We had a timeframe; albeit one ticking down. I even knew where my target would be for it, at least approximately. One down, four to go.

The key would be in isolating each target from the others, ideally in arenas catering to our strengths and exploiting our quarries’ weaknesses. With Tez still tied up in induction, however, it didn’t look like we’d be able to cheat our way into the answers.

With the revelation of Grace’s powers, we had another tool in our box of tricks. The problem was the proximity requirement. If I could get him close to the remaining executives, he might be able to find objects we could use as lures, similar to Gungnir for Odin. But it would require putting them together in a room without incident and them being foolhardy enough to rush out to take the bait during a history-making announcement. If there was even anything to find. It was an option, but it would take time.

Time we didn’t really have.

Siphon offered another potential weapon. Singapore was a locked ecosystem, but the hackers had other divisions. If we talked to them, explained how our aims aligned, there was a chance they’d pitch in. I didn’t fancy it, though, and the pact being expanded was a hefty risk. It was already about to go back up to seven, with Tru being added belatedly to the mix with what Lucy called an amendment clause – unanimous approval from all other members.

Late to the party, I copied and pasted my signature to the pact’s document attachment on Tru’s computer in the most underwhelming enactment of a magical contract since anything ever arranged by Providence’s Legal department. Getting Tru to agree to it had been a task and a half, with none of us able to explain what he was signing or why, and the added side effect of him being unable to hold any awareness of what he was looking at on screen.

“What’s this?” he uttered as I pressed a strip of cloth into his hands.

“Gag.”

“Why?”

I grinned.

Thus avoiding the screams, I left him to recover and went to check on my other new housemate. Janus had left the bed, and the entire room. After some investigation, I found him out on the side balcony wrapped in a bedsheet, hands and face turned up to the sky.

He still didn’t have eyes, just sunken pits where they probably couldn’t grow in. From the side, the cavity of his face was both obvious and unusual enough it could easily be passed off as a trick of the light. He turned towards me as I approached. Aside from the eyes, he appeared almost normal from that angle – though the effect was ruined the moment he moved again.

I shifted outfits and pulled the resultant opera mask from my face, placing it in one of his upturned hands.

Janus’ fingers brushed over its surface. “This is me,” he observed, the Latin rolling off his tongue in a noticeably lighter voice to his counterpart from Facility J. “So the world hasn’t changed that much, then.”

“I can make it something else if you’d prefer,” I said, leaning my elbows on the rail. “And it depends. If you mean whether people have learnt to stop shitting all over each other, then no. No, it has not. Mainly, it’s bigger, faster, dirtier and noisier. And we have the internet now. That was fun.”

“And Providence,” Janus stated.

“Significantly less fun.”

“Its era draws to a close,” the god of boundaries stated ominously. “So I prophesised at the dawn of time.”

Which spoke for itself. Anything people claimed to have done going back that far couldn’t be trusted, whether they believed it or not. Too much incongruity. But Janus was coming from a time before the pantheons had communicated much. The discrepancies had been less obvious back then. That, and every pantheon had assumed the others were mistaken or lying.

“Yes, about that. If we’re discussing changes, that was one of the big ones. The future hasn’t been fixed in a very long time. If you ask me, it never was. Otherwise Fate was a complete idiot for allowing the downfall of its own existence and letting the big stick-in-the-mud take over.”

Janus glanced towards me in such a way that I felt his missing eyes might have been boring into mine despite their absence. “The small Fates, perhaps. Though they would have had their reasons. But larger, all-encompassing destiny? No. For I am he, and he is very much alive. I cannot be contained, and I did not let myself be killed for precisely the reasons you describe. The end will come, and soon. My release precipitates it.”

“You say that,” I pointed out. “But we’ve established you’re not the part of yourself who deals with that business. How would you know?”

“The rest of me knows,” Janus stated calmly. “He suffers to ensure what must come, comes.”

“You know, I used to know the Norns,” I sniffed. “Maybe it’s a fate thing, because you sound just like them. Real sticklers. ‘Oh no, the future is horrible, but we won’t do anything about it because it could throw a whole bunch of things off-kilter. Also, you deserve it. Blah, blah, blah.’ To which I will point out, they A) were entirely wrong about everything, and B) are all dead. But don’t feel too bad about it. Domains become defunct sometimes. It happens. At least you aren’t the god of some city that doesn’t exist anymore.”

Janus frowned at me, gripping the mask in both hands. “Who did you say you were, again?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m the one who –” A thought occurred to me, and I paused. “You’ve been in the void since the Constantine War?”

“Yes. You know this.”

“Then the name ‘Baldr’ doesn’t mean anything to you?”

“An acquaintance of yours?”

I rocked back on my heels, temporarily stunned into silence, until reality came crashing back down again. “But your other self was here. He’d have been there.”

“Everywhere, in fact. I foresaw my current torment. It’s why I preserved a part of myself for safekeeping. The part the public never saw and wouldn’t miss.”

“I have to ask,” I said, leaning into my next question. “What’s your connection to Hel? She’s the only reason you’re here.”

“Another name that means nothing to me.”

“Well, she knew about you. And that you’d been separated from the rest.” I swivelled against the rail, turning my back on the view below. “If you’re trying to protect her, you don’t need to. Whatever she’s up to, I have no intention of stopping her.”

“I’m not aware of this ‘Hel’,” Janus said firmly. “Unless she’s one of the dead, I have spoken to no one between my excision and your arrival with the Betrayer. Either she learnt about me via her own means, or she must have coerced it out of my other self.”

I searched his face, though its unique nature made it hard to read. “A shame,” I said eventually. “You two would probably have a lot in common. So tell me about the end of the world, then, since you know so much about it. How is this version supposed to go down? Or are you also afraid of changing things?”

“I don’t know how it happens,” the god remarked. The bedsheet chose that moment to slip from his shoulders and he raised a hand to readjust it. “Only that it does. My precognition, when I had it, had limits. Everything after my capture was too scrambled to make sense of, and to search through it was to invite insanity. But I was the embodiment of endings. I felt it coming. Knew it to my core. It can’t be averted, any more than a fly could stop a volcano.”

“Yeah, that’s about what I expected,” I chuckled. Leaving the rail, I stepped forward and clapped him on the shoulder. “Who knows, Janus, you might still get it. In the meantime, you should figure out where you want to go from here. You might be safe here –” although I wasn’t sure how long Lucy’s protections on the apartment would last, “– but I’m assuming you won’t want to stay forever. Did you have a plan for what to do at the end of the world, or were you just going to wing it?”

“I am a quarter of who I once was,” he replied. “I’m weak. I should reunite with my other self. I could do it now; he is all around us. But he is still prisoner. I will first need time to figure out how to undo the laws binding his body. Then, once I’m restored, I’ll be able to fully assess the state of affairs and provide the answers you seek.”

“Laws?”

An image entered my head. Rows and rows of inscribed symbols in familiar Akkadian script.

“I see,” I said. “They brought in Enki to do it.” It checked out. When you needed the impossible made possible, the god of magic was generally the person to call.

Yet again, I wondered what kind of hold Providence had over its CHRO. Even assuming Yahweh and his angels could selectively nullify his powers, it still didn’t explain why he’d gone along with so much for so long. He clearly wasn’t happy about it.

Doubtless any attempt Janus made to thwart one of Providence’s high security facilities would set off alarms. Even Tez hadn’t managed to escape notice, and that was with both concealment powers and functional prophecy on hand to aid him.

Moreover, interfering with one of the edicts directly would be likely to not only draw the attention of Security, but Enki himself.

Which, when I thought about it, was exactly what we needed. Something important enough to draw Enki out during a critical moment, away from the other executives and away from the office. A location we could control and prepare in advance.

“It’s dangerous, but I’ll help you,” I decided, the anticipation audible in my voice. “On two conditions. You show me where the bindings are and hold off breaking them until I give the word.”

“I don’t require help,” Janus retorted, the bedsheet undercutting the grandiosity of the statement somewhat. “Once I’m free, I shall strike my captors down before they have a chance to overcome me again.”

“Oh, really? You’re up against a lot of gods, crater-face. They say overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer, but it’ll also sock you in the gut at lightspeed, especially when you’re using it to slam the big flashing button saying ‘don’t press me’. Plus, I met the rest of you, and you’re not looking so hot these days. You’re going to need a certain amount of protection while you recover.”

Of course, a security breach of this scale ran the risk of attracting not just Enki, but Vishnu. The two of them together posed a far more formidable force, with Vishnu covering Enki’s most notorious weakness - time. But that was the kind of detail we could run through with Tez, once we had him back. Small changes to the plan to make it follow the precise timeline we wanted, ensure they stayed separated. Prophecy really was unfair like that.

“Why should I listen to your request?” Janus asked. “Retrieving me from the void was your own decision, and I’ve already repaid the favour by dissecting your friend.”

“I really hate to play this card,” I prefaced it, “but since you ask – because of who I am. I can’t help but notice you seem very concerned about the end of the world. So, hello. Pleased to make your formal acquaintance. I'm one of the people who were supposed to end it.”

Two down, three to go.