Seventeen-year-old Sebastian is hunted by a power he can barely understand, and one message on his desk suggests he is not the only one who can slip through solid stone.
Night had settled over the city in a dead hush, and the abandoned hospital looked even worse for it. Sebastian moved along the corridor with his shoulder close to the peeling wall, careful where he stepped. Every sound seemed to carry forever here: the soft drag of his shoe, the creak of old pipes, the thin rattle of the windows in their frames.
Two weeks ago, he would have turned around at the front gate. Two weeks ago, he still believed the strange tingling in his fingers had been a trick of exhaustion. It started with a door handle. One moment it was cold metal under his palm; the next, it was nothing at all, as if his hand had forgotten how to meet the world. He had jerked back so hard he nearly fell. Since then, it had happened again and again. A dresser drawer. A brick wall. The edge of his bedroom mirror. Not often. Not on command. But often enough to make sleep impossible.
He had told no one. Who would believe that his hand could sink through solid things for a heartbeat and come back unchanged?
Then, this morning, he had found the note on his desk.
You're not the only one. They already know.
No name. No explanation. Just those seven words, written in a hand he did not recognise. So he had come here, to the place everyone in town avoided, because if anything could answer a question like that, it would be a building full of locked rooms, sealed basements, and things people had tried to forget.
A sound broke the silence behind him.
Sebastian froze.
Footsteps. Heavy. Unhurried. Coming straight toward him.
His pulse slammed against his ribs. He pressed his palm to the wall without thinking, feeling the familiar sting build under his skin, like static gathering before a storm. The footsteps drew closer. One turn, then another. He could almost picture the person on the other side, close enough to grab him if he hesitated.
He swallowed hard, shut his eyes, and pushed.
The world lurched.
For an instant there was pressure, a sharp metallic scraping, and the sickening sensation of moving through deep water. Then the cold vanished. Air rushed against his face. When he opened his eyes, he was no longer in the corridor at all.
He was inside the room beyond the wall.
And standing only a few feet away from him was a girl in a black hoodie, watching him as if she had expected this all along. In her hand, something small and dimly lit flickered with a pale blue glow.
"You took long enough," she said.
Before Sebastian could speak, a thunderous удар shook the wall behind him. Dust spilled from the ceiling. The girl snapped her head toward the door at the far end of the room, where a harsh white light was growing brighter by the second.
"If they see you now," she said, "we're both dead."