Disclaimer: I don't own The Hills Have Eyes.

Summary: My name is Amber. My parents were killed on a military mission to Sector 16 in the New Mexico desert. No one told me what happened, but I saw their bodies. There is something bad out there, and I am going to go find it. And kill it. GoggleAmber, AU

In honor of Friday the 13th, here is a new fic! Ironically enough, not one for the movie of the same name. And, I know I shouldn't, but I really wanted to write this. I hope that y'all enjoy this little fic. The idea just got in my head and wouldn't come out! I would love it if y'all reviewed and gave me opinions and whatnot. Always means a lot. Anyway, please enjoy!

The Avenger
Chapter One: Normalcy

I stared at myself in the mirror.

I hardly recognized the person who stared back.

It sounds like the most clichéd thing to say, but it was the truth. After much strife, I was a brunette again. Sure, that sounds like a silly accomplishment, but it was the meaning behind it that I was proud of.

People always said I looked like the perfect combination of my parents, with my mother's dark hair and my father's blue eyes. I decided to rebel in my last years of high school by dying my hair a bright blonde. Looking back on it now, I wonder why. I had nothing but kind, loving parents who would've given me the world if they could have, it seemed stupid to want to look different from them. Sure, they were gone a lot - army stuff - but they never failed to call or send a letter.

I chalked it up to wanting to be different. Everyone else at school was a brunette - well, most everyone. Blondes were few and far between, and I wanted to stand out. I still remember my parents reaction when they saw what I had done to my hair. The very thought of their shocked faces brought a smile to my face.

Of course, now the smile is followed by a sharp pang to my chest.

I looked at myself in the mirror, studying myself for a bit longer as I towel-dried my hair. I sighed and tossed the empty box of hair dye back into the trash. I was glad to no longer be blonde, to no longer have to deal with the comments that came with my hair color. I was glad to look more like…myself now. For various reasons.

I contemplated jumping back in the shower just to make sure I got all the residual dye out, but decided against it. Still rubbing my hair with the towel, I opened the bathroom door and entered the hallway.

I planned on sneaking off to the spare room I had been provided with as of late, hopefully without disturbing anyone else. The Martinez's were always welcoming. They had been friends with my parents; their daughter Missy and I practically grew up in the sandbox together.

I truly didn't deserve to have a friend with such a nice family, people that were so understanding about my plight that they automatically cleaned out their guest room and wouldn't allow me to say no to their generosity.

I felt bad for it, of course. Taking up a space in their home, eating their food, and just generally living there. I knew I shouldn't. Missy had told me time and time again that she was happy to give me a place to stay, and that I shouldn't even think that I was a burden to them. I still couldn't help myself. The thoughts were there, as loud and incessant as a hive of bees.

I turned into my room, opening the door to find Clyde Martinez sitting on the bed, staring at me with his huge, brown eyes.

"'mber." He grinned.

"What are your stinky feet doing on my bed, kid?" I asked playfully, knocking his knobby little knees with my knuckles.

He pointed at my hair. "Why'd ya do that?"

I shrugged, not wanting to give such a young child my true answer, one that would no doubt make his dreams become nightmares. "Wanted a change."

Clyde gave a smile. He was such a sweet kid I was prone to cavities every time I was near him. He was Missy's five year old son and reason for being as well as one of my favorite people in the world. I was at the hospital when he was born, despite the fact that Missy was two years older than me and had him when she was sixteen. I watched him as he gave Missy and her parents hell in his terrible twos, watched as he evolved into the kind boy he was now.

"Mommy told me to get you," he stated in the childlike bluntness of his. "Dinner's ready."

Letting out a sigh, I adjusted the waistband of my pajama bottoms when I noticed my oversized, baggy shirt had gotten tangled in it. "Okay. Lead the way."

I ran a hand through my hair and watched as Clyde rushed out of the room and down the stairs. A smile passed over my face and I followed him.

"Johnson."

I spun around, hearing the laughing voice of my best friend and confidant. Missy was staring at me with a large grin on her face - a rare sight - and flicked at a lock of her dark hair. "What's up with that?"

"She wanted a change, Mommy." Clyde sped up and grasped his mother's hand. "I'm hungry."

"Okay, okay." She smiled. The only time she truly smiled was around the people she was close to, like Clyde and her parents and a select few friends.

I found that I couldn't remember the last time I truly smiled and meant it.

We entered the dining room and I automatically felt my stomach growl. The scent of food was thick in the air. Chicken of some kind, heavy spices, vegetables. Sophia Martinez's cooking was to die for. I'd probably give my right arm to be able to cook like her - then again, being armless wasn't necessarily good for cooking.

Missy's mother was placing the food in the center of the table, while her father Luis was conversing with her in Spanish. Missy's brother Daniel sat at the table, his fingers twitching with the desire to get at the food.

It was all enough for my chest to ache, as if an invisible fist - real and destructive and hating - had punched through me.

Clyde rushed over and jumped in his seat. "Smells good!"

Sophia smiled gently down at Clyde, who beamed back. She then focused her gaze on me, standing in the doorway and looking quite out of place. Her eyes immediately found my hair. "Amber! What have you done?"

"Dyed my hair," I pointed out lamely.

Her shock faded away for a moment, and then she smiled. "You do look so much like your parents."

At that point, I faded out.

Reality slipped from me like water through desperate fingers, and I found events playing through my mind as if I were watching a movie.

The last time I spoke to my parents - over video chat, their smiling faces laughing at a joke I had told.

The phone call I got a day later.

The way my feet felt as I walked to the morgue.

"Do you need a moment to collect yourself, miss?"

The coroner flipping the sheets back, revealing my parents' faces, lifeless and drained.

And mutilated.

Cuts and gashes and things that I know didn't align with the story the army gave me were the first things I had seen. Pale, white faces, still and unnaturally peaceful looking. Had it not been for the ragged, crude marks on them, I would have thought they were sleeping, as cliché as that sounded.

The coroner looked at me as if I were something particularly sad. I think he knew what he saw in my eyes. The look of disbelief. I might not have been a medical major like Missy, but I knew what their wounds were supposed to look like, if they had truly died like the army said they had. These were ragged cuts, inflicted by a crude blade. More than one type. Bruises from fists, different sizes. Maybe more than one person was involved.

An accident, they said.

No.

No.

This was no accident.

As if knowing what was going through my mind, the coroner had looked at me, his eyes sincere and grave in his wrinkled face, and said just a few words - the words that would confirm my suspicions.

"Don't do anything rash."

"Amber."

I snapped back to reality, looking at the face of my best friend. She was hovering in front of me, looking concerned.

"I'm fine," I told her, moving to sit down at the table.

The coroner didn't tell me much, but the way he looked at me and his mannerisms confirmed what I knew.

My parents' deaths - and all of those in their squad - were no accident. No stray bomb or whatever the hell they were talking about did this to them. They gave me practically no answers, and those wounds were clearly inflicted by another being.

I had found my parents' squad leader's number. His name was Jeffrey, and he was as intense as they come. However, I was able to get a little information out of him. His only provided me with a few words. Words that sounded distinctly like a warning. Words that I couldn't forget, said in his deep baritone.

"Sector 16 in New Mexico. That's where the accident happened." He had sounded haunted, as if recalling something horrifying. "I can't tell you any more than that."

The internet is a lovely thing. I had a map with the area marked, and the quickest route to get there, folded neatly in the desk drawer in my spare bedroom. The room that I was supposed to be inhabiting during the summer. The whole summer. And then I would enact my plan. I would turn twenty in just a few measly days. A belated birthday celebration was better than none.

I looked at Clyde, his eyes bright and innocent. Lucky. He knows nothing of the pain and suffering that the human body can be put through and still survive. He knows nothing of the things that are out there. Though miles and miles away, those things could take his family away from him. Just like they did mine.

His earlier words rang though my head.

"Why'd ya do that?"

I dyed my hair because I wanted a change, I had told him. I kept the real reason hidden within me, held close to my chest, only being thought of in the most intimate of moments when I was alone and had nothing to lose by letting myself have these thoughts.

I knew two things for sure.

My parents weren't in an accident. Their deaths were purposeful.

And, when I found their killers, I was going to do the same thing they did to my family.

I returned my hair to normal because I want whoever murdered my parents to know that they won't get away with it. I want them to know that they can never do anything like that again.

Most of all, I wanted to see their faces when they glimpse upon mine - looking eerily similar to their last two victims - before I end them.

End Chapter One.