Warsaw disappears into a strange silver fog, and Michael and Lena begin to awaken powers they cannot explain, until a siren and a flash of light force them toward the same unseen threat.
Warsaw was vanishing into a thick silver fog that swallowed the streetlights and softened every sound into something distant and unreal. From the ninth floor of his block, Michael pressed a shoulder to the windowsill and watched the city blur at the edges. He usually liked the night from up here. Tonight, the silence felt wrong. The fog was seeping through the cracked window too, cold against his face, as if the air itself had chosen a way inside.
Across the city, two estates away, Lena was cutting through the park in a last, stubborn attempt to catch the tram. The fog clung to her coat and hair, heavier with every step, until she felt as if she were moving through water. She stopped beneath an old oak tree, bent over with her hands on her knees, and stared into the dim path ahead. Going home on foot suddenly seemed like a better idea than trusting the night.
Michael straightened. Something moved below his building, near the curb. He leaned forward to see more clearly and then froze. The street was still there, but his view was not. It had peeled away from his body, drifting above the pavement as if his eyes were no longer his own. Panic flashed through him. He blinked hard, squeezed his eyelids shut, opened them again. The image stayed.
Lena lowered herself onto a bench, breathing too fast, too shallow. The fog touched her skin, and for one sharp instant she felt light, almost weightless. Then a voice brushed past her ear, so close she flinched. "Are you ready?"
She spun around. No one was there.
The answer came before she could think it through. Her body moved first, faster than fear, faster than thought. One heartbeat she was on the bench, the next she stood at the far end of the park, staring back at the empty path where she had been. Her pulse hammered in her throat. She had not run. She had not even decided to move.
Michael's breath caught in his chest. Somewhere above the city, still beyond his control, his strange hovering vision found a figure in the park. Lena looked up at the exact same moment, as if she had felt him watching. For one impossible second, through fog and distance and whatever was happening to them both, their gazes locked.
Then an alarm siren tore through the night.
The sound split the silence open. The fog shivered, thickened, and rolled across the streets in a single violent wave. Michael's vision lurched. Lena stumbled back, staring into the whitening dark. And in the centre of it all, a line of light sliced across the sky, bright and silent, rushing straight toward the city.