Andrea Höst - And All the Stars

Their speed undid them. The quiet determination of Fisher’s expression, the way he moved away from the fire exit instead of opening the door, stopping to rest a hand against the wall and lift the other, it was all clearly wrong, but they processed this too late to not run straight into the shield he raised.

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.