The post-mind control interview was… fun. All kinds of little details. But eventually, after I detailed all the ways I had used teleportation and public information about the capital buildings to attack the symbolic center of the American nation, they let me out and I saw Andromeda waiting for me. I had been inside a nondescript federal building, but Andromeda had been waiting for me.

She was in a new car I hadn't seen before, a sleek red sports car, but not a Nemo. The windows were tinted, but she had hers rolled down. She had a book in her hand, reading it while she waited for me. She folded it closed when she saw me and got out of the car.

She looked… really good. Honestly, and I probably should not ever say this aloud, much better than she had before. The serum had rendered her skin radiant and clear, made her just about six feet tall and very fit. She was wearing a nice new dress, which I did not take to mean I was not in trouble.

"Hey," I said after a moment. What was I supposed to say in this moment? I had attacked the capital. I had tried to expose both of us as Hydra agents. I'd shot her with the scepter. I'd also kept so many secrets, my secrets had secrets.

She looked me over, "No comment on the new appearance?"

"Any way you look," I said, "I think you look great."

She kissed me and gestured, "Come on, let's get out of here."

I slid into the car. It was a security precaution we'd established in the event of either of our arrests to buy a new car for pick up, clear it of bugs with an EMP, and roll out. But it was still funny to see that she'd torn out the voice radio even though it was probably voice activated. The inside still smelled of new car.

"Sorry I attacked you," I said nervously. "And blew up the capital."

"Don't worry about that," Andromeda said and I couldn't help but notice the emphasis. "You were under a thrall and you managed to get everyone else out safely enough." She reached over and squeezed my hand at that. "It was very selfless, but in the future keep in mind that you are our most valuable asset."

I felt uncomfortable about that. It was too cold a perspective for me to enjoy - These were my friends and my fiancée, I wanted them to be safe. But she was right. In light of everything, she was definitely right. I had almost wrecked the United States. I squeezed her hand back. "So are you a big name superhero now?"

"Yeah," Andromeda said, her tone still light. "They're calling me Hornet."

"That's good," I replied. It would be useful later on if she had a good reputation. Heck, it would be useful right now, given that my name had been plastered all over the world as its most wanted man shortly before I launched an attack on the United States capital. "What's the damage on my reputation?"

"Well, we haven't done any snap polls yet but the general consensus is that you shouldn't be imprisoned for terrorism and sedition."

Finally, we made it onto a highway and going sixty miles an hour. "So…" she said after a moment to be sure there wasn't traffic up ahead. "What the hell?"

I sighed, I knew this was coming.

"A time machine? You built a time machine."

Okay, so I didn't know that was coming. "Uh… Yeah." I scratched my head uncomfortably. Really thought we were going to start on Wakanda or the Super-Soldier Serum. Or the Hydra thing, depending on how confident she was about the standard lie or confused she was by phrasing. Didn't know Victor had told her what the Lilypad was. "Technically it was Victor's design."

"But your idea."

"I mean, yeah. Anyway, the ethical issues got overwhelming, the security threat was non-zero. I'd gotten the Super-Soldier Serum, that was enough."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Mike, it's not that you stopped using it. Why didn't you tell me?"

"We live in a world with mind control. Minimizing people with information minimizes risks."

"Mike, I am your fiancee!" Andromeda grumped.

"Victor is my best man," I pointed out. Okay, not the best move. I was letting my emotions catch up to me. I breathed in and out. "It doesn't really matter, the principle is the same. I didn't tell him about your shrink suit."

"And Wakanda? Pierce has reported what you told Barton. Mike, you lied to me about one of the most important secrets in the world!"

Wakanda. I'd explained the tech theft to Barton and while he might not know the exact nature of Wakanda, he definitely knew about it being technologically advanced and a source of Vibranium. Sooner or later, they were make me pay and it wasn't even my fault this time. I mean, it was my fault in the strict sense. To me, it proved the old-school doctrine of Wakanda. T'chaka was too merciful. He should've had one of his lackeys do the murder and take the fall for it. Make up a motive after the fact. Andromeda wouldn't have been able to protect me at that point, it would've been simple, clean. Now I was going to have to do unto them before they did unto me.

"Wakanda isn't some plum target, Andromeda," I said. "It's the most politically backward, monarchial oligarchy imaginable with tech decades or centuries ahead of the rest of us. It is a nest of viper-bees, it is poison fruit, it is a real danger. It was obvious from the very start that it was a deadly problem. I wanted to have a more secure hold in America before I risked confronting."

"THIS ISN'T SOME SPIN MEETING! You lied to me, Michael. You could have told me the truth, trusted me, and you didn't. On the night we talked about marriage and everything! Why?" Her voice broke at the end.

In situations like this, the answers are delicate. There were wrong answers, all of them true. 'You lied to me' for example. Andromeda had actually stuck her neck out quite far to bring me into Hydra. She had trusted me more, faster, than she had been taught all her life to trust and she'd risked everything to bring me in. So to her, it would be an insult to bring that up. She had basically been perfectly transparent from her perspective. 'Hydra is a truly crazy organization and I knew your loyalty to them was your central motive.' While true, was also not the sort of thing one says about his own organization that he'd moved towards world domination. SWORD was now in a perfect position to acquire huge hordes of new employees of great talent and then turn them towards its objective. 'I'm a chronic liar whose paranoia knows no bounds' was certainly on the table, honest, and forthright. But a major problem was that I was a chronic liar whose paranoia knew no bounds.

Anyway, I went with, "I should have, I'm sorry." Which was, objectively, a lie.

"Okay," Andromeda said, loosening her grip. It turned out 'I'm sorry' was the right answer. "Did you stick to the standard explanation?"

"Yeah, it was an off-color joke. You had a secretive government job and I was a business tycoon politician. I had used it to set you off guard, especially given the presence of Captain America."

"And it slipped my mind because I was in the middle fo the combat." She winced, "Sorry about that."

"It's not your fault," I said reassuringly. Now was not the time to be unforgiving.

"How'd you get the knowledge of Loki and the scepter?"

"The Gibborim wasn't my first contact with alien life."

"And that is how you got all that information?"

"Yeah, the hearing stuff as well."

She seemed to accept that.

Well, for now anyway.