Hailey stood alone in the middle of the street with the noon day sun shining down on her. She was in downtown Boston in the middle of a weekday, yet there was not a soul in sight. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound.

She recognized the vision for what it was; she had them often. Her mother had been involved in a covert genetics program that had gifted her, and her three daughters, with psychic abilities. Hailey’s strongest gift was her precognition – the ability to see possible futures. Her ability was so strong that she didn’t just see them, she would often live them. She was so sensitive that the even the slightest skin contact would trigger visions. For that reason she always kept as much skin covered as possible.

She looked around for some point of reference point of time and saw the front page of a newspaper ground into the asphalt.

“E.T. Ultimatum: Submit or Die,” read the headline. The date was six months from now.

She blinked and swallowed hard. Glancing around again, she noticed a silhouette in a car next to her. She cautiously stepped over and peered into the window. She’d seen bodies before, one of her sisters was a doctor, but this was beyond what she was prepared for. While the length of time meant that there wasn’t any gore, the people inside were locked forever in a testament to torment. It was had been a typical family – mother, father, 2 children. They were curled fetal in their seatbelts, their faces upturned, and their mouths wide open in silent screams. Their hands were on either side of their faces as if they had been clawing at their own skin. She slowly reached her hand toward the window, but before her fingers could even touch the glass she felt waves of agony wash over her. She collapsed to her hands and knees, stomach turning.

She closed her eyes and focused. ”This is only a possible future,” she whispered, straining her mind to see other futures. But none came; this future was coming.

“They’re all like that” a female voice said behind her, soft and sorrowful. “Every city, every country, every continent, every world.”

Hailey froze. She’d never interacted with anyone in any vision – she didn’t think it was possible. She turned and looked up at a tall woman with fair skin, golden hair, and dressed in a simple white robe trimmed in gold. Most notably, though, were the large set of white, feathered wings on her back.

“Who… why?” Hailey asked, afraid of the answers.

“The Elthari. They are one of the five races that make up The Founders. They were exiled for treachery millennia ago, and they’ve come back. They pretty much want to wipe everyone out. Why? Because they have their own standards of what is acceptable in a sapient being, and anyone that doesn’t fit is destroyed. A being is given one chance to sign up and let the Elthari ‘correct’ their ‘flaws’. If not, well...” she gestured around her. “This isn’t like your fiction stories; there is no heroic deed that could have stopped this, no negotiation. They don’t care about resources, money, slaves. You are an infestation to be eliminated. They drop bio weapons from orbit with the same detachment that you would sprinkle poison onto an ant mound. There is no spunky hero or climatic showdown. Just Elthari sitting back, safe and sound, waiting patiently for everyone to die.”

Hailey rose slowly to her feet. “There has to be a way. No future is ever absolute.” She grew thoughtful, she could feel the line shifting. Tiny shifts, but they were there. “You and I talking, it’s already changing things, but why can’t I see those shifts? Why can’t I see that changes that your presence here, now, is causing?”

“I’m outside your timeline. You will only see the ripples once I’ve offered my help, and whether or not you accept. I can’t save your world, or any of the others, but I can tell you how.”

Hailey tried again to read the shifts and see where they were leading, but they eluded her. “How? How do I stop this? And who are you?”

“I am Gabrielle from one of the other Founder races, the Seraphim. Well, I was. I’m a Warden of the Vault now. The Ancients created The Founders, seeded Humanity across many worlds, and then disappeared. They left behind The Vault, a repository of their knowledge and power. The only known entrance to it is here, on Earth. It’s possible to use The Vault to save your world.”

Hailey sighed, “What’s the catch? There’s always a catch.”

“The Vault can only be accessed by the Founders. You would need one from each of them. The Seraphim were exiled from this galaxy. The Dragons, Sidhe, and the Xikinti are nowhere to be found. While The Elthari seemed to have returned from their exile, they are not in an agreeable mood. They want the Vault, too, but not for good reasons.”

Hailey crossed her arms, fidgeting with her necklace. “So we have to find these – Founders – and get them to open this Vault?”

“No.” Gabrielle shook her head. “There’s not enough time. Even if we found them, we’d still have to screen a suitable individual from each that could be entrusted with the Vault. We don’t have to search for Founders though. Human DNA is stable, malleable. The Founders used it as a template for many other species. The only searching we need to do is for the right people. As Warden, I can use the Vault’s power to make them a Founder.”

Hailey had an idea where this was headed, the reason Gabrielle was speaking with her, now, about this.

“How will you know? How will you choose?”

“The search was set in motion millennia ago. I was there the last time it was opened. We messed up… badly. By the time we realized what we’d done, it was too late.” Gabrielle drooped. “No amount of power can alter the past. We were determined, though, to correct the future we had caused. It took centuries in the Vault to work it out. Well, centuries as viewed from outside. We created five tokens and infused them with specific powers and properties. As time unfolded, they worked their way from one hand to another so that when the day came, this day, they would be in the right hands. The hands of the persons most likely to bring the best outcome.”

Hailey sighed and closed her eyes. The timelines seemed to be humming with energy. The shifting had stopped; time itself had stopped. It was as if the universe was holding its breath. “So am I one of these… chosen?”

Gabrielle gave one of those smiles that one gets when the day seems to be getting a little less disastrous. “Your necklace, it’s one of our tokens.”

Hailey paused her fidgeting, and looked at the amulet. It certainly looked ancient. She had found it in a jewelry box left to her after her parents had died in a suspicious car accident. No one had ever seen it before. It was a simple disk with a tiny hole for the chain and was decorated with some of the most intricate runes and knot-work anyone had ever seen. Scholars had described the runes and knots as vaguely reminiscent of this or that culture, but no one had ever been able to identify them.

As she studied it, she felt a power stirring. A feeling as if the universe itself was extending its hand to her, offering her a future that, for the first time, she could not see. All she knew was that it was a future different than the one she was currently standing in.

“Which one is it?” Hailey asked

“It’s the Sidhe. When we visited your world millennia ago to open the vault for the first time, your people called them Elves, or Fae. They were masters of the arcane and were always trying to uncover the mysteries of the universe. They infused themselves with powerful, and sometimes bizarre, magics in their quest for knowledge.”

“And you’re asking me to become one?” Hailey turned the amulet over in her hand.

“Yes.”

“So, I become one of these Sidhe, and then what?”

“You do what you feel you need to do, what you think is right. That’s why you ended up with the token. There are too many probable outcomes to map out a single path through this mess. You are among those most likely to make the right decisions at the right time.”

Hailey’s gaze fell to the ground, “You realize that you’re asking me to give up my Humanity? Give up my home, possibly my family? Everything that I’d ever hoped for or dreamed of? You said the Sidhe were nowhere to be found, that means I’d be alone. Even if I was able to start over somewhere, find new friends, build a new life, I’d be alone.”

Gabrielle nodded. “I understand. My role in the last opening cost me my life. I don’t even have the option of starting over.”

“What did you do?” Hailey looked at her, eyeing her carefully. “You said before that you messed up badly the last time the Vault was opened. What did you do?”

Gabrielle’s eyes lowered. “The Elthari were being corrupted. The Dragons were able to trace the corruption back to their underworld. Something was there, some sort of entity. It had eliminated the denizens of the underworld. It was corrupting Elthari old souls as they were coming in to be reborn and new souls as they were born. We didn’t know where it came from, how to stop it, or even how to push it back. We didn’t know what to do, so we closed off their underworld and took away the Elthari’s ability to reproduce.”

Hailey gaped at her in shock, but Gabrielle continued.

“The souls of those that died would be lost forever – new ones would not be created. Those that hadn’t been reborn yet were now ‘quarantined;’ locked in there with... it.”

“How could you do something like that?” Hailey whispered. “That’s, terrible!”

Gabrielle glared at her. “Don’t you dare sit in judgement of me! You weren’t there! You didn’t live in that time! You didn’t see the terror that was lurking in their underworld! What is was doing to their people, what their people were doing because of it! We were the wrong people to pick for this, but there was no real system to pick the right people. There was only qualification that each race wanted of its candidate, and that was to put their races' interests first while still being able to play nice long enough to get into the Vault. That much we did just fine. Except that damned Dragon! He was the only one that was reasonable, and the rest of us turned on him. Yes, we messed up, but we did the best we could. We were the wrong people for the job!”

“So now I have to give up my life, my humanity, myself, to clean up after you.” Hailey whispered.

Gabrielle was shaking now, either from anger or guilt, possibly both. “I tried to make it right. I stood against my own people when they decided to 'quarantine' the corrupted Elthari that were still living. I fought against them when they wanted to include the uncorrupted ones for ‘good measure.’ I betrayed them when they tried to turn on the Xikinti, and they executed me as a traitor. The war had gone on for over three hundred years, but once the Xikinti got dragged into it, it was over within a few weeks. The Seraphim and Elthari were both nearly wiped off the face of the universe. The only thing that saved them was agreeing to be exiled from this galaxy.”

Gabrielle took a deep breath, and softened. “You don’t have to, it’s still a choice. You can turn it down, I can find another.”

Hailey looked around again – at the newspaper headline, at the body in the car, at the stillness that represented a dead city, a dead world. Gabrielle had also mentioned ‘worlds.’ She imagined other planets with billions of people meeting this same fate. Her eyes began to water.

“I really don’t have a choice, do I? If you find another and they fail, all this blood will be on my hands. Well, at least for as long as it takes for me to die with the rest. If they succeed, I’ll have to live my life knowing that other lives were destroyed because I wouldn't step up. ”

Gabrielle watched as Hailey’s face knotted over the decision.

Hailey let out a long, shaky sigh. “No, I’ll do it.”

The power that had been building in the amulet seemed pause, as if giving her an opportunity to change her mind, before rushing into her.

It was a unique sensation. There was no pain, just light-headedness and the feeling of having had way too much caffeine and a tingling like static electricity. She felt knowledge rooting itself into her mind. She saw paths, webs, and strings of energy coming from and connecting to everything. She grabbed the thread of time that had been so still, refusing to let her see forward along it, and pushed. She saw in the distance a small spot of light, a spot of hope.

She heard Gabrielle’s voice one last time before she lost consciousness.

“The longest of nights has begun for all the Known Worlds. There will be much pain, much sorrow, and much death. Keep your faith, little one, keep your hope. Protect it and let it guide you through this, for it will be getting very, very dark."

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