"I don’t think I’ve recovered as much as I thought," Madeleine panted, as they propped him against the end of the railing.
"In future, I’m only rescuing people who faint at the bottom of stairs." Noi looked down at the boy doubtfully. "Maybe I should go find some sort of cart."
"Hey! HEY!"
The shout came from above, heralding three more boys stampeding down the stair.
"If you’re the cavalry, your timing sucks," Noi said, unimpressed by their rapid approach.
"What happened?" asked the tallest boy, and Madeleine had to blink because he was movie-star handsome: precisely symmetrical features, flawless brown skin, silky black hair, athletic build. Even his voice was fantastic: a mix of Indian and plummy English accent which was candy to the ear.
"We found him on the stair," she said, and felt silly for her defensive tone. "He’s hit his head."
"Told you Fish was pushing himself too hard," said the boy nearest Madeleine, a strawberry blonde well-furnished with freckles. His blue eyes sloped down at the corners, giving him a weary look, but his hands moved briskly over the unconscious boy’s head, locating the lump as if he could learn something from it.
The third boy was the shortest, his face fashioned from an imp template, with pointed chin and fly-away eyebrows which darted toward the sandy-blonde hair at his temples. He might as well have Mischief stamped on his forehead.
"You two carried him down the stair?" His grin took up half his face. "Damn, I’m sorry I missed that."
"Yeah, yeah, the floor show’s at eleven," Noi replied. "Maybe we should get your friend out of the sun. We were taking him to the wharf."
"Lead the way. I’m Pan. This is Nash and Gav. Looks like you met Fish already."
As Madeleine and Noi introduced themselves, the first two boys hoisted Fish up on linked arms.
"Was there anyone nearby?" Nash, the tallest one, asked. "Could someone have attacked him?"
"I haven’t seen anyone but Madeleine," Noi said. "We were going up to look at the Spire."
"We’ve just been." Pan glanced over his shoulder, and up. "Fish wanted to do some comparisons of our stars to the ones of the Spire. You seriously think someone hit him, Nash?"
"It would be stupid to ignore the possibility. We still haven’t the least idea what is going on."
"Why compare your stars to the Spires'?" Noi also looked over her shoulder, craning back to sight the tip of the Spire.
"To see if they matched in pattern, or even reacted." He glanced down at Fish, at the patches of blue on his exposed arms. "And to see if having stars would let us through the barrier around it."
"Did it?" Madeleine asked, interested. "Did you touch it?"
"No. The barrier remains. But it was only a first look."
Unlocking the sliding entrance door of Nikosia, Noi led them into the small indoor dining area, pulling one of the tables aside to clear access to the long, padded seat which ran up the right wall.
"There’s a first aid kit somewhere. Be right back."
"Have you been cooking?" Pan asked, sniffing the restaurant’s fresh-baked aroma as his friends manoeuvred Fish onto the too-narrow seat. Then he laughed: "Man, you won’t even have to look at people to tell which ones are Blues – just wave something edible and we’ll come running."
"Are you all–?" Madeleine asked, and Pan held his arms out, showing starry blue palms and a thick stripe disappearing under the sleeves of his jacket.
Nash was more obviously Blue, with all of the back of his neck that shade, the stars rather faint, and Gav – wearing a black blazer over a school uniform similar to Fish’s – stripped it off to reveal all of his left arm and most of his right was blazing with light against a midnight field.
"Only Blues are out and about, I think," he said, hooking the blazer over a chair. "We fell over quickest, once the stain showed up, but the Greens at school can still barely get out of bed."
"School? You stayed at your school?"
"We’re from Rushies," Pan explained, gesturing at an embroidered gold crest on the blazer. "Rushcutters Bay Grammar. It’s one of the biggest boarding schools in Sydney. Two-thirds of the students are day boys, but the rest of us are either from out of town, or overseas. No way to get–"
He broke off as Noi emerged from the kitchen, first aid kit in one hand, and a baking tray half-full of scones balanced on the other.
"One of you grab the jam and butter I set out," she said. "There’s drinks in the walk-in to the right."
She handed the tray off to Nash and then began sorting through the first aid kit while everyone else attacked the scones. Even Madeleine had another, surprised at herself.
"Is this extreme appetite thing going to keep up, do you think?" she asked Nash.
"Who can tell?" He didn’t seem as hungry as his friends, only eating one scone for the pile they’d inhaled. "BlueGreen – one of the data compilation sites – is suggesting that the stars indicate some level of stored energy, and that is why there’s a need for increased food intake. Did both of you experience the surge after the stars developed?"
"Surge?" Noi paused, holding a pad of antiseptic-soaked cotton wool. "The poltergeist imitation? Yeah, I sent our coffee table flying."
Madeleine nodded, and rubbed her arm where her shirt hid a plaster-treated cut.
"It may relate to the field which stops anyone from approaching the Spires," Nash said. "The Spire has stars. Blues have stars. The Spire has a shield. Blues experience the surge. And only Blues are so ridiculously hungry. So far." He sighed, and looked quickly at Noi’s patient, who had shifted in response to her dabbing. "We went down to Circular Quay after trying the Spire, because someone had reported a Blue dog, and small animals surviving are so rare we wanted to document it."
"An exercise in futility, with bonus rotting seagulls," Pan said. "Gav, you have a car, right? I don’t think Fish is going to be up to a walk even if he does wake up."
"Right." Gav grabbed his blazer and another scone and headed to the door. "See you soon."
"I think he’ll be okay," Noi said, as Pan hovered at her elbow. "He at least reacts to the antiseptic, and there wasn’t that much bleeding. Is he a good friend of yours?"
"Fish? Never even spoke to him before Friday. I think I might have seen him once or twice, but he’s in year eleven – Nash and I are year ten – and Fish is a day boy."
"Then why was he still at the school?" Madeleine asked, reasonably. School was the last place she would have wanted to hang out.
"Microscopes. Rushies is big on Theatre and Science, so the school’s all auditoriums and laboratories. Fish stayed up Thursday night studying himself. Then he moved on to everyone else. Did I tell you I went off at him, Nash?"
"It does not surprise me, temper-boy," Nash said, brows lifting.
"After he recovered from the surge, he divided everyone up," Pan explained. "So now we have Greens Dorm, Blues Dorm, and the big one for those who didn’t make it. Fish broke the Greens up into groups and tried different things on them. Aspirin, heat packs, cold packs, sugary drinks, water only. Teddy – Teddy Rasmussen from 10B – he was doing so bad, and Fish told me to switch him from hot packs to cold packs and keep checking his pulse and writing down all the changes and I just started shouting. Told him I never knew anyone better suited to their name, that fish were warm in comparison. He just waited until I wound down and then asked me if I knew the best way to take out a zombie."
"Head shot," Noi said promptly.
Pan nodded at her. "And wooden stakes for vampires, and silver bullets for werewolves. And penicillin for bacteria. But we don’t have the slightest idea what to do about dust and starry towers. Information is a weapon, a defence, a first step to everything according to Fish, and we need to gather as much as possible before the next wave of infections, so we can act rather than react. He and the other big contributors on BlueGreen even think they’ve found a way to increase Green survival rates. So I’ve wanted to punch him a few times, but I’m feeling a bit Oh, Captain! My Captain! at the moment as well. All the teachers left, y’know? Had their own families to look after, though I guess some of them meant to come back. Fish stayed, and now he’s gone and fallen down some stairs. Which is distinctly uncool of him, really."