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"Cloud?" Madeleine blinked. "What areyou talking about?"
A familiar, exasperated sigh. "Always in your own world. Look, they think it's some kind of bio-weapon. A cloud of dust, coming from a black tower inHyde Park. It's happening all over theworld – black towers and dust. They'resaying it's aliens or – oh, what does it matter? Just stay where you are until I getthere. Are you closer to the Stricklandor Walpole Street entrance?"
The glow of Madeleine's phone lit up glittering swirls in thepowder still settling after her fall. Her throat itched, and she wanted nothing more than to be saved. And her mother was out trying to do exactlythat, driving to school instead of home keeping herself safe. Riding to the rescue.
"I'm at the Gallery, Mum."
The background noise of the call changed abruptly, and thenher mother's voice came clearer, no longer on the hands-free set. "You're where?"
"The Art Gallery of New South Wales," Madeleinesaid, making the lie resigned, apologetic, with no hint of dark and bruises, ofbroken things and dust. "I waswaiting here till Tyler's plane got in."
"You..." Theword trailed away on a small shaking note, as unlike Victoria Cost as it was possibleto be.
"I'm probably safer than you," Madeleine said, tofill the silence, to hear something other than that strangled word. Her eyes stung and she had to swallow, towork to make her voice sound casual, a little guilty, a touch disbelieving, as ifshe couldn't credit the idea of black towers or bio-weapon attacks. "I'm in the Asian art section – itdoesn't even have windows. Are theanimals okay?"
"That damn painting," Madeleine's mother said. "You – Madeleine, why do youalways..."
"Is Dad home?"
"He's on his way." Her mother's voice was regaining its usual brisk pace. "You stay where you are. Don't go to have a look outside. Find the door to that section and shutit. Don't worry about what the Gallerystaff say. Stay as far away from outsidedoors and windows as possible, for as long as you can. Even when the air seems clear, use somethingto cover your mouth and nose. The roadsare going insane, so I'm not sure when I'll be able to get in to where you are,but I'll call you back when there's news and you can head to Tyler's. You've still got that pass-key?"
"Yes, Mum." The familiar reeling off of instructions helped Madeleine conjure ashadow of a smile, made it possible to respond with the right note of wearypatience.
"Good. I'll callyou when it sounds like it's safer for you to head to Tyler's. Or if it looks like you should try to spendthe night there. Don't let anyone try tomake you leave before it's clear."
"I won't. Mum..."
But her mother had hung up. Madeleine laughed, then coughed, and gingerly levered herself into asitting position. Her back and head didnot love her, but her mother did, even if they'd had a lot of trouble talkingto each other the last few years. Nowall she had to do was overcome a little matter of collapsed exits, and getherself down to Tyler's.
And then? She couldpretend to her mother all she liked, but whatever the dust did, Madeleine wassurely going to find out. She must haveexceeded any minimum dose a thousand times over. Breathed it, swallowed it, had it in hereyes, ground it into her skin.
But that only made her want a bath, to clean herself off, tonot be this filthy, fumbling, near-blind creature. "If you want B, finish A," hergoal-oriented mother was always saying, and just now that was advice Madeleinewas willing to take. Time to get out.
"But first check for other people," Madeleinereminded herself, and sighed.
Lifting her phone, she used it again as a torch, surveying adim landscape of severed support pillars, broken stairs, and deceptively softmounds below a wall of stars. Her trainhad departed as she'd walked up the stairs, and both platforms – what remainedof them short of the wall of stars – stood empty. In the middle of the day the station had beenfar from busy, but there'd been a few people about. She could start with the small control roomswhere the station staff retreated after signalling trains to depart, and theelevator–
No, not the elevator. Nothing could be alive in that compressed wedge of glass and metal.
The platform control rooms were double-entrance boxes, notmuch larger than the elevator. Madeleineheaded left, focusing on the nearest doorway: a dark, empty square. A phone began to ring as she approached, andMadeleine edged into the room to a jaunty proclamation of I'm Too Sexy. A man lay near-buried in the dust, sprawledface-down across the threshold of the far doorway. Madeleine couldn't see any blood, any obviousinjury, but the layer of dust didn't seem disturbed by any rise or fall of chest.
As the phone switched to screaming about messages, she madeherself touch his shoulder, shake him, press her fingers to his throat, butchose not to turn him over, to discover what had left him so still. Instead, she moved to the edge of theplatform, raising her phone to peer up at the shadowy curve above and thedarkness which swallowed the track in either direction.
"Anyone there?" Madeleine called. "Hell–" A new spasm of coughing ripped through her,reviving the pounding in her head. Itwas impossible not to kick up fresh clouds of dust as she waded through it, andinhaling sharply had been a definite mistake.
If anyone was going to call for help, they would have done soalready. All she could hear was fallingwater. Best to be methodical.
Reluctant to go near the starry wall again, Madeleine merelypeered along the shortened platform, then turned to begin picking her way inthe other direction. Almost immediatelya rounded shape turned under her foot and she nearly went down, dropping herphone into a drift which glowed and sparkled unexpectedly.
"Welcome to the Glitter Mines," Madeleine muttered,digging to retrieve her phone and then investigate what she'd stood on. A scatter of soft drinks, escapees from atumbled vending machine. That wasserendipity, and Madeleine immediately picked up the nearest bottle and twistedthe cap. The contents erupted into herface, but even a sticky orange bath was better than dust on dust, and shegulped down the remainder, till her throat no longer felt coated. Discarding the bottle, she wiped her phone,then tucked a few spare drinks into her backpack.
Moving more cautiously, she decided to follow the very edgeof the platform, since little of the rubble had reached the track itself, andthe curved arch above it was still intact. The platform extended further than the central co
No visible damage, and far less dust. The twin overhead lines which powered Sydneytrains seemed intact, though she supposed they must be severed by the starrywall. It would be easy for her to climbdown and walk out, but she still had a lot of area to check.
About to turn away, Madeleine caught sight of a depression inthe dust and, disbelieving, angled her phone for a better look. Footprints. Barely visible, since another layer of pale powder had settled on top, butdefinitely footprints. Three, maybe fourpeople, had climbed down to the tracks here.
She wasn't angry at being left. People were like that. And it released her from further searching.
The drop to the track was nearly as tall as Madeleine, but itwasn't difficult to lower herself off the edge to the chunky gravel whichsurrounded the rails. Then she hesitatedat the mouth of the tu