Luke almost expected four unfriendly-looking engineered faces to be waiting for him when he came home, but it was still early-AM, the twins and Paul fast asleep. Luke made himself a midnight snack of pork bologna on whole wheat bread, went to bed, and dreamt of nothing.

He woke up relatively early, seeing the twins and his master on the couch together, hoping that they didn't know or didn't care. Last night's adventure would be a stupid thing to suffer or die for.

"Why?" William asked, simply. Well, there goes didn't-know.

"..Because I could?" Luke replied, shrugging, trying for didn't-care.

"Paul... you never broke his freedom illusion," Howard accused. There was an edge to his voice that he never wanted to use with Paul.

"It's been a long time since I heard those words," Paul replied. "Luke, do a handstand and stay like that." Luke got the hint and instantly flipped over. Paul looked at the twins: See? Obedient.

"How stupid do you think I am?" Luke asked. He was facing the opposite direction and standing on his hands, but his voice was accusing anyway.

"Really fucking stupid," William said. Luke's arrogance was wearing his patience thin.

"Yeah, well you're wrong. I checked everything, read all the rules, even had one of Sarah's subordinates help me out. You think I don't know how you guys do things, what you've done, all the people you killed? I read a shitload of it fast, because I'm smart now. You guys made me fucking smart. I killed two people and didn't break a dime's worth of secrecy. Big. Fucking. Deal."

"You also went off on your own with equipment belonging to another Illuminatus with no permission whatsoever to perform a very unnecessary operation," William replied.

"Shut up! You two rule the fucking world, right? The whole fucking world. And you're standing there bitching Paul out about how his servant" There was the slightest hint of sarcasm in that word. "took less than a day with some goober's helicopter to do something you people do every day."

"An Illuminated jet-helicopter, actually, from an apparently loyal Illuminatus. You misled him about your authority, and if he cares to look up the operation, he will know what his vehicle was used for under our fucking authority. Furthermore, it's not 'you people', it's 'we'," Howard said.

"Fine then. Something that we do every day. Just tell me what you're going to do, ground me for a month?"

He was reminding William of the assholes in school, and that, combined with his influence on Paul, was really starting to grate on William's nerves. "There's only one punishment we use," he said, and tapped his sets of fist-blades against each other. Paul looked back and forth between them. He knew that his lifelong friend wasn't going to actually hurt his servant, but he didn't like this either.

Luke sighed. He was very tempted to say 'Okay, kill me' but he had things he still wanted to do. "Don't get me wrong here, all right? You guys are the greatest thing that ever happened to me, if it wasn't for you I'd still be in there, probably still.. fucked up like that. But you've forgotten that it's your planet. Our planet. The Illuminati's planet. You've probably been steeped in secrecy and illusions and all that stuff so much that you don't really know how much real power you have now." Luke marveled at how damn smart he sounded. They really did help him quite a bit.

"That is a very. Serious. Accusation, Lucas," Howard stated.

"Luke, you can stand on your feet again," Paul said, and Luke jumped off his hands and flipped in mid-air to look the twins in the eye, his head moving back and forth between them slowly.

"I'm sure it is. End of Secrecy can't be delayed, right? Has to happen when The Time Is Right, whenever that is." Luke was referencing a couple of treatises on the subject. "I know all about that, I told you I was smart now. You're not going to hurt me for telling you what I think is the truth, are you?" The twins were not. "Your jet alone can probably waste the entire United States air force. Those microwave satellites can cook the entire army and navy. Any Green Berets or other special operations shitheads are mincemeat to Enforcers. I can personally fuck a lot of them up. And I was never named Lucas."

William's temper was dwindling- it was still a rational discussion, after all- and he spoke more even-handedly. "Luke, you are simply wrong. A planet is a very large thing. If the entire Illuminati was united and engineered, you could possibly be correct. However, between the rogues and the fact that there is still only so much power we can muster at one time, attempting to end secrecy now may be a fatal mistake. We're immortal, remember? We can wait a few more years while we kill off our enemies and distribute the retrovirus. And you have no business going out and doing any unneeded operations on your own, so never do anything like that again." Properly, the Dominator should have had Paul say that, but didn't want to embarrass him like that.

"I wasn't going to anyway." The twins understood he was telling the truth; there was no one left for him to really take revenge on. He had more than his share of hatred for his former peers, but just being so much more powerful than them was enough.

"Shall we review the way you performed this?" Howard asked, sitting down on the couch and gesturing to the screen. William sat to his right, then Paul, then Luke.

"I just fried them, I didn't take care of all the details. I had some guy, some operative do that." Howard didn't bother turning the screen on after he heard that.

"Misleading him about your authority as well," Howard replied. But at least a real professional did the secrecy preservation. If there had been irregularities with that, they would have been noted.

"Look, you two got me on that, all right? Besides, he knew it was my parents. I'm sure he could figure it out."

"And that is exactly the problem. It makes us look like fools. Do you not see this?" Howard asked.

"Because I borrowed some guy's helicopter- jet-helicopter, whatever- and killed two lousy normals?!" The twins smiled ever so slightly at Luke's use of 'normals', but their body language was menacing.

Paul looked to the twins to his left, at Luke to his right, and did not like what he saw. The twins had never killed a sentient engineered and did not relish the idea, and Luke was still at least nominally obedient, but the tension had grown deadly.

"Luke, apologize," Paul commanded him.

"I'm sorry," Luke said after a second. Paul glared at him. "For doing this on my own." The glare continued. "...and for making you look like fools. Didn't know it was that easy."

Paul felt the right side of his body tingle slightly, his hair standing on end. "And discharge. Now!" Luke put his hands next to each other a foot from Paul's face, and there was a brief crackle of electricity. He hadn't really meant to charge up like that; it was becoming a reflex to tense situations.

Paul looked to his left. He wanted to say something pithy, but all that came out was, "What's with you two? Damn, you never act like this." What was with them, they all realized, is that they were pissed off, at people they're not used to pissing them off, a very dear friend and his servant. But any good servant would only act independently to serve his master's interests, not his own. "We're the only ones who knew that he didn't have permission. Do what you do best. Lie! Or if you won't, I will."

"What we do best isn't lying, Paul. Or even Dominating. It's killing," Howard said through clenched teeth. For the first time in his life he was actively suppressing his Dominator rage. The idea of him having to lie about something like that, to save face, because of what some servant did was infuriating. But if he had to do something about Paul (do something about Paul?!) and his errant property, he'd do it when he was calm.

"All right- hold it!" William shouted. "I can't believe we're having this discussion. Paul, we're not going to hurt you or anything precious to you over this. We probably will end up lying just because it's the logical thing to do, but I doubt anyone's ever going to ask. Fuck it, I'll make up some bullshit about how Paul ordered you to kill your parents as a loyalty test. But listen, Luke, you have no idea how thin the ice is here. Sure, the secrecy risk is tiny, but just killing 'a couple of lousy normals' is a tiny risk for nothing. One of the first things I wanted to do when I got here was to go kick somebody's ass, and there's still some normal-world asses I'd like to kick, but for the organization's sake I won't do things like that." Yet.

"Yeah. All right, I understand," he said, turning his head away. "Anal as hell!" he muttered sotto voce, without taking the other engineereds' superior hearing into account.

Oddly enough, Howard relaxed on hearing that, clear understanding lightening his mood instantly. "Luke, in your head, you know you are not the center of the universe. But in your heart, you've always felt you had to act as if you are, because of the circumstances of your upbringing and the necessities of your former life. Now you are here, which requires a far different line of thinking. Your parents were not important. They were literally not worth the time and effort it took for you to kill them. Even if you bothered some operative to do it, they would still not be worth the time and effort. In fact, the only reason Mr. Rhines was worth Paul's time is because he was an Illuminatus."

"Not that he could possibly have done all that shit if he wasn't," Paul added.

"So.. no, that's right, isn't it. My life doesn't matter." Luke said this casually, without anger.

William smiled at him, and his eyes glinted, seeming to shine of their own accord. "In the sense that you're thinking about it, absolutely not. You are an Illuminated servant. Your former life is an empty shadow. You have no rights, nothing you truly own, not even yourself. This is the price you paid, and you're not stupid enough to give us any bullshit about it not being worth it. Everything that you are, everything you will be, is here, with us, so long as you live, which will be quite a long time if you refrain from pissing us off." The twins chuckled. "Any and all grudges against anyone that you previously had are meaningless. There was no one you cared about that you left behind, but even if there was, he would mean nothing now. You are simply a mostly self-directed piece in our game, and enjoying much more real independence because of it." Luke laughed- put like that, it sounded contradictory, but it was true! "And, when the time is right, you will stand with Paul as he joins us in establishing the End of Secrecy. Now let's end this pointlessness and enjoy each other's company." William caused four controllers to pop out of the screen, and Luke put aside his general dislike of computer games to play the oldie-but-goodie Super Smash Bros. Melee.

As is often the aftermath of an angry conversation, the participants internally chided themselves for taking part in it. "I bet if Sarah was here, she'd slap us all silly for that," Luke said, and everyone laughed; the idea of Sarah slapping them, or her slapping anyone to any state other than dead was funny. Paul in particular didn't finally stop chuckling at that until twenty seconds later.

"Hey, Luke, why did you borrow a jet-copter instead of just using mine?" Paul asked.

"You have one?" The laughter bounced off the walls. "Oh gee, I'm sorry, I keep forgetting that those things are cheap!" Seriousness blended with sarcasm brought more laughter.

"You really don't understand what it means to rule the world, do you?" William asked. Ah, perspective. A great many fresh recruits, Illuminati and servants both, had similar problems.

"Do I want to?"

"You'll figure it out in due course," Howard said.

"You know what you should have done, though?" Paul asked as Luke's Pikachu got between the twins' characters and a few moves later was sent flying. "I can't believe you missed this one."

"What?"

"Thrown yourselves on their mercy because you're an orphan." Brief silence, then explosive laughter, although William ended up explaining the classic definition of chutzpah.

It was easily an hour or two before Sarah said from just behind them, "Nice match." Luke had let the twins wear each other down, splattered them both with something undodgable in context, then finished off Paul through the power of cheese. "While Paul's pet psycho was off plastering his parents, I was killing more important people." That was followed by an unspoken 'And?' She might as well have said that she'd drank water that day. "I found out that Peter Gritzl was a rogue." She pronounced that one very carefully, making it sound like the possessive, barely including the 'was'.

The look on the twins' faces wasn't worth it, yet.

"Would you like to know the details?" The Duumvirate glared at her in response. Sarah pulled out a small device that looked rather like a normal cellphone and pushed a few buttons on it. The viewscreen buzzed. "That would be me." Howard answered it and Sarah's face showed up on the screen as she looked into the cell's camera. A data transmission request was next, and he accepted it angrily. The Duumvirate did not like their girlfriend playing games with them.

Their expressions changed when they read the data in question.

"Sarah," William asked after a couple of seconds, "how the hell did you get this?"

"I did a bit more research on that guy acquiring the girls. He was using an emotional control device. Just guess who copied his basic design."

Two weeks was definitely long-term memory to the twins; Luke got it first and he looked at her in disbelief. "You mean that asshole copied that?!"

"Just the collars, those.. procedures were all his. Mr. Gritzl had.. different tastes. Even his traps were fetishistic."

"Traps?!" Howard burst. Now the looks on their faces were worth it; it was such a rarity and pleasure to surprise them.

Sarah smiled. "You didn't think I could get all this just by asking politely, did you?"

William looked at her. "So you suspected him, then you raided him, and now you tell us he was a rogue after you already killed him." The twins were almost left speechless. Sarah had deliberately killed a member of their power base without even knowing he was an enemy. Unlike Rhines and many of the other low-level Illuminati slaughtered by the will of the Dominator, Gritzl was long-entrenched, valued in the organization, and had contributed a number of inventions and ideas appropriate to his level and standing.

"If he wasn't a rogue, would you have ever told us you did it?" Howard asked cautiously.

"Yes, but that's because you would have figured it out," Sarah said. Nobody raided like she did.

"How many other Illuminati have you killed and not told us about?" William asked. For the love of fuck! First Paul's servant, now Sarah?!

"None," she said truthfully. "The idea to do this occurred to me when you were doing your research," she lied. She knew they'd kill Matthew, and she knew they'd freak out less badly when she killed Gritzl if they already killed someone for similar mental problems. The things she did to save the twins from themselves and their damned politics. "Do you feel betrayed, Dominator?" she asked formally. The twins just glared at her in silent fury, torn between the absolute impossibility of killing their lover and the mother of their child, and the previously supposed impossibility that she would do a thing like this. "I've had to deal with him and his powerlust before, in person. I didn't understand what I was looking at then. When I saw that he sought power at any cost, and considered his technical experience, and you had already set a precedent by wasting that other fuckhead, it became a better idea to go after him and investigate than not to. Risk versus reward. I think you would have come to the same conclusion, but where you failed is when you thought he was just being male."

"We've already been accused of certain critical flaws in judgment earlier today, Sarah," William said, frowning. "He was a little bit smarter, a little bit more power-hungry, and only moderately more perverted than a lot of guys in this organization." The overtone was I don't like it either, but what am I going to do?

"And it's that little bit that pushes them over the edge," Sarah replied. "There are two sets of rogues. There's the originals, which we still don't know much about and which haven't done much of anything at all. Then there's the johnny-come-latelies, the people who joined after the original conspiracy." Gritzl had been in the Illuminati in the late 80's but hadn't been anywhere near as powerful or as savvy; it was unlikely that the rogues would have wanted him then. "Now, think- why would anyone join something like that? Considering our collective kill record, and the fact that every other engineered is firmly on your side, you'd think they'd realize it's a death sentence."

"Power. They're disenchanted with our hegemony and promised some higher position if the rogues take over. This is basic stuff," Howard said.

"I used to believe that, but now I disagree. I think they hate you personally once they find out what you are. It's your youth they hate, your energy, the fact they can't influence you as they can everyone else, that you are completely impervious to their methods of manipulation, the fact that you change their culture and their rules right out from under them, and, in their minds, dare them to stop you. Perhaps you don't know this sort of thing, you were intentionally trained not to know it because your predecessor wanted to make the perfect unmanipulatable force of justice, if such a thing can be said to exist here."

"Bullshit!" the twins blurted out simultaneously. "Quit insulting our intelligence, Sarah. We've thought about all this a while ago," William continued. "We're a threat to their sense of superiority, yes. We exhibit a tendency to rule with absolute dictates, yes. And since we're taking things to a more outright level than the past, so are they. Their reaction to our unimplantation would have been done a lot differently otherwise. They're just dumb enough to believe they can win."

"The reason anyone chooses to follow any belief system is because of emotion. One of their principal emotions is a sick loathing for everything they cannot control. Why did you take out Rhines?"

"Because he couldn't possibly be that perverted and still be a decent Illuminatus," William replied. "It reflected an overall mental illness."

"Is that an after-the-fact explanation?" Sarah asked. The twins bristled. They didn't like their motives questioned, especially not by her.

"Sarah, we knew that instinctively. The man was fucked in the head, believe me, I actually talked to him. He didn't hate me personally, in fact the sick fuck actually liked me.. probably because he didn't know me very well. But you're right, most of the people we've killed are like that, like Damien fucking Gladstone," Paul said. "People that broken can't make good Illuminati. Or good anything, for that matter, except maybe kibble." Paul's voice took on a certain angry note.

"You are on some level correct, that much is certain," Howard acknowledged to Sarah. "It was an emotional reaction, in much the same way an aggressive reflex to someone pointing a gun at you is an emotional reaction. But my question is this: Was your takeout of Gritzl spurred by pure logic, or gut instinct?"

Sarah nodded. "You got me. But we're getting sidetracked. What I was also getting at is that they feel the same way about you."

"The leaders, I'm not surprised. But the new ones? If they turn to us they can speed up their road to immortality. They have no reason to hate us. It doesn't make sense," Howard replied.

"I never said they were smart or that they had their priorities straight. Which makes me wonder what the rogue leaders intend. Because those guys are smart. Let's watch the evidence, shall we?"

The raid came first, Sarah starting at the physical entry and continuing to Gritzl's basement. She had invested ten grams of weight into a camera mounted in the center of her chest.

"You made it sound like you killed him intentionally," Howard pointed out when her recorder showed the scene of death. He also found Sarah's new acquisition interesting, but decided to save that for later.

Sarah shrugged. "How was I to know he'd be dumb enough to do that himself? I'm not even sure if he's really dead."

"I'm not sure if we're watching the same video, here. In the one I'm watching, he was splattered all over the walls," William said, raising his eyebrows in amusement.

"And with the information I have, I learned that these people can make very, very good copies of themselves."

"Fuck," Howard said. The implications... "Fuck, fuck a duck!" And screw a kangaroo! What was this, Official Illuminati Bad News Day?

"This is some major league bullshit, Sarah. Everyone we've ever killed could possibly be still around. Everyone!" William exclaimed, his hands animated as he talked.

"The Night Operator. The old one. The one who blew his brains out. I knew there was something fucked up about that!" Howard shouted, rolling his head back. "Oh, am I going to rip the shit out of him..." That particular cloud did have a silver lining. Howard had wanted revenge for his own implantation.

"James Baker, that other douchebag, the Bitches, the Bastard, the Bastard's son..," William reminisced.

The Bastard's son. Paul's heart squeezed particularly hard for a beat. Fucking Christ, not him, he was gone... "Luke, this is a standing order. If it ever comes to light that Damien Gladstone is still alive, butcher him. Your way. Take as much time as you'd like."

"I hear and obey," Luke said, smiling. No one asked why Paul didn't want to do it himself. The poetic justice was evident.

"Not even going to interrogate him?" Sarah asked.

"Like anyone but a complete idiot would tell him anything but misinformation. Where do they live, anyway? I mean, seriously, where do you hide that many Illuminati who can't be seen in public anymore?" Paul asked. And they would have to be hiding, completely. Faces and voices changed wouldn't do it. Someone getting the slightest bit of their DNA would blow their secrecy.

"Yeah, they're probably all in one place. All of them trapped in there, with either nothing at all or very little to command," Howard conjectured.

"Reminds me of Team Melee Starcraft," William said.

"That's that schizophrenic 1v1 mode," Howard remembered. His brother nodded. "Probably fun for normals, but boring for us. And even worse when more people pile on. The rogues in that situation? It'd be like a bag of cats."

"Or maybe they've just managed to accept that they're out of the game once their other-selves are killed," Paul suggested.

"Yeah, but they're growing old, and it's been years for some of them. Especially if Damien really was one of them. Pretend we don't know about it, just keep killing them, and see if we can find anything that looks like multiple people are running it?" Howard suggested.

"No, they know that we know," Sarah said. "Let's keep going."

"Did he actually have anything on that computer?" William asked.

"I don't think he ever put it on that computer. I was setting up his inheritance, so you two wouldn't need to divide his resources. Although he had a number of children, he had no heirs. For some reason he made them all into servants, and yes, he really did that himself. But also found in his file was a will, that most of his property would go to Quadrus Dominus, held in escrow by Xavier Burgard until Quad is old enough to claim it. Interesting."

"Insult and injury. Nice," Howard said, smiling. Disinformation that obvious was the Illuminated equivalent of a middle finger. "Although there will be people who don't like that one at all."

"He was a proven rogue. Do you think I'm going to tell the truth about how I found out to anyone but you? Who exactly is going to complain?" Sarah replied. Her organization unilaterally taking resources was a bold and divisive move, but not altogether unheard-of. For normal targets, they would simply request more than they needed and keep all of it; for Dominator's orders, they would retain a small portion of the target. The first two years of Howard's reign were lean times indeed for this sort of thing.

"I'm just curious what a four year old boy is going to do with a whole lot of teenage girls," Paul said. The twins chortled.

"Unlike some of us who just hand stuff like that to the first available warm body, I took them and will move them where I please," Sarah snapped. Like the ones Paul had rescued, many if not most would get a quick, merciful death. "Speaking of warm bodies, I suggest we end all recruitment."

"I'll guess how this argument is going to go," William said. "You're going to suggest it because of the fact that procedures and technology make it ever easier for a smaller number of people to control a greater, and the fact that the engineered youth coming out of Northberg is going to be far superior and won't contain any psychological deviants."

"And the fact that there are a lot of servants that can do practically everything an Illuminatus can. Is there anything to beat these arguments?"

"Yes," Howard answered. "The first is that we'll be seen as making a massive, unilateral power play and possibly alienate a significant number of older, more entrenched Illuminati. We're not terribly fond of most of them either, but they're still our power base. The second is that there are still a number of savants out there to be added to the gene pool, but insanity and genius tend to stick close together and it's not always practical to divide the two pre-recruitment. The third is that any recently-recruited idiot is an ant. If they're playing it as paranoid as we are, which they apparently are, the enemy leaders cannot fully recruit any members who joined since our unimplantation, because any one of them can be an infiltrator- they have to resort to cell structure and limited liability." That phrase took on a whole new meaning here. "If the new Illuminati know what they're doing, great. If they can't cut the mustard or they're doing things they shouldn't or they're simply not fit to live, then they die. Are you annoyed with having to do your job?"

"Yes."

"Don't be. Secrecy will end in a few years," Howard said.