RWD: 3.02

3.02

“I don't feel like wrestling”

—BARON VLADIMIR HARKONNEN

The city night embraced him, a tapestry of damp air, distant sirens, and the hushed secrets of sleeping houses. He moved through the residential labyrinth, an unseen current in the urban flow, his path guided by a mental map now as familiar as the star charts of Arrakis. The curfew, a flimsy net cast by the authorities, was an irrelevance. Twenty minutes of swift, silent passage brought him to an unremarkable suburban house, its windows dark, its lawn neatly trimmed – indistinguishable from its neighbours.

Paul retrieved a set of keys from his pocket, the metallic click of the lock cylinder unnaturally loud in the stillness. The interior was well-furnished, a comfortable, almost banal domesticity that stood in stark contrast to its current, primary occupant. Upstairs, in the master bedroom, Bakuda lay upon a large, ornate massage bed – a recent acquisition, its therapeutic vibrations and pressure points programmed to alleviate the worst of her paralysis-induced discomforts, a small investment in maintaining the functionality of a valuable, if temporarily unwilling, resource. 

She was asleep, her breathing shallow but even. Paul moved to the wardrobe. He ignored the array of combat gear – plate carriers, assault rifles, knives, even machetes hanging from the rack within. His target was specific: a PRT uniform, tailored to his size, complete with fabricated identification documents bearing his profile picture. These had been prepared a day in advance, a contingency for tonight and all future operations requiring… official sanction, or at least the convincing illusion of it.

He changed swiftly, the crisp, unfamiliar fabric of the uniform settling over him. He selected an appropriate standard-issue sidearm and an assault rifle, slinging the latter over his shoulder. Closing the wardrobe, he exited the house as silently as he had entered, locking the door behind him. The garage yielded a nondescript pickup. He drove, not towards the city centre, but to a pre-arranged rendezvous point five minutes away, parking in a shadowed cul-de-sac before proceeding the final few hundred meters on foot.

Beneath a flickering streetlight, its orange glow casting long, distorted shadows, Paul retrieved a burner phone from his new uniform’s plate carrier. He dialled a memorised number. One ring, then a click. "I'm here," he stated, his voice flat, devoid of inflexion, then ended the call. A minute later, around the bend, an unmarked panel van, its windows tinted to opacity, rolled to a silent stop before him. The side door slid open, revealing the dark interior and the indistinct shapes of men within.

Paul entered without hesitation. Twelve figures, clad in identical PRT tactical gear, their faces obscured by helmets. Ex-Rangers, Special Forces veterans, seasoned PMCs – Coil’s former elite, their loyalty, or at least their obedience, now purchased by Paul’s coin and the undeniable fact of his ascendancy. He did not trust them, not in the way one trusted a Fremen brother-in-arms. But their competence was a known quantity, their professionalism a reliable tool. 

Tonight, they had been briefed by their new, unseen employer that a specialist, a parahuman, would be leading the operation. Nothing more. The men clearly weighed the disguised Paul as he settled in amidst them, but no words were exchanged. The van pulled away from the curb, its engine a low thrum, and began its journey south through the city.

Fifteen minutes later, the vehicle lurched to a halt in a darkened alleyway a block from the target. It was an apartment building in the downtown area that served as the home for some two dozen members of the Herren Clan, a white supremacist cult with deep, familial ties to the Empire Eighty-Eight. Paul had long since dissected Coil’s extensive intelligence archives on the city’s factions, and with the information gleaned, deduced the identities of the clan’s most prominent members.

The mercenaries disembarked professionally, weapons held at the ready, forming a loose perimeter with Paul at the front. From there, he momentarily surveyed the apartment building: three stories, cheap brick façade, most windows dark. The intelligence suggested multiple parahumans within, including some E88 members: Rune, a telekinetic; Victor, a skill-thief of considerable repute; Othala, a specialised healer and power-granter. Aside from those three, the building contained some three other Parahumans. Not that it mattered. Their fates, and the fates of all other non-cape combatants within those walls, had been sealed hours ago, when Paul first conceived of this night's raid.

The main door was a well-made wooden fixture. However, a single, well-placed strike from one of the breachers wielding a battering ram shattered the lock, and Paul and his men poured into the dimly lit hallway. The sound of their entry, the splintering wood, the thud of boots on linoleum, acted as an alarm. A dozen seconds later, the first doors creaked open further down the hall. Figures emerged, sleepy, confused, some already reaching for weapons. Too late. The mercenaries, equipped with suppressed firearms, moved as a wave of disciplined violence. Paul led the charge, processing the chaotic scene with the lethal clarity of a Mentat-Assassin, identifying threats, prioritising targets.

He rounded a corner, and Victor was there, lanky, still in sleepwear, his eyes widening in surprise. Behind him, a younger woman, Agnes – Othala – her face a mask of confusion. Victor’s power, the ability to steal and master skills, could have made him somewhat problematic, given time, given warning. He had neither. Paul’s rifle came up, a smooth, economical motion. A single shot, precisely placed. Victor collapsed, a marionette with its strings cut, his potential snuffed out before it could manifest.

Othala stared, frozen, the reality of the assault yet to penetrate her shock. Paul swept past her, a blur of motion, a single, precise strike with the butt of his weapon to the temple. She crumpled without a sound. Her value as an asset, a granter of powers, however temporary, was self-evident. Mawhiba. A gift, albeit one wrested by force. A wordless gesture to the nearest PMC saw the girl lifted, restraints already being applied. Her youth, her potential malleability, made her a resource to be cultivated, not extinguished.

Further down the corridor, Othala’s parents. The father, a Striker with the ability to generate lethal, electrically charged punches, lunged forward, hands crackling with energy. Paul didn’t break stride, another round ending the threat. The mother screamed, a raw, animal sound, before a mercenary’s buttstroke silenced her. She, too, would be taken. Less an asset in her own right, more a component of control, a potential lever upon her daughter should Othala prove… recalcitrant. Sentimentality had no place in the calculus of statecraft, but the strategic utility of familial bonds was a constant across all universes.

The next moment, Tammi – Rune – emerged into view from a side passage, her face contorting into an expression of rage as a jagged piece of drywall, ripped telekinetically from the wall beside her, hovered menacingly in the air. Her intent was clear, her power already lashing out. Before the makeshift projectile could be launched, before her focus could fully cohere into a more potent defence, Paul moved. His rifle barked once, not at her, but at the wall just above her head. The sharp crack and spray of plaster served as a micro-second distraction, a disruption of her concentration. In that sliver of an instant, he closed the distance. Her telekinetic shield, likely forming, was not yet absolute. He sidestepped the now erratically drifting drywall, striking out like a serpent, the butt of his rifle connecting with her jaw in a short, brutal arc. Rune’s eyes rolled back; she collapsed limply, the telekinetic grip on the debris vanishing. Another asset, her powers of manipulation over the physical environment deemed too valuable to waste. Paul sidestepped the teenage cape’s unconscious form, allowing another PMC to secure her. The remaining clansmen attempting to form a defence behind where she had stood met swift, silenced ends. Their fanaticism availed them nothing against the cold, hard logic of superior firepower and strategic surprise.

The building became a charnel house, the brief, brutal encounters echoing in the confined spaces. In the end, Paul did not personally oversee the sanitation of every room, the elimination of every pocket of resistance. The PMCs were more than capable of fulfilling the remainder of the purge. His command had been explicit: no combatant or ideologue was to leave these walls alive.

Only the children, those whose minds were not yet irrevocably poisoned, were to be spared. He moved through the rapidly quieting building, a final pass, his senses attuning to the subtle shifts in atmosphere, the fading echoes of conflict, ensuring the primary objectives were met. The few that fled through the windows wouldn’t get far. The snipers Paul had prepositioned hours ago on the rooftops ringing the building, their fields of fire overlapping, were an unspoken guarantee against any desperate, unseen escape. Ihkam. Control, absolute and meticulous.

Paul returned to the idling van, the chill night air a welcome ablution against the close, metallic scent of violence that clung to the building’s interior. The three unconscious forms – Othala, her mother, and now Rune – were already secured within, zip-tied and silent. He slid into the passenger seat, and for a moment, simply listened to the thrum of the engine.

The next moment, he retrieved his burner phone and sent a single, unencrypted message to Tattletale. 

“Execute.” 

He had briefed her earlier, in veiled terms, to prepare a specific data packet, a collection of irrefutable intelligence detailing the civilian identities of Empire Eighty-Eight’s remaining leadership, those not caught in the Herren net tonight. She was to have it ready, poised for dissemination through the backdoors into PRT servers and media outlets that she had so diligently cultivated. The timing was critical.

The release of this information now, on the heels of Coil’s public unmasking, would force the PRT’s hand, compelling them to act decisively against the Empire, lest they be seen as utterly inept or, worse, complicit. And Eidolon, the city’s borrowed god, would become Paul’s bludgeon. The PRT would unleash him, directing his righteous fury against the exposed remnants of the Empire.

It was an elegant, if brutal, synergy. In one move, the Empire would be shattered. The PRT, seemingly complicit in disregarding “The Unwritten Rules”, would see a further erosion of its own legitimacy, its already crumbling facade of competence. Makr. Deception, but on a strategic scale, turning his enemies’ strengths against themselves.

The remaining mercenaries filed into the van, their movements economical, their expressions hidden behind masks or the flat affect of professionals who had just completed a grim task. The doors slid shut, sealing them within the anonymous vehicle. The driver, without a word, put the van in gear. It pulled away from the curb, melting into the city’s lightless arteries, leaving behind a silence that would soon be broken by sirens and the dawning horror of discovery.

Paul stared out at the rain-slicked streets of Brockton Bay, the city a wounded beast slumbering fitfully under a sky pregnant with unshed storms. The seeds of upheaval, carefully planted, were beginning to germinate. The old order was fracturing, its foundations shaken. From these ashes, he would begin to sculpt something new. Al-Mulk. Dominion. The true work, the long, patient shaping of this world to his will, was a subtle and demanding art.