I cursed and took off my headset. I couldn't waste time debating, I had to get in and get out. The security camera and machinery, that was fine, as long as I moved fast enough. I jerked on the gloves and my mask over their head and opened the door of the van, closing it quickly behind me.

Ideally, I would've walked at a slow pace up to the house without the mask on. Circumstances, however, were pressing. Ten minutes can quickly become less, especially as we were already down to nine minutes. So I bolted. Look, I'm not out of shape but neither am I in it and when I worked out, I generally swam laps instead of running - Better on the joints. I was running as fast as I can, my heart was like a jack hammer in my ear.

I made it to within perimeter of the cameras without much trouble. The house was a gargantuan thing, with beautiful lawnscaping and large windows and a guest house. The building could've housed a baseball team and did house a grand total of three people. I preferred much smaller living spaces, but I assumed when you came up from nothing like the Wilders it was the symbol of the thing that mattered most. I looked around the neighborhood and nobody was looking at me, though I supposed anyone could've made me out in the evening light. The Wilders were not big on vacations and so we'd taken our best option - An evening outing with their son to the movie theater. We had hoped that would mean it would be less erratic than a date night.

But we don't always get what we hope for.

I was at seven and a half minutes according to my watch and that was an estimated time, so I had to hurry. Dodging through the camera's line of sight was not hard in the strictest terms, but it was burdensome. I knew what the pattern was and I could move through it, that wasn't the issue - It was just that it meant a sort of lurching movement across their lawn. Camera gap to camera gap to camera gap until I reached the door.

Five minutes left according my watch. The security system was off, obviously Andromeda wouldn't be able to extricate herself if we had left it on, and the door was unlocked, so I slipped inside and locked the door behind me. Just in case we needed to make our egress through another door, I didn't want anything tipping the Wilders off.

Thankfully, the Wilders subscribed to the anti-Nixon school of privacy like I did. I bolted down the hall to the office, unlatched the door, and turned the coasters to open the door. Three minutes left, not a great amount of time but this house had a lot of doors. The door to the dungeon was cool in a secret agent way though. It shifted the whole bookshelf and left Andromeda visible in her all-black breaking and entering garb. Ah, takes me be back to that moment she kidnapped. I shoved those feelings away.

And then, in the distance, I heard voices. I held my finger up to Andromeda in a shushing gesture. "I'm sorry I got sick," said a child's voice. That would be Alex Wilder, their son. Well, at least it hadn't been a trigger on Geoffrey's phone for the opening of the door.

"It's fine baby," said Mrs. Wilder, the high powered attorney of the PRIDE. "We don't blame you for being sick."

"I threw up in Dad's car," Alex said. Well, that explained the swift return.

Our masks covered our whole faces, so it wasn't really possible to mouth things at one another. I held up a hand and made a three motion and then mimed opening the door. She nodded understanding. I gave her a thumbs up.

"Babe, did you forget to turn on the security?" Mr. Wilder asked. "The car's gonna be fine, Alex, I can always take it in for a steam cleaning."

"I don't think I forgot," Mrs. Wilder said

"Well it's off," he said in a tone that implied he didn't quite believe her but didn't want to push it. "Let's both try to remember in the future. I'll turn it on for the night."

Fan-tas-tic.

I held up my hand and made button pushing motion with my other hand and then a locking motion with one hand.

Andromeda nodded understanding and mimed opening a door before closing and expanding her hands together in a wee-ooh wee-ooh pattern.

I gave her a thumbs up after a few seconds.

Andromeda grabbed my hand and dragged us out of the office into the hall. I raised a hand and drew a question mark in the air.

Andromeda pointed at the door and its glass.

The front door opened, "I'll go get you some sprite, bud," Mr. Wilder said, heading towards the kitchen and (by extension) us. The other Wilders were going up a staircase, probably to Alex's room.

I held up one finger and then made a three stage height tier and then made the tallest height. Then I made a stepping gesture.

She pointed at her ear and made a cutting motion.

I looked back at her. Ah, yeah, that probably wouldn't be audible to her would it. I made a motion to my own ear and then made multiple jerking thumbs up.

She nodded and grabbed my hand and dragged us down the hallway towards the front door, moving very softly and carefully.

I resisted the urge to panic, she knew what she was doing. Right? She opened a door to one side of me, a hall closet, and we both went inside and pulled it shut just as I heard Wilder's feet round the corner.

The redeeming feature of Wilder's obsession with large rooms was that he also, apparently, liked large closets. We were able to fit pretty comfortably into the back of the coat closet, but we weren't able to pull the door fully shut.

Wilder got closer and closer and suddenly stopped in the hallway in front of the door.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I held my breath.

And then he pressed the door closed with a little thump.

I let my breath out, but slowly. Andromeda's features were draped in shadow. I was pretty sure she couldn't see anything at all. I picked up her hand and putting my finger on hers and pointing like a compass to show her where Mr. Wilder was.

We sat in silence for a minute as he fished a sprite out of the fridge and Mrs. Wilder comforted Alex upstairs. Then he walked past us and past the hallway closet and up to his son. I breathed out a sigh of relief, "Upstairs," I whispered as quietly I could intro Andromeda's ears.

"How long?"

"Don't know. Kid sick."

She took a second, "Don't think they're going to open this closet, no coats when they left. Let's not risk it."

Great. But she was the expert at these things.

Sure enough, after a minute or two of conversation with Alex, the Wilders came down the staircase and I shushed Andromeda and put two fingers in her hand as a compass.

"Well, that wasn't as much fun as I was hoping tonight would be," said Mrs. Wilder.

"It's okay baby," Mr. Wilder said. "It may seem like tonight was a loss, but he'll remember stuff like this for years."

"I know, I know. I just know you were stressed from work and the crew, I wanted to give you a nice night off, not full-dad duty."

"Well, when Darius gets out, the crew won't be a problem anymore." Darius must've been the guy who fought him over disloyalty in the series. He was giving him control of the local crips? Well, whatever I guess. "And in a few months, I'm sure Trent Industries will finally get me my damn solar panel orders."

"They still haven't gotten those to you?"

Thankfully Andromeda couldn't hear them or she might have laughed at me.

Look, folks, it's hard to completely transmogrify the whole energy sector. We were nearly three percent of the whole energy sector! From basically zero, that was hard. Supply chains are more than procurement requests, employees require training even in the relatively automated factories I designed, factories had to be gutted and renovated in line with my standards. And if something went wrong with the factories, I often had to intervene myself because my engineers barely understood the underlying principles. Simultaneously, I was trying to invent a particle that would allow shrinking, totally revolutionize the shipping industry, and time travel and I was distributing computer systems that would nuke the Hollywood system from orbit.

I had a lot going on.

"They say there's a back order." You're damn right there's a backorder you ungrateful prick. I'm going to own you soon and then you and all your friends will answer to me. Nemo, Wizard, and Synergy will be afflicted with the same problems as Trent. I guess Wilder Construction probably wouldn't be, but that's just because this dude didn't contribute anything to society.

"That's ridiculous," Mrs. Wilder said, dismissing all my hard work with singular ingratitude. "Aren't you paying them enough?"

"Lots of people are paying them enough," Mr. Wilder sighed, popping a cork of some kind and pouring two drinks. "It's fine, it'll be a lot of work when they come through. Between Trent and Stark, we're rolling into the future faster than we could've hoped."

"To our future, then," Mrs. Wilder said with a smile.

"To our future."

They stayed up for talking for what seemed like a year. I mean, good for their marriage but it left Andromeda and I crammed into the back of a closet, breathing on each other. Then, finally, mercifully, "Mm, I want to take you to bed."

Five minutes later we were out into the dark of night.

"I should've left you in that damn dungeon," I said, laughing hysterically as we got into the van.

"Oh my gosh, we were right on top of each for forever!" Andromeda said, sliding in and peeling off her mask. "You should've! I could've gotten in some cardio running up and down the hall!"

"What a terrible reward for my chivalry."

"Sir Lancelot, let's get out of here."

I got into the driver's seat of the van and turned it on, pulling out and driving off. Hopefully nobody had seen us or nobody suspected anything.

"Hey, how could you hear them so well? You got some kind of bionic implant I don't know about?"

Well.

"No," I said after a long moment. "Listen, you can't tell anybody about that."

"Why not?" she asked, genuinely confused.

Girl, you are the reason why not. If Hydra found out, or even suspected, that my abilities weren't one hundred percent natural, they might decide to put me on an operating table. "Look, I did my best to get to the root of it, trust me when I say it's all dead ends. I don't know how it works. I just know I don't want to end up on an operating table."

"You wouldn't end up on an operating table! You're a part of Hydra now. Besides, many hands make light works."

"Andromeda, you told me you'd do whatever it takes to achieve Hydra's dreams. I need you to swear to me that you won't put that at risk because you're curious about my hearing."

"Alright, alright."

"Swear to me, Andromeda, on your loyalty to Hydra."

She placed her hand upon her heart. "I swear, on my loyalty to Hydra and to its cause that I will not tell anyone about your weirdly keen hearing."

I'd just have to hope that held up long enough.