The knock came at 7:47 PM, sharp and deliberate—three raps that seemed to carry their own weight. Maeve felt it before she heard it, a ripple in the immediate future that made her hand freeze over her calculus homework.
She opened the door to find a woman in her late forties, with red hair streaked with premature silver and eyes that looked exactly like her own. Not similar. Identical. The same unusual hazel-gold that Maeve had spent nineteen years being told was "striking" and "unique."
Hello, Maeve. My name is Dr. Kavita Sharma. I'm... I'm one of the five Sources. And I'm your biological mother.
The world tilted. Maeve gripped the doorframe, her precognitive sense suddenly white-noise static, overwhelmed by the cascade of possible futures branching from this single moment.
I... you're... (voice breaking) You're real. I thought the Sources were just code names, sanitized files in a classified database. I didn't think you were actual people who could just... show up.
Dr. Sharma stepped inside without waiting for invitation, glancing around the modest mobile home with an expression Maeve couldn't quite read—guilt? Nostalgia? Regret?
They told us you'd all be raised well. Comfortable homes, good education, loving families. (pause) They lied about that, didn't they? At least for some of you.
I had a good family. My adoptive parents were kind. They just... died when I was sixteen. Car accident. After that it was foster care, part-time jobs, survival mode. But I'm here now. I got the scholarship. I found Priya and Ji-woo. (voice hardening) Why are you here? Why now?
Because someone in the military wants to weaponize you. Not the ones you've been working with—General Winters, Commander Marsh, they're trying to protect you. But there's a faction, a shadow group within DoD that sees the peace treaty with the interdimensional beings as a missed opportunity. They want to use your abilities for surveillance, interrogation, assassination. And they're planning to start with abduction.
Ji-woo's location sense had been screaming for twenty minutes—a persistent wrongness centered on Maeve's trailer. When she and Priya burst through the door without knocking, they found Maeve sitting across from Dr. Sharma, both women crying quietly.
Okay, someone want to explain why my location sense went haywire? And who—(stops, staring at Dr. Sharma) Holy shit. You're Source Three. Precognition and probability manipulation. You're in all the files.
(sitting down heavily) And you came here to warn us. I can feel it. Not just warn—protect. There's another Source here too, isn't there? Nearby. Watching. Making sure this meeting happens safely.
Dr. Sharma nodded slowly, impressed despite the circumstances.
Source Five—telekinesis and force manipulation—is positioned outside. He's... let's call him our insurance policy. The five of us have been monitoring Project Constellation since before you were born. We didn't realize how fast your abilities would evolve, how much stronger you'd become when resonating together. That's attracted dangerous attention.
(wiping her eyes, voice steadier) Tell us everything. Who's coming for us? When? And how do we stop them?
The call went out at 3:47 AM, a mental alarm that jolted all thirty-seven members of Constellation awake simultaneously. Alex had sent it—not through phones or computers, but through the resonance network they'd built during training. A psychic 911.
They're moving tonight. Black ops team, twelve operatives, targeting Sarah Chen—Source One's daughter, probability manipulation—in Chicago. ETA two hours. Winters doesn't know. Official channels compromised.
Within twenty minutes, fourteen members of Constellation were on the road. Ji-woo riding shotgun with Maeve, her location sense locked onto Sarah Chen's apartment in Lincoln Park, tracking the assault team's approach like a radar system.
Priya sat in the back seat, eyes closed, her telepathic sense extended to its limit. She could feel the assault team's thoughts now—cold, professional, utterly convinced they were doing necessary work to protect national security.
(gripping the steering wheel) Ji, I need exact positions. Priya, can you confuse them? Make them think they're in the wrong location?
I can try, but twelve minds at once... that's going to hurt. I'll need the rest of the network to help amplify.
They're splitting up. Six at the front entrance, six at the fire escape. Sarah's on the fourth floor, southeast corner. She's awake—her location signature just spiked with adrenaline. She knows something's wrong.
Maeve felt her precognitive sense open up, showing her the next fifteen minutes in crystalline detail. Multiple timelines, multiple outcomes. In most of them, Sarah was taken. In a few, people died—either the assault team or members of Constellation. In exactly one timeline, they won without casualties.
(voice urgent) Everyone listen. We have one shot at this. Ji-woo, you need to guide Sarah to the roof, not down. Priya, focus on the fire escape team—make them think they're on the wrong building. Alex, get everyone else into position around the perimeter but do not engage. We're not here to fight. We're here to make this extraction mission fail so badly they never try again.
Sarah Chen stood on the roof of her apartment building, shaking with adrenaline and fear, surrounded by fourteen members of Constellation. Below, twelve confused operatives were searching the wrong floors of the wrong building three blocks away, convinced by Priya's telepathic manipulation that they'd received bad intelligence.
We need to go public. All of us. If we stay hidden, we're vulnerable to exactly this kind of thing. But if the world knows about Project Constellation, if we're visible...
(exhausted from the mental effort) Visible targets? That doesn't sound better. That sounds like every government, every corporation, every two-bit dictator trying to kidnap us for their own purposes.
Not if we have protection. Legal status. The interdimensional beings recognized us as ambassadors. What if we make that official? Not just with the U.S. military, but internationally. United Nations recognition, legal protections, autonomous status.
Ji-woo's phone buzzed. General Winters, calling at 5:30 AM.
I just got word about an unauthorized operation in Chicago. Please tell me none of my people got hurt.
No casualties, General. But we need to talk. All thirty-seven of us. And we need it recorded, on the record, with legal representation present. Things just changed.
They gathered in the same auditorium where they'd first learned the truth about their origins. All thirty-seven, plus General Winters, Commander Marsh, and—surprisingly—Dr. Kavita Sharma and two other Sources.
The meeting was being recorded for Congressional oversight. This time, they weren't subjects being briefed. They were negotiators.
The faction responsible for last night has been identified and contained. I can't give you details, but I can tell you they won't be a problem anymore. However, the underlying issue remains—multiple entities, governmental and private, view your abilities as resources to be acquired or controlled.
Then we remove ourselves from that equation. We're proposing the creation of an autonomous organization—Constellation Institute—with international legal protections similar to diplomatic immunity. We'll cooperate with legitimate authorities on matters of global security, but on our terms, not as assets to be deployed.
Dr. Sharma stood, her voice carrying the weight of decades of guilt and determination.
The five Sources will formally petition the United Nations for recognition of Constellation as a protected class—post-human diplomats with unique capabilities essential to interdimensional relations. We have documentation of the peace treaty, evidence of attempted exploitation, and testimonies from respected scientists. We're prepared to go public if necessary.
We're not asking for permission anymore, General. We're informing you of our decision. The question is whether the United States wants to be our ally or just another government we have to protect ourselves from.
The silence that followed was profound. Then General Winters smiled—a real smile, not the careful diplomatic expression he usually wore.
You know what? I think I like you kids better as allies than as assets anyway. Let's make this work.
General Winters. There is something more that you should know and it gives me an idea. What we are planning is way too public, even if it's supposedly done in secret. Too many people will know. I've been in contact with an operative in another Navy secret project. Her name is Ella Patel.
(General Winters interrupts) Priya, I'm sorry to tell you but you have been deceived. Ella Patel is a fictional character, part of an online novella, a soap opera. Many young women have bought in so deeply to that narrative that they are going around pretending to be Ella, just like some are convinced they are Supergirl or Wonder Woman.
(Priya laughs) With all due respect, General, I'm psychic you know. I read her thoughts. She's for real and her sister Helana as well. Trust me on that. But here is what I was thinking. They protect their secrets by hiding them in plain sight. The Ella Patel story is published as fiction, and a lot of it is fiction, but it's about fourty percent real. That way if there is a security breach people will think "Oh, that's just some stupid girl all caught up in la-la land thinking she's some fictional character." Even if it was on Fox News, people would just laugh and not believe it. It fooled you didn't it? I think we should do the same thing, publish everything we do, hiding it in plain sight. Here is their website. Ellas Story | My Love From The Future
Priya, you may be on to something. Hide it as a conspiracy theory, misinformation, just a silly story that some people think is real. The news media would be afraid to report it even if they knew it was real. I'll check into it and see if we can find an 'author' for your 'story'.
The three of them sat on Maeve's cramped couch, exhausted and wired, processing everything that had happened in forty-eight hours.
So we just negotiated our way out of being government weapons. That's... that's huge. That's insane. How are we so calm right now?
(laughing weakly) Speak for yourself. I'm internally screaming. I just helped prevent a kidnapping using telepathy and now we're potentially founding an international organization. I'm nineteen. I still get carded buying energy drinks.
Maeve leaned back, closing her eyes. Her precognitive sense was showing her fragments of possible futures—testimony before the UN, training facilities in neutral territory, the slow work of building something unprecedented.
Dr. Sharma asked if she could stay in touch. Not as Source Three. As... (voice catching) As my mother. She wants to know me. Not my abilities, not my genetic potential. Me.
What did you tell her?
I told her yes. Coffee next week. One hour. We'll see where it goes from there.
Priya reached over and squeezed Maeve's hand. Ji-woo grabbed her other hand. For a moment, they sat there in silence, three young women who'd been engineered for a purpose they never chose, who'd found friendship in a mobile home park, who'd just reshaped their own destiny.
Next crisis, can we maybe take a few weeks off first? I'd like to have at least one normal college experience before we save the world again.
(smiling) I'll do my best to foresee a boring spring semester.
Narrator voice: It would not be a boring spring semester.
They laughed, the sound carrying through the thin walls of the mobile home and out into the Pennsylvania night, where stars wheeled overhead—points of light in patterns ancient and ever-changing, not unlike the constellation they'd become.
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