I was woken up from pleasant sleep by the sound of an engine.. the propeller, of the boat. But it's still very dark outside. This is Sarah, though, and she's obviously got someplace in mind. Even though my bladder was starting to annoy me, I stayed down and out of sight.

"Sarah.. we killed everyone on that boat. In almost every major accident, at least someone survives. Won't that raise questions of its own?", Billy asked.

"That's the wrong direction of thinking, because weird stuff happens, and most of it without us. The right one is to ask yourself this: what will the normals see? You two weren't there when I made the fuse and set up all the flammables. Fortunately for us, they had an almost completely full tank and a lot of other stuff to burn as well, including alcohol. People check fire patterns these days so I didn't pour gasoline all over everything. You two probably didn't notice, but I moved your more smashy kills closer to the main blast. What the normals will see is a missing lifeboat, a few people dead from falling objects and blunt trauma, some missing people- and there's always missing people- and a lot of charred, broken skeletons." My servants are turning people into charred, broken skeletons, and I'm not even the Dominator yet. "I also put a few packs of cigarettes in the right place- someone was just smoking way too close to the engine when the gas cap was off. Even if someone does suspect foul play, what are they going to come up with? You two probably didn't see him, either, but one of those guys was a major coke dealer."

"But you didn't know that before you went in there." Billy pointed out.

"No, I didn't. Every operation is a calculated risk. We needed a boat, and stealing one without nuking the main boat wouldn't have worked at all." It would have been impossible to conceal that, with this somewhat loud engine anyway. Sarah took her hands off the wheel, leaned over very close to me, and said in a faint whisper, "Besides, if anyone does determine things to make it a secrecy breach of any level, you'll be the Dominator by then, so don't fucking worry about it." I was utterly, totally relieved to hear that- and she was right. What are normals going to figure out in less than a week, assuming they ever do? "And get back to sleep." We did.

"All right, guys, this is where we stop.", Sarah's voice awoke us. My bladder was ready to burst.

"Is there no one around?", I asked.

"It's clear." I stood up and started to take a piss, and Billy did the same, releasing a lot of pressure and turning the water yellow. "Just so you two know," Sarah said jocularly, "there's a fish that can swim up your stream of piss and lodge itself in your dick. It's called the candiru. Of course, since you two regenerate, it's just a one-swipe fix." Sounds painful, but unlikely, and if she's being sarcastic or completely joking, it's not showing up..

"You.. can't delude me, Sarah.", I reminded her.

"I'm not. It actually happens." Both Billy and I started watching our piss. "In more pleasant news, we're across the Amazon and we're making wonderful time." Yay and double yay. "That's no reason to slow down, though." We got out of the boat, ready to go- Sarah picked up the sleeping bag, and then started to drag the boat onto land. Why...? "Guys, we're not downstream of where the yacht was. We have to destroy this thing." The hour it took us to chop the boat into pieces and bury them individually was worth the fact that Sarah had got us closer with it while I was able to sleep.

Of course, that also meant that Sarah herself didn't get much sleep, and it showed, despite her fervent efforts to ignore it. It's all right, Sarah- hold out until the end of this and I'll give you as much sleep as you could ever possibly want. I don't think you'll be killing people for me that much. Similarly, Billy's doing a good job repressing screams, and he'll probably scream as much as his subconscious tells him to when he's back home.

Nothing interesting happened for the rest of the second test until we got to point X, nothing at all. We walked around normal bases, plodding through pretty much the same shit the whole time, eating the same natural foods, going at about the same pace, although I think it was getting to us and we were slowing down slightly. Sarah wasn't worried- she said that we'd get there on time..

..and, eventually, we did.

From a distance, the location of Point X looked like a massive Incan temple constructed more than a thousand years ago, with overgrown stone, strange animal symbols, the works. I severely doubted it. It would be no problem for the Levels to use something like this for the final part of the test, particularly if it was already a base to begin with.

"About.. nine hours to spare.", Sarah said. "I'm surprised. In a way, I was expecting a few minutes."

"But it looks like we're going to need those hours. As I should have expected, there's no door.", I said. It's just like them to do something like this. The stairs ended onto what was effectively a block face, covered in stones bearing pictograms. A puzzle, probably. Probably considerably worse than any of the ones in the first test. Something more to figure out, just in case I'm not already exhausted and running out of time. "And I had to leave all my entrance-makers at home." For everything the Micro can't fix, the atomic shotgun can.

Sarah thought for a minute, and looked up the face of the temple and back down, then back up again. It would also be just like them to put a fake puzzle here and put the target circle on the very top. "I know what you're thinking, Sarah.", I said.

So did Billy. "He never gave us a height measurement."

"Well, it's easy to climb, so I doubt it's up there..", she said, shrugging.

"Climb it and check anyway.", I commanded her. "Billy, do you see anything that I don't?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be standing here puzzling over how to get in. You know, it would be just like these guys to put all these symbols and stuff here, but put the actual entrance in some obscure place on one of the sides." Ugh. He's potentially right, but I don't think they'd do that without any clues here; I looked at the symbols and immediately discovered what they represented.

"Or put some weird push-the-blocks puzzle to open up the entrance, only the blocks are everywhere around the temple and need to be hit in a certain order. These symbols are a clue. That one's me." It was obvious. "And I think that's you." The same picture with shorter hair. Are these symbols pictures of some ritual to perform to get in?

"And I think they're mocking us.", Billy said. Judging from the corners of the wall, if there's any ritual to be performed, it's a homoerotic one. Okay.. what the hell is this thing trying to say, really? Even they wouldn't drag me this far just to say "Go fuck yourself and your servant." at the end.

"Yes. They are most definitely mocking us. I really doubt that's what we have to do to get in. But these aren't push-blocks, so if we look at them a certain way, they almost certainly tell us how to get in."

"This time, I think it's you who's forgotten your Illumination, Howard. This isn't Indiana Jones. This might be just one large block, but who the hell says it doesn't have sensors?" He was, as usual, right. Sarah was climbing down, shaking her head- nope, no circle up there.

"Shit. You're right. I have definitely been getting way too far into this. Okay. This one.. this.. no. No. THIS one symbolizes the Dominator." The pyramid containing the eye. "It's the floating top of the larger pyramid."

"Then this is my picture, and.. this symbolizes me.", Sarah said, pushing on two other blocks- a female symbol (the only one on the wall, I noticed) and a brick falling from the top of a flat-topped pyramid- the pyramid that Howard's symbol floats above. "They're mocking me, too. I was supposed to be a first."

"I don't think I have a symbol.", Billy said. There were lots of assorted symbols to choose from- some Illuminated, some with either no meaning or a meaning I don't know. "I'm not really supposed to be here, I guess." It's all right, Billy- according to six billion normals, I'm not supposed to exist either. "Wait." He pushed on a pyramid with no eye, as well as the short-haired picture.

"Fuck.", I said. "That's obviously not it." Great. My last several hours before the squads come and I'm spending them touching symbols on a wall in Nowhere, Brazil. Yay for the Inheritor of the Illuminati.

"Wait. I'm being a dumbass. How long is my hair now?", he asked rhetorically, reaching around Sarah to touch my face symbol.

"How's it going to know there's two of us?"

"Touch the others, but push this one real hard. Maybe it takes both of us." Apparently it did- the long-haired symbol moved inwards and the wall simply fell over. There was a curved, probably spiraling passage at a right angle to our left; all three of us looked on as it lit up with torches.

"Well, it's a good thing we didn't bother looking around the rest of the pyramid. Okay, Sarah, how many traps?" I didn't need to ask, but I figured I would just to make it clear.

"LOTS.", Sarah said. "And just look at how that hall curves around. Come on guys, you know what that means."

Actually, I wasn't sure what it meant.. "Rolling rock fun.", said Billy. Groan... yeah, that's exactly what I need right now after a tiring day of walking, to have to dodge traps while running from a several-ton ball of death, while Levels watch my struggle to survive as a spectator sport. Fuck you, guys! Wait until I have the fucking power, I replace you assclowns with engineereds, and I laugh while watching your normal backs get broken by the sheer kinetic energy of a thousand kilograms of rolling stone!

"Well, it's not impossible and we don't have anywhere else to go. Fuck it, I'll take point.", I said. I'll take point because the traps are probably dodgeable and the rock isn't. Of course if I actually do lose either of my servants to this kind of insanity, there's going to be hell to pay where the only currency is pain.

"Wait a minute, Howard. Depending on how big that rock is, how fast it moves..", Billy said, making pushing motions. Of course.

"Stick together until it triggers, then. And once it does, I'm either going to run or push that thing, and of those two you're going to do what I do. Let's try this."

We walked not five feet down the hall when the stone wall directly behind us (perpendicular to the crashed pictogram wall) crashed down to reveal a rolling rock. It wasn't as big as I figured- but it was probably more than a thousand kilos and it must have been going about 35 kilometers an hour.

I screamed and ran- at it. The slaps of my servants' hands hit the rock shortly after mine, and we had to force the rock both against its movement and against its downward rotation. It hurt like hell, my muscles were burning.. we moved back, it was simply too large.. don't want to back into any traps.. then eventually our force proved the greater and we started moving forward. From there it was child's play to roll the rock out the entrance we had made with the wall's collapse. Billy flipped it two middle fingers as it bounded down the stairs we had come up, and Sarah was simply laughing hard. If I thought Billy could be affected by traditional Pavlovian reinforcement, I'd find a way to reward him for that one.

"Fucking excellent, Billy. That probably pissed them off a good deal and made this a whole lot easier.", I said.

"Billy, I think you just ruined a lot of other people's fun.", Sarah said. "That was fucking hilarious. Howard, still taking point?"

"Of course." I swaggered down the hall. A few arrow-traps sprung; I caught every one and tossed the thin metal shafts aside. I stepped, felt movement, and moved my foot out of the way of a spike trap. For the hell of it I triggered it again only to kick it, bending it out of shape so the spike couldn't go back in. I knew they had cameras so they could watch my desperation; instead they watched my triumph. Eat it, assholes; I'm laughing at you and I'm not even the Dominator yet.