Hera’s back stiffened, her pose snapping to alertness. When she spoke, slow and quiet, her voice rumbled throughout the garden in low, perilous echoes. The lilies coating the surface of the canals shivered in the gentle water. Petals and leaves shook loose from the trees. “What have you done?”

“Oh,” said Tez, still smiling. “Exactly what you summoned me to do. Isn’t that why you want a seer in the role? To cut past the bullshit and deliver quick responses?”

As he spoke, a dozen scenes splayed out in my mind, layered on top of each other in a way that still managed to be perfectly comprehensible. I found myself gazing out at vast landscapes, cities all. All were shown from height; skyscrapers and foothills – the views a sightseer might admire from a lookout. Many of them I recognised. Nairobi. Santiago. Prague. Hong Kong. Hangzhou, I was relieved to see, was not among them.

I felt myself in Tez’s body, multiples of them working in synchronisation, lifting their hands and summoning great masses of formless energy. From the reactions in the room, everyone else was watching it too.

“I didn’t remake the world by personally examining every blade of grass,” he remarked, as his copies condensed their summons in great dark clouds over the cities. “All I needed was the coordinates of each division, which Odin provided.”

Vishnu and Hera both glared at me in accusation.

“I don’t know what you expected,” I said with a shrug, inwardly trying to quash the choir of alarm bells forming a battering ram against my composure.

In the memory, the shadows of lines formed within each of the clouds. For a second, they remained only ghostly outlines amid the roil. But then one by one, milliseconds apart, they slammed into existence; great black cubes kilometres high intersecting houses, highways and skyscrapers, obliterating everything occupying their space. Clouds of splinters and rubble exploded out from the edges where buildings had been shaved in half, and the air thrummed with an ear-piercing toll. Their resonant gongs exfoliated the earth even from a distance.

Seconds after the giant structures appeared, the visions cut out simultaneously as their imagery went dark.

“Of course, it’s all frozen out there.” Tez’s tone was nonchalant. He wriggled himself further into the beanbag, stretching his arms with the fingers crossed palms-out. “I left it to the last second. Most people won’t have even realised yet. You can clean it up if you want. Send someone out to fix the wreckage, tidy it all up. Blow up the satellite footage and surrounding cameras. Resurrect a few tens of thousands of people, make it all squeaky-clean. ‘Course, it’s a lot of effort. But that’s Siphon’s official offices wiped off the planet. All you need to do now is wait for Pakhet to take care of the stragglers.”

The huntress shifted uncomfortably in the ensuing silence.

Vishnu’s fingers twitched and Tez froze in place, hands still extended.

“Not a word of this,” Hera hissed to Pakhet, who reacted with justifiable alarm at being the sudden object of the wrong sort of attention.

I tried not to do the calculations on how many bystanders had just been murdered. I wasn’t above getting my hands dirty, but becoming a brute in order to destroy one defeated the point. At least it had been quick.

The intricacies of Tez’s incarnations still escaped me, but this was far from the first time one or more of them had resorted to laying unnecessary waste. I was dealing with the same person I always had, but also not, and felt an abrupt pang of loss for the Tez I’d planned my heist with back in the ancient era of several days past. Grief Tez would have had to deal with over and over again.

“It’s a little late for that,” I pointed out, doing my best to sound unconcerned.

Hera scowled. “Don’t pretend you weren’t behind this. You’d better have a singularly convincing reason for pulling this stunt.” She turned her back and stalked forward towards the junction of the buildings behind her, clearly expecting us to follow.

I couldn’t call Tez out on it. Not now. Not without revealing my shortcomings. Odin was a seer, spymaster and mind-reader. Even if the latter aspect wasn’t known to the executive, uncovering threats was his speciality. Admitting I’d been taken unaware would show me up as incompetent at best and endanger my cover at worst. Woe betide if Providence believed I didn’t have a backup plan to keep him under control.

This hadn’t been a stand against Providence so much as a challenge directed at me. Although it fulfilled the role of both neatly enough. I’d chosen to ignore Tez’s earlier request. Now I was reaping the consequences.

The message itself was received loud and clear. Without Apollo or Odin around providing meaningful competition, Tez had just rocketed up the vacuum in the food chain.

We paraded forward into the shade of the pseudo-temple, passing between its central columns. At its centre, the canals finally met at a round pool still shaking with a few lingering ripples, its liquid breaking over onto the surrounding tiles.

Hera stopped at the edge and stared into the water. A diffuse glow emerged from its depths, scattering shifting refractions across the ceiling before solidifying into a birds-eye view of what had once been central London. With most of its notable landmarks gone it took me a few seconds to recognise the lay of the landscape, which was now mostly composed of cube. The structure appeared to be made of the same reflective obsidian as Tez’s foot, with gold cracks splintering down the sides in recessed geometric grooves. Rubble hung suspended in the air around it, held stationary in time.

Bringing a palm to the side of her head, Hera leant into it and sighed as the view swung around to display the scene from other angles. “Are we sure that’s all of them?”

“There’s also Singapore,” I answered cautiously. “But it’s isolated.”

“Then it can wait. Any staff left in the country can be written off as expired assets. Everyone who matters is outside it, in any case.”

“My Head of Compliance matters,” Vishnu interjected. He frowned.

“That’s nice,” Hera said, in a tone suggesting nothing of the sort. “But Themis will also have to wait. If we can’t get in, then these reprobates certainly can’t get out. Meanwhile, your new manager has just thrown us all from one kind of emergency into another. That’s the third one this week. At this rate, people will start to think the position is cursed.”

Pakhet, who had trailed up behind us, cleared her throat. “It might be,” she commented. “Have you ruled it out?”

Hera’s jaw tightened. “I’ll add it to the increasingly extensive list. You, on the other hand, are going to be busy disposing of the survivors. Everyone who has ever worked in those offices needs to die, along with any family members or close friends. Or anyone else they might have passed their software onto.”

Pakhet nodded, and swallowed. “I’ll need a sample,” she declared. “Something to scent. A memory, a taste.”

“That will be difficult with the facilities destroyed,” said Vishnu. “I’ll prepare a team to dismantle them.” He raised a hand.

“With all due respect, it doesn’t have to be direct,” Pakhet explained, some of the dance seeping back into her steps. “I’m top tier. It was a long time ago, but I have Sun Wukong on my resume. Kaulu. Loki.” She looked at me.

She was fabricating the last one. Although given how many gods they’d sent after me, probably not entirely. “Oh, I like you,” I said, and meant it.

Abstract-powered hunters were to be feared. If I messed this up, there was every chance she’d figure me out. But I had to trust Tez, as much as his recent actions clamoured against it. He would have chosen Pakhet for a reason, and if he’d wanted to feed me to the lions he could have done it a hundred times before now. That, and I was invested enough to take him down with me if he did.

Plus I could use this.

For the second time this day, I steadied myself and forced my thoughts into an Odin-shaped box, then poured my memories of Ngai’s laboratory into the huntress’ mind, leaving out anything about Regina or Neetu, or any awareness of the shape of my body at the time. Even then, it was a gamble. Tez had better come through.

I have another project for you, I added quickly. One you’re not to share with anyone.

Pakhet’s pupils dilated. Why?

Because someone in Providence has been feeding Siphon power, I said. I want you to find out who it is and report back to me.

I answer to Vishnu, she replied hesitantly, though it was laced with a significant amount of curiosity. Well, Tezcatlipoca now, technically.

Tez brought you to me, didn’t he? I reminded her. I haven’t been able to rule Vishnu out. Not yet.

“Odin,” Hera said in a warning tone.

“We’re done,” I announced. “Is that enough for you to go on?”

“It should be, yes.”

“Good,” said Hera. “If you don’t mind, the rest of us need to talk in private.”

Vishnu took the hint and the huntress froze in place. “I will supervise her,” the Preserver said. “It’s a significant exercise, and the eliminations must be properly recorded.”

I snorted. “As opposed to the millions of others who just got flattened?”

“We must work with the data we have.”

“Do what you must,” Hera replied grimly. The water shivered across the surface of the pool. “But first –” she turned to me and raised her voice to a piercing scream, “– what were you thinking?”

“Me? The decisions of Vishnu’s hirelings are hardly within the scope of my department,” I responded in mock-surprise.

“You and I both know that doesn’t mean anything. This has your handiwork all over it. And all I can say is that your petty revenge had better be worth it.”

I gave a harsh laugh. “You think this is about some childish squabble?”

“Of course it is. I abstained from signing Vishnu’s vendetta because, as far as I’m concerned, your department has been solving the problems caused by his. But this has taken it too far. The rules aren’t yours to set. Only one person has that power, and he’s liable to enforce it. So far we’ve been on the right side of history, but don’t for a second imagine that can’t change.”

“Of course it can,” I stated. “Everything changes. The world is changing. It always has. And so we have to keep up like we always have. It’s been too late to wind it back since the sun fell out of the sky. Pretending otherwise is simply denial. Think of it as an aid to Legba’s messiah programme. The world won’t be able to ignore us now. The righteous will fold to the cause in droves.”

“We are a team. We display a strong, united front. And you are trying to discredit one of our own,” Hera proclaimed. She folded her arms.

“I am not. He’s doing a perfectly good job of that on his own,” I replied.

“I warned you,” Vishnu said to Hera. “You ignored my counsel at your own peril.”

“Our peril,” Hera amended. “This affects us all. No winners come out of instability.” She closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath. “What’s done is done. What will it take to clean this up?” The last part was directed squarely at Vishnu.

“It’s an immense number of moving parts,” came the reply. “Without reversing time, the enormity of the task is unprecedented. It can be done, but we would need to bring in a significant consultancy contingent. Staff confidentiality would be hard to guarantee, even under non-disclosure.”

“And I suppose reversing time is out of the question.”

“I maintain it is far too unchecked to bring into the picture. For any reason.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” said Hera. “And glamours won’t be effective. Not with this many secondary effects.”

Even I agreed there. Time reversal – other than the kind resulting in blood cubes full of time shadows – was prophecy on steroids. Easier to abuse, harder to hold accountable. Prophecy at least required seers to be aware of an issue or ask the right questions. Turning the clock back came with all the benefits of 20-20 hindsight. To my knowledge there wasn’t a person alive with the ability, but with Providence’s resources I wouldn’t put it out of the realms of fabrication. Give someone the ability, and they may as well have already won.

Although prophecy was also the reason why this had to work. If Tez was right – and I didn’t see how any other seer would be capable of interfering when they were all stuck in a time freeze – it didn’t matter what we decided. He was going to come out of it laughing. If he was still on my side, I would too.

An opportunity indeed.

“Leave it,” I insisted. “None of us want to spend the decades it would take to undo the damage. Instead we deal with it, patch up the fallout and use it to our advantage. Tezcatlipoca has exposed a severe hole in our security. As long as we had it, it was only a matter of time before this happened anyway.”

Vishnu stepped forward, overtly angry for the first time I could remember. “You can’t ignore this again,” he petitioned Hera. “This is outright sabotage!”

“Of what?” I asked. “Your precious routine? Grow up. Do you really think Providence will be an iota weaker for what’s happened today? As opposed to leaving Siphon out there wielding a legitimate weapon?”

“Millions of people just died out there.” Muscles twitched along Vishnu’s jawline. “And we caused it. Mortals are flawed. Petty. We are supposed to be better.”

Consolidation had done… strange things to the Hindu pantheon. But I doubted even he could be that blind. Providence had done much worse in the past. No, there was something else. I tilted my head at him. “Are you afraid?”

“Of what?”

In front of Hera, it bode well to choose my words carefully. “Of a momentary lapse in control soiling our reputation. It won’t. The victims will blame themselves. They’ll blame others. They’ll blame a vaguely ominous garden gnome if we tell them to, because we are better than them.” Because we’d told them we were, and they’d believed that, too.

As Vishnu’s eyes flickered over my shoulder to another rippling city crushed under obsidian, it seemed to me he didn’t appear at all certain. “Only so long as we respect the process,” he said. His voice was quiet.

“You’re as bad as each other.” Hera’s sharp tone cut in. “And you’re both at fault. Vishnu, you need to retract your complaint. It’s a waste of company resources. And Odin, this is your final warning. Another stunt and I will oversee your demotion personally.”

“I assume that doesn’t come with a statute of limitations,” I sneered, the words dripping out with an ease I hadn’t predicted.

“Themis cared about such conceits,” Hera remarked. “I care about actual results. The method is coarse, but perhaps a cull was needed. Out and inside the business.” She waved a hand and the image in the pool faded back into clear liquid. The occasional sparkle glinted up at me, glass shards forming disrupted mosaics along its shallow depths. Faces I didn’t recognise, proud men and women dressed in old Greek finery.

“We leave it,” she declared. “What remains of Siphon can quarantine in Singapore. Pakhet shall take care of the other loose ends. We’ll need to reshuffle Marketing and Operations significantly to deal with the aftermath.”

“And Head of Security?” I asked.

Hera sniffed and began to march back towards the garden. “Unfortunately, a high-functioning seer is currently indispensable and alternative candidates are limited. Moreover, demotion is unreliable as a form of persuasion. But as you say, times are changing and so must we. Apollo and his kid gloves are gone. His replacement is clear he intends to make changes. He can hardly complain when we do the same.” Her lips twitched. “If Tezcatlipoca has no desire to run about on side errands, he’s welcome to remain here under permanent supervision. Consider his movements officially restricted.”

Tez was still frozen outside on the beanbag, looking awfully smug for someone who had to have foreseen his own punishment. Hera stopped in front of him, made an irritated noise, and snapped her fingers.

The seer vanished. For a split second I thought Hera had a way of getting around the office travel restrictions, until a flash of movement streaked from the air, bounced off the beanbag and rolled into the petals below.

Vishnu glitched and reappeared where it had fallen, his fingers uncurling around a small, circular object. A long chain tumbled between his fingers. “An amulet? This is –”

“Calm yourself. He’s still functional. He’ll just find it difficult to run off and cause problems. Especially if you don’t put him in front of any mirrors. Carry him on you and you should have plenty of time to react if he tries anything.”

“Seers’ powers are largely tied to their autonomy,” I pointed out as Vishnu lifted the chain around his neck. “You’re severely limiting his effectiveness at chasing leads.”

“Well, that’s what we have you for, isn’t it?” Hera’s tone indicated she was in no mood to accept arguments.

The amulet was about the size and shape of a fob watch, and looked like it was made of the same obsidian as Tez’s prosthetic foot. Diamonds scattered along one edge of the disk in a similar helix formation. A single eye formed from faceted obsidian sat inset in the middle of the pendant.

Then it moved, the glass twitching in turn from Hera to me to Pakhet, who had belatedly unfrozen and was trotting up the path to rejoin us.

Totally worth it, said Tez, in the gleeful tones of a child in the bloated, satisfied aftermath of illicit food crime. I just wish this shape came with an eyelid. The eye swung in my direction. Now we’re even.

If we’d been alone I’d have been tempted to take the amulet and watch it plunge down the staff toilets. There was a fine line between ‘useful distraction’ and ‘putting the entire company on high alert’. On top of that, Tez was supposed to be preparing to take down his new boss, which was a bit much to expect from an immobile object. Even one with Tez’s powers.

There were tactics he could use, weapons he could still fire, but they paled next to the loss of prophetic versatility. As gambits went, it should have been aborted with radioactive landmines long before conception. And for Tez to pull such an act of self-sabotaging masochism –

You’re not the original, I accused the amulet. You’re a reflection.

One whose life has been overwhelmingly comprised of induction procedures, said Amulet Tez. Something was inevitably going to burn. The eye slid back to Hera in time to catch her opening her mouth to speak.

“Understand there are consequences to your actions,” the goddess stated. Having re-established control, the anger had slipped back under her professional mask. “I don’t know where you got the idea that promotion raises you above the rules –”

“Apollo,” Pakhet and I answered in unison.

“– but as you can see, it doesn’t.”

I can’t hear you, drawled the amulet, not sounding particularly annoyed about it.

“Lip read. We have new roles to match your ‘new methods’. Your job is now to advise Vishnu personally. He can account for the rounds with your staff. After all, he has time.”

Pakhet shuffled her feet uncomfortably in the flowers until Hera gestured for her to speak.

“So,” said the former, “is he staying on all the time? Won’t that cause issues with privacy? What if Vishnu needs to go to the bathroom?”

I almost snorted up the contents of my last meal.

Hera gave her the kind of curt smile people offered to folk they didn’t care about. “I think you should be more concerned about your own duties,” she suggested.

So the real – well, main – Tez was still out there somewhere. Hopefully not one of the other copies still caught in the time freeze. I didn’t imagine their fates would be pleasant.

Nor would Xiānfēng’s, though in a freeze they wouldn’t feel a thing. If I didn’t do something, there was an excellent chance Pakhet’s trail would lead her right to them and Yun-Qi.

I almost felt sorry for Siphon. This wasn’t even Providence’s full force; just one trigger-happy seer and a handful of powered staff. Four hundred years of Xiānfēng’s progress, an offshoot’s frankly genius modification, and infiltrating an enemy stronghold with the most effective mass weaponry against divinity in history – it could all be wiped out in a literal instant.

That was what it meant to go up against gods, even when the fight was fair. More often than not, when two deities fought the one left standing was the one who struck first.

Providence had struck first, and the fight had never been fair. Just held back by the politics of power-hungry despots.

And part of me wondered if I was all that different. Maybe if I’d said the right thing or reacted the right way in one of Tez’s future visions, I could have stopped it. With the right spin, I could still save the survivors, leave threads open unchecked for them to wave their weapons again. But after Tez’s overdramatic intervention they’d be hitting the weaponise button faster than thought. As much as I liked mortals, I also wanted to spend eternity outside a soul jar.

If Yahweh’s powers even allowed him to succumb to it. For all I knew, it was possible all a successful Siphon would accomplish was wiping out the last of his competition.

So the slaughter of millions it was.

“One final briefing note,” I proposed, slapping a forced smile on my face. “We still need a sample recovery for R&D. The primary software poses far too much risk to bring into the office, but my investigations uncovered rumours of a variant safe to approach in the field. If you find either version, I want them and their researchers intact and delivered to separate isolated locations. No digital connections within a hundred kilometres, including phones.”

“Better still, we have a handful of retired facilities in inventory,” Hera said. “Some are quite out of date. It won’t take more than minimal upkeep to keep these individuals contained. Stripped of their toys, I imagine they’ll jump to earn our forgiveness. Vishnu, enact at your discretion.”

“This is simple enough.” He turned to Pakhet and the two conferred about various points of dull Operations logistics, with Hera chiming in occasionally. My brain tuned out.

With the entire world frozen outside Hera’s garden, there wasn’t much more I could do to protect Xiānfēng without painting my hands red and pacing up and down the garden professing my network of allegiances. This version of Tez wasn’t saying anything, so I hoped it would be enough. When I checked the amulet again, I found it looking back at me.

They’ll kill all the other reflections, I told it. Find their mirrors and smash them before the freeze lets up. I’m surprised Tez threw you all into annihilation for this.

Not quite, it replied. The others were mine. Not all of us are above using gaffer tape. Turns out transformations count as destroying mirrors. They won’t find the others because they’re already gone.

If they’re small mirrors, I mused as I feigned listening to technical jargon, and you’d been wearing them like clothes, there’s a chance I could get the same ones back. Untested, though. I’ve never had this situation come up before.

I kept the accompanying emotions friendly and conspiratorial. In one rogue moment, Tez had changed the fate of the world and manipulated everyone’s trust to do it. But despite his methods, the ulterior plan was still going ahead, and we needed him now more than ever.

We were still allies.

I had to make sure it stayed that way.