Phantom Eye

Prologue

All Rights Reserved 2016 Melanie Hallett

What could be the most average day in a single person's life, could change everything about them forever.

School, school is the most average thing for a 16 year old girl to be doing. The last bell ringing, and the powerwalking to return to the lockers to go home. Seeing people you have walked next to everyday but never spoken to almost sprinting, but no faster than this average 16 years olds walk.

Anastasia Burke, Anastasia Robyn Burke to be exact.

The average 16 year old, with a mother from Russia, and a father from England, even though they live in Australia. An average girl who gets straight A's in school, works part-time at a local pizzeria, but somehow still manages to have a healthy social life, even if it means sacrificing healthy sleeping habits.

This is the story of Anastasia Burke.

"Ana!"

The call of her name from across the courtyard pulled Anastasia to a stop, resulting in a few people bumping into her and muttering in annoyance, to which Ana replied with small, quiet apologies.

Matilda, a bouncy red-headed girl that Ana had befriended on orientation day jogged to Ana's side. She never paid notice to how her skirt would fly, as it was Matilda's firm belief that no one will see her underwear because of the mandatory black tights that they had to cover their oh so seductive legs.

"Have you finished your history assignment yet? Because I need help, like, badly," came the long drawn out sigh of Matilda. Although it would seem she was asking for help with her assignment, the twinkle in her dark brown eyes told Ana otherwise, she knew that the red-head had finished her assignment, but she also knew that it gave Matilda an excuse to go to Ana's house on a school night after work.

Pausing briefly, Ana hummed out her response, giving Matilda a mischievous smile. The two turned tail and followed the now sparse swarm of leaving students to their locker area.

The short, but excruciating process of packing laptops, books, and other objects that they deemed worthy of being taken home into their ugly, compulsory catholic school backpacks, took longer to the student then it did to a clock. The classic 'humph' as they swung the 2 tonne bag over their shoulders before rearranging their blazer echoed down the open patio.

Sniffing a bit from the oncoming cold, Ana turned to Matilda who was only 1 locker away and pepped her farewell before plugging her earphones into her phone and starting her music to distract her from the walk home.

Hopping down stair cases and jumping off ledges, even if it meant her bag would whack her back, quite painfully, each and every time, brought short bursts of joy to Ana. Eventually she made it to the flat trail that she followed every day to get to and from school, and she kept up the tradition, to this day.

Well, almost.

Although the trail was out in the open, it was in a rural area, and not many people drove down this road, so it was quite secluded, you could say, from the rest of civilisation. The trail was next to a road, but there were no footpaths as this was farm land. It wasn't quite the outback, but it definitely wasn't a suburb, the houses were not 1 or 2 metres apart, but more like 50 to 100 metres from each other. Large areas of land surrounded each house, huge gardens and pools, or fields with sheep or crops.

Her earphones and blaring music stopped Anastasia from hearing the car that slowly pulled up behind her, or the two burly men that got out and followed her, she didn't even hear them trying to get her attention, she didn't know until they grabbed her. She didn't feel their hands at first, she felt pain from a needle entering her neck and putting something straight into her bloodstream, she couldn't move.

And then, she felt nothing, her fear was hammering in her brain, and her only movement was that of her eyes flicking to and from the men pulling her into the car, she didn't know her feet were trailing, or that her bag had been torn from her back and sent rolling down into a pit beside the trail.

All she knew, was that this average day, was average no more.