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"...in ourSydney studio at the time of the Spire's arrival. We could not have been quicker sealing thedoors, and the Building Manager shut down the air-conditioning plant as amatter of priority, and closed every vent possible. It made no difference. Every single person in the building has begunexhibiting the symptoms observed in the heavy-exposure group broadcasting fromSeoul. We can only repeat the medicaladvisory. Do not travel. If you are infected, do not attempt to reacha hospital. Even if you are indoors,cover both mouth and nose with multiple layers of damp..."
Madeleine was inthe bathroom, pulling the oversized tracksuit top over her head, shucking thepants, staring at herself in the mirrored wall. Blue wrists. Not a flush ofcolour beneath the skin, but bold streaks extending to the inside of herelbows. More at armpit and groin,midnight blue. She turned, consideringthe true bruises on her back, dim by comparison, and spotted more midnight blueat the back of her knees.
Pressing the skinof her right wrist produced none of the pain response of a bruise. The skin was warm, soft, normal. She didn't feel sick, beyond having eaten fartoo much too quickly.
"...just in,"the presenter was saying as Madeleine returned. "The Seoul group has reported intense, urgent hunger, an almostcrippling–"
Madeleine hit Muteand turned away. If anything worsehappened, she'd know it as soon as anyone, and she didn't like the way thepresenter kept having to stop and swallow, didn't like what his voice ratherthan his words were telling her. Itpulled her into thinking of a whole world looking at their wrists, clogging thephone lines, melting down Twitter and Tumblr andFacebook, comparing symptoms, reaching out in their overwhelming need to knowwhat it all meant, how far it would spread, what would come next, after thehunger. If she spent her time thinkingabout how she would die, she wouldn't finish.
Thankfully she wasworking with quick-drying acrylics, had already laid down the base colours, andcould now build detail. The clothes,necklace, hair, polish, and blue seat made a vivid mix, and she would have to workto stop Tyler's skin from receding, or losing the magnetic quality of palegreen eyes.
Racing symptomthree.
ooOoo
Drumming rain,lukewarm and persistent.
Sitting tilted in acorner, Madeleine puzzled over why she felt the rain should be hotter, andturned her head away from slick tiles. She'd been leaning against them so long it felt like her skin waspeeling out of a mould. Lifting a handshe could trace the indentation of grouting below her eye. Velvet.
She blinked, sawtinted glass, and recognised the outer wall of Tyler's enormous shower, andthen looked at her foot, her leg, all the way up to the sodden hem of thetracksuit top. Midnight blue. With stars.
What surprise shefelt was for the lack of pain. Pain hadbeen the constant, the dominating force which had overtaken every otherconsideration. It had started in herlower back, tiny twinges, and she'd thought it just another consequence of hermarathon at the canvas, a companion to the stretched ache between hershoulder-blades. The pangs had spread toher legs, her arms. Not too bad atfirst, an intermittent ache that made her want to shift and move. But then sharp, deep pains along her bones,making her gasp and jerk and stamp about.
For a while she'dbeen able to work through, but one jolt had taken her at a bad moment and she'dslashed a fine line of white across half the canvas. After quickly repairing what she could, she'dhad to step away. Better to leave thepiece unfinished than destroy what she'd achieved. Particularly Tyler's hand, toying with thelong topaz necklace. That was some ofthe best work she'd ever done.
Her memories werehazy after the last of the painting. Another patch of extreme hunger, and a long time on the couch, shiftingand twisting. Random images from thetelevision: black towers and people in Hazmat suits. Roadblocks. Blue and green animals, everything warm-blooded showing stain. Crackling feedback on her phone when shetried to answer a call.
It had beendaylight when the tremors and cramps started, knots beneath her skin which madeher cry out and whimper. That was whyshe'd ended up in the shower, needle-hard water stitching her skin because theheat and the pulsing force had been the only thing which had helped at all.
She pulled off thesopping tracksuit and by slow degrees drew her feet up, levered herself on tothem, and shut the water off. Then sheshuffled with geriatric gait to lean against the mirrored wall. This time she didn't need to look for patchesof blue skin, but catalogued instead what was familiar. Her head, barring a patch below her righteye, remained its usual unta
The rest, from justbelow her collarbone down, was an unbroken dark blue, studded with motes oflight. Galaxies, nebulae andfiery novae. They weren't on the surface of her skin, but seemed to float belowit, as if she had become a window on a night sky at the centre of the universe.
And the way itfelt! The mirror she leaned against, thetiles beneath her feet. Everything shetouched was a confusing mix of the texture she expected, but also velvet. And when she ran blue palm along blue arm, itwas velvet on velvet.
There were stillfine hairs along her forearm. Peeringclose she could make out the faint lines and ridges at her wrist, and herfingers showed the prune effect of long exposure to water. If it wasn't for the shimmering lightbeneath, and the feeling of velvet, she could tell herself that she'd simplybeen stained blue. But her skin was nother skin.
Was she turninginto the tower?
Memory of warmstone, wondrous and strange, flooded through her. Touching it had sent a tingle all throughher, but then it had thrown her away, blasted her–
The mirrorshattered, and Madeleine was tossed forward, bouncing off the basin and fallingto her hands and knees. Fragments ofglass and tile rained down around her as she cowered, hands over her head, butnone of it touched her, and she was aware of strength flowing out of her in away which felt as uncontrolled as a throat wound. She was doing this, destroying everythingaround her even as she shielded herself.
Madeleine pulled itback, an effort which left her limp, barely able to lift her head to survey herhandiwork in a room suddenly dim, lit only through the open door. Shards of glass and ceramic layeverywhere. The mirrored wall, ceilinglight, the basin, shower screen, even the tiles – all looked like someone hadtaken a sledgehammer to them. But shewasn't injured at all. Not even thesmallest fragment had reached her, though she would now have to find some wayto move without cutting herself to shreds.
The television wasstill on. Madeleine could hear a voicewith a British accent, talking about death tolls. About 'blues' and 'greens', a mandatory notravel order, and the possibility of person-to-person transmission.
She was hungryagain.
Chapter Four
Tyler's inadequate pantry finally drove Madeleineoutside. It was Saturday morning, fourdays after the arrival of the Spires, and she no longer felt like she wouldkeel over if she walked any distance, but she might if she didn't findsomething to eat soon. Whatever else beingblue meant for her, it made skipping a meal a major problem.
Overnight rain had washed Woolloomooloo clean of obviousdust. High white clouds studded aceiling of dazzling azure, and the sun's warmth tempered a fresh wind. She could hear some kind of electronic music,but it was too faint and distant to identify the source. Otherwise, silence. The long row of boats bobbed lazily inunshrouded water, and high fencing hid the lower apartments' patio gardens, soit wasn't until she reached the restaurants, their outdoor eating areas stillin disarray, that Madeleine had any reminder of disaster beyond the clean blackshaft of the Spire dominating the cityscape.