For spies and assassins, it is a very fortituous thing indeed when targets' locations, names, faces, and hierarchy are all known. Most Illuminati had at least some information about their top servants in the database, but lower-level operatives were left in the shadows, to anonymously make trouble in case of a takeover. This raid was no exception- surely Wilfred didn't tell him everything- but Wilfred had handed Paul a list, and it was accurate in what it contained. Almost all of the known targets worked regular hours in their jobs as high-ranking normals, and so were suitably diurnal for a mass 3 AM raid to catch them unawares, some right after they had staggered home from a Saturday night drinking binge.

It was most sensible to start at the top. The servants' de-facto leader was not Hugo Chavez but a normal-unknown by the name of Jacques Barrera and his wife, Carmenita. Sarah's first call that night showed him lying, face-up, on his bed, the covers pulled back with a slight bloodstain from the implantation. The first words out of his mouth were the same as he had given Sarah, in nearly-unaccented English: "Please don't involve my children in this." Their school-age children were safe asleep a few rooms down, husband and wife refraining from screaming for their sake, assassins quieter than Santa Claus.

"You're consciously excluding your children from us?" Paul sighed as Jacques nodded. The idea was somehow loathsome, but fuck it. "If that's your wish I'll respect it. Answer my questions and tell me no lies. Were you assigned to be in charge of Wilfred's continuing operations?"

"Ah- not after- when the time came, yes, but for day-to-day, no."

"Explain. Fully, so I understand." He didn't have time to listen to this, but he really didn't have time not to listen to it.

"His intention was to actually give basic control of the country to you. He has his own enemies, who he's.. surmised will have the ability to take this nation away from him. By giving it to you, he blocks their attack. I was to be left as a sleeper agent to retake the country when he felt it necessary for his ends. The rest of Wilfred's men, you see, are loyal to me and to Carmenita- and we are- were- loyal to him." That made sense. Servant hierarchies beat dealing with them all yourself.

"I'm implanting all of them as well. Your old master messed with someone he can't handle," he said on a whim, smiling. "Move the screen so your wife can see." Jacques might have been resigned to his fate, but Carmenita looked like terrified hell. "Give me the names and locations of all of Wilfred's Venezuelan servants not on this list."

This took a while, with the two of them consulting everything from email to a genuine paper Rolodex. Paul found himself in contact with Karl Mandel for the first time, who Sarah had assigned the task of new target acquisition. Paul, new at this, was slow and trying to be methodical; Karl was fast, methodical, and immediately helped correct any of Paul's omissions and mistakes in acquiring needed raid-aiding information. 'That was Sarah's tutor? God damn. No fucking wonder.' Paul found himself dealing with two new acquisitions, listening to two voices at the same time, his fingers flying between the 'mute' for one contact and the other. It felt like juggling chainsaws. How the hell did the rest of the Illuminati do it? (Paul would later learn that this sort of mass acquisition was something most Illuminati would have their own team for, not try to do themselves even with support, instead implanting some servants to other servants and resetting them later.)

He found a moment to give the husband and wife their final orders. "I order you two to retake your place as servant leaders, and things are to be ran as they were before Wilfred's 'gift'. Understand that I'm giving you broad discretion in operations. Use your judgment for my benefit. The screens will be our points of contact unless I establish more. Don't try to avoid me." The servants looked at each other as Paul said that, and he realized he committed an operational safeguard but a social faux pas. Avoid their new master and be left adrift? Any servants worth the name would rather gnaw their own arm off. "I'm inexperienced," Another meaningful look, this time no shit, "and you're implanted. If there's something you feel I should know, you're ordered to tell me as soon as secrecy permits."

"Wilfred will seek revenge," Carmenita immediately said, right before her husband. "He may not react immediately. But he does not forgive slights. He may make attempts on our lives." It was Paul's turn to give the meaningful look: what, really? Of all the things, that was what they were worried about?

"Did you notice the people who implanted you? Those are from the assassins' organization. Which is now run by Sarah Mortis Dominus, you might have recognized her." Their eyes widened. "If he tries, Sarah and I will turn him to soup." Or Paul may be expected to do it himself by that point, but he wanted to instill confidence. His screen informed him of another implantation. "I have more new servants to deal with now. We'll talk later." He was about to order them to try to get some sleep, but that's about as counterproductive as implant commands get. He clicked off instead ('setting one chainsaw down') to focus on the other operations.

Almost all of them went as smoothly. It had been so long since Sarah was on a real mission herself, and since she commanded the operation this time she didn't have to worry about someone else's stupid orders getting in the way. Glorious! Sarah enjoyed the thrill of silently leaping from rooftop to rooftop in some cases and remotely sabotaging normal-make motion detectors in others, pure efficiency and purpose her way of showing off to her astonished team what she was for, why she was created. Illuminati symbolism be damned, black was her color.

One mansion-owner had his own private security; they never knew their employer had been raided at all. One particularly paranoid man, implanted already, had a suicide injector that he wore beneath his hair and a cubic centimeter of neurotoxin slammed into his brain the moment he detected, with his many sensors, that someone with Illuminated know-how was trying to sneak in. (No one, not even Karl or Sarah, was reasonably expecting something like that. These servants lived among normals in residential districts, some rich and some poor.) Another man noticed early, freaked out badly, and managed to give one of Sarah's agents a flesh wound (silenced pistol; at least he regarded secrecy as important) before Sarah took him down herself. Once he realized who, what, and why, he calmed down; being implanted scared him, but one of Wilfred's existing foes terrified him a great deal more for reasons Paul didn't particularly care about at the moment.

By the time everything was over, Sarah and Karl were approving of a mostly smooth operation, an anonymous agent was cursing himself for not seeing the gun until it was too late, various servants were in various states ranging from 'Oh fuck, that chamito's going to get us all killed' to 'No more Wilfred, thank God'. Paul found himself with a shitload of names and positions to memorize, and all he wanted was to go to bed. So he did.


His best friend's voice: "Hey, Paul!" Oh come on, already? It was light out, but he didn't even dream.

"Whatever it is, I don't want it," Paul replied, mostly to his pillow, just loud enough for engineered ears to hear him. He ran a chunk of the world! Couldn't he at least sleep in?

"You don't want breakfast?" That voice again, as if it was just ten-year-old Paul sleeping over at nine-year-old Billy Bohecker's house, and Billy would eat three times Paul's breakfast before the two of them would play together on the weekend before they did homework, Paul sitting on Billy's shoulders, amazed when he could not only walk carrying him like that but run fast, which ended with both of them promising to Billy's mom not to reveal that he could do that.

But that was before they found out that Billy didn't really have parents but did have a twin brother.

Paul sat up. His head felt like it was full of not-quite-depleted uranium, and it took him a second to realize the color swap of his room. The silent servants had come in overnight and changed the contents of his closet and all of the furniture except the bed he was laying on. He had slept with his suit on, and didn't bother changing; instead he meandered downstairs, the smell hitting his nose.

Sarah smiled at him over her mighty slab of bacon, not in smugness but in deep satisfaction. Paul didn't get it. She'd just been on the business end of his night from hell and it was almost as if she was thanking him for it. What was she so happy about? He was about to ask her when she slept, but he knew the answer: anywhen she got the chance. "Forget assassinations. You are the goddess of catnapping." She laughed at that, smiling even wider.

"So Paul, how'd you like your first day of Illumination?" William asked, smiling as well. Paul flipped him off in response. William looked Paul over- haggard, messy, uncut hair, bloodshot eyes, downcast, worried, and with a great weight on his shoulders. He almost said something sarcastic about respective worries and responsibilities, but then again Paul was only human.

"Is there anything I forgot?" Paul asked, plopping down on the chair like he weighed a hundred tons.

"I doubt it. What were your orders?" Sarah replied.

"I gave Jacques broad discretion, told him to use his judgment for my benefit, and told him to tell me if there's anything I need to know."

"Then definitely not. He'd tell you, wouldn't he?" Paul ordered a servant to use his judgment for Paul's benefit? She liked that phrase. Quick, general, and all-encompassing, yet loose and non-restrictive. Didn't Howard use something like that on her at one point? She'd have to use that one herself.

"You're right. I just want people who know what they're doing to be actually running things. And I don't know what the fuck I'm doing."

"If it wasn't bad politics I'd put you to fourth level right now for that," Howard replied after swallowing. "Because that puts you above those who don't know what the fuck they're doing, but insist on actually running things anyway."

Sarah left for a few seconds and came back with a tall cup full of brown fluid in her hand, which she placed in front of Paul. "I wondered why we had any of this stuff. Drink."

He looked up at the cup. She definitely wouldn't poison him, but... "What's in it?"

"You don't recognize the smell? You just took a South American country, you should get used to this."

"Oh, it's just coffee." Some half-formed memory told him it was a drink for adults, and the engineereds never touched it, but he chugged it in one long gulp. The aroma and deep bitter taste kicked him like Juan Valdez's mule and the caffeine would kick him again in a few minutes.

"And a little bit of coca leaf extract." He perked up suddenly- she gave him what?! "Chill out. It's a tiny dose. Your servants are probably chewing on five times that much right now."

"They chew it.. I didn't know that, and you want me to learn stuff like that," Paul figured out immediately.

"The drugs down there would be one of the first things."

"If he starts snorting Bolivian marching powder, I'm blaming you," William said offhand. Howard, who never heard the term but knew of all kinds of chemical ways to get Bolivians or anyone else to march, started laughing hard.

"Hey-o for Llello," Paul joked, pronouncing the Spanish ll's properly.

"That needs to be a song," William replied before diving back into his food.

Paul waited for Wilfred's call all day, doing the research Sarah suggested (everybody used coca in that part of the world; it was only when it was refined that it became a problem), trying to relax screwing around playing games with the twins and their dogs, now obligated to step off-screen when they got a call from some Illuminatus requesting arbitration. (Having another Illuminatus by the decision-making Duumvirate's side was more bad politics.) The Duumvirate had proclaimed that the accusatory use of the R-word would inevitably cause somebody to die, either the accuser or the accused, and probably a lot more people as well. Implants would be used to verify and hunt the rest of them down. Normally, everyone tried to trick the Dominator, it was part of the business; but the Levels had apparently gotten the message here.

When it finally did come, he took it upstairs. Answering this one on the Duumvirate's comfy couch wasn't quite what he was going for.

Wilfred's ruddy face, all stern and frowny. Would it get frownier, or shocked? Only one way to find out. "Paul, there is something concerning our agreement we need to talk about," he said in that increasingly grating voice.

For an instant, Paul felt the faintest twinge of now-I'm-in-trouble fear, swiftly washed away by 'This guy can't hurt me. Very few of them can. I'm wearing white. That means I can do anything I damned well want, proven by the fact that I am doing just that.' A smile broke out on his face. "An agreement? I don't recall signing anything," he said with a smirk. "Are you sure you have the right Paul?"

"I don't know what you've done, but I've tried contacting three of the men I have working with you" ('With, not for, fuck you,' Paul thought) "and I haven't gotten responses from any of them. Would you mind telling me what is going on?" Dear God, that paternal voice was starting to grate.

"Oh, that's nothing. Have you tried to contact the men working for you that you thought I didn't know about?" Wilfred half-opened his mouth, falling off his high horse. Paul exploded, his voice cracking more than once and his eyes getting slightly more damp than he would have liked. "Do you think that I'm dumb enough to believe that you'd just hand me a country in exchange for my trust? Great idea, give some kid pretend-control and get a sub-Illuminatus, lots of respect from your friends, 'cause you've got a free in-road to the Dominator! How about none of the fucking above!"

"If you didn't know who you know-"

"If I didn't know who I know, fatass, you wouldn't have called me in the first place! So fuck off!" Wilfred stared at him, almost said something, but clicked off as Paul stared him down. If I wanted a father figure, asslicker, I'd go find my real father and implant him.

Laughter broke out to his side, and he swiveled his chair to look at the twins. "Are you sure you have the right Paul?" Howard imitated. "I've got to use that. And with us it's even worse."

"You know what else we can do?" William started, grinning. "When they refuse to take responsibility for their failures? We just blame each other for smacking them down. 'Well, I would help you, but this other Dominator...'" Even louder laughter. "Your voice just died on you. And you obviously didn't plan your words."

"I actually planned too much. I thought of all these things I could say and so I never said any of them." The twins gave him a been-there look of understanding.

"That was an awesome finisher, though," William continued. "He wouldn't have called you."

"So true," Howard said, nodding. "But if you researched him, you could have continued with the fact that if he didn't know who he knew, he wouldn't be in a position to talk to you at all."

"Wait, you checked up on him?" Double eyeroll- after that much smart, please no stupid.

"He's obviously trying to find a side road to us," Howard reminded him. "Think how we take that shit. Especially now."

"Wait, isn't that what always happens?" Paul asked, laying back in the white velvet. Damn, this chair needed a footrest- ahh, there it is. If he was really going to be an Illuminatus he needed a smug look, and he felt it easier to be smug in a more relaxed position. And holy fuck was this the most comfortable chair ever. He felt like he could lay in it for days, and that was all he wanted to do about now. Anxiety and panic were starting to get annoying. As a servant he had done a moderate amount of serving, and a great deal of passive learning, game playing, and lounging around. He was starting to deeply miss that.

"Paul, in case you have short-term amnesia today, we are in a mood for killing people," William said. "Anyone taking risks to attract our attention is either foolhardy or has something serious up his sleeve."

"What- what the hell? I thought they all had something-", Paul started.

"They do," Sarah interrupted, appearing out of nowhere as usual, behind the twins. "You think, 'big shit just went down, there's a threat to the established order, everybody better pull together and stop the bullshit for a while until we put down the threat'. And sure, that's completely right, that's the sensible response." She rolled her eyes a bit, shaking her head. "Not gonna happen, guys. The first thing that they thought of when you said calling people rogues would get somebody killed? 'How can I make this one guy accuse this other guy of it without it getting traced back to me?' To everybody in here, it's the end of the fucking world. To them? Not so much. It's just another plot among so many." The twins looked at her with a degree of understanding and horror. "They hate you because you don't give them what they want, but they support you because you don't give the other guy what he wants. Fairness doesn't mean a damn thing to them." She tried to hold it back, but couldn't hide the bitterness.

"Or to you," Howard said.

"That place was mine. Mine by birth, mine by popular authority, mine by promise. Mine by nobody got in my way."

"Except for all the people who are going to see you still with us, and say 'The Dominator gave it to her.'", William replied.

She stopped her frustrated look- he was surely right, hell, that was Karl's first assumption- and pantomimed looking at her wrist instead. She hadn't worn a timepiece there for many years. "I understand, Dominator. I will begin caring in half-past I don't give a fuck."

"But you take one," Howard said, stepping towards her.

"Finally," she said, and in engineered-movement instants they were in the twins' bedroom, leaving Paul on his swivelchair, blinking. What exactly did they do in there, anyway? There was one appropriate hole, and two sticks. Did she take it in other holes, use her hands, did they take turns, what? With engineered strength there were positions they could take that normals wouldn't dare try. Maybe it was better if he didn't know. He had things to check up on- make sure that Wilfred didn't have long-term traps or go apeshit or something- then he was going to take the longest rest he possibly could before duty pulled him away.

As it turned out, duty was existent only in limited amounts, as a conversation with Jacques and Carmenita confirmed. Most country-owning Illuminati took the time to micromanage somewhat, choosing policies and laws and altering the way they wanted their chosen nation to behave. Forms of government, behaviorism, making people believe this or that; that was what they cared about and why most of them had gotten in the Illuminati in the first place.

But Paul didn't really care what form of government normals lived under, and so gave his servants nearly total reign over policy, deciding only to step in when they needed extra coordination or immediate orders. So long as things remained stable and his forces remained in power, who gave a fuck about communism or capitalism? Venezuela was socialist, so he figured he'd leave it that way, but whether or not free enterprise or collectivism were the chosen ideology meant little to him. Illuminati had a long history of fighting each other with ideology, using various plots to take over each other's power bases- the Russian Revolution had been about this- but that was before the modern institution was fully structured, the Dominator enthroned, the organization's focus heavily altered from the original vision of Adam Weishaupt. World War 2 had opened the eyes that World War 1 didn't. These days the major industrialized regions' owners limited their conflicts to minor socioeconomic issues and all the direct power fighting was left for the less-developed regions of the world.

Like South America.

So defense was his immediate concern. There was no question of someone looking for ways to depose his hold; that was just what Illuminati did, powerlust above all, even though most would be scared out of it by the people he knew. There was a difference between 'disputes' and 'fair competition', although the line was blurry; they were supposed to be able to play the power game without interference from the assassins' organization or the Dominator, but 'supposed to' never meant a whole lot to an organization that could alter the rules of the world. A suitably power-hungry normal would do anything for a chance at his uniquely-privileged position.

And here he was, not really caring about normal political power in the slightest, but simply taking what he needed to be accepted as an Illuminatus. Why? Why didn't he care? Then he remembered what was really important- the twins, their ideal, the kids at Northberg and the engineered future. That was what this was all about. His own power was just a tool to that end.

The resulting contempt for his new peers came easily. Space-filling wastrels, con men and cheats, small-dicked weaklings, petty tyrants with the worst blend of superiority and inferiority complexes, and sad, desperate attention seekers whose path from fourth level to third meant so much to them that they were willing to destroy each other, and countless normals, in what they knew to be a silly game, solely for their own gratification. These were the people who ran so much of the world, and Paul found himself wishing for their swift demise.