Successful? From where I was standing, it had been a disaster. “What in the state of Zeus' toenails just happened, compadre?”

There was a small beep as he hung up, immediately followed by the sound of a throat being cleared behind me. With a roll of my eyes, I turned to face him. “I wasn’t aware I’d put up a neon sign over my door saying ‘everyone please come barging in without an invite’.”

“Someone’s tetchy,” he remarked, eyebrows raised. “I want to keep the detailed discussions off the phone for now. I don’t think we’re being monitored, but let’s not make it easy to be proven wrong.” He held up a hand to stop me from interrupting, looking very pleased with himself. “As for what’s going on, that’s easy. We just paved the way to our imminent success.”

“Hmph,” I grunted, unconvinced. “Explain. Actually, hold up. Let’s go somewhere else, then explain. If you’re paranoid about phone monitoring, I’m paranoid about my apartment being bugged.” Not least because of what Lucy had found on Eris’ computer, or the fact Obvious Thug had somehow known where I lived.

He made a noncommittal noise. “Suit yourself. You’ll want to get changed, then. Wear something skintight. And leave your phone here.”

I noted he’d lost the glasses and hat since I’d seen him earlier. It made him look less like a hipster who was trying too hard and more like a 1970’s dad. “I’m not sure if I’m meant to take that as a threat or a mildly kinky proposition,” I quipped as I rummaged through the nearest pile of clothes.

“You’ve got a burkini over there in your inexplicable pantry closet,” he pointed out. “That’ll do.”

“I think I just learnt more about your love life than I ever wanted to,” I said, nonetheless retrieving it from where it was wedged between some cardigans and a box of cereal.

I had to admit I was curious about where we were going that would necessitate skintight clothing. The burkini had a hood that covered my ears, designed to keep water out and slightly muffling every sound around me except the soft movement of fabric every time I turned my head. It wasn’t exactly a subtle look.

When I was done changing, Tez extended a hand. “Ready?”

I placed my palm over his, and a moment later the world around us erupted into colder shades of grey and silver as the warm apartment ambiance was replaced by the light of the moon and stars. The subtle nuances of residential background noise cut out instantaneously, replaced with the loud crash of waves against sand and the odd chirp of a cricket. A light breeze brushed past us and the air was still warm, but less cloyingly humid than it had been a moment ago.

We were standing on a narrow footpath overlooking a long ocean beach of white sand. At its back stood a row of mammoth skyscrapers – hotels and exclusive apartments, by the look of them - with palm trees dotting the walkways between. The headlights of a distant car or two flashed in my peripheral vision, and there were a few other people out walking some distance away under the floodlights lining the main promenade, but in the immediate vicinity we were alone. By the look and feel of it we’d skipped ahead a couple of timezones, but not by much. The burkini was starting to make more sense now.

“Surfer’s Paradise, Australia,” Tez confirmed, gesturing around us. “Not a bad holiday spot.”

“Is this where they’re keeping the you-know-whats?” I asked.

“Not even close,” he said. “This is just our first stop.”

“Okay,” I conceded. “So why don’t you start by explaining what happened back there?”

“Gladly.” He turned and started walking up the nearest road, away from the beachfront and towards the densest cluster of buildings, indicating for me to follow. “That, my curious fellow, was what we call a distraction. If I was to have any chance of getting key information out of the right people, I needed to make sure Shitface was out of the way in the interim.”

I made a low whistle. “So you knew he would show up and engage me.”

“Not for certain. But yes, that was the expectation.” He sounded inordinately pleased with himself, which wasn’t surprising – I doubted he had many opportunities to pull one over on his rival.

It made sense. Provide enough of a distraction, and Shitface would comb the timelines for my involvement, while overlooking Tez and leaving him free to take future action. By the time the former was done interrogating me, Tez would have had time to accumulate a hefty little stash of answers and revert back to a set of timelines where he wasn’t putting himself at high risk.

By now I should have been used to being the sacrificial lamb, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about it when I wasn’t in on the joke. “Clever,” I admitted at last. “Except for the glaring flaw that he probably now knows all about the plan.”

“Selling yourself short, Loki,” he replied, with a jaunty step. “This is you we’re talking about.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling the beginning of a stress headache coming on. “Don’t believe the reputation. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, trust me. And he had me questioned for hours, Tez. I have no idea what I told him. That’s concerning. I’m concerned.”

“Well, are you stupid enough to tell him your plans?”

“Probably not?” I hazarded. “How could I know?” Outwitting Shitface wasn’t all that hard, but I found it hard to believe I would have been able to repeat that feat across every timeline generated. What’s more, I couldn’t honestly say I could trust myself not to spill the beans under certain circumstances. Even for someone like Shitface. There was always a way. But I kept those thoughts to myself for now. “Did you at least find out what he asked me?”

He snorted. “That man blasts through timelines like a sword in a balloon pit. I can’t keep up with those kinds of speeds. I was more concerned with keeping us out of long-term trouble.”

“Speaking of, what’s the status? You tell me it was a success, but how?”

“I don’t see your head on a plaque, if that’s what you’re asking,” he evaded.

We turned down a side street. More skyscrapers. Here we started to see fewer hotels and more deserted shopfronts at ground level, along with the odd restaurant serving its last few customers before closing time. Commercial district.

“Be more specific. Has he figured out what we’re doing? Is he coming after us in the primary timeline?”

“Doesn’t look like it. At least, I’m not seeing any interference from him in the near future.” He paused for a moment. “Sure, if he’s smart, he’ll plan on lying low for a bit, wait until there’s enough evidence to catch us in the act. But I can’t see him doing that.”

Normally I’d have agreed, but I had a bad feeling about the way he’d just… vanished. No snooty soapboxing. No immediate repercussions, or backup from the rest of Security. Just gone. This wasn’t like him. He never passed up an opportunity to assert his moral superiority. Too bad Lucy wasn’t around to ask for insights.

Tez grunted. “You’re thinking about it too hard,” he said. “Leave the prophecy to those of us equipped to deal with it.” A few steps later, he stopped in front of a random building and nodded towards it. “Here we are.”

I peered across at it. “Steve’s Scuba Supplies,” said the sign at the top in a hideous green font against the backdrop of a cartoon ocean. The first letter of each word was composed of bendy palm trees that looked like they’d gotten confused about where the sun was multiple times during their growth cycles. The interior of the shop was hidden behind a metal security screen, and it didn’t seem like there were any lights on behind it.

“Thought that would surprise you,” said Tez.

He was right. Of all the things I’d been expecting, diving had not been one of them. It should have been, in hindsight. The ocean wasn’t the worst place to hide something. Vast enough to be like planting a needle in a haystack, and inaccessible enough to make the task very difficult for undesirables. “Tell me we’re not going to –“

“- the bottom of the Mariana Trench,” he finished for me. “No. I mean, if you ask me, it has way too much of a reputation. Better to pick some dull spot in the middle of nowhere no one’s ever heard of.”

“Colour me intrigued,” I said. “Where, then?”

“You’re not going to like it,” he warned me, holding out a hand. “You’re going to have to work for this, and it’s going to hurt.”

Taking the proffered hand, I blinked in the sudden darkness as the interior of the shop washed around us. It was almost pitch black on the inside, although I could make out a few sharp angles resembling the corners of cabinets and racks. Tez held up a restraining arm to prevent me from walking forward, and a few seconds later the lights went on.

He stepped away from the wall switch and pointed upwards, where two nebulous patches of darkness hung like amorphous smoke clouds, hugging the ceiling in a beautiful violation of mortal physics. “I’ve taken care of the cameras, including audio.” he advised. “You can speak freely.”

“Good,” I approved, inspecting the length of the room. The shop was well-travelled, a bit dingy – the kind of practical place that made enough good trade not to have to worry about keeping up the appearance of a showroom. Scratched and scuffled floorboards where heavy equipment had been moved around on a frequent basis. Did a lot of business in repeat hires rather than new sales, I guessed, although there were plenty of new goods on display as well. My eyes drifted toward the counter where the cash register sat. The Singaporean-Australian exchange rate wasn’t bad.

“Leave it,” said Tez, following my gaze. “It’s empty. And it’s the moon, by the way.”

“The what?”

“Where we’re going. That’s where they’re keeping the suppressants. Good old Luna.”

I looked at him curiously. “You don’t have clearance. How are you planning on getting around that one?” Nobody had clearance to leave Earth except the executive team and a small sub-community of assorted celestial gods who couldn’t be forced out without causing a serious PR incident. It was one of the capital-R Rules. The tyrant liked everyone close to home where we were easier to keep tabs on, instead of potentially raising rival armies halfway across the galaxy to unseat him from power.

“I’m not,” he answered. “I could have stolen some access cards, but they leave too much of a trail. We’ll just have to weather it. I told you it wouldn’t be easy.” Pacing over towards a rack of wetsuits, he picked one out and tossed it towards me, a child’s orange outfit with glittery silver stars running in a sash formation from shoulder to hip. “Put this on. Over the burkini. You’ll need it.”

I held it up in one hand and waggled it in challenge. A few glitter flakes tumbled down. “Tez, I may not be an expert on space, but even I know this isn’t going to cut it. We should be raiding NASA.”

“Again, too risky,” he argued. “I looked into it a bit. Didn’t venture too far in case it tripped an alarm, but it has all the warning signs. Things go missing there, they’ll be noticed. So we’re making a homebrew.”

Providence had tendrils everywhere.

“Damn,” I said, unzipping the suit. I was short and skinny enough that it just about fit. If only I had my powers, I could have approximated a proper spacesuit. Probably. Of course, if I had my powers, I wouldn’t need one in the first place. “I have no idea how those things are supposed to work.”

“That makes two of us. But here we are. Not too late to pull out if you’re having cold feet, although it would be a crime to let the opportunity go to waste.”

“Pfft,” I said. “I was walking around barefoot in the snow before frostbite was invented. Although socks do seem like the kind of thing you’d want in space.”

While I went hunting for some, and gloves, Tez ambled over to the back of the shop where a variety of oxygen tanks hung on display. He wrestled one down and inspected it like a mathematician encountering an unsolved equation. For a few minutes conversation ceased.

“Engineering is harder than it looks,” he said eventually. “But at this point I’m settling for something that allows you to bend your elbows and prevent you from screaming the entire way through the mission.”

I shook my head. Great salesman, Tez.

Beckoning me near, he handed over a pair of untinted navy goggles. I put them on, aware that each successive piece of mismatched apparel drew me ever closer to resembling some kind of deranged clown. Soon to be deranged space clown, which somehow made it worse. All my wardrobe preparation, and it had never occurred to me I might need astronaut gear.

“Hold still,” Tez ordered, eying me up like a measuring stick. The air around me thickened and condensed, forming a tangible pressure that threatened to pop like a bubble. When it did, it burst into existence as reams of thick but surprisingly light fabric covering me from head to toe. A glass screen in front of my eyes formed a visor through which I could peer out ahead, though not to the sides – not that my peripheral vision wasn’t already hindered by the goggles. I rapped on it with my knuckles, which were now encased in what looked suspiciously like ski gloves and unable to produce more than a soft thunking noise. And the more I thought about it, the more I suspected the reference material for the helmet had been an actual fishbowl. All the external noises around me were heavily muted, while my own breathing sounded like someone was releasing a firehose every few seconds.

A heavy weight on my back threatened to tip me over, which I guessed was the oxygen tank. A quick check in the shop mirror confirmed this, and also that the deranged space clown was about to become reality; the makeshift spacesuit was bright orange with a belt of glittery stars across the front.

“Not what I would have chosen for a covert operation,” I commented, starting a little as my voice echoed back at me loudly. Or at all. But I had to appreciate his sense of humour.

Tez looked back at me blankly and tapped his ear. You’ll have to sign, he said directly into my head. Couldn’t figure out how to install a working comms system.

I signed, which was also awkward when wearing gloves with about a quarter of the dexterity of my regular hands. If I wasn’t careful, Tez would think I’d lost my mind talking about a magic pigeon cupboard.

Eh. Trial, error and experimentation usually do the job. What’s the point of having divine powers if you have to take a university course? That’s the kind of thing you hire other people to do for you.

I was beginning to see why he’d never accepted a promotion out of Helpdesk. Of course, I couldn’t talk, having about the same level of scientific background – but then, I wasn’t a creator god. It was a little worrying to think that humanity might have been created by someone who couldn’t tell the difference between a marble and a ball bearing, although if I was being honest, it would go some way to explaining some of its more questionable design flaws.

I signed, impatient to get going.

He nodded, and with a snap of his fingers encased himself in a second spacesuit of near-identical design, except that his was black. Like Durga, Tez had Colours. If it wasn’t black, it was yellow, or some combination of the two. So far he’d managed to avoid being mistaken for a giant bee, but I was convinced he’d slip up eventually. It was somewhat gratifying to see he’d also given his suit an undignified star motif. We were in this together.

One more time, he held out a hand, this time with extra spacesuit. It was time to visit the moon.