The Last Night Without Cameras - Seven Guests. Seventeen Minutes Without a Recording. One Disappearance - Nathan Ashborn

INTRO - The Last Night Without Cameras - Seven Guests. Seventeen Minutes Without a Recording. One Disappearance.INTROMarta noticed the first camera before she even reached the gate. A black dome protruded from beneath the eaves of the small security building, aimed directly at the road cutting through the forest. A second had been mounted above the intercom keypad. A third watched the driveway from the stone wall. When the heavy steel gate slid open without a sound, Marta counted four more. Seven cameras before she had even seen the house. Her phone had been without a signal for twenty minutes. She stopped the car on the gravel forecourt and stayed behind the wheel for a moment. Ahead of her, beyond a row of bare birch trees, stood Willa Orla - three levels of glass, dark timber and gray stone built into a slope above a Masurian lake. It looked more like a private hotel than somewhere anyone would invite friends for the weekend. Warm light glowed behind the huge windows. A gas fire burned on the terrace. Beyond it there was nothing but the black surface of the water and forest stretching all the way to the opposite shore. There were six cars already parked outside. Marta counted them twice. Her Volvo was the seventh. She had no idea why that detail reassured her. The front door opened before she had time to take out her suitcase. "You're eleven minutes late." Klara Radecka had not changed as much as Marta had hoped. The same short blond hair. The same way of standing with her arms folded beneath her chest, as if every conversation were a negotiation she intended to win. Only her face was thinner now, and shadows had formed beneath her eyes that makeup could not quite hide. "Hello to you too," Marta said. Klara smiled and came down two steps. "I thought you wouldn't come." "So did I." They hugged briefly. Marta felt the cold of Klara's hand against the back of her neck. "Did your phone die?" "No signal." "That's normal. There's Wi-Fi in the house." Marta looked at the camera mounted above the door. Klara noticed. "Szymon is obsessed with security." "I can see that." "No. Not yet, you can't." There was another camera in the hallway. Then another by the stairs. And one more above the entrance to the living room. Marta took off her coat, but instead of handing it to Klara, she slung it over one arm. "You record your guests?" "Only the shared areas. Hallways, entrances, the garden, garage, terraces. No cameras in bedrooms or bathrooms." "How reassuring." "I told you, it's Szymon's idea." Laughter drifted from the living room. Marta recognized Paweł's voice before she saw him. That alone was enough to make her consider turning around and going back to the car. Klara must have read something in her expression. "You knew who'd be here." "I knew who you'd invited. I didn't know who would actually come." "Everyone came." Of course they had. Ten years of silence, and then one message from Klara. Saturday. One night. All seven of us. No partners. No children. We finally need to talk about what happened back then. Marta had read it at the office between two meetings and had been unable to focus on a single document for the next hour. She never replied to the final sentence. She wrote only: I'll be there. The other six were waiting in the living room. Paweł was the first to raise his glass. "Well, look who it is. Our runaway." "I didn't run," Marta said. "You left Warsaw three weeks later and spent a decade not answering my calls." "That's not the same thing." "Feels pretty similar from the other end of the phone." Natalia interrupted them, walking up to Marta with an overly broad smile. Behind her sat Michał, Olga, Wiktor and Adrian. Some greeted Marta warmly, others with the cautious politeness of people unsure whether the old rules still applied after ten years apart. Seven. Marta counted them too. Klara remained by the entrance. "Szymon will join us later. He's still on a call." "I thought tonight was supposed to be work-free," Adrian said. "For us." "And the host?" Klara hesitated a fraction too long. "For him too. As soon as he's done." Marta sat at the far end of the sofa. On the coffee table stood seven wine glasses, seven water glasses and a small wooden box. "Phones," Klara explained. "That was the condition." "Whose?" Olga asked. "Mine." "That wasn't in the invitation." "Because half of you would have found an excuse." Paweł let out a short laugh. No one joined him. Klara opened the box. "One night. No phones. No walking out of the conversation because of an email, a child, a client or a headache. Tomorrow morning everyone goes back to their own life." "And the cameras stay?" Marta asked. Klara looked at her. "The cameras stay." "So we're supposed to be honest in a house where everything is being recorded?" "Video only. No audio." "That makes an enormous difference." This time Michał spoke. "Marta, could we maybe spend the first five minutes not assuming somebody wants to murder us?" "I can try for three." A few people laughed. The tension eased for a moment. Marta took out her phone. The screen showed a single Wi-Fi bar, connected to ORLA_GUEST. Before she placed the device in the box, she noticed a notification. There was no sender. No number. Only a message displayed on the lock screen. DO NOT GIVE UP YOUR PHONE. Marta froze. The notification disappeared before she could open it. "Everything okay?" Klara asked. Marta looked up. Behind her friend, high in the corner of the living room, a small black camera made an almost imperceptible movement. The lens turned directly toward her. "Yes," she said. She switched off the phone. But she did not put it in the box. When no one was looking, she slipped it into the inside pocket of her coat. Eleven hours later, the police would secure recordings from all twenty-six cameras at Willa Orla. Every recording would be missing exactly the same stretch of time. From 23:47 to 00:04. Seventeen minutes. Long enough for one of the seven people to disappear. And short enough for the remaining six to start lying.

Chapter 1 - Seven Places at the Table - The Last Night Without Cameras - Seven Guests. Seventeen Minutes Without a Recording. One Disappearance.Chapter 1 - Seven Places at the TableMarta realized she had made a mistake only when Klara closed the wooden box of phones with a small metal latch. The sound was quiet, almost ridiculous in the spacious living room, yet everyone glanced toward it for a moment. Paweł raised his glass as if they were taking part in some strange toast. Natalia went back to watching the snow beginning to settle on the terrace. Michał asked Wiktor about the drive from Warsaw. Only Olga kept her eyes on Klara for several seconds, wearing the expression of someone who wanted to ask whether the box really needed to be locked. Marta was thinking about the phone in her coat pocket. And the message. DO NOT GIVE UP YOUR PHONE. She had not seen a number. She had not opened the notification. If someone asked whether she had really read those words, she could not even have proved to herself that it had not been an ordinary app notification displayed in a way that her tired mind had completed for her. Except she remembered the sentence perfectly. "The rooms are upstairs," Klara said. "Marta, yours is the last one on the left. I left towels in there." "Wine first," Paweł said. "Not everyone came here to drink." "That already sounds like an accusation." "Everything sounds like an accusation to you." He laughed. Klara did not. Marta picked up her suitcase and headed upstairs, taking the first opportunity to disappear from their sight. The staircase ran alongside a tall wall of raw concrete. Low lights were set between the wooden steps, switching on one after another as she passed. On the landing, a camera watched the corridor. It was larger than those in the living room, housed in black casing and fitted with a small diode glowing a steady green. Marta stopped for a moment. The light did not blink. The camera did not move either. Even so, she had the impression the house responded to every step she took. The room was exactly where Klara had said it would be. Pale wood, a double bed, a simple armchair, an entire glass wall overlooking the lake. In winter it looked nothing like the photographs Marta had once seen online. It was neither turquoise nor calm. Wind drove black waves across its surface, and the far shore disappeared into darkness. She locked the door. Only then did she take the phone from her coat. There was no notification. She checked her messages, notification history, apps. Nothing. The Wi-Fi worked, though weakly. She tried opening the messenger. For several seconds the screen remained blank. Then a new message appeared. This time it stayed long enough for her to read it. 23:47. Nothing else. The sender was listed as Unknown. No number, no photo, no option to reply. Marta tapped the text field. The keyboard did not open. She took a screenshot. The phone vibrated. Another message. DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED AT 23:47? Marta sat on the edge of the bed. For several seconds she stared at the numbers and tried to force herself to think about something else. The time. Tonight. This house. Not August ten years ago. Not the wet road. Not the door of Paweł's old Volvo that would not close properly. Not Daniel's pale shirt clinging to his back. She swiped across the screen and took another screenshot. The message vanished. The image remained. That was enough. She slipped the phone into an inside pocket of her bag and began unpacking with exaggerated precision. Toiletry bag into the bathroom. Charger onto the bedside table. Sweater over the armchair. Toothbrush. Pajamas. A book she probably would not open. She needed to keep moving. When she had left Warsaw ten years earlier, she had begun by packing too. That time it had taken two hours. Her entire life fit into three boxes, a suitcase and several bags of clothes. She had not told Paweł. She had not told Klara. She had not answered Natalia's call. Wiktor had sent one message. I understand. Only Olga had never tried to contact her at all. For years, Marta had considered that a courtesy. A knock at the door froze her with one hand resting on the suitcase lock. "Marta?" Paweł. Of course. "One second." He did not answer. When she opened the door, he was leaning against the frame with two glasses in his hands. "Whisky." "I don't drink whisky." "You used to." "I also used to be a student, sleep four hours a night and think you were interesting." "Hard to argue with evidence that strong." He held out the glass. She did not take it. Paweł walked in without being invited and set one of the glasses on the table. "You still do the same thing." "What?" "Pretend that if you're unpleasant enough, no one will notice you're scared." Marta closed the door. "Get out." "I didn't come here to fight." "Great. Then leave peacefully." "Did Klara tell you why she brought us here?" "She wrote that she wanted to talk." "I know that much." Paweł walked over to the window. In ten years, a little gray had appeared at his temples, but otherwise he looked almost the same as he had back then. Slightly thinner. Better dressed. More self-assured in the way Marta had always found most dangerous - as though age had taught him how to hide uncertainty rather than get rid of it. "Did you get anything?" she asked. He turned. "What?" "Before you came. A message. An email. Anything strange." He shook his head too quickly. Marta looked at him without speaking. "No," he said after a moment. "Did you?" "No." A brief smile crossed his face. "Ten years, and we can still lie to each other within the first thirty seconds of a conversation." "It wasn't thirty seconds." "Technically, you're right." "Why did you come?" Paweł stopped smiling. "Because Klara called me." "She only texted me." "She called me." "What did she say?" "That someone knows." Marta's throat went dry. "Exactly what?" "That." "Excellent. Very precise." "She wouldn't say more over the phone." "And you didn't ask?" "I asked." Paweł picked up his whisky but did not drink. "She said if I wanted to find out, I had to come." "And you came." "So did you." Marta looked toward the door. "Paweł." "Yes?" "What time is it?" He frowned and glanced at his watch. "Seven forty-two." Marta nodded. "Nothing." "Why did you ask?" "No reason." "You've gotten worse at lying." "You never got good at it." For a moment they stood facing each other like two people who knew every weak point the other possessed but had gone years without practicing how to use them. Paweł spoke more quietly. "I didn't know you'd leave back then." "Neither did I." "You could at least have told me." "And you could have done a lot of things." His face hardened. "We all could have." Marta looked away. That was the worst thing about coming back to them. Not that they remembered. That every one of them remembered differently. "Are you coming downstairs?" he asked. "In a minute." "Klara wants dinner at eight." "Let her start." Paweł had almost reached the door when he stopped with his hand on the handle. "Marta." "What?" "Szymon doesn't know." She looked up. "About what?" "Daniel." She said nothing. "At least that's what Klara claims." "She told you that?" "A year ago. It came up in another conversation." "And you believed her?" "I don't know." Paweł opened the door. "But if he really doesn't know, I'd like it to stay that way." Marta watched him until he disappeared down the corridor. Then she closed the door and reached for her phone. A third message was waiting on the screen. PAWEŁ IS LYING. This time the sender had attached a photograph. Marta enlarged it with two fingers. It was dark and blurred, taken through a car window. She recognized the place immediately anyway. The gas station on the old road toward Serock. The date in the bottom corner showed August ten years earlier. In the photograph, Paweł stood beside a fuel pump. Daniel was next to him. The picture had been taken at 23:31. Sixteen minutes before the time in the message. Marta sat down. According to the version they had all repeated for the last decade, Daniel had left their house by the Narew more than an hour earlier. Alone. On foot. And none of them had ever seen him again. Dinner was supposed to begin with roasted celery soup. Instead, it began with Olga asking a question. "Where's Szymon?" Klara was straightening the napkins on the table. It was the third time she had done it, though every one of them already lay perfectly aligned. "I told you. He's working." "On a Saturday night, when you've invited people you haven't seen in ten years?" "I didn't invite him." "He lives here." "It's a weekend house." "It's still his house." Klara put the napkin down. "Olga, if you have something to say, say it." "I do. It's strange." Adrian sat beside her, watching the exchange with the expression of a man who would have happily ordered popcorn. "We could establish a rule," he suggested. "Everyone gets to say something is strange once an hour. After that you have to be specific." "You're strange," Natalia said. "You've used your allowance." Michał sighed. "It's been twelve minutes and we already sound like a high-school field trip." "We didn't go to high school together," Wiktor pointed out. "Exactly." Marta sat opposite Paweł. Since coming back downstairs, she had not looked him directly in the eye. Eight places had been set at the table. Seven occupied by the guests and one for Klara. There was no ninth setting for Szymon. "Actually," Marta said, "since we're discussing strange things, who chooses a house with twenty-six cameras for a meeting where everyone has to surrender their phones?" Wiktor looked toward the nearest lens. "Twenty-six?" "Give me time and I'll find a few more." Klara poured herself water. "There are twenty-four." Marta leaned back in her chair. "Good to know." "Two on the driveway are dummies. Szymon was testing a different setup there and the housings were left behind." "That is an extremely normal sentence," Adrian said. "Szymon's company designs security systems," Klara explained. "The house is partly a demonstration site." "Demonstration site?" Natalia repeated. "Clients come here to see the systems in use." Marta lifted her wine glass but did not drink. "So you don't just record us. You put us on display." "The video is stored locally. There isn't someone sitting somewhere else watching." "How do you know?" Klara looked at her. "Because I know my own house." Marta thought of the camera in the living room turning toward her at the exact moment she had hidden the phone. She said nothing. For the first fifteen minutes or so of dinner, they managed to talk like people meeting after a long absence who were pretending the absence had been the only problem. Natalia told them about her divorce, but only the parts that could be made funny. Michał talked about his daughter and reached for his phone before remembering he could not show them a photograph. Adrian claimed he had sold his company at the perfect moment, though Olga immediately pointed out that its value had doubled three months later. Wiktor said little. Paweł joked enough for all of them. Marta almost began to believe Klara had really wanted nothing more than a reunion. Almost. At half past eight the lights dimmed briefly. Less than a second. Klara looked up. So did Wiktor. "Generator?" he asked. "The system stabilized the voltage." "I didn't ask whether it worked. I asked whether you have a generator." "We do." "Because it's starting to come down pretty hard outside." Adrian turned toward the window. The snowfall was thickening, erasing the trees from view. "The forecast said it wasn't supposed to snow until tonight." "It is tonight," Olga pointed out. "It's eight thirty." "In December, that's night." Klara began collecting plates. Marta helped without being asked. Once they were alone in the kitchen, Klara closed the dishwasher and rested both hands on the counter. "You don't have to follow me around." "I'm helping." "You never liked helping in kitchens." "People change." "Not that much." Marta put the cutlery down. "Paweł told me someone knows." Klara froze. "He wasn't supposed to do that." "Apparently he's stopped following instructions." "That's nothing new." "What does 'someone knows' mean?" Klara glanced through the open passage toward the dining room. The others were still sitting at the table. "Later." "No." "Marta." "I drove four hundred kilometers because you wrote that we had to talk about that night. Now Paweł says someone knows. You started by taking away our phones, and this place looks like a surveillance center. There is no 'later.'" Klara rubbed her temple. "Three weeks ago I received an envelope." "From whom?" "I don't know." "What was inside?" "A photograph." Something tightened in Marta's stomach. "Of what?" "Daniel." "Where?" "At the gas station." Klara met her eyes. That was enough. "The same photograph?" Marta asked. Now Klara went pale. "What do you mean, the same photograph?" Marta realized her mistake one second too late. "I saw a similar one once." "Where?" "I don't remember." "Marta." "You said you got an envelope. What else was inside?" Something passed across Klara's face, caught between anger and fear. "A card." "With what on it?" Klara did not answer for a moment. "A time." Marta already knew. She asked anyway. "What time?" "23:47." Paweł's laughter drifted in from the living room. Marta turned her head toward him. "Who else knows?" "About the envelope? Just me." "Szymon?" "No." "Paweł said you called him." "I only told him someone had started digging." "Why him?" Klara lowered her eyes. "Because it was his car in the photograph." Marta looked toward Paweł again. This time he was looking directly at her. As though he knew exactly what they were talking about. "At eleven," Klara said, "I'm going to show everyone what I received. Then each of you is going to tell me exactly what you remember from that night." "Why eleven?" "Because I want Szymon gone." "Where?" "To Warsaw." "You said he was working." "He is." "Here or in Warsaw?" Klara clenched her jaw. Marta felt that she had touched something her friend had never intended to reveal. "Klara." "Not now." "Is he even here?" For several seconds neither woman moved. Then a man's voice came from beyond the door leading into the corridor. "I am." Marta turned. Szymon Radecki was standing in the kitchen doorway. Tall, slim, dressed in a black turtleneck and dark trousers. Marta had only seen him in photographs before. In every one of them he had looked gentler. In person, the first thing she noticed was his eyes. He was not looking at Klara. He was looking at Marta. "And I was just about to ask," he said, "why one of you hid a phone."

Chapter 2 - Seventeen Minutes - The Last Night Without Cameras - Seven Guests. Seventeen Minutes Without a Recording. One Disappearance.Chapter 2 - Seventeen MinutesSilence fell over the dining room before anyone had time to pretend Szymon's question did not matter. Klara was the first to leave the kitchen. "What are you talking about?" "A device connected to the guest network." "We have several devices." "One that shouldn't be there." Szymon walked past Marta and stopped at the end of the table. He did not raise his voice. That was precisely why everyone immediately gave him their full attention. Paweł pushed his glass away. "You have a system that counts phones?" "The system sees devices connected to the network." "Very romantic house." "It isn't a feature designed for guests." "But it works on guests." Klara gripped the back of a chair. "Szymon, let it go." He looked at her for the first time. "You asked me to check that everything was working." "The cameras. Not the people." "The network is part of the system." Marta knew that if she took out the phone now, every eye would turn toward her. She also knew refusing would change nothing. Szymon had not named anyone, but in a house full of cameras it could not have been difficult to work out who had used a device after leaving the living room. "It's mine," she said. Paweł closed his eyes for a second. Olga turned toward Marta. "I thought we all handed ours over." "I didn't." "Why?" "Because I didn't want to." "That's not an answer." "It is. You just don't like it." Klara stared at her as though she had only now remembered the conversation in the kitchen and the photograph Marta knew too much about. "Show me the phone," she said. "No." "Marta." "I'm not handing over my private device for inspection by your husband." Szymon raised one hand. "I don't want to see it." "Excellent." "I only want to know why someone is breaking one simple rule five minutes after arriving." Adrian gave a short snort. "This is fascinating. Truly. You invite people here after ten years, confiscate their phones, record every corridor, and then you're surprised someone has an issue with the rules." "No one forced you to come," Klara said. "Not yet." Natalia straightened in her chair. "Can we stop? Whatever Klara wants to tell us, let her say it now. Then we can stop playing this game." Klara glanced at the clock. "No." "Why not?" "Because I said eleven." "That makes no sense." "It does to me." Wiktor, who had been silent until then, asked, "Szymon, are you really leaving?" "Yes." Klara answered too quickly. "In a minute." Szymon said nothing. Marta watched them with the growing conviction that the guests were not the only ones who had brought secrets into this house. "Then maybe we can start with the simplest question," Michał said. "Why are we here?" Klara turned away from her husband. "I told you." "No. You wrote half a sentence." "And yet all of you came." "That's not an answer." "True," Olga said. "We all came. That probably says more about us than it does about you." Paweł poured himself more wine. "Could someone please stop talking like a therapist?" "Not until you stop acting like a patient." Adrian smiled to himself. Paweł looked at him. "What?" "Nothing." "Then why are you smiling?" "Because the world changed in ten years and you didn't." "You learned to buy more expensive watches." "And choose better company." "Apparently not every time." Klara struck the table with her palm. Not hard. Hard enough. "Enough." Silence returned. Marta thought that if the point of the evening had been to recreate the atmosphere from ten years earlier, they had managed it faster than anyone could have predicted. Back then it had started with Paweł and Adrian too. Only Daniel had tried to calm them down. Szymon checked his watch. "I'm leaving." Klara crossed the room to him immediately. "Wait." "We agreed." "Five minutes." "Klara." "Please." For the first time that evening, Marta heard something in her voice that could not be mistaken for irritation. Fear. Szymon must have heard it too, because his expression softened. "All right." They went together toward the study near the entrance. The door closed behind them. Natalia exhaled. "Am I the only one who wants to just get out of here?" "No," Olga said. "The snow's getting worse," Wiktor pointed out. "Cars work in snow." "Snow isn't the problem on that road. The last two kilometers aren't plowed. If it keeps coming down like this for another two hours, it'll be bad." Michał looked up. "Are you serious?" "I have four-wheel drive and nearly spun out a kilometer before the gate." Adrian shrugged. "They'll clear it in the morning." Marta watched Paweł. He had not said a word since she admitted having the phone. When the others started discussing the road, she leaned toward him. "The gas station." He did not move. "What?" "The photograph. You and Daniel. Twenty-three thirty-one." His fingers went still around the stem of his glass. "Not here." "So you remember." "I said not here." "You told us the last time you saw him was at the house." "Marta." "That's what all of us said." Paweł glanced at the others. No one was paying attention to them. "Where did you get the photograph?" "That doesn't matter." "It does." "I got it today." His expression changed instantly. "From Klara?" "No." "Who?" "I don't know." Paweł leaned closer. "Show me." "First tell me what you were doing with Daniel at the gas station." "I'm not discussing that at the table." "It's been ten years." "Exactly." "Klara got the same photograph." Paweł went rigid. Marta continued. "She told me in the kitchen. An envelope, the photograph, and 23:47." "She told you?" "Yes." "She hasn't shown anyone?" "Not yet." Paweł looked around again. "So someone sent it to her, then to you." "Yes." "When?" "About fifteen minutes ago." "That means whoever sent it knows you're here." Marta said nothing. Paweł looked at the camera in the corner of the dining room. "Or they're here too." The study door opened. Szymon came out first. He was wearing a jacket and holding his keys. Klara remained in the doorway. "I'll be back late," he said. "You don't have to come back." "We'll see." He looked at the guests. "The weather's getting worse. If anyone wants to leave tonight, I suggest doing it now." Adrian raised a hand. "We don't have our phones." Szymon looked at the wooden box. "Klara can give them back." "She won't," Klara said. Her husband looked at her for a long moment. "This isn't a prison." "No one said it was." "Yet," Adrian repeated. Klara ignored him. Szymon walked over to Marta. "Your phone can stay." She had not expected that. "Thank you for the permission." "It's not about permission. If you're going to use the network, do it knowingly." "What does that mean?" "The system logs when devices connect to access points. Not content, but location." An unpleasant chill ran through Marta. "Location inside the house?" "To within a few meters." Paweł looked at him. "Why would anyone need that?" "In this house? Testing." "Is everything here for testing?" Szymon smiled without amusement. "No." When he walked away, Marta noticed that Klara did not kiss him goodbye. The front door closed. A moment later headlights moved across the windows. Szymon's car lights swept through the garden, illuminating the snowbanks before disappearing behind the trees. Klara went over to the bar. "Anyone want a drink?" "Looks like you do," Natalia said. Klara poured herself gin. "That too." There was almost an hour and a half left until eleven. Marta could not tell whether Klara was deliberately delaying the conversation or whether she simply could not bring herself to begin it. They moved into the living room. The gas fire burned behind the glass. Outside, snow was falling almost horizontally. Soft music played from the speakers in the ceiling, though no one seemed to know who had turned it on. They talked about everything except Daniel. Wiktor told them about moving to Gdańsk. Natalia admitted she had been seeing someone for a year but had not yet wanted to introduce him to her children. Michał drank more than before and became talkative. Olga barely drank. Adrian switched to water after two glasses. Paweł disappeared for more than ten minutes. Marta noticed first. Not because she was watching him. Because the empty place opposite her looked like a gap in the picture. "Where's Paweł?" she asked. Natalia shrugged. "Bathroom?" "For fifteen minutes?" "Maybe he has bowel problems. Ten years is a long time." Olga looked up from her glass. "He went upstairs." "Do you know where?" "I saw him by the stairs." Marta got up. "I'll be right back." "Keeping tabs on him?" Adrian asked. "Yes. I have a schedule." The corridor was cooler. Marta passed the camera by the stairs and went up. The door to her room was still closed. Paweł's room was probably on the opposite side, but she could not see him anywhere. Then she heard a sound at the far end of the corridor. Metal against metal. She moved toward it. Paweł was standing beside a door marked with a small plaque: TECHNICAL. "What are you doing?" He turned sharply. "Nothing." "You're getting worse at lying." "I was looking for the bathroom." "Behind a locked technical door." "It's a big house." Marta came closer. "What's in there?" "I don't know. It's locked." "You tried to get in?" "Are you following me?" "There are seven people in the living room and one of them disappears for fifteen minutes. After what I received, I've started counting." Paweł looked toward the camera above the stairs. "Not here." "You keep saying that." "Because there are microphones everywhere." "Klara says the cameras don't record sound." "Klara says a lot of things." Marta studied him. "Do you know something about this house?" "No." "About Szymon?" "What everyone knows." "Which is?" "Security company. Money. Klara met him five years ago. They married two years later." "How do you know when they met?" "Facebook exists." "Says the man who supposedly doesn't check other people's profiles." Paweł did not answer. Marta pointed at the technical door. "What were you looking for?" "The recordings." "The cameras?" "Yes." "Why?" He leaned closer. "Because if someone is sending you photographs in real time and the only person who knows where we are is Klara, it might be worth finding out who's really watching this house." "Szymon just left." "The system didn't." "You think it's him?" "I think someone deliberately got all of us into the same place." "Klara." "Maybe." Natalia's voice came from downstairs. "Hey! Come down!" Marta and Paweł looked at each other. "What?" Paweł called. "It's eleven!" Klara was waiting in the living room beside the table. A white envelope lay in front of her. Marta recognized it immediately even though she had never seen it before. Ordinary size. No stamp. No return address. Beside the envelope, Klara placed a photograph. The same one Marta had on her phone. Paweł and Daniel beside the fuel pump. 23:31. "I received this three weeks ago," Klara said. No one joked. "Was there anything else?" Olga asked. Klara took a rectangular piece of paper from the envelope. She placed it beside the photograph. In the center, printed in large type, were four digits: 23:47 Natalia covered her mouth. Michał moved back from the table. Wiktor stared at Paweł. "What is that?" Adrian asked. No one answered. "Seriously?" He looked from face to face. "Am I supposed to pretend everyone else understands?" Olga spoke quietly. "Not all of us were on the road that night." Marta turned toward her. "What?" Olga fell silent immediately. "Say that again," Paweł said. "Nothing." "You said not all of us were on the road." "I phrased it badly." "No. You phrased it very clearly." Natalia stood. "I don't want to do this." Klara stepped into her path. "This is exactly why we're here." "No. It's why you're here. I came because you wrote that someone might try to put the blame on us." Marta looked at Klara. "You didn't write that to me." Natalia realized her mistake too late. "You told everyone something different?" Michał asked. Klara did not answer. Adrian gave a short laugh. "Unbelievable." "I wanted all of you to come." "So you manipulated us." "Yes." The honesty shut him up. Wiktor pointed toward the photograph. "Paweł, why are you in a picture with Daniel if we told the police he'd left earlier?" Paweł stared at the photograph. "Because I drove him to the gas station." Marta felt something inside her sink. Not shock. More like the final remnant of hope that the photograph had some simple explanation. "Just the two of you?" she asked. Paweł nodded. "He wanted cigarettes." "He didn't smoke," Natalia said. "He did that night." "Why?" "How should I know?" Marta sat opposite him. "Did he come back with you?" Paweł did not answer immediately. "Yes." "To the house?" "To the junction." "What junction?" "By the forest." Michał went pale. "Why would he get out a kilometer from the house?" "Because we argued." "About what?" Paweł looked at Marta. She already knew. Not the details. The subject. "Me," she said. Natalia turned her head away. Adrian swore under his breath. Klara lowered her gaze. Paweł confirmed it. "About Marta." "What did Daniel have to do with Marta?" Wiktor asked. Marta could feel Paweł waiting for her to decide whether to say it. She decided. "He knew about us." "About you two?" "Paweł and I were together." Michał frowned. "We knew that." "Not then." "What?" "Paweł was with Klara then." The silence was immediate. Szymon doesn't know about Daniel. Only now did Marta think of the sentence again. Maybe Daniel was not what Klara most wanted to keep from her husband. Klara stared into the fire. "It was a long time ago." "Not for Daniel," Olga said. Every head turned toward her. Olga had once again said one sentence too many. "What is that supposed to mean?" Klara asked. "Nothing." "That's the second time you've said 'nothing.'" "Because I don't want to dig through things that have nothing to do with this." "Everything has to do with this," Paweł said. Then the lights went out. They did not flicker as they had before. They went out completely. The music cut off in the middle of a note. The gas fire died a second later. The house sank into darkness. Natalia screamed. Someone knocked over a glass. "Stay calm," Wiktor said. "The generator should kick in." Marta reached for her pocket. The phone. Its screen lit her face. 23:47. For one second no one spoke. Then Paweł swore. "Marta," Klara said. "You have your phone?" "Yes." "Give us some light." Marta switched on the flashlight. A circle of white light moved across the living room. Klara. Natalia. Michał. Olga. Wiktor. Adrian. Paweł. Everyone. "The generator should come on after five seconds," Klara said. More time than that had already passed. "Where are the controls?" Wiktor asked. "Technical room upstairs." Paweł looked at Marta. "Locked." "I have the key," Klara said. She started toward the stairs. Marta caught her by the arm. "We don't split up." Klara looked at her. "I need to get the power back on." "We all go." Adrian scoffed. "This is ridiculous." Marta's phone vibrated. She did not want to look. She looked anyway. NEW MESSAGE. This time the text was shorter. NO ONE LEAVES. "What is it?" Paweł asked. Marta turned off the screen. "Nothing." "Marta." "Later." Klara pulled her arm free. "I'm getting sick of 'later.'" They went upstairs together. In the darkness, the house felt larger. The flashlight on Marta's phone picked pieces out of the blackness - walls, stairs, faces. The cameras were dead. Their green indicators had gone dark. At the technical door Klara took out a ring of keys. "Where did you get that?" Paweł asked. "It's my house." "A moment ago it wasn't." Klara unlocked the door. Inside was a small server room. Equipment racks, power modules, a screen mounted on the wall. Everything was dark. Wiktor went in first. "The generator isn't running." "I can see that," Klara said. "The question is why." "Maybe the snow." "The generator's in the garage." "I don't know anything about this." "I know a little." Marta shone the flashlight toward the screen. For a moment a faint glow appeared. 23:48. Then it died. "The UPS is down too," Wiktor said. "Those two things shouldn't fail at the same time." "What does that mean?" Natalia asked. "Either your system is very badly designed, or somebody shut it down." Klara took out her own phone. "I'll call Szymon." No signal. The Wi-Fi was gone too. Marta checked her device. Nothing. "There might be one bar outside," Michał said. "We're not going outside," Marta replied. Adrian looked at her. "Why?" She could not tell them about the message without revealing everything else. "Because it's dark, it's snowing and we don't know what happened." "So you're the only person with a phone and suddenly you make the rules?" "If you want to go alone, go." "Maybe I will." "Adrian," Olga said. "Stay." That worked better than anything Marta could have said. Adrian stepped back from the door. Two minutes passed. Then three. Wiktor tried to start the emergency panel. Klara held her phone out as a light. The others stood in the corridor. Marta looked at Paweł. "What happened at 23:47 ten years ago?" Paweł shook his head. "Not now." "Right now it is exactly the same time." "I know." "So what happened?" For a moment she thought he would refuse again. "I stopped the car." "Where?" "On that side road." "With Daniel?" "Yes." "What happened next?" "He got out." "And?" "He was shouting." "About what?" "Everything." "Paweł." "He said he was going to tell Klara about us. Tell everyone." Cold spread across the back of Marta's neck. "I knew that." "Not everything." "What else?" Paweł stared down the dark corridor. "He had something." "What?" "A recording." A sharp crack came from the server room. The lights came on without warning. Marta squeezed her eyes shut against the brightness. Power was back. First the ceiling lamps. Then the staircase lights. A moment later the green camera indicators came alive. The music did not return. "We've got it," Wiktor said. Marta looked at her phone. 00:04. Seventeen minutes. Exactly. No one said it aloud. Not yet. They went back downstairs. Klara headed straight for the table. She stopped halfway across the room. "Where's the photograph?" The envelope was where they had left it. The card with the time was there too. The photograph was gone. "Someone took it," Natalia said. "It was here," Klara replied. "We were all upstairs." "Not all of us the whole time," Olga said. Marta looked at the group. Something was wrong. Not the photograph. The number. Klara. Natalia. Michał. Olga. Wiktor. Adrian. Marta. She counted again. "Paweł?" No one answered. Adrian turned toward the corridor. "Probably the bathroom." Marta was already moving. "Paweł!" Ground floor. Empty. Kitchen. Empty. Study. Door open. Paweł did not answer. She ran upstairs. "Paweł!" His bedroom door was open. The suitcase lay on the bed. His jacket hung over the chair. His shoes stood beside the door. Marta checked the bathroom. No one. When she returned to the corridor, Klara and the others were already behind her. "The car," Wiktor said. They went back downstairs. Through the glass in the hall, they could see the driveway. Paweł's car stood exactly where it had before. Covered in fresh snow. Marta went to the camera panel near the study. The screen was working again. In small rectangular windows she could see the living room, the hall, the upstairs corridor, the terrace, the garage and the driveway. "Go back," she told Klara. "I don't know how." "Szymon never showed you?" "I know the live view. He handles the archive." Wiktor came closer. "I'll try." A few taps brought up a timeline. 23:46. Video. Marta, Paweł, the others in the living room. 23:47. Black. 00:04. The picture returned. The corridor was empty. The driveway was empty except for the cars. The terrace was empty. The gate was closed. Klara moved to the next camera. The same. Another. The same. "All of them?" Natalia asked. Wiktor opened the combined view. "Looks like it." "Seventeen minutes," Olga said. No one in the room moved. Marta stared at the black space between two fragments of recorded time. 23:47. 00:04. The phone in her hand vibrated. The Wi-Fi was back. A message appeared on the screen. For several seconds she did not open it. Then she swiped. There was only one sentence. NOW THERE ARE SIX OF YOU.