Hidden In The Shadows

Chapter 2

Faye's mom would have hated knowing her daughter was out in the middle of the night, alone, and purposely looking for a fight.

But she wasn't here anymore, so she was left with her crazy prepper dad leading the way instead.

Thirteen years ago her and her family was happy, tight knit and always looking out for each other. They lived in a cute house with a backyard, had a stereotypical minivan and neighbors that they knew on a first name basis. They had a normal life.

Her mother, Natalia Starks, was a geneticist working on a cure for some ignored disease no one had ever cared to research. She was creating a name for herself, talking in broadcasts and talk shows to hook more sponsors to fund the project. Then when Faye Starks was only fifteen, her mother's lab exploded. It had been large and loud enough that she had heard it, and felt the ground shaking before learning what it had been and what it had taken from her.

The lab, the research, and all eight people working that day were incinerated. Nothing remained of her mom or what she dedicated her life to. The company had held small ceremony to say goodbye to those who are lost, giving her and her father a picture of her mother in a lab coat with a plaque that had her name engraved into it.

After only a day the entire company was back to it, scrapping that project and moving on like it was simply a bump in the road. Like her flesh and blood hadn't burn to nothing just down the hall.

That stupid picture was buried in a box somewhere at her dad's new house now, both of them preferring to remember her mom for anything but what got her killed.

Since that incident her dad kind of lost it. He'd pushed and pushed her to practice hand-to-hand combat, saying he wanted her to be able to protect herself with just her two hands. If they failed her, she always had a stash of throwing knives freshly sharpened and ready for when she was out almost every night for her "sessions". This consisted of her dad tuning into the Detroit PD coms for hours and listening for something she could get the jump on. Anything from simple petty robbery, to full on alley fights that ended in her slinking away in the dark when the bullets had settled and the cops finally arrived to finish what she started. The trick was to always make sure someone got a glimpse of her before she finally disappeared, leaving her mark.

The media had dubbed her "The Hooded Shadow". Not the most creative name if you ask her, but it made her dad proud so she didn't really care in the end. It's also nice knowing that she was making some kind of small impact on the city, that maybe her mom was watching her with pride, wherever the hell she is.

After the accident, the company had started to send widowers checks to her dad every month as part of a signing deal her mom had fought for. On one hand she was glad her dad was well taken care of with the sizable checks. On the other hand not long after his wife's passing, Jack Starks joined some online prepper forums and began getting ready for "when shit hit the fan". He sold their family home and relocated himself and his still mourning daughter to a crappy house. It was in the outskirts of the city and it needed a lot of work, and was a big downgrade from their formerly beautiful suburban home. He hadn't minded though since this one, for who the hell knows why, came with the Doomsday bunker big enough for five families. Almost every check was used to stockpile his little underground paradise with enough food for 20 years for the both of them, enough weapons to make a small army weep, and a decked out security room. She never got how he wasn't on some watch list at this point, but then again she couldn't guarantee he wasn't.

Because of her dad's extreme "hobby" as she called it, she began training to defend herself almost immediately after losing her mom. She hadn't minded really, relishing in her sparring sessions in the bunkers gym to get out all of the pent up anger and pain. Soon the empty space for her mom was filled with a hunger for revenge. She didn't even know who she was mad at anymore, and when her father saw that the gym wasn't enough for her to take her anger out on, he began scouting the streets of Detroit for her next targets.