I'm not really sure just how the idiots get in the organization. My best theory is nepotism, but I have a hard time believing that- for one thing, Dave Wilson isn't influenced by anyone, at least not in any way that's in the records. All of his stuff belongs to him. Of course, he has ties to others of higher level, but that's just usual and they didn't look particularly suspicious- when an Illuminatus is found to be unsuitable, the person recruiting him is looked at, but not usually attacked. It's all too easy to make an honest mistake- an honest mistake that pisses the Dominator off. It's also too easy to say 'Hey, I didn't know he'd be like this!' when the asshole knew it all along.

Actually, I'm sort of glad for the idiots. Keeps us all in practice- because there's going to be a lot of idiot-slaying between now and the time we've finished the billions of them off some few hundred years from now. I'm just glad there haven't been more of them. A few might be fun to kill, but this is the home of the masters and we don't have time for too much of this shit.

So here I sit, about ten miles from Dave's compound, concealed in a van with one other Illuminatus and four other servants. It's good that Jeremy is in on this. Although he's not engineered, he knows what he's doing, and is probably going to end up higher in the organization than he is now. He's the second person I'd like to use the retrovirus on, the first being Paul. But he needs experience in Illuminated practices, and watching just how ass gets kicked around here is going to help his education immensely.

"This might seem like a really stupid time to bring this up, but I've never killed anyone before.", Joey, an eleven-year-old with dark hair and a slightly freckled face that looks kind of like Paul's, said from the back seat. Looks like Jeremy's servant needs to learn as well.. Billy and I started laughing.

"Don't worry. You'll get used to it.", Sarah said in a sarcastic tone that she usually reserves for me. "Even for normal society's purest normals, you don't even notice you're doing it after the tenth one or so. Besides, even if morals still mean anything to you", she said with a brief snicker, "it's not like the people going to be shooting at us are actually people."

"Yeah, shooting at us too.. Jeremy, why didn't you just tell me I was that expendable?"

"You're not.", Jeremy quickly replied. If he was, wouldn't it be a bit pointless to acquire him?

Paul spun around and looked the boy in the face. "Joey, look. The Massacre Twins and Madame Bloodlust up here are going to kill every fucking thing they see before you even know they saw it. You probably won't even get a chance to shoot while they try to outdo each other in frags. Before you even look at one of the guys, he's probably already dead, you're here just for show, that's all. Just to follow Jeremy around because he needs to officially be a part of this and he obviously wants you with him. And unless Howard lets you, Jeremy, you're not going to get any kills either." I cracked up laughing; so did Sarah and Billy. That's the one thing I love most about Paul. After dealing with so much obfuscation and general bullshit, it's nice to hear someone tell it like it is.

"Was that..?!", said Jeremy, startled.

"Everything he said was perfectly true, Jeremy. He didn't tell you enn-eeee lies.", I said, still smiling and chuckling.

"Howard- do you mind if I make a completely unbiased comment?", Jeremy said, obviously going to fire off some piece of witticism.

"Go ahead, that's the kind of comment you should make anyway.", I said, preparing to be amused again.

"All three- no, all four of you are completely fucking nuts. You deserve your servants, Howard, and the three of you deserve him just the same. All of you are just fucking crazy. Three of you are immortal and the other one's more likely to die. How can you just walk right into the field of carnage and put your goddamn motherfucking lives on the line if and when you don't have to, especially you, Howard?" He doesn't understand. I need to think up the words..

"And let someone else have all the fun?!", Sarah cracked. My servants started giggling at the same time I did, almost certainly worrying the young Illuminatus.

I found the words. "Because we can, Jeremy.", I said, slowly and seriously. "We can. Your fear inhibits you. You think you're going to die if you get into a risky situation. Well, like Paul said, this isn't even a risky situation, and you are not supposed to fear. If you honestly don't think you'll survive, you think a stray bullet will hit you, whatever, stay out of the fight and just send big bad Enforcers. If you lose any, I'll personally replace them out of my own pocket. But I like killing, I don't like doing it alone so much, they like killing, we kill. If you're worried about Paul and his less-than-engineered reaction time, he knows how to stay out of the way of bullets." Jeremy started nodding as I talked, and his face started lighting up with some understanding.

"I get it. I understand. You're not just crazy, you're absolutely fucking psychotic.", he said, with both wonder and accusation in his voice.

"Comes with the territory.", Billy said without looking at him.

"Okay, that's it, I know where I am, I'm in somebody else's dream world. Not my own dream world. Somebody else's dream world.", Joey said somewhat loudly, some fear showing on his face. "This. Whole. Thing. Is. Crazy. Even you, Jeremy, you know you don't really have to be here. Let these maniacs do the slaughter and just computerize your face in!"

"Worried about catching a stray bullet, Joey? You're in such a sad state, if I were you, I'd welcome death. Yeah, sure, you got implanted, your life is over. But that doesn't mean you can't still enjoy it.", Sarah said sharply to him, somewhat annoyed. I'm not sure what's annoying her. Anticipation for her first real mission in a long while, most likely. Can't be PMS...

"You really do like killing people, don't you Sarah.", Joey said, the vocal lilt to signify a question noticeably absent from his voice.

"You didn't stop him from asking stupid questions?", I asked his master.

"There are no stupid questions.", Jeremy replied, setting me up for an easy one.

"Only stupid people.", I replied- along with every other sentient in the van, including Joey himself. Gah! All six of us? Too much telepathy!

"So when do we kick his ass?", Jeremy asked uncertainly.

"About five more minutes and this car starts moving. This is going to be a full, by-the-book Illuminated strike.", I said, sounding intentionally formal, a rare thing for me.

"Not like last time.", Billy said, smirking.

"Nothing like that. That was fun, but looking back.. no. Not again. Jeremy, that time we were a little too close to being shot or having to do a secrecy shuffle. I didn't like that.", I replied. I liked it when we were doing it, but looking back it was clear that I had been very hasty.

"How was that anyway... just you three taking on a whole base, about.", Jeremy asked, apparently visualizing it.

"It wasn't a base.", Sarah said. "Wasn't even close. Just some boys' ranch with some Enforcers on it. We basically just... well, dropped in on him. You should have seen the look on his face."

"Ha, you should have seen the look on his face when he found out I was already implanted... he fucking shit his pants.", Paul said, his gleeful spite causing him to grin a bit.

"I never knew that was from you! I thought I caused that!", Sarah replied, and I could almost sense her mind revising the history of what happened that day. "Dammit. There goes the moral victory, anyway." Oh, yes. Speaking of moral victories..

"I've been thinking.. you should probably do the deed, Jeremy. Everything else gets mortified, and you walk in and...oh, I don't know. How would you like to get rid of him?", I asked, intentionally grinning at him to signify that almost any way would be fine.

"Hmm. His servants run MLM scams, that kind of thing, so..." I haven't a damn clue what 'MLM' is. I guess I'll have to find out sometime. "Fire might be nice. Got a flamethrower?"

"How about a drip torch?", Paul suggested.

"What's that?", Jeremy asked. I didn't know either.

"You know how firemen have to put out fires by making fire breaks? Well, they drip flaming stuff onto grass as they walk along, drop by drop." Ah. A nice, slow, controlled burn. Like Chinese Water Torture, only faster and with more screaming. It appears Paul has genuinely lost the local morality after all. Sarah crooned a low 'ooooh' sound to signify her approval.

"Ooooh.", Jeremy said, grinning with delight. "That is nasty. Howard, can you..?"

"No problem.", I said, ordering the Enforcer in front of me to call for one. "It'll be there by the time we get in." The Enforcer put the car into forward motion and I felt a tiny twinge of anticipation. "All right, it's time." It only took a few minutes for it to drive us into ass-kicking position.

After the van parked and we walked a few hundred meters through light, natural forest and brush, we were welcomed by eight Enforcers. They immediately dispersed upon our arrival, one stopping to hand Jeremy the drip torch he requested. They'd circle the place, moving through the trees to cover all exits, turning Dave's building into his prison.

"This is a completely formal raid, and we're doing this with at least most of the usual procedures, by the book.", I said, for the camera. "His building will be surrounded, any forces he may have will be annihilated or captured, and Dave Wilson will die very, very soon." I turned to my servants. "The three of you must as of right now shut the fuck up and stay that way, unless you have something urgent to say. You can talk after the target is eliminated."

"Joey, you too.", Jeremy said quickly.

It would take a few minutes for the Enforcers to circle the building. Sarah put her ghillie suit on in a few swift movements and headed towards it, moving with more than her usual stealth- she'd be creeping along when she saw the clearing. I idly thought about how it would go- this should be clean. Kill sentries, maraud in, waste everyone, walk out. I considered the chances of any of the normals getting shot- they're low. Enforcers always attack the most threatening targets first. I considered possible foul-ups, possible.. forget it, I told myself. This shouldn't be considered hard. But a few minutes can seem like hours when you're waiting to get into real violence...

I heard two sniper shots come from Sarah's position at the exact same time, and all five of us rushed towards her; she had thrown off the ghillie suit and was waiting for someone to blow away the normal electrical fence separating death from the target. A blaring klaxon sounded from Dave's base. Paul obliged her with the launcher, the fence shorted out (glad there's no normals around here, this is getting very noisy indeed, that klaxon could wake the dead and the explosion didn't help any), we pulled out our pistols, and I experienced the simple feeling of pure pleasure I always get from this.

We rushed through the hole in the fence, and onto the 200-meter stretch of open land that Dave was trying to use to snipe off anyone trying to sneak in. But we weren't sneaking in- we were running in at our full speed, and popping off guys with our usual accuracy. I got two with two shots- I heard four shots from Billy and Sarah, as the klaxon came to an abrupt halt. There were more of them, firing from various windows- but our Enforcers fired immediately after the defenders shot at us, killing them all. A pair of double doors marked the rear exit- Billy fired at their locks at the same time I did and we kicked them in simultaneously, breaking the hinges and swinging the doors wide, and revealing four humans coming from the hallway directly in front of us to run and shoot at us as we dodged the normal guns' bullets with relative ease. Are they normals or- no, I realized, my presupposition was right- Dave had recalled all his Enforcers to defend him. I immediately realized the irony of promising only two Enforcers to every fifth level. They are useful; they are powerful. But they can't save anyone from sentient, fully-engineered power.

I realized that the guns would only lengthen the fight, so I put them away and drew my blades, also noticing the two additional homiforms coming in from each side. Another hand-to-hand fight with Enforcers. Pity. Dave couldn't even bother to put in some auto-defenses or traps?

A year of development seems to have done something for them- but not much. They knew that their normal guns wouldn't do much at any range- so they rushed with them, and it was two-on-one for me. One at a time, I told myself. I flipped over the first one, grabbing its shoulders and throwing it, dodging a bullet from the second one. I'll kill that one now, then- It's trying to smash my head, I'll duck, it's punching at me and shooting with the same hand (trying to add another 300 FPS to normal guns? That's not going to help much), I'll get out of the whole thing's way, it's going to kick, I'll grab.. I could have crushed its testicles right then but Enforcers simply don't feel pain in the same way that normals do. So I cleaved it from the nave to the chops as I had done a year ago, my blades punching through both its kevlar and its underlying metal plate. Bah! They're wearing metal, and it's not our quality. The fool- he's using Enforcers but not Illuminated materials. Oh well. The other one was right on me and I waited until the last instant before punching it in the chin with my blades, the tips coming out of the top of its skull, its blood running down my arm. I let it fall to the floor with a thump as Billy pummeled his last one with a very rapid series of stabs to the chest. I looked back and saw one corpse with its throat slashed, and the other one had its head smashed open, as if she had just killed it in a flash without thinking about it.

"Was one of those a normal?", I asked. Billy picked up the last dead Enforcer, sliced off part of its sleeve, and took a couple of bites out of the tricep.

"Yeah, one was." She looked at her pregnancy and I wondered how close she is to delivery. It's a strain on her, obviously, but she's made it quite clear that she can handle it.

"So where is he?"

"Hmm, the guy's stupid... bet he's on the top floor in the most obvious room, making himself a perfect target.", she replied evenly, and we went right up the stairs and into the room. No one there. Billy rushed forward to the large desk and looked out the window- at an armored vehicle speeding through a hail of Enforcer fire. As I realized what it was that he saw, I drew my gun and so did Sarah. We fired simultaneously, blasting through the glass, and shooting out the back of the left tire, which wasn't protected at the bottom against aim like ours. The driver- yeah, it's Dave- struggled for control and skidded the car to a stop, turning the vehicle on its side. And once more I realized his foolishness- he's hiding cars made out of our materials but he can't get his guards to wear the same in their armor. Bah.

And I want this jerk NOW, before he decides to do something like end it all. Fastest way down.. I cleaved away a section of the window in one swift stroke. "Sarah, grab Billy's arms and lower him down.", I said. I held onto Billy's legs as she dangled both of us out the window- I jumped down and rushed Dave at full speed as he climbed out of the driver's side door, grabbing and holding him by his neck.

"Oh no.. please, don't.."

I shook him back and forth a bit. "Pathetic till the end, I see."

"Look.. don't kill me.. please."

"Well, why not, Dave? The normals certainly want to kill you. If I remember right, you're a champion of multi-level marketing, chain letters, and Internet spam.", I said, then taking a second to grin. "If I were to put them into a pit, and then I were to throw you into that pit, they would tear you apart, limb from limb, which is what I'm going to do to you!!" I enjoy the fear, and I'm sure the people watching this will as well. And he was terrified. Why bother being terrified? I'm the Dominator. I cannot afford to show sympathy to idiots like you. Face it, Dave- you're going to die, and there's nothing you can do about it. My arm was getting tired, so I threw him up in the air with it and caught him with the other one.

"But you're lucky today. I'm not going to kill you." A small bit of relief came over Dave's face. I threw my thumb back at the approaching Jeremy. "He is." The relief went away.

"So you are giving this one to me.. all right.", Jeremy said, as he disengaged the drip torch from its place on the back of his armor. "You mind dropping him?" I opened my hand and Dave fell to the ground on his ass, then stepping aside so that my fellow Illuminatus could indulge his torturous desire.

And torture he did, starting with a few drops of drip-torch liquid flame on Dave's lower abdomen, as the man screamed in agony. Jeremy only grinned as he began his speech, making sure it was audible over Dave's vocal cords. "Do you know why I'm doing it this way, Dave? My sources tell me that you're in charge of some of the largest marketing campaigns in the world- you've got servants in junk mail, television advertising, mass E-mail.. cyberpromotions.com, wasn't that? Sanford Wallace, right?" I wasn't going to laugh- not out loud, not now- but that's hilarious. Obviously, the recording will be closely tied in the database with the real reason for this, so Jeremy can say whatever he wants. It'll be just as funny to the people watching this.

The only one who didn't get the joke was Dave, who screamed his pain to the world as his genitals were incinerated. Jeremy simply started dripping randomly on him, hitting the grass a few times and burning it just the same, smiling all the while. "Oh JESUS MAKE IT STOP!!!" Don't worry, Dave. It'll all be over soon enough.

"All really great business, sure. If they were normal-owned corporations, they'd get enough wealth for us to look at them. And so your wealth is absolutely astronomical for your level. But there is a bad side to it as well. Some people don't like what you're doing, even if it is just to normals, and they call it 'spam'. I use that term as well. And you know what, Dave?" This is getting funnier by the word.

Dave tried to choke out the word 'mercy' a few times, failing miserably.

"I hate spam." Jeremy punctuated that remark with two pistol shots to Dave's kneecaps, the bullets flying through the bone easily. I'm not sure how much of this is his real enjoyment for this sort of thing, and how much is just to show everyone watching that he's capable of it. Dave stopped feeling pain- a moment of shock?- and then redoubled his cries of agony.

"Aww, he's so cute like that...", said Jeremy, smiling. "Oh well. Bye, Dave." A final bullet to the forehead ended the spammer's screaming and his life, and the Enforcers ceased the recording. I considered taking a few bites out of the corpse and decided to forget it. He's probably loaded with normal-world chemicals. "That felt so right."

"Well, that's it, mission accomplished.", I said with a shrug. The cleanup is not our problem. I thought back on how little effort it had taken to do this. Sarah snipes, we rush, we dodge, we fight, the target dies. No serious threats. Nothing to really give us a hard time. No insidious traps, nothing particularly unexpected, even though he basically knew we were coming. Bah! What a waste of my time. I didn't even have to do this personally- Billy could have done all my fighting for me.

"Good timing.", Sarah said, as she sunk to the ground to lie on her back. "Now there's something I just have to do, right now... nngh..", she said, as she slipped off the lower part of her suit to display her expanded vagina, as she pushed the child out. I found my fist clenched in anticipation- and I'll use the blades if I have to, considering that she may need her hole opened wider than is possible without damage. Of course, I don't want to do that.. let's hope the engineers thought of that.

I realized that they had as I saw my child's head poke out into the world, followed by the arms, followed by...

...another pair of arms? Oh, great. The Operator and I are going to have a little talk...

..but the rest of him is perfectly okay, I noted, as Sarah expelled his bottom half and then the messy afterbirth. He began whimpering and crying, and Sarah held him to her chest, calmly slicing off the umbilical cord with one of her fingernails. This makes sense, in a way. The ultimate assassin, the third most physically dangerous person in the world, has her child shortly after a bout of killing. I took a closer look at the baby- his hair's an even blend of mine and hers. His top two hands have six fingers; his bottom two have five. He has four toes on each foot.

"First death, then life.", Jeremy said, breaking the silence and observing the baby intently. "But.. what's with the arms?" Heh, you think I know? You think this was planned? It would make for a great plan if it was, provided he has full use of all of his limbs.

"Northberg obviously never expected us to breed.", I said, sighing. "And that's where I'm sending him, for the education and nurture I had." There is no reason to do otherwise- even with a defect (or is it a blessing?), Northberg Educational is simply where engineereds are taught. "Let's hope he's not crippled by the arms. Because if we cut them off.."

"They'll grow right back, won't they.", Jeremy finished for me.

I nodded. "That part of the DNA's the same." I'll talk to the Operator after he's allowed to examine my four-armed son- there is absolutely nothing I can do at this point, so I pushed the thoughts out of my mind. "Let's go home. I'm almost never up this early."

"Howard... no one's going to try to kill me for this, are they?", Jeremy asked. Maybe by fools, but no one with any sense in his head is going to fuck with someone that's killed someone in my presence, unless he has a serious death wish. But there's always the chance that some friend of Dave's might freak.. bah. There is always that chance. But I like Jeremy, and I'll make it clear that I'll do what I can to keep him safe.

"Probably not, not while they know I'm behind it. But you can spend a couple of days at the island if you want." Sarah finally put on her pants with one hand, cradling our son with the other, and he stopped crying.

"Thanks, Howard. I think I'll do that. Your jet's not big enough, is it?"

"Nope." He'd have to use the helicopter he came in.

Sarah opened her shirt to suckle the newborn, and we walked back to the car that took us here, Jeremy and Joey following behind the four of us.

"Well, that answers a question I've had..", Sarah said casually.

"Which was...?", I asked.

"Whether or not our child would be more physically powerful than you are. Hybrid vigor, strange DNA combinations no one foresaw.." She chuckled to herself a bit. "I guess I got what I was hoping for. Now all we have to do is wait ten years and see if he's smarter." She has confidence that it's a blessing, then. Good.

"This is getting weirder by the minute..", I heard Joey say in a low voice, probably right up against Jeremy's ear where he thought we wouldn't hear him.

"It's called 'progress'.", Sarah replied. Paul laughed, and Billy and I grinned. Jeremy and Joey were surprised at her hearing- they didn't think the engineers improved that?

"Yeah, progress. He has a point.", Jeremy said. "What happened just now? I know you three are just part of it, and he's probably gotten used to it, but this really is very strange to normals. You guys just waltzed into a defended compound, killed everyone inside, I cooked an asshole with a drip torch while talking about what's wrong with Net spam, she had a baby with four arms, and we're all walking back like none of this is really a big deal!" We went through the hole in the fence that Paul had originally blasted, laughing at that. You forget where you are, Jeremy. This is my planet, and this is our existence. Strange to you, but nothing particularly spectacular to us.

"Jeremy, you want the full explanation?", I asked him, turning my head to look at him while ducking the forest's branches.

"Even if it all goes over my head, I still want to hear it.", he replied. Good attitude. That's probably the mentality that got him in the organization in the first place.

"This whole thing, what we're doing, is just a successful plan. The only thing I wasn't prepared for was your spam commentary, and that was just amusing for recent recruits. If anything large had happened unexpectedly, then we'd care more about it. I knew she could give birth in the middle of it. I knew we'd have to face quite a few Enforcers. It's just me, the Dominator, doing what I do. This is the usual."

"With a usual like that, I could never think of you raising a kid- even with all the servants in the world.", Joey said. He doesn't know?

"You didn't tell him, Jeremy?", Sarah asked.

"Never actually researched that myself.", he said, as we got back into the vehicle, the Enforcer turning the engine on and putting it into reverse. "A from-birth educational institution, I suppose?"

"Right, first try. They put it right next to the genetics facility at Northberg." Which makes for a very short trip for the engineered youngsters.

"That makes sense..", they said with a simultaneity that I thought was reserved for me and Billy.

After we got back to the airfield, Sarah took the baby to Northberg in a propeller plane, I took the jet with Billy and Paul, and an Enforcer flew Jeremy and Joey in the young Illuminatus' helicopter.