I hadn’t noticed Vishnu working on anything since he’d closed the laptop, but the Preserver had the name for a reason. The most specialised member of the executive suite, his signature power was to, well, preserve. More often than not, it was the majority of the universe that got frozen while time kept ticking along for the lucky or unlucky few he chose to exempt. As powers went, it was utterly terrifying even without the abstract component allowing him to put arbitrary characteristics on pause. There was a reason the Hindu pantheon had been the last to fall.

The one saving grace was that post-consolidation Vishnu had all the imagination of a dead goat. But it was well within his abilities to have held complete meetings with half a dozen people in less than the time it took me to blink.

“If you had followed protocols, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” Vishnu countered, his tone calm. “They are there to keep operations running smoothly, the sun in the sky. If you had come to us about Apollo instead of playing maverick, we could have lined up a replacement in advance. If indeed it was warranted. Instead, our position is infinitely more precarious.”

“Then let’s resolve this promptly,” said Hera. She turned back to me. “What evidence do you have of this alleged treachery?”

Good question. Time to pull a bunch of hot air out of my ass.

“Other than his own words? Unauthorised system requests and approvals. Suspicious site access.” I thought back to the woman in the blade chamber at Facility J. “He’s started promising escape to prisoners and making under-the-table deals with staff. Why, just earlier today he was offering bribes to Nyaminyami to cover up his movements. I believe he intends to unseat Yahweh and replace him with new leadership.” The words didn’t want to come; I was having to fight the pact every step of the way. As a result my voice was coming out somewhat strained, but it couldn’t be helped. “I’d like to request permission to conduct a full audit of his recent activity in the system,” I finished. It was bound to happen regardless; the best thing I could do was ensure I was the one in charge of it. “I expect it will be enlightening.”

Hera raised her chin. “Noted.”

“You can’t be serious,” said Enki. “Surely I can’t be the only one who sees what a mistake this is. We need to authorise a resurrection and put Apollo back in play immediately. Legba? Vishnu? Back me up, here.”

He didn’t get any help. “The rules are clear,” said Vishnu, folding his hands together. “The penalty for treachery is demotion. If he has truly conspired against Providence, resurrection would be pointless and arguably more dangerous.”

“What he said,” Legba added, nodding at Vishnu. “It seems to me like he got what was coming to him.”

“This is Apollo we’re dealing with,” I reminded them, holding up my hands as if relinquishing my part in the decision-making. “Question him now, by all means, but the moment he regains access to his powers, he will use them to his advantage. Don’t bank on me being able to retake control again.”

More importantly, I wanted any interrogation to take place with me there to direct it. The tightrope I walked was holding for now, but it would only take a single gust of wind to send me crashing down.

Death, the great equaliser, also came with the convenient side benefit – although not from a victim’s perspective – of stripping a god of even their most intrinsic powers. For once, Apollo would be able to lie.

“I’ll talk to him,” Enki pleaded. He pushed back his seat and stood up, pacing around the edge of the room. “Convince him he’s made a stupid mistake. In all the business, we don’t have another person with the skills to replace him. Or the disposition. We won’t cope.”

I almost mentioned Tez, but held my tongue. Missing this opportunity had better be worth it.

Hera waved a dismissive hand. “There are always people. Nanshe could do it, for example, although it might be a hard sell adding another woman to the management team. There’s also that vaguely insubordinate seer on Helpdesk. He seems reasonably competent. You’d be surprised what people can be capable of when offered the right incentive.”

Sorry, Tez, I thought to myself. I tried.

“Worst case scenario,” Hera continued, “if they don’t work out, you can always make creating more seers your side objective. After going through proper screening, of course.”

“There are so many problems with that I don’t know where to start,” said Enki. “And it could take years.” He rubbed at his forehead, where beads of sweat had formed despite the efforts of the office air-conditioning. “Enough accusations. I want to hear it from Apollo.”

Legba grinned, seeming to take that as his cue. “Such drama,” he said. “And here I was thinking we’d have to let our memories of the Vatican incident entertain us for the next few decades.” His eyes unfocused and appeared to be searching something no one else could see. “Mmm-hmm. There we are. One seer with a loyalty impairment coming up.”

Raising a hand, he snapped his fingers and I blinked in surprise as what felt like some kind of distorted dimensional rift opened up in the centre of the room.

Instead of a doorway, however, I found myself looking at the hazy form of Apollo materialising knee-deep in the table, as translucent as he was oblivious to physical impediments. He was dressed in the clothes he’d worn on death, though the bridle-turned-earring was noticeably absent. Upon seeing me he made a violent double-take, though with no ability to interact with the surfaces around him it caused him to shift awkwardly in mid-air.

“You!” His voice came out incensed but oddly muffled, like the sound was passing through water.

Relax, I said, getting in before he had a chance to do anything stupid. It’s Loki. I didn’t dare say much more in front of the full force of the executive; given the situation, it would be a bad look to be caught passing messages.

Not that I had much of a chance.

“Apollo,” declared Hera, rapping her knuckles on the edge of the table to get his attention. When the dead god saw who it was, he groaned and closed his eyes, before opening them again with a resigned expression. “Odin has accused you of conspiring against Providence. Is this true?”

Say yes, I urged him.

His expression darkened further as the realisation of what I was doing began to sink in. “Is this my trial, then?” he asked instead, ignoring me. Anger peeled at the corners of his words, easily discernible even through the distortion. “Since when does a murderer get to sit on their victim’s jury?”

“This discussion is not about Odin,” Hera dictated, her knuckles poised above the counter. “It’s about you. Did you or did you not have plans to destabilise the leadership of the business? It’s a simple question.”

“Destabilise?” He barked out a humourless laugh, then repeated it again for good measure, almost doubling over in the process. “I’ve given nearly two thousand years of my life maintaining order in the face of the best efforts of immortal hooligans to destroy it. No one in Providence’s history has done more in the name of stability than I have.”

Typical Apollo. He was already dead and I still wanted to strangle him. Not helping, I growled into his head.

“Shut up,” he threw back, not even bothering to pretend. “I’m not done. If any of you actually cared two hoots about anyone other than yourselves, you’d realise you’ve all been teetering on the side of an incline this whole time with an avalanche about to land on your heads. But I’m not Sisyphus, and I could have let go of the boulders any time I wanted. Killing me is going to topple any semblance of stability faster than I ever could.”

“That’s why we need you back,” said Enki, offering him a small smile. The CHRO stepped forward, casting a man-shaped silhouette against the diamonds of light in the wall. He stopped short of the ghost when the table got in the way. “I don’t know what Odin’s playing at, but it won’t go unanswered. You’re not a traitor –”

“Of course I’m a traitor,” Apollo snapped, not looking at me as he said it. “I said I wanted stability and meant it. Maybe now that I’m gone you’ll all stop relying on me to provide it for you and finally get your act together.”

“Well,” I said, spreading my hands. “That settles that.”

“Not so fast,” Hera interjected. To Apollo, she asked, “Were you working alone?”

It was like watching a train soar in graceful slow motion off the edge of an embankment. “I –” he began. A pause, as he waited for either the pact or his truth-saying to kick in, I wasn’t sure which. Neither did. “Yes?” he finished uncertainly.

Hera and Vishnu shared a long, slow glance at one another as I tried very hard not to face-palm. Legba chortled again while Enki’s eyebrows threatened to shoot through the roof.

“Give me names,” said the goddess of marriage.

It was at this exact point I realised the pact’s critical weakness: namely, death. Kicking the bucket was such a rarity among immortals that none of us had actually thought to consider it.

Being past the point of worrying about physical concerns, there wasn’t a whole lot they’d be able to do to torture the information out of Apollo without first resurrecting him. But the dead god was operating blind with neither prophecy nor briefing to help him out of it, and with Vishnu on the case the executives had all the time they needed. I had to step in before the Preserver decided to trigger a freeze.

I cleared my throat, feeling the eyes of some of the most powerful beings in the universe bathe me in scrutiny once again. “Isn’t it obvious?” I said.

The clear scapegoats were Siphon. A mortal organisation, stealing gods from under the company’s own nose; a task it was hard to believe anyone could pull off without inside help. The pieces fit together so nicely. Ramping up the investigation into their number wouldn’t do Yun-Qi any favours, but for the sake of the immediate benefit it was probably worth it.

Except – it niggled at me in a manner making me inexplicably twitchy, like there was something I was missing. Even as the room watched me, the weight of expectation bearing down at a critical juncture, the words died on the tip of my tongue. Hesitation had nailed Apollo; I had to say something. And then, like lightning, an idea lodged in my brain. Words formed on my lips almost before I had a chance to consider them.

“He’s been working with Loki,” I declared.

The tension rushed out of the room faster than a disappointing balloon animal receiving a shoulder massage, leaving me at a loss as to the bizarre nature of the response. A chorus of groans filled the conference room, except from Apollo. The ghostly spirit looked as confused as I felt.

“Not this again,” Enki complained.

I stared at Legba in bewilderment as his hand reached out and patted me lightly on the shoulder. “Loki can’t be responsible for everything,” he stated, repeating the pat a couple more times. He grinned. “Besides, she’s gone now. You can let it go.”

“Although that is coincidental timing,” Hera mused. Her brow furrowed. “If she was advising him –” She glanced at the ghost, who folded his arms and glared contemptuously back.

“Loki’s a menace,” Apollo said with a scowl. He turned his gaze on me. “I couldn’t think of a better person to distract the executive long enough to make some changes.”

Was that the hint of a smile I detected? It was hard to tell. I frowned, testing the waters. “I’d tell you I don’t enjoy saying ‘I told you so’,” I remarked to the room as a whole, “but I very much do. I’ve been warning you all along.”

No one contradicted me.

That was… interesting. I hadn’t been aware my name had been a regular topic in higher circles. Not that it mattered much now. I got to set the narrative from now on.

“Well, it didn’t get her very far,” Hera rebutted. Her tone had shifted slightly since I’d brought myself into the conversation, from severe and hostile to severe and slightly less hostile. “Problem personalities ultimately burn themselves out. Much like our recently-disgraced representative here.”

“I’d like to think my discretion had something to do with it,” I put in.

“Your discretion is acknowledged. It will be put to further use conducting the audit you requested. Unless there are any objections.”

There were none. Enki pulled out a seat and fell into it, eyes closed. His fingers curled around the armrests, and he didn’t utter a word.

“Does this mean my authority is no longer temporarily suspended?” I asked, with a smirk in Vishnu’s direction.

If I thought it would faze him, I was wrong. “Now that guilt has been established, it has been decided you were acting within your rights to deal with the matter as an emergency,” he said. “However, I move for you to receive an official warning. This action should have been agreed upon in advance. At minimum with myself, as Apollo’s line manager.”

I checked on Apollo, who hadn’t weighed in on his own fate. The anger hadn’t left his face, but it had been joined by resignation. It occurred to me he would have been through a similar process more than once from the other side.

“Seconded,” said Hera. “Yahweh will expect some accountability for not being kept in the loop. Not to mention the sun. Speaking of which, Odin, if you would sign off on Amaterasu, that’s one less thing we all have to worry about.”

“Consider it approved,” I said, thanking my lucky stars the interrogation hadn’t gone any deeper.

“I assume you still have the implement used in the execution? You’ll need to turn it in, along with any other fatal weaponry in your possession. Godkillers are strictly off-limits.”

I spread my hands magnanimously. “But of course.”

Legba laughed. “Sure you will,” he said.

Hera sniffed. “Let it be noted it in the minutes that you have successfully foiled a plot against management. I’m sure Yahweh will be pleased. As always, your methods leave something to be desired, but no one can argue with your results.”

I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. The executives had always been laws unto themselves, but for Odin to murder a senior manager using illegal weaponry and have it swept under the rug in one short meeting was unexpected even to me. Vishnu and Hera had a reputation for playing by the book, but I wondered what Legba got away with in the pursuit of his job.

“And now that we’re done resolving this complete perversion of justice,” Apollo interrupted from the middle of the table, “what’s to become of me?”

Vishnu raised an eyebrow, waited a heartbeat and reached for his laptop. “It will take some time to arrange a replacement Head of Security,” he said, reopening the lid. “If you would, Legba, we’ll need you on call for a while. Apollo died before he arranged a proper handover; his successor will need catching up to speed and a full transfer of probationary access permissions. I will oversee the selection of the new appointment and Odin will handle the IT. But until that knowledge is passed on, the handover process must continue.”

Apollo scowled. “I thought death was supposed to end our contracts. What if I say no?”

“Think, man,” stressed Legba, tapping the side of his head with one angular finger. “Would you rather a resurrection, knowing what lies on the other side? Take the void and be glad your time in it is delayed. You’ll have the rest of eternity to get used to its company later.”

“Pah,” said the once-seer. No longer a god, but simply one more soul in a boundless array. “After this hellhole, I look forward to the break.”