Two weeks since Mexico. Fourteen days since I made a fool of myself in a restaurant that smelled like cilantro and heartbreak. I've been counting. Not on purpose — my brain just does it, tracking the distance between then and now like maybe if I get far enough away it'll stop hurting.

I'm in Intro to Microeconomics, surrounded by 200 undergrads, and every single one of them is broadcasting. The guy two rows up is hungover and regretting last night's texts to his ex. The girl next to me is spiraling about a paper due tomorrow — I can feel her anxiety like static electricity against my skin. And the beautiful idiot in the letterman jacket keeps glancing back at me, his thoughts a lazy river of speculation.

Professor Martinez is explaining supply curves, her voice a distant hum beneath the cacophony of two hundred inner monologues. I used to be good at filtering. Before Mexico, I could tune it down to background noise, like a radio playing in another room. Now everything feels louder. Raw. Like the volume knob broke and I can't turn it back down.

The guy in front of me shifts in his seat and I catch a stray thought — something about the curve of my neck, wondering what my hair smells like. It's not malicious. It's not even particularly crude by college-boy standards. But I still want to crawl out of my skin.

Three dots appear, then disappear. She knows I'm lying. She always knows. But she lets me have it anyway, because that's what sisters do.

The campus coffee shop is packed with the lunch rush. Ji-woo found us a corner booth — she always finds the best spots, her locator abilities extending to optimal seating arrangements — and now the three of us are crammed together with overpriced lattes and a shared plate of mediocre scones.

Maeve snorts into her latte. I can feel her precognitive sense flickering — she's seeing possible timelines where I actually said yes to Marcus, timelines where I let myself try again. She doesn't share what she sees. She never does unless it matters.

Ji-woo: For what it's worth, his thoughts are pretty clean. I overheard him thinking about you last week and it was mostly "she seems smart" and "I wonder if she'd want to study together."

Ji-woo: No, I was locating his thoughts. There's a difference. I just... happened to notice where his attention was. Geographically speaking.

Maeve: You don't have to date anyone. You don't have to do anything you're not ready for. But "I'm focusing on school" is not the same as "I'm healing," and we both know which one is actually true.

I don't have a response to that. So I drink my latte and pretend the conversation is over, even though we all know it isn't.

The Navy sedan is parked outside our trailer when I get home from class. Black, government plates, tinted windows — the whole cliché. I spot it from half a block away and my stomach drops.

Commander Sarah Webb is waiting on our tiny porch, looking deeply out of place in her crisp uniform against the backdrop of faded siding and potted succulents. She's in her fifties, silver-streaked hair pulled back tight, and her mind is disciplined but not silent — I can hear the edges of her thoughts, carefully controlled. She's had training. Counter-telepathy protocols. The Navy has whole programs for this now.

I want to say no. But Maeve's voice echoes in my head from last week: The Navy is going to keep coming whether we like it or not. Better to know what they want than to wonder.

Our living room still looks like a tornado hit it — moving boxes half-unpacked, Ji-woo's art supplies scattered across the coffee table, Maeve's calculus textbooks stacked in precarious towers. Commander Webb surveys the chaos with carefully neutral eyes and sits on the edge of our secondhand couch like she's afraid of catching something.

Webb: I'll get straight to the point. We have a situation that requires your specific abilities.

Webb: No. This is internal. We've identified potential security concerns within several classified research programs. Personnel who may be sharing information with foreign actors. We need someone who can... verify loyalties. Quickly and discreetly.

Webb: I want you to help protect sensitive programs from foreign interference. There's a difference.

Webb's thoughts slip for just a moment — frustration, calculation, a flash of this would be so much easier if they'd just cooperate — before her training kicks back in and the walls go up.

Webb: You'd be compensated generously. And it would go a long way toward building goodwill with the program. The Navy has invested considerable resources in Constellation. Some of my colleagues feel that investment should yield more... reliable returns.

Priya: Let me make sure I understand. You want me to use my telepathy to read the private thoughts of people who haven't consented to being read. To spy on their innermost minds and report back anything you deem suspicious. To violate their mental privacy without their knowledge, for purposes they'd never agree to if asked.

Priya: I said no. I won't do it. Not for money, not for goodwill, not for whatever veiled threats you're about to make. My abilities don't give me the right to violate people's minds, and being born in a Navy lab doesn't make me Navy property.

Webb's expression doesn't change, but I feel the shift in her thoughts — surprise, reassessment, a grudging flicker of something that might be respect.

Priya: Note it. Put it in my file. I'm sure there's a whole section for "uncooperative assets."

Webb: You're young. You still think principles are simple. That there are clear lines between right and wrong. Life will teach you otherwise.

Webb: For what it's worth — and this is off the record — I didn't think you'd say yes. But I had to ask.

Then she's gone, the black sedan pulling away, and I'm alone in my messy living room with my racing heart and my shaking hands and the strange, fierce pride of having said no to something that felt deeply, fundamentally wrong.

Maeve finds me on the back steps at nearly midnight, wrapped in a blanket, staring at the stars. The mobile home park is quiet at this hour — just the hum of distant traffic and the occasional bark of someone's dog.

Maeve: She felt you get angry from three blocks away. Said you were "broadcasting like a radio tower."

I scoot over, making room. She sits beside me, pulling half my blanket over her legs.

Priya: They wanted me to spy on other programs. Read people's minds without their consent. Report back on anyone who seemed "disloyal."

Maeve: I saw it. The timeline where you said yes. Where you let them turn you into what they wanted.

We sit in silence for a while. The stars are sharp tonight, the late March air still carrying winter's bite.

Priya: I still think about him. John. Not because I want him anymore — I think that part is actually healing. But because he was quiet. His mind was the only quiet place I've ever found. And I don't know if I'll ever find that again.

Maeve: You might not. You might spend your whole life hearing everyone's thoughts and never finding another person with natural shields strong enough to give you silence.

Maeve: I'm not done. You might not find silence. But you might find something else. Someone whose thoughts you actually want to hear. Someone whose inner voice becomes as familiar and comforting as your own. Someone who isn't quiet, but whose noise feels like... home.

Maeve: I see possibilities. Lots of them. Some are beautiful. Some are heartbreaking. Most are somewhere in between. But in almost all of them — the ones where you end up okay — you're not alone. And the person beside you? They're not quiet. They're just... yours.

Maeve: I know. I love you too. Even when you're spiky and broadcasting heartbreak at three hundred decibels.

Maeve: I know. And that's fine. Heal however you need to heal. Date when you're ready, or don't date at all. Just... don't close the door forever, okay? You're nineteen. You've got so much becoming left to do.

The back door creaks open. Ji-woo appears, holding three mugs of hot chocolate, somehow having located exactly what we needed without being asked.

We scoot apart, making space. She wedges between us, distributing the mugs, her presence warm and steady and exactly right.

I'm not fine. But I'm not alone. And right now, in this moment, that feels like enough.

I'm back in Econ. Same seat, same professor, same two hundred broadcasting minds. The guy in the letterman jacket is still wondering about me. The anxious girl is still panicking about papers. The hungover guy has moved on to regretting a different set of texts.

This is Marcus Chen. Ji-woo gave me your number (don't be mad at her). I know you're focusing on school, but there's a study group for the Econ midterm on Thursday. No pressure. Just studying. I make really good flashcards.

I don't respond right away. I put my phone back in my pocket and try to focus on supply curves. But I'm smiling slightly — just a little, just at the corners — and when Maeve texts me fifteen minutes later with a simple ? emoji, I know she's seen something in the timelines shift.

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