Angels gave me the creeps in a way corporate bluster never could. The pair currently hovering in front of Vishnu’s centre of operations provided the perfect example. It was bad enough they had an exemption from the fast travel ban and could pop up behind you at a moment’s notice, regardless of what private activities you happened to be engaged in.

I stared down at the supposedly holy toes dangling just above the floorboards and suppressed the urge to pull a face. Angels could walk, but for whatever reason liked to follow people around in disturbing Roomba imitations, if Roombas had humanoid features which popped into hyperrealism and demanded bystander attention.

If Lucy was hard not to stare at, the second generation had taken that essence and distilled it into its purest form. I gazed up at the unblinking eyes set slightly too close together, the sharp cheekbones and too-perfect smiles. Skin which seemed like it might slough off whatever lay underneath at any moment. Extraordinarily beautiful, without doubt. In much the same way a plant could be lovely while it consumed a corpse for nutrients.

Vishnu peered past his screens at the intruders and pursed his lips. “You should not be here,” he declared. “That this meeting is held during stasis should be indication enough we were not to be disturbed.”

This was news to me, but it made sense. Time might have been marching on for the three of us, but it was entirely possible the outside world had been frozen in its tracks while the executives served me paperwork. Given the current situation, it would be stranger not to.

More unsettling was the angels’ intervention. The only way they could have interrupted – or been able to acknowledge the meeting to begin with – was if they were somehow unaffected by Vishnu’s abilities. Probably by design. If I were a tyrant rebuilding an unconditionally loyal personal army, I’d want it to have an advantage over my competition, too.

As intel, it was invaluable. Whatever ambush we laid for the leadership, we’d have to account for the possibility of angels breaking it. Where they got their powers, however, I didn’t know. One look at those vacant faces was enough to confirm no one was home. Not really. Dealing with angels really just amounted to interacting with enchanted constructs.

The smiles these ones bestowed on the COO now were probably meant to be awe-inspiring. In reality, they resembled the strained faces people pulled when their photographer took too long lining up a shot.

Off to the side, Legba winced. He picked at his nails, scraping bits of black polish onto the floor. With my eyesight boosted the way it was, I could make out a little cloud of flecks around his feet which I didn’t think Durga’s brother had noticed yet.

One of the angels drifted forward. It was slightly shorter than the other, with wider eyes and palms clasped loosely together in front of itself. “Our sublime father requests your immediate presence.” Its gaze slowly moved between us. “All in this room are expected to attend.”

I gulped. This confrontation had been coming for a while; there was only so long I’d have been able to avoid it.

I’d have to warn the others to prepare for another stint of impotence while the pact worked overtime preventing the tyrant’s reality slice from revealing a mutiny against him. I knew there were gaps in its coverage; its integration with the Helpdesk system made that abundantly clear. Nor could it read minds, or Yahweh wouldn’t have tolerated Odin and his plots for a second. But my impersonation of his Chief Information Officer mightn’t necessarily fall under the pact’s protection. Even if it prevented Yahweh making the connection to the existence of a wider revolution, I wasn’t at all sure I’d be able to stop him knowing my true identity.

I could try and delay. Trouble was, you didn’t just say no to the most powerful –

“His request is acknowledged.” Vishnu fixed the angels with an irritated glare. “I have a number of urgent matters to complete first. Once those are concluded, we shall attend to the meeting. Until then, you will leave us to finish this discussion in private.”

Or that. That also worked.

“I’m also busy,” I jumped in, seizing the opportunity. “And I can’t put time on hold like some. Obviously, these are unusual times. I suggest a raincheck until we regain some semblance of stability.”

The angel’s eyes moved back to me. It tilted its head slowly to one side. “The invitation is non-negotiable,” it said in a pleasant tone, before shifting its eyes again towards Vishnu, head remaining fixed in place. “Our Lord’s will is paramount. You will accompany us to the holiest of holies without further ado.”

“The Holies, huh?” Legba’s voice remained casual, but his fingers had paused. “Since when were we allowed up there?”

“Since our father, in his glorious wisdom, has deemed it so,” the angel replied. Its companion had remained silent throughout the engagement so far.

Legba nodded in my direction. “What do you think, Odie? Reward or punishment?”

I raised an eyebrow at him. Odie?

Before I could answer, Vishnu rose from his chair. “Then the situation is dire,” he stated.

“Congratulations, Sherlock,” I muttered under my breath.

Vishnu glitched, vanishing from his desk, and my hands fumbled under the sudden weight of objects. A new phone sat clasped within one palm; a lanyard dangled from the other. Turning over the pass on the other end, I found Odin’s grim countenance staring up at me.

Tucking it around my neck, I glanced around for the Preserver and found him waiting by one of his many confusing passages. “My belongings?”

“Can wait,” he delivered. “You are still under investigation, after all.”

“This is obstruction,” I growled back.

“Yes. We’re obstructing you, under official regulation.”

“Oof. Tough breaks,” said Legba, giving me a pat on the shoulder as he walked past.

I had expected the angelic cohort would transport us straight to our destination, but apparently not. Both of them stared in my direction, unblinking, until I stepped forward to join the others. Their bodies turned in mid-air to watch as I filed past, and it took an effort to turn my back on them. Only the quiet rustling of fabric told me they were hovering along behind me at a constant distance – one much closer than I’d have liked.

Whiro’s teeth, I hated angels.

We wound our way along an inscrutable path through the maze of lattice screens, glimpses of colour flashing through the woodwork every few seconds. I didn’t know what Vishnu had been thinking about when he’d designed the place, but it sure as Níðhöggr wasn’t efficiency. I used the opportunity to contact Grace through the naudhiz rune while I still could. It wasn’t as easy as it had been on previous occasions; Vishnu’s personal suspicions about Odin were already having a spillover effect onto the pact.

The managerial lift welcomed us with a feeble ping, and I watched with apprehension as the lead angel waved a palm across an empty patch of interior wall. A second, less erratic musical note sounded and accompanied a solitary thread of light spilling down the length of the metal at a speed similar to that with which my stomach was dropping out from under me. Excuses weren’t going to get me out of this one.

The mood in the elevator was grim in general. Even Legba seemed thoughtful, slouching at the back away from the angelic convoy.

I turned my attention back to the wall, where smaller threads spun out from the central line. Each was clearly marked in bold lettering, with a bright blue outline surrounding the item ‘Suite: Chief Operations Officer’. It was only halfway up the chart. Immediately below it sat Odin’s office, which I made careful note of. On the other side read ‘Suite: Chief Financial Officer,’ and finally ‘Suite: Chief Executive’. Everything above that appeared to be written in incomprehensible garbage.

Neither Vishnu nor Legba showed any signs of surprise. I’d heard rumours of floors existing above Yahweh’s office, but had never come across any actual evidence. This changed matters. For all I knew, the extra levels could house anything from storage space to a ladder to Durga’s Structuralist overlords, though knowing Providence it could just as easily be a swarm of unfulfilled tax returns turned into angry bees.

For something that talked like its conversational skills hadn’t made it past the nineteenth century, the angel had no problem stabbing its knobbly digit into the chief executive’s button. The destination glowed, pinged, and ratcheted up the wall where the other items collapsed into it in little showers of blue sparks. Someone had had fun designing that.

The slow burn of dread didn’t get much of a chance to build. The trip went by quickly and included a few seconds where the lift smelt briefly of flowers, but the scent died down again as the doors slid open. Vishnu glitched next to me, his back straighter on the other side. Legba matched him in stiffness. At least any discomfort I gave away wouldn’t be out of place.

I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting – perhaps another large white chamber like the foyer or the furnace room – but instead the doors opened onto near-darkness. Distantly, a field of glittering multicoloured stars hung in what might have been the sky or a far-off ceiling. Probably a ceiling. Between the stillness and the temperature, it felt like we were indoors. Though if I hadn’t seen the elevator buttons, I’d have easily believed we were stepping out onto the highest floor of the building. A subtle dimensional tingle passed over me at the threshold.

The lift closed behind us with a soft whirr, and I turned to find it standing alone and unsupported, the vast space carrying on behind it in the other direction. Even as I watched, the doors faded to transparency and disappeared, until all that remained was the glowing call button.

Any signs of anything resembling a recognisable office – or landmarks in general – were nowhere in sight. It would be easy to get lost in here.

The starfield cast just enough light to see by, its reflections dimly scattered in the polished floors below. Marble, again. Vishnu’s interior design choices might have been inefficient, but at least they were different.

The lead angel hovered ahead. We were clearly expected to follow. Its companion hung back at the rear, keeping an eye on us.

Just being here was enough to send my powers sprinting for the exit, but the pact was pulling its weight. I even had some small amount in reserve thanks to the demons, though it wouldn’t go far. As a test, I let one of the hairs from my head drop to the floor, to no reaction. Encouraged, I twisted a few more into the shape of a raidho rune, imbued it with as much power as I dared and let it fall, marking our location.

Futhark didn’t really have a rune for tracking, which had always struck me as a massive oversight on Odin’s part, presumably because he had lackeys he could order to do it for him. Now, I was wishing his foresight had predicted modern data privacy violations. The rune of roads would just have to do instead, assuming it didn’t get hoovered up by passing vacuum angels.

It wasn’t quite unnoticed; Legba turned and raised his eyebrows at me the moment it hit the ground. Right – languages. Runes weren’t exempt, apparently. That was very interesting.

Cross-pantheon senses weren’t common. If that interaction extended beyond only perception, I could see why he’d been promoted. Checks and balances, and a direct contingency against Enki and Odin alike. The things you learnt when impersonating others. If I made it out in one piece.

But Legba and I weren’t in conflict just yet. Positioning my back to the rearmost angel, I brought a careful finger to my lips. Secrets shared.

Legba didn’t seem particularly impressed. May as well save yourself the effort, he said, turning back with a small shrug. Can’t hide it from the boss.

True. Still, chances were I’d have far larger things to worry about in the near future than a wayward travel rune. Might as well be ready to run.

We walked for some time. Yahweh’s suite followed its own structural rules, a dimension unto itself. One as pretty as it was boring, much like its owner’s approach to external affairs in general. It didn’t help that the lack of landmarks skewed with more than just my sense of direction. The further we journeyed, the more I felt like my vision was playing tricks on me. Or my head. Though madness wasn’t the tyrant’s style.

The stars I’d taken as brightly multicoloured were really just subtly tinted with flashes of iridescence here and there among the white. They also seemed to be getting closer. I doubted they were actually stars, but enhanced eyesight would only get me so far.

After several minutes trailing behind Vishnu’s crinkling silks, it hit me. I wasn’t misremembering. Colours really were being leeched from the environment. The hues on Vishnu’s outfit had been vibrant beside the lift. Now they looked washed-out and faded.

Lifting a hand in front of my face, I found it similarly affected. Now that I knew it was there, I could feel the change the same as I did everything about my body. It wasn’t just a trick of the light. My skin really was on its way to becoming grey, outside my control. If it hadn’t been for the strain on the pact I would have been tempted to resist.

It was probably for the best I didn’t. We were in the tyrant’s world now, entering under his rules. To someone who could see everything, resistance would be marked and noted.

But I did want to laugh. In a world full of rainbows, it was just like Yahweh to desaturate the gay away. In every sense of the word.

Thankfully it wasn’t much longer before a silhouette broke up the flatness of the expanse. I recognised the outline as Hera’s. Already averse to embellishment, the effect of the colour drain made her look almost like a living statue. In the dim light she could have been one of the angels herself, but for the physical age and light behind the eyes.

Vishnu was by now completely dressed in pale greys, and my own features resembled those of a corpse dragged through the wrong end of an embalmment. At no point in my life had ‘draugr’ been a fashion decision I’d been interested in, but sometimes life threw you colourless citrus you couldn’t identify until you’d already suffered an allergic reaction.

The lead angel stopped short, allowing us to continue on ahead.

Vishnu spoke first. “Hera.” He gestured around him. “What is the situation? Why have we been called here, instead of to the boardrooms?”

His audience closed her eyes briefly before changing her mind and gazing out into the expanse. “I wouldn’t presume to put words into our leader’s mouth,” she responded. “But look around. The world is in a state of chaos. It needs guidance. Leadership. When we fail in our duties, Yahweh must step in to correct them.”

I did look around. The quiet starfield offered a poor analogy for the supposed mayhem Hera was talking about. “I’m sure he will,” I said carefully. “Just like he’ll be here any minute now.”

As if on cue, light flared from above us. Blazing beams of white erupted down in precise rays casting soft circles on the marble, each one no larger than my fist; an ivory forest of ghostly saplings. But only for a moment. Then they pivoted – a few at first, followed by the bulk and a few lazy stragglers – to focus on the radiant figure blazing before us in full glory against the endless, malefic night.

It took everything I had not to bring my palm to my head. Something told me this was going to set the tone for the rest of the meeting.