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.