A chill wind whipped her red curls into an even more unruly state than usual. This second week in November was cold, and it smelled like snow was on the way. But something was wrong, and Hannah stopped midway down the outside stairs from her second floor condo to figure out what it was.

There were no strange noises coming from any of the condos, and the smooth expanse of snow that had fallen during the night was unbroken by human footprints. All the doors and windows in her line of sight were intact, and she didn’t see any evidence of burglary or vandalism. Everything seemed to be perfectly normal, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

There was a faint cyan cast to the landscape, and the wood siding on the condos stood out in sharp relief. The scene reminded Hannah of an old sepia photograph she’d seen of her grandparents’ farm. The color was different. The shadows in the photograph were brown, but the shadows she saw now were bluish-black. They were different than anything she’d ever seen before.

Blue light. She thought about that for a moment. Was this some kind of natural phenomenon like a meteor shower, or a blue moon? Hannah hurried down the covered staircase and looked up at the sky. She didn’t see anything unusual in the heavens. The only difference between this morning and any other morning was the light. The sky was brighter in the east than it had ever been before.

A delighted laugh escaped Hannah’s lips. Her mirth took a visible form in the icy air, and the little cloud of vapor that formed reminded Hannah of the balloon above a cartoon character’s head. To carry the analogy even further, the balloon should be filled with a lightbulb to show that she’d figured out what was amiss. Of course things looked different this morning. She was accustomed to leaving her condo at five AM when it was pitch black. On this particular morning she was a full hour later than usual.

Hannah stepped carefully on the sidewalk between the buildings and took the stairs down to the garage. It was underground, stretching the length of her four-condo building and extending across to serve the four units in the building next door. Hannah hurried down the steps. She had to rush to meet Andrea on time, and as she reached the bottom step, she came very close to running into her downstairs neighbor, Phil Plotnik, who worked nights at DelRay Manufacturing.

“Whoa!” Phil said, reaching out to grab her arms. “What are you doing here this time of morning? Did you sleep late?”

“Not really. Lisa’s handling the baking this morning, and I’m meeting Andrea at the mall.”

“I thought the mall didn’t open until ten.”