Not about to look a gift deity in the clinical narcissism, I rode the lift down with my chest and fake reputation intact.

My first instinct was to use my new access card on a visit to the mysterious gibberish levels, but the continued presence of an angelic escort put a halt to that idea. I also had a feeling I was still too close in proximity to Yahweh for him not to pick up on it. Better to wait until he left the office.

Although if you believed the rumours, it didn’t happen often. I could imagine him up there soaking up endless praise like Aphrodite spamming refresh on her Instagram account. I didn’t doubt Helpdesk’s unresolved tickets ended up somewhere entirely different. And less like stars so much as the kind of light that glinted off a shattered glass currently being used to stab you in the face.

So instead I paid a visit to my own office. If I was lucky, Odin might not have rigged it with a thousand deathtraps.

Where Vishnu’s had been a fragile, fragmented maze and Yahweh’s a cavern as empty as his empathy stores, Odin’s base of operations struck me at how familiar it all was.

The lift doors had opened onto Valhalla.

Without the crowds of jostling warriors and roar of background conversation, it felt more like wandering onto a disused movie set. The bits were there, crafted to perfection, but Valhalla had been intended to house people, not dust.

The elevator and its creepy inhabitant moved on, and I walked out into the mead hall in a partial daze, eye and ears still alert for danger. Though with the current state of my powers, there wasn’t a whole lot I’d be able to do if things went wrong. I was banking on the angels and executives having the run of the place, even if no one else did. Too many traps being set off by soulless messengers probably wouldn’t endear the CIO to his superior.

Atmosphere aside, it seemed too perfect. Movie set be damned - this was the real deal. Odin must have used his influence to save one last small fragment of his old seat of power. Naturally the part with the throne. It sat at the far end of the giant hall, its back to the high open windows which had always distinguished Valhalla from its mortal counterparts. The dead hardly needed to concern themselves with the cold.

The existence of any windows in Providence only added to the mounting evidence I was looking at a dimensional relocation. If my powers hadn’t been pact-squeezed I would have been able to confirm it easily enough. I began the trek to the far end, past the dozens of enormous long tables on each side, still scattered with plates and mead horns as if after an ancient feast. I doubted they’d been used recently.

Closer inspection revealed miniscule strings of runes carved into every surface, strengthening and preserving the materials for as long as they had power to draw from. It would have taken time and personal attention.

Indents still marked the rafters where Gungnir once hung, though of course the spear really had been destroyed. Despite myself, I couldn’t help a powerful wave of nostalgia washing over me. I’d never expected to see Valhalla again, not since being forced into Providence’s employ. And certainly not since the restructure. The site of many atrocities had also been a place of carefree celebration more times than I could count.

I glanced to my left. Small holes in the walls and scratches under a few of the tables were all that remained of the chains once binding Fenrir. Where they’d set him out on display as a trophy, feeding him scraps like a common mutt.

With Yahweh only a few floors above, I kept my muscles relaxed and my feelings to myself. Perhaps the only trap Odin needed was the ever-watchful eye of his boss. I’d have to watch myself while I was here. Like Odin must have.

On the long table directly in front of the throne waited Odin’s ring. A solitary piece of jewellery returned where many had been taken.

It was a message. Vishnu – maybe Legba and Enki, too – knew it had been the only thing of real value among my confiscated possessions. I might have won the battle, but the war wasn’t over. I slipped it into my pocket until my powers returned enough to check for shenanigans, and turned my attention to the windows.

The vista was convincing, though not entirely as I remembered it. The mountains of Asgard had eroded somewhat. A few lonely bridges between peaks had been added. No more valkyries to provide taxi services. Whatever few dead remained after the war had still been using the place until only a few short decades ago. And denied modern conveniences, by the looks of it.

The biggest difference was scale. It had the same look as Jörm’s garden in Facility J, with the background hazy and indistinct, details becoming vague past the immediate surrounds. In the end, it would all be contained in another chamber. Just another floor in the tower.

Still, Odin had done a good job with his own cell.

Feeling melancholy, I checked the throne for suspicious runes and lowered myself onto it. I hadn’t seen any obvious signs of a computer system yet, but given their owner’s portfolio oversight, they were bound to be around somewhere.

It didn’t look like my luck would extend to a ready-prepared workstation. Back in his office, Apollo had talked about the high-level systems being tied to people’s souls. I might have passed the cursory inspection, but no matter how good my shapeshifting, I couldn’t pass my soul off as someone else’s, except perhaps to a complete idiot. It was hard enough imitating someone telepathically. I was dreading the inevitable moment I’d have to do it.

The question then became how access had been arranged. Whether it was tied to a pre-existing imprint in the access card or a more direct line. If it was the latter, I was screwed unless I could find an override. If Apollo had still been around, I could have asked him. But he was Vishnu’s problem now.

Although… I did have access to another seer. If he wasn’t familiar with the systems yet, he would be eventually. If I made a point of asking and carefully outlined a plan –

I almost expected Tez to appear then and there in typical seer fashion. But no. His powers would be suffering like mine. Unless he’d seen this coming further in advance, in which case I could have asked him to prepare answers for me and leave them somewhere useful, such as under the table.

I checked under the table.

Well, it had probably been too much to hope for. And Yahweh would likely have noticed them anyway. I was on my own.

I could at least try the access card. If I could figure out how. It already hung around my neck; if it had anything to show me, I should already be seeing it.

In which case - I pulled off the lanyard and re-examined the hall. Almost nothing changed.

Almost.

A few of the table runes collapsed into nothingness once the pass was removed. If I hadn’t already enhanced my eyesight into oblivion I’d likely have missed it. The inscriptions were unobtrusive, only a few differences among many. Clever.

Looping the lanyard back around my neck, I stared at the reinstated runes and barked out a truncated laugh. Now that it had been brought to my attention, it was obvious. I was looking at a keyboard. Not exactly the traditional use of runes, which weren’t activated after the initial inscription per se. But Odin had moved on from the past, however much his current choice of office stood in stark opposition to the notion.

I looked for the diamond-shaped ingwaz rune – beginnings – found it, and gave it an experimental tap. The key might have shimmered faintly, but it was hard to be sure. More decisive was the immediate cold attention I felt focused on me, laser to target.

Not a person. Definitely not a person. The intrusion felt similar to the information dumps offered by Providence’s task system, though it wasn’t that, either. The coldness spread from my mind to the space behind my absent eye, becoming physical as well as mental. It came from all around me – thousands of tiny runes Odin had carved into the various surfaces of Valhalla, hidden in plain sight.

Of course he wouldn’t trust the standard operating system. He’d built his own interface powered by his own magic. Magic which now reached into my mind with probing tendrils, searching for verification. The cold in my socket intensified, becoming painful.

I retreated into the back of my head and thought Odin-like thoughts, flipping the switch to put me more into character. I’d taken out that inconvenient thorn in my side – the rival seer – and was finally free to act as I pleased, working towards my preferred futures as I saw fit. I had survived Yahweh’s scrutiny, remaining to his knowledge his loyal henchman. If I’d made some enemies along the way, it was an acceptable loss so long as I managed to retain my position of influence and favour.

The cold retreated along with the intrusions, and didn’t come back when I relaxed my thoughts back into their usual patterns.

In their place, I found myself looking at a vision of Providence’s corporate logo, much like the one I’d seen in Apollo’s office. I was seeing it through the empty socket, the whole right side of my vision taken up by it and overlaying part of the reality I could still witness from my left.

I willed it away and the logo vanished, replaced by the system desktop. Not quite the same as the version Apollo had used, but close enough.

I was in. No soul-recognition software, then – or at least, not implemented directly. Tied to a pre-existing access imprint, perhaps, or maybe Security had gotten lazy – or Tez-influenced – while making me a new one.

That verification, though – it had come close to taking my eye socket out, and half my head with it. The eye wouldn’t have been a coincidence. If I’d been a lesser shapeshifter, it would have likely been the end of my infiltration venture.

Between that, the access card, the runes, and Yahweh sitting above judging everything, I was fairly sure Odin’s security would have stopped anyone except me. Paranoia justified, I suppose.

I did like being me. Especially when it didn’t come with a ball and chain around my ankles.

New obstacle, though – everything in Odin’s system seemed translated into runes, which decidedly hadn’t been designed with corporate management in mind. About the only obvious transliteration was his personal calendar, which I deliberately closed before it could give me a new slew of commitments to ignore.

It took me a while to narrow down functions. The bucket of three thousand notifications I mistook for a task system proxy turned out to be Odin’s email inbox, and the actual task system resembled more of a flowchart spilling down like a waterfall or structural analysis of ponzi schemes. I could drill down into each computer from here and look at what tickets had been created, edit and reassign them, trace their entire history. All of them. From street bums to heads of state.

At this moment, I had access to a staggering amount of power. From this office, I could influence monarchs, meddle in governmental policy – or set the daily budgets of all Helpdesk staff to an amount that would bankrupt the company, if I felt so inclined. Fight the fight of the foolish believing the world could be saved from within.

But I had my sights set on other things.

I messed around with a few items on Lucy’s list while I got used to the interface. The system responded to mental instruction for basic tasks but nothing more complicated. It was, in the end, still based on modern technology. Luckily it didn’t force me to type in Futhark.

Rather than flailing around on systems I was less than familiar with, I opened Odin’s inbox and sent Djehuti an email delegating Eris’ computer for immediate investigation, explaining the Xiānfēng-installed software. Once he found it, he was to conduct a sweep of the business for similar incursions and send me a full report.

That took care of that.

Covering, and covering up, Apollo’s activities would be trickier. I didn’t want Djehuti poking his probing fingers into that one, and Apollo had been a manager, not Helpdesk staff. His activities weren’t logged by the task system. Looked like I’d have to do this the tedious way.

For the next several hours I studied Providence’s systems, diving as deep as I dared without setting off red flags and unwanted complications. My inbox pinged at me, but the stooges could wait. It was as much an exercise in language as anything; I breathed runes by the end of it, deciphering new sigils, structures and definitions with disappointingly slow progress.

But there was progress. An application lined to the walls – literally; they filled the aisles of Valhalla – with charts and spreadsheets eventually identified itself as the heart of the company tracking system. It contained enough information to make my head hurt, and not just because of its direct line to my brain. I tried to make sense of it until the fake Asgard sun dimmed in the distance and plunged the hall into grey, sending torches on the walls sputtering into naked flame.

Something panged in my chest and I swept a hand across the runic keyboard, severing the connection. Enough for now.

I could feel my powers returning, and the ghost of Valhalla would wait.