The winter was the only shield against the valley's nasty heat and Andromeda had been sitting out here for hours waiting for Leslie's scheduled trip to a holy site for the Gibs. So it was really a relief when her car came up the road and Andromeda drove right in front of it. Leslie Dean's car slammed into Andromeda's vehicle's side but it barely left a dent as they both shoved forward for a few seconds. Mike had really over-done the armor on his personal vehicles, in Andromeda's opinion. This was excessive. It made sense with this plan but all his cars were like this. What was he expecting, an assault by tank?

"What the heck were you thinking!" Andromeda heard a voice shout. Leslie Dean was an attractive woman with red hair and a stark white pantsuit. She was a decade older than Andromeda, the leader of a (locally) powerful cult in California that worshipped the "beings of light". According to Mike, those beings of light were actually aliens with "glow-y and blast-y" powers. She'd learned not to question him about these things.

"Oh my gosh," Andromeda said, getting out of the car, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry." Nobody went down these streets, but she still made a point of scanning the horizon. Mike had said to keep casualties down, so casualties would be kept down. "Oh man, this is my first wreck."

"You just pulled out in front of me! Did you not even look?"

"I was on my phone… I'm so sorry. Jeez, okay, come on, let me give you my insurance." Andromeda waved Leslie over. People were suggestible if you looked like you were co-operating with them, so this made it easier to get her within a good, solid range. Predators like Leslie Dean, especially, lurched toward weakness by default. It was always a mistake to operate in that mode,

"Wow," Leslie said as she got up to the car door, "Your car can really take a beating for such a little thing."

"Yeah, my boyfriend's super paranoid" Andromeda said, miming fishing through her car. Then, once Leslie was leaning against the car, she came out of the car and whipped out her pistol. "Hands above your head and against the car, quick and careful."

"You bitch!" Leslie said, but she put her hand up against car as instructed.

"Mrs. Dean, I'm surprised you have such a low opinion of the mothers of children out of wedlock." Mike had said to be as mean as she could manage, that Dean was a fanatic and needed to know that her whole life was at stake. "What would Karolina think if she discovered you were ashamed of her?" She patted her down and pocketed her sleek Wizzy smartphone, but Leslie wasn't carrying any weapons.

"My daughter was born in wedlock to my husband," Leslie said as Andromeda drug her hands down and put them into a zip tie.

"In wedlock, yes, to your husband, no," Andromeda shoved Leslie down onto the ground and dragged her a little bit till her white suit was good and dirty. "Try not to lie to me going forward, Mrs. Dean."

"The Church won't pay a ransom if you kill me."

"We aren't interested in a ransom." Andromeda shoved her into the backseat.

"You won't get away this," Leslie shouted. "I have powerful friends."

"Mrs. Dean," Andromeda said as she opened the trunk "Your baby daddy is dead. Killed by a strike team this morning. We found out that you're his heir, but it will probably be a few weeks before anybody else decides he's dead."

"You're lying."

"That would be a stupid thing to lie about," Andromeda said, taking the hardened computer out of the trunk and opening it in front of Leslie. "Computer, play."

And the scenes from the HUD of the Hydra strike team that had killed Jonah. They'd blown up his car on the road, sending a burning, flaking wreck onto the roadside. They'd closed ranks at that point, found his burning body regenerating in a flow of technicolor light, and started firing round after round into his body. Eventually, his recovery faltered and there was one last glow of light - Peaceful and even-keeled. Then life left Jonah's body - The alien was dead.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

Leslie began crying. It was so pathetic. This woman was kidnapped and she didn't even know to stay steady. Andromeda wanted to slap her, but the vulnerability would be useful. "It's alright to cry," Andromeda said, carefully keeping her voice steady and soft. "We killed him because of his involvement in your little human sacrifice cabal."

"No, no, this is fake, you must be using that new Thoth engine… he can't, he can't be dead."

"He is. We killed him. We got the video files from Wizard, we used a fairly basic EMP to permanently fry all of the electronics on your church. I'm told both of those were pathetically easy." More accurately, Andromeda had listened to Mike cackle with rueful laughter for ten minutes after he finally bothered to hack Wizard's servers. He said a teenager could've done it. "But we wanted to make sure there were no loose ends" Andromeda took a deep breath, "Computer, show live footage of Karolina Dean."

A beautiful little blonde girl appeared on screen, smiling and chatting with her friends in the school cafeteria.

"She's a beautiful child. I'm sure she loves her mommy and daddy very much. We also have evidence that she's a human-alien hybrid. Absolutely fascinating, in our view, a very valuable piece of a puzzle about life on this and other planets. Can you imagine what would happen if that got out? Maybe she would be taken to a secure government facility if we published that information. Maybe she would wind up on an operating table. Maybe it would just destroy your marriage and reveal your church as a cargo cult in our little backwater world."

"No…" Leslie said, "Please, she's just a little girl. I'm begging you."

"You killed… five other people's little girls, if my count is correct? What makes you think I should go soft on you?"

Leslie shook her head, her body shaking. This was weak. This woman literally blackmailed some of the most powerful people in the country into sacrificing children to her alien god. Now the shoe was on the other foot, she fell to pieces. Andromeda had stared down a gun held by her own boyfriend and hadn't even shaken.

"Mrs. Dean," Andromeda said. "I can kill you now, put a bullet in your head and send you to join your warped idol. Or I can send you home to your husband and daughter, to your church, and you can never see me again. The only condition is that you transfer all of your inheritance from Jonah into this charitable trust in the third world." Andromeda shoved the card into Leslie's suit coat. "Good press, a chance to go back to a happy life, and no money you weren't expecting lost. If you fight me on this, I will destroy your little cargo cult, have your daughter taken into federal protective custody, and then kill you."

"Alright, alright. You win, I'll do it."

It was impossible to know, of course, what Leslie would do when released. But Andromeda drove her to the nearest rest stop and dropped her off.

"It's done. These people aren't exactly master criminals. How was Minoru?" Andromeda asked, getting on the phone after switching out the plates on the side of the road.

"It was surprisingly smooth, didn't need to threaten her basically at all. She said Jonah didn't have any back up personal tapes. She was happy to transfer."

"Do you think she'll suspect Amy's anaphylactic shock was our doing?" Mike had a decently clever idea to induce anaphylaxis and then take Amy out of her high security private school in an ambulance.

"I hope not. I still don't know what Minoru can do."

Mike not knowing was the scariest thing to Andromeda.