Authors: Andrea K Höst
Madeleine's own shield reacted automatically, saving her from
paralysis while bouncing her violently backward. She had barely wit enough to create a shield
to protect her head from smashing into the ceiling, but this had the effect of
slam-dunking her to the carpeted corridor floor.
Wind knocked out of her, sight hazed with wriggling grey, she
lay stunned for vital seconds, struggling to breathe. Time enough for the strawberry blonde boy who
had once been Gavin to take hold of her arm and pull back the sleeve, for the
prick of a needle to add to her confusion. She tried to pull away, managing to catch a glimpse of Pan floundering
to his feet above a paralysed Nash, trying to shield against the Moth which
danced around him.
Noi, least-impaired, punched at Gavin, but the sandy-haired
boy was between them, planting his feet, shield shimmering to visibility as it
absorbed the energy.
"Not bad," he said, and then collapsed.
The sandy-haired boy's body landed beside Madeleine, as a
deeply blue-veined Moth lifted out of him. She gasped and tried to make heavy limbs move, staring into the boy's
green eyes, glazed and empty. It was so
hard to lift her head. She heard Noi cry
out, a shout of rage and despair, and then, nothing.
Cotton-headed, mouth dry, driven to consciousness by a Blue's
hunger, Madeleine cracked eyelids and winced at the assault of unrelenting
sunlight. Then the full unpleasantness
of memory intruded, and she bolted upright.
There was no-one near her. Not a sound, or any hint of movement. The strangeness of her location took her attention. She was on a single bed in an enormous
curving room, bare except for carpet. Floor to ceiling curtains formed distant makeshift walls in both
directions. The narrower curve of inner
wall displayed signs for toilets. Behind
her, nothing but windows.
Staring out – and down – over Sydney, Madeleine realised
where she had to be. Sydney Tower, the
tallest building in the city. Four
doughnut-shaped floors which from the outside looked like a gold ice bucket
balanced on a pole, crowned by a thick cylinder and antenna. The bed was out of place: this wasn't
somewhere people slept, it was a tourist site with restaurants and observation
decks.
Her backpack and a spare bag of clothing were sitting a short
distance away. She was still wearing the
clothes she'd snatched on at dawn: sneakers, track suit pants and a white dress
shirt held together by two misplaced buttons. Looking down at the shirt, Madeleine began to shiver in the warm
sunlight, rubbing her arm as she realised the significance of the needle. She was too strong for the leader of clan
Ul-naa
to possess. The Moths had taken the others, and drugged the prize they could not
use, yet would not give up.
A black balloon swelled in her chest. Fisher...Fisher must have gone downstairs and
met a roaming Moth, then simply led others to where a clutch of free Blues
slept. To the people who had become her
comrades in arms, her friends. They were
all gone. Arms wrapped across her face,
curled protectively over her head, Madeleine wept in suffocated abandon. She had failed every one of them. All for one had become the only one.
Fight. Always
fight. No matter how impossible the
odds, no matter who you've lost, how you've been hurt. If there doesn't seem to be a way out, look
for one. If you seem to have come to an
end, start afresh. Never, ever give up.
Fisher had been so insistent that Madeleine particularly had
to go on, had foreseen with his usual clarity that her strength would set her
apart. But being difficult to possess
didn't give her a path forward. These
bare two weeks as part of a team had left her all too aware of her deficiencies. She needed Fisher to gather information, Noi
to come up with a plan and three backups. Emily's determination to fight, Pan's madly inspired suggestions, and
Min to poke holes in them until Nash mediated a resolution. They were supposed to have stood together,
and found a way to win.
If she fought, these would be the people she killed.
No-one, human or alien, interrupted her tears. When she had sobbed her way to numb
exhaustion the curving room was as still as when she'd woken, nothing but drowsy
sunlight and dust motes, offering no guide to how to face what next. Madeleine could pretend that she found
renewed determination, that her promise to Fisher spurred her to seek
information, some plan or solution. But
it was the Blue's imperative appetite which got her off the bed.
It must be the same day, perhaps very early afternoon. A full day without eating would have left her
single-mindedly focused on filling her stomach, a hair's breadth from licking
the floor. What she'd be like going
without food for more than a day was something she'd never care to find out.
The presence of her backpack made the food hunt simple. Emergency cinnamon fudge, safely tucked in
the front pocket beneath her clean underwear stash. She munched steadily through it, staring out
the window at Hyde Park and the black rise of Spire, no less featureless
despite her elevated view. No sign of
movement. Pressing against the glass she
tried to see the top of it, this thing which had brought so much death.
It was not true to say she felt numb. She felt hate. But it was formless, a resentment which had
no sharp edges, stymied against acting by the consequences. If she stopped caring about the people they
were wearing, Madeleine suspected that she would be able to kill at least a few
Moths by swinging full-strength punches. She wanted something far more difficult: her friends, free, together,
undamaged. Something she had no idea how
to achieve.
If you want B, first do
A
. Which was great advice, but what
she wanted was more like M – or X – when she didn't know what the letters of
the alphabet were, let alone in what order they lined up. But the thought helped. Instead of stumbling over how to do everything,
all at once, she would step back from the big picture. Neither X nor Z – the destruction of the
Spire – seemed at all possible for her to achieve alone, but if she first did
A, perhaps she could find a way to B and to C.
A was simple. A was
looking around.
She began to explore, heading for one set of the curtains
which shut away the rest of the doughnut-shaped room. Pulling them back she found herself standing
beside a flight of stairs leading back and up. Beyond them, the inner wall was filled by a bar, all shining glassware,
with a row of tall round tables and barstools set against the windows
opposite. The shelves meant to hold
bottles were empty, but there was a tray set out and waiting with a handful of
muesli bars and a rectangular carton of long life milk.
The milk was open, the carton cool. Madeleine sniffed it suspiciously, then took
a wineglass, poured out a sample and tasted it. Honey. She drank, and ate a
muesli bar, and was glad of the emergency fudge, which allowed her to put two
of the bars away for later. A carton of
sweetened milk and a few muesli bars was not a generous serving for a
high-stain Blue, and she thought through the implications of that as she moved
on toward a line of elevator doors, and a spiral staircase descending.
None of the elevators worked. Unsurprised, Madeleine completed her circuit of the mostly bare floor,
then worked her way through the other three before returning to her bed to make
an inventory of the contents of her bags. Clothes, her sketchpads and various pencil collections. The two mobiles – her own and one looted from
the North Building – were missing.
The tower was bare of both people and food. She found the entrance to a rooftop skywalk,
and some small machinery rooms in the squat cylinder set on top of the 'ice
bucket' of the larger floors. A gift
shop on the top main floor offered an array of key rings and magnets. The restaurants filling the lower two floors
held endless potential kitchen utensil weapons, and water. No telephones. There were touch screen computers for
tourists which would only tell her about Sydney landmarks, and drink machines
which had been broken open and emptied. The Moths had gone to the effort of removing everything edible or useful
for communication, turned all the lifts off, and left her to sit.
If they wanted her alive, they'd have to come up to feed
her. That would be an opportunity. First, however, there were fire escapes.
Simply walking out of the tower seemed unlikely. Perhaps the Moths had left a guard down the
bottom, and rigged an alarm to let them know she was on her way. That would mean a fight, but during her
explorations the main thing she'd discovered was a quiet determination to find
step B, and then step C. Pulling on a
reorganised backpack, she found the nearest fire exit and pushed it open.
Stairs. Well lit, no movement
or suspicious noises. She slipped
through to the landing and eased the door shut on a gift shop toy placed as a
block, then stood listening, looking. If
there were traps or cameras she could not detect them. The plentiful supply of tourist information
had let her know there were 1500 stairs and it would be a struggle to stay
strictly alert all that way. Which was
no reason not to try.
Five flights down, Madeleine stopped to gauge a change to the
quality of light. The flat white had
taken on a tinge of blue. A Moth? A Rover? She doubted one of the dandelion dragons would fit in a stairwell, but
nor was it likely she'd seen all of the Moths' bestiary. The question was whether the best move was to
fight, here in the narrow support shaft of a building unlikely to cope with
holes being punched in walls.
She eased forward, pausing at every turn to steal glances
around corners, the blue tinge growing stronger, dominant, until the stairwell
took on an underwater air. And then it
was ahead of her, no dragon or mermaid-dog, but...goo.
Wall to wall electric blue jelly. It completely blocked the flight of stairs
below her, every gap sealed with luminous glop. There was no visible reaction to her approach, no tentacles lifting from
the surface or sudden pulsing, just a steadily glowing barrier.
The fight with the Rover had taught Madeleine enough to not
simply try to power her way through it. A very cautious finger punch suggested that it would absorb energy in
much the same way the Rover had. A light
tap with her shield nearly bounced her into the wall. The goo had defences.
Gritting her teeth, Madeleine considered the problem, then
climbed back up to the nearest kitchen and returned with a jug of hot water and
a knife. The hot water produced no response,
while the knife...
The goo's shield punch threw her up the stairwell. Rapid shielding bounced her straight back
down to ricochet again off the glowing barrier, and only frantic easing of her
shield prevented madcap ping-ponging. She collapsed on the landing above the goo and lay shaking, trying not
to let her head fill with imagined injuries, only to have them replaced by
guesses as to what was happening to Noi, to Emily, while she failed to get down
a flight of stairs. What were the Moths
doing with their stolen Musketeers?
Taking deep breaths to calm herself, Madeleine began to
reassemble her fragmented determination, to force herself look at the moment as
an achievement. Easing shields to
control ricochet had been something they'd only begun to explore during their
combat practice sessions. Watching the
possessed Blues fight had made clear the Moths' ability to control much of the
shield bouncing, and the Musketeers had been attempting to modulate the intensity
of the shielding to cushion an impact rather than rebound. Madeleine had struggled to make any
progress. She could manifest the
shielding on just one side rather than all around her, which meant she no
longer paralysed herself when swiping to shield-punch, but her skill level was
a rough equivalent of doing embroidery while wearing gauntlets.
Step B was obviously shield practice.
ooOoo
Twenty-four hours later, Madeleine's plans and ambitions had
contracted to a singular focus: food.
The Moths had not come to feed her. It didn't make a great deal of sense, since
if they'd wanted to kill her there would be no need to go to the time and
effort to clear out two entire restaurants, including cleaning away any plates
and glasses in use on the day of the Spire's arrival. It would have taken a team of people – Greens
most likely – to have so thoroughly removed everything edible.
Madeleine's hunt had so far won her a tomato sauce squeeze
packet. She scanned the compact, curving
kitchen, searching for missed possibilities, her gaze settling on an
industrial-sized toaster. A quick
examination located a sliding crumb tray, specked and dotted with charred
bounty. Madeleine shook everything loose
into the palm of her hand, licked that clean, then began dotting crumbs with a
finger which trembled.
All but black scrapings remained when, disgusted, she threw
down the tray and dashed out of the kitchen. She did not want to be this. What
would come next? Rats? But, no, all the warm-blooded animals in the
region had been finished off by the dust. It would be cockroaches.
Pounding up the stairs to the third level, she ran along the
curve of windows, intent on the grandly mature gesture of throwing herself onto
her bed. And stopped so quickly she fell
to her hands and knees. On the bar
counter a new tray, another carton of milk, three muesli bars.
One part of Madeleine was incandescently furious. It was a pitiful serving for a Blue. Even before the stain it would have been an
inadequate day's meal, and the idea that this was all she would have to combat
stain-fuelled hunger made her want to yell and throw things, left her
frightened for what state she'd be in after another day. The rest of her wasted no time on anything
but gulping down milk.
Honey-sweetened again, this time with a trace of butterscotch
which, even when that sounded a note of caution, was not enough to stop her
draining most of the carton before coming up for air. As she gauged the dregs, a sledgehammer of
heat hit her squarely, providing a full and unavoidable explanation for the
additional flavour. Spiked.