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Silver
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Chapter #1: Prologue
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Have you ever wanted to take back a bad decision that you've made just to see what could have happened? I'm not talking about a simple problem such as cheating on a test or saying the wrong thing to your girlfriend. I'm talking about the really bad, "what-was-I-thinking", everyone-suffers, life-altering decisions. Ever had one of those before? I'm just guessing, but I think that there's no one in the world who hasn't had one of those at one point. Have you ever wondered what could have happened if you could take one of those back?

I have. My father tells me that the past cannot be changed no matter what you try, and I respect him enough to believe him. But even though he has never lied to me, I can't help thinking what could have happened to me if I had just left...

But I'm not complaining right now. My decision was one of those that turned out to be better for me in the end... but I can't help but shake the feeling what could have happened if I had just...

But I don't want to spoil the ending for you. Let me tell you about that one decision that forever changed my life.

My name is Nick Silver and I used to be a collector of sorts. I was a collector of rare and spectacular items from all over the world. But my collection consisted of just one type of item - silver.

I had always been fascinated by silver and the wonders it brought to me. It sounds like a strange and expensive hobby to most, but believe it or not, I can actually afford it. For three generations, the Silver Family has been collecting silver artifacts from all over the world and it seems that I caught onto that tradition rather well. Ever since my parents passed away, I have been continuing my family's tradition of collecting silver items and storing them in our "vault".

The "vault" happens to be a closet hidden inside the crawlspace inside another closet. It's blocked by a massive state-of-the-art thumbprint scanner. Yes, I admit I spent some of our silver money, but I did it to protect the value it brought to me.

I should probably tell you what my collection consists of. Over the years, my family has collected things like: silver statues, miniature molded figurines, countless jewelry, pendants and tea sets, rare coins from God-knows-when (I haven't checked the dates in a while), silverware and eating utensils from every corner of the globe and my pride and joy - a full-length silver mirror that always seemed to tarnish when I wasn't checking on it.

But believe it or not, the only contributions I've made to this collection are a couple of bars of 99.9% pure silver that I won off of a bet with a friend of a friend of an acquaintance (don't ask). I was already 20 years old and this felt like mere pennies in comparison to the wealth that was concealed in my closet-in-a-closet.

Believe it or not, but every last cent that this silver was worth had been earned with hard work, constant vigilance and/or pure luck. My family decided back when they started their collection that they would not resort to stealing or ripping off anyone to get any one piece of this massive wealth. We had earned that stash with honor and tradition and would be forever shamed if it was breached.

Have I ever worried about getting ripped off myself? Of course I have! Not a day goes by that I don't think about someone discovering my vault and pinching every last penny I had. That's what prompted me to remove the door to the vault and replace it with a bank-standard-issue security door in the first place. I put my own life savings into protecting my stash. I'm talking insurance up the ying-yang and every security measure I could think of. I was as determined as my own parents were in protecting our heritage and continuing our legacy.

But all that changed when I took an innocent excavating trip down to the Caribbean...

I don't know what brought me there in the first place. Maybe it was Fate or maybe it was the crazy thought that I would stumble across Captain Jack's treasure. Those "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies were bloody amazing and that's probably what got me down here in the first place. The sheer magnitude of the treasure I had seen in those movies sparked my interest at what kind of silver mother lode could be down here along with the not-so-important-to-me gold and whatnot.

Boy, was I wrong! I had misinterpreted the islands in the movies as fortresses built into the islands. It turns out that it was all movie magic. The amount of effort it would take to make a fortress in these cliffs would be next to impossible. Plus, most of Caribbean Islands were flat and/or forest covered. I could find no indication that pirates had ever been here. The locals even laughed at me when I brought up the topic of pirates in the local marketplaces. It seemed that this was a wasted trip in its entirety...