Infinity Blade: Redemption

it.
    “I could have let the crossbow bolt hit as I reached the pillar,” Raidriar noted, “but it is not for one such as you to kill a god.”
    “Raidriar,” Ausar said, reaching out, lifting his head. “I . . . I am ready to talk . . . as you wished to do those weeks ago, when we stopped our fight.”
    Raidriar inspected the knife. A fine weapon, forged from folded steel. It would do. “I think not,” he said.
    Then he slit his own throat.
    SIRIS WATCHED the God King’s body slump lifeless against the pillar. This time, it would not heal, would not recover. In this position, his soul could escape through the hole in the ceiling.
    “What,” Isa said, “was that ?”
    “Freedom,” Siris mumbled. “How long has it been?”
    “Almost two years,” Isa said, recovering her knife and shivering visibly. She kicked the God King’s body, making sure it was dead, then stepped up beside Siris again.
    So short? Hell take me . . . I could have sworn we were in there for a millennium.
    The Dark Self growled within him.
    “Come on,” Isa said, kneeling and triggering the platform. It rose slowly into the air, stone grinding stone. “A lot has happened since you were imprisoned.”
    As the stone pillar reached the roof, Siris watched the two figures below slowly consumed by darkness. One of them escaped her bindings and ripped the sack from her head.
    Siris was left with the image of her scrambling for his broken, pitiful excuse for a sword, clutching it as the other figure ripped free of his bonds . . .



DEVIATION
THE FOURTH
    URIEL WIPED digital spreadsheets from the top of his desk, sliding them out of the way with an annoyed gesture. He grouped others, bringing them down and arraying them beneath his fingers.
    The numbers . What did the numbers say? Mr. Galath . . .
    Why? Why couldn’t Uriel make sense of the world like he could these sheets and statistics? He was never wrong—not with numbers. When they’d demonstrated the Sympathetic Thermal Conduction mechanisms, who had guessed the exact bids that each participant would present? Uriel. When Mr. Galath had come forward with his Advanced Artificial Entity matrix, who had predicted to the day—to the day —how long it would take the government to develop regulations? Uriel.
    The numbers didn’t lie. War. Why would Mr. Galath want war, after all of these years? Any of their devices could have been used militarily. They’d always put protocols in place to prevent such things. Now . . . now they went to militaries and took bids.
    What was the man working on? The new secret—it had to be incredible, amazing, transformative.
    Uriel would find the answer. Men should make sense. If they listened to reason, they would make sense. Perhaps if governments focused more on what was logical, rather than killing one another, the world would work as it was supposed to.
    Adram passed by. “Staying late?” he asked.
    Uriel didn’t look up.
    Adram patted him on the shoulder anyway. “Look, no hard feelings. I don’t mind that you tried to sabotage me.”
    “You don’t?” Uriel asked. That didn’t make sense, even if he had been chosen by Mr. Galath. Uriel looked up, but Adram really did look pleased.
    “You should be angry at me,” Uriel said. “I tried to stop you from getting your way.”
    “Nah. It’s cause and effect, Spunky. It’s like . . . you’re hardly a person. No offense there! It’s a compliment. You’re like a machine. Data in, data out. No emotion!”
    Uriel pressed his fingers against the table until the tips were white. The display warped, spreading a little halo of color around each finger. “Did he say . . . ?” Uriel barely kept his voice in check. “Did he say what it was about? The special meeting?”
    Adram leaned down. “I’m gonna live forever, Uri boy.” He winked, grinning, then stood up straight. He obviously shouldn’t have said anything, but the bounce to his step as he moved off—humming to himself and doing a little slide on the carpet as he took the corner—spoke volumes of his euphoria.
    Live forever? Impossible. Even for Mr. Galath.
    Or was it? Uriel turned back to his spreadsheets, then hunkered down. He spent an hour teasing information from accounts that were nested inside subsidiaries and shell corporations, and a strange string of answers began to form. The moon? What was Mr. Galath doing on the moon? And these bunkers around the country? Uriel couldn’t think what else to