And All the Stars

by Andrea K Höst

  "Yes." The woman had blinked, and tears were now welling in brown eyes. Behind her, the limp corpse of the Moth slid off the room's wrap-around counter to take up too much space on the floor.

  "I won't be long," Fisher said, dragging one of the Greens into the corner furthest from any buttons. "Check the monitors for an indication of how many Moths are active."

  He pulled the second Green across to the first, gave her a quick, sharp glance which she caught out of the corner of her eye, and then left. Madeleine turned to watch him stride into one of the elevators on screen and stand, hands in pockets, head bowed. Tense, strained, and already looking tired. They'd only just started. How could they possibly prepare for the Core's return in a scant few hours?

  "Thank you. So much."

  The Blue she'd freed reached out deeply stained hands, only occasional patches of brown visible. When Madeleine offered hers in automatic response, the woman gripped and squeezed them painfully tight, then let go and began to explore her own face.

  "I can't hardly believe..." She swept her hands slowly over softly curling hair, squeezed shut her eyes, causing tears to break loose from lashes. "Me again. At last."

  "Welcome back..." Madeleine said uncertainly.

  "Sarah," the woman said, making the name a release, a triumph. "Sarah Jeteneru."

  "I'm –"

  The woman widened her eyes, a momentary laughing expression. "You're Madeleine Cost. Do you think there's any of us in this city who doesn't know the Core's great prize? And, oh, he's reached too far, hasn't he? You're here to bring him down."

  "We're here to try," Madeleine said, startled and impressed by the woman's rapid shift toward self-command. She surveyed the wall of monitors, wondering how many Moths were in the hotel. A central screen was flicking between images, and Madeleine caught her breath, staring at a person sitting cross-legged on a bed.

  The picture changed to Nash, standing at a window, but a furtive sound demanded Madeleine's attention, and she turned to find one of the stunned Greens trying to overcome post-paralysis pins and needles and get to the door. By the time the Green had been stunned and stashed back with his companion, Fisher had arrived, wearing a backpack and hauling heavily loaded Eco-shopping bags.

  "Eat," he recommended, putting down four bags brimming with blocks of chocolate, boxes of muesli bars, bags of dried fruit. He slid his backpack to the ground, produced a mobile phone which he passed to her, then pulled out a large roll of duct tape, turning purposefully to the Greens.

  "This is Sarah," Madeleine said, opting to stock her backpack first. She refused to contemplate crumb trays ever again.

  "Fisher," he said, with a preoccupied nod. "How many people are up and about in the hotel?"

  "Up, quite a number, watching the Buenos Aires Challenge." Sarah glanced toward a laptop, where images of an arena were being streamed, then pulled a keyboard into reach and tapped out commands. "Most in their rooms, but there's a cluster in a guest lounge, and another group in with the North."

  "The North?" Madeleine asked.

  "One of the Five. There's no English word – no Earth word – which fits what they call the four who support the Core, so they use North, South, East and West. The four quarters. The South and the North are watching together," she added to Fisher, who paused, frowning, then briskly resumed his taping efforts.

  "We'll need greater numbers before we go up, then," he said. "But first the leech Blues. Any obstacles?"

  "One guard, at the beginning of their corridor," Sarah said, and when the Greens were thoroughly wrapped led Madeleine and Fisher directly to a row of rooms which had been roughly reinforced with the kind of security screens usually seen on the front doors of houses. The first in the row, by contrast, had had its door removed, making it difficult to get past unseen, so Madeleine simply ran straight into the open room, the man inside not even facing her when she spirit punched. Too easy, but already she was feeling a pinch of strain.

  "I'm not sure how many of these I can do in a row," she said, as she knelt over the fallen Blue. "I'll be okay for a handful more, but..."

  "No, you need to rest for when we go for Noi. With this third freed Blue, we can safely take all but the strongest without you, and punching duty can pass on to each new Blue to limit exhaustion."

  "Have you posted how to free people?" Sarah asked from the door. "We need to get something out there, tell the world how to do this."

  "Is right..." The man lying on the floor beside Madeleine groaned, then tried to lever himself too quickly upright. "Can't delay–!"

  "We'll prepare a time-delayed post after we have the leech Blues," Fisher said shortly. "Failure insurance. But we can't go public yet. Not everything's in place."

  He too was thinking in terms of dominos. Of course he would, following the memory of Théoden's plans, and that idea started to bring too much to the surface, so Madeleine turned to help the newly freed Blue to his feet. He wobbled unsteadily, told her to call him Kiwi Joe, then gathered her up in a huge hug. Since he was a big, solidly built man, this was more than a little overwhelming, but then he, like Sarah, took himself in hand, producing the keys to the makeshift prisons, asking Fisher questions about what next.

  They shared out keys, unlocked the screens, and then Madeleine jumped back with a stifled squeak as Nash cannoned out of the room she'd opened, a broken chair leg swung like a sword, missing her head only because he pulled up at the last moment.

  "Not possessed!" she said hastily, but he'd already worked that out, probably because Moths weren't given to squeaking.

  "The others–?" he asked.

  "Soon," Madeleine said, but suddenly Nash wasn't looking at her, was staring past her down the hall, the tense determination vanishing from his face, replaced by stunned disbelief.

  "Leina?"

  Madeleine had known, had seen him on the monitors, but still that husky, once-familiar voice broke something in her, and she whirled and flung herself into a startled Tyler's arms.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Tyler's soothing, barely audible hum took Madeleine back to the summer when she was five, an inconstant moon in Tyler's orbit as he strolled the back pastures of a neighbouring farm. She would dart off to follow a butterfly, examine a flower, bring back a seed pod to offer him. At twelve he had seemed impossibly tall and distant, holding his sun hat against the wind. But when there were nettles, scrapes, bruised knees, he would drop down to her height, open his arms, and hum just as he did now as he gave her a tiny squeeze.

  "Are you rescuing me, or am I rescuing you?" he asked, as completely self-possessed as Tyler always managed to be.

  "Both?" Madeleine gave a shaky little laugh and made herself let him go. "I think it's supposed to be more we're mustering forces to save the world."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Another of the leech Blues stepped forward, a short, ivory-skinned woman with a bruised face partially hidden by streaming red hair. "We don't have a hope of fighting these things."

  "Let's not discuss this in a corridor," Fisher said, and herded them back to the security room, where they could talk while keeping an eye on the monitors – and the Greens who had inched across the floor and were trying to lever themselves in reach of a desk phone. The question of Greens bothered Madeleine immensely, since there wasn't a Moth to remove to make them themselves again.

  Ten people and a jellyfish corpse made for an extremely crowded room. Madeleine and Tyler tucked themselves onto a corner of the wrap-around desk, and since Sarah was partially shielding her, Madeleine took the opportunity to let herself look at Fisher, who was giving them all a survey in return, betraying a hint of impatience.

  "In a little over four hours, the Core and two others of the Ul-naa Five will return from the Buenos Aires Challenge," he said. "And discover that Blues have been freed and revived, which is the most forbidden act among their people. Freed Blues retain the information they experienced. Not a lifetime's memories, but everything including the Moth's thoughts during t
he period of possession. This is such a serious thing that the clans will unite with a single purpose: to kill us."

  The redhead looked doubtful. "What do you know that's so important?"

  "Isn't knowing how to kill Moths, and free and revive Blues enough?" Joe asked.

  "After what happened because of Washington? Shit no." The last leech Blue, an Asian teen with an impressive collection of piercings, moved restlessly, limited by the crowded space. "Not that I'm sorry you busted me out, but unless you found a way to stop them dusting any more cities, you got to be ready to kill a lot of people to save a few Blues."

  "Are you volunteering to be locked back up?" Fisher leavened the question with a tired hint of smile. "I don't have enough information, yet. What I need to do is free a Blue possessed by one of the Ul-naa Five, gambling that one of the Reborn – one of the Fives – will know of a way for us to bring down the Spire. If there isn't..." He hesitated.

  "I will not turn my back on the possibility of ridding ourselves of the Moths," Nash said firmly. "And for the moment, we cannot do a great deal more harm by trying to find out if there is a way. If there is not, then we can discuss the risk of another dust attack, and whether we allow that threat to keep us from fighting. Until then, there are friends I must find."

  "Hear hear," Tyler said, his voice soft, but carrying effortlessly. Nash immediately lost his poise, his glance at the cramped corner uncertain.

  "But how do we fight?" the redhead asked. "They feed us just enough to stay upright. It's all I can do to stand here so close to you lot, not draining you dry."

  Madeleine couldn't see the woman's expression as Nash explained the Rover fight, but her stance shifted enough to be a response in itself.

  "All right," the woman said. "I can't say I want to do this. And I can't say that I'll go willingly back to that room, threats of more dust or not. But I'll help to a point."

  "Until we know more," the Asian boy conceded.

  Fisher simply nodded, already focusing on the next step. "We have just over four hours."

  ooOoo

  "Your remodelling job on my bathroom was impressive."

  The words were only teasing, but Madeleine still shifted in embarrassment and glanced across at the redhead, Claire, who was watching the monitors for progress of the 'collection team' Fisher had led off to free reinforcements.

  "I didn't realise you reached the apartment."

  "Oh, yes. I'd just found your Mysterious Note when, well, aliens, and my two friends became very curt types who bundled me up and delivered me here. It sounds like you've been having a far more adventurous time."

  "I guess. I–"

  A great roil of emotion swelled, blocking Madeleine's throat, filling her eyes. Tyler glanced at her, then tucked her against his side.

  "The edges become less raw," he said, conversationally. "Big hurts never really go away, but you can contain them, build up scar tissue to stop them cutting so deep. The question for you here, given that it's apparently so important you rest for this fight, is whether it will help you to cry about it now, or put it off till later."

  Madeleine leaned her head against Tyler's shoulder and let his warmth seep into her, borrowing the strength to push back breaking down a little longer. She was far from the only person who had lost someone, and the thing to do was focus on freeing Noi, not so much to save the world, but because it was Noi.

  "Did you see the painting?"

  "It was there?"

  "On the wall in your bedroom."

  "I didn't get that far. Will I like it?"

  "No. But I do."

  "And that's what matters?" The door opened as Tyler laughed, that rich, throaty burble, and Pan, leading the way in, stopped dead, a delighted grin consuming his face.

  "Maddie, you seriously held out on us," he said, stepping aside as Fisher, Nash, and the fourth leech Blue, Quan, bunched up behind him. "I'd tweak your nose for it, but I'm so damn glad you figured out a way to free us I'll let you off this once."

  It was a brave show, and Pan almost succeeded in behaving just as usual, though his eyes gave lie to his smile. Full of sympathy, and awareness of the length of Fisher's possession. Mercifully, he transferred his attention to Tyler, crossing to hold out his hand. "I'm Lee, and I give you fair warning that I am going to fangasm over you at some point when we're not saving the planet."

  "I'll look forward to that," Tyler said with perfect gravity, shaking the proffered hand.

  "I didn't figure out how to free you," Madeleine began, then caught Fisher's expression. A clear 'later', which she understood and accepted while hating the idea of receiving thanks which belonged to Théoden. "Do we have enough to go get Noi?" she asked instead, glancing at the crowd outside the door and feeling a little better to see Min among them.

  Fisher gave her a brief, grateful smile, surely not intended to pierce her heart so thoroughly, and said: "Yes. A quick parcelling out of targets and we'll go up."

  A woman called Jannika was left behind as monitor room guard, and the now dozen freed Blues and four leech Blues crammed into the nearest emptied hotel room, to assign each leech Blue a protector, and divide everyone else into attacker or reviver with the recommendation to "adapt as necessary". This piece of advice became the whole of the plan after they split into two groups, and the elevator Madeleine rode up in arrived at its destination floor and opened its doors on two surprised Blues.

  Min punched and one of the Blues fell beside a limp possessor, but Moth song rose piercing and urgent from the other. The freed Blues spilled out into the lift foyer, Fisher punching, Pan dropping to his knees to revive the first Blue. The second Moth bloomed, but did not fall. It was the worst moment possible for a Moth to survive separation, filling the air with song, and Madeleine thrust herself forward, raising a shield. Instead of attacking the Moth flitted sideways, and off down the corridor.

  "Heading toward our target!" Fisher said, and they raced after it even as answering song rose from surrounding rooms.

  The Moth's path lay through the foyer of the second elevator, and it was that which saved the moment. The other group stepped out, and Sarah reacted to a Moth flying directly at her by shield-punching it into the ceiling. Claire, confused but willing – or hungry – reached up and pressed her hands to the single trailing tip in her reach, and the song abruptly died.

  "Clear the rooms we've passed?" Pan asked urgently, and at a nod from Fisher reversed direction and headed toward a door just as it opened.

  Madeleine scrambled with the rest, using the security master key taken from the monitor room, and ran through the next door only to be blasted by a force punch which knocked her on her behind. The Blues on the far side of the room were the youngest she'd seen, but clearly strong and too far away for her to comfortably spirit punch. Hating the idea of injuring children, she snapped a light force punch in their direction to keep them occupied – blowing out wooden shutters and glass from the windows behind them – and staggered into a run at them.

  The taller one – a skinny boy with a blue stripe down his chin – punched her again, but she was expecting it this time and set her feet so she wasn't bounced when her shield absorbed, then spirit punched, both at the same time. A wave of dizziness swept through her, and she fell against the foot of the bed as twin Moths projected back through the gaping windows.

  "Leina?" Tyler, following her about according to instructions, lifted her more or less upright.

  "Help me over," she said urgently, and fed two still little figures energy despite the dizziness. She stayed kneeling by them because there was no way she could leave without being sure she hadn't just killed two children, even if she could stand up.

  She could hear the progress of the fight in neighbouring rooms, flurries of sound, brief outbursts of Moth song. It seemed to spread and spread, and then when Madeleine thought she had to go help no matter how dizzy, it all died away. By then one of the children, a girl around ten, had her eyes open, all her attention on the boy, who was slowe
r to revive. They both looked to be of African descent, might even be brother and sister, and a knot gripped Madeleine's stomach then relaxed as his eyelashes fluttered.

  "Always sleeping in," the girl said, and promptly put her head down on his chest and began to cry.

  "Where did–?" Pan came through the door at a trot. "Maddie, we're going for Noi straight away – there's too much chance they heard something. You good?"

  The dizziness had faded enough that she could stand, so she nodded and followed along, grateful when Tyler slipped a supportive arm through hers. The group of freed Blues had grown in size yet again, and there was a milling confusion of people gathering in the nearer lift foyer.

  Sarah, low-voiced, was making brief explanations, but an urgent trill of Moth song interrupted her and it started all over again, but this time the figure they were chasing down was Emily, who wasn't even supposed to be there, and no convenient third group emerged to intercept her as she ran straight for their target suite, song spiralling.

  "Go! Go!" Madeleine didn't even recognise the person who shouted, but sprinted, hand-in-hand with Tyler. Someone ahead punched straight through the door closing in their face, and they streamed inside, a frantic mass, but Madeleine checked at a glimpse of a fallen tangle with blonde hair.

  Min, panting but bright-eyed, was there before her. "I'll look after her. Get Noi."

  No choice, the crowd surging, flooding into a spacious lounge area, so many that Madeleine couldn't be sure which were the possessed Blues. Then Fisher yelled "Balcony!" and she turned to see a familiar figure heading over the railing.

  Far too far to spirit punch, but Madeleine did it anyway, a desperate move which sent her ploughing into carpet, feeling like she'd shield-stunned herself except with an absence of sensation which was more frightening. But the punch worked, blue and white blazing out, Noi left hanging like abandoned laundry. The Moth rose, and only Nash was even close, his full speed run turning into a hop, a leap off the top of the railing to grab a trailing edge of white before it could escape. He landed like a gymnast, balanced on the crossbeam, dragging his captive down. Tyler and Quan, following, raced to stretch and press hands to light.