Michael fell asleep in the passenger seat before they left the manor grounds.
Lilian drove. She could have controlled the car without sitting behind the wheel.
She had chosen a human presentation for the visit and intended to experience the ordinary parts of it too.
The foreign divine energy made Michael's exhaustion irregular. His pulse remained stable while his neural activity rose toward waking levels.
"Michael?" Lilian called. He did not answer.
***
Thunder filled his dream.
A woman stood inside it, thin beneath an atmosphere carrying both lightning and death. When she turned, her face became a skull for one instant and then a living expression sharpened by suspicion.
"Why are you here?" she demanded. "What is your connection to Odin?"
Michael knew her name through memory, not introduction. "Hela."
The storm reacted.
"He sent you."
"I have never met Odin. Someone put power in me without explaining it."
"He is dying and sends another voice to persuade me?"
"I'm not here by choice."
Hela did not believe him. Death moved across the dream like a wave.
"Then leave."
Michael woke with the seat belt locked across his chest. Lilian had already pulled the car to the side of the road.
"You were dreaming," she said.
"How do you know?"
"Eye movement, brain activity, and the divine signature inside you responding to another source."
He described Hela and the accusation.
"The memories fit."
"They may fit because the dream gave you both the same story."
Michael looked at the road ahead. "The stranger connected me to her."
"Or the energy recognized a compatible domain. I am increasing monitoring, not drawing a genealogy."
She returned the car to traffic.
***
May opened the door before Michael finished knocking. She embraced him, welcomed Lilian inside, and assessed their distance from one another with the efficiency of family.
"Are you Michael's partner?" she asked.
Lilian glanced at him. "The answer is not settled."
Michael nearly dropped the phonograph.
May smiled. "That's more honest than most settled answers."
She asked Lilian what she did, where she came from, and what she enjoyed.
Lilian refused the version of her history that would make Tony a father and Michael a mother. She explained that she was an artificial life-form created through several materials, an adaptive architecture, and her own emergence.
May listened without deciding it was a metaphor.
"And what do you enjoy?" she asked again.
Lilian had answers for capacity and function. Enjoyment required more thought. "Learning what people mean when their words are insufficient," she said.
"Then Michael will keep you busy."
Dinner was simple and warm. The phonograph proved old enough to interest May and personal enough to reveal that Michael had chosen it at the last moment. Lilian contributed no purchased gift. She listened instead.
Peter returned halfway through the meal. Mud covered his clothes, and a bruise darkened one cheek. He stopped when he saw Michael.
"What happened?" May asked.
"Nothing."
"Peter."
"I said I'm fine."
He went to his room and closed the door without explaining. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
Michael could have followed. He could have confronted Peter with healing, strength, the hair sample, and every suspicion he had gathered. Doing so in front of May would turn concern into exposure.
"Give him tonight," Michael said.
May's worry remained. "He keeps coming home hurt."
"I know. I won't ignore it."
That promise required a better method than surveillance. Michael violated it almost immediately.
***
Inside the car, he asked Lilian to access nearby cameras.
"Peter declined to answer," she said.
"He declined in front of May."
"That is not consent for us to reconstruct his movements."
Michael's hand tightened around the door handle. "If someone attacked him, waiting could leave him in danger."
"Then limit the search to an active threat. No identity scan, no archive beyond tonight, and we tell him what we did."
"Agreed."
The footage showed a robbery and Peter moving toward it. Without a suit, he underestimated the attackers and left bruised but alive. The angle never showed his full strength.
Michael felt pride before fear corrected it.
"He chose to help."
"And lacked protection," Lilian said.
"Could you design a suit we can offer him?" Michael asked.
"Yes. We tell him about the surveillance first, and we don't leave it in his room as proof that we know his secret."
Michael nodded.
The suit would not be armor on Tony's scale. It would protect against impact, conceal identity, support movement, and leave control with Peter. Lilian would design no remote override for Michael.
They deleted the copied footage and kept only a record of the active danger that had justified the search and of their access.
At the house, Peter remained behind his closed door. Michael had enough evidence to ask the right question.
He did not yet have the right to answer it for Peter.