The storm had moved away over the bay, leaving the smell of ozone and restless waves. Lena sat at the small radio, which remembered her grandfather's time, and turned the dial over the noise of the shortwave band. Between the crackles there was suddenly a clear tone, and then a clear whisper, as if speaking from behind glass: "The fractal wakes up at midnight. Take a torch." The tone wavered and shifted into a series of digits, which Lena automatically transcribed into her notebook. Usually she enjoyed solving ciphers for sport, but this time the skin on the back of her neck twitched of its own accord. In the evening she met Bartek at the end of the pier, where the water reflected the residual light. "If it's a joke, it's a very expensive one to produce." - he muttered, looking at the sheet of paper covered in numbers. Lena moved her finger along the lines, lowering her voice. "It's coordinates and time. And maybe a password too, if we use the Vigenère key. It comes out 'RENEW'." The compass in her hand spun twice and stopped on the direction that led straight under the concrete silhouette of the torpedo house, blackening a few hundred metres away. Waves rumbled under the railing as the sudden, cool light of the harbour lighthouse cut through the fog. "We don't have to go inside," she added quickly. - "There's an old cable culvert on the shore. I'll show you." The tunnel they descended into smelled of rust and salt, and its walls were as damp as the gills of a large fish. Drops fell rhythmically, as if someone was counting the seconds. Lena led the way, shining a torch on marks smeared with salt and paint: spirals, squares, repeating patterns reminiscent of a broken wave. "Fractals," Bartek said, trying to sound ordinary. - "Someone had a lot of time here." At the end of the corridor they came to a metal door, its hinges coming to life under Lena's hand. Behind them spilled a shallow hall, low and wide, with a rectangular platform in the middle, as if someone had left an experiment table here and forgotten to take away the instructions. On the platform stood a box with an analogue dial, three brass knobs and a small screen that looked like the eye of a blind robot. Lena put the notebook down next to it, hearing the tone from the radio still buzzing in her ears. "Wait," Bartek warned, but she was already entering digits from the stream, separating each with a long breath. The screen shone belatedly and displayed the word: RENEW. Something rattled in the wall, as if hidden gears were awakening inside, and the air thickened with salt. The floor trembled slightly, the torch danced with a patch of light, and a shadow ran over their heads in the darkness that none of them could cast. "Do you hear that?" - whispered Bartek, but he was only answered by the long sigh of the mechanism and the heavy clatter of the lock turning on the other side of the hall. At the same moment, a second, unfamiliar light flashed behind their backs and someone they had not seen at the entrance said quietly: "You're late."