Chapter 6: Surface Tension

Maya had expected to find Viktor alone in the library basement, hunched over his laptop in some forgotten corner between the genealogy section and old city records. What she hadn’t expected was to find him standing perfectly still in the middle of Elena’s research sanctuary, staring at a wall covered in photographs and charts like he was reading code.

“You came,” Elena said from behind a desk piled with journals and manila folders. “Good. We need someone who understands systems.”

The basement felt different than it had two hours ago. Warmer, somehow, with a subtle vibration in the air that made Maya’s skin aware of itself. Elena had transformed the space into something between a historian’s study and a fortune teller’s den—maps pinned to exposed brick walls, timelines drawn in colored ink, photographs from different decades arranged in careful patterns.

“The power grid failures aren’t random,” Viktor said without turning around. His voice had that flat quality it always took on when he was processing information faster than he could explain it. “But they’re also not following any infrastructure logic I understand.”

“Because they’re not following infrastructure logic,” Elena replied, pulling out a leather-bound journal. “They’re following this.”

She opened the journal to a page covered in precise handwriting and handed it to Maya. The date at the top read March 15, 1923.

The mills went dark again today. Third time this month. Mr. Patterson says it’s the old wiring, but I know better. It’s the same pattern Grandmother told me about from her time—power fails along the old ways, the deep roads that run under everything we built on top.

Maya looked up. “Whose journal is this?”

“My great-grandmother’s. She worked the textile mills when they were still running. But look at this.” Elena flipped through several pages to find another entry. “April 2nd, 1923. The singing started again last night. Coming up through the floor boards. Sarah Mills heard it too, says it makes her body remember things she never learned. Some of the girls have been having the strangest dreams.”

Viktor finally turned around. “Singing?”

“The humming,” Maya said immediately. “That’s what we’ve been hearing.”

Elena nodded. “Every major technological transition. 1871, when the first electrical systems were being installed. 1923, during the expansion of the power grid. 1967, when computers started networking. And now.”

She pulled out a map of New England with red dots marked at various points, connected by lines that looked nothing like highways or power cables.

“These are the failure points from each decade. They follow geological formations that predate human settlement by thousands of years. But there’s something else.”

Elena opened another journal, this one more recent. “My research on families who experienced… contact… during previous events. The Patels. The Blackwoods. The Nakamuras. The Riversongs. All of them have stories passed down through generations about people from underneath the city who appeared during times of change.”

Maya felt something cold settle in her stomach. “People from underneath.”

“Not people exactly,” Elena continued. “More like… what people could be. What we were before we forgot how to listen to ourselves instead of the noise.”

Viktor’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, frowning at the screen. “Text from an unknown number. Just says ‘building basement, come alone.’”

“That’s not from me,” Elena said.

“I got the same message an hour ago,” Viktor said. “It’s what made me come here.”

Maya was about to respond when she heard footsteps on the basement stairs—light, quick steps that didn’t match Elena’s careful movements or Viktor’s measured pace.

“Maya? Are you down there?” Priya’s voice, breathless like she’d been running.

“Here,” Maya called back.

Priya appeared around the corner, still wearing paint-stained clothes, her dark hair messy and her eyes bright with an energy that seemed to take up more space than her small frame should have been able to contain.

“The painting,” she said without preamble. “I finished it, and it’s… God, you have to see what I painted. I don’t remember painting it, but it’s perfect, and I know that place like I’ve been there a hundred times.”

She stopped talking abruptly when she noticed Viktor. Not the way people usually noticed him—with mild recognition followed by discomfort when he didn’t perform the expected social pleasantries. This was different. Priya looked at Viktor like she was seeing something interesting for the first time.

“You’re the systems guy,” she said. “The one who disappeared after announcing the grid failure.”

“Viktor,” he said, his voice careful.

“Priya.” She smiled, and there was something in that smile that made Viktor take a half-step backward. “You know, I’ve been having the most vivid dreams about underground spaces. Caverns with flowing lights. People who move like they’re dancing with gravity instead of fighting it.”

Elena looked between them with the expression of someone watching a chemical reaction she couldn’t predict. “Priya, your grandfather mentioned your family has old stories—”

“Dada knows what’s happening,” Priya interrupted, but she was still looking at Viktor. “He’s been waiting for this for sixty years. Says the bridge-walkers always know when it’s time.”

Viktor’s analytical mind was trying to process the way Priya’s presence seemed to change the electromagnetic field of the room, but his body was responding to something else entirely. The way she stood with unconscious confidence, the way her attention felt both casual and intensely focused.

“Bridge-walkers?” Maya asked.

“Families who maintain the old knowledge,” Elena answered. “Who remember that the underground isn’t a place—it’s a way of being. Living according to your authentic design instead of the conditioning that keeps us separate from our real nature.”

Priya moved closer to Viktor, close enough that he could smell paint and something else—something like ozone after lightning.

“You feel it too, don’t you?” she said quietly. “The frequency changes. The way reality is getting… more flexible.”

Viktor found himself nodding before his mind could engage its usual protective protocols.

“I dream about data that looks like music,” he admitted. “Harmonic progressions in electromagnetic noise. Mathematical relationships that feel alive.”

“Exactly.” Priya’s smile widened. “It’s like the boundary between inside and outside is dissolving. Between what we think we know and what we actually remember.”

Maya watched this exchange with growing fascination and slight concern. There was an energy building between Viktor and Priya that felt both magnetic and unstable, like two systems trying to synchronize without quite finding the right frequency.

The humming started again, rising from somewhere beneath the basement floor. This time it was more complex, layered with harmonics that seemed to bypass hearing entirely and speak directly to the nervous system.

All four of them felt it. Elena’s hands stilled on her journals. Maya’s organizing mind went quiet for the first time in hours. Viktor’s analytical defenses dropped long enough for him to feel the pattern behind the sound—not random vibration but structured information, communication from something vast and patient and deeply familiar.

Priya closed her eyes and swayed slightly, as if the humming was moving through her body in waves.

“They’re not trying to contact us,” she said dreamily. “We’re trying to remember them. We’re trying to remember what we were before we got afraid of our own power.”

When she opened her eyes, they were looking directly at Viktor with an intensity that made him simultaneously want to step closer and run for the surface.

“Want to find out what we’re remembering?” she asked.

Viktor hesitated for exactly three seconds—long enough for his mind to list seventeen reasons why following a 22-year-old art student deeper into whatever was happening was a terrible idea.

Then he nodded.

Maya looked at Elena, who was watching the interaction with the expression of a librarian who had just watched two volatile books decide to read each other.

“Well,” Elena said mildly. “This should be interesting.”

The humming grew stronger, and somewhere above them, another section of the power grid failed with the precision of a system that was finally ready to transform into something entirely new.