He found himself increasingly excited. This was really, really big. The corner of his table screen started flashing. A phone call. He tapped on the square, sending the conversation directly to his implanted earphone.
“Hello?” he asked, distracted.
“Uriel?” Mary’s voice.
He smiled immediately. Her voice . . . it always took some of the tension away. He looked up from his screen. “Hey.”
“I was just wondering,” Mary said. “Is there something special I could get for dinner tonight? Something you’d like?”
He looked down at the hive of numbers. “I . . . I might be working late again.”
“Oh, you needn’t say it so hesitantly, Uri. I know your work is important. Do you know when you’ll be home?”
“Ten?”
“How about I order in something from that Thai place you like so much? It will be waiting in the fridge when you get home.”
“That would be nice,” Uriel said, smiling. “You’re too good to me, Mary.” He hesitated. “But what about Jori? He hasn’t seen his dad in three days.”
“I’ll let him stay up,” Mary said. “He won’t be home until later, anyway. Hockey practice is tonight.”
There was a game this weekend, a championship. It was blocked out on his schedule, marked in red, immovable even if Mr. Galath demanded it. Uriel often worked late – too often – but he’d never missed a game.
“Mary,” Uriel said, leaning down. “I think something is coming. Something amazing.”
“Uri? I haven’t heard you sound this optimistic in a while. Aren’t you worried? About . . .”
She didn’t say it. He wasn’t supposed to talk about work with family, but she was one of the only people who ever actually listened to him.
“I am worried,” Uriel said. “But I think this project is a cover for something greater. I don’t think Mr. Galath intends to release the . . . other thing. He’s watching to see what we’ll say about it. I just . . . I can’t explain. But it’s in the numbers. He’s pulling people aside, one at a time. Telling them about the new project. Preparing them.”
“That’s wonderful! Do you think he’ll choose you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” People, even Mr. Galath, didn’t make as much sense as numbers did.
“We should get you a new suit, just in case.”
“You know I hate shopping.”
She laughed. “All you have to do is try it on. That won’t be so bad, will it?”
“No, I guess it won’t. First dinner, now this. You’re wonderful.”
“I guess I just want to do something special for you, Uri. You’ve been working so hard lately. See you at ten.”
He hung up with a tap on the screen. Rain still washed against the window outside, but despite the dreary weather, he was glad for the window. Mary had been right about that, as she was about so many other things.
He found himself writing down his thoughts, as he sometimes did. A kind of journal, but one filled with his dreams of what could be. What would the world be like if people made sense? What would the world be like if they were not able to kill each other so easily? Could he make the ideas work? He wrote it all down.
“Hey,” Jarred said, walking by. “Aren’t you supposed to be coming to this?”
“Hmm?” Uriel asked.
“The meeting? Mr. Galath? Project Omega?”
Uriel sat up straight, checking the time on his screen. He cursed, sliding his spreadsheets off the virtual table and into the chip in his wristwatch. Some made fun of him for it. So archaic. He liked it better than carrying around an embedded datacore.
“Seriously, Uriel,” Jarred said, shaking his head. “You’re in your own little world, aren’t you?”
Uriel hastened to grab his suit jacket and throw it on while jogging after Jarred.
CHAPTER
THREE
EVEN AS he was slaughtered, Raidriar planned.
Each moment of awareness helped him put together a plot, a method of escape.
Control. He would be in control.
So, even as he died, even as he flailed and struggled, he continued to plan.
It involved holding himself back and waiting for an opportunity. That opportunity was not now.
But it would come.
SIRIS KILLED. And he was killed.
Again and again, they made those same rounds. Sometimes he defeated the God King, and would keep him crippled and broken for weeks on end. But then he’d lose track of the passage of time. He wouldn’t notice that it had been far too long since he’d smashed the God King’s face against the ground.
Sometimes . . . he almost welcomed it. A change. Another voice, just for a few moments. He walked that line, letting Raidriar come just to the brink of recovery.
Because of that, sometimes he lost. When he did, he would swim that void, letting the Dark Self grow stronger and stronger until it broke him free again.
It was difficult to track the changing of days in this prison, particularly while wearing a body that did not age and did not need to eat. He felt hunger, yes – it was perpetual, a horrid scratching inside, as if something were trying to eat its way out. But he did not need food. He was immortal – truly immortal.
He won. He lost. They played this game over and over. Dozens of reversals. Hundreds of deaths and beyond.
Siris gave a brief notice to when he died his thousandth time in the prison. He had already killed Raidriar twelve hundred times at that point. Keeping track of those numbers . . . they were the only things for him to keep track of.
This became his world. His life.
Kill. Be killed.
With each death, the Dark Self grew stronger. Instincts he did not want, but which he seized and used anyway. A primal force that lived inside of him, like a monster bound in fragile, fraying ropes.
A nightmare.
YES . . . RAIDRIAR thought as he awoke from death. Hold something back.
He threw himself to his feet as awareness returned. He struggled, he fought, but he did not give everything.
A nugget of strength, buried within. He would need that. For now, he played the game. He fought back. This time he actually won, blinking his eyes as they restored themselves, looking down at the corpse of the man he’d battered against the wall until his neck broke.
Raidriar took a deep breath and settled down to think, plan, and plot.
SIRIS WAKENED from death and waited for the blow to fall.
He had recovered too slowly this time. Disoriented, he prepared to fight back, to reach up with hands gnarled and twisted. He had begun breaking Raidriar’s hands each time, and so his foe had begun doing the same thing.
No blow fell.
Go! the Dark Self said.
Siris roared to his feet, ready to punch with the backs of his wrists, fingers flopping uselessly. If he could get his arms around . . .
Around . . .
He searched about, blind, swinging this way and that. Where was his enemy? What game was this? Would Raidriar give him hope, then crush him? Raidriar was a fool! Any advantage would be seized, would be used. And–
“I never thought,” a weary voice said, “I would ever grow tired of killing you, Ausar.”
Siris’s eyes finally started picking out light. He backed away from the shadow near the voice and put his back to the wall of the prison.