When he heard the plan, Lucy broke out laughing. With Vince in tow and Tru struggling to cope with existing, let alone strategy, the conversation had dropped into Italian. Lucy had been taking moments here and there to catch up the English-speaker, but here he was forced to pause and take a breather.

“You want us to turn ourselves into pixels and gallivant around inside a computer system?” Mayari narrowed her eyes at me. “What is this, Tron? You’re talking about something that’s entirely untested.”

“Not entirely untested,” I said, and explained the situation with Xiānfēng.

“You realise no one’s going to have made little human avatars for us,” Mayari stated. “In essence, we’d be transforming ourselves into self-aware mathematics and logic operations. I don’t even know what that would do to a brain.”

At the mere mention of transforming, my body had already started dissolving and I worked to pull it back together. “I’m not sure it works like that,” I submitted hoarsely. “Quil didn’t seem to have any trouble with Siphon’s variant, and I’m sure he was born without a whole lot of grey matter. Plus, it’s Helpdesk we’re talking about. There’s as much miracle in there as technology, and with all the tasks any of us have absorbed over the years that probably counts for something.”

“And what if I don’t come back?” Mayari posited. “Who’s going to deal with Yahweh then?”

Distant movement in the pit below us caught my eye, and I found myself momentarily distracted. Descending from the outer rim not far from our current location, a dirt path spiralled its way around the edge of the drop. As it got deeper, it developed the addition of wooden treads and handrails, soon joined by supporting scaffolding, and then transitioned into metal walkways hammered to the rock with long metal pins. I couldn’t see much further below that since the view was blocked by the first of the horizontal spires, but it was clearly a group of small figures making its way towards us. It would be a while before they reached our position.

I tore my attention back to Mayari. “Technically it’s only Gia going in directly,” I said. “You’ll be there to help guide her, and I think you’re the best-suited of us to do it.”

“I’d say the same about you,” she shot back. “You’re Odin now. You have access to his system controls. Even if you can’t bypass official channels, there must be something in there about Helpdesk and how to switch it off. Not only that, you’re the expert on dimensional business. Not to mention Yggdrasil.”

“Expert is a bit of a stretch,” interrupted Tez. He’d let go of Vince, who’d managed to calm down a little and had wandered a short distance off from the group to lie down on his stomach and peer into the abyss, kicking his legs up at the knees behind him. “And there’s no reason you can’t both go. Loki has a direct line to all the demons, so as long as we aren’t too heavily pact-drained she’ll be able to stay in touch.”

“That’s an excellent point,” Lucy broke in, wiping the corners of his eyes. “We’ll have to time this carefully to minimise strain. The edict is one thing, and Janus gives us a good cover. But Helpdesk going down is going to be noticed by every eye in the business.”

“So Xiānfēng will be a likely suspect,” I agreed. “And that’s where Mayari comes in.”

Understanding washed over the moon – currently sun – goddess’ face. “How early can you get me there?” she asked. “I might be able to lay an ambush.”

“I’ll send some of my army with you,” Lucy offered. “They might not be needed, but if they are, they should help. When Yahweh arrives, he’ll likely bring a few angels with him, and my crew knows exactly how to handle them.”

“You’ll need to take care of the guard,” I added. “There’s only one, but it’s a place of power for him.”

Tez waved a hand. “Leave that to me. I don’t expect much deviation on that part of the plan.”

“Good,” I said. “Of course, that’s all only half of this part of the plan. Once Helpdesk is down, you’re all going to get hit with the rebound, so either Lucy or I will warn you to brace. Unfortunately, that means –” I pointed two fingers at Lucy and Durga, “you’re both going to have a terrible case of ADHD to deal with. Sorry. It was just too good not to.”

Lucy, for his part, seemed unfazed. “I’ll deal with it. It’s fewer souls than I’ve had to manage in the past, and I handled it back then. It’s what I was created for, after all.”

We all looked at Durga. Since entering the childverse, her dead arm had been restored to full health, her hair to jet black. She’d made her way over to Tru’s self-imposed corner of despair and had sat down on the dirt beside him, cradling his child’s head in two arms and resting a third palm on his shoulder.

She stared back at us. “I expect it’ll hit hard,” she admitted. “So be it. I no longer have my sisters to hide, so I can bear it. Vish will be hit, too. But even we won’t suffer like Yahweh. Our requests are at least disseminated between members of our pantheon. Yahweh removed anyone he deemed competition. But you should probably limit my part of the plan to stabbing.” A fourth and fifth hand pointed at Lucy and Mayari. “I’m not going to be up for their level of mental workout.”

Mayari frowned at the ex-demon. “What’s up with him this time?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but Lucy beat me to it. “Brain damage. From before birth. He was lucky to make it. I wish I could say it was unusual, but a lot of the souls I end up with were rejected for reasons like this. The good news is that this place will heal them, given enough time. But it takes years. It’s not my strong point.”

“So this place is a giant healing field.”

“Eventually.” He leaned back as if on a wall, except there was nothing there.

Vince, who had looked up from the abyss, saw it, made a double-take, and almost fell into the hole.

“Most of the kids I take in are very little,” Lucy continued. “They arrive here and stay until they turn ten. That’s how old we are now, by the way. It’s usually enough time to fix most of the problems. Then, they get a choice. They can leave and age as normal, or they can stay here as children as long as they want. Most of them leave. I did my best, but this world is tiny. Wanderlust is inevitable.”

“But they’ll die outside,” I pointed out. “Right?”

“Only if they don’t come back. Most do. Some live their full lives and return on their deathbeds. Others leave for a month or year or two in spurts, rationing their time. I bleed a few every year, but I give them the choice, and there are always more to fill the vacancies. You’ll find my army looks quite different on the other side.”

“And which of us gets it?” Mayari asked.

“Me,” I answered from the crest of the ridge.

“Not just you,” Durga corrected me. “I can go without, but Lucy will need to distribute them among the rest of you.”

“Sure, Mayari can have a few. But the rest are definitely with me,” I argued. “Third fifth of Loki’s master plan: angels versus demons. After all, that is what they are.”

Stiffening, Durga glanced down at the figures making their way towards us. I copied the motion. By now I could clearly make out the group of ordinary children ascending the pit. Ordinary except for the lack of strain most mortals would be displaying after climbing that many stairs, and the unchildlike composure in their stances.

“I can accept the noble sacrifice of your five generals,” the warrior goddess said, facing him with an accusing stare, “however reluctantly. But inflicting this fate on a whole city of children? Demons belong in the afterlife until their souls have a chance to heal. Which we all know no one is getting right now.”

I knew what the warrior goddess had to be thinking. Demons in the old days had often run out of control. Lucifer had kept his corner of the world clear under Yahweh’s orders, but other pantheons had dealt with them differently, some turning a blind eye until things went wrong. Natural-formed demons – as opposed to the divinely-created variety – happened whenever souls had formed enough to stay together in one piece, but not enough to be, well, sane. Usually they never made it to birth before landing in the afterlife.

The Hindu afterlives had been unique, drawing all souls towards a healthy equilibrium and another chance. From Durga’s point of view, being a demon was therefore a sickness; the afterlife, the hospital patients were treated in. Shooting an arrow through their skulls practically drove the ambulance service. And in fairness, when demons went bad they could do a lot of damage if left unanswered. Though not all went bad.

But there were no longer any hospitals for the dead, and she could no longer smite them into intensive care. It must have seemed like Lucy had torn handfuls out of their identities for his own ends.

“My demons are different,” Lucy pointed out. “I’m adding, not taking away.”

I remembered Lucy telling Pope Grace back at the Vatican what he did with the children signed over to him. Fixing them. “I have it on recent personal experience Lucy can seed demonic energy,” I said in a wry tone.

“The atmosphere here isn’t concentrated enough to make demon lords,” Lucy confirmed. “I’m not powerful enough to alter that many people that much all at once. But the base template is there. These are the lucky ones.”

“Or were,” said Mayari. “You are planning on sending them out to do battle.”

“Only if they agree,” the devil countered.

“I would wield the sacrificial dagger of my Lord wherever he wanted,” Vince offered by way of support. He crawled back from the lip of the overhang with enough red dust covering his tiny suit to make it a contender for a washing powder infomercial, and bowed before Durga. “I pledged my loyal blade to the serpent a long time ago. And with my new malefic powers, I shall purge the world of all that stands in his way.”

“You forgot the maniacal laughter,” Mayari told him. “And the moustache.”

Vince raised his hands to his face. “Oh,” he said, feeling around. “Well, I’m ten. That would be a bit silly at my age.”

Durga’s face remained neutral. “‘Adding’, you say.”

“Adding,” said Lucy, firmly. “And once we win, we can fix the sorts of problems that led to these issues in the first place.”

Durga sighed.

I clapped my hands together to regain the group’s attention. “Back to the plan, I’m expecting a bunch of the holy hover-turds at the Vatican. Remember that, because it’s where the planned announcement is going down, or would be, if we gave it a chance. We won’t.”

“I won’t lie, I did want to know what it would have been,” Lucy mused. “Tez?”

The seer had largely been sitting out of the conversation, gaze distant as he looked into the future even now. No time to waste when this much rode on his predictions. He snapped out of it, shaking his head a little. “If we never make our move, Lorenzo will be officially announced as the new messiah. They’re planning an attack on Rome to do it; the messiah will publicly save the city with the support of an angelic host. A massive shitstorm goes down and Italy says bye-bye to democracy. Beyond that, I can’t tell you much more than the next person. Too much divergence on the long-term consequences.”

“Well, we’ve got to stop it,” Durga exclaimed. She laid Tru back against the wall and rose to her feet. “How many of them are there? Who do they bring in, and what tactics do they use?”

Tez barked out a laugh. “This is Legba we’re talking about. This isn’t a military strike, it’s entertainment. You think I overstepped my bounds dealing with Siphon? You haven’t seen anything. But it’s moot. This thing was designed to be a linear production. Disrupt the opening scene and the rest of it falls apart. Nobody sent the angels to theatre school. The show does not go on.”

“Yeah, well,” I remarked. “It still leaves us with a bunch of angels to deal with. Leaves me with them. And they can override magic like Yahweh.”

Lucy grinned. “Which my army can specifically counter. I wouldn’t pit them against any gods unless you want a slaughter, but I raised my children to evade the forces constantly hunting them. Not only can Providence’s angels not tell them apart from mortals, but the override won’t affect them.” The smile faded somewhat. “Unfortunately, that’s where most of the power went. My first priority was getting them out into the world to live fulfilling lives. You’ll find some of the older charges have extra juice, but I reserved most of it for the demon lords. Who they also can’t tell apart, by the way.”

It explained why the pact had been strangely stable of late despite Grace being in the thick of the hornet’s nest. I’d been wondering about that.

“I take it I’m not also exempt by proxy,” I drawled.

“Alas no. You’ll have to figure something out.”

“Well,” said Tez. “The angels are one part. You’ve also got a number of Marketing staff on hand to bring the spectacle to life.” The recognisable image of a tall classical tower and its occupants entered my head, and I made a note of them just in case. “They’re off in their own little clique at a convenient vantage point,” the god of night continued. “Get there early enough and you can avoid them entirely. Drag your feet, and you’ll be dealing with them, too. I spent a long time looking, but it’s practically impossible to separate the director from his star performers on opening night. The best I could do was arrange you a brief window before they arrive.”

I found myself drawing in an anticipatory breath. “Act fast, got it. Give me the exact timings, and that’s our final deadline. Legba is the last of the five, because order is important. We disorient with Yahweh first, then debuff and distract with Enki in immediate succession. Legba comes last, after all the others are set in motion. We prevent the attack on Rome, make sure the messiah never gets to messi. Then we take him with us and declare custody of Providence. What could go wrong?”

Durga pursed her lips. “You mean, other than an enormous crowd disappointed it didn’t receive the miracle it came for?”

“You’d think people would be used to that by now,” I said. “Still, not much point in holding back at this point. Chances are they’ll get some kind of show, even if it’s closer to a fireworks safety malfunction than Broadway.”

I noticed Tez start to grin out of the corner of my eye.

Mayari shifted her weight to the other side, closer to the sheer drop. “There are still two fifths of the operation unaccounted for,” she pointed out. “What about Vishnu? He’s still our most serious threat.”

The smile spreading over Tez’s face cracked all the way into laughter. “Oh, I don’t think you need to worry much about that,” he cackled. “It’s better than I’d ever have planned. After we were all so worried, the great lug is going to do half the work for us.”

This was news to me. Just as well, since I hadn’t had any idea what Tez’s portion of the plan would involve other than bad amulet advice and pushing the COO in the vague direction of Singapore.

“Do tell,” said Lucy, keenly alert. “Are we talking a change of heart?”

Tez turned his head to gaze at Durga, whose expression had just changed to one of dawning realisation.

“In a way,” she remarked into the ensuing silence. “But I bet he’s going to break. Now both his primary supports have been cut out from underneath him, and their replacement is actively antagonistic.”

“I warned him I’d be promoted above my level of competency,” Tez said, unoffended. “He’ll get no sympathy from me. You’re also right.”

Durga plucked at the black braid dangling over her shoulder as the rest of us – with the exception of Tru, who hadn’t received the latest translation yet – all stared at her. “Every rule and every precedent he’s built his portfolio on has just been broken after a thousand years of stability. We’re not like Odin’s department; we follow clear rules and procedures. Now he’s watching everything he maintained descend into chaos, and his position eroding away to politics. Plus he does care about his staff, you know.” She looked up, noticed the stares, and her fingers lifted from the braid. “What? Everyone always forgets I can sense these things.”