I met Baldr’s eyes for a split second. The smile he shot me was radiant enough to induce cancer.

“Don’t let them in,” I said.

The Head of IT made a double-take at the arrivals. Even through the dust, it was clear it was a sizeable crowd, made worse by the lack of strangers. “But that’s –”

“He uses mind control, you bin chicken.” In the middle of the pack of bodies, I spotted Lofn. She showed no signs of outward damage yet, but who knew how long that would last.

It was too late to throw up barriers. Others had noticed. Doing so now would be the PR mistake of the century. Already Security staff were moving towards the exits.

“You’ll see it yourself in a moment if you let him in,” I continued. “ Let me get you out of here.”

Djehuti gestured at the windows. “Look, though. It’s safe. This is our evacuation. Of course we’re letting them in. Or us out, and we can deal with the situation together.”

I made an exasperated noise. “And what if they’re bringing the containment field in with them?” The original, that was – the rival to our copy – with its own version of Themis and Vishnu. It wasn’t a farfetched scenario; whatever Amulet Tez knew, Baldr’s contingent would by now too. I could only hope Regina and Neetu, being other resources, had managed to keep the operational instructions a secret. Since we hadn’t been sprung in a time freeze, I had to assume we had time.

They might well have used Regina to forge the path through the city. I didn’t spot her in the crowd, but that didn’t mean much.

If Baldr and Tez were here, Bragi wouldn’t be far behind. I was lucky he hadn’t already caught me. Thank god for interdimensional glass. With Tez’s foresight in play, I had to hide and muddle the trail.

Shifting into mosquito form, I ducked behind the department head to break line of sight with the visitors. Not that it helped much. Ending up anywhere near Bragi, no matter what form I took, made me a sitting duck; I needed to evade. But I still had words to say.

Stop them opening the doors, I echoed. And if they do, play along until you can get away, no matter what you see. You’re up against an army.

I left him behind protesting and chased up Gia, still typing frantically into laptops. One vanished from her arms as another appeared to replace it, frustratingly slow in the size of the crowd. She was never going to get through them all.

We have to go now, I insisted, hovering between her and the back wall. First priority is protecting you and the soul jar. For all my insectile stealth, I felt critically exposed and vulnerable. One misstep, and prophecy would still bring me down.

Despite his scepticism, Djehuti had made his way over to the doors with a wave and a word, managerial clout buying us a few precious moments. More faces had lined up outside the glass now, smiling and chatting among themselves. Given time, that wouldn’t last. Authenticity would give way to half-realised obedience as Baldr's victims struggled to comprehend what happened around them.

There’s nowhere to hide, said Gia, glancing around for only a second before continuing to alter a mind. It’s a big empty hall. Unless you mean in one of the tents.

With the number of people out there, one of them would see her enter. But it was what we had. Let me speak to Themis. In the meantime, act casual and head over. We have to assume Tez knows who you are. We can’t let him learn what you’re doing.

She set off, still working intently on the device. What about Tru and the others? Inanna?

A pang of guilt threatened to work its insidious way under the temporary lid I’d placed on the panic. ‘Expendable’ wasn’t a word you used to win friends. They’ll have to find their own way, I settled with, and groped around until I hit the mental snag of the soul jar – surprisingly hard to pinpoint given its current occupancy rate. Baldr’s here, I notified Themis. We need a bubble on the office now.

The goddess’ response didn’t raise my confidence. Lucy’s flask might have been put back together, but Themis sounded more strained than she had while in pieces. I’m near my limit, she replied. No one person can hold all these gods for long, and my domain is slipping away.

What do you mean? I asked, alarmed. Djehuti was still talking with the staff at the doors, but it could change any second. If they’d asked me, not that anybody had, Themis’ domain had always been wishy-washy at the best of times, and that hadn’t stopped her before. Why did it have to now, of all times?

I’m only as strong as the regulations I enforce, Themis answered. Dubious declarations of independent auditing or otherwise. Leadership being in limbo is a recoverable blow. Without a suitable replacement, the destruction of its supporting records and infrastructure is harder to survive. Divine authority is in question; I’m relying on Earthly laws now.

I zoomed to a standstill on one of Gia’s shoulders. Such as?

Trespass. I could limit entry to employees, but it would turf you out with your retainers. You’re not part of Providence anymore. It could throw you into the path of Siphon.

Except I had protections against that sort of thing now. I think we do it, I agreed. If Gia’s holding the flask, it should bring you with us, right?

Most likely. We won’t be prevented from egress.

Wait till I give the word.

Themis hesitated. I can talk to Vishnu, she offered. Explain the situation. If this trend continues, you can’t rely on me alone.

Djehuti appeared to be losing the door argument, his attempts to delay undermined by the half-hearted effort. I was a little surprised I’d won him over enough to try at all. Amazing the difference a lack of mind control could make, even a short way in. Inanna, still where I’d left her with Tru and Baal, was watching him curiously from a distance. During our delirious descent she’d been competent and collected, as befitted an enigmatic mastermind. Now, it was plain to see she hadn’t a clue what was going on.

Figuring it out, though. You didn’t need a common language to be able to trace the scene dynamics. The way people looked to Djehuti for subtle guidance, marking him an authority. The way more followed Baldr, outside and within the foyer. As more people cottoned on, those who weren’t needed to hold back Yggdrasil or stave off collapse had started trickling towards the glass. An uncertain standoff had developed between those separated by it, and increasingly within.

Gia typed in a phrase and depressed the return key on the latest laptop, the computer vanishing a second later. She crossed the rest of the way to the collection of tents a little faster, and stopped in front of the nearest, hesitating.

Go on, I prompted.

The tent was red like the painting, a small thing designed for one adult, or two heavily intimate ones at best. I watched the windows as Gia unzipped the flap and crawled inside. A few people were watching, Baldr among them. Unfortunate.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“You’ll want a disguise,” I said, materialising practically on top of her. I pulled off the wig I was wearing, along with the accompanying outer layer of clothes, handing them over one by one. Unfashionable, daggy and suited to an unexpectedly camping grandma. The wrinkled mask I pulled off my face completed the look, hyper-real and intended to mislead. “You’re Hungarian now,” I instructed, transforming into a perfect replica of Gia herself. “I’ll head off the pursuit while you get changed. Be ready to go by the time I’m back.”

I ducked out of the tent, monitoring the doors through eyes shaped like blemishes. Djehuti had moved out of the way, and Security had their hands on the handle. I ran a length of me over to the exit and up the door, welding the new piece shut to the wall and discarding it just as rapidly. The nearest Security officer wiggled the handle, but it did nothing. She took Djehuti for the culprit and turned to the Egyptian with a scowl. I kept walking towards the crowds at the lifts.

Baldr was still watching me, Bragi now visible behind him, but the bulk of his attention had shifted to the entrance. He sauntered along the length of the glass in front of his following, until he faced the Head of IT. Djehuti shifted uncomfortably. The Security officer glanced at them both, made an annoyed toss of her head, and promptly ripped the door off the wall by its handle. A jagged hole filled the space left behind.

I froze, then performed my signature move in record time, letting the husk of Gia collapse to the floor. With luck it could still be a decoy. In mosquito form, I raced back to the tent, dodging figures left and right. An opening meant Bragi could reach me.

But no one was stepping through. Tez, only now catching up with his new leader, sighed to a waddling halt. From the folds of his coat, a hand more tremoring bone than flesh emerged and gestured at Baldr to wait.

That didn’t bode well.

As if to illustrate it, another enormous chunk of Providence crash-landed behind them in the street, crushing a few gods along with it. Dust buffeted into the foyer. I saw Bragi flinch.

Baldr didn’t bat an eyelid.

The Security officer was likewise unconcerned. She rested the chunk of wall she still carried by the handle against the neighbouring glass, stepped through the dust tunnel, and immediately vanished. It was behaviour I’d seen thousands of times at Providence’s travel stations. At the front doors, less so. Judging by the faces among both sets of crowds, the confusions was shared.

In any case, it bought me more time. I arrived back at the red tent, nudged Gia in preparation and zoomed through the flap –

– into an unfamiliar room in the dark. A very small one, granted, but – against all expectation – somehow not the tent. Actually, it seemed to be a closet. Unimaginative white shirts and trousers hung from cheap wire coat-hangers above me, with cramped sets of chipped shelving underneath.

I turned human again and batted through the garments to push the door open, clambering over the furniture to –

– a factory floor, dim and deserted. Complex machinery and conveyor belts, currently idle, criss-crossed over a layer of sterile tiles. Safety goggles hung in neat hooks along one wall, next to a sheaf of laminated forms in a clear plastic holder.

Once could have been the typical hazard risk associated with general proximity to divinity. Twice, and chances were good someone was messing with me with a side order of agenda. Separated from my best hope against Baldr at a critical juncture, I didn’t imagine a friendly one. Peering back, I managed to catch an entirely different door latching with a click behind me. I stopped, cursed loudly, and took a moment to sort myself out.

I’d come through a travel station, or something like it. Odd, but it was one way out, especially if the Singapore barrier had come down. If I was lucky, I might have been caught up in someone’s poorly-executed escape attempt. The bigger problem was that it had separated me from Gia and the seventeen thousand-plus divine souls she carried. I pulled the door open to retrace my steps, and found myself –

– in a pool of freezing water, just below the surface. Dark again. I splashed up to the surface and broke into –

– a forest path, warm and twilight, with the door to a maintenance shed behind me. Water cascaded around my shoes in a miniature avalanche, turning the dirt track beside them into temporary mud. I dried myself off and stared at the shed, which responded to my accusation in typical underwhelming fashion. No getting back that way.

I stepped off the mud puddle and set about working my way back via visitation. Away from Providence’s bulk protections, the notion Pakhet or another tracker might show up to shiv me in the back made me antsy, and I readied to hurry. To my surprise, however, I made contact immediately.

Gia was not in the tent, or in Providence. Half dressed in the disguise I’d provided, with the mask pushed back on the top of her head, she appeared to be in the bedroom of an enraged man with a baseball bat standing between her and the door. It did look a little like she’d prepared for a home robbery. I took one look at the scene and pulled her out of there, landing her back with me on the forest path. Crickets hummed at us in the backdrop.

“I’m not going to ask,” I deadpanned. “Obviously it got you, too. I’m guessing you left by the tent flap instead of staying put like I told you.”

“The hall was collapsing,” the demon lord defended herself. She swivelled to stare at the maintenance shed, and stepped with a squelch in the mud puddle. “Pieces hit the tent. I had to find somewhere more defensible. But I ended up in a restaurant, and when I left that, that’s where you found me.”

“Do you have the flask?” I posed, and breathed in relief as she patted one bulging pocket. That was something.

“What’s going on?” the demon lord insisted. She pulled off the now-redundant mask, rolled it up and stuffed it down the opposite pocket. “What do we do now? Find our way back?”

I shook my head. “Any protection Providence has left won’t last much longer. Providence won’t last much longer. Not in its current state. It has Baldr’s attention for now, but he’ll send someone out for me again soon. Also, there’s the matter that doors don’t appear to be working.”

“Then what do we do?”

I sighed. The forest was growing darker, the golden light filtering through its trees turning to grey. “I could sit here and be a universe again while you work your way through eighteen thousand decontaminations.”

“Almost nineteen thousand now.”

“That many?”

“That’s what Themis says.”

“This is how the world ends,” I mused wryly. “Not with a bang, but an incredibly dull audit. Who would have guessed?”

“You’re joking about the world, right?”

I joined her in appreciating the trees. Restored to its full vitality, my immortal body remained as energetic as ever, but didn’t quite offset the mental fatigue. The cricket chirps had died back a bit in response to the sounds of our conversation, but picked back up outside of a certain radius. It didn’t look like the world was ending, but these things rarely did. I had no idea what part of the world we were in.

“I wonder if all the doors are broken,” I mused, running a thumb and forefinger around the edge of my lower lip, “or if it’s a more personal thing, like a curse. You should probably get back to decontaminations. Ask Themis to prioritise people for you in order of most to least catastrophic. I’ll be here when you need me, being a toolshed.”

I took a few steps and leant against the nearest tree until it became part of me, reaching out till I controlled a few dozen metres of forest. As the most important person in the universe wiped her forehead and sat in the path, the glow of the next laptop lighting her face, I counteracted the fading daylight with gentle bioluminescence. It reminded me of parts of Jötunheim, where aeons of shapeshifters had left their mark. I wove glowing twigs and leaves together above our heads until I had enough to build dimensional walls from, then displaced the whole thing out of Midgard. It was as difficult as it had been the first time, but at least now I didn’t have to worry about angry dimensional trees, god-haters’ divine containment fields and Providence’s risk mitigation enforcement snapping at my heels.

I breathed a sigh.

I would have preferred to be near the action, maybe finding the rest of the answers. I could still go there, of course. If Tru had managed to stay out of trouble, I could send a visitation. Regina, too. I’d do that in a moment. Victory was mine, at least when it came to Providence, and yet somehow it didn’t feel like winning. All this time, everything I’d been through – even the destruction of a supposedly insurmountable foe – and I was still running away. Conquerors didn’t have to put up with this.

Anyone not already cleansed of the Baldr effect would be his by now, and there were a lot. Not nineteen-thousand-a-lot, no, but most of ours weren’t decontaminated either. Bringing them to the brainwashing source would be madness.

Ten laptops in, and I wondered how Yun-Qi and Hel were doing. For all I knew, my daughter had been grabbed by the soul jar. I thought about Sigyn, the second time since Mayari’s island, and the melancholy deepened. My living allies had been scattered. Mayari herself was light years away staving off ruin, Tez, Durga and Grace had joined the enemy, and Lucy was neutral at best, doing who-knew-what with Vince in tow. Janus –

My train of thought halted and backtracked. Janus, god of doors, had been on his way to reunion and escape.

Well, I supposed I knew how that had gone, and what he was doing with it. And now I also had one more potential seer on Baldr’s side to worry about. Sedna’s waves.

Or I could just stay here and not deal with any of it.

A vague human shape dropped out of the sky and landed next to my wall of leaves. An inspection revealed it to be one of Hera’s angels, no doubt passing by on its patrol through the sky. We observed each other for a few moments, until a friend dropped down beside it. This seemed to be the trigger the first had been waiting for. Together, they advanced on the vines.

Shit.