Mayari was already waiting for me back at J-98, cross-legged on the polished stone. “You took your time,” she observed. “Going to enlighten me on what you were up to?”

It had taken a while to pick all the worms off without crushing them, while at the same time preventing them from climbing straight back on. “Family visit.”

“Ah. Was it bad?”

I sighed and joined her on the floor, up against the opposing wall. “He got lucky. I think. Some of those others…” I shuddered, and moved to change the subject. “Find anything on your end?”

She pulled her phone out of a pocket and gave it an affectionate pat. “All mapped out. The exterior, anyway. Even found a couple of suspicious hidden rooms, though I figured it best not to invite any tripwires this visit.”

“They’re probably something dumb like cleaning cupboards anyway.”

“I was thinking control panels. Or standby deathtraps. Or controls for standby deathtraps.”

“Maybe. I suppose they’d be easier to activate from the same dimension.”

“Do you need some time?” she asked.

“No.”

Mayari looked pensive for a moment.

“What is it?”

She gazed at the map on her phone, frowning. “I just thought maybe I’d find something else. A tomb, perhaps. We are in Facility J.”

"Oh," I said, putting two and two together. “Ah. Mister Cautionary Tale. That was all long before I was born. Besides, I think Lucy would have mentioned something if there was a realistic chance he'd be here. To put it lightly.”

“I know,” said Mayari. “It’s a long shot. I know he wasn’t demoted. Our esteemed overlord figured out a more permanent solution. I just thought, you know, maybe the body would be here. Pay my respects. Maybe there would be something on it we could use against him.” She gave me a sidelong glance. "Don't tell Lucifer I said that last part."

Privately, I doubted the tyrant would have left a body to pillage. Slaughtering one's immediate family wasn't exactly an original idea in divine circles, especially back before the older pantheons had figured out the world was larger than their small insular corners of the earth. There was something about intra-pantheon conflict that made wounds stick better, like Tez' foot. And between family? More so. Putting aside the fact that the idea of murdering my own progeny made my stomach turn, you would have thought that keeping positive familial relationships was a no-brainer.

But if the tyrant had one overriding trait, it was jealousy. Lucy, while charming, had always been too fractious and argumentative to win on the public relations front. Baby brother, on the other hand - loyal, earnest, and ridiculously naive. Hadn't been raised with the rest of the family and didn't have inside perspective. Believed in his dad and was extinguished for it, all because the preaching campaign went a little too well. Yahweh did not suffer competition, no matter who it was from.

Lucy wouldn't talk about it, except to say he'd tried to warn him. Them. The others followed. And there had been no more children in that particular pantheon after that.

“Enough of that for now,” I said. “Let’s go say hi to Old Two-Face. Seeing as it’s what we came here for.”

Nothing happened when I scanned the access card except for the mandatory security observation, which came and went within seconds. No trans-dimensional access descended upon me that I could tell – confirmed when I reached out to the wall only to end up giving it an awkward pat.

“Er, this one might be broken,” I said. “I swear it was working before.”

Mayari removed her hand from where it had been resting on my shoulder. “Maybe it doesn’t like it when multiple people try to register at once. As a prevention measure against smuggling someone out.”

“It’s not that,” said a tired voice behind us.

My companion and I shared a look of alarm, before slowly turning to face the speaker. It was the same face from Tez’ visions; dark curls, long nose, proud features. Proud, and exhausted. The dead giveaway was the two faces, however – one visage looking out to the left, the other to the right, not quite at the 180-degree angle you saw portrayed on old coins, but angled forward slightly. I noticed Mayari shuffling to one side, further away from me, so that he could look at us both directly without having to turn his head.

“Mayari,” he greeted her from the nearest face, then switched to the other to address me. “Loki. I don’t have a lot of time, so state your piece and make it quick.”

After the initial jolt of surprise wore off, I felt my hackles rise in indignation. “You've got some nerve opening an introduction by bandying my name around while I’m in disguise, Janus. What if there was someone watching us?” Not that I thought there was any covert presence hanging around. If there was, I’d already shot myself in the foot several times over. The pact test continued to prove itself useful. But it was the principle of the thing.

Mayari’s reaction was not dissimilar. “So you do have your powers,” she stated, an almost accusatory note in her voice. “What on earth would possess you to stay in this hellhole?”

He made a sound of annoyance. “Not… exactly,” he answered in Mayari’s direction, before switching mouths again. The eyes on his faces struggled to make eye contact. “And no one’s watching. Trust me.”

"Mmm, I don't think so," Mayari responded. “We were expecting a captive. We’re going to need answers before we proceed.”

“Right,” I said, backing her up. “I mean, look at you. Modern dress, speaking fluent English, and not even of the ye olde variety.” Sanity yet to be verified. “Smells like a little side sponsorship, if you ask me. You and Apollo have a thing going?”

“Not to mention what the situation is with your cell, or lack thereof,” Mayari added, narrowing her eyes.

Janus huffed at us. “Time is precious, and you’re wasting it.” He made an expansive gesture with his arms, spinning a little to encompass every direction. “This is my cell. All of it. Your stolen pass works as intended.”

“It’s not stolen,” Mayari said, omitting the fact she had what was potentially the largest stash of counterfeit passes ever created currently sitting in her personal workshop.

Janus blinked. “It isn’t? I must be… getting mixed up.” I was reminded of my conversation with Jian Bing. For a seer, it seemed awfully like he hadn’t seen this coming. But if his divination was offline, how had he known who I was?

Mayari noticed it too, shooting me a querying look.

Don’t ask me. “So, what –“ I voiced aloud, “– are you saying they just let you run loose in here playing minotaur? I find that hard to believe.”

“Not just here. Everywhere.” The last word was announced from both mouths in unison, serving to emphasise the point. He gave us a wry smile, though there was no trace of happiness in it. “They knew my weakness before I did. The one whose body you’re wearing made sure I didn’t see it coming. So no, we don’t have a ‘thing’.”

“Aaah,” I said, drawing the vowel out. “Nope, still don’t follow.”

“Omnipresence?” questioned Mayari, then repeated herself, sounding more sure of herself the second time round. “Omnipresence. Presumably across multiple dimensions. I’m right, aren’t I?”

He sagged a little, wiping at his outer eyes before moving on to deal with the inner ones. “You are.”

“How do you deal with a god of boundaries? Give him no boundaries to control,” she suggested smugly.

“Or you could just use suppressants, like they do for everyone else,” I pointed out.

“Weren’t you the one extolling the virtues of abstraction earlier? Under an abstract filter, the very act of imposing suppression is itself a boundary. They probably tried it and it probably didn’t work.”

“You’ve got to stop being so good at this,” I told her, shaking my head. “Keep this up and I might start to get jealous.”

“You’re already jealous,” she quipped, and refocused on Janus. “That said, I didn’t think omnipresence was real. Even Yahweh stopped trying to achieve it and stuck to having Marketing run campaigns insisting he already had it."

Janus barked out a bitter laugh. “Oh, he figured out how to achieve it. It just turns out no one in their right mind would ever want it. Infinite awareness means nothing without the ability to infinitely multitask. I’m spread much too thin to deal with it. With anything. Can’t tell what’s past, present or future. Just meaningless bits, white noise. No focus. I pick things up, yes. Languages, identities, information. I couldn’t tell you where they come from, when they're from, or how they fit together. They send people to question me about them every so often. Or they will do. It's hard to know. It’s all I can do to hold my attention in one place enough to have this conversation. Which, I’ll say again, you’re wasting. Your pass there serves as a beacon for me to anchor onto. But it won’t last. I’m already stretching.”

The last word sounded so strained, so hollow, that chills went up my spine.

So many questions were running through my mind, but I forced myself to cast them aside. “I need you to alter a soul,” I said. “Can you do that?”

“No.”

Oh, come on. Hel wouldn’t have sent me here for nothing. “I’m willing to negotiate. Caveat that I can’t rescue you, and it needs to be doable within the next twenty-four hours, but otherwise, name your price.”

“Not possible. Active powers are good as gone.” His speech was degrading, like someone who’d stayed up well past their recommended bedtime.

Fuck it. “And what about your fourth face?” I asked pointedly. “Is that also off the table?”

“I – how did you –”

Ah, so there was one. “People talk, Janus. Judging by your reaction, however, it looks like they weren’t meant to. Tough break. So, you can tell me where it is or I can inform Providence you’ve been hiding something. You might think they can’t do worse than they’ve already done, but I assure you they can.”

Fourth face? asked Mayari, bleeding indignance. Just when were you planning to mention this?

Janus saved me from having to answer. “Whose soul?” he rasped.

“Who says I’m stopping at one?”

“Whose. Soul?” he repeated, gritting his teeth.

My mind raced, trying to piece together what little I knew about the god of transitions. Who would he want to help the most? Or get revenge on, for that matter? I could spin it both ways. Crap. I didn’t have enough time to figure it out.

“Durga’s,” said Mayari, beating me to it. “And Parvati’s. And their sisters’. You might not have met.”

“I know her,” he said from both faces, clearly with an immense effort. “She who violates the inviolable. You want to stop her?”

“Pretty sure she’s stopped already,” I said. We were on Mayari’s path, now; no point in jumping ship. “That’s half the problem.” The other half, of course, being that living on the back end of a code wheel apparently instilled a lust for fratricide.

“We want to save her,” asserted Mayari. To the point. “Separation or erasure, those are the options.” Or turn Parvati over to the tyrant for demotion, I thought to myself. The worst option was still an option.

A low, humourless chuckle emerged from the bearded god’s lips, reverberating off the stone to carry down the corridor. “Then this is… the end. Take it.”

“Thanks,” said Mayari. “Where can we find it?”

“Bet you it’s some kind of cryptic riddle,” I murmured to Mayari, then blinked and made a double-take. Janus was getting bigger, physically. Wider and taller, and developing a sort of blurriness around the edges like an old video file. Janus’ mouths worked for a few seconds, but no sound came out. Eventually he pulled it together enough to communicate what he was trying to say.

“Inside…” The mouths worked, but nothing else emerged.

Mayari’s brow furrowed. “We’re losing you,” she called out. “Inside where?”

I tugged on her arm, towing her backwards as the god of boundaries continued to expand in eerie silence, his head on a rapid collision course with the ceiling, fingers growing from ordinary appendages to meaty sausages, to fleshy things the size of small tree trunks in a matter of seconds. More of that blurriness, now, translucence spreading across his whole body.

In the glimpse I had before his head hit the ceiling and bowed forward at the neck, I saw his eyes were no longer fixed on us, instead gazing motionless out into the distance.

“Keep backing up,” I warned Mayari, poised to run, even as his knees buckled and fell to the floor. With nowhere else to go, the rest of the body started ballooning out into the corridor at an ever-increasing rate, the walls struggling to contain the expanding bulk.

I expected something to give, and it did – but not how I’d imagined. It was Janus’ body that gave way with an initial quiet ‘pop’, before seeping sluggishly into and through the stone like liquid, still expanding, but in more proportional directions again. He was partially transparent, now, almost hologrammatic, and all I could see was part of his torso as it ascended to giant proportions and kept accelerating at an exponential rate.

Mayari disappeared in a rapid afterimage, my pact sense telling me there was a good chance she’d popped up at the entrance. I followed and found her prying at the door with her powers, but it wasn’t opening. It needed the pass around my neck.

I got as far as getting my hand around the lanyard when Mayari’s palm touched my shoulder. “Brace,” she advised.

I didn’t have time to brace. For a split second, I saw a faint wall bearing down on us at breakneck speed, and by the time that registered it was already too late. A wave of what felt like very thin jelly passed across and through me, and I found myself having to endure several uncomfortable seconds of what felt like every cell in my body being slightly displaced. It faded, slowly, leaving a bad taste in my mouth in more ways than one.

Mayari and I glanced at each other, somewhere between concerned and shell-shocked. Then she made a discreet retching noise into the palm of her hand.

I lifted my chin skywards, not that it would make any difference. “Janus?”

No answer. Nor any sign he’d ever been here.

We headed back to enclosure ninety-eight, where I dug Apollo’s access card back out of my shirt and re-swiped it, to which precisely nothing happened except for another observation check. Better not do that too many times.

Well, shit.

“Maybe it’s on a time limit,” Mayari offered. Her tone suggested she wasn’t confident about this. “If we wait long enough, we could re-establish contact.”

But for how long? Forty-eight hours might have been a bit optimistic in hindsight. I didn’t fancy going back to Parvati and begging for more. I was used to people disliking me, but there was the kind of dislike that spoke to opportunities for gloating in one’s perceived superiority, and the kind that just made people angry and uncooperative, and Parvati’s was the latter.

My apprehension must have shown on my face. There was a brief moment of hesitation before I could see Mayari’s gears start whirring again in search of alternative possibilities.

“I’m on a time limit,” I reminded her, to reinforce the notion. “I’d hand off to you, but I don’t think you’d pass the security checks.”

“We could confirm the specs with Apollo,” she suggested. The words sounded somewhat reluctant as they left her mouth.

“Great,” I said in a tone implying anything but. “How’s that interdimensional phone signal? Mine’s in custody.”

“Non-existent. You want to check in with him via your demon army?”

“The one doing live media interviews, or the one drooling onto his pillow with sock breath? You know, the exit’s only a few hundred metres away.”

Neither of us moved.

After a moment, Mayari snapped her fingers. “I have a better idea.” Unhitching her shoulder bag, she reached in and fumbled around for a bit, pulling out a small circular device. This was followed by a short rod, which got screwed into the back of the machine. “3D scanner,” she explained, holding the rod and giving it a sharp tap on the end with her finger. “Last year’s prototype from R&D.”

The device made a mechanical click, long screens unfurling out from the central compartment like a geometric flower. Mayari gripped the edge of one and pulled it inwards, whereupon the whole lot copied the action in graceful curves, moving in symmetry. Once they reached far enough to form a half sphere the size of a beach ball, she clicked the end of the rod again and the blades locked into place. Each panel formed a fan shape, wider at the outer edge than the inner, and between that and their extensive length, they shouldn’t have been able to fit into the central casing. I found myself wondering idly what would happen if someone took a sledgehammer to it and broke it open.

“How did you get your hands on something like this?”

“Lucifer. I owe him a favour.”

Of course she did. Sooner or later, most people did. The trick with Lucy was to not care. I got the impression he thought of it as a game, and there wasn’t much point in keeping score if the other person was happy to go along with his machinations anyway.

She placed the cup against the wall, over the plaque and scanner so that the rims of the panels rested flat on the surface, and pinched the rod inwards. I was expecting some kind of feedback from the device, but instead it was Mayari’s eye, the real one, that flashed white for a second in a burst of vibrant illumination before fading back to grey.

“Oh,” she said, and licked her lips. “Delicious.”

It was so Odin-like, so covetous, I felt my powers flare in subconscious response, flooding my body with adrenaline and sending my reflexes into overdrive, ready to carry me away to somewhere even I couldn’t predict at the slightest provocation. Do not engage. Reality reasserted itself a moment later and I clamped down on the impulse, rationality winning over instinct.

Still, I found myself mentally checking the pact and making sure her thread led back to where it was meant to. And even then. You could never be quite sure, with him. The only thing you could be sure of was the eye, and the hole it had burned through reality.

Loki? Mayari was staring at me oddly.

“Just thinking,” I evaded. “You’re almost as unnerving as the venue.”

“Er… I’m not sure how you expect me to take that, but okay. Noted.”

“How exactly does that thing work?” I asked, nodding at the scanner.

“Want to see for yourself?”

“Some other time.”

She shrugged. “It’s a sophisticated mod on the company reality slice. Rather than the big picture, though, it focuses on pure physical matter. It picks up all the details, down to a near-atomic level. Including any effects bolstered by divine energy. The downside being it can’t handle anything bigger than a small umbrella. I was using it to reverse-engineer small parts for the base, but now that you’ve brought me Tez, I plan on starting to bulk manufacture.”

“I can see how that would be worth a favour,” I concurred. “I am surprised the department just let it walk out of there.”

Mayari smiled. “That’s because it didn’t. The schematics did. Turns out they’re just as effective on each other. Put two in a room together with a curious enough person, and you have a recipe for infinite small-scale production.”

I raised an eyebrow. “See, if I was in charge of that project’s security, I’d have had someone install malware on them for that exact reason. No use downloading something into your brain if –”

I stopped, the memory of a woman in Peru and her embedded headpiece springing to mind. A woman who had been very, very dead.

“If?” Mayari prompted me.

“If you get corrupted,” I finished thoughtfully.

She gave me the evil eye. “You really pick your moments, don’t you? This is how people develop neuroses. In any case, I’ve been using it a while. It’s safe.” The smile crept back in. “The way I see it, if our friend here is truly omnipresent, location shouldn’t matter. We get hold of a beacon, we can call him to us. Provided he’s capable of it. Now that I’ve got the blueprint, I’ll get Tez to make one and we can summon him from anywhere. It gives you a bit more leeway while you do what you need to do.”

“It might be harder to get away a second time,” I commented, watching as she started working the fragile petals back inside their case. “I was hoping we’d have whatever Tez thinks we need to bring back with us by now.”

“The fourth face you mentioned?”

I shrugged. “It seemed to fit. I figured the chances were good.”

“What is the deal with that?”

“I was told to find it by a trustworthy source. Other than that, I don’t know much more than you. Really.”

“You owe Lucifer one too, huh?”

“I said ‘trustworthy’.” But I grinned as I said it.

She pulled a face. “In light of recent information, I think there’s a good argument anything we take back – or anything anywhere – is a piece of Janus. And the key -” she tapped a finger to the side of her head, “- is right here. And just as well. Slicing bits off people is something I’d rather not get involved in.”

“Mayari,” I uttered.

“Yes?”

Don’t turn out to be him, I thought.

“Let’s get out of here.”