The Duumvirate personally approaching and inspecting new Illuminati was not an absolute barrier to treason by any means. Rogues could still filter in, easily. There was no way of telling what an Illuminatus had said to a recruit, and all the Illuminati had in the way of documentation for the normal-plucked ones were, obviously, normal records; the very same normal records that Illuminati may edit at whim. Theoretically, those edits would be logged in the master database. In practice, that was only when the Illuminatus doing it wanted them to be. Any fakers had a massive advantage over any inspection.

But, even so, the twins' examinations and easy interviews accomplished two things. The first was psychological; it allowed the nascent Illuminati to see their Duumvirate in person, and at nearly fourteen the twins were already quite physically imposing, their pure presence lending them credibility as the holders of absolute power. Rogue recruits, if not cowed, could be frightened into acting hastily or with greater hesitation. At the same time, it firmly established that the Duumvirate were not unreachable; that they could be approached and even conversed with, a terrifying thing for many fresh Illuminati, rogue or not.

The second reason, more concrete, was that it allowed them all to be scanned for implants in one fell swoop. William, striding down the Bavarian hallway with his brother and friends, was idly thinking of how nice it was to have a system where they could hide such scanners in the ceiling and walls.

And that was when the railgun projectile tore through the steel wall at more than twenty thousand kilometers per hour from roughly ten meters away, passing directly through Howard's torso, severing his spinal cord and tearing through the lower portion of his heart. The resulting wave of overpressure inside his body ruptured his lungs. Shock traveled up his spine into his brain and his world faded to black before even he could react. As the projectile was extremely thin and armor-piercing and due to the nature of Illuminated steel, there was a bare minimum of relatively slow-moving shrapnel, and it mostly embedded itself in the twins' clothing. William received a cut to his right cheek which glanced off the bone. Sarah and Paul, being behind them and just far enough to the sides, received no wounds save for a small cut on Paul's right ear.

For the sole Dominator still breathing, time slowed to a crawl.

Centisecond One: 'Howie's been hit.' His brother just starting to move backwards from the impact.

Millisecond Fifteen: His right arm instantly lashing out and catching his fallen twin. Sarah's firearm out and at the ready, aiming at the hole.

Centisecond Four: 'It went right through him.' His brother moving in earnest now, off his feet and sailing towards the ground. Pain, unacknowledged and unimportant, from the wound in his cheek. Sarah moving to attack the hole in the wall where the projectile came from, reacting and not yet thinking.

Centisecond Five: Paul just beginning to flinch.

Centisecond Six: 'He will not survive.' This thought clinical and cold, the emotional segment of William's brain having not yet recognized what had happened. Sarah reaching for her weapon.

Decisecond One: The understanding that his brother, his dear, precious twin brother, the one who had taught him everything about the whole world and had played with him and fought alongside him and laughed with him and always been his friend, even when he could have done anything he wanted with him, was dying. The clinical knowledge that the last of Howie's life was leaking out of the hole that the enemy had put in him. Sarah finding nothing to shoot at, the enemy in question being an automatic one-shot railgun, operated from a distance or by computer.

Centisecond Twelve: Denial. 'This isn't real. I'm going to wake up.' An almost unnoticed muscle ache in his right arm from lashing it out too fast even for himself.

Centisecond Fourteen: The wish, raw and naked, to alter reality, to step back two deciseconds and push Howard out of the way. 'I won't let this happen.' 'Seal the hole. Stop the leak.' William's left arm reaching for his fusion/fission weapon, his conscious mind not yet understanding the plan.

Centisecond Sixteen: 'Replenish Howard's blood supply. Regenerate the hole shut.' Conscious understanding and acceptance of the plan. William using his right arm to throw Howard a short distance into the air and removing his weapon fully. Sarah looking back at the twins in horror.

Centisecond Eighteen: William shoving the tip of his foot into the trigger guard of the weapon and placing his hands above the shotgun barrel, aiming away from his brother and everything else. The very beginning of screaming "I WON'T LET THIS HAPPEN!!", which would take more than a second. An eternity.

Decisecond Two, one full fifth of a second after impact: Dominator William squeezing the fission trigger, the atomic projectile severing his hands at the wrist and continuing through the ceiling.

Centisecond Twenty-one: Shoving his severed right wrist into the large exit wound in Howard's back. Sarah turning towards them. Intense, sharp pain, expected and consciously ignored.

Centisecond Twenty-two: Forcefully shoving his severed left wrist into the much smaller entrance wound in Howard's chest. Pressing the two arms into Howard with as much pressure as possible.

Centisecond Twenty-Three: 'This better fucking work.' Sarah's eyes widening with astonishment. Unbelievable agony knocking his time sense back to a more normal one.

He knew the nerves hadn't connected at all, he knew it was a combination of psychosomatism and the very real pain from his destroyed hands, but William felt Howard's chest wound, felt every bit of the pain that his brother was blissfully unconscious for, felt it not in his own body but somehow in Howard's. He also felt Howard's blood pump, far too much of it pumping out of his body, the pumps becoming weaker and less regular. No. No, fuck that. Seal the space between us. Keep pumping regardless. Here, I'll set the pace.

Sarah immediately took off her suit, revealing a number of concealed weapons in places Paul never thought weapons could be concealed, swiftly wrapping it around the hole in her Dominator's chest, weaving the arms and legs around her other Dominator's arms. The waterproof, flexible fabric would serve for now. "Paul, call Northberg now," she told him.

He fumbled with his phone for half a second before his finger flicked to the speed-dial button. He'd put the major allies on speed dial before, on a lark. He never expected to have to press the button. "Operator, get a doctor to the Bavarian headquarters fast."

"Hole in torso of engineered, partially sealed, we're evacuating him," Sarah shouted in the direction of Paul's phone.

"I'll have one there as soon as possible!" the Operator yelled, his fingers flying across the keys as fast as his middle-aged hands could type, commanding some department or other to make it happen.

"If you don't get one here on time, I WILL KILL YOU regardless of whether or not it was possible!!" Sarah screamed at him. Fuck secrecy, fuck all the 'power base' crap, it didn't matter and she no longer cared. Either the twins were going to be in a safe place or she would make this place safe by killing everyone in it. The Operator clicked off.

"Wait, Sarah, they've got to have something here.," Paul started.

"They do, but it's not adequate for this and do you trust it?" She looked around at some masters, servants, and Enforcers who had turned corners to see what had happened, the sentients stopped in their tracks by the sight of the maimed twins and, for some, Sarah's naked body. "The fuck are you all staring at?!" she yelled at them, and they pushed each other out of the way to get out of sight. The Enforcers continued moving. "Enforcers, if you interfere, your master will have fewer Enforcers," she informed them. This stopped them and made them pull out phones instead; the more recent models could recognize and respond in a sensible way to a credible threat.

"Can you pick them up, get them out of here?" Paul suggested.

"No, they're too badly-"

"Yes," William said, gritting his teeth against the pain. The Operator had made certain modifications to fundamental parts of their brains. Pain, no matter how intense, would never stop a fully engineered or even most partials. "It's not that kind of injury. Put your arms near mine and don't worry about his legs or neck," he told Sarah, who did just that. Even with them carrying a badly wounded (or was he dead by now?) Dominator, Paul found it difficult to keep up as they rushed outside, leaving a trail of blood.

They stood on the landing platform, Sarah looking around and brandishing weapons, clearing the area as fast as she could as Paul supported his Dominator, the body parts oh-so-slowly sealing together. Seconds seemed like minutes, minutes like hours, even to Paul, who kept his eye on the skies, hoping to see the telltale dot with its long contrail. "Is he still.."

"He's alive. And he's going to stay that way," William said, as if attempting to alter reality by sheer force of will.

It took six full minutes, William fighting off a growing lightheadedness with pure white rage. The jet-helicopter, coming from the northwest, was of the same make as Jeremy's- for a confused moment William thought it was Jeremy's. "Good that he's here, but where the fuck's the doctor.," he thought, before it landed and six Enforcers carrying medical equipment jumped out.

"Enforcers, keep the Dominator alive!" a small servant said, following behind. Clearly a doctor, the man was utterly confused by what was going on. "But.. what did you..." The man had a bad assumption, and couldn't figure out how or why William had shoved his arms into Howard's sternum.

"You figure it out," Paul spat out, annoyed. After surviving that, and watching his Dominator and very dear friend at the brink of death, the last thing he wanted or needed was incompetence. "Your Enforcers have." The man took a closer look and gasped with understanding as his Enforcers proceeded with their work. Oxygen and nutrition- those were the keys to Howard's survival. So long as his cells could get both of those, the rest would be regenerated. To that end, the Enforcers unceremoniously shoved large needles into Howard's aorta, carotid, and femoral arteries- Howard's autonomous nervous system twitched, as if it was trying to dodge- and pumped blood substitute into him. The oxygen mask detected that Howard wasn't breathing enough, and forced pure oxygen into his lungs, side effects be damned- his furnace metabolism would make its own CO2. Every time the machine exhaled for him, the inside plastic became covered with blood. They used a liberal amount of skin-sealant, pouring it into and through the wound, finally stopping the blood loss.

Having accomplished that, the usual procedure would be to put the patient on a stretcher, but since that wouldn't work, the Enforcers simply lifted them up and the attached equipment with smooth grace, setting them gently inside the aircraft. The small man had to run to keep up, jumping into the passenger's seat just as the pilot Enforcer started a slow, gentle liftoff, followed by even more gentle jet boost. Paul stood there, watching them go with tears in his eyes.

"Paul.. c'mon. We're following them," Sarah said. He nodded. The twins' super jet could protect the older-model jet-helicopter, lasers against missiles if it came to that. Paul suspected that it didn't matter, that if Howard was going to die today, he would have done it already.

"Oh God, Sarah..," Paul sputtered as she accelerated them through the air, the familiar hum of the jet's flight comforting them both. "They could have put that through his fucking head!"

"We live on a lot of 'could have's, don't we?" she replied rhetorically. "By rights we should all be dead. I don't know if it's lack of foresight on their part or simple incompetence or really good luck or what. They know who we are, what we are, and often where we go. In fact they could theoretically blow that plane out of the sky." Paul gasped at his own incompetence- his job was to guard them, and one of the few times they actually needed him for that- "Don't worry about it," Sarah continued. "Those models were all retrofitted with anti-missile defense systems once the war started, and if they've got a laser good enough to get through the armor, they could easily have hit us with it when we were out of the jet. As for railguns..." Sarah shrugged. "If they had one they could set up outside, they would have killed us on the way in."

Insight flashed, and Paul's stress broke into a wave of logic. "It's not the same they," Paul said. "The ones we've been fighting would have. They could have just put it on the roof or something and blown us out of the sky. Whoever fired this one only intended to kill one of them, probably to send the other one on a berserk rampage. Maybe a crazy loner lurking to seize power, maybe someone disaffected with the current group. Shit, maybe he knew that Howard.. or William.." Paul suddenly realized that he had no idea which twin had gotten hit. "would survive, and he's trying to tell his friends, 'OK, I can kill them any time I want, you better change your plans to give me more power when I do kill them.'"

Sarah understood, and sighed, hoping that Paul was wrong but suspecting he wasn't. One group of demented fuckheads was quite enough.

"The enemy- enemies- don't have a Micro. Do you know how much all this hinges on that, Sarah?" Paul asked rhetorically. She nodded grimly. "If they get their hands on one satellite, one fusion weapon, a bomb or a Micro, whatever, even an atomic shotgun- we're fucked. If they capture one of those aircraft that were retrofitted, or steal anything else with any fusion they can rig up to explode, we're fucked! If they have a design plant somewhere where they can copy any of it, or even make a basic atomic weapon with technology developed in nineteen-fucking-forty-five, we're fucked!!" Paul's voice grew higher and higher, more profane, more hysterical, his insight having given way- or paved the way- to panic. "Why the fuck do we even leave the fucking island to begin with, or, alternatively, why the fuck do we stay there? I say we should live in this fucking jet and keep it flying 24/7, way the fuck out of range!"

"Paul, can you imagine those two living in fear like that?" The basic question calmed him down.

"No, I really can't. They just.. wouldn't."

"It's unthinkable. What normals would call unconscionable. And of course there's a very good reason why they shouldn't."

"We can't appear to be losing," Paul concluded.

"It would go against Illuminated theory, but of course you're exactly right."

"Illuminated theory- what a bunch of bullshit. It's.. what's the term for it here? False elitism? Most people, probably everyone here, aren't independent of psychological everything. They just pretend to be."

"Exactly," Sarah replied. "There might be some guy right now with access to technology that could kill us, who's sitting on the fence trying to find out which way the wind will blow. If he sees the Duumvirate being chickenshits he'll probably give his power to the other side for a higher seat in the new hierarchy. Morale matters. And to that end, it's great that things turned out the way they did. They struck what should have been a mortal blow. They were probably singing and dancing if they saw that shot happen. If they still see two Dominators instead of one after that, they're going to shit their pants when they realize neither of them are fake."

"Neither of them are... hey."

The problem with having engineered friends is that they can finish your thoughts way too often. "You're going to ask one of them to act like a robot or an Enforcer."

"They can swap every so often, but.. and of course we'd have to let everyone know soon for the morale thing, and we'd have to be able to really get an element of surprise.. it's a great idea but I can't make it work!"

"It is, Paul," Sarah said approvingly. "I can't make that one work either. But if you keep having ideas like that, you might give us one that will." It was a Twilight Zone sort of war- a war not only of force and of death, but of mind. Being able to win battles against videogame odds in reality was awesome, but to actually finish the war would take brainpower.

Paul just shook his head. He didn't have any more of that, either.

Aboard the medical aircraft, there were two other sentient brains which were similarly stressed. One of them was the doctor's. He was a rather traditional sort of doctor, having served in the organization for seventeen years. His practice generally consisted of aging Illuminati who didn't quite trust Northberg (which was funny, because he was the Day Operator's servant), inter-Illuminati spats, and the occasional normal who simply could not be allowed to die. Engineereds still felt new to him, and practically never required his assistance; this was the first time his Enforcers had ever used the training given them by the former Night Operator of Northberg. (The doctor made a point of checking the training for accuracy after that Operator killed himself. It was, in fact, accurate. The late Operator didn't lie when he had no real reason to and could be found out.) He had nothing but shock and amazement upon seeing what had happened to Howard, but now he felt a certain sort of pride. He was witnessing history, after all, and he was in the unique position of seeing that history with his interior vena cava and descending aorta torn apart. The thought crossed his mind that the oxygen pump might give his Dominator an aneurysm, but he had no alternative. The Operator had made it very clear: Engineereds can't stand oxygen deprivation, dehydration, or nutrient loss nearly as long as normals.

William was feeling no pride whatsoever. He felt nothing but hatred for the people who had tried to kill his brother, fear that the next time they might succeed, and an enormous, fantastic relief that Howie would live. Tears ran down his face and he shivered with an incalculable level of protective fury- whoever did this would pay, pay with his life and more besides. The screaming pain of William's lost hands meant almost nothing. He would rather have his arms and legs chopped off hundreds of times than lose his twin. "Howie, don't you ever die, it's against the rules, you're not allowed to die, don't you ever, ever get hit like that again, I swear if you die I'll kill you, don't you ever, man, don't you ever die on me..," he blubbered softly into his dear, dear brother's left ear.

Howard heard none of this. What little brain activity he had was a glimpse of death itself. Had the shot been a few inches higher on his chest, he would have been doing more than glimpsing it. His heart continued to beat regularly, oxygen was forced in and bloody gunk was forced out of his severely damaged lungs, and the Enforcers occasionally pushed a needle back in when it was starting to wiggle out, but other than that he was inert.

The two aircraft landed at nearly the same time, Enforcers carrying the twins down the halls of Northberg, ignoring the tram, Sarah and Paul close behind. The Operator waited for them in what looked like an operating room, a single chair in the center of the room surrounded by all sorts of life-support and monitoring equipment, most of which neither Sarah nor Paul recognized.

The Operator glared at them, silently accusing: Why didn't you protect them? You're their guardians, aren't you? But they all knew it was utterly impossible to see coming, and the Operator turned his gaze away to monitor his most precious creation. He was proud of William's ingenuity for using himself to staunch the bleeding. The Operator's keen mind couldn't help but grok the scientific corollaries, even as he attached sensors and hooked up a different, more sophisticated oxygen pump. If one twin's entire lower body got blown off, he could, theoretically, graft it to the other one's torso until they regenerated. ('Joe Mengele, eat your heart out.') In fact, if there was somehow a need for mindless Dominator clones, he could grow them like Enforcers, a single engineered stem cell dividing into an adult. For a brief instant he wondered if Howard had ever considered using William for spare parts when he was his master, but realized that the Dominator had almost certainly already thought of, and discounted, that idea years ago.

'And that's why I'm getting heart rhythms from both of them right now.'