Near the end of the test, the potatoes had simply run out. We had to keep the peasants alive, of course, and rationing the food was a painful, maddening experience, right until the end.

I've never faced starvation as a concept before this. Hunger, yes, and maddening hunger very occasionally (which my 'parents' immediately satiated, and now I know why), but never like this. Thirty more minutes and I can butcher, rip, and tear, devour life for my own needs, feast on kidney beans and jerky, toasted bagels and raw, bloody flesh. Thirty. More. Minutes. I can't stand this, but I'm forced to. I know Howard hasn't been intentionally starving me- half an hour ago he ordered an enormous shipment of food to be delivered at precisely midnight- but right now, the island is almost completely divested of food, to the point where it would take more energy for us to find it than we'd get from eating it.

And, with the limit of this test set by time and time alone, I watched something I've watched before: the clock. 'A watched pot never boils' is doubly true for engineereds who can divide time much thinner than normals- I literally waited for fractions of a second, staring at the time on Howard's big screen. 11:31:01.27 or so. Is it time yet? Nope. About 11:31:01.54. Is it time yet? Nope, still not time. 11:31:02. One whole second has passed! Finally! The combination of hunger and waiting was getting to Howard as well, I noticed, but that didn't stop me from continuing to watch the clock, holding myself still. I felt like I was going to start eating myself. C'mon, I'm not that starved, am I? I'm still in one piece.. but of course I am. My regenerative power will kill me before I can actually experience what normals see starvation as- I'd eat myself without having to take a single bite. I tried carefully to slow everything down, to prevent myself from suffering an autoconsumptive death.

I saw Howard, next to me, watching the clock as well. No.. no sense in it. "Bah. Forget it, Howard. Looking only makes it seem slower.", I told him.

"You sound like you've done this before.", he replied.

"I have. Every day to get out of school, I stared at the clock. I've done this so many times, it's not even funny." But it was never like this. "Damnit, I need some food!" I was shaking and tried again to calm myself down as much as possible. Almost 25 more minutes and that's it, this nonsense is over. Even Sarah is suffering from it, I can tell- she's actually breathing hard.

I tried to pretend that time didn't exist, an utterly hopeless thing to do. If time didn't exist, there's no way it could ever be midnight, and no way I could ever start eating. I tried to turn my body and brain off for a while- nothing doing. If I turn off, I'm off to stay. With this much hunger, there was no conceivable way I could approach anything resembling sleep. Or maybe I'll just eat those fucking peasants. They're alive and they're probably nutritious. I'll eat them like screaming pigs. The word 'cannibalism' reached my mind and I dismissed it as a meaningless concept. If it wasn't for Howard's command I'd just go over there and gobble them up like a giant in a fairy tale. 'You'll ruin your appetite!', a TV-mom's voice said in my head. (The agent I thought was my mother never said anything like that..)

For fifteen minutes I sat like that, struggling to keep my metabolism under control, knowing that all I had to do was wait long enough- just a few more minutes, no way I can starve to death in a few more minutes, right? I'll eat, I told my body, I will eat! Just not right now... "Now.. do you know.. what desire is, Howard?", I asked, knowing that he was feeling much the same.

"I think I'm beginning to learn.", he replied, sarcastic and aggravated.

Eventually, time finally got to where we needed it to be. 11:59, and Howard walked outside, and I followed him hungrily. Finally! Midnight! The food reached the ground the moment the clock hit 12, and Howard commanded the Enforcers to unpack the food and eat whatever they needed for their own bodies. Why the hell did he order that? I thought for sure Howard was going to rip open at least one of the packages himself. I followed him walking over to the huts instead- what did he have in mind? Oh yes. I understand now. Yes, this'll be perfect. It looks like I get to eat them after all. As we left the mansion and approached the makeshift village, the light grew dim. It didn't really matter to me; I still had plenty of hearing and smell. And I smelled meat.

"Que la chingala?", one fifteen-year-old said, and I picked him as the first. I knew it'd take energy to attack, but I didn't care. It was time to eat. I simply tore his left arm off- it seemed to take no force at all- and started chowing down, feeling a splendid joy as blood and flesh ran down my throat unhindered, my stomach and my metabolism singing a hymn of praise. Dinner is served. The boy had died instantly from shock, but the other normals were screaming, and I was standing right there in the middle of it, gobbling up a human arm with gusto. The conventional wisdom is wrong- humans don't taste bad, at least not to me, although it would be better if these were cleaner. To a normal it would look like I had gone crazy, but I was perfectly compos mentis throughout. I was doing what I thought was the most logical thing to do, what made the most sense. I heard screaming and it fit into a generally pleasant mood, like an organ player in a fine dining hall.

A woman started screaming in a high-pitched air-raid siren voice, and Howard instantly silenced her by slamming her nose into her brain with an enormous discharge of blood and a loud snap of breaking bone. Well, kids, looks like the elementary-school question has been answered- this technique really does work. You just need a lot of force and accuracy to do it. I dropped the arm, which was reduced to little more than bone, and feasted on the rest of the body, drinking from the leaking arteries leading from its stopped heart. Another older boy, obviously in suicidal desperation, tried to attack me- I sent his wrist backwards to his shoulder in one smooth motion, snapping his elbow, and went back to my meal. An eight-year-old girl was trying not to be noticed, sitting silently in her bunk, completely motionless, probably thinking, praying, hoping that this was just a horrible nightmare. Don't worry, little girl. It'll all be over soon.

"Diablos blancos..", a woman said. Yes, we're white devils indeed. We ignored her and continued to feast, completely uncaring of the growing panic. Even if they were united and armed, these people could never be a match for us. I turned the body over and went for the thighs, chewing and swallowing bite after bite of stringy muscle, feeling its juicy warmth slide down my throat. Our carnivorous teeth aren't any longer or sharper than normals'- it's just the bite strength that's so much different.

I heard Fido's telltale bark. Want some doggie treats? "Go ahead, Fido! Eat, boy, eat!", Howard encouraged him, and he tore out the little girl's throat in a single stroke, splattering blood on everyone in the hut and ending her nightmare in death. She never even screamed. He continued hungrily savaging the body, viciously tearing at whatever flesh he could get, his powerful jaws like a hyena's. Good dog! The other dogs followed Fido's lead and began to chow down on the available meat.

Another woman on a taller bunk started pleading, a completely useless thing to do in the face of hungry engineereds. "Por favor... por favor.." She may as well have been saying 'Por favor, mata me ahora.' Howard ripped her to the floor and kicked her repeatedly in the ribs, snapping them and sending bone fragments into her lungs and heart. The feast continued, with the still living peasants, even the one with the broken elbow, silent and unmoving, praying to their God that we'd fill up and not notice them.

I heard screaming, shouting, and the sound of rubbing sticks- torches were being lit. The hut was dimly lit by an orange glow from the door. A peasant held a torch aloft, trying to comprehend what he was seeing. "Dios mio...", he said before he fainted, and his torch fell on him and began immolating his clothes and his body, which stunk even worse when on fire. In seconds he was awake, screaming, as he burned to death. I would have laughed, but my mouth was full, and the moment it became empty again I took another bite.

And, surprisingly enough, so was my stomach. This was to be expected- normal adult humans can't eat a ten-pound steak without being full, and I have no idea how much meat I just consumed, probably twice that much. I felt my body digest it as fast as it could, the nutrients waking me up inside, my white blood cells destroying whatever diseases they carried, the incredible pressure of "I have to eat right now" dissipating with every breath. I munched a bit more as Howard casually kicked down a wall of the hut (instead of jumping over the flaming body at the door) and walked out like a satisfied, confident predator. Through the wall I could hear the peasants' shouts more clearly: "Diablos!!" "Los jefes han matando Alicia!" They don't understand what's going to happen; they can't. They have no experiences to compare this slaughter with. After a few more bites I was completely filled up and I followed Howard out.

Sarah was outside, covered in blood (even her hair, which was soaked to the point that she looked like she had done some sort of weird dye-job), and surrounded by body parts (she must have been even more fierce than we were, whatever she did in there), fighting three aggressive males (one of whom had an erection, I noticed amusedly) who had somehow gotten the idea into their heads that they would be able to take a single naked, engineered teenage girl with only torches for weapons. I've never seen Sarah fight before, but I knew that this was distinctly their mistake. They rushed her- Sarah moved forward very quickly, wrapped her left arm backwards around one of their necks, snapping it almost immediately, and a fraction of a second later used the other hand to stick her fingers upside-down in the eye sockets of another one with her elbow above his head, then forced upwards on her fingers and downwards on her elbow, the seemingly leverage-less move peeling his skull open, the broken bone scooping out parts of his brain. I had no idea that was remotely possible- it probably wouldn't be without truly insane strength indeed. The third one was just a tad farther away, and he died by two quick blows to the jaw, the first one slamming it backwards several inches, the second sending his teeth upwards inside his brain. Their torches never even came close to touching her.

Most of the other peasants must have been watching that, because when they saw it, they ran for the trees en masse, dropping their torches so that it might be more difficult to find them in the dark. Not very effective against us, not effective at all against anyone with nightvision goggles, and that'll only work until daytime. I watched their normal struggles as I know Howard does- with detached bemusement. It hadn't been raining; the discarded torches quickly lit up the grass and wood structure of the huts, and although they were too far apart to start any real conflagration, several of them burned brightly. One woman dropped her baby on its skull, then picked it up and kept running. Hey, it wasn't going to use that brain anyway.

A black helicopter slowly hovered down to the grass between us and the mansion, and once its metal feet touched the ground, the motor immediately shut off and the blades quickly came to a stop. Sarah and I followed Howard to it, and out stepped a man Howard hates, 'The Bastard', Herbert Gladstone. Seeing us naked and covered in blood startled him, but not for long- considering his position and his experience, this guy's probably seen and done far worse. "Mighty Inheritor," Mighty indeed. "you have successfully completed the requirements of the first test for the abilities of Control and Patience. Now, we shall test you for the abilities of Endurance and Skill." I didn't ask why 'Endurance and Skill' were Illuminated requirements. Maybe they change the tests based on who becomes Dominator, and this is definitely their first time testing an engineered.

"I accept, you stupid bastard.", Howard said, and I could see the grin on his face even from behind.

The Bastard bent over a bit and dropped a single weighted parchment at Howard's feet. "You have twelve hours to prepare yourself before leaving." Hardly a limit at all- after the waiting I just did, twelve hours would feel like an eternity. "The details are here." He stepped back into the powerful helicopter, and it fanned our blood-soaked bodies with the cool air before it vanished into the sky.

It was then that the realization of exactly what I had just done caught up to me. "I can't believe I just did that. The fucking food was right here, and yet we.. you.. just fucking slaughtered them anyway.", I said, the events of the past few minutes flowing back into my mind from a different perspective. I hadn't just slaughtered people. I had torn the arm off a living man (the second person I ever killed, and I knew there'd be many, many more) and eaten it raw, and I had enjoyed every moment of it. This wasn't the result of a command or self-defense- I chose to kill him. If I wanted to, I could have gone for one of the packages and started eating at exactly the same time, leaving Howard and Sarah to go after the peasants- Howard wouldn't have commanded me to follow him. I felt slight twinges of shame and horror, but those were artificial feelings caused by my exposure to normal society.

"They were going to die anyway. Besides, we all know why the fresh meat went first." Howard feels only his inborn emotions, and as such has no remorse. 'You don't ask why a lion kills and eats a gazelle. Why ask why we eat normals?', he'd reply if I asked him why. Howard has the correct approach. It wouldn't even matter if I was freed, because this is my place in this world. I was carefully engineered to kill.

An Enforcer walked up to Howard, and said in its uncaring monotone, "Howard, the peasants may be killed now. Do you wish Enforcer aid in that matter?" 'No, I'm going to do it all myself. Thanks for asking, though.', I imagined humorously. Thanking an Enforcer is pointless, and I don't think Howard's exactly willing to track every one of the fleeing peasants down.

"Yes. Kill them all, as quickly as possible, with a minimum of damage to the island. Then resume normal duties. I'm taking a bath. And so are all three of you.", he said, gesturing to me, Sarah, and Fido. The dog barked in acknowledgement. I felt strangely relieved at being commanded; I wouldn't be deciding to do things like kill people. Howard dropped the piece of weighted paper on the end table to his couch, and we followed him down the elevator to his gigantic pool, and I realized I was quite tired after that kind of meal. Falling asleep while swimming- always a no-no- was unlikely, but a distinct possibility. "Water - fifty-five.", Howard said, obviously thinking the same thing.

But that was way too cold. "Fifty-five?! If you're worried about us sleeping in here, you really don't have to at sixty-fucking-five!", I exclaimed, shivering in advance.

"This is a lot easier for you than it is for me." Oh no, he's going to.. "Jump in.", he commanded us. We obeyed instantly, and I gasped loudly as soon as I hit the water. God damn, it was COLD! Sarah shrieked the moment it hit her flesh. Fido got out as soon as he jumped in, shaking madly and probably wondering just why his master had done that to him. Well, Howard, it worked- we're not sleepy anymore! Howard touched a toe to the water, and for a moment I thought he was going to raise the temperature himself before he got in. To his credit, he didn't- he muttered "the hell with it" and jumped in himself.

"Yaaa!! Water! Seventy! No- Water, eighty!", he shouted the moment his body hit the water, and Sarah and I started giggling. Hey, Howie, now you know. Next time, don't do that to us, all right? I felt a rush of current under me, and the water quickly heated to a much more sane temperature. Ah, much better. It was still funny- even after we have a death orgy of peasant-crushing bloodshed, he still acts like his usual self. "What the fuck's so damn funny?", he yelled at us.

"You.", I explained. It was the exact answer.

"That and everything that happened in the last thirty seconds.", Sarah added. Fido got back in, and dog-paddled around, his reddish, sticky fur becoming white and clean again. We treaded water, keeping our extra-dense bodies afloat, and the currents took the organic slop to the filters, quickly repurifying the water. There was a dispenser of powerful gelatinous soap on the wall here, like there is in the bathrooms, but we didn't need it.

"Thus ends the first test.", said Sarah, a bit happy and a bit anticipant.

"Hey, Howard.. didn't you say that the tests only last five weeks?", I asked.

"Yeah, so?"

"Well, then the next test can't be that bad, can it?", I asked. It couldn't be any kind of test like this, at any rate.

"There are a lot of bad things you can do to someone in a week, Billy." He, of course, has a point. There's also a lot of bad things you can do to people in half a second, as we've so recently proved.

The only way for something like that to happen would be... "Yeah, but like.. they're not going to just flat-out attack you with Enforcers or something, are they?"

"I doubt they'll do that, but they're inventive, Billy. Just remember that."

"Oh, don't I know it." If devious people with big ideas weren't inventive, we wouldn't exist. We swam around in the lukewarm water for a couple of minutes, relaxed. My hair was about as long as Howard's, now, and I felt it brushing against my shoulders in the water, and I realized what it did for Howard's overall effect.. Now only if it crackled with electricity when we were pissed- then we'd really have an effect going.

"Billy, I left the paper up there. Bring it here.", Howard commanded me. At least he didn't use the word 'fetch'. I rode up the elevator to the living room, and grabbed the corner of the paper with my wet forefinger and thumb (the 'don't damage my stuff' command)- but it didn't get wet. Of course. I read it on the way down:

1. You may not communicate with anyone not in the Illuminati.
2. You may not bring any kind of sustenance with you.
3. You may not bring electric devices of any type with you.
4. You may not bring Enforcers or non-implanted agents. ('Oh joy! We get to come too!', I automatically thought, sarcastically. The truth is that I was actually glad to go with him.)
5. Illuminated secrecy must be kept. (They have a very exact definition for that. Don't let anyone find any evidence we were there- if there is evidence, it should logically lead to another conclusion entirely.)
6. You may not bring any form of transportation.
7. You may not bring any weapons except blunt weapons and blades.
8. You may not light fire.
9. You must arrive at Point X, an area two hundred miles away from the starting point, within 168 hours of the beginning of this test.
10. You must start at the designated starting point, and at the designated time.

Below that was a precise crosshair on a map of South America with exact latitude and longitude coordinates. Right in the middle of the jungle. Oh, shit. But it could have been much worse, like somewhere in the Himalayas, or maybe Siberia or Antarctica- or a canoe in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. As the elevator reached ground floor and I walked over to the pool, Howard saw the expression on my face. "Howard- you better take a look at this. I think I jinxed it.", I joked. They, indeed, can do a lot to us in one week.

He did. "YAAAAAAAAAA!! Holy shit!! Sarah, how the fuck are we supposed to do this?" Sarah climbed out, sighing, and looked at the paper.

"Hooooo... very carefully? Well, where's Point X?"

"I guess we'll have to find that out when we get there.", Howard replied.

"Billy," Sarah said, sighing again, "you did jinx it."

"Sarah, is this even remotely possible?"

"Yes... remotely. Two hundred miles in... 168 hours. And not all of that will be daytime. You'll have to average a daytime speed of about two miles an hour, without guns, gathering your own food, crossing a couple of rivers I'm sure, and not being seen. It can, technically, be done. And why are you saying 'we'? It says..." Sarah had misread Rule 4. "Oh dammit. I usually don't miss those either."

"Oh come on, Sarah, they wouldn't leave us behind now would they?", I said with a bit of sarcasm.

"Considering their inclination for making tests hard, I figured they'd make him do it alone.", she replied.

"How many tests did they give you, anyway, Sarah?", Howard asked.

"About thirty big ones and constant little ones, like a total thousand or something. It was a weekly schedule." Really not that many when compared to all the constant testing annoyances of normal-world school. "They changed it a few times though."

"Tell me how the one you most remember went.", Howard commanded, and I saw her mind drifting back, looking for the answer.

"Well.. I was eight years old at the time. I had just a little bit of training and experience with actual fighting, but, well, enough to get by." 'Enough to get by' for an engineered Illuminati assassin is almost certainly 'enough to slaughter trained soldiers' for the rest of the world. "Then they put me alone in a room with one of those one-way mirrors on the wall, then they bring in this kid... he was a few inches taller than me and he was really aggressive. I think he was basically the meanest kid they could find. Anyway, they brought him in the room, and.. I don't know what they told him, but I think it was somewhere along the lines of 'do whatever you want to her.' He started pulling my hair, I told him to stop it," I'm surprised Sarah showed that much restraint. "then he started trying to kick me... then my training kicked in." I winced, imagining it. Funny for me to wince at something like that, after what we just did, but the situation was totally different.

"Ouch! What happened to him?", Howard asked.

"I forget all of it.. but I know it was something like several cracked ribs, a fractured neck, three separate concussions, bruises up and down his body, cuts everywhere.. I know I didn't kill him. But I used leverage, my steel shoes, my fingernails, everything." It must have been horribly painful, but she could have killed him in an instant, especially with her training. Why the hell didn't she?

"Did you have the metal fingernails then?", I asked.

"Yeah, I got those when I was like six. It took two guys to rip me off of him. I didn't knock him unconscious either, you probably would have loved his screaming." Howard started giggling.

"I suppose you passed the test.", I said.

"With flying colors."

"So what were they testing for?"

"The ability to kill. The ways came later." Ah, that's why. She would have beaten him to bits instead of a targeted kill... just like she did to those peasants. I think it's her natural method of killing.

"I thought you did that naturally.", I replied.

"Well, I do, but they needed to check." Something about the way she said that reminded me of the Illuminati's perfectionism with all of its products, and for some reason that made me slightly depressed.

"They always do.", I said, sighing, and watched Fido get out of the pool and shake off faster and harder than any normal dog, flinging water every which way. The traditional wet-dog smell is absent from him; he has his own, and it's much less stinky.

"So we've got twelve hours before we get to go on a safari of pure aggravation and the risk of death or worse. Great.", Sarah said, mildly annoyed.

"Yes.", Howard agreed. "Okay, how to spend them?"

My stomach answered that question. "I'm still fucking hungry.", I replied, amazed at it. Normals, going swimming after a meal like that, would almost certainly get stomach cramps. For us, the effect is negligible, the water pressure not affecting our accelerated digestion one bit. The intestines are going, but the stomach is empty, and the stomach wants more.

"Let's eat.", Howard replied. We went back up the elevator and ate a smorgasbord. It wasn't the traditional course-by-course meal of royalty. It was a disorganized, rapid feast of a wide variety of ordinary food shipped in from a normal supermarket, with whole packages being devoured at a time, with everything that ordinarily would be oven-cooked thrown into the microwave and nuked instead by Sarah, who alternated between bringing out and serving the food, and eating gigantic portions herself. The only table manners we observed were the ones useful for getting food down our throats faster. For the second time today, I couldn't laugh because my mouth was full, but it was funny, even though I've laughed at it four weeks ago. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the true face of the controller of the world! Not only have been you been lied to about the identity of your leader, you've been lied to about his manners, behavior, and basic genetic makeup! Your Rex eats like a hominid tyrannosaurus!

Howard walked away from the dining room table and plopped down on the couch; I followed him.

"Damn, all this food and we munched on the peasants." The thing wasn't that we had killed people, the thing was that this food had tasted much better than the raw humans. Or at least that's what I told myself.

"Billy, it's not like they wouldn't have died anyway. You know that."

I had already thought about this.. but I still had to say something. "Yeah.. but after watching your dog rip out the throat of that eight-year-old while I was chowing down on that other guy.. I dunno man, there's just something about that." I honestly couldn't put my finger on what.

"You were taught for ten years that life is precious, that no one deserves to die, that violence is a disgusting, horrible thing not practiced by advanced civilizations, right?" Sarah cackled at that.

"Basically, except for wars." In which case, hey, it must be done.

"And you now know who taught that to you."

"The Illuminati."

"Of course. It was a lie, Billy. There are six billion human beings on Earth. Almost none of them are anything but generic, replaceable sheep. There's just so many of them, we can take a few and the rest don't care. Except if we want them to. Human life is next to worthless." Which, as I thought before, is the correct approach. An American doesn't care about the fate of Africans. The Middle East doesn't give a damn one way or the other about Mexico's poor. Why should any of us here in the Illuminati, masters or servants, give a damn about any of them?

"So why do you tell everyone that it's not?" The whole world already behaves as if it isn't- what benefit can be gained from lying? Other societies in the past surely lived without such illusions.

"Duh! Because Big Brother has to love them back. People won't love the system unless they think the system loves them, or at least is essentially good according to the moral codes which we put down for them." I thought something was slightly wrong with that control philosophy, but I didn't know enough world-control theory to formulate a serious base for questioning it.

"So you and your Illuminated friends really don't give a fuck.", I said, obviously.

"About most sheeple, hell no. Of course, there are certain sheeple that we use to keep the rest of them in line. People will follow those chosen leaders straight into Hell if they lead the way. That's where we got the term 'sheeple' from. Do you understand?", Howard replied.

"Yeah. Yeah, I get it. They're like ants, right?" They may act like sheep, but the Illuminati doesn't treat them like sheep at all, really. A shepherd would care if members of his flock were butchered indiscriminately. With six billion anonymous, largely interchangeable ants, millions can die and it doesn't matter.

"You got the idea. Let's get some sleep." Very good idea, Howard. I walked upstairs and didn't even bother pulling the covers over my naked body before entering dreamland.

And what ugly dreams they were. Instead of eating humans, I was being commanded to eat giant mounds of shit, and I obediently gobbled the shit up like it was actual food, feeling its brown stickiness go down my throat and smelling its awful stink. I woke up- screaming, naturally- and realized immediately why the dream contained what it did. I walked into the bathroom, sat down, and a gigantic black snake of bacteria and stench ripped its way out of my anus. No more Mexican food for me, I said to myself, chuckling. Then I went back to bed and pulled the covers up this time and easily fell back asleep.