Who knows. Maybe Peil was the better option at one point. [ He holds up a finger and waggles it. Hear him out. ] I can't know what my past self was thinking, but from what I can piece together, it was worth changing my face for.

[ There's no guarantee his life had been any better before the experiments. The lab did away with most of his memories, but not all of them, and what vague glimpses remained pointed to one thing: he needed that new identity. Would it be odd to say he trusts himself to have made the best call he could at the time? Sure, maybe Peil had left out crucial details and misled him on what the job entailed, but he doesn't like thinking of himself as a victim in their schemes. That makes him seem helpless when he believes he's always been resourceful. ]

If you didn't step in, I would've given them the slip one way or another, but I wasn't planning on such a dramatic exit.

[ He shoots Accelerator a look. Indeed, in some other universe where he continued to botch his job, he would've quietly leveraged what he knew and gone into hiding, but this isn't that universe. ]

If I had fancy powers, maybe it would've been a different story. Is that how you got away?