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Panting, Min and Fisher scudded after them, and Madeleineforced herself to strain for any glimpse of movement on the shoreline ratherthan gaze up and up at the bar across the sky. They turned directly after passing beneath, and drew the dinghy to astop in the shadow of the first of the Walsh Bay piers.
The map had shown a hotel at this location, so they didn'tdare speak, simply waited till the two rowers had their breathing undercontrol, then pushed back out of the bay and pressed on toward the turningpoint marked by Barangaroo's northern park.
"Duk-duk! Duk-duk!"
Something had gone wrong. Min and Fisher stopped rowing, though they didn't back paddle, allowingthe dinghy to continue slowly onward. They could hear the dip and creak of oars ahead of them, coming closer,and after a long hesitation Noi responded, and the two dinghies found eachother north of Walsh Bay's central pier.
"What is it?"
Noi sounded as sick as Madeleine felt. They'd taken less time to cross the Harbourthan expected, but they had few contingency plans, none of them ideal.
"There's something in the water off Headland Park."
Nash's whisper was calm, unhurried, and Emily better summedup the situation by adding: "Glowing eyes. There's glowing eyes, looking."
"Did it spot you?" Noi gazed anxiously past them.
"Don't think so," Pan replied. "We didn't get close, saw it as westarted around the curve. Scurried awaylike mice."
"It's not visible from the near corner of thepark?"
"We didn't spot it till we were past the initial bump ofthe sea wall."
Noi lifted the binoculars and peered into the gold-stripeddark. Barangaroowas broken into three sections grouped into a north-south rectangle. The north was covered in trees, sandstoneblocks rising out of the sea to a grassy hill. The south was crowded with apartments and skyscrapers under construction. The middle, separated from the other sectionsby two small coves, was a mixture of garden and cultural sites – Madeleine hadvisited it the previous year to see an open-air sculpture exhibition – butseveral large buildings sat on its southern edge, including the enormousSouthern Sky Hotel, a 6 Star extravagance which, before the Spires interrupted,had been in final preparations for a grandiose opening gala. The plan had been to row down to the covenearest the Hotel, risking only the briefest amount of time travelling by foot.
After a tense wait, Noi lowered the glasses. "It doesn't seem to be followingyou. Is it feasible at all to get intothe park without going into its line of sight?"
"Yes. Easily." Nash paused, thenadded: "It is more a question of what we will encounter in the park, giventhat there is already one creature on guard."
"I'm for risking that," Noi said. "Anyone against?"
No-one spoke.
"Right. We'dbetter do this without any chatter. Weunload, and push the boats out. Evenwith the path lights, it's probably a bad idea to go stumbling through thetrees, so walk along the i
The nearest edge of the park was an inlet sheltered in alldirections except north across the harbour, with more than enough room for bothdinghies. They bumped against steppedblocks of stone, and Madeleine was not the only one to wet her feet in theprocess of getting out. A lamppost stoodabove them, marking the path's location, and they took their time dumping theirlife jackets, pushing the boats out, and then climbing, a hands and knees progress,constantly reaching to confirm each other's location, passing the food bags up,angling to avoid the light.
Moving at a pace just short of a trot along the path throughthe trees, they hesitated at the inlet at the southern edge of North Barangaroo, then darted from shadow to shadow in the moreopen Central section. The hotel loomedabove, a monolith of glimmering blue glass, and they approached it at atangent, following the road down to the gates of the underground car park.
Firmly sealed.
Chapter Seventeen
"Who takes the time to lock up in the middle of an alieninvasion?" Pan deposited his foodbag 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 maingates. "Even if this isn't wiredwith an alarm, punching it open will leave an obvious sign someone's brokenin."
"Shall I look down here?" Nash unslung his bags and headed down abranch of the entry drive, Pan at his heels.
Madeleine added her food bag to the growing pile, and peeredthrough the mesh of the gate. Thishurdle had not been unanticipated, but even though the garage entry was lowerthan street level, she felt painfully exposed beneath the cold fluorescentlighting. Not long till dawn. Just over six hours before the world wouldcome hunting.
"We could try to finger punch just the lock," Emilysuggested, peering over Noi's shoulder.
"Because only breaking it a little would be less likelyto set off any alarms?" Min asked. The sharper than usual edge in his voice brought a warning glance fromNoi, 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 entrypoints," Fisher said. "Afterthe panic of the arrival day, the chances of every single one being firmlysealed is low." But he glancedtoward the eastern sky.
"Guys, check this out."
Pan, beckoning from the junction of the drive. They followed him past a "StaffOnly" sign, to another set of metal gates. Nash was peering through the one on the right, and pointed as they cameup: "A solution."
Standing two metres inside the gate was a machine sporting abig green button, a gate release meant to be hit by departing drivers.
"All it needs is a finger punch, at just the rightstrength 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 groundfloor, and then they were standing at a spacious junction directly before adoor marked 'Reception'.
"Kitchen," Pan said, and went right. By the time they followed him into anenormous rectangular room of shining stainless steel, he was pulling open aheavy-duty door. A wave of chill flowedover them. "Freezer. And this would be – damn, I've seen housessmaller than this refrigerator. Weshould all fit in here."
"No." Fisherwalked 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 dioxidebuild-up which is going to be the problem. Depending on the length of the challenge, we may need to risk evenopening the doors at least once. Unless..." He glanced aroundthe kitchen. "With big enoughcontainers 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 tospread between them if we want to survive twenty-four hours." He pulled the freezer door open again andconsidered its size. "Plenty ofspace here, which is good since one of us will probably need to use it. We can adjust the temperature to the highestsetting."