Iga was nineteen and endured night shifts better than morning lectures. After work, she would climb to the roof of her dormitory and count the lights in the city windows. They blinked unevenly, as if they were exchanging secrets, as if the whole horizon was speaking to her in the alphabet. Her fingers remembered the integrated circuits more than the warmth of a mug, and it calmed her. Lately, she had the feeling that the electricity in the cables corresponded to her breathing and steps. She touched the handrail, and her skin trembled like a string before quieting with a hint of embarrassment. She didn't tell anyone about it, not even Lenka from the room, because it sounded weird. She left the matter on the roof, under the aerials, between the wind and the metal of the railing. That evening the storm was coming from the Vistula, low and greenish, like something not quite arrived. In one second, everything went out: the corridor, the car park, the bus stop advertisements, even the red lights of the lifts. The city took a breath and then collapsed into such silence that it pinched the ears. Only her phone lit up her hand with an unnatural battery percentage and a message: "Lighthouse: are you alive?" The thought came that it was a joke, but after all, no one's screens were glowing anymore. The edge of the clouds swam like muscles, and she felt the tiniest currents shoal under her skin. She closed her eyes, took in the night, and for a joke thought of the switch hidden in her breath. The lanterns along the boulevard lit up one by one, from the river towards the bridge, like a frightened row of beetles. The tram on the bridge groaned, moved a metre, stopped, and she moved her hand away and it was dark again. A figure with an umbrella stood on a neighbouring roof, though there was no wind and the rain was just looking for the city. A voice came through the sheet metal, as if speaking from a megaphone, and yet it was too close. "You gave me half the city without even asking," he said, without lifting the umbrella an inch. Iga's phone vibrated a second time: "Don't touch the railing"; at the same time, the gutter began to shoot sparks like skylights. The sparks were gathering into a cool ball right next to her hand when someone from behind the chimney called her name. The hair on the back of her neck rose vertically and the nails in the ridge twitched as if someone was lifting them from underneath. She remembered the needle on her grandmother's old radio shaking before it caught the tune. Some change fell out of her pocket, but it didn't roll off, just danced in place like a faint field. The figure with the umbrella took a step across the void between the rooftops, silently, as if the stairs existed only for him. "Time is chasing us," he said, "and you will choose for both of us." The screen flared again: "Iga, if you can hear me, let go of the metal"; at the same moment, the ball by the handrail recoiled towards her wrist.