At the end of the dry dock in Gdynia stood the orbital recycling hall. Lena was fourteen and helped her mother sort metal from satellites. She liked the nameplates and the silence that came back after the cranes howled. That afternoon the crane lowered something smooth, like an egg made of steel, onto the floor. A faded inscription glistened on the shell: TIME CAPSULE - ECHO-7. Mum just shrugged her shoulders, saying it was an advertising prop from the museum. Lena wasn't sure, because the metal smelled of winter and old ozone. She was helped by Oskar from the robotics club, who was coming here for parts. They rolled the capsule onto a cart and hid it in the school's physics lab. Inside it smelled of chalk, dust and ozone extracted from the coil regulator. The panel on the side flashed a green dot and a power question. Oskar plugged in the powerbank from the drone and Lena put her hand on the case. The surface was cool and strangely springy, like skin under frost. A thin projector slid out of the capsule and unfurled a hazy grid of dots. It was a map of the coast, only the sea line ran far inland. On the corner flashed the date they had been taught in their history of the future: 2068. A voice, young and snarky, said: protocol ECHO activated, receiver unknown, signal delayed. Then the lights went out throughout the studio and the phones stopped seeing the network. Oskar pressed the torch into his teeth and muttered that it was just interference. However, Lena heard something else, as if knocking from very far away. Words appeared on the panel that formed her name. The system asked for a biosignal, and a light pulsed under Lena's fingers like a heart. The device beeped, though there was no metal hinge on the screen. A minute counter popped up, and next to it the signs: restricted atmosphere, recording zone, source object. Source object? she repeated in her mind as the map rolled up into a single pulsating point. This point was exactly below their school, at a depth of thirteen metres. The capsule sounded again, this time in a child's whisper: Leno, if you can hear me, don't run away. Something heavy clattered under the floor of the studio, and the timer started counting backwards.