Andrea Höst - And All the Stars

All characters in this publicationare fictitious and any resemblanceto real persons, living or dead,is purely coincidental.

Madeleine Cost is working to become the youngest person ever to win theArchibald Prize for portraiture. Her elusive cousin Tyler is the perfectsubject: androgynous, beautiful, and famous. All she needs to do is pinhim down for the sittings.

None of her plans factored in the Spires: featureless, impossible,spearing into the hearts of cities across the world and sprayingclouds of sparkling dust into the wind.

Is it an alien invasion? Germ warfare? They are questions everyone onEarth would like answered, but Madeleine has a more immediate problem.At Ground Zero of the Sydney Spire, beneath the collapsed ruin of StJames Station, she must make it to the surface before she can hope tofind out if the world is ending.

I BLAME THIS BOOK ONFLANNERY AND WENDY DARLINGand thank them for it.

Additional thanks to Dr Jennifer Elliman, Dr Chris Fellows,Julie Dillon, Lexie Cenni, and Estara Swanberg.

Spelling is Australian English.

Madeleine Costs world was a tight, close space, a triangular tubetilted so her head lay lower than her feet. Light reflected off metal,not enough to give any detail, and there was barely room to squeeze onehand past the slick surface, to explore face and skull and find powderydust and a throbbing lump. Dull pain also marked upper shoulder, hip,thigh. She felt dusty all over, grimed with it, except her lower half,which was wet. Free-flowing liquid drained past her head.

She could smell blood.

Ticket barrier. Those were the rectangles of metal above and beside her.Madeleine could remember reaching for her returned ticket as the redgates snapped back and then then a blank space between there and here.Thursday lunchtime and shed been at St James Station, planning to walkdown to Woolloomooloo to wait for Tyler, just off the plane and sure tobe strained and tired and all the more interesting for it.

The noise the water made suggested a long fall before it hit somewherepast her feet, close enough to spatter her ankles before draining pasther. The ticket barriers were a generous double flight of stairs abovethe platforms, or had been. How far above them was she now? Had it beena bomb? Gas explosion? She could smell smoke, but it wasntoverwhelming. The blood was stronger. Smoke and blood and falling water,and how far was it falling? How big was the drop, and how

"Hello?" Madeleine called, just a croak of a voice, anything to shut offthat line of thought. The effort made her cough.

There wasnt room enough to shift to hands and knees. She could barelysquirm onto her stomach, the small pack she wore catching on thewithdrawn gates. Stretching one arm forward, she followed the path ofthe water down, and found an edge. But she had no way to measure thesize of any gap beyond. Reaching back with one sandalled foot, sheexplored damp channels in powder, and grainy concrete. No edge. Notwilling to just lie there, she tucked her elbows in close and wriggledback an inch.

The ground shifted.

Freezing, Madeleine waited for the plunge, but nothing followed except afaint rocking motion. She the slab of concrete with its burden ofticket barriers and girl was balanced on a downward slope. Anothershift of position and she could send the whole thing plunging, and wouldfall and fall, and then the blood would be hers.

Eyes squeezed shut, Madeleine tried to calm herself down. Shed alwaysthought herself a composed sort of person, but black panic clawed,demanding an urgent response screaming, running, leaping howeverimpossible that might be. It was only the itching in her throat, settingher coughing again, which pulled her back.

Could she drink the thin flow of water running past her? It didnt smell not stronger than the blood and smoke, at any rate. The tumblingsplash was so loud, a solid belt as it hit the concrete near her feet.St James Station was underneath Hyde Park, the ticket barrier level justa few metres below grass and trees. The strength of the waters impactsuggested a drop to the platform level.

Up. Down. Stay. Three choices which felt like none in the blood-scenteddark.

Her phone, tucked in the outer pocket of her backpack, let out theopening notes of her favourite song. Prone, elbows tucked in, handsbeneath her chin, she couldnt just reach back. By the time shedscrunched herself into the tiny extra space on the tilted border of herworld, and worked her opposite arm back, the smoky voice had eased intosilence. She still scrabbled for the packs zip, ignoring the burningprotest of her bruised shoulder and side, and caught the heavy rectanglebetween two reaching fingers.

As Madeleine brought her arm painfully forward, the clear white lightfrom the phone conjured hazy reflections of girl in the silver-metalsides of the two ticket barriers. These faded as she turned themakeshift torch forward to reveal whiteness and a crosshatching of darklines. Bars.

Madeleine stared, confused, until she recognised the green-paintedrailing which edged the upper level and the stairs to the platform. Theywere warped and twisted, but still looked thoroughly solid, forminganother wall to the cage capping the slab of concrete. There was no wayforward.

It was difficult to see beyond the railing, but the white resolveditself into dust, pale mounds of it, through which she could glimpse athird silver rectangle, this one twisted and torn, the tickets it hadswallowed spewing from its innards across dust and chunks of concrete.

Her raft lay on one of the flights of stairs, which did not make sense.St James Station had only two lines. The tracks sat parallel, perhapsfifty metres apart, their platforms joined by a broad expanse ofconcrete full of pillars which held up the ticket barrier area. Theticket barriers sat over this central area, while the stairs were toeither side of it, close to the tracks. To be on the stairs she and hermetal cocoon would have had to fall sideways.

Whatever the case, at least she was near the bottom, even if she wouldstill need to risk moving backward to get out.

But before that Turning her phone around, Madeleine found a missed callfrom her mother. Her parents thought she was at school, and had no ideashe was skipping to start work on the portrait of Tyler. Thered been nopoint embarking on Round Five Thousand of the Grades v Art argument whenTylers mild willingness to oblige a cousin didnt extend to alteringhis schedule in any way, and the cut-off date for the 2016 Archibald wasin less than a week.

The phones clock told her it was nearly one pm maybe fifteen minutessince shed arrived at St James and the signal was strong, but shecouldnt get through to her parents. It wasnt till she called triplezero that she had any kind of response, and that was a canned messagewhich boiled down to "Everyone is calling emergency".

Trying to reach her voicemail messages didnt work, so she gave up andtexted: "Cant get through will talk later".

Without knowing more about what happened, she couldnt be sure whetherit was more sensible to wait for rescue, or try to make her own way.Shifting about could trigger a slide or collapse.

Out in the dark someone elses phone rang one of those joke ringtones, growing louder until the phone was shrieking. No-one picked up.How many people were in the station, lying in the dusty dark? Callingout brought no response, but the ringing told her there must be someone.

Tucking her phone into her bra, Madeleine explored behind her again,cautious toes still finding only dust turning to mud, and wet concrete.An inch back, and nothing. Another inch, and the ground shifted as ithad before, but this time Madeleine didnt freeze against the see-sawstilt, and almost immediately it settled. The settling didnt surpriseher resting on rubble on a stairway, her raft was hardly going to tipupright but the sensation of it was strange, not as firmly solid asshe would expect from concrete stairs.