It was supposed to rain tonight. It didn't.
The clouds hung low enough to touch, swollen and heavy, but the city below them refused to give in. The streetlights buzzed like dying stars, the air stank of rust and gasoline, and Ivankov stood at the edge of the Eastway Overpass wondering how long it would take for the river to forget a body.
He wasn't planning anything. Just wondering.
A small notebook sat beside him on the railing, its pages filled with neat, obsessive handwriting. Dates. Coordinates. Drawings of circles intersecting at impossible angles. The last page was wet, ink bleeding into gray.
He checked his phone again—no signal, though the bars flickered in and out like they were trying to breathe. The device had been doing that for weeks. Ever since the lights.
Six months ago, the city had gone white for seven seconds. No explosion, no sound—just white. Like the whole place had blinked at once. When the light faded, people claimed they'd lost different things. Some said their sense of smell, others whole days. Ivankov lost his brother.
And maybe something else he couldn't name.
The world kept moving, pretending it hadn't noticed. But Ivankov noticed. The air felt wrong after that—too sharp, like a chord held too long
He heard footsteps behind him. Elara, again. Hood up, hands buried in her coat pockets, same as always. She moved like someone trying not to wake the dark.
"Been looking for you," she said.
"Didn't hide very well, then."
She ignored the joke and nodded at the notebook. "You still keeping score?"
"It's not a score," Ivankov said. "It's a map."
"To what?"
He looked out at the skyline. The towers blinked red in warning patterns. "To where the light went."
Elara sighed through her teeth. "You sound like the forums. You know, the ones with the videos of flickering lamps and people saying it's divine punishment?"
"Maybe they're wrong," he said. "Maybe it wasn't punishment."
"What then?"
He took a moment. "An opening."
That word made her flinch. People didn't talk about openings anymore—not since the Glassfield Event reports vanished from the news. But she'd seen what he'd seen: things bending the wrong way in mirrors, animals standing too still, lights that moved like they were alive.
"You think he's still out there," she said quietly.
Ivankov picked up the notebook and tucked it into his jacket. "I think he went through."
"Through what?"
He turned, finally looking at her. "You ever notice how the stars look different now? Like they're not where they used to be?"
She didn't answer. She'd noticed. Everyone had, but no one said it. The constellations were the same shapes—but shifted, just slightly. Astronomers blamed orbit drift, atmospheric lensing, nonsense words for something they didn't understand.
Elara exhaled and rubbed her face. "If you go digging again, you'll end up on another list."
Ivankov started down the overpass stairs. "Already on one."
She hesitated before following. "Where are you going?"
"To the lab," he said. "The one that burned."
She caught up to him, boots splashing in shallow puddles. "You think there's anything left?"
He glanced over his shoulder, the faintest smile on his face. "There's always something left. Even light leaves a shadow."
They walked in silence, the hum of streetlamps filling the space between them. A stray cat darted across the road, tail low, eyes glowing for a moment brighter than headlights.
When they reached the underpass, Ivankov stopped. The concrete wall was tagged with a single word in black spray paint, half-washed by rain:
"SOLARIS."
He brushed his hand over it, the paint dry beneath his fingertips.
"Elara," he said softly, "they never found who wrote these, did they?"
She shook her head. "They just keep showing up. Every week."
Ivankov stared at the word a long time, then turned toward the road. "Then we're close."
Far above them, one of the streetlights flickered—once, twice—and then went dark. When it did, for just a second, the stars rearranged themselves.