Jeremy and Joey showed up fifteen minutes later, jet turning to helicopter before gently landing on the twins' front lawn, joyful greetings exchanged in the sunlight. The last time Jeremy'd seen the Duumvirate in person was their birthday four months ago, a spectacularly awesome affair involving both normals and engineereds, spanning the globe from the Sahara to Antarctica. One of the twins asked what Joey was doing way down there (his head came up to the Dominator's mid-chest), and, laughing, picked him up to sit on his shoulders. The honor was accepted with mirth as they walked inside; now the servant saw over them all.

And they continued carrying him, into their upstairs room, away from Jeremy who was held back by Sarah. What the hell--

That was when Sarah showed Jeremy words on a screen that he recognized immediately, startled. The phrasing was for Joey's benefit. 'The complete and whole truth' would have carried the same general meaning but the formalized courtroom version left no room for misunderstanding. He looked up at Sarah, only beginning to realize what was going on. She glared back at him in silent command: do it or you're fucked.

"Joey, when they ask you questions, tell the Duumvirate the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!" he called upstairs in a much louder voice than necessary, almost screaming the words. Instantly the door to the twins' room closed and Jeremy was left to ponder why he had been told to say that and why Joey had been led away from him, and came to the obvious realization he didn't want to think about: they didn't completely trust him.

"Sarah, Paul, after all this time, you honestly think that I might be..," he said in a much softer voice than necessary.

"Operationally speaking, it remains an open question," Sarah said neutrally. Jeremy was an experienced enough Illuminatus to know that was intended as a statement of fact to avoid insult. It still felt insulting, though.

"Yeah, after all this time," Paul said. He gently reached out and grasped one of Jeremy's hands in both of his. "I'm really sorry we have to treat you like this. We have to be sure for the retrovirus. Until you've tried it, you have no idea how powerful this is."

"Now you're just making me want it even more!" Paul's excitement was contagious.

"How do you think I was? When the Operator said he had almost finished mine, I ran out of here like a bat out of hell! For the first time in my life since I met Billy, I'm not completely outclassed anymore!" The boys shared a chuckle at that.

"Are they actually making mine or was that going to.," Jeremy started.

"They're making it," Paul interrupted. "We'll be very surprised if Joey starts telling us bad things about you." And Jeremy's thoughts turned to what Joey actually would be forced to tell them, and he blushed. It wasn't the hidden abject fear of someone about to get caught for treason to his Dominator. Nor was it the cringing humiliation of someone about to have some horrible personal secret ripped out of his closet like a dancing skeleton. Jeremy's red face represented simple youthful embarrassment, and he let out a long, chuckling sigh and sat on the Duumvirate's plush red couch, head in hands, as his servant was interrogated.


"What the heck is going on?" Joey asked the moment the door was closed.

"Ve are azking ze queztions here, untermensch," William growled in a very convincing Nazi voice. Joey flinched back but relaxed when he saw the smiles, and stiffened when they went away to be replaced by piercing looks of stone. Cigar-store Duumvirate. He sat down at one of the twins' computer chairs, swiveling it around and fidgeting, figuring that if he was going to be aggressively quizzed, he might as well get comfortable.

"Is Jeremy plotting against us?" Howard asked, flatly.

"No," Joey replied, stopping his fidgeting immediately, the word escaping his throat and barely brushing his mouth on the way out. Had he not been commanded to answer, his reply would have been shocked silence. Their body language didn't show direct threat and they weren't upset, but why would they ask such a crazy question? Joey was starting to feel what everyone else felt when confronted with a serious Duumvirate.

"Has he ever communicated with any of our confirmed enemies?" William asked.

Joey had meant to answer 'No, hell no, what are you thinking?!' but realized that he just might have at some point. "...Maybe. I don't know. If he did, he probably didn't know who they were." This, or something akin to it, was the expected answer. If Jeremy had been regularly communicating with someone later found to be a foe of the Duumvirate, the twins would have expected him to tell them about it.

"Are you there for most of his conversations?" Howard asked. Joey started looking between them, anxious. This wasn't good cop/bad cop; this was neutral and intimidating cop/neutral and intimidating cop. The effect was striking in its own way, especially since he knew their power and they were so much bigger than him. He knew that was silly, it's not like their size of all things made them dangerous, but...

"I don't know, some of them. Probably most. Yeah, most, unless he's talking to a lot more people than I know about."

"Has he ever sent you out, or allowed you to be sent out, of the room before a conversation?" William asked.

"No way, he never, ever, does that, and nobody ever asks for that." Once upon a time, servants weren't expected or even allowed to know what their masters know and weren't part of Illuminated conversations, but by the fall of 2003 the term 'nescients' was only used for normals. This was another of the culture changes that the twins had helped bring to the Illuminati, although it had been happening anyway. When servants are your weapon holders and information is a weapon, withholding information from servants is a good way to get screwed over or even killed, and asking servants to pretend they don't know what you do is silly.

"Has he ever said he was going somewhere without you, and you later found out he lied and went someplace else?" Howard asked.

Joey's reply involved a smile. "He never goes anywhere without me."

William's turn: "Do you ever get the feeling that he's not telling you something?"

"Oh yeah, all the time." The twins didn't show their surprise. "He never tells me everything he's doing. I watch him do it, and usually I understand most of it, but sometimes he just does something that doesn't seem to make sense but it ends up working out in the end." The twins' surprise was replaced by complete understanding. Although he was by no measure stupid, there were very good reasons why Joey was the servant and Jeremy the master. He simply couldn't match wits with his white-wearing friend.

Howard's turn: "What does he really think of us?" And at that, Joey blushed just as Jeremy had downstairs.

"He worships you. He.. he idolizes you. Sometimes he tries to act like you. He's not obsessed or anything but he thinks that your ideas on practically everything, control, relationships between Illuminati, all of that stuff is all right and tries to follow them. It usually works, too." That was it; Jeremy had just been outed as the world's biggest Dominator fanboy. The twins shared a deep, lengthy chuckle and relaxed their intimidating poses.

"I'm.. heh.. I'm really sorry about that, Joey," William said, giving him a gentle pat on the shoulder.

"It's all right, I understand. You guys had me pretty scared," he said, getting up and chuckling as well, his mind awash in relief. "Hey, um.. I'm getting this too, right?" Wouldn't it completely suck if he didn't?

"Once Jeremy is cleared for the retrovirus, that means that he's also allowed sentient engineered servants," William replied, smiling.

"You don't think he'd leave you a normal, do you?" Howard asked. The question was intended in jest, and Joey wouldn't have answered if not for the command.

The word was carefully enunciated with lips and tongue: "No."

Paul saw the matching blush on Joey's face as he slowly walked downstairs and tried to guess the reason. Were the two of them sharing something more than a house over there? It couldn't be just regular old gay sex, that wasn't even a blip on the radar. Maybe Joey was the one on top? That would explain quite a bit. "He's our fanboy," Howard explained, nodding at Jeremy, whose mouth opened in shock. "What, you thought we wouldn't tell them?"

"More importantly," Jeremy said in an obvious bid to change the subject, "you're really that scared? To start worrying about any slim chance that anyone ever might be plotting against you before you can make them just as fast and strong as you are?"

"It's not the strength or the speed we're worried about. Or the regeneration, or the immune system, or the immortality even," William said, looking at him solemnly. "It's the intelligence. Take microfusion. It's incredibly difficult to comprehend, even for us. Magnetic fields right down to the atomic level, it involves using quantum physics against itself. And no one can get the chance to reverse-engineer it who isn't on the retrovirus short list already."

"But you take one of the enemies, and you make him engineered?" Howard asked rhetorically. "A genius, who knows that microfusion can be made to work, who hates us. We are not having one of those."

"I understand," Jeremy said, nodding and smiling. "Anyway, it's good to hear." The twins raised eyebrows at him- good to hear?! "You just said that I'm going to become a genius. I think I need it." He smiled wider. "And yes, I'm a total fanboy." Fuck it, it was out in the open now, so why not? He reached out and hugged one of the twins, burying his face in the white fabric, his servant following suit with the other. It was good to have someone to look up to, someone to trust, someone to call if the shit hit the fan. In normal land and even as an Illuminatus, he'd have people he was supposed to look up to. Invariably, they ended up as patronizing, vain douchebags, failing to live up to expectations and making ultimately unreasonable demands. The Duumvirate tended to exceed his expectations and their demands were sensible and executed well, if paranoid. Such as them actually ordering him not to tell anyone how they interrogated servants. Geez, guys, like he was really going to do something like that.

Joey had it easier. The person he looked up to was almost always right there beside him, and he had the luxury of having that person directly command him on a day-to-day basis.

The six of them hung out for a while, enjoying the island and each other's company, occasionally watching the Duumvirate deal with various problems ('patience of fucking saints', Jeremy thought; he'd have dealt with all the horseshit much more harshly), with an invitation to come back later once the retrovirus had finished with them.