There came the sound of the receiver being passed, then: "Maddie."
"Dad, make her go. It’ll be… Please. If I know you’re out of reach of this, it’ll help."
"Where are you?"
"Well hidden. Plenty of food. We haven’t decided yet what to do long-term, but for the moment we’re set to wait and listen."
Silence, then: "We were so proud of you today, Maddie. When you stopped to help that boy, I could see how afraid you were, and I–" He broke off, and Madeleine had to stand abruptly and go upstairs. Their conversation after that was fractured and full, and she broke down when it was done, and wept for the first time since she’d woken lying in dust.
After some time, Noi came up and handed Madeleine a steaming mug.
"There’s a few thousand spoonfuls of sugar in this," she said. "We’re all pretty shocky."
"Thanks," Madeleine mumbled, and sipped until her throat had opened, watching Noi as she wandered around the room.
The triple-wide landing at the top of the staircase had been fitted out as a spacious library, with floor to ceiling shelving on all walls, and even above the window seat which looked out over the navy base side of the bay. Most of the shelves were a riotous jumble of spines of all colours and sizes, but one bookcase held nothing but two-tone Penguin classics, and on another serried ranks of leather gleamed. The only furniture beside the window seat was a heavy coffee table, a curve-footed floor globe, and two vivid stained glass lamps. It was perhaps the nicest room Madeleine had ever been in, and she wished she was in a state to appreciate it.
"Who called?" she asked eventually.
"Faliha. They went straight south, didn’t come back here for anything. And then, well, her Mum…stopped. Is just sitting in the car, turned toward the Spire. Faliha wanted to ask if we had any information – and to check if we were okay."
"What if the Greens stay like that? Just standing, staring, until they starve and die? Shaun and Nick and Mrs Jabbour and…"
"The possessed Blues are gathering near the Spires," Noi went on, deliberately shutting down speculation. "That webcam trained on the Sydney Spire is still working, but only a couple of people have shown up so far." She paused, eyeing Madeleine critically, then went to the top of the stair and called down: "Come up here and I’ll show you why this place in particular."
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."