep up the plausible deniability thing to keep my ass out of the Hole for blatant treason, but I'm too busy plotting galactic domination to invest much time in trying to convince these people I'm not just three Machiavellian schemes stacked on top of each other, wearing a trenchcoat.