Adaptationready Stories

On festival night the harbor lights blink out, a clamp screams, and someone goes under. Seventeen-year-old Alessia Monroe moves before the town can gasp-no cape, no magic spectacle, just fast hands, a steel ladder, and a family that treats competence like a language. When the lights come back, a stranger is replaying the moment frame by frame, and polite people with silver-crest cards (teeth? crown? gear?) start using words like discretion and community safety. Echelon is what happens when power dresses like philanthropy and asks the gifted to be quiet. The Monroes don't chase glory; they keep receipts-literally, in a matte tin hidden behind a baseboard-names and favors the harbor would rather forget. Invitations become interviews; a cliff-house "briefing" feels like a velvet threat; a fundraiser rewrites history in white walls and champagne. Threading between it all are texts from someone called V: useful, unnerving, never free. As pressure builds, Alessia leans on the oldest coastal law-water tells the truth first. Expect urban-fantasy grit with political-thriller bones: protective mom energy, found family, slow-burn secrets, and a heroine who refuses to be anybody's evidence. The question isn't what she can do; it's who gets to decide what she's allowed to be.