It's 3:13 a.m. In Praga North, the neon sign above the old Kosmos cinema crackles, as if someone is tugging at it with fingers made of wind. The suburbs are like an unravelled canvas: a little glow of soda, a little blackness over the Vistula, a barking dog, a late taxi. Iga stands on the kerb, with her hand tucked into the sleeve of her rain jacket, and feels that the air has a different density today - as if the night is covered from the inside with a layer of glass. Before all this began, she was cartographing cities. Not road maps, not fashionable bicycle routes, but networks that rarely make it onto paper: nests of pulses, runs of electricity, places where a person speeds up a step without knowing why. She had been learning this herself, since the day she discovered she could see something others couldn't: thin, almost transparent threads over people's heads. They flowed from her chest upwards, trembling like strings at the lightest movement of thought. When she concentrated enough, she could brush one such thread with her attention - and the world beneath her fingers changed tone. She imposed rules on herself. Never touch someone's thread on a whim. Never tug hard on it; that which strains can break. Always say someone's name in your mind, as if you were knocking on a door. This was her ethic and her only protection against the city becoming an instrument played by one human hand. Today, however, something is different. The neon sign of the 'Cosmos' crackles again, but the sound does not dissipate in the chill. Instead, it thickens the air, curls it into an invisible, pulsating ring. Iga crinkles her eyebrows. The threads above the passers-by - individual night birds, a food vendor, a girl in a green cap, a security guard with a cigarette - bend to one side, like grass under a gust. All of them, even the gentlest ones, pull towards the Vistula. At this hour, the river smells of metal and wet wood. Iga walks towards the Swietokrzyski Bridge, her steps pounded out by her breath: even, quiet. The lights on the bridge blink synchronously, as if they get along without words. A night tram passes in the distance, an endless loop of "- - - - -" winds up on the board instead of the line number. A homeless man, who usually sleeps by the wall, suddenly sits up and looks at the same spot as everyone else with unseeing eyes. The threads above people's heads tighten even more. "I'm not the only one feeling this" - Iga thinks and that's when she sees him for the first time. He's standing leaning against the railing in the middle of the bridge: yellow mackintosh, hood revealing fog-stained hair. Eyes calm, attentive. He doesn't look like someone who has ended up here by chance. - Iga? - he asks. She speaks quietly, but the sound reaches her effortlessly, as if someone has pushed the air away so that a straight line of voice can come through. She stops two steps away from him, not stepping into his shadow. The threads above his chest are not ordinary: they split, forming tiny, pulsating branches, like a network of side streets lit from within. - You don't seem surprised,' he replies. - And this is not a common sight. The man smiles, as if he recognises in her something he has been waiting for. - My name is Oskar. I hear the city too, but in a different way," he says and raises his hand. The air around his fingers mutes to absolute silence. The tram on the other side of the river is still running, but its metallic rasp does not reach him. The noise of the Vistula disappears. All that remains is the pulse of the light on the bridge, Iga's heart and the emptiness that Oskar kneads like clay. The bubble falls silent and disintegrates with a slight squeak. The sounds return like a wave. - 'Someone is harvesting what we can,' Oskar continues, as if he has already wasted too many words explaining this to others. - He bends the knots of people into one direction. See. Iga looks. Across the river, by the Powiśle Power Station, there's a soft glow over the rooftops, seemingly nothing - reflection, dampness, night light filtering through the glass - but the threads above the heads of passers-by clearly indicate that point. Like compass needles. - What for? - he asks. - A common direction for the election? That sounds like... - He searches for a word and pauses, as none fits so as not to cripple. - Like too much certainty - Oscar helps. - When he's made it to the end, human decisions will begin to preside over alien music. Only one rhythm will remain. And you, Igo, know how to break it. I saw what you can do in Haller Square. That boy in the white jacket would never run down the stairs. You did a microslide. You saved him before the stone fell. The heat of shame and defiance flows across her face. - Don't follow me,' she says firmly. - I don't have to. The city screams your name when you touch. And it's getting louder and louder. If we don't stop it, tomorrow we'll wake up with a silence in our heads that can't be reversed. From behind Iga's back comes the clatter of a bicycle. A girl in a green cap rushes across the bridge, looking at her phone. The threads above her are stretched to the limit. For a second everything becomes transparent: the steel of the structure, the water, the air, the skin. - 'Come on,' says Oskar. - Before it grows there. They walk down the descent of the bridge and head towards the square at the Power Station. In the square, trusses of lights draw geometric patches on the wet slabs. The guard at the gate yawns as wide as if he wants to bite off a chunk of the night. The threads above his chest go up and turn left, towards the largest hall. Behind the glass panes, monitors are flashing, someone is adjusting something on the panels as if it were a regular night shift. - What are we supposed to do? - Iga asks. - Find the core - replies Oskar. - The place where our knots fasten to. The nest can take some of the impact, but only you can untangle the tangle without tearing people apart from the inside. They go inside. The hall breathes warmth. The smell of ozone and grease from the restaurant mixes into a strange, bittersweet note. Technical footbridges run above, a row of red taps and metal ladders below. The threads above the heads of the few workers pulsate like skylights, but none of them fall straight - they all turn to the same place at the end of the corridor, where the light is a ton darker. Iga goes first. She feels the threads of her own breast: usually soft and supple, now stretched so tight that it feels as if someone is holding it between her fingers. She makes no sign of it. She passes the cleaning crew. One of the women reaches for a bucket, stumbles over the threshold, and her thread jerks violently downwards for a split second. Iga does it reflexively. In her mind she says in a whisper: "Klara". She touches the thread with her fingertip of attention, just enough to add a half-step of balance. The woman regains her uprightness, laughs to herself and moves on. In return, a cold, throbbing pain passes through Iga's temples, as if someone had moved an iron nail across a nerve. - 'Careful,' hisses Oskar. - Everything is intensified here. They reach a door at the end of the corridor. Behind the glass, in the former switchboard, stands a construction she has never seen before. It is not a machine from a catalogue. It looks like a combination of a frame from a bed and a cobweb of fibre-optic cable stretched over a metal frame. In the very centre, where normally there would be a display or the heart of a reactor, a glowing, milky blob trembles. It does not hang. It is not falling. It is pulsating. Iga knows, without any words, that the threads of the people around her are conducted through this droplet. They pass through it like the eye of a needle and come out already different, as if someone is teaching them a new rhythm. - 'Don't touch yet,' says Oskar, but Iga already feels that the drop sees her as she sees the threads. A ripple of awareness, cool and alien, brushes against her skin. - 'You didn't come alone,' comes a voice from the metal staircase leading to the upper footbridge. Iga and Oskar turn around at the same time. A woman in a silver-grey coat is standing on the stairs. Her hair is pinned up, her face like one from 1960s posters, beautiful in a way that gets menacing when she doesn't blink. The threads above her breasts don't scatter into the air. They don't go upwards. They flow downwards, straight to the floor, like water seeping into the ground. - 'Mira,' says Oskar, not really asking. - 'I told you it would grow,' he replies calmly. He goes down two steps and lifts his gaze to the drop. - Now it's not enough to stop her. She wakes up. Somewhere above them a siren wails. The light dims for a second and then returns, but unevenly, in layers. A breeze comes in from the river through the open door and carries fine dust: dust that sparkles as if it were full of mirror filings. Every thread in Iga's sight tightens and turns its tip towards her, not towards the drop, not towards Oskar, but towards her, like an overly vigilant swarm. - 'Igo,' says Oskar, and there is no more politeness in his voice, only request. - 'If you touch her, she'll want to pull you inside. But maybe that's the only way to find out where the fixation is. I'll mute the impact, and you cut what you need. Just don't let it cut you. Mira doesn't take her eyes off the drop. - 'You shouldn't have come here,' she adds quietly. - She was calling out to you. From the very beginning. The drop pulses faster. The walls of the switchboard make a quiet, strained purring sound. The threads above all those present stretch forward, like muscles just before a jump. You can smell the storm, although the sky above the river is perfectly black. Iga lifts her hand and brings her fingertips close to the trembling milky light. At the same moment, everything outside goes silent: the tram, the fans, the conversations in the restaurant. The silence folds over her head like a hood. The drop glows into a brightness that does not dazzle, but reflects everything inside. In it, Iga sees the contours of the bridge, her own face, Mira's hair, Oskar's gesture stretched out with a nest. And then she feels the first alien impulse pass through her own thread. Warm, too sure, like someone else's hand tilting her chin upwards. Another centimetre. Another half. Just that one more twitch and....