And All the Stars

by Andrea K Höst

  "Noi likes you, you know."

  A puzzled partial shrug in response.

  "Really likes you."

  His smile faded and he looked disbelieving. "You sure?"

  "Very."

  He blinked twice, then looked down and away, face completely blank. Lee Rickard, lost for words. Then the tiniest involuntary curling of the corners of his mouth, a smile trying to happen despite any attempt at control, twitching back whenever he tried to erase it. He looked up at them, eyes very wide, drew a deep breath, then let it out, and simply said: "Anyway, g'night," before leaving.

  "Matchmaking?" Fisher asked.

  "I wondered if perhaps it had simply never occurred to him that she would consider him."

  "Because Lee Rickard is not, beneath it all, the eternally cocksure Pan?"

  "Exactly. I hope it wasn't a mistake. I'd hate to make this harder for either of them."

  Out on the Mezzanine balcony a stage-trained voice lifted, strong enough to be clearly heard over the music. "Cock-a-DOOdle-doo!"

  Fisher laughed. "Don't worry too hard."

  She smiled, and tightened her arms around him. "I've never really been part of a group. Not even before I had trouble at school. The teachers were always telling my parents I need to be taken out of myself. They thought I was hiding in my drawing."

  "Too busy doing important things, no time for people. All very familiar." He stroked a loose curl away from her eyes. "I think I'm a good deal more like you than like Noi. And I'm enjoying all the complications of people far more than I could ever have expected. Tonight – tonight makes it easier to face tomorrow."

  Madeleine couldn't help but agree. Birthday parties, charades, and slow-dancing with someone whose eyes turned bright when he looked at her. Things which, like her painting, could give her the strength to run or to fight or to just keep going.

  ooOoo

  A climb to any height almost seems to invite calamity, and it was with a sense of the inevitable that Madeleine woke to oscillating song.

  So close! She heaved out of the bed, an immediate, instinctive reaction, then stumbled in scant dawn light at the absence of Fisher. There was no time for guessing. Madeleine snatched at clothes, shoved feet into shoes. A glance showed the en suite was empty. Grabbing her bag, with only a fraction of thought spare to regret how little she'd kept packed, she bolted from the room.

  "Maddie! Thank God."

  Noi snatched Madeleine's hand and reversed direction, pulling her into the next suite.

  "I can't find Fisher," Madeleine said, struggling to keep the words low, searching the thin shadows.

  "He knows the plan."

  Moth song again, sounding like it was right outside the door of the room, and Madeleine gulped and hoped a plan would be enough, racing with Noi through the series of interconnected suites. The others had already collected in the furthest, poised by the entry door.

  "Did you and Fish leave the elevator unlocked?" Pan asked.

  "No!" Madeleine was absolutely certain of that.

  "Questions later." Noi pushed them toward the door. "Go."

  The floors of the hotel tower were shaped like a segment of rainbow, with the suites all along the outside, accessed via a single corridor which bracketed the smaller inner curve containing the lifts and service areas. Fire escapes were located at either end, and the plan for escape was to run to the fire escape furthest from any intruding Moths and go down two levels to one of the lifts which had deliberately been parked away from their sleeping floor. Of course, it was a plan based on the assumption that the Moths would have to approach their floor by climbing and punching their way out of one of the fire escapes, that they would be guessing as to which floor the Musketeers were on, and would have tripped one of the alarms getting into the building in the first place. Instead of five steps ahead, the Musketeers were four behind, and all they could do was scramble.

  They barrelled through the door into unfurling wings.

  Momentum carrying her forward, crowded on all sides, Madeleine didn't dare shield-punch, and dived left, trying to avoid the Moth while still heading in the direction of the fire escape. She lost her footing, found Emily on her knees beside her and grabbed her hand.

  "Go! Don't wait!" Noi urged, catching up Emily's other hand as the boys hesitated a step down the corridor.

  Madeleine staggered to her feet. Emily's hand tightened in hers, and the girl let out a startled little sound. And stopped still. Nearly falling again, Madeleine stared back at Emily's calm face, and tried to let go of a hand which suddenly held firm to hers.

  "No." Noi, caught on Emily's other side, pulled her hand free, but did not run. "Millie..."

  "Noi." A mocking tone, accompanied by a thin smile which did not fit Emily's young face. "Just wait there."

  "For pity's sake, look up!" Min grabbed Noi's arm and swung her aside, then ducked himself, but not quick enough. A second Moth settled around his shoulders, and sank beneath his skin.

  With a wordless, sobbing cry Noi snatched at Madeleine's hand and pulled her free, and they ran with Nash and Pan as another ball of light drifted into view, and behind them two boys, one strawberry blonde and the other sandy-haired.

  "Fish!"

  At Pan's exclamation Madeleine looked ahead. They'd rounded enough of the corridor's curve to see the fire exit door, and Fisher waiting beside it, and the relief was so strong she stumbled, but then found the strength for a burst of speed, catching up with Nash as Fisher took a step or two in their direction.

  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.

  Chapter Twenty

  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 s
itting 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 an
d 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.