The Silver Key

As May rolled over in her bed, awakened by her own tossing and turning, she saw a soft light from outside her bedroom door. She sat up, put on her slippers, and went to investigate, careful not to wake anyone up. When the door opened with a soft creak, she saw a small silver key on the ground by her feet. As she reached down to pick it up, she realized that it could easily be a cursed object. She retreated back into her room and shook the resident of the top bunk awake.

"Wha-" the girl started to say loudly before May put a hand over her mouth.

"Shh, you'll wake everyone else up," May whispered, "come look at this."

The girl from the top bunk rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and climbed the ladder to the floor. May took her hand and led her to the small key, still sitting neatly at the door.

"Do you think it's okay to touch?' May asked her bunkmate.

"Probably, just be careful," warned the girl.

May reached toward the key and tentatively picked it up, feeling its warmth in her hands.

"Here. Give it to me, I'll test it and see if It's dangerous," the girl said.

May handed her the key, and the girl cast a spell over it. A small symbol - one that looked a little bit like a fish - began to glow on the key, apparently showing her something about the small silver object.

"It seems to be okay. It has a lot of power, but it's not inherently dangerous," the girl said, handing the key back to May.

"Thanks Alex," May said.

The girls both climbed into their respective beds and began to drift off to sleep.

~•○•~

The next morning, May had an idea. She grabbed some string left over from a school project and pulled the string through the small hole at the top of the key. She looped the string around her neck and tied the two ends together.

"That should be good enough for now," said May.

"What should be good enough?" questioned Alex tiredly from the top bunk.

"This necklace I put the key on," replied May.

"I'm gonna try to find some info on the key, do you want to join me?"

"Yeah, no" said Alex, rolling over and going back to sleep.

May turned back to her computer to try to find something - anything about the key. She clicked on every link - even tried going through the third and fourth pages of the search results - but she found nothing. Nothing at all. In desperation, she clicked over to the last page of search results and
scrolled all the way down. There was one link she hadn't clicked on, as it appeared to be fake and seemed like it was very likely to be a scam. She hesitated a moment before clicking on the link and immediately regretted her choice. The screen filled with pop-up ads - too many to click out of. She managed to see a line of text from one of her protective add-ons through the ads, but she wished she hadn't. It alerted her that her computer was being tracked.

"Alex!" she immediately yelled.

"What?" replied the girl from the top bunk.

May explained to the other girl what had happened, and she seemed concerned.

"I would say that you should get rid of the computer, but they already know our location, and it's the only device we have, so I don't think we should do that," explained Alex, still wondering how she had let this happen.

"Do you think those people know about the key?" May asked, fear lingering in her voice.

"It's likely, because the site had some things about the key in the description, and how else would they know about that."