Consensus
About this series
Elena grew up in a household where denial was the primary coping mechanism. Her father was an alcoholic who everyone pretended was fine. Her mother maintained a fiction of normalcy with exhausting precision. Elena learned early that reality is what you agree not to see.
She was recruited by The Threshold at 26, identified during a psychological screening for a government contractor position. The screener noticed something unusual: Elena could describe inconsistencies in witness testimonies with uncanny accuracy. She could see when stories didn't fit. The Threshold recognized this as latent Doubter potential and offered her a choice: join them, or forget they existed.
She chose to see.
Twelve years later, she's one of their most effective field coordinators. She's contained seventeen breaches, managed over two hundred witness modifications, and written three protocols still in active use. She's also slowly disappearing. Each year, the world feels less real. Colors seem slightly desaturated. Conversations feel scripted. She tells herself it's just the job. She doesn't believe herself.
Her marriage ended four years ago. David couldn't understand why she was always distant, always watching, never fully present. She couldn't explain that she'd forgotten how to stop analyzing reality long enough to live in it. She got custody of Maya and relocated to the Pacific Northwest—officially for remote monitoring duty, unofficially to escape.
AI Disclosure: This series was written with AI assistance. Cover art was created with AI assistance.
Stories
Season 1
Story 1 • 8 chapters
Elena Vance has worked at The Threshold for twelve years. Her job: monitoring for breaches and coordinating containment. She's good at it—clinical, efficient, detached. She's seen reality fold in on itself, watched people forget impossible things they witnessed, helped smooth over the seams. She believes in the mission: consensus must be maintained, or everything falls apart.
Then her daughter starts drawing things that haven't happened yet.
At first, Elena rationalizes. Children have active imaginations. The drawings are coincidences. But the details are too precise, the events too specific. Her daughter isn't predicting the future—she's choosing it. Believing it into existence with the unshakeable conviction only a child possesses.
According to Threshold protocol, Elena knows exactly what must be done with individuals who can unilaterally reshape reality. She's ordered it herself, dozens of times.
Now she has to decide: protect the consensus that keeps the world stable, or protect her daughter from the organization Elena has served her entire adult life.
As Elena digs deeper, she discovers her daughter may not be an anomaly at all—but the result of deliberate manipulation. Someone is awakening Believers. And Elena's daughter might be the first success in a plan to unmake everything The Threshold has built.