Eye of the Fire

Chapter 1: The New Future

   Sheila woke up feeling like it was a new future. She looked around, and then she remembered what was missing. She felt her head droop and shoulders sag in. She'd lost her parents in a fire the day before. Her parents and her were in their house when a fire sparked, her father's last move was throw her out the window, her mother's last emotion was good-bye. 

   It couldn't have gotten worse after their death, but then immediately the fire spread, burning everything she had ever loved. The fire took everything she loved. 

   Her house; the only place she ever knew... ever loved. Her parents; the only people she loved and still loves. Her life.

   Sheila stood up and paced around the room, her eyes landed on her... a calendar reminding herself it wasn't even her room. It was her birthday today: April 27. "This had to be my early birthday gift?" she muttered to herself angrily, but her temper faded when she remembered what her mother and father always said. "You fight fear with confidence, you fight anger with love, and that's your strength." Thinking about her parents made her eyes tear up. She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the ground, she took a picture of her and her parents from a bedside table she saw. She hugged it, knowing she must be acting like a baby for a 12-year-old girl... wait no- 13 now.

   "I need to stay strong," she whispered to herself. "Mother and Father would tell me to follow the path that called to me." her mind flashed to the time her Mother sat with her when she was bullied at school. "There are many paths, you must choose the one with light and hope, it's up to you." 

   Her eyes pricked with tears again as she thought of her mother. She stood up, suddenly determined. "I'm going to stay strong, I'm doing this for Mom, Dad and me." She raced across the room and wrenched at the door handle. 

   It didn't budge. 

   She tried again and again. Was she being held hostage after what happened to her parents and on her birthday!?  

  She groaned and rubbed her wrist where her black watch bit into her black suit. Her mother used to say she reminded her of a spy, ever since that day- she dressed like one , black bodysuit and black watch plus a utility belt her parents got for her last birthday. 

   Strength had always been her dad's talent. Whenever something sad or bad happened, the mood was always happy thanks to him. He was the strongest, not physically- emotionally. Her mother had been the nicest person she'd ever known. "Well," she said to herself. "If they're those- I am too," she said out loud.  

   She slumped again. No idea where she was. No idea what she was anymore. But there was one thing that she was sure, she was who her parents wanted her to be: Brave. 

   She sighed and walked back to the door and shouted out: "CAN I COME OUT?" Nothing responded to her call. She slumped and her elbow smacked into a metal rod on a rack beside her. She gasped in pain. 

   She reached into her fanny pack- or utility belt that spies called it- and took our a paperclip. She bent it into a key-like shape and put it into the little hole on her side of the door, the door clicked and she creped out into the hallway. 

   Suddenly a voice rang out. "What are we going to do with the girl?" the voice asked. "Why don't we just kill her, Boss?" another voice said. Sheila muffled her gasp with her hand and quietly walked out the door. She snapped the door shut and looked up at the house. It was a dirty, beat-up cottage. It was a small cabin like structure. 

   "Why are they plotting to kill me?" Sheila mumbled to herself. "I will fight them with love and peace-" she paused. What if they were the people who set the fire to her house that claimed her parents' lives? 

   "If they did murder my parents, they'll die..." she paused. Fight hatred with love. Fight enemies with love. She just remembered that last bit. Had her parents anticipated their death. Is that why her dad through her out of the house in time- and into a pool? She suddenly remembered- she did not even have a pool, so how the heck did she land in one? Or was it just something else with water in it. 

   As the pieces clicked into place she ran back to her ash-covered, burnt home. Her eyes fell on the little above ground pool she didn't even know was there. 

   When was this addition made? Something was definitely off. She walked around her ash-covered, burnt-to-a-crisp house and saw something nearly all the investigation teams had missed. She pried a piece of thick burnt wood off a big silver box. It had beautiful designs on all of the sides. A diamond incrusted handle, sturdy panels- and a code pad. She blinked, making sure she was not imagining this. How did this metal not melt to the ground. Was it fire proof? Was that even possible? I must be losing my mind, she told herself firmly. 

   She looked back to the code pad, it asked for a 4-digit code. She was born on 04-27, which meant she should try 0427. She tried her birthday- nothing happened. Her parents, she knew, were born in 1979, she tried that as well. It did not work. She sighed. Why had her parents hidden this from her for all these years- though, she thought. It might have been days not years. 

   She studied the metal more closely, it had to be made of hafnium carbide  and tantalum carbide. She looked more closely, and saw a 4 runes etched on the side. It was unreadable to somebody like Sheila, as she did not know the runes. But that would not stop her from searching for them...