In Neon, three friends wake to powers they cannot explain and a message that pulls them toward the roof of Orion Tower, where something in the city has already started to move.
Neon never really slept. After dark, the city only grew sharper: glass towers burning with colour, transit lines hissing through the streets, windows lit like a second sky. High above it all, in an attic stuffed with old film posters and battered furniture, Lena, Marcin, and Tymon spent their nights talking too long and pretending they were still waiting for life to begin.
That night, life arrived uninvited.
The power cut out without warning. One moment the attic was alive with neon bleeding through the skylight, the next it was swallowed by darkness so complete it felt deliberate. Wind slid through the cracked window, cold enough to raise goosebumps on Lena's arms. She inhaled, bracing herself, and felt a sharp tingling race through her fingers.
Light burst between her hands.
She jerked back, staring as pale sparks flickered over her skin and vanished, then came back brighter, restless as a heartbeat. Marcin swore under his breath and reached for the curtains. The fabric snapped away from his hand, then moved again, not with the draft, but with intent, gathering and folding as if something invisible had taken hold of it and was waiting for his next thought. Across the room, Tymon froze mid-breath.
His face drained of colour.
"Do you hear that?" he whispered.
Lena and Marcin listened. At first there was only the building settling around them, the far-off groan of traffic, the storm beginning to drag its nails across the rooftops. Then Tymon flinched again, pressing a hand to his temple.
"Not outside," he said. "Inside. Someone is talking."
No one answered. The silence in the attic had changed; it felt thinner now, stretched tight over something they could not see.
Lena looked down at her hands, which still shimmered faintly in the dark. Marcin slowly released the curtain and watched it hang still, as if nothing had happened. Tymon stood very still, his eyes fixed on a point just beyond the wall, like he was listening to a voice no one else was meant to hear.
Then Marcin's phone lit up on the table.
No name. No caller. Just a message.
Do you know why you are different? This is only the beginning. Come to the roof of Orion Tower at midnight. I will be waiting.
Someone who knows more.
For a moment, none of them moved. Outside, thunder rolled across the city, low and deliberate. Neon flickered in the distance, block by block, as if the whole skyline had begun to blink awake.
Tymon swallowed. "Tell me that's a joke."
It wasn't. And somewhere above the streets, on the tallest tower in the city, a light came on and stayed on, as if it had been waiting for them to look up.