And All the Stars

Chapter Seventeen

"Who takes the time to lock up in the middle of an alien invasion?" Pan deposited his food bag on the traffic island dividing the in and out lanes. "Want me to go try the front?"

"Not yet." Noi tugged experimentally at the service door to the right of the main gates. "Even if this isn’t wired with an alarm, punching it open will leave an obvious sign someone’s broken in."

"Shall I look down here?" Nash unslung his bags and headed down a branch of the entry drive, Pan at his heels.

Madeleine added her food bag to the growing pile, and peered through the mesh of the gate. This hurdle had not been unanticipated, but even though the garage entry was lower than street level, she felt painfully exposed beneath the cold fluorescent lighting. Not long till dawn. Just over six hours before the world would come hunting.

"We could try to finger punch just the lock," Emily suggested, peering over Noi’s shoulder.

"Because only breaking it a little would be less likely to set off any alarms?" Min asked. The sharper than usual edge in his voice brought a warning glance from Noi, and he made a gesture of apology, then sat down on the traffic island, examining reddened palms.

"In a hotel this size there will be a dozen entry points," Fisher said. "After the panic of the arrival day, the chances of every single one being firmly sealed is low." But he glanced toward the eastern sky.

"Guys, check this out."

Pan, beckoning from the junction of the drive. They followed him past a "Staff Only" sign, to another set of metal gates. Nash was peering through the one on the right, and pointed as they came up: "A solution."

Standing two metres inside the gate was a machine sporting a big green button, a gate release meant to be hit by departing drivers.

"All it needs is a finger punch, at just the right strength to push the button, but not so strong we smash the machine." Pan looked around. "Who thinks they have the best control?"

Knowing her limits, Madeleine opted to fetch the food bags, and returned just as the gate whirred upward. The elevator obliged them by not requiring any keys to access the ground floor, and then they were standing at a spacious junction directly before a door marked Reception.

"Kitchen," Pan said, and went right. By the time they followed him into an enormous rectangular room of shining stainless steel, he was pulling open a heavy-duty door. A wave of chill flowed over them. "Freezer. And this would be – damn, I’ve seen houses smaller than this refrigerator. We should all fit in here."

"No." Fisher walked into the rack-lined space and paced out an estimate of its boundaries, stepping around pallets of boxes set on the floor. "Four, no, three people at most. It’s not the oxygen; it’s the carbon dioxide build-up which is going to be the problem. Depending on the length of the challenge, we may need to risk even opening the doors at least once. Unless…" He glanced around the kitchen. "With big enough containers we could try to rig some kind of crude carbon sink. That may help a little."

"Then where do the rest of us go?" Emily asked, stepping closer to Noi.

"There’s four restaurants in this hotel – we’ll need to spread between them if we want to survive twenty-four hours." He pulled the freezer door open again and considered its size. "Plenty of space here, which is good since one of us will probably need to use it. We can adjust the temperature to the highest setting."

Madeleine shivered at the mere idea, and looked around at worn, shadow-eyed faces. Some of them had tried to sleep during the gap between the challenge announcement and leaving, but the attempts hadn’t been very successful, and after a pre-dawn row and a park excursion with wet feet, the idea of even the refrigerator made her feel ill.

"Right." Noi dumped her food bag on the nearest work surface. "Iced Blues it is. But first snacks, hot showers, a warm meal, and then we’ll see what we can do about making a freezer habitable.

An elbow to her ribs. Madeleine started awake, and came close to falling off the edge of the triple-stack of mattresses set in the centre of the refrigerator. Emily, beside her, shifted and groaned until Noi, on her far side, turned to rub the girl’s arm.

"She’s trying so hard," Noi murmured. "She’s not even thirteen-going-on-fourteen, has only just stopped being twelve. I don’t know how to convince her that she’s allowed to be overwhelmed and frightened sometimes. Just like the rest of us."

Madeleine blinked in the orange glow of the emergency exit button. "I spend half of each day being overwhelmed. What’s the time?"

"Ten minutes till midnight. How’s your breathing? Feeling headachy? Stifled?"

"I feel like I’m in a refrigerator," Madeleine said, tucking the quilt back under her side, then contemplating the metal ceiling. "I guess it worked, then."

"Yeah, looks like Science Boy was right. I had my doubts, I admit it."

"I think he did too," Madeleine said, remembering Fisher’s expression as he asked for her promise.

"Twenty minutes before we get to check what’s going on. Distract me by describing exactly what you’re going to do to Science Boy first opportunity you get."

"I think I’ll leave that to your imagination." Madeleine’s own imagination caught her up, and she paused to enjoy it before adding: "The rooms in this place are–"

"Yeah. Lap of luxury, fallen into it. And did you see the big room half done up in decorations? We’ll be able to use them for Pan’s party."

"Much as I liked that apartment, there are some definite advantages to this move. And we have enough food to last us maybe for the rest of the year."

"Pity we’ll be leaving it behind." At Madeleine’s confused look, Noi continued: "Once the fuss from this hunt dies down, we really need to get out of this city. No matter the problems we’ll have dealing with the uninfected, it’s clear that you – all of us really, but you particularly – are way too interesting to the Moths. We need to get out of dragon range."

"But can we do that without anyone helpfully pointing me out while I’m still within reach?"

"If Nash’s sister has come through, then the Moths will have been flooded with sightings – a few more won’t hurt. Though a judicious makeover is probably a good idea. A tub of peroxide should dent your serious arty girl look."

Emily’s voice rose, small but defiant: "How can we fight if we run away?"

Noi blinked as the girl turned to her, then said: "Leaving doesn’t stop us from returning. To fight, we need to both learn to confidently control all these fancy new powers, and come up with a plan. Getting out of the city will buy us the time and freedom to do that."

"If we leave, we won’t come back." Emily spoke with a furious certainty. "We’ll be like the rest of them, cowards waiting two years for it to be safe again. Don’t you want to make the Moths pay?"

"You know I do." Noi was a rock against the tide of Emily’s anger. "I want it enough to not run shouting at them before I’m ready. They’ve taken everything that was precious to me away, and I will find a way to hurt them for that. I know you miss your family, Mil–"

"No!" Their mounded quilts were pulled away as Emily sat up, her slender body rigid with ever-increasing anger. "I don’t miss them! You think they’re dead, don’t you?"

After a swift, astonished glance at each other, Noi and Madeleine struggled into sitting positions. Noi reached out, hesitated, then changed direction to take Emily’s gloved hands in her own.

"I did," she said. "They’re not?"

"They left." Two words and a world of emotion. "When the dust started, they went straight to my brothers' school and then out of the city. I couldn’t even get home – a girl from school took me to her house. My parents are the worst people in the world."

The tears came, bringing with them violent, wrenching sobs, and Madeleine and Noi could only clasp Emily between them until the storm had eased.

"Emily." Madeleine shied away from asking if the girl’s parents even knew she was alive. "You know that, whatever happens, we won’t leave you behind. We’ll come for you."

"No you won’t." The words had an exhausted, bitter certainty. "I know it’s all a lie, just play-acting to make each other feel better. The Moths will get us one by one, just like they got Gavin, and we can’t do anything at all."

"You’re underestimating us there." Noi spoke with quiet assurance. "We know that we can fight. I’m sure we could hurt some of them. It’s just a matter of hurting them effectively which we’ve yet to figure out." She stroked Emily hair. "I think you’re not being quite fair to your parents as well."

"They left."

Noi took a deep breath. "Millie, when the dust came, my Dad was up at Kellyville, well away from the cloud. He drove back in. The traffic was madness, people driving the wrong way down the roads, and it took him hours, but he got home. My Mum, and my Nonna, and all his brothers, they yelled at him, called him stupid, but he said he wanted to be with us, whatever was going to happen.

"I guess maybe it helped Mum, him being there. And because he got sick later than the rest of us, he was able to look after everyone, for a little while. And, with Mum and all his brothers and all of our family gone, maybe he would have preferred to not have to be around afterwards. But me, I’d rather still have a Dad."

"Th-that’s different."

"If you say so. And it’s different again to get ourselves out of the reach of the Moths until we can find a way to hurt them. Nor is it just play-acting to give it your best shot. And that’s what we’re going to do. I’m not going to guarantee that we’ll win, but I promise you we’ll try." She paused, studying the stubborn set of Emily’s shoulders. "About time for breakfast, don’t you think? Ah, and check-in time – almost missed it." She fished a tablet computer out of one of the bags set alongside the mattresses.

Keeping devices off was more about preserving battery life than the possibility of being tracked, but it still gave Madeleine an uneasy feeling as Noi, complaining about the poor signal, slid off the bed and held the tablet toward the door.

"Pass me the thermos?" Madeleine said to Emily, and was pleased to find the tea clinging to a lukewarm state. They set out a miniature feast as Noi reported that the challenge was still underway.

"Next check-in time at seven," Noi said, returning to accept a cup. "Science Boy says if it goes much past that we might have to risk opening the doors to try and cycle the air, and we’re to keep alert for any headaches, muscle twitches, or turning new and original colours. Anything to report?"

"Just cold," Madeleine said, around an oatmeal biscuit. "I’d hate to be in Pan and Nash’s shoes."

While the Southern Sky had four restaurants, it had proven to own only three walk-in refrigerators, with both ground floor restaurants catered out of the same kitchen. Fisher was in the top floor restaurant’s refrigerator, and Min in the one on the Mezzanine level, while Pan and Nash were stuck with the biggest freezer at its warmest temperature setting. Since the warmest temperature setting of the refrigerator was still making Madeleine wish for another hot shower, she hated to think how they were coping with the long night.

"Do you feel sleepy?" Noi asked. "I’m tired, but it might be because I kept waking up and stressing."

"Not sleepy," Emily murmured.

"Cold aside, I’m fine," Madeleine said. "Energetic, even. I usually wake up feeling good after feeding Nash. Don’t know why."

She dusted away crumbs, and they packed their leftovers, then took turns using one of the large lidded buckets Noi had found and emptied during their hurried preparations. For all they’d thought they would have plenty of time between arriving and their deadline of an hour before the challenge, they’d barely been ready. With no password for the hotel’s computers they’d been unable to code the card-keys to access the higher floors, and had been limited in their movements until the discovery of an unlocked security room on the Mezzanine level which, along with master keys, had provided camera views of much of the hotel.

Fisher’s hunt for wheelie bins and caustic soda had taken even longer, and dumping entire containers of bathroom cleaner in after they’d been filled had produced an eye-stinging reek, which thankfully had lost its edge by the time they’d rearranged their hiding places enough to fit both the bins and mattresses hauled down from the hotel rooms, along with some wilting pot plants from the foyer. How much difference the bins would make to carbon dioxide levels was something Fisher hadn’t been willing to guess, beyond insisting that in theory they should help.

She’d wanted to kiss him before they locked themselves away. She’d planned on it. And hadn’t even managed an exchange of meaningful glances, though she’d known it could well be the last time she would see him. Too tired after the long night, and having Nash drain off much of her energy. Too new at all this to seize the right moment.

"Noi," she said, after they settled back down under their quilts, "did you see if any other Sydney Blues had been captured?"

"I figured looking at that can wait till we’re out of here."

Madeleine sighed, and curled against Emily, working hard at not feeling guilty. Unless they’d gambled wrong about the length of the challenge, it looked as if she would have another chance to see Fisher.

How many chances had she stolen from other Sydney Blues?