Authors: Andrea K Höst
"What if the Greens
stay
like that? Just standing, staring, until
they starve and die? Shaun and Nick and
Mrs
Jabbour
and..."
"The possessed Blues are gathering near the
Spires," Noi went on, deliberately shutting down speculation. "That webcam trained on the Sydney Spire
is still working, but only a couple of people have shown up so far." She paused, eyeing Madeleine critically, then
went to the top of the stair and called down: "Come up here and I'll show
you why this place in particular."
The rest of the escapees came clattering up, exclaiming at
the room.
"Because we won't run out of reading matter if the power
goes?" Fisher asked, with a faint smile and lifted brows.
"Not even because of the Wonder Woman bedroom," Noi
said. "Which I've bagged already,
thanks. No, check this out."
She crossed to the leather-bound books and pulled three
toward her, producing a muted click. And
the entire bookcase moved, swinging out to reveal a pocket-sized office with a
safe, a desk and computer in front of a slatted window, and high shelves full
of files.
"You can tell it's there if you start looking at room
proportions," Noi said. "But I
would never have guessed if it wasn't standing open when we showed up."
"Your taste in hideouts is impeccable," Min
said. "But that would be
comfortable for two or three."
"We'll clean out what we can and deal with it," Noi
said, shrugging. "If anyone comes
to this building, we're straight up here and the door shut. No waffling, no delay. And we need to do what we can to minimise the
'bunch of people hiding out' ambience we've already achieved. I wanted to hook up some kind of motion
sensor alarm for that walkway, but didn't get a chance, so we'll just have to
be quiet and keep an ear out."
"If there are other computers in the building, there is
every chance one of them has a webcam," Nash suggested. "We can feed it to a monitor in the
lounge, and roster some kind of watch."
"Good thought. Maybe we better set that up straight away, and then talk what
next."
"And have food," Emily said plaintively, sparking
immediate agreement. Blues.
Nash left with Fisher and Min to scout the other apartments
for an unobtrusive spot to set a camera, while Pan decided to join the cooking
crew.
"Is there really a Wonder Woman bedroom?" he asked.
"And a
Supergirl
one."
"That's mine," Emily said.
"There's six bedrooms." Noi eyed the pantry stuffed with bulk
supplies from the restaurants, then passed it over in favour of the
freezer. "Two guest rooms – each
with twin beds, luckily – the parents' room and three for the kids, and I think
I would really like the people who live here and I have no idea if they're
alive or dead, or standing in a street somewhere staring at the Spire."
Her voice, just for a moment, had wavered, then she reached
into the freezer and pulled out a Tupperware container. Keeping on. Noi, Madeleine knew, wouldn't break down till no-one could see her.
ooOoo
"So," Noi said, after the first edge of hunger had
been dulled, "places to run to. Family homes. Houses belonging to
really trusted friends who live outside the city. Where's everyone from?"
"Hong Kong," Min said, with a slight smile. "And I suspect we can rule out Nash's
home as well."
"I live in Edgecliff," Fisher said, naming a suburb
just east of Rushcutters Bay.
"Marrickville." Noi lifted one shoulder. "I
had some rellies up in Brisbane, which is no help."
"Leumeah," Madeleine said. "Out near Campbelltown, still in the
dust zone. But my grandmother lives just
outside Armidale. My parents – I told my
parents to try to get there today. It's
on the edge of farmland, kind of open, but it wouldn't be totally obvious if we
were there."
"Kogarah," Emily said quietly, and did not mention
parents. That was a suburb not much
further out than Marrickville.
"Oberon," Pan put in. "In the tablelands, just before
Bathurst. Relatives all around the
area. A couple of spare rooms."
"Shouldn't you be called Puck, not Pan, if you're from
Oberon?" Min asked, eyes lit with sudden delight.
"I've played him as well. But merry trickster junk aside, he spends his
time being ordered around. Pirate-taunting's way more my style."
"What I'd give for a straightforward pirate right
now," Noi said. "Okay, so
either west or up north. Oberon's
closer, but might be harder to get to since there's fewer access roads into the
mountains. How likely is it that a bunch
of us could stay at either place for any measurable amount of time without the
entire town knowing?"
Neither Pan nor Madeleine were very hopeful of that
happening, and they debated splitting into smaller groups, or whether it was
necessarily that bad a thing to be known to be Blue, once you were out of the
city.
"Can't we stay and fight?" Emily asked. "We're letting them get away with
killing our families, and taking our friends, and our homes! It's not hopeless! Madeleine
hurt
one of them, and they couldn't take her over. We can punch and shield. Can't we
at least
try
?"
"At this stage, we can only learn more before
acting," Fisher said. He hesitated,
then added softly: "I won't pretend I don't want to hurt them. I want – very badly – to bring that Spire
down. I'm trying to think of a way. That Madeleine was able to shield..." He gave Madeleine a measured glance, then an
apologetic smile as she reacted with not unnatural discomfort. "It gives me hope, but it's hardly an
upper hand. We will watch for
opportunities to go on the offensive, but we need to prioritise
staying...ourselves."
"If nothing else, we can practice shielding and
punching," Nash said. "The car
park below this North Building will give us a relatively private space, though
we won't be able to use anything like full strength. But fine control, learning to shield quickly,
it cannot be a bad thing."
"We brought some phones back from the other
apartments," Min told them. "Use them and turn your own off. And stay off the ground line. I'll set up a monitor and alarm in the lounge for the webcams – there's
a program I can use to make them motion sensitive. It'd also be best to go silent on any web
identities, and mask our IP for any family contact."
"You're starting to depress me," Noi said. "But more smart thinking. And I'm sure everyone can resist the
temptation to give out details. If you
have to tell them something, tell '
em
we're out near
the zoo."
Without a clear decision on what to do next, they finished up
dinner, attention shifting to the television as it showed scenes from earlier
in the day – Blues being chased, Blues shooting at balls of light which didn't
seem to care about bullets, Blues force-punching and hurting each other far
more than their pursuers, and no other instances than Madeleine's of anyone
even momentarily saving themselves with a shield.
The gatherings of Blues near the Spires seemed to be breaking
up, and there were signs of movement among the Greens, some of whom had at
least walked out of range of cameras observing them. Others were still standing, waiting, whiles
Greens more than two hundred kilometres from Spires didn't seem impacted at all
by the Spire song, even if it was played for them.
Fisher and Nash stacked the dishwasher while everyone else
shifted bags and tried to rearrange the pantry so it looked a little less
obviously stocked for a siege – difficult given the industrial-sized sacks of
sugar and flour. With the boys taking
all the downstairs rooms, the parents' room was left for Madeleine. It was decorated in dark wood and another
beautiful lamp, but she felt uncomfortable, an intruder.
Folding her clothes into piles in the wardrobe, Madeleine
hesitated over her backpack. She'd
bestowed most of the packets of condoms on Noi, but had kept a few, vacillating
between thinking this very bloodless and unspontaneous, and acknowledging that
she was not only keenly attracted to Fisher, but also in a situation where she
was more than ordinarily inclined to act on that attraction.
Or not. Shaking her
head at the thought of successfully advancing anything with Fisher, she tipped
the contents of the backpack into a bedside drawer and went to find Noi.
Pan had done so just before her. "You meant it about the Wonder Woman
bedroom!" he was saying, standing in the doorway.
"It's the floor-to-ceiling gaming consoles which put the
cherry on the cake," Noi said, nodding at the only wall not papered in an
enormous wrap-around mural of Amazon princess against a silhouetted landscape
of temples and stars. "This is one
little girl who wants to kick ass."
"You or her? But
you're pretty much Wonder Woman already," Pan said, stepping forward to
examine the array of games available, and missing
Noi's
sudden, painful flush. Noi had backed
off from Pan after learning that he was indeed only fifteen, and even the news
that it was his birthday soon hadn't changed her mind. Since Pan didn't seem to have realised Noi
had been pursuing him, her decision hadn't made a great deal of difference to
their interaction, but moments of vulnerability broke through.
"Did you see the
lightsabers
?"
Madeleine asked, to give Noi longer to recover.
"
Wai
! Guys! Get down here!"
Min's summons sent them clattering down the stair. On the big television was an Asian woman
wearing a strappy top which showed arms with only the occasional patch of
non-blue flesh. Her tone was sedately
calm, her posture relaxed, and the effect was one of casual conversation. Madeleine guessed the language to be Japanese.
"Why are we excited?" Noi asked.
"It's one of the possessed. They said she–"
The image flickered and jumped back to a point where the
woman was just sitting down. She turned
to the camera, and a man began translating in voiceover as she spoke.
"Listen now. I am
the Core of the Five of what you may call the Clan
Taiee
. The
Taiee
are First
in this cycle of primacy among the En-Mott. We come to this world to settle primacy for the next cycle, and to
conduct business of our own."
The woman smiled warmly. "Meaningless things to you. Deliver up to us all who are Blue, unharmed. Do not interfere with those who are Green. Neither hinder nor disturb us. Those who do not comply will be
reprimanded." The idea of reprimand
appeared to delight her. "Should
insufficient Blues be delivered to us, the Conversion – the dust – will be
released until a sufficient measure achieved."
"
Fuck
." Pan, beyond Shakespeare, sat down heavily.
"Our business will take a matter of two of your
years. When it is complete, we will
depart."
The translation ended, and the screen switched to a
non-stained woman. "Further
transmissions have been made from four other Spire cities. São Paulo, Mumbai, Shanghai, and New
York."
They crossed to the New York transmission, where a skinny
black teenager with a shaved head told them that he was the Core of the Five of
Clan Na-
uhl
, who were Fourth in this cycle of
primacy.
"We are so completely screwed," Pan said.
"No leaving the city." Noi exchanged a glance with Fisher and Nash,
who both nodded.
"People wouldn't..." Emily began, then shook her
head. "I guess they would. I guess...I guess people might even expect us
to turn
ourselves
over."
"They can live in hope." Min waved a tablet computer. "These cities aren't quite an exact run-down
of the most populated cities in the world, but it's pretty close. And they're the locations of the tallest
Spires. This primacy they're talking
about – they took over our planet to decide on a new pecking order." He was incredulous, losing the mildly-entertained
calm he'd displayed till then.
"And business of their own." Nash ran a hand over his eyes. "How very unspecific."
"Two years." Noi tapped the lid of the box the Take Him Away Lady had given her, then
absently began to pull loose the bow.
"If they leave in two years, what happens to the people
they've taken over?" Madeleine asked. "Do they keep them? Or
unpossess
? Dispossess?"
"Not a gamble I'm willing to take." Noi lifted the lid off the box, revealing a
colourful array of cupcakes, exquisitely decorated. She held one up, studying piping work so
delicate it was like lace. "Well,
she knew just the thing to give to a Blue. And it's a nice illustration of our primary problem – we all eat like
horses. We've enough food for a few months,
particularly if we collect everything in the other North Building apartments,
but two years is going to mean a lot of scouting forays."
They debated longer-term options. Staying at Finger Wharf. Finding another location in the city or outer
suburbs. Trying to hide in a countryside
fearing a second release of dust. Getting out further, to an island, or Spire-free Tasmania. But for now, not knowing the abilities of the
things calling themselves En-Mott, or the position the uninfected would take,
they could only stay and watch.
Pan reached suddenly and turned the sound up on the
television and they all turned to see freckles, strawberry blonde hair and blue
eyes.
"...the Clan
Ul-naa
," a
familiar voice said. "The
Ul-naa
are Hundred and Fifth in this cycle of primacy among
the En-Mott. We come to this world to
settle primacy for..."
Pan muted the sound again, and then threw the remote at the
television. It bounced, and the
batteries flew free, but no-one made any move to rescue it.
Noi's
shoulders had
hunched, Emily was trembling with anger, Fisher withdrawn, and Min
uncertain. Nash–