Young writer Alexey Danilov receives an order from a publisher to write a crime-mystery novel. Inspired by promises of wealth and fame, Alexey shuts himself in his apartment and gets to work. And then incomprehensible, strange, frightening events begin to happen to him. An answering machine transmits messages from a long-dead person... The tree under his window spontaneously lights up... Maybe it’s his wild creative imagination playing pranks? But why then is someone under real surveillance of Alexei’s apartment? And why, finally, is the most mysterious and classified Russian intelligence service beginning to take a close interest in the writer?..