I looked warily at Reggie, who looked back at me with all the smugness that a tech-bro could naturally generate.

  Other-me got together with this?

  There must have been extenuating circumstances. Getting trapped in a foreign dimension together or something. Still.

  “I thought you had just the one thing you needed to do,” I said.

  Just one more thing? Does he think he’s Steve Jobs or something?

  “Oh yes,” Reggie agreed. “Mission accomplished and all that. It’s just… before I go, do you want me to turn the gods back on? Or not?”

  You wouldn’t have thought that a room full of people saying “What?” would create such a cacophony. Well, all right, no one limited themselves to just that. It seemed that everyone had a strong opinion on the matter, or just a strong need to express their disbelief that Reggie would even ask the question.

  The gods, of course, were shouting in outrage. My companions and Borys were asking questions that might have some relevance. But even the dungeon inhabitants were shouting something, trying to make themselves heard in the din.

  Trying, and failing. Between the number of people with an opinion, the slightly echoing nature of the chamber and the instant escalation to shouting, no one could understand a word.

  “Quiet.” I didn’t speak that loudly, but I punctuated it by firing one of the cyberpunk guns into the ceiling. It wasn’t too loud either, but pulling out the weapon was an implied threat to anyone in range, which let me use [Intimidate]. That had an effect. The skill flowed out of me, instantly silencing those with no resistance to it.

  The meaningless notification was repeated for each of the gods and for each of the dungeon inhabitants. Not for any of my companions though. Either they were too strong to be cowed by a simple [Intimidate] or they hadn’t taken my shot to be a threat—which was fair enough. It wasn’t. They did shut up though. The chamber was silent, with everyone looking at me.

  “Are you seriously going to let us make that decision?” I asked.

  I was being generous with the word ‘us’ there. If Reggie had intended to listen to the gods, he would have just restored them. The dungeon inhabitants had only learned that the gods existed about five minutes ago. I doubted they had anything relavent to bring to the table. Even if they did, they and the gods had just lost a Social Contest with me. For the next twenty-four hours, they were bound to not go against me.

  My companions did have enough knowledge of the gods to make their opinions relevant. More than I did, to be honest. Despite that, they usually followed my lead. That left Borys as the only other independent speaker. Still, that made two, so ‘us’ was appropriate.

  Reggie shrugged. “I don’t have feelings about it one way or the other,” he said. “All it affects is how fast I need to dash for the portal afterwards. I don’t have the time or inclination to poll the entire population, so you guys are it. What did you want to do?”

  “What… happens if we decide to keep them supressed?”

  Reggie looked over at the fuming gods. “They’re not entirely mortals,” he said. “They have some perks that aren’t normally available, like unaging. If they can get to level ten, they should be able to unlock their powers again.”

  “What? Level ten is godhood?” I’d never heard that. Then again, I’d never heard of anyone reaching level ten.

  “Not… quite?” Reggie sounded doubtful. “But it should be enough to unlock the powers they already have. That’s assuming they don’t find a hack like the one I used before then.”

  I stared at Reggie, trying to articulate my next question. Was level ten a realistic possibility? Would Reggie even be able to tell me that? The chaotic jumble of my thoughts was interrupted by Fyskel.

  “Dearest Kandis,” he said. I rolled my eyes. Apparently, buttering me up didn’t count as going against me.

  “No doubt you’re thinking,” he continued, “that you can’t afford to restore our powers, as even considering the opposite will be taken as traitorous and punished accordingly.”

  “Well, now I’m thinking that.”

  He bowed, with only a trace of his usual mockery. “Two things,” he said. “First, we are well aware that thoughts do not constitute actions. We’ve been aware of your disdain from the beginning and have not punished it. Rather, we cherish your independent spirit.”

  “Disdain? I think you mean outrage,” I said. I glared at him—with disdain. “Outrage at being dragged out of my life and into this madness.”

  “As it turns out, we didn’t do that,” he pointed out. “This fellow, and his comrades, were the ones who ripped your life away from you. All we did was pick up the pieces, and in the service of a greater good.”

  “That’s a good point,” I said, turning my glare on Reggie.

  “Hey,” he said. “We’ve moved Heaven and multiple Earths to make our mistake right.”

  I grunted. “What was the second thing?” I asked Fyskel.

  “The second thing is that our agreement is still in place. Should you restore your powers, we will return to the status quo and any god that takes offence at anything that was said or done or thought by anyone here will be prevented from acting directly. Agreed?”

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  The other gods, who had all jumped from their seats when this topic started, muttered or nodded agreement with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

  “Good to know,” Cloridan said. There was a phutt sound and Ashmor exploded.

  Everyone stared in shock. Cloridan was holding one of the little cyberpunk pistols from the third floor, of the same type that was currently in my hand. It wasn’t the most damaging weapon, but Ashmor was only level one. The gun put a hole in his chest considerably bigger than his head.

  Fyskel was the first one to break out of his shock. Even Cloridan was still, shaken by the enormity of what he’d done.

  “No! You can’t—” he rushed over to Ashmor’s fallen body and dropped to his knees in front of it. “Please, you’ve got to help—” he looked over at Felicia.

  “I’m sorry—he’s dead,” she said helplessly. “It was too fast…”

  “Maybe the rest of them can make the case that they should go back,” Cloridan declared. “But not that guy.”

  Like most of the people in the room, I just stared. Cloridan didn’t seem inclined to massacre more gods, so there wasn’t anything I needed to do right now. The other gods had gathered around Fyskel who had started sobbing over the corpse. They seemed shaken, if not as upset as Fyskel was. None of them seemed happy.

  “Emotions running high, I guess?” Reggie said.

  “I—Cloridan—we—” was all I managed to say.

  Borys was a bit more composed. “I’m not sure I want him getting his powers back in this state,” he said. “Is this an all-or-nothing thing?”

  “It is,” Reggie told him. “Though… there is a loophole, as you’ve found.”

  “If you turn the powers back on, will he come back to life?” I asked.

  “No, he’s gone,” Reggie said. “And before you ask, I can’t bring him back. Once your code is marked as dead, we can’t change it. There’s talk about making that our next project, once the Earth is back up and running… but that’s a long way away.”

  “Ending death? Is that possible? Could you…”

  “It’s a dream,” he said. “The data is there, we just have to find a way to activate it. And find a place to put them all.”

  My mind was spinning with the possibilities, but I was getting ahead of myself. We had other things to decide. I looked over to the dungeon folk.

  “What were you shouting about, before?” I asked. Then I pointed to Travis, because I didn’t want them all speaking at once.

  “If he’s turning them back into gods, can he turn us as well? Gotta be better than monsters.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Bold of you to think we’d make the likes of you into gods,” I said. “Is that the same for the rest of you?”

  “It was more about not being monsters than turning us into gods,” Evan said. “Though I wouldn’t say no if that was on the table.”

  “Sorry,” Reggie said. “I can’t do either of those things. We don’t have enough control, even with the extra rights. What I can do…” He trailed off, thinking. “Yeah. You’re all 21st-century American humans, right? Or you think you are, at least.”

  “We are that,” Evan insisted. “Maybe we’re not… original ones. But we are Americans.”

  “Fair enough,” Reggie said. “What I can offer is… passage out of here. Step through the portal. You’ll lose your Monster status and will just be a human like any other on that world. You’ll need to make a new start, find a job and all that, but it’s better than being a monster.”

  “Hey, wait a minute!” Axel protested. “I wanted to mix the Monsters with the humans!”

  I snorted. “You wanted to see who murdered who, you mean. That sounds like a better offer than mine. You should take it.”

  “Didn’t you say you’d take care of us?” Marta, the older schoolteacher, asked. “He hasn’t offered… much of anything.”

  “I can’t promise anything. I’m afraid taking on refugees is outside my authority. But they’re not going to kick you out once you’re there. And… it’s modern. There’s modern jobs to be had, not like beast-skinning or whatever they do here.”

  “The jobs aren’t that bad, but they use skills that you don’t get. So… you’re always going to be wards of the state. Or me.”

  They all looked at each other uncertainly. “Can we have some time to discuss it?” Evan asked.

  “Sure. Have you got any opinions on the god thing?”

  “The virus is already God. We need no others.” Dr. Huang looked startled at the words that had come out of her mouth. “I’m… sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “Don’t worry about it, I know who’s to blame,” I said, shooting a glare at Axel. He smirked right back at me. “What about the rest of you?”

  They muttered and looked at each other, trying to form a consensus. Finally, Dr Emily spoke up.

  “If we’re not going to stay, perhaps we shouldn’t have a say,” she said. “But we don’t see a pressing reason to return their powers.”

  I nodded and turned back to my friends. “So what do you guys think? Use your words, please, and not guns.”

  Cloridan stared back at me, unfazed. “It was the right thing to do,” he said unrepentantly. “That guy… he wanted to destroy everything. There was never going to be a better chance to get rid of him for good, and the world is a better place for it.”

  “I would have said that no one was sad to see him go, but that clearly isn’t true,” I said, looking over at Fyskel, who was still sobbing over the body. “Fyskel was pretty unpopular, but you didn’t shoot him.”

  “He’s an untrustworthy weasel, but he has helped, at times,” Cloridan said. “I don’t think we should give him his powers back, but he doesn’t deserve to be put down like a dog.”

  “But we need the gods, don’t we?” Felicia asked. “They’ve guided and protected us throughout history.”

  “History only started when they agreed to keep their interference to a minimum,” Cloridan argued. “They agreed that they needed to be kept in check.”

  “They did fuck up a lot, from what I’ve heard,” I agreed. “Borys? What do you think?”

  Borys had been focussing on Cloridan, ready for another murder attempt. Now he looked at me.

  “They won’t be happy if they don’t get their powers back,” he said. “You should think about the damage they can do as they are now.”

  “Like what?” I asked. “Once they get a few levels, sure, but now?”

  “I still have my gifts,” he told me. “So the churches will still be around. They’ll still need the gods to grant them their powers.”

  “Can they do that, without powers of their own?” I asked Reggie. He had been listening in to the conversation with interest.

  “Eh, not sure,” he said. “It’s a complex setup. Give me a couple of hours and I could work it out, but I don’t want to take that kind of time.”

  “So they can grant themselves their priestly powers,” I said. “That will still take a few levels to get dangerous.”

  “But if they get their church behind them, and come after you, there will be trouble,” Borys pointed out.

  “Do you think they can? Will your patron get the support of his church?”

  Borys gave a snort of laughter. “Those bastards,” he said. “They only respect strength, and he’s not strong anymore… but they’re smart enough to know that they need him. Might be worth it just to see how it pans out.”

  “Kyle?” I asked the only one of us that hadn’t spoken yet. He frowned.

  “I’m not sure, but I think… my vote is for no powers.”

  “Kyle!” Felicia objected. “We have to give them their powers back,” she said insistently. “It wouldn’t be right to have them just… wandering around like regular people.”

  “No powers,” Cloridan said. “Let them work for what they get, like the rest of us.”

  I looked a Borys, who hesitated. “No powers,” he finally said. “I’ll work something out with Rakaro.”

  “Sorry Felicia,” I said. “I feel pretty comfortable siding with the majority.”

  I looked at Reggie. “We’ll take no return of powers, thanks.”