The nightmare reminded me- I never learned exactly what Damien did to Paul. I could try to find out, of course; my morbid curiosity outweighed my apprehension. Paul went back to sleep almost immediately after I screamed, knowing what it was. I don't even think it interrupted his dreams. Yup, he's out like a light, and so I could use the computer without him waking up. I turned the brightness almost all the way down on the computer to the right, and silently looked for Damien's records. 'Maybe there won't be anything.', I said to myself. 'Maybe he kept it a big secret, even from his father. It's not something you advertise.'

In Damien's case, it was. Twelve parts of four-hour-long video files, in fact. I gritted my teeth- which felt a bit weird- and started the first one, because I just had to fucking know. I started the video.

'The Beauty of the Servant, Paul Smith - Produced by Damien Gladstone'.

Oh, dear fuck.

Paul was on his knees, bent all the way over, wearing an ugly leather costume right from a gay bar in Nightmare World. He was holding his arms behind him, silent and unmoving. If this was shown to someone who had no idea of the existence of mind control implants, it would be assumed that Paul had chosen to do this, and that imaginary person with that bad assumption horrified me. Damien walked onscreen, carrying a whip and smiling. 'You're not smiling anymore, you son of a bitch.', I would have said aloud if Paul wasn't asleep. "Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Damien Gladstone. Today, we'll be observing the implanted sentient servant in his most natural state.", Damien said, as if he was hosting a documentary for National Geographic. "There is more here than meets the eye. Inside his suit are several steel burrs, carefully aligned with his joints and nerves. Even as I stand here speaking to you, he is suffering in agony." If there's such a place as hell, you asshole, give Satan my regards! "Yet he cannot scream. This, of course, is due to no gag, but instead is due to the power of mind control implants.", he said, for the benefit of that mythical witless viewer. "Observe carefully." I didn't want to watch Damien hitting Paul three times on his exposed ass with the whip, causing angry red marks and Paul to jerk forward. "See how he moves? I have commanded him not to. Prohibited from reacting voluntarily, we know that all his reactions are not. This show shall contain no pretending. Everything you shall see is the true beauty of the implanted servant." He then pulled out something from a nightmare indeed, a foot-long dildo with spikes, and-

That's it! I wanted to force myself to watch enough for a representative sample of just what Damien had done, but I realized I couldn't take it. I stopped the video, closed the file, turned the brightness back to normal, and shut everything down. Then I returned to bed and put my arm around Paul protectively, enraged at Damien for what he'd done to my best friend. The asshole was already dead, of course, so the rage could go nowhere, but I was pissed off enough to want to resurrect him and kill him again, over and over. My hatred and I fell asleep.

I woke up in the morning to feel Paul pushing on my arm, and I lifted it off of him. He sat up, looked at me, and said "Good morning, Billy.", in a chipper, pleasant voice that was astounding to hear from the subject of Damien's ghastly videos.

"Paul, I command you never to look for any of Damien's available materials, or even watch them if you happen to find them accidentally." That was entirely for his benefit, and he knew it. His face looked blank for a split second, as if he was hammering down memories, a thing that my command would help him do.

"Okay, Billy.", he simply said in the same chipper voice. I smiled at him and went back to sleep for a couple more hours.

I woke up again with something else on my mind. Howard hasn't seen this, I'm sure. Does he even have... yes, I'm sure he does have at least some idea of what normals are capable of doing to each other, but I doubt he's seen anything like this. For a moment I didn't want to give him any ideas, but that was a silly concept, and I knew it.

I thought for a bit, got out of bed, put on a pair of black pants, and walked into Howard's room silently, closing the door behind me. "Howard... I'm not even sure if I should show this to you or not... but I guess you should probably see it.", I said, noticing his game of Starcraft.

"Is it urgent?", he asked, not looking behind him.

"No." I sat down on the floor by his side and watched him play. It was either a 1 on 1, or a larger game that had its members destroyed down to a 1 on 1. The enemy knew where Howard was- map hack, I'm sure- but Howard clobbered the hell out of him anyway. Knowledge is only some power. Howard choked him to death, preventing him from gathering resources and massing a slaughterhouse attack against the enemy's last base, when the enemy tried disconnection hacks, which showed immediately on Howard's screen as what they were. I love it when Illuminati modify games. Howard simply used another window to flick the fool off the Internet like a booger. He closed the windows and looked down at me from his chair.

"Now what is it you're not sure you should show me?", he asked, and I answered him by standing up, getting in front of him, and using the Search function to find the videos the exact same way I had before. He knew what they were immediately; I didn't need to say anything.

"Is this going to be unpleasant to watch?", he asked. I certainly hope he doesn't find any pleasure in it.

"It was for me, I only could take a minute or so of the first part. I really don't know why I'm showing you this. I just.. think you should see it for yourself."

"I doubt I'll even watch one of these in a sitting.", he said, double-clicking on Part 1.

"One thing.", I said, as the video started up. "I told Paul never to even search for Damien's stuff or to even touch it if he did find it."

"Probably a very good decision."

I didn't watch the tape this time. I watched Howard. And, carefully observing his reactions- his open mouth, his befuddled look, his slow head-shaking, I realized something predictable and comforting.

He didn't understand. On a very fundamental level, he simply didn't understand. To him it's just awful normal stupidity. How could any of us imagine Howard could ever possibly do something like this? He's having a hard time just watching it. I smelled a very faint trace of vomit, and Howard closed his mouth, immediately closed the video window and its accompanying search list, swallowed, and turned to me, and I knew I'd get a very solid command of some sort.

"Billy, I command you to explain, in a way that maximizes my understanding and minimizes my confusion, the reason why Damien has done this." There it is.

I would love to have been able to obey that immediately, but I didn't understand, either. Saying 'because he's a sadist' would explain nothing. That part is obvious. "Because.. because he wants to assert dominance, to feel powerful. Maybe he's got something to prove.", I lamely explained.

I hadn't been able to minimize his confusion at all. "Assert dominance? Feel powerful? Prove?! That must be the most screwed up normal psychology ever. He's an implanted servant, what the hell was there to prove?" The fact that he was an asshole? The fact that he loves causing misery? The fact that he was a fucking dickhead? Those, too, would explain nothing.

"His own ego. Howard, what I want to say is that it's because he was an asshole, or a dick. In normal land it would explain everything. Telling it to you... this is what he valued, what he cared about doing. It gave him pleasure to do it. If you want to know why that's the case," He did. "I don't know." I could- well, actually, since it wouldn't help and could possibly delude Howard I couldn't- make unsupported psychological guesses about Damien's family history.

"What a fucking waste.", Howard said, with finality. R. I. P. Fucking Waste. "You may stop trying to make sense of it. I can't make sense of it either. I'm going to simply say that his brain was misconfigured," My opinion exactly. "and otherwise pretend I never saw this. Now that you've shown me something that made me almost puke" Yup, I noticed that. "and given me my ugh of the month, make Sarah cook my usual plate of good food, if she hasn't already." I got up and walked out the door. "And yours, while she's at it." Howard didn't notice my slight smile as I walked out the door to relay the command to Sarah, who left her monitor full of scientific information to cook us breakfast.

It was ready about ten minutes later, and I hungrily went down and sat at the table. Mmm... meat and donuts go well together when done right.

Chewing and swallowing my first bite, I felt a pain in my molars, like they were pushing against parts of the gum they shouldn't be, and looking at Howard I could tell that he did too. Sarah turned from her cooking and looked at us sharply and then down at the food, thinking it was something she'd done or was in the meal; Howard held up his hand to Sarah, signifying that it was all right. We were just going to lose some teeth. For about two minutes, we sat there, wiggling and prying. Get... out! There's the top right one gone, yank, then the top left one... then bottom left, bottom right. It hurt yanking them out, but it would have been more annoying to wait. I held out four teeth in my left hand, Howard held out four teeth in his right, and we put them in a pile, chuckling. I licked the holes where they used to be and felt an unfamiliar point deep in the gum instead of the usual flat surface of my baby tooth molars. Sarah just nodded, as if she should have known.

Paul tentatively reached out and took the teeth in his hand, shaking them, and offered a suggestion as to what to do with them. "Shotgun.", he said, simply, and we laughed- that would be a great thing to kill someone with, wouldn't it?- and went back to eating, which was a bit different without our first molars.

"Paul," I asked, "did Damien in any way teach you how to use that gun you carried?", Howard asked as we almost finished our breakfast.

"No, not really.", Paul replied.

"Sarah, order whatever is needed to train him in how to pose a serious threat to a non-Enforcer combatant in an automatic pistol duel." I knew immediately why Howard was doing it. He wants his servants as powerful as he can get us. Extensions of the self, right? "When it gets here, you're going to use it to do just that. Paul, the reason you're being trained is because I want you to actually know enough and have enough skill to fight against Illuminati agents with normal genetics, if necessary."

"Yes.. yes, Howard. But.. considering what you are and who else you have.. why would you bother?", Paul asked. If he wasn't a servant, I'm sure he wouldn't be reluctant- c'mon Paul, you're going to get to play with guns. It's not going to be that difficult or tiring. I know you'll never fight at my side with your normal DNA, but you can learn to protect yourself.

"Because I want you at your peak.", Howard replied. "And it just might mean something someday."

Sarah called it down, Paul went downstairs to play some light-gun games as practice, and Howard killed the time with me as usual as the stuff was flown in and Sarah set it up. When it was ready, I climbed a tree to watch from a nice overhead angle- Howard just stayed inside, watching him through the big window at the living room.

It's like a fine art- the fine art of killing shit, taught by the Princess of Death herself. Hmm. I don't know how the hell she can do what Howard told her, frankly. The agents have years of training and experience with their weapons, and all Paul would have is his gun and a few lessons. Then again, Paul's always been a quick study, his youth means he learns faster, and his teacher is the princess of assassination- and since this is Illuminated teaching, she's not going to bother with too much happy crap, it's just going to be a lesson in shooting. "All right, Paul, I'm not going to bother with any introductory shit, I'm tired and you know how things work. This is your weapon. .357 caliber, thirteen bullets a clip, fully or semi-automatic, depending on which way this switch is flipped.", Sarah said, moving the small lever back and forth. "Fore sight, rear sight, and you know what not to point it at. And there's no safeties on our guns."

"Yeah, what would be the point?", he said, in his young voice.

That's another thing that just seems fundamentally wrong about this, not the training, just the fact of him being here. Howard and I are, of course, more advanced than normals- we could easily be mistaken for high school freshmen now. And although Sarah's voice will probably never crack, she looks a few years older than she really is. Paul, on the other hand, looks and thinks like an unusually intelligent, but otherwise normal 11-year-old boy. There's a new psychological twist for ya- what happens when someone is constantly exposed to role models they can never live up to, especially in this environment? He's trying to make up some ground by exposing himself to Illuminated learning- he knows he's limited, he just doesn't know his limitations, and he's always been an optimist. He has only partially reached puberty, he has no hair on his body, he's fighting off the remains of lingering childhood fears (redoubled by that asshole Damien), and he's much weaker than anyone else within miles.

Then again, since the weapon of choice is a handgun of the highest manufacture, none of that is going to affect anything very much. How old were those Jonesboro kids taking the head shots? 11, 13? Or was one 10 at the time? Sarah was obviously thinking along the same lines as I was- the next thing I heard from her was, "One more fact about guns- muzzle velocity is not affected by age, experience, temperament, cognitive abilities, or even aim."

"Yeah, exactly, not even aim, which is why you've got all that ammo sitting there. I suppose you're going to start me on that?", he said, pointing to a three meter wide, three meter tall bullseye-style target 50 meters away, with blue, yellow, and red circles.

"Yes, I am. You have to trace a line, Paul. Rear sight, fore sight, target. Aim for the center. Don't think about anything other than the center of the target, look at it, picture a bullet in it. Line the sights up and get it good, and don't let fear or frustration get you or we'll be here all night." She looked at his stance- a brace-for-recoil stance, the left arm supporting the right arm as seen in some Westerns- and then at his hands. "Oh, shit. I forgot your muscles shake. Don't hold the gun tightly, it doesn't do anything for us but it's really fucking you up. Look at the target, and think about the line." He relaxed a bit, concentrated, relaxed more, aimed, looked at the target with his surgery-modified eyes- and then fired one time.

Directly into the center of the target.

Holy SHIT! Damn, I was expecting him to miss a few times, be counseled on his stance, and then get closer and closer to the center as he steadily learned the actions of guns. His very first shot (okay, second, but point-blank doesn't count) of his entire fucking life, a bullseye from fifty meters out. He raised the gun in a Soldier of Fortune stance and started laughing.

"Oh shit, this is going to be easier than I thought.", Sarah said, sounding surprised- a rarity for her.

"Would you like another?", Paul said, grinning and laughing.

"Sure, gimme another one."

He gave her a second demonstration of his obvious talent. There's still only one hole in the target- did he miss entirely? No, wait, there's two, one partially touching the other, the second one slightly down and left of the first one. Cops can't shoot like this, and Paul's putting holes into red material like a starving me eating a young piglet? "How the FUCK?!", I exploded from my perch.

"Shut up Billy, you'll jinx it!", he called back. Sarah just giggled. "So I'm good at this!" He fired three more times, two in the red and the last in the yellow.

"Heh. Not bad. All right, Paul, next shots are moving."

"Ugh, moving targets..."

"No, not moving targets. You moving. It's still stationary, but you should be able to run back and forth as you hit it. Use whatever move comes naturally and remember the line." He jogged forwards and backwards, keeping his left hand (Why his left? He's right handed. He'll probably swap a few times anyway, though.) out in front of him, firing once- completely missing the target- and then stopping for brief instants the second two times he fired, smacking the blue and then the yellow.

"Paul, as you run, you jiggle a bit. That's okay- as long as you know how you're jiggling. If you have to move the line around, remember where it's going. It is a small target."

"Damn it! All right, the line, the line." He swapped hands and ran back and forth some more, trying to keep a bead on the thing as he ran, straining to keep the weapon steady and keep his line of sight between the sights. He hit yellow and then a lucky one (I could tell) touching both yellow and red. Damn, he really is good. Is it just talent or a sort of determination? Sarah pressed a button on her body and a robot arm took a layer off the top of the target, revealing a brand new one beneath. A variant of Kevlar, I figured.

The training continued in this vein for thirty more minutes of straight shooting- he stopped running when the target started moving and he didn't have too many problems with that, then both of them were moving at the same time and he started missing again. I wonder why normals would never do it this way, but I figured I understood- they don't have an Illuminated effectively infinite budget, and this is costing a lot more ammo than they'd dare spend.

"The line still applies, Paul.", she said after he missed the circles entirely six times, hit blue fourteen, and hit yellow twice. All of those shots would have missed a dodging, weaving human.

"Yeah, I know. It's just that.." He started running back and forth again as the target's motorized system guided it around randomly. "I'm sick," BLAM "sick," BLAM "sick" BLAM "of being considered some monkey of a lesser being compared to the assholes around here!" I heard something in his voice and saw something in his movements I never expected from Paul. We all turned to look at his shots.

They were in a tight, triangular pattern near the center of the target.

Sarah grinned and laughed. I started cheering.

"How tired are you?", she asked.

"Very.", he replied with a sigh.

"All right, Paul- you've got most of the offensive part down pat. I don't-"

"Hold up- offensive part?!", Paul interrupted with some surprise. "Sarah, I can't dodge bullets like any of you can."

"You don't have to dodge, just make yourself harder to hit. I don't think you'll be able to do some of the trick shots around here most of these people train in, but that's for special situations only." Sarah paused a minute to reflect on it- from looking at the side of her face, I could read her thoughts- 'what the fuck is Howard thinking?' I know what he's thinking. He wanted Paul to be at his peak, and that peak turned out to be higher than I expected. Paul has demonstrated that something extra, the thing we thought was reserved to engineereds only, the talent and willpower to overcome insane odds, merging the conscious and subconscious in the same way we do, to create a fighting machine. And that's what Howard wants Paul to have in him, and considering how much violence we end up in, it's the logical decision.

Of course, the uber-joke is that Paul's already lost to the insane odds, but never mind that for now.

"Fatigue's going to affect you too much. We can finish this tomorrow." Paul had fired about three hundred and fifty shots total, in a bit more than thirty minutes, and done a good deal of running back and forth. He really is good. There's not much to it- it's just a matter of aiming the barrel towards the target, and having enough self-control (another uber-joke for ya..) to not screw up and aim the barrel slightly in the wrong direction. Illuminated weapons operation is user-friendly- shoot, shoot, reload, that's it.

After we got in, I asked Sarah about it, and she told me that, even for the types of long rifle that normally would require several steps to load, the machinery inside these things does it automatically. Even the pump-action is automatically done with the battery-operated internals.

He fell asleep quickly that night, and my nightmare was incoherent but having to do with him and guns.

Sarah woke us up early the next morning, and it continued. Tired as I was, I watched from my perch- watched Paul learn that you can move your body around without severely screwing up your aim, assuming you have some idea what you're doing. For us, it's just natural. For him, it's a tedious learning process, and the repeated combination of defensive and offensive maneuvering quickly wore him out after twenty minutes or so, a crash course. I further realized how quickly people can be taught certain manual skills if you cut away the bullshit.

"Paul.. all right, you're not the best, but you'll do.. okay, time for a better challenge."

"What?" Sarah took four leaps backwards, for a total of about thirty feet.

And then Sarah asked Paul to do a thing I didn't expect.

"Shoot me."

"WHAT?! Sarah, you know the-"

"Paul, I have a better chance of getting hit by lightning than being shot by you with that thing. You should know that by now."

"All right.. it's part of the training.." Paul got into the stance he had been in with his first shot, but more relaxed, and much more confident.

"Aim for the head." Three bullets whizzed through the place where Sarah's head had been. "You're not following my dodging, Paul." Three more bullets came, each in different areas, Sarah's head easily moving out of the way of each one. "Good.. damn good.. although you were a little off on that last one. Center of the chest." One bullet would have pierced the area between Sarah's breasts, had she not twisted out of the way. The next bullet she lunged forward from, the next was going for her head and she leaned back, the next was low and she jerked forward, and the last went wild. "Keep on trying, Paul!" He did, for almost ten whole minutes, throwing bullet after bullet into empty air and continuing to reload; I looked and made sure, nope, there's nothing down there for him to accidentally hit. "Okay, stop.", she said, and then turned to the window. "Howard- he's good."- from this position, I couldn't see him at all.

"Good enough?", he replied in his usual tone.

"I wouldn't make him an agent just yet.. but I wouldn't pit any normals I wanted to keep against him, either. He'd have to take a regimen of courses to get appreciably better, and even that might not really help."

"All right. Paul, try to shoot me with the next bullet in that gun.", Howard said, obviously watching his words.

Paul fired, I heard a loud TING, and saw Paul dodge away a bit, holding the right side of his head. Is he- nope, he's not bleeding, and Howard and Sarah are laughing heartily.

"You now know about ricochets.", Howard said, and I could hear the grin in his voice. "You also now know that this glass laughs at those bullets." It's probably not even marked. Fuck 'bulletproof' glass (which basically absorbs bullets like a kevlar vest and will shatter from repeated attacks)... his is probably manufactured down to the molecule. A hard blade-punch would probably go through it, but nothing with less force behind it. "Any more training that you might want is up to you, that command's over." Paul didn't want to do any more training, and I climbed down the tree and followed him and Sarah inside. Yup, it's not marked.

Sarah then made breakfast, which of course was delicious; then Howard and I used up the rest of the Kevlar targets Sarah had brought, testing out various items in his complete arsenal. The day went by as usual after that.