The blood trail turned a corner into an empty cell not far from the equivalent of Janus’ in Facility J. The murmur of hushed voices and the distinctive bluish glow of a computer screen warned me I was getting close long before I reached its end. After Hualing, the path had been strewn with physical rubble in addition to spatial kinks. Xiānfēng had been smart about it, chiselling chunks out of the walls and scattering the paths with gravel to test for anomalies. It seemed to have worked.

A lull fell across the room as I stepped through the door, a huddle of strained faces staring out at me from the middle of the cell, lit by the glow of electronics. Compared to the others, it was holding up well, with only a tiny patch of disintegration in one of the far corners. Without custom enchantments and adjustments applied, the cells were simply bare rooms. The computers had been set up on the floor – exactly two of them – and for the paperclips of Eris, I couldn’t figure out where they were drawing power from. They didn’t appear to be plugged into anything.

“Hualing says she’ll miss you,” I said by way of greeting, scanning for guards. The blood trail, sparser now, dripped over to one of the walls and terminated in the stump of a leg swaddled in what had once been someone’s shirt.

Notably, the stump belonged to Ponytail, one half of Lucy’s forensic analyst duo. The contractor sat propped up against a clear wall free of interference as a makeshift nurse tended to his leg, pale but alert, squinting at the distant screens. It took him a few moments to realise something was off and turned to stare at me, blinking as his eyes adjusted.

There were nine of them all up, mostly unfamiliar. Gianna, the other half of the contractors, was the only one to ignore me, working rapidly at a keyboard in the kind of ergonomic conditions responsible for extending carpal tunnel susceptibility to the entire human body.

Yun-Qi rose from the side of the room, his usual impeccable suit covered in dust and fingerprints. “It’s alright,” he informed the crowd. “It’s a friend.” But the words were strained.

It didn’t do much to dispel the unease. I wasn’t sure how much they knew, but if Pakhet was to be believed, I was looking at the last remnants of Xiānfēng. An organisation of several hundred dissidents, now just seven. Several of the survivors stole glances at my missing eye, only to look quickly away when I stared back. They knew who I was – or at least who I was pretending to be.

Are there any guards aside from the doorstop out the front? I asked Yun-Qi.

He shook his head, the movement polite but uncomfortably distant.

“I’m not Odin,” I revealed, dropping the act. To help distance myself from the association, and for the sake of convenience, I slid back into the form I’d used at the appointment in Peru, with the addition of unthreatening sushi pyjamas blatantly plagiarised from my run-in with Passport. A little glow for effect didn’t hurt either. The time for playing mortal was over.

“An atrocity was committed against you today,” I continued, approaching the group barefoot. “I can’t turn it back for you, but I can offer my help. Starting with you.” I pointed at the two contractors and repeated myself in Italian. “Which one of you left the message?”

I ignored the stares I was getting, complimentary or otherwise. Reactions were mixed. A couple of the Xiānfēngites gazed my way in open awe, while at least one met my eyes with obvious distrust.

“It was me,” announced Gia, not looking at me at all. If she hadn’t spoken I could easily have believed she hadn’t heard the question. “Guess this means the devil really is a thing, then, which is somehow the least weird information I’ve learnt in the last few hours.”

“So much for ‘I know everything’,” I commented. “Which I wiped, by the way. As risks go, that one was especially stupid.” After my sojourn in Singapore, I’d scurried back to Valhalla to fix the damage. I hadn’t gotten to it in time to stop it being picked up on Djehuti’s evidence dossier, but as far as I knew no one but the god of writing had seen it, and among the crowd of other incriminating data it was just one red flag in a whole mass communist semaphore performance.

The huddle parted in front of me as I drew close – except for Gia, who didn’t budge. I took the spot on the floor to her left and peered at the screen.

It was Canciana’s programme, transplanted to a new machine. On the multiple monitors more of it was visible this time, though still largely inscrutable. One particular window caught my eye – a mirror of the front end of the task manager, identical to the version I’d used every day for the last decade. Below it, a display pushed out many lines of updating code refreshing in real time. It was still set to Lucy’s task list, and I found myself letting out a low whistle.

For the first time, Gia tore her eyes from the monitors and stopped typing, pausing to look at me properly. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you. But more…” She waved a hand around in a vague circle. “Magic. Hah. Well, you know what they say about being presented with new evidence. And, uh, there’s a lot. This software –”

“Exactly what did you find?” I cut in with a brief frown at the task window, before scouring the setup for any kind of linkage or power input, physical or otherwise. All I came up with was the black tiara of Canciana fame, jacked portentously into the back of the computer. “I’m amazed you have internet connection. How is this thing even working?”

“It’s a side-effect of the aether.” I’d thought Yun-Qi might jump in with the answer, but instead it was one of the survivors, speaking up in Mandarin. He kept his distance, his grey turtleneck, once elegant and refined, smudged with recent dust and a smear of red. “Or more specifically, the interface between the aether and the devices connected to it. What you would no doubt know as the divine prayer network.”

I drew in a silent breath. Being schooled in my own company by mortals – and outsiders, to boot – was a surreal feeling. “Not in as many words. But yes. I always thought that was limited to company-issued devices.”

The Xiānfēngite cleared his throat. “Philippe Musisi, at your service. Lead researcher of –” he gave a mild cough, “– metaphysical studies at the institute. Unofficial, of course,” he added quickly. “We always knew we’d meet face-to-face eventually, although we all hoped it would be under better circumstances. But to more thoroughly answer your question, it’s not the internet we’re connected to, but the divine. We’re still cut off from regular communications inside this pocket dimension.”

I vaguely recognised his name from what I suspected had been a Nobel Prize. “Then are you aware what happened back home?”

“That we’ve been systematically exterminated?” The scientist was keeping it together, but I recognised the undercurrent in his tone. He swallowed. “The exuberant one in the tracksuit seemed delighted to inform us we’d been spared, citing ‘essential test project personnel’. Though that didn’t stop her from killing most of our colleagues. Apparently we’re supposed to acknowledge our good fortune with gratitude.” His face made it clear what he thought of that idea.

I sighed. “It was the best I could do at short notice,” I apologised, omitting the fact it was an ally who’d caused the problem in the first place. That nugget of truth wouldn’t help me now. “Siphon overreached and attracted the wrong attention, and the executives didn’t make a distinction. But let’s be honest. Even if they did, they still would have killed you.”

“Siphon?”

I waited for Yun-Qi to explain the Providence-assigned terminology, again noting the hesitation. Apparently the Xiānfēng renegades hadn’t given themselves a formal name, so Siphon it would remain for now into the foreseeable future.

“It’s worse by an order of magnitude,” I picked up again when he was done. “You could say they’ve made a public announcement. Millions crushed to death and the world doesn’t know what to make of it.”

“That explains the tasks coming through the system,” another Xiānfēng member piped up. “All those mentions of doomsday.” She looked at me and ran a hand through her cropped hair. “Is it real?”

I stole a brief glance at Yun-Qi, whose face remained unreadable. I wanted to tell him this wasn’t my fault. It was Providence’s fault. But we’d both know that wasn’t entirely true.

“Not yet,” I answered. “Or rather, I wouldn’t give up on the current trajectory of looming inexorable ecological collapse. But it’s certainly not good. Which brings me to my next point.” Making to clear my throat, I realised it wasn’t necessary – I already had the acute attention of every soul in the cell, even the Italians.

Here I was, in a room by all accounts packed with world-renowned experts, extraordinary enough in their fields to be hand-recruited for immortality by my own son and each covetous enough for the position of Envy. Any of them would have been a trustworthy candidate, and rightfully so.

I gave it some thought, eyes watching the scroll of tasks and background code on the monitors, then glanced back to Gia. “Why did you leave her at the reins?” I asked, my brow furrowing. “They’re good or we wouldn’t have hired them, but aren’t they a little out of their depth?”

The woman who’d spoken earlier made a slight cough and beckoned me over out of easy earshot. “It’s a matter of exposure,” she whispered to me in a low voice. “The Lyssa effect.”

“You think she’s loony?”

I’d known Lyssa at the start of my unwanted adventures on Floor L of Helpdesk. For a goddess of madness, she was saner than most of senior management and I would have taken her company over Eris’ any day. She’d also been demoted in a scandal over office politics. As far as I could tell, someone had gotten themselves into hot water somewhere and blamed their mistakes on Lyssa’s influence. She hadn’t been in possession of her powers at the time, but apparently it hadn’t factored into the decision-making. Just one more casualty to add to the endless list.

“It’s what happens when they look at tasks,” the nameless Xianfengite explained. “Too much information for the brain to handle. If we’d known about it in time, we could have stopped her. Stopped them both.” Her eyes flicked towards Ponytail still propped up against the wall, eyes closed and breathing slowly. “But we didn’t. At this point, there are two options. We leave them to learn what they can while they can, before the load catches up with them. Or,” she took a deep breath, “we send them in, untrained, to undertake the journey. I assume our founder told you about that.”

“He did. And I take it he’s also told you a few things about me.”

She shot me a small smile, brown eyes sparkling. “Not nearly enough. None of us even know your name. You aren’t the devil, are you?”

“I can,” I replied, “in complete honesty say I’m not. But that’s all you’re getting for now.”

“It’s enough that you’re here,” she replied. “All our lives, we’ve wanted to speak and stand on equal footing to the gods. But our work requires us to hide from them.” Her tone darkened, tears misting at the corners of her eyes. “For excellent reason.”

“No going back,” I agreed. “So Gianna and Silvio need to do a little tree-climbing, and I need someone to go in and shut down Helpdesk. I’ve recently acquired access to Providence’s end of the system, but it needs more than one person to take it offline, plus approvals unlikelier than converting Zeus to celibacy. What are the chances you could stop the whole thing?”

She thought for a few moments with an expression of mild concern. “It should be possible, but your allies, while capable professionals, lack the specialist training. I could do it, perhaps. I’ve been in there once before. I could do it again, in spite of the risks.”

I appraised her anew. “So you’re one of the immortals, then.”

She winced back at me under the scrutiny, seeming embarrassed. “Early signs would indicate. We haven’t tested beyond basic biological scans and functions. Health restoration we’ve confirmed, and aging looks promising. Field testing is a little more extreme than anyone’s comfortable with, given the consequences of failure. But no survivors have died yet.”

“Until Providence went on its extermination spree, you mean.”

“Even then. Everyone who survived the journey is here in this room. We assumed it was why we were spared.”

I drummed my fingers against the curve of my hip. “Is there anyone here who hasn’t taken it?”

“Well, there’s Dr. Lien.”

This was a problem. I didn’t just need someone to shut down the task system – I needed a demon to do it. Someone capable of coordinating with Lucy and I during five simultaneous operations, with powers to give them an extra edge.

“Thanks for the information,” I said, holding out my hand and watching as she shook it without incident. “What did you say your name was?”

“Xu Wen. Senior –” She caught herself halfway. “Chief developer.” She hesitated a moment, waiting for me to return the favour, but I wasn’t planning on enlightening her.

“How confident are you that your team could get someone there and back to do the job with minimal training?” I asked her.

“Honestly? Not at all. But there is one point in their favour.” She glanced at Gia, still tabbing between tasks and hungrily drinking up code. “All that knowledge in their heads, while it lasts, can help in the space between. Some of us absorbed a little before taking the plunge, despite the risks. It helps familiarise us with the lay of the land, such as there is one. But if your specialists go, they’ll have to go soon. It won’t be long before the alien data starts displacing their own memories and they forget who they are.”

She wasn’t wrong. By Providence’s rules, we weren’t supposed to show outsiders the task system, officially for their own protection but really to protect company secrets. It didn’t stop people, though, myself included. At the rate incidents happened, the odds of psychotic patients and dedicated identity theft felons having had a one-time run-in with disgruntled Helpdesk staff were probably sitting around fifty-fifty. And those were the lucky ones.

“Is it even doable? You need a medical procedure, and this isn’t exactly a hospital.”

Wen grimaced. “If pressed, we can be resourceful. I tell you, the odds aren’t good to begin with.”

I went back to the computer, crouching down behind the monitors so I was looking Gia in the eye. I rested my elbows on top of the screens and said, “I have good news and bad news. Bad first: you and Ponytail are dying.”

The analyst wrested her eyes from the screen and blinked at me. “What?”

“The good news is that I can fix it. For one of you, anyway.”

“Hold up.” She moved her hands away from the keyboard. “Sil’s banged up, but they told me he’d be fine once they cauterised the damage. And I’m fine, having wisely brought up the rear while everyone else decided to throw themselves at Hell’s supply closet.” Her eyes darted towards the empty doorway. “I told them they should have stayed near the exit.”

“How’s your head lately?” I asked. “Migraine? Information overload? Trouble focusing?”

She shot me a wary glance in the glow of the screens. “There’s no shame in having ADHD. Just because my executive function isn’t as steady as it could be, it doesn’t mean I can’t focus on the important things. I’d like to see your average forensic analyst pull off what Sil and I achieved today. Are all gods this out of touch?”

“Oh, much worse,” I lied. “Seriously, though, you’ve probably only got days before whatever’s left of you becomes permanently hooked up to life support, or – given the current situation – quietly pushed down one of those spatial holes in the corners there until you turn into dimensional spaghetti. Mortality is a benign tumour, and you’ve just kicked it into metastasising. Luckily, I have the cure.”

I illustrated my point with a couple of memories of task system excess; most notably a high-profile case of an irate employee replacing a local television channel’s breakfast prayer-time with the Helpdesk feed for twelve minutes. The resulting vegetablisation had been blamed on lead poisoning in the water supply, and hardcore fans of the show, of whom I supposed it was distantly possible there were more than zero, would have been forever doomed to bemoan the disappearance of a lost episode after Providence scoured it from existence.

Gia’s face turned the colour of overmilked tea. “Well, shit,” she complained, and closed the window sharing the task manager. “How was I supposed to know eldritch knowledge came with psychic radiation?” She blinked and stared around at the dingy cell and its occupants. “Did these guys know? If so, this is some A-class malpractice, right here. And you didn’t warn us, either.”

“I didn’t realise until later,” I evaded. In truth, I could have shown up in time with a little detective work, but I’d had one or two other tiny things on my mind, such as the world falling apart. Just another reason accruing worshippers had always seemed like a terrible idea. All that responsibility and no realistic way to keep on top of it, even for people allergic to fun. “Point is, all you have to do is become a demon.”

“But only one of us can, for some reason.”

“Supply bottleneck,” I explained with a shrug. “This lot might have found a way to expedite the process, but in our case quality takes time. That and poorly-conceived deadlines are why we’ll only have five deadly sins instead of seven. But what project ever goes to plan?”

Gia narrowed her eyes. “So this is a devil thing. Will there be any amount of torture involved at any stage in the process?”

“Only if you want there to be.”

“Then give it to Sil,” she said, without a moment’s hesitation. “I’ve got ten years on him; it’s only fair.”

“Actually, that’s why I’m asking you,” I supplied, lacing my fingers together on top of the monitors. “Unfortunately for Ponytail, I’m not offering a charity service. Whoever gets it will need to bust into computer land and shut down the task manager. Not that I’m practiced in these matters, but my guess is that something going wrong down there will make a missing shin look like a trip to Hawaii. Experience, in other words, is your friend.”

Gia stayed quiet for a moment before speaking. “I have a lot of questions. But right now, the one coming to mind is how you can expect me to just leave a colleague to die.”

“Because it’s better than you both dying. And if a transaction for your life doesn’t motivate you, maybe this will.” I lifted a hand and gestured around the chamber. “This is the one place in the world right now that might be able to fix both of you. Sil will get his chance, if you’re fast enough. But you need to complete your job first.”

“And what exactly will shutting down the gods’ organisational system achieve? Forgetting for a moment this is way outside my usual gigs. I’m not dumb enough to think this will put me on anything but their most-wanted roster, so if this is one of those worse-than-death situations, you can find someone else to do it. My life was pretty awesome until the devil hired me, you know.” Before she could say anything further, her lips parted in a sharp intake of breath and she raised a hand to her temple. “Ow.”

“See? It’s already starting.”

“Alright, alright! Just answer the question.”

I couldn’t tell her about the pact – yet. But I had a handy fallback option.

“I owe these people a favour,” I revealed. An understatement, after what they’d been through. No sooner had Yun-Qi entrusted me with their confidential information than Tez and his reflections had abused it, calling in a tracker to undo four centuries of painstaking research and preparation on a mass scale. Sure, it had wiped out Siphon, but at staggering cost.

And no matter how often I kept repeating to myself that they would have ended up in the void anyway, I couldn’t shake the terrible feeling we’d done damage we couldn’t repair. Yun-Qi, so genial earlier at the hospital, hadn’t come to greet me this time, but had stayed quiet and distant. I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eyes for fear of the betrayal I might find there. From where he stood, I’d professed to work against the gods, only to be complicit in the greatest blow in their favour since the end of the war in India.

I was asking too much of him. Of all of Xiānfēng. Repeating exactly what I’d just sworn to Hel I wouldn’t repeat.

It couldn’t be for nothing, now. I had to believe this would all be worth it. To see it through. Even if it meant I might lose the child I’d only just regained.

But I couldn’t deny it was getting harder.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I spoke up, raising my voice so the whole cell could hear it. Amid the muted discussion, it wasn’t hard. “But I think it’s fair to say Xiānfēng and Providence are now at war.”

“The world and Providence are at war, whether they know it or not.” Yun-Qi stepped carefully into the centre of the room. His eyes briefly touched mine but moved on. I hadn’t lost him yet, in spite of everything. But it wouldn’t take much more.

Silence greeted him; his followers unconvinced. Yun-Qi cleared his throat. “We may be prisoners, but we are very far from defeated.”

“Providence just broke the world,” I whispered in Gia’s ear like the metaphorical devil while my son renewed his speech, seizing the opportunity to work on morale. “So now it’s – or rather, you – are going to break them back. Welcome to the defining moment of your career.”