Well, well. Shitface had broken the rules big time. Was it treason or sabotage? Not that it made much practical difference. For all the dirt he had on me, he was putting himself in an extremely vulnerable position, regardless of whether or not he was playing the double agent. A large part of me wanted to turn him in to Vishnu then and there just to see him get taken down a peg.

But that would be an unforgivable waste of the single greatest opportunity handed to me in all the time Providence had forced its way into my existence. Because he was right. Remove Apollo, and you removed most of life’s basic roadblocks. Pride was meaningless next to an offer like that.

I tugged absently at the bracelet encircling my wrist. Dog on a leash. Not so different to the one I’d already been wearing, really. Just more visible.

It had been a long day, and the bed, sad and disheveled as it was, was looking very inviting. I’d talk to Lucy tomorrow, see what he thought about the whole mess. I tottered over to the edge of the room, falling onto the mattress in a heap of tired bones, displacing a few textbooks and sending them flying. With one arm hanging over the edge of the bed and the other squashed against the wall, I closed my eyes.

And immediately snapped them open again. I’d become accustomed to mortal behaviour for too long. Some immortals also had to sleep, granted, but I wasn’t one of them. It was just a matter of taking on a form whose body was awake. Barely a change at all. It was a good thing I was alone, because forgetting something that basic was just embarrassing.

I spent the next half an hour setting up the new phone. If Apollo was smart, which was still questionable, he would have put something on there to feed him information. But if there was, I couldn’t find it.

He had done some of the legwork for me. The phone had already been keyed to my task list and standard Helpdesk access permissions. As for it being untraceable, I had to take his word for it. If nothing else, I supposed, as Head of Security it would be Apollo’s team who breaches were reported to first, which provided an extra level of protection. High-level insider corruption was a glorious thing. When it didn’t come back to bite you, at least.

Still couldn’t believe it was Shitface. The world had gone insane.

With most of the night still ahead of me, my next shift didn’t start for hours. A successful heist wasn’t going to get me out of work.

But you could do a lot in a few hours, and my most immediate goal was a simple one: improve my living conditions. The world was once again my oyster; it was time to start harvesting pearls.

First, I needed a suitable target for identity theft. As tempting as it was to choose someone powerful and high-profile like a monarch, diplomat or business mogul, I wasn’t going to be able to make the schedules work. I already had a full-time job; I had neither the time nor inclination to handle two. No, what I wanted was someone who was filthy rich, equally lazy and not earmarked as high-priority in Providence's ticket system. A few prospects came to mind; people who had at one point or another ended up on someone’s task list with ridiculous requests. I did love oligarchs with more money than sense; they could afford almost anything they wanted already, so their requests (other than the cross-demographic health-related ones) tended to be highly illegal or very challenging. Lucy seemed to end up with a disproportionate number of them.

On my own list, I’d had one memorable case about three years back; the semi-estranged son of a one-time top record executive, before that whole industry had gone to pieces. In possession of a significant fortune, and heir to about five times that, he’d wanted assistance killing off his parents to speed up the process. The whole request had been written in what looked like bad rap verse, which was at once indicative of the sort of people he was hanging out with and fascinating from a logistics perspective, because I hadn’t known you could stylize a task request like that, let alone get it to rhyme with verses like ‘hang ‘em from a noose, ain’t abuse, gotta shoot ‘em like a goose’. If that wasn’t a guy who wouldn’t be missed, I didn’t know who was.

A quick search of my task list found it. Trust Ifana. Ironic name. Religious. The rap was about as bad as I’d remembered. Lived in the United States, land of guns and stubborn last bastion, give or take, of the imperial measurement system.

I made a note of the address and went there, arriving in the middle of a blaze of cold sunlight. Gazing out over a sea of skyscrapers and city haze, for a moment I thought I’d made a mistake. Then the moment passed, and I realised I was simply standing at the edge of a vast balcony with nothing between myself and a drop hundreds of metres high but a glass fence reaching barely above my waist. Nice view, if a little on the smoggy side.

But I hadn’t come here to watch the scenery. The balcony I stood on was massive, wider than some houses and twice as long. Much of it was taken up by a clear infinity pool, and the rest was dotted with expensive-looking deckchairs and floor cushions. A square fire pit adorned the corner, where the balcony swung around ninety degrees to the left, surrounded by seats, and I could see through the ceiling-to-floor windows of the building that sat behind it to where it continued down to an outdoor bar on the other side.

Someone had hosted a party here very recently. The night before, by the looks of it. Empty bottles, wine glasses, plastic plates and assorted pieces of rubbish were scattered at semi-regular intervals all over the place. I picked my way past it all towards the indoors, running my hand over the backs of the deckchairs as I went, testing out the quality of the textures and surfaces. A top architect had designed this place, that much was clear. So far so good.

The mess was worse indoors, and it became apparent not all the guests had left. Two people, a man and a woman, both in their late teens or early twenties, were passed out on opposite ends of one of the multiple large sofa suites, covered in blankets, and a third, also in their twenties, was snoring loudly on top of a makeshift bed assembled out of a pile of cushions on the floor. Rap Boy was not among them.

A built-in projector silently beamed a washed-out rectangle into one long wall, whatever device it had been running off long since gone into standby. The tops of every bench and table were covered in the tell-tale aftermath of a successful feast. Everywhere I looked, I saw expensive fittings, clean lines and long spaces. No one woke as I ambled through.

A clatter from the opposite side of the penthouse informed me there was at least one other about.

I found him in a palatial bathroom the size of a double garage, all feature lighting, glass walls and giant mirrors. Rap Boy hadn’t changed much in the three years since his task had been submitted. Hair a little longer than his description, eyes a little more bloodshot. He had the kind of complexion you saw on people who had lived hard lives; lines that would develop into early wrinkles sooner rather than later. Interesting, when you considered his family was worth more than thousands of other people earnt in a year. No doubt some history there.

He met my eyes in the mirror, spitting out a mouthful of toothpaste, and I waited for him to finish, camping out in the doorframe. Even that was expensive - the thing had gold-plated hinges.

“Can I help you?” he asked eventually, pulling on a dressing gown over his towel. “Kinda creepy, you staring in the door like that.”

“I was waiting,” I said, smiling. “For Trust Ifana. We meet at last.”

He examined me with a wary expression, trying to figure out if he should know me. Apparently it had been a wild party. “It’s Tru, these days. Do I know you? Are you, ah, here with someone?”

“How are things?” I asked, ignoring the questions. “Parents still alive?”

A faint look of concern crossed his face. “What? Of course. Why wouldn’t they be?”

“Mmm,” I said. “Well, about three years ago my employer received a request - from you - to take out a hit on your family. Took me a while to get around to it, sure, but better late than never, right?”

His body language changed, muscles tensing. “Is this some kind of sick joke? I don’t know who you are, but this isn’t funny.”

“It is a bit,” I grinned, pulling out my phone. “I’ve got the whole thing here. I quote: ‘Shoot ‘em till they’re dead, bullet in the head, crimson blood shed‘ – sound familiar? Not the kind of thing one forgets easily; as creative as it is tasteless. Here’s the dilemma, though. You specified – let’s see – eight different methods of killing your parents, and that makes your order a little tricky to carry out. I’m assuming you didn’t literally want them murdered by hanging, gunshot and drowning simultaneously, so you’re going to need to be clearer about what you’re after.“

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he said.

“And I’m going to have to decline,” I told him, not moving from the doorway. “You’re not going to get out of this by playing dumb.” Not everyone could get a ticket into Providence, after all. I wasn’t clear on the acceptance criteria, but I’d yet to meet someone who had successfully submitted a ticket only to later forget about it. For a request to make the cut, it had to mean something. Behind every appeal lay some kind of personal scar. Always.

He shook his head. “I don’t have to defend myself because there’s nothing to defend. You’re trespassing on my property, and I’m telling you to leave. Or I’m calling the police.”

He tried to muscle past, and I moved to block his path, grabbing his upper arm even as he tried to shake me off. “I get it,” I said. “A request between you and God. Nobody else was meant to know. Unfortunately, it turns out you put your faith in a cheapskate who outsources his labour. To me.”

“Yeah? Who even are you?” He shook off my hand and shouted out into the penthouse. “Hey! A little help here!”

I heard stirrings behind me out in the living space. “Who am I?” I asked, changing shape. “For now, I’m you. Obvious downgrade, I know. Be a good boy and don’t go anywhere.” With a flick of my finger, I booted him off to a remote part of the Mojave, adjusted the towel under my dressing gown, and frowned at my blurred reflection. Rap Boy was a little on the short-sighted side. Screw authenticity; I was fixing that.

“Are you okay? Who were you talking to?” a voice asked behind me. The woman from the sofa.

“Just myself,” I answered, flashing her a winning smile. “Sorry to do this to you at short notice, but everyone needs to leave. I agreed to let the regional over-65s fetish club use this place for their annual potluck, and it starts in half an hour.”

A look of abject horror crossed her face, and I caught her mouthing the words ‘regional over-65s’ to herself on repeat as she scurried away. News spread, and within five minutes the apartment was empty. I spent a few more inspecting the rest of the penthouse and decided it would do.