Sarah gently touched my shoulder to wake me up. 'Billy didn't scream. Whew.', was my very first conscious thought of the morning. My second one was the intense discomfort I felt upon waking up way too early. I didn't want to get up. I wanted to lay here. Despite the uneven ground beneath the bag, the general humidity, and the heat of laying next to two people (well, one now), here was an excellent place to be. Unfortunately, it wasn't a reasonable option. "Ow... Six more nights of that? This is going to suck...", I muttered, getting out of the bag slowly and listening for any humans that might have heard us. Nope. Nothing. Not even very many animals. Some birds called in the distance, and a snake hissed nearby, but other than that, nothing was active.

"Well, we survive another day.", Billy muttered, just as tired as I was. "It could be worse.. How far did we go?"

"I'd say.. well, we were going all day. Thirty miles would be my guess.", Sarah said. "At least we better hope it was that much." She looked at her compass, thinking, and we packed up and continued on.

I just wanted to call it off, really. I wanted to say, 'Okay guys, we give up, game's over, I'm not playing anymore.' But the First Level wasn't fooling around, and this was no game. Even so, I'm the Master here- I can always say 'Okay guys, break time.' (even though we've just started) or 'I think we need more sleep.. wake us up in a half hour, Sarah.' This is what makes things worse on me than Billy and Sarah. They have to continue. I have to, in a sense, as well, although it isn't real control. It's control by force of threat, influencing my decisions in a way I don't want them influenced.

And I royally hate that being done to me.

Making things worse was the pain and boredom. To a normal, this would be 'exercise', an activity that increases the body's future ability to do work by enlarging muscles and expanding arteries. To engineereds, it's 'pointless nonsense', because we simply regenerate. And that was happening now, with my body struggling to repair the damage slowly being done to it. Not really that important, and decidedly non-fatal even over a long period of time, but a pain nonetheless. And I probably really shouldn't be bored. In my years of being the Inheritor, I've never had an experience quite like this, and I'm still with my best friends, after all.

The ground was soft, muddy, and in a state of perpetual decay. There was barely enough light to see by, and we slogged through the mud almost blindly, with Sarah constantly checking her compass, using the faint light of what dawn sun could be seen through the seemingly infinite mass of trees. Splurt, squish, splat.. the mud tried to stick to our feet without providing traction to walk on, and if it wasn't for these suits we'd be wasting even more energy on it. The constant, tired walk was becoming a nuisance to my ears, with the squishing of mud, only broken up by a patch of higher ground or a fallen tree to climb over. As the sun slowly, almost invisibly rose, the obstacles became easier to see, but the sheer repetitiveness became worse and worse.

There were puddles everywhere, and we didn't avoid them. Why waste energy? We simply walked over rocks and tree roots, following Sarah's compass. There wasn't anything else. There were lots of animals audible, yes, and plenty of multicolored beauty, but this wasn't my island where I could appreciate it at leisure.

It never... fucking... stopped. Hours and hours of walking through wet mud, pure Enforcer-grade drudgery at its worst. We kept a fairly brisk pace- we had to. I ignored the growing pain in my legs and chest, dreaming of the day when this will all become a faint memory and the normals involved in this excuse for a test will be dead, either because of old age or because of me just getting sick of their shit. The worst part, the thing that kept me from falling into total boredom-induced monotony as Billy has, was my anger and frustration. How dare they do this? If I survive, I can kill them! One at a time, or maybe all at once. A single swipe with the Micro, with them all sitting in a row, would rip them all to pieces almost simultaneously.

"..this SUCKS!!!", Billy shouted suddenly, and if it wasn't for secrecy he'd had screamed it at the top of his lungs.

"No shit, Billy. This sucks big. Too big. I'm going to rape the guy who thought this one up.", I said, clenching my fist to reveal the blades. Open ass, insert sharp objects, remove soul from body. "Let's rest for a few minutes...", I said, exhausted, and sat down on the muddy earth, then leaned back slowly on my elbows and finally my back. It was nice.

"Howard.. I get the feeling that if we stay stopped for too long... we won't be able to get up. You wanna sleep as much as I do..", Billy said. He'd also sat down, but didn't lay back, because he knew we'd have to get up soon. He's right. Procrastination is a gravity well. It's easy to get sucked in. I don't have to get up for a few more minutes, what's that going to affect? Same with the next few minutes.. and the next. Sarah would have an idea of when to say when, but that would cut things even closer to the last minute..

"Yeah.. I hate this shit. Secrecy my ass. There probably isn't a Homo Sapiens within a ten mile radius, except for the spies. Hey spies, and hey whoever's watching through their eyes, fuck you. Hard. You've got mental deficiencies thinking this shit up.", I said, annoyed. "Fucking.. let's go.", I muttered, got up, and Sarah continued to lead us with her compass.

Another half hour or so and I started to feel hungry. "Sarah, we need food.", I told her.

"Let's see...", she said, looking at all the trees surrounding us. "Leaves look about right.." Could it really be that easy? Shit, my island has a similar food density, if that's the case. We followed her to a tree with wide leaves.. and bananas! She found a good position and easily used her grappling hook to snag them and yank them off the branch, catching them as they fell. They were yellowish-brown but were probably good to eat anyway. She snapped two from the bunch and handed one to each of us. I ripped the top off mine and dug in.

I got a mouthful of bad taste and hard objects for my trouble. I spat them out immediately, utterly disgusted. "Gah!", I exclaimed, spitting some more, trying to get the awful taste out of my mouth. "Fuck that shit!"

"What's wrong with it?", Billy asked.

"Look for yourself!", I shouted, showing him and Sarah the inside. Unlike bred or engineered bananas, these wild ones are full of seeds. I suppose they're technically edible, but.. ugh! "It tastes like shit, too.", I told them. Billy dropped his, and Sarah made an expression that she didn't have a clue they'd be like that. Well.. now we know, the hard way, and she didn't research for taste, just poison. I tossed the banana I had to the ground and stomped on it, annoyed, and Sarah tossed the bunch. "Sarah, there's more than this out here, isn't there?", I asked. If there's not, it's time for hunting.

"Definitely. I saw some Brazil nuts ten minutes ago, probably should have said something. Let's keep going." In about five minutes, she spotted something- a large tree with giant coconuts, many of which had already fallen to the ground. Coconuts out here, and from a tree like that? I've never heard of that before. Some giant, tailless rat had seen us, and skittered into the bushes at our approach. If these aren't good, that animal's on the menu.

Sarah examined one of the fallen coconuts, pulled her machete, and slashed the top off- it's not a coconut at all! Instead of the white milk and nutmeat of what I was expecting, it was full of Brazil nuts. Cracking them open individually was easy with our blades and strength, and we feasted. I was worried about them tasting bad like the bananas did, but they were delicious. We ate a total of four of the large mega-seeds before we were full.

Sarah then took the shells and attacked them, smashing them to pieces with her feet, hands, and the tree trunk, stomping on them, until they were completely destroyed. What the heck? Did she have some aggressive energy to work out? "The cuts were too clean.", she explained, as she tossed their shards randomly around the tree. Oh, yes. Secrecy. Normal hikers, which is what our trail pretended to be from, would never be able to slice those open in one stroke.

I realized I was thirsty, but Billy asked it first: "Sarah, what water should we drink?" These puddles don't look very good.

"Water that hasn't had time to stagnate." Moving water, in other words. It was easy to find a clear one, spurting off a rock like a perpetual water fountain.

The trudge went on. There's nothing mystical, adventurous, or even entertaining about walking over long distances. Although the scenery is beautiful, it's just a lot of land- land that might have someone with binoculars on it, someone that we couldn't spot, possibly an innocent bird-watcher finding things a bit more rare than he expected. The suits are designed for camouflage, of course, but our faces are visible through the clear plastic. In about three hours we noticed a village, seeing them long before they could see us, and simply walked well around it.

Fifteen minutes after that, our hunger started to kick in, and Billy and I solved it by leaping onto a sloth from two trees at once. Its claws were no match for our strength, and we tore it from the tree, breaking its forelimbs on our legs. Sarah tore its back legs apart with her fingernails, and it screamed its death throes as we ripped off the fur and chowed down on the raw, stringy meat and organs. It was unique, if nothing else. I've had lots of different animals' flesh on my plate before, but never a sloth.

Half an hour after that, a river was in our path, with no logs to walk across this time. About nine meters across, it was dirty to the point of blackness. We reached a simultaneous consensus: "Shit."

"How deep?", Billy and I asked at the same time. Sarah looked down into the muddy blackness and shook her head. One meter, six meters, who's to know?

"Well.. these are long enough, we can grapple and swim it.. but that's going to be a pain.", Sarah said with a sigh. Grapple-swim.. ah, yes, hook onto something on the other side, and let the water push us around in an arc.. but trying to get up those muddy embankments, about two-thirds of a meter high, will be difficult and annoying. It was easy to visualize us slipping down multiple times.

"Shit. We can eat predators and we're having problems with a fucking river.", Billy said, sighing as well.

"Predatory animals don't have that many watts' worth of push.", I reminded him. "Oh, we could hang on, all right.. but that's going to be a pain. Isn't there an easier way?"

"One word for you, Howard.", Billy said.

"What?"

"Tarzan." I looked up and saw the thickness of the branches and their distance from each other.

"Good choice.", I said, as we climbed across the branches, the thinner ones breaking as we moved. There weren't any vines to swing on, though, and even if there were, I would never have dared to do it with my weight.

Survival was the easy part; we found edible animals and plants readily and without trouble, although the food here caused our bowels to expel their contents more messily than usual.. and there's no sprays or anything to wipe with here, either. The hard part was the continuing. There was some tangled underbrush in a few places and we simply sliced through it. The ground was muddy, and I felt the energy loss at every step. And then it had to happen- we reached another river, a real river, one without any friendly trees to climb over. We looked at each other- now what?

"Grapple-swim this one, find a way to cross a bigger one when we get to it.", Sarah said, and we did. She used her grappling hook to grab a tree, pulled on it to make sure it was secure, and we jumped into the water holding onto it, letting it push us as we simply held on. We climbed up the embankment, mud getting all over the suits- fortunately the dirt can't make it through.

"Sarah, how're we doing?", I asked.

Sarah retrieved the grappling hook from the tree and re-coiled the rope. "If we keep doing what we're doing, we'll be there on time. But.." I don't like hearing 'But' from Sarah. Sarah's butt is nice, but 'But' from Sarah is a bad thing.

"But what?"

"You remember about the ecology here. Rainforest proper is easy to walk through. As we get closer, we're going to have more and more jungle to deal with, we're going to be wade-swimming quite a bit, some of the forest is flooded and the water levels are high... what we need to do is commandeer a boat. We can go straight from here to near our destination very fast if we use one.", she said, reading her map. "We can't keep walking.. not for very long, anyway."

"Sarah.. dammit.. I thought that wouldn't be so much of a problem.", I said.

"Heh, you wish. This place doesn't have as many tourists as I thought. We need to steal one from some village or something.. a jet-boat, if we can get it. Canoes are too slow, propellers can get stuck on shit.", she replied.

"A jet boat. A fucking jet boat. Out here?", I asked.

"Not impossible. Missionaries are out here..", she replied. Missionaries? Out of how much land? Out of how many people?!

"So instead of avoiding civilization, we need to find it, without it finding us.", Billy said. "Nothing like challenge." Challenge? Fuck this, I wouldn't play games with this kind of 'challenge', why the fuck do they have me doing this in real life?

"This is more than challenge.", I told them, shaking my head. "This is luck." The worst kind of 'challenge' there is.

"You think I don't know that? But there is no other solution.", Sarah said. I hate it when there's no other solutions, too. "We can't swim it and it might take days upon days for us to smuggle ourselves. I hate not being able to plan as much as you do, but this defies planning.. this is just one of those take-it-as-you-can deals. Whatever you do, don't get depressed again."

"Yeah.. that's certain failure.", I said in Latin. "We just keep going for now. Next village we find, we look for a boat." And we continued through the same shit. Which is what it felt like, that we were walking not through muddy, leafy forest floor, but shit, as if we were in someone's idea of eternal torment, but only enough to agonize our legs. The only refreshing action was when we used a long, stiff branch to pole-vault across a river. A bit after that, Sarah found a wounded bird with a broken wing- she did which came naturally, namely taking a big bite out of it. She then threw the corpse in the river, where it was swiftly set upon by a school of piranhas. She then, to our surprise, pulled out the splashing mass and we ate the piranhas one by one, being careful not to get cut by their razor-sharp jaws.

Unfortunately, there was no village, and no boat. Can I swim more than a kilometer wearing this suit and with this pack on my back? Probably, but this is a hell of a way to find out. Realizing the lack of any civilization any time soon, and seeing the forest grow wetter and wetter, Billy groaned audibly.

"Relax. Maybe you didn't take a careful enough look at the map, but I did. This is going to end soon.", Sarah said, and I sighed with relief. "You didn't know either?" We're going exactly as we looked at the pictures, no detours? But this area shouldn't be this wet..

"No, I figured you were taking us around something, or upstream of something before we hit a river."

She shook her head. "I am taking you strictly as the crow flies. I don't know how fast the current will be and I don't know when or if we'll have a boat or of what type. You thought this was solid ground looking at it from the air, didn't you." Billy and I sighed simultaneously. Gah. Same kind of trees, but not same kind of ground. "Like I said, relax. There's a hill a few miles from here and swimming through the trees shouldn't be that hard." 'Swimming through the trees' is not a phrase I'd ever expected to hear from Sarah.

Tree-swimming was an experience all its own. We went from tree to tree, walking on roots when possible, moving through the variable-depth water when it wasn't. Sometimes we could wade somewhat, walk on the bottom with our heads above water or most of our bodies, other times it was swimming all the way. Once in a while we'd do long jumps to keep out of the water and onto the tree roots, which were like miniature islands in a game where the idea was to swim as little as possible. If it wasn't for the Damoclean sword of imprisonment hanging over my head, I might actually have had fun with it.

Sarah looked startled at one point, then reached down with her speed and pulled out a large fish. Strangely enough, this fish's chest moved in and out, as if it was breathing the air. Wait.. it was! Must be a lungfish. I haven't had one of those on my plate, either.

"Arapaima gigas.", Sarah informed us. "Hangs out in warm water, breathes air, rather rare find." And it was, indeed, gigas. It must have been as large as Sarah herself, as it violently struggled to get out of her powerful grip. Sarah wedged a part of the fish under her face shield, flipping it open, and taking a large bite. "It's a local delicacy when it's cooked right, but it's still good raw.", she said, walking over to some roots and sitting on them, holding the fish in her lap as it continued to try desperately to flop away. Unfortunately for it, it was beset by three hungry engineereds (just an hour after we ate the piranhas, too) and it didn't last very long at all. When we were as full as we could possibly be, we threw it back into the water. After a meal like that, I wanted nothing more than to rest, laying contentedly on the couch, maybe with Sarah massaging my painful legs and Billy brushing out my sweat-soaked hair, a slight, blissful smile on my face as I faded gradually to sleep.

Nope. We're still in shitsville. "Billy, Sarah, you know the old adage about not swimming right after you eat?", I asked them. Billy nodded.

"The one we broke after we ate those peasants?", Sarah asked.

"Yes, we're disfollowing it again." And we continued. It got rainy again, swiftly turning into a downpour. I knew we weren't going at three kilometers an hour, maybe more like two. There's no way in hell I can keep a steady pace of any real speed in this, no one can. Sarah was right- there was indeed a hill, and actually being able to walk instead of wade was a welcome change. Unfortunately, it didn't last nearly as long as I'd hoped, sloping downwards into the same kind of crap we just left.

"This is bullshit.", I declared.

"Yes, it is. I wonder if-", Billy started.

"Be quiet.", Sarah interrupted, turning around. Um, Sarah, don't piss me off now.. but she wasn't trying to, she was listening for something. Yes, I hear it, a steady low rumbling of an engine.. and, unless that's a very unique kind of aircraft, the only thing that sounds like that is a boat! "This way, quickly." We followed her in a direction at a right angle to the one in which we've been going, moving much faster than we were before. "And above all, just stay the hell out of sight." You don't need to say that, Sarah.. but out here, in this shit, I won't get mad for that.

We reached the edge of the trees and met a river, and Sarah looked left at the boat making the noise.. a two-story luxury yacht. What an aggravating concept. Normals, who almost certainly aren't worth it, are enjoying luxury out here, while I, the fucking Inheritor, am forced to undergo a test in the middle of it. Sarah thought out loud, letting me know at least some of what was going on in her head. "Hmm.. all right. No, we can't.. ah, it has those. All right, let's do it this way. You two go about.. eighty meters down that way. Stay out of sight, and climb on the same way I do when it finally gets there. We're going to kill everyone on that boat, but when you start killing, do it bloodlessly." She's actually telling me what to do.. normally I would never be this irritated, but after all the crap I've had to deal with today.. okay, fuck that. There's only one question I have to ask.

"Your plan is the best way to ensure my success?", I asked her. Right now, that's all I care about.

"The best that I can see.", she replied. Then that settled it, right there. She wouldn't be the best assassin in the world if she didn't know what she was talking about.

"All right, the seven-meter command is gone.", I told them. "C'mon, Billy. We're going to follow her plan." We moved away from Sarah and the boat, eighty meters or so from her, waiting until the yacht got to our general direction. She climbed aboard, snagging the ladder as it passed by, and skittering up the ladder like a squirrel.. going all the way to the top, why would she.. ah, yes, the radio antenna on top of it had to go before anything else could happen. And then the ladder came to us and it was our turn to start destroying things.

Killing sheeple is refreshing, invigorating, and fun. Even though we used nothing but our bare hands and did it bloodlessly, it was still unbelievably easy. We broke the necks of four pool players like nothing, then went out to the deck and heard two fat guys talking about manipulating the tort system (what country, I didn't catch) for money. Guess what, guys, your money can't save you from my Illuminated power. I crushed one's skull and Billy sent his hand into the rib cage of the other one, rupturing his heart but not his skin. We went around that yacht like the SWAT team from Hell, kicking in locked doors and killing people inside. There were some crew members, their look of surprise on seeing such efficient killers the last emotion they'd ever have. Consider it an early retirement. One guy actually had a rifle- what would he hunt out here, anyway?- but we didn't let him live long enough to try to use it. I killed a young girl by twisting her head backwards. It only took us a few minutes to kill all the sheeple on board, but we spent a few more minutes making sure we didn't leave anyone alive. Nope.. nope, nobody's hiding here. The only people still breathing on this ship are me, Billy, and Sarah.

"Okay, plain English, here's what we have to do.", Sarah said. "We have to make most of them look like they died naturally, which should be doable, because most of them are going to go near the fire," Fire? I can't.. ah, same old trick, I can't light the fire but they can. "but put a few of them under something heavy. Some you'll have to toss overboard, and for those, cut them open first, don't get any blood on the boat, but pierce the organs. Otherwise they'll bloat up and float instead of sink." Humans are like that. "Hopefully they'll have a lot of fuel and we'll be able to blow this boat to bits, but if not, the rest of it has to look natural." Wait... don't we need this boat for transportation? Like.. now?

"What, we're going to burn it now?", I asked, not understanding, as Billy started moving bodies around.

Sarah stopped, turned around, and explained it. "Of course we are. C'mon guys- the boat has to go down at about the same spot it went when the GPS signal died. We're going to nuke it right here, but we're taking one of those lifeboats." Ah, yes, those small ones outside the yacht. Both Billy and I smiled and nodded. Much better from a secrecy standpoint than this huge thing. "By the way, when you're done faking the deaths, each of you bring a body on the lifeboat- for secrecy we might need them." I didn't stop her again by questioning exactly why. The body-moving was tiresome, but mercifully short- Sarah had already taken many away to be burned, and the others were easy to place. Nope, the hard hands of an engineered didn't kill that guy, the bed did. Hey, it's rational, especially when the boat blew up when somehow the gasoline ignited. Those guys? Oh, they were tossed overboard by the blast, but all you'll find is a fish-chewed skeleton, because they sunk when they fell in. For the bodies to take in the lifeboat, I grabbed the girl I'd broken the neck of, and Billy dragged the 200-pound lardass he'd imploded the chest of. We went back to where we met before, hearing Sarah bump a few things around down there, then running out of the engine room like there was a bomb down there. Oh wait, there was. "Let's get the fuck out of here!" No problems with that- we jumped into the lifeboat, Sarah pulled the cord to start the outboard motor, and we immediately burst out of there at full speed. "Fortunately for us the sides of the boat are pretty high. Just stay down." So as not to be seen. She then did something strange- she flipped up her face shield and forced her whole head through it. Ah, so if anyone sees her, they'll think 'girl' and not 'odd-looking camouflaged suit-wearer'. She piloted the boat, but I was determined to have her plan followed through properly, and so did not poke my head up to look outside the boat, even after the loud BOOM came from the yacht. All right, Sarah, it's embarrassing to say so I won't, but you completely outwitted us there. I would never have thought to do any of that, and I know Billy wouldn't have either. And with this plan, we get to lay down, even if it's near sheeple corpses.. and laying down we can... zzz.

"All right.. we're going to hide ourselves.. here.", I heard as my next conscious sensation. She carefully put the boat under a tree's roots, which looked like large fingers grabbing the boat, ready to squeeze it- as they did, holding it in place. No time to get scared by stupid shit now. She turned off the engine and put her head back through the face-shield, back to the way it was meant to be worn. She then got out of the boat and started breaking branches, setting them carefully over the engine, apparently trying to hide it from view from above. "The bag will protect us against infrared detection, but not this thing.", she explained. Yes, they will have infrared out there, looking for survivors that don't exist. But since we're not ditching it..

"You intend to get more use out of it, then.", I said.

"Bet your albino ass I do.", Sarah replied. "By the way, you can slice and toss the bodies now- take some bites of them now if you want." Crunch, crunch, crunch. Yes, it's been sitting out a few hours, but the meat wasn't that bad. Now I see why Billy brought the fat guy. When we were full we tore them open and tossed them overboard. "And you two are going to like this one- it's time to sleep. We can't afford to move now." Yes, that sounds like a very good idea indeed. After taking a few drinks of river water, we did just that, enjoying the slow, rocking motions of the boat.

We heard the splish-splashing of piranhas chewing on meat before we fell asleep. The piranhas have the same attitude I do...