They hadn’t been kidding about ‘disused’.

Hera’s earmarked storage space opened up far underground in a dry, cramped chamber littered with the desiccated remnants of animal bones. I immediately disliked it. The air was stale and thin in a way suggesting an old entrance had been blocked off by rockfalls, water, or both. It would have been pitch-black but for the dim camp light rolling gently away from my foot where I’d kicked it over on arrival. Shadows swung wildly about the passage, growing out of jutting stalagmites in fearsome patterns only to meld back into the walls moments later.

A metallic door stood unsupported in the centre of the grotto, courtesy of Odin’s lanyard. I took a step towards it, stopping short as one of the moving shadows failed to reintegrate with the rest of the cave. A second later it blurred and resolved into a human figure – Tepeyollotl, from the Security team. God of caves. It figured.

I hated caves.

He gave me a nod that looked vaguely pained. “Sir. This resource is off-limits except to Operations.”

Tepe was a big man like Janus, but also sleek. He loomed out of the darkness with composed grace, hair and extremities blending so seamlessly into the shade I couldn’t quite tell where they ended. In fact, I realised, he actually was fading halfway. Not many shapeshifters could hold half states indefinitely, not that there was much call for them in the first place. It was one thing for a breeze to slide elegantly under a door and another to squeeze a gluggy mess of half-formed pieces through it. I’d seen it attempted and could have done without the memories.

“It’s my investigation now,” I informed Providence’s watchdog, flashing my lanyard. “This is a little out of Operations’ wheelhouse, so I’ll be taking point from here.” I waited a beat and followed up with an impatient circular hand gesture. “That’s your cue to let me in.”

When he didn’t move, I shrugged and turned back towards the door, only to find it missing. A quick scan of the cave revealed it standing some metres away near the far wall. Pursing my lips, I reassessed my estimation of the lackey on duty. Illusion, confoundment or spatial magic; fairly typical for the sort of deities who holed up in tunnels. Those who were there by choice, anyway. If it wasn’t a labyrinth complex it was a prepper mentality, or some combination of the two. As if there was a hope of stopping Providence once they came for you.

It was fairly basic as defences went, but still – this would be a place of power for him. Antagonising him here would probably be a bad idea. It was looking like I’d have to swallow my reservations and call Vishnu.

“Unlike your boss,” I spoke, staring the god down, “I don’t have time to waste.” Before I could pull my phone out of my robes, however, a distinctive vibrating noise sounded from Tepe’s hip.

The god dropped the halfway shape and shifted the rest of the way into human form, feet resolving into sturdy sandals with toenails painted as green as his fingertips. The rest of the shadows fled from his hair, leaving it tousled and distinctly dark green. A company-issue phone emerged from the folds of his muted but contrasting orange slacks.

“Yes,” he said flatly, answering it. “Understood.”

Without uttering another word, the door at the end of the room clicked open. It looked like Tez had come through on schedule and beaten me to it. Tepe’s eyes slid from me to the door as he stashed his device away, but he didn’t speak again.

“Talkative one, aren’t you?” I mused as I made my way over. “Maybe you should get out more.”

Tepe glanced sideways at me. When I was halfway to the door, he picked himself up and followed me at a few languid paces. So it was like that – allowed access, but with company. Vishnu really wasn’t letting this grudge thing go.

But a sentry would ruin my plans for this outing. “Listen,” I said, folding my arms and turning back to my stalker. “I’ll say this nicely. This project is way above your pay grade. Management or above. Understand?”

He didn’t budge. I supposed it was true that Quil and Nuja – decidedly not managers – had been captured along with Themis in Louis Ngai’s office. A precedent had been set there. It must have been common knowledge.

“Alright,” I tried again. “You and I both know how this goes. You don’t answer directly to me, but I’m still in charge of this business. Now, I’m sure Vishnu spun you a bunch of bullshit about power struggles and politics while completely missing the point of the investigation, but I can’t have you, or anyone, barging in and disrupting an extremely delicate piece of work. Or do I have to remind you these are the people your new manager had to squash with a rock bigger than the one you’re currently living under?”

Part of me considered provoking a brawl, but Tepe wasn’t combative as far as Security staff went. Most of our prior run-ins had involved him quietly standing by while his colleagues had done the talking, clearly with his mind elsewhere. Once I’d even seen him pull out a book on the job while Apollo had monologued on about the importance of duty or some such garbage. Even accounting for the place of power, I had a good chance of being able to take him down. Especially if I used the earring.

And the moment he laid a finger on me, I’d have him. If he took the bait. Attacking a manager of higher rank was grounds for demotion, regardless of their department. Everyone knew that. Of course, that was a long-term mess I’d have to sort out, and I wanted an immediate answer.

“Besides,” I continued. “If you’re in there with me, who’s going to watch the door? Honestly, I worry about Vishnu sometimes. Too much time in stasis eroding what should be common sense.”

An expression of distaste crossed Tepe’s features as he stepped back towards the wall, shifting back into half-shadow. He’d get in trouble no matter what he chose, but a dressing down from the COO was preferable to a demotion.

“Good choice,” I said, with a twinge of regret. I had nothing against the cave god, even if I’d have preferred his domain crumble to dust while I wasn’t in it. Once you had power, abusing it was easy. Problems larger than the culmination of my last three hundred years’ worth of struggles could melt away in instants like they were nothing. If I wanted, I could simply live as Odin and take it all for myself. It wouldn’t be too late.

It occurred to me it was exactly the kind of thing the Allfather would have expected me to do. Become him. Betray my allies. Be exactly what the world already thought of me. Even as a mind-reader, he hadn’t known everything.

I’d play the role, but I’d never be him. And if all went to plan, I wouldn’t have to play it much longer.

The moment I stepped through the door, I could feel the facility was in dire need of repair. The immediate space around the entrance had been shored up and stabilised, but the rest was suffering under severe neglect. Thin patches riddled the pocket dimension that might once have led to other worlds. Since the restructure, for all I knew they might lead to the void or simply dangerous contortions of space and time. Other spots felt twisted and dense in ways I’d rarely, if ever, encountered. It wasn’t a safe place to store anything. It was the kind of place you sent things to to die.

Oversight was stretched thinner than I’d thought; no wonder Enki had requested reinforcements. This was what the Facilities department was meant to prevent. Either Operations had forgotten to notify them or they hadn’t realised how bad it had gotten in… I could only assume the place hadn’t been touched up in centuries. Even then, this was bad. Or the third and equally-likely option – everyone had absolved themselves of responsibility and assumed someone else would come along to address the problem. So much for guarding; I’d be lucky if Yun-Qi and Xiānfēng were even still alive.

At first glance it resembled Facility J - cut from the same basic template, but dark. No false sun filtered down through the ceiling this time, and the only light I had at all came from the open door behind me. I nudged it closed with a decisive clunk and reached for one of my many ornamental rings, scratching a pair of runes into its surface by touch. It flared to life a moment later, not much more effective than Tepe’s crappy lamp. Bioluminescence would have been a vast improvement, but it was too soon to start flashing my signature powers around until I was sure there wouldn’t be more guards lurking further in. I didn’t need much light to see by, anyway.

The entrance hall was mostly intact, though frayed around the edges. I passed close to a few of the weak spots, hoping to get a sense for what was wrong. It didn’t tell me much, other than that my fingers faded out of existence near the seams, only to return when I pulled them back. Mostly harmless. Though from the detritus lying on the floor amid scuff marks and chipped plastic, I gathered the other occupants hadn’t been so informed.

I went left at the T-junction, taking the more familiar route. In this version the cells hadn’t been sealed yet, the doorways opening into actual, barren rooms. Dimensional rifts, broken and warped, arced across the entrances of the first few, telling me they’d been used to store something at one point, even before construction had been completed. One spun in a gentle funnel moving at the speed of treacle. Parts of the wall had come away with it, sending stone and splintered mortar levitating in its invisible currents.

Another had exploded outwards, lancing across the width of the corridor in beams the width of my head. As I shone my light into one, I saw it flicker out from another, only to disappear when I moved it a few centimetres along, and reappear again from the empty cell after a few more.

Less harmless. Proving my assessment, a large pool of blood intersected the nearest beam and turned into a meandering trail of drips and red shoeprints. I stepped over it and continued moving.

The fifth or sixth cell had a person in it. Not the owner of the blood – the trail gave that area a wide berth and continued down the corridor.

As far as I could tell – and it was difficult – it was a woman. Bits of her drifted around the cell inside various distortions, fracturing as they moved. It was like watching a drop of ink spread in a glass of water, slowly turning the whole jar black.

“Help me.” The words rattled around the room in Mandarin, barely above a whisper, coming at me from a hundred different angles through vocal cords no longer in one piece.

I paused, considering. “Who are you?”

“Pang Hualing, from Xiānfēng. Do you know us?”

“I do,” I answered, taking pity on her. “I’m the one you’ve been waiting for.”

“You are?” My words seemed to send the pieces into a frenzy, more splitting off to the tune of exhausted groans. When she spoke again, her voice sounded even more diluted and inhuman. “Please help me. I can’t stand it. I got too close and it drew me in. I can’t… fix it.”

I could see the problem, and, if I’d been the one caught, could probably have found my way out. Doing it for another person was a different matter entirely. I didn’t have the skills to mend the distortion. I might have been able to guide her through it if she had the capacity to learn. But it would take a long, long time.

I remembered what Yun-Qi had said about Xiānfēng creating immortals. “Can you die?”

There was a long pause. “I think so.”

“Good. Maybe I’ll see you again. This will probably hurt.”

“Wait,” Hualing stalled. “Have you found the others?”

“I’m about to.”

“Tell them good luck. And that I’ll miss them. Please.”

I nodded slowly, not sure how well she could see me, then added my voice to the confirmation. Raising my hand, I activated Odin’s ring and incised a straightforward battle spell on the largest of the broken pieces, ignoring the sharp rattles of protest. Then I repeated the process, targeting shapes one by one until the sounds died back into silence and what might have been a soul – it was hard to tell – fell away from reality in pieces.

The remaining fragments had stopped moving and splitting and simply hung suspended, macabre insects preserved in transparent amber. I backed away from the blood splatters and deactivated the band of remote inscription with a kiss. Nice to have bonuses up my sleeve.