Lucy’s welcoming committee of infinite patience continued to circle up from the pit below, making their way closer to the top. My feet itched to explore the bottom, or the middle with its shining spokes, but I couldn’t afford distractions now.

“We’ll be the straw on the camel’s back,” Tez enlightened us further. “Even if I don’t intervene, the Preserver goes rogue. Today, tomorrow, a week or a month from now – it’s going to happen. All it will take to set him off is a small nudge, so we can time this to perfection. Leave that to me.”

“What’s he going to do?” Mayari asked warily. “I don’t like the idea of us all being stuck in a time freeze while an executive member runs rampant over our plans, even if he doesn’t know about them. In that situation, not only are we powerless, we won’t even know what’s been changed.”

“Well,” said Tez, “you’ll have my reflection to provide insights on that front. Vishnu’s been taking him into stasis with him. Though if it wasn’t for the strategic usefulness, I’d call him back. Ever since my other self became jewellery, I’ve been getting random infodumps of hours of dull chores and I’m convinced Vishnu’s real secret is not having broken sooner. It’s worse than Helpdesk. Believe me, I’m being punished.”

“But will that be enough?” Mayari persisted. “Ideally, we want a way to stop him activating stasis in the first place.”

“That depends entirely on where it’s used,” Tez responded with a smug expression. “Like the office, for example. Guess what Providence doesn’t defend very well against?”

I raised my eyebrows in genuine surprise. “He’s taking on Providence? Alone? He’s never going to make it.”

“It won’t affect Dad or the Host,” Lucy agreed. “I take it this needs to happen before the task manager is disabled, or all systems will already be on high alert.”

“Right,” I confirmed. “Vishnu still needs dealing with first.”

Tez held up both hands, gesturing for us to slow down. “I wish I was making this up,” he said. “No, he isn’t quite that far gone. Think of it as more of an unplanned executive decision. One for the good of the business.”

“Taking system tickets seriously?” Mayari suggested hopefully. “I don’t know. Tell us.”

“Oh, nothing much to surface appearances,” Tez said in the kind of nonchalant tone telling me it was, in fact, a major deal. “Just a minor security override to the planned schedule. Moving the office foyer from Bhutan to a new location.”

Durga frowned. “But he already has universal access. Everywhere there’s a building, anyway. Unless he’s changing the underlying parameters, I’m not sure what’s to be gained from it. Vish doesn’t break procedure without an excellent reason.”

Changing the parameters could be a big deal, I had to admit. Fiddling with spatial magic could lead to interesting and sometimes permanent effects. An infamous example had occurred centuries ago when several employees had exited through the foyer while it had inhabited a birdhouse, right before it changed. They’d been stuck as miniature versions of themselves for several weeks before bureaucratic approvals had been granted to configure the settings back to the same location and let them reverse the effect. They’d never heard the last of the teasing. The one I personally wanted to test – from a distance – was opening the foyer entrance into one of Providence’s own meeting rooms, which would either be a straightforward portal transition or break reality in some form of infinite office replication. Only experimentation would tell.

“Exactly,” said Tez. “Universal access.”

It clicked. “Singapore,” Mayari and I exclaimed simultaneously.

“The one place no one can get to,” I added. “No one on the company system, anyway. Unless you happen to have control of a hulking great skyscraper coated in protections against every form of divine power imaginable. So he’s taking Siphon into his own hands, then.”

“No,” Durga blurted out, to which Tez snapped his fingers in enthusiastic confirmation. “Well, yes. But it’ll be a rescue mission. For the three staff members left behind.”

“I was in the meeting when Apollo’s fate was decided,” I pointed out. “I wasn’t under the impression his boss was especially forgiving.”

“Apollo betrayed the company, and by extension Vish,” Durga explained. “Whereas Themis and the others did nothing wrong. One is a liability to be written off the balance sheet. The other is a loyal asset he’d defend to the end. Or would have, once. But even now, there’s enough of his old selves still in there. He still cares. Yes, it’s couched behind corporate rationale and business justifications, but it’s there. He’s going to try and get her back.”

“Bullseye,” Tez stated, rubbing his hands together. “One tiny little settings change not noticeable from the inside, able to bypass the chief executive’s attention. Can’t pause time, of course, since that would alert Yahweh. And once Themis is back and they finish off the organisation together, Singapore can rejoin the rest of the world and everything goes back to normal.” He grinned. “Or at least, that’s what I’ll be advising him.”

Lucy held up a single hand, palm forward. “One moment. He’s going to expose the entire office to the single greatest danger to them in recent memory, for the sake of rescuing three people?”

“Sure,” Tez said. “After all, Siphon will be frozen. They’re hardly a threat.”

“And how does he plan on avoiding their containment fields?” I asked. With the blanketing of the city Regina had described, I doubted he’d be lucky enough to avoiding walking straight into one, and Siphon would no doubt be hiding right in the middle. Vishnu’s stasis, while powerful, didn’t come with inbuilt energy disruption as far as I was aware. The containment effect would still be active.

Tez had an answer for that too. “With me,” he responded. “Or rather, my reflection.”

“And he trusts it?” Lucy queried.

“If he succumbs, so does the other me,” he replied. “One benefit of having your advisor hanging around your neck.”

“Amulet Tez could walk him straight into it,” I suggested cautiously. “In theory, we could pull him out again once this coup is all over. And that’s one less problem for us to deal with.”

Tez shook his head. “No thanks. You can look elsewhere for your needless noble sacrifices. Us newborns still have our whole lives ahead of us. You spent all that time arranging your demon lord into position, so let’s use her. My reflection will lead Vishnu to her hideout. We say she’s an independent consultant Odin picked up for his investigation; no direct loyalty to the company, at least yet. Vishnu knows he needs this kept off the official records, so it’s an attractive offer. We demonstrate her threading a needle through the minefield. Then it’s just a matter of timing the moment to snatch the amulet away. Once they’re separated – bam, into the containment field he goes. Of course, Singapore will still be frozen indefinitely, but that’s the least of our concerns.”

“Are you fast enough?” Durga asked him. “As I see it, that’s the critical flaw in your strategy. If he sees it coming at all, even for a split second, you’ve already lost. And I’ve worked with Apollo enough to know prophecy doesn’t protect against seer-induced fumbles.”

“That is the hard part,” the seer agreed. “And the interference from two of us being involved in the planning hasn’t helped. We’ve run into a lot of dead end timelines. Turns out trying to provide distractions in a stasis field isn’t easy. You can’t just point into the distance and say ‘look over there’ when your target knows it’s all frozen. But our best bet is giving him what he wants. Let him find Themis, and Siphon. His own focus on her extraction should give us the opening we need.”

“Okay,” Lucy acknowledged, his face neutral. “As long as you know what you’re doing. I’ll work with Regina to see what we can do to get her powers up to speed in the remaining time we have.”

“If something does go wrong, I’ll know,” Tez reminded us. “He’ll be keeping the pause localised to Singapore on our advice, so hopefully the news will come through in real time. And because we’re up first, we can call off the rest of the plan if we have to.”

“Will they buy it, though?” Mayari asked.

Tez shrugged. “I don’t have time to run through every side scenario. Maybe, maybe not. Just be aware we may need to have a backup, and Vishnu is the obvious scapegoat.”

I saw Durga shoot him a worried look, clearly not convinced it would be enough. I wasn’t either, and touched my hand to the metal band most of the way to rematerialising on my upper ear. I still wasn’t sure how best to use it, or to activate it minus exploding chains.

“Here,” I said, handing it over once the change solidified. “Put this on him first.” I’d planned on saving it for Legba, but a lot could go south in those precious slivers between Regina lifting the amulet and Tez booting its wearer into the containment cloud. The bridle-earring wouldn’t save much time, but even a microsecond might make the difference between success and failure.

I’d just have to face my target on hard mode. At least I was sure he wouldn’t be fiddling with time.

Upon seeing the earring, Durga shot me a relieved glance. “You don’t need to imprison him,” she said. “Neutralised, you could let him go. Take his pass away and send him somewhere where he can’t make his way back to the office.”

“And why should he get special treatment?” Mayari asked. “What if he has a contingency ready?”

“Tez would –”

“Tez doesn’t care,” said the man himself. “My job is to get him out of the way. How that happens doesn’t matter as long as he stays gone.” He poked at the earring until it sprung open, and a cascade of golden chains showered down into the abyss. I waited for them to snap taut, but instead they kept rattling down the side of the chasm. It was a thin chain, but the god of night had to dig his heels in to prevent being dragged over the side by the increasing weight pouring over the edge.

“That’s… surprisingly useful,” Mayari acknowledged over the clinks of metal and background vindication I was feeling from not being the only one to not get the hang of it immediately. “Even if it does have the potential to crash several national economies.”

Tez cleared his throat and held out the hand clasping the earring towards me. “It’s my reflection who needs this, and I can’t call him back without blowing his cover. Smuggle this into Singapore and then we’re talking.”

I grasped several handfuls of chain and flipped the mental switch to turn it off before it got too out of hand, only for the thing to retract at the speed of an angry tape measure. Giving it to Regina wasn’t a bad idea. Trapped as she was in the public park, there wasn’t much she could do but practice to pass the time.

“Then if you have no preference, spare him,” Durga insisted, returning to the earlier conversation as I tried with partial success to avoid whiplash. “We’re fighting this fight to end the brutality. We don’t have to copy the callousness of our predecessors.”

Vince fixed a dubious stare on the warrior goddess. “Even I know a good dark cabal smites its enemies.”

“We’re not –” She broke off, seeing Lucy waving a hand at her to run with it. “If things had gone slightly different, I could as easily have been on the other side of this caper. I’m still not sure how I ended up here. But you’ll note I am here. Everyone knows there are problems, all the way up the chain. They just can’t break it. But you understand everyone in the business has been one of its links. Even Lucifer.”

Lucy inclined his head.

“We should cover loose ends,” Mayari insisted. “But I do see where you’re coming from. How we handle this will matter, in the long term if nothing else. We’re putting all our effort into achieving one goal without considering how it will be perceived.” She spread her hands, gesturing around the group. “All of this will mean nothing if the office turns on us. And I honestly don’t know which way it will fold. We didn’t exactly run a survey.”

“Worry about that later,” I said, weathering the recoil from the last of the chain thundering home. I put it back on my ear. “Regina will have the earring; one of the Tezes can figure it out when the time comes.”

“If only we hadn’t broken the scanner, we could have replicated it for each of our targets,” Mayari lamented. “There isn’t a chance we could get another one, is there?”

“Last I checked, that was the only one stored in the office,” said Lucy. “To prevent the infinite duplication problem, I expect. They’ll have more, but I don’t know where they are.”

“If Odin and Vishnu were on better terms, I could try asking about repairs,” I said. “But something tells me it would raise more suspicions. And a visit to R&D is right up there in the red zone of risk assessment. If anyone will see through me, it’ll be them.”

“We’re running out of time for further prep work,” Tez affirmed. “And we’re about to have visitors.”

The party of quasi-children had at last reached the lip of the abyss and begun working their way around the edge. Closer up, I could see the disconnect in body language better; the grace and self-awareness typical in most people who’d been around for more than their first couple of decades. All four wore strangely timeless outfits, closest to tunics and not quite a uniform, but consistent enough it suggested a local fashion market independent of any currently on Earth. I could see Lucy’s indirect influence at play from the high quality and subtle embellishments and wondered how many were dressing to impress.

Once again, I wondered about the society and resources available below and how far it all went. If it was still there after tomorrow, I could see myself taking Clara there on a field trip. Or all my children, for that matter.

Unlike the five demon lords, this group didn’t bear glittering tells on their palms. Unable to take their eyes off the five adults – to outward appearances, at least – in their midst, they approached a little slower than I suspected they would have otherwise.

The tallest, a redhead with freckles and perfect teeth, stepped forward. For a moment I thought she might bow, but instead she addressed the devil with a casual, if wary, tone. “Welcome home.” I couldn’t quite place the accented English. She glanced across at Tru, who had managed to pull himself together enough to look merely sick rather than traumatised. “I’ll organise a room for the newcomers. But we’re out of materials for new constructions.”

“Again,” chirped one of the others, a smaller girl with hair so black it was almost tinted blue. On closer inspection I realised it was blue, and it didn’t have the look of dye.

“Again,” acknowledged the first girl. “What’s the latest on the next import?” I noticed she stared pointedly at the golden band on my ear.

I saw Mayari’s lips curl up at the corners. I like these people already.

“No plans yet,” Lucy answered. “But this isn’t a standard call, and we won’t be staying long.” He swept an arm at the rest of us. “I summoned you to meet my allies and generals: Loki, Mayari, Durga and Tezcatlipoca. Your fellow recruits here are Tru and Vince, and they’ll be leaving with us.”

Even cut off from the outside world, I could see the names made an impression. By this point, my transformations had managed to manifest a tunic similar to those worn by the local residents. I crossed an arm over the soft fabrics and bowed.

“Ah,” said the redhead. “Then you’ve spread the word about our city.” Her eyes flicked to the side, into the centre of the pit.

“Yes. It’s time for us to expand its borders. You’ll need to gather everyone and make preparations for war.”

“War? Now?” A dark boy with one brown and one green eye stepped forward. “We’re not ready.”

“In a few hours,” elaborated Tez. “That should be more than enough. You’ve had more training than most people on Earth. Some even in actual battles.”

“You know what we’re fighting for,” said Lucy, “and we’re up against the Host. It’s your decision. But this is likely our best chance. Everyone who wants to join should assemble here, near the portal. I’ll be here to give you the detailed brief and answer any questions.”

“You’re not coming back with us?” Mayari queried.

“I’m needed here,” he replied. “But I’ll keep the portal open. Your island is just on the other side of that door, and I’ll need your help with logistics. But I expect this will be the last time I see the others face to face until we’re victorious, dead, or worse. Except Vince. He stays with me.”

Hearing his name, the occultist raised his eyebrows hopefully, and Lucy repeated the sentence in Italian.

“If only my dearest mother was alive to see this,” the former said, and sighed.

“Win, and she could be,” the blue-haired girl replied in the same language. She shot Vince a devious wink. “You’re in a pro-necromancy electorate now.”

I raised my eyes skywards. Perhaps only ten metres above our heads, the rock walls began curving inwards, giving the whole area the impression of being on the inside of a very large egg. The world edge followed it exactly. If the pattern held, I was willing to bet I’d find a similar situation towards the bottom, every scrap of material save that required to hold the borders in place mined and exploited for resources. I wondered what would happen if someone were to punch through.

“I want your best with me,” Mayari was saying somewhere beside me. “People who can afford diversions and buy me time.”

“And I’ll take the rest,” I chipped in. “We’ll be in a crowd. I want quantity and maximum confusion.”

As one, the children looked to Lucifer, who nodded in confirmation. “There won’t be much for you to do at my end. Go where the help is needed. Tezcatlipoca? Durga? Assistance is yours if you want it.”

“They can’t even get to where I’ll be,” replied the seer. “Not without travelling through the office, and that’s not going to happen.”

“I still don’t know what I’m meant to be doing,” Durga pointed out. “We hadn’t gotten to that part yet.”

Everyone’s eyes turned back to me. “Right. Final fifth of Loki’s master plan.” I cracked my knuckles while doing my best to keep a straight face, since every idea I’d considered up to this point I’d summarily discarded. But I didn’t have anything better. So what the hell, then. Why not go big?

“I hope you’ve all been paying attention during our extensive corporate education,” I declared, interested to note the pact didn’t seem to be giving me problems explaining despite our small outsider audience. “And also you, Tru. Because we’re going to buy out Providence.”