Chapter 4: The Dawn Line

My phone went off at 7:23 on Sunday morning, a long ugly buzz that dragged me out of sleep.

DAWN BAND ALERT: MORVATH, CYRUS. Outdoors. Sunrise in 15 minutes.

I was in the car by 7:25.

Lakewood to Detroit Avenue took fifteen minutes with no traffic, and I did it in six.

The sky was pale grey, with a stripe of pink at the bottom.

The band's dot was on the roof of the bank.

I ran up the front steps and hit the steel door with my fist.

Then I remembered the emergency key card on my lanyard, and I swiped it.

The door let me in.

The lobby was dark.

I took the back stairs two at a time, four flights.

At the top was a metal door with a sign that said ROOF ACCESS.

I pushed it open with my shoulder.

The air was freezing.

Cyrus was sitting at the edge of the flat roof with his back to me, his coat open, looking at the sky over the lake.

"Cyrus!"

He turned his head very slowly.

"Ms. Novak. Good morning."

"It's eight minutes past the dawn line."

"Is it?"

"You were supposed to be inside by seven-twenty-three."

"I know."

"You can't stay."

"I know that too," he said.

His voice was strange, soft and slow, as if he was talking from the bottom of a pool. "I only wanted to see one."

"One what?"

"A sunrise."

I stared at him.

"It's been a hundred and thirty years," he said. "I watch the pink part. Then I go in. I always go in."

He tried to stand, and his knees folded.

That was when I understood what the dawn did to him.

It wasn't the sun itself, not yet.

It was the light coming closer, and it drained him, heavy and slow.

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