Andrea Höst - And All the Stars

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.

"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.