From Embers

F O U R

I woke up to my mom calling me. I must've fallen asleep at my desk. I looked out of my window beside my bed and it was dark. How long was I asleep? I stood from my desk and walked downstairs. She was in the kitchen eating a sandwich. She looked like she had calmed down a lot from earlier. 

"What's up mom?" I asked.

"I just wanted to talk about today, I was pretty frantic earlier." She answered.

"Okay, what's up?" I asked.

"When I was talking over the phone with the school, they said they pulled the video from the incident and were very concerned as to what happened." She stated.

"Okay, have you seen the video?" I asked.

"No, they said I would need to come to the school to watch it." She responded.

I started to freak out. I forgot the school would have to pull the feed from the hallway. What was I going to do? They're going to know everything. 

"I'll be at the school tomorrow to take a look at it. You don't have to worry." She reassured me.

"Okay, I'm not worried, mom." I lied.

She's going to find out what really happened. She's going to have questions. I'm so screwed.

"I'm about to head to bed, and the principal excused me from school for a few days, so I won't have to wake up for school tomorrow." I stated. 

"Alright son, I love you. Never forget that. Sleep well." She cooed.

I hugged her and went back up to my room. I sat back down at my desk and opened my laptop. As soon as it booted up my screen went dark. A cursor flashed in the middle of the screen. After a few moments, letters started appearing, they turned into words.

DO NOT BE AFRAID.

What is going on? Who is talking to me?

"Hello?" I asked softly.

The words disappeared and a new sentence formed.

TRUST ME.

"Who are you?" I asked.

A GUARDIAN.

"A guardian? What are you protecting me from?"

YOU'LL FIND OUT SOON. BE READY.

Before I could ask anything else my screen flashed back to normal and left me staring at my own reflection in my computer screen. Things are starting to get weird. First my abilities, the girl, the shooter, then the video, and now this. Who was that and how did they get access to my computer? I rubbed my hands through my hair and sat back in my chair. I picked up the picture of my dad and rubbed his face. When I rubbed it, it felt wrong. It wasn't smooth like glass was. There was something over the glass. I grabbed my flashlight on my phone and scanned the cover of the picture frame carefully. It took me a few moments to realize but there appeared to be an extra layer of something every bit. I held it closer to my face and took a breath. It smelled bitter. I set down the picture and went into my closet. After a few minutes of searching, I found my blacklight pen. I picked the picture back up and flashed the light over it. There were two faint words written across the glass.

Stay alive.

What could that mean? Did dad know something that I don't? He told me when I was younger that he would always be able to to talk to me. He must've known these things would start happening to me. 

I set the picture back down and thought over things for a moment. Something was never right about the way he died. They told us he was in a plane accident and that there were no survivors. I never knew what he did for work because I was always too young to know. He was gone for weeks at a time and when he was home he would leave at a moment's notice. He had to have been some kind of government agent or something along those lines. He always carried a gun, wouldn't ever leave home without one. He would always be looking over his shoulder, always aware of his surroundings. There wasn't a thing not mysterious about my father, he kept to himself. He told me, "It was better this way". I never understood. 

"What have I gotten myself into, dad?" I chuckled.