We rushed outside, and there was more shooting- from both the forest to the left and the field to the right. And the Enforcers were getting gunned down by it- I saw one being shot apart. "I don't know who the fuck's commanding you, but you will not harm The Dominator!!", someone called, as the body flew past the window due to the kinetic energy of all the bullets being pumped into it. What the hell? Who.. oh, yes. Them. I figured they'd turn against me along with the Enforcers. The normal operatives (or are they, now? I'll have to check if I survive this..) spread out in a defensive position after we stepped out of the mutilated metal shell that had been home.

"Couldn't you guys get here just a little bit QUICKER?!", I shouted at them.

"We didn't know what the hell was going on. We thought it was just you until we saw the missile.. are you hurt? There's blood on your foreheads..", the leader said, struggling to remain assertive in the crisis. He's not used to actually talking to me, after all. Hurt? No. Rather the opposite... in fact, that might explain the sheer feeling of insane power I've been having. Psychosomatic? Or did that implant removal really do something that no one could anticipate? I'll find out..

"I'm fine. I'll tell you later. Right now, this place is a fucking hot zone. We have to leave here NOW.", I said.

"Yeah.", the leader agreed, as Billy noticed another incoming missile and blasted it out of the sky, the missile's explosion being louder than the atomic shotgun. "Take the jet!" And fly the hell out of here many times faster than sound.

"What about you?", Billy asked.

He got the answer I was expecting. "We are ubiquitous. We are here when you leave; we will be here when you return." Billy recoiled slightly. Even if the odds are hopeless, that is the only attitude they as operatives can have. They are the caretakers. I'm going to make sure that all future Enforcers here (if I can ever come back..) are cleared through them, instead of whatever the hell's been going on.

"Guys- if that jet's not trapped, I am ashamed to be considered an Illuminati assassin.", Sarah said. "There is just no way it can't be."

We don't have much choice.", the Anarch said, as he stepped back inside the wrecked shell and pressed the button for the jet. (Hey- he found out about that? Lots of places he could have, though..) We all knew to stay away from him as he went towards the jet.

A sss-chunk- the most ominous sound I've ever heard in my life (aside from us)- came from somewhere inside the plane.

"Run.", I said in a far too soft voice.

"RUN!!!", Billy screamed, as we all retreated to an even safer distance, throwing ourselves on the ground as the plane exploded. Damn it!! At least we're all okay.. but the sub's almost certainly trapped in the same way. How the hell are we going to get out of here? Damn it more!! This place is supposed to be fucking secure!!

Paul answered it for me. "The boat. We've gotta take the fucking boat!!" They could have installed some kind of trap... but we have no choice but to take the risk.

"Yeah- let's move!" A boat full of Enforcers came into our line of vision. Billy and I reacted simultaneously and annihilated everything living on it, the bodies loudly splashing, the ocean beneath turning red with the carnage, the boat continuing as a ghost ship. Who's next?

We got into the boat silently, the Anarch turning it on to full speed towards the coastline of America. It would really, really suck if we ran out of fuel right now.. forget it. There's a million things that could happen, I reminded myself. Stay focused, dammit.. not even the rage of the Dominator can stand against the overwhelming force they're going to bring this way.

And they did. A good deal of rapid-reaction forces at once, about seventy hominids in Illuminati-quality boats against five hominids in a normal boat. I hope someone is recording this.. because even if this really is the Dominator's Last Stand, it's going to be something to watch. The first thing I noticed is that this must be an entirely Enforcer-directed operation- none of them got the clue to shoot at the boat and not the passengers, the only exception being the slow-enough-to-shoot torpedoes and missiles. So much for teaching them tactics. As we fired, Billy and I screaming profanity and hate in our first-learned languages, I found myself very glad that the Anarch had decided to bring a Micro up that elevator. I tried to keep it in the water, to both cool and refuel it (the filter could probably last a week straight in salt water, damn, has it been cleaned recently?! This is the worst way to find out..), as Billy, Sarah, and Paul were obviously concerned with ammunition troubles. The Anarch was piloting the boat, and I noticed that he was smart enough not to bother swerving. Shit. So many of them! A Micro shot here kills those, an atomic shotgun blast takes out that boat, the missiles've got that, and Paul's unloading the Ass Cannon there.. dodge, dodge, dodge.. "Stop shooting at me, you assholes!!", I screamed in Latin, as I fish-fried several at once. A bit later, they did. It's not because they ran out of cannon fodder.. it's because we're too far away from 'safe' waters, even though I'm sure they're trying to keep a field of secrecy around our location.

Great. Now we're going to be hunted. I wonder how they plan to do it? Get us in a building somewhere and blow it to pieces? Get control of satellite lasers? No.. they would have already done that if they were capable of it. But in normal territory, we're safer even if we break secrecy ourselves.. we've already got this enemy faction (whoever the fuck they are) after us, what'd be wrong with getting the rest of the organization up our butts as well? No, I decided. That would eventually end it.

After what was probably a couple of hours (time flies when you're running for your life), the boat reached a rocky shore and we cruised northwards, looking for somewhere to hide- it must be assumed that they have forces inland (and possibly coming in from above) ready to kill us, and I'm glad they didn't fire at us from the beach. We swiftly found a sewer drainage pipe hidden among the seaweed and the sand, tore off the rusted steel cover with our combined might, and we climbed in. Not big enough to walk in and disgusting as hell, but if I live through this we can crack jokes about it afterwards. 'No, you don't have a septic tank problem, ma'am, although you might be the target for a new experiment. Oh, it's just that you've got Illuminati in your sewer.'

We crawled for what could possibly have been hours, our hands and feet pounding the sides and bottom of the sewer as we crawled through it. I'm just glad there hasn't been any recent rain to send bad water our way. A storm drain was above us, and the Anarch simply popped it off and climbed out, and we followed- we were in the middle of a large indentation in the ground, with the pipe's opening above brackish, dirty water. Flat brick buildings everywhere- no, they've probably got normal alarms on them, and it would take too long for Sarah to find a way in. We simply can't take the time to look.

"They're not here?", Sarah asked from behind us, climbing out of the pipe. "Well, we know it's not all of them.." Shit, if it could possibly be anywhere close to 'all of them', I'm toast. "Coast clear?", she asked, before answering it herself by looking around.

We climbed out of the pipe, which was sticking out a couple of meters from the ground, and waded through the knee-deep, heavily tainted water. Damn, and I thought the normals practiced sewage treatment, too. Sarah had her weapons at the ready, looking for people to kill.

"Forget it, Sarah.", the Anarch said as he lifted himself out of the pipe. "Any attack from your weapons would send people coming. We would not be able to kill them all without being easily discovered by a group of people far too large." If we used projectile weapons, that is... to avoid noise, we simply wouldn't.

"Yeah.. hate this!", she said, sneering. She wasn't alone. "Gonna get my claws into the bastard who tried that.." 'Which bastard who had tried what?', I didn't ask. Focus on survival now, save the revenge for later..

"You'll be lucky to have your claws after this is over.", Paul said, a bit dismally. I heard something else- great, a normal.

The man looked to be about forty years old and had some kind of heavy metal pouring out of the headphones on his ears. "Who the.. hell are you?", he asked, pulling the still-going headphones off his head and onto his neck, looking at us as if we were from another planet. Which, to his ilk, we might as well be.

"You mean you've never seen two albinos, a guy on steroids, a normal-looking kid, a girl with bladed fingernails- all of them carrying weapons- and a white dog come out of a pipe before?", Sarah asked, casually, as she slowly walked up to him. His life won't even have time to flash before his eyes...

"No.. is this some kind of joke?", the normal replied, his last words. If it is a joke, it's not a very funny one.

"Yes.", Sarah said, and tossed him down the hill, snapping his neck on her leg like a flimsy branch. The Anarch, for whatever reason, took his headphones off the corpse as it rolled down to land face-down in the water. "And you're the punchline." She looked around, probably for normal surveillance cameras.. or more enemies. "No one else and there's some light forest here. Come on." We followed her into a wooded stretch alongside a highway, and my overflowing brain started thinking.

Why the hell are we still alive? There are only so many sewer paths- why didn't they, say, pour gallons of neurotoxin down them? What the hell is preventing them? The only logical answer is that the ones who did that.. the ones who controlled me, don't have enough power in the Illuminati to do those things. Or, right now, there's a battle going on somewhere, with those loyal to their Dominator fighting against the usurpers.. until I get back to an Illuminated safe spot, I can't know. But.. for something like this to happen, for me to be controlled, they'd practically have to.. "This is all nuts.. They can't be the ones controlling the satellites, or we'd be fish food by now..", I muttered.

"Quit underestimating yourself, Master. It's detrimental to long-term survival.", the Anarch said. I have no idea why he thought I was underestimating myself.

"He's got a point. It doesn't matter how many guys they can summon.", Sarah said, fingering her weapons. "They'd have a major crisis on their hands. The other ones are probably wise to something going on, your squads have already contacted them. Everybody's probably looking for us now.. but they don't know where that sewer led and maybe their satellites never saw it." What a SNAFU. If, say, Sarah or another of my assassins (she's not 'your assassin' at all anymore, I reminded myself) fucked up so badly as to not use the Illuminated resources at her disposal, it would be a loyalty-breaking lack of competence. There must be infighting going on- that's the only answer to this.

"Hard to believe.. they've got to be fighting each other.. but then again, this whole thing..", Billy said, shaking his head, mirroring my thoughts.

"Is hard to believe. Since fucking Day One.", Paul finished for him, putting this into his perspective. "We sure as hell can't stay here." That much, we can agree on.

"Then let's go.. that way.", Sarah said, pointing in a direction parallel to the highway. Any decision is as good as another when you have no way of knowing what to decide. We barely got started when we heard the telltale whup-whup-whup of a helicopter, and I wasn't sure whether it was Illuminated or normal.

"For us?", Billy asked rhetorically. It would be some fantastic luck if it wasn't.

"Murphy says yes..", Paul said, and I heard a series of thumps below us- great. We're being followed there, too.

"Fuck, they're tracking us through the sewer. Probably using scent detectors of some kind.. but they're not going to come out!", I said, a bit glad. Four normals had discovered the corpse Sarah left, one rushing to call for help, almost certainly thinking it was an accident- secrecy was preserved. And, unless our enemies are going to break secrecy just to send an almost certainly ineffective...

The one going for help got a silenced bullet into the back of his head. Of course they are. They implanted the Dominator. Little things like secrecy aren't going to get in their way...

"Now we know..", Sarah said softly, wincing and squinting her eyes, obviously upset. "There goes secrecy."

"Not entirely. It's just going to be a bigger cover-up than usual.", I said. That's the way it is so far, but if they think that attacking us in front of live nationwide TV cameras with Enforcers will end in our deaths, they'll do it. "They want me.. they want us. Nothing else matters to them now. Let's just run." We ran like hell, our stride only slowed by making sure we were invisible to everyone. I was worried about Paul being able to keep up and considered having the Anarch carry him, but he was doing rather well. I heard the enemy enter the forest, vastly less concerned about being heard or seen than we were.

"They're not that close. Anarch, you open that, you and Paul go in there. Fido, you too.", Billy said, pointing to a sewer entrance that the Anarch opened easily, and started running through the forest. Huh? Why... ah. He's going to try to mix up the scent. We ran around the trees in different directions, crossing paths. Hopefully, they can't follow us fast enough to-

They could. Enforcers shot at us with silenced pistols. What a waste! What nitwit thought this up? We just got done dodging machinegun fire- how the hell do they hope to hit us with individual bullets that don't even exceed the speed of sound? There was a normal operations leader with them (I haven't the faintest clue why.. man, will I ever love to see the commands on all of this, assuming they were recorded at all), who realized the folly of his attack, and killed himself with a suicide tooth as Billy and I tore through his Enforcers like a knife through Jell-O, with Sarah getting a few strikes on the last two as we destroyed them. She took a spherical light-creating device from the body of the normal and examined it for traps or tracers, and checked his pulse- yup, he's dead. What a complete waste.

"All right.", she said, yanking the manhole off like it was nothing. "Time for some more Ninja Turtle shit." That's what this is starting to remind me of, with the incredibly stupid villainy and all- some kid's cartoon gone horribly wrong.

"Not even going to ask how you've heard of them..", Paul replied from inside, and we crawled down for more. The sewers were slightly convoluted- apparently they connect all the buildings in this area- and we slowly went back and forth, trying to confuse anyone else with a scent detector.