Chapter Two

[magickeyboard.livejournal.com]

Well life got a little crazy there but hey, disappear and there's lots of new stuff so yay! I need to catch up on all of the posts I missed but here's the next chapter in my story for comments and critiques! I've very much appreciated all the comments I've gotten so far and look forward to more!

They critiqued our technique, every move analyzed as they told us how to improve. Largely we ignored them although our faces showed nothing but attentiveness.

 

The training sessions had become play for us years ago, as children they were the closest thing we had to fun. So while they treated every single day like a serious event, we rarely gave close to a hundred percent, just enough to keep them satisfied that we were trying to improve. Usually we made them last longer, extended the fun, but today we were worried. Four, Eleven, Thirteen, and Fifteen were on a long mission, a mission that was now overdue by a day.

 

I had expected them to be back on base by the time we got back from our mission. They hadn’t been. We weren’t allowed to ask questions and no one had expressed any concern in our presence but as soon we were back in our quarters I intended to ‘listen’.

 

They had all of the Project personnel trained to not think about anything important while on base but things slipped through the cracks. It was much harder to not think about something than it was to think about something and as long as I never indicated that I overheard things, they didn’t acknowledge that I was the biggest security risk on base. The price they paid for having a mind reader at their disposal.

 

I had managed to learn quite a bit over the years and had gotten skilled at sifting through the clutter of thoughts for the nuggets of useful information.

 

They probably would have made us run through another session, given how short the first one had been, but there was a meeting that most of military and scientific personnel had to go to so we were let off early.

 

We weren’t supposed to leave our rooms, which aside from our beds were furnished with exercise equipment and Project approved educational material, until dinner. Our rooms were heavily monitored for non-approved activity but even cameras couldn’t pick up thoughts.

 

I lay on my bed with my eyes closed and breathing even, pretending to rest. My mind touched the others in their rooms with a brief hello and I would have moved on if I hadn’t felt one of them waiting for that brief touch so he could speak with me.

 

What’s up DW?                                                    

 

Just wondering how you’re holding up? You seemed distracted today.

 

Something told me that wasn’t what he really wanted to ask but I played along. I’m fine, just worried about the others.

 

I’m sure Four, he paused tellingly, I’m sure all of them are ok.

 

I frowned although he couldn’t see it, and made the decision to push to see what he really wanted. I would much rather talk about his fears and emotions than my own. Double standard yes, but the truth none the less.

 

What did you really want to talk about DW?

 

He had the grace to show his mental embarassment and sent a faint mental pulse of apology before seeming to work up his courage. I want your opinion, your advice, both as a fellow Shadow and, here he hesitated before plunging onwards, and as Mandy’s friend.

 

Ok. I said cautiously, he already knew she liked him, however unspoken their feelings might be, and beyond that I wasn’t sure what advice I was qualified to give. I was as clueless when it came to relationships as the rest of us.

 

I, I just, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to start something while we’re part of the Project but I’m just so tired of waiting.

 

Back in my cell I fought the urge to tense as I felt a burning sensation under my eyelids, I knew exactly what he meant and I didn’t know what I could say that would make it better.

 

I’m tired of waiting too, we all are. If you think that it’s worth the risk I’ll do everything I can to help, if you think the risk to both of you is too high, I promise you she’s not going to change her mind.

 

He didn’t speak again but I felt his gratitude and his desire to be alone in his thoughts so I pulled away and tried to collect my own emotions. We lost a lot because of our lives, so much that I could never decide what the worst sacrifice was, but the pain and grief and hope I felt in DW was pretty damn close to the top of the list.

 

I took a deep breath before ranging farther, dipping into the minds of the guards just outside our section of the compound; I still needed to know what was happening to the others.

 

They knew nothing and I continued onwards. The doctors were going over our test results, nothing interesting there other than one intern who was having rather pornographic thoughts about Two and I.

 

I contemplated showing him an image pulled from my memory, something particularly gruesome, but figured his crudeness wasn’t worth the uproar that could cause if he reported it.

 

It was when my questing mind reached the meeting that they thought was out of my reach, above ground, that I found something worthwhile.

 

Something horrible.

 

The others had been caught, they had been on a mission overseas and foreign military agents had captured them despite their impressive abilities. Something had gone wrong. They didn’t know what exactly but they had lost all contact other than their tracking signals, which were implanted at the base of all of our skulls.

 

Right now the meeting was debating between two options, three technically but the third was a distinct minority of people who wanted to abandon them. That wasn’t going to happen. We were too expensive and knew too much for that possibility.

 

Instead something worse might happen.

 

They were either going to arrange a rescue, or bomb their location with enough fire power to erase all trace of life for the next fifty years. They could make it look like an accident, they were good at that. No one would ever suspect the US of anything.

 

But I would know.

 

I burned with the urge to just push on their minds, nudge them towards the first option. They would know I tampered but if the others were rescued, it would be worth it. My death would be worth it. Assuming they killed me, there were worse options.

 

I utilized one of the few aspects of my ability that the Project didn’t know about and pulled the others into my mind. At first they were surprised, then they saw what I had overheard and there was silence, angry silence.

 

We all ‘listened’ with intensity for their decision; poised and ready to strike by mutual, if silent, consent if they made the wrong choice.

 

They didn’t. We all breathed again.

 

They would send us to rescue them tomorrow; tonight they would gather all the information they could and prepare any equipment we needed.

 

We would be ready, we would act concerned, we would get them back.

 

That night was one of the longest in my life; pretending to move around my room without care, eating dinner casually with just the hint of concern than an overdue mission warranted. I wouldn’t call it torture. I’d been tortured; we all had to make sure we wouldn’t break. This wasn’t that bad, but it was close.

 

Our team was like a family, those ten of us who had survived everything the Project put us through. We trained together, fought together, plotted together, and hated the Project together.

 

I wanted them back, alive and safe. I wanted Four back.

 

You may be wondering why, if we all hate the Project so much, we’re still here and working with them.

 

Oh, you’re wondering about Four? Well, I hate to break it to you but I’m not going there.

 

There are many reasons that we are still here; some physical, some emotional, and some of it’s just fear. For physical reasons there are the trackers built into our spinal columns, we would need to find a way to safely remove them to be sure of staying free once we escaped. We’re pretty sure we could manage that, we’ve had a lot of time to come up with theories, but we’re still not one hundred percent sure that its just a tracker. They could have put something more lethal inside of us and we wouldn’t know, we were just children when they were implanted.

 

There’s also the fact that we’re pretty sure we’re not the only branch of the Project, I’m sure that we’re not the only special ones they have trained and that means they have other means of finding us if we leave, and that if we succeed it lowers the chances of any other group being able to. Not to mention they could just make more of us, they have our DNA and none of us our comfortable with the though of clones or children of ours being under their control because they lost us.

 

Then there’s the fear. Fear of failure, that if we try and succeed we won’t get another chance. Fear that some of us will get out and some of us won’t and those left behind would be punished. Fear that they’ll threaten or hurt our long lost families if they can’t get to us. Fear that we do get out, that we do succeed, and that we won’t know how to handle the real world. What if this life is all we’re really capable of? We don’t talk about that fear but its there all the same.

 

None of this means we don’t have a plan or that we intend to stay working for them the rest of our lives, lives that due to our unique genetics promised to be quite long and healthy. It just signifies that we have to be smart about whatever it is we’re planning. Assuming we’re planning something of course.

 

I plead the fifth.

 

Here's the links to the first chapter and the prologue as well.

Prologue
Chapter One

Comments

[starlight83.livejournal.com]

Your most serious issue is with "telling" rather than "showing." Your story reads very distantly, as if your first person narrator is an old, old woman relaying a story that she's forgotten most of the details of. You're sort of glossing over scenes and just relaying what happens in them instead of actually digging in and showing it blow by blow.

For instance, when your main character listens in on the meeting, all you do is have the narrator announce what she overhears. Instead, you could actively detail exactly what conversation or thoughts she's overhearing. Give your reader the exact conversation she hears, the thoughts she's privy to, and how she's reacting to them. These are important scenes in the course of your story. Don't just say that they've happened...*show* them.

Also, you have some grammatical issues I'd like to point out, because they're all very easy to fix.

First, every time you refer to "the Project" don't capitalize it. Only capitalize it if you're referring to it directly by name. If there's a "the" leave out the capitalization. Project in and of itself is not a proper noun. I noticed you did this with a couple of other words in your Prologue/Chapter One, but can't off the top of my head remember which they were. Same principle applies though.

Also, you're occasionally mis-using semi-colons. For example, "There are many reasons that we are still here; some physical, some emotional, and some of it’s just fear." What you really intended to use here is just a regular colon, which basically is a big grammatical flag saying, "Here comes a list: list." Though in this case, a comma would work just as well.

I hope some of that was helpful. Keep writing! :)

[thebonedawg.livejournal.com]

I agree with the "showing" and not "telling" part. That's really important. And giving us the dialogue of what was said in the meeting would really help.

I disagree about "The Project." I think you should leave it capitalized. It brings it to attention and lets the reader know that it is something official. And from what I read, I took "The Project" as the name of what they've been working on. It's actually the title of something. It's not just a random project someone's doing. It is The Project, and that's really important for the story. Therefore, I think you should always capitalize it.

[rosalinda-143.livejournal.com]

I agree with starlight83 that your telling more than showing. We want emotions, we want to feel the fear and worry when One finds out that Four and the others aren't back from the mission. We want to feel the surprise and despair that One if feeling when she finds out that Four and the others have been captured.

Was it hard or easy to convince the scientists' to choose the first decision to rescue them without letting them know she's there?

Show me the fear of why you don't want to leave, show me the other emotions of why you don't want to leave. Show me what she feels when she finds out the scientists' are planning to blow up that whole area and make it look like an accident. Anger? Fear? Both?

I hope I wasn't too hard on you. Keep writing and I'll keep my fingers crossed to see this published someday. :) Good luck!

peace.love.happiness.

- Rosie

[magickeyboard.livejournal.com]

I am really bad at telling rather than showing, my worst weakness I think and since I usually don't write in narrative but third person, past tense it's aggravating the problem. That's a very good point of actually showing the conversation she overhears and I've been trying to insert more dialogue into the story anyways so that's something I'm going to work on.
I definitely appreciate the grammar tips, the semi colon I had actually originally had as a comma and then changed it when I over analyzed myself. In the case of the Project though, I know its not a noun that is usually capitalized but in my story in this usage its a name and so therefore a proper noun which should be capitalized. The Project, is shorthand for Project Shadow, the name of the governmental agency or organization that they're part of. If there's ever a non capitalized usage of the word in my story than it means I'm actually using it as the noun itself rather than a name. Does that make sense? Or am I totally crazy :-D

[starlight83.livejournal.com]

Some clarification, in case you were curious. :)

Semi-colons have two basic uses: to combine two complete sentences, or to be used as a "strong comma." I think it's the second one there that confused you. It's a pretty rare case to run into. Most of the time that happens when you have either a really complex sentence, or your sentence contains a list wherein one or more items in the list also contains a comma. Not something you'll run into often.

I still don't think you should capitalize project because you are referring to it in a general sense. Still, if you really want to have it stand in as a proper noun, then you should capitalize "the" as well, just so it's clear.

And the revision you posted is definitely better on the tell verus show scale! Good improvement.

[magickeyboard.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I struggle with dialogue but I had some free time so is this better on the show versus tell scale? Also don't know how to cut in a comment if that's even possible so here's hoping this isn't too long.



It was when my questing mind reached the meeting that they thought was out of my reach, above ground, that I found something worthwhile.

Something horrible.

I had caught the beginning of the meeting and slipped unnoticed into the mind of one of the guards at the door and listened with his ears. Mr. Hartley cleared his throat and spoke first. “Four, Eleven, Thirteen, and Fifteen have been captured or so we assume. Something went wrong and we have received no communications in thirteen hours, they missed the last two check in’s.”

There were startled murmurs and then one of the military adviser’s spoke up. “Are their tracers still active?”

“Yes and they’ve been stationary for the last ten hours, all life signs are still valid so we know they’re alive and we know where they are.” This time it was Mr. Neal who spoke, another Project leader with a gratingly nasal voice. At that particular moment though his voice was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard, something was wrong but they were alive, anything was fixable as long as they were alive.

“When are we sending the rescue and are we going to send all of the other Shadows in? If whoever it was managed to capture four I think they’ll need every advantage we can give them.”

“Why do we have to send a recue? There are other options available to us.” It was Mr. Hartley again and I nearly gave away my presence in the guard’s mind as shock almost broke the shielding between my thouts and his.

“What are you suggesting Hartley?” Mr. Parker asked, the one who had assumed they were sending a rescue and for the first time in my life I found myself cheering on one of the Project leaders.

“If whoever we’re dealing with managed to take out four Shadows whose to say they won’t take out the remaining six as well? Then we would have none. I’m just suggesting it may be better to cut our losses.”

“Surely you don’t mean to abandon them? We can’t let anyone else get a hold of their genetics or the little knowledge they have about us and those are very expensive assets to just throw away.”

“Expensive yes but irreplaceable no, as for the possibility of their secrets being revealed, well there are ways to remove that possibility without risking any more of our expensive assets.” Anger rose like hot acid in my chest and only my nails digging into my palm all the way back in my cell kept me from losing my tenuous grip on my self control.

“Is your vote for destroy and disavow?” Mr. Neal asked in a non commital tone as he looked at Mr. Hartley. The other man nodded and Mr. Neal turned to Mr. Parker, “And your vote is for rescue?” Again the other man nodded and Mr. Neal turned to face the rest of the Project leaders and staff. “Suggestions please people, we need pros and cons and other solutions.”

Several voices spoke up at once and I used the confusion to pull my concentration away from the meeting and utilize one of the few aspects of my ability that the Project didn’t know about and pull the others into my mind. At first they were surprised, then I showed them what I had overheard and there was silence, angry silence.

Now we all listened as the discussion continued for what felt like hours as I held my shields, glad that the guard whose senses I was ‘borrowing’ had an unusually placid mind. This wouldn’t have been possible if he was experiencing strong emotions himself because ours were bubbling over in a confused turmoil of anger, hope, fear, and weariness at being seen as assets rather than people.

Finally a decision was reached. “We will send the other Shadows in the morning, its hostile air space so we can’t keep reserves their but we will have them within a reasonable range for rescue. This discussion is over.”

Mr. Hartley and a few others looked less than pleased at Mr. Neal’s announcement but they accepted it and after a few last minute points the meeting ended and I slipped out of the guard’s mind, releasing everyone back to their own thoughts.

[rosalinda-143.livejournal.com]

Anger rose like hot acid in my chest and only my nails digging into my palm all the way back in my cell kept me from losing my tenuous grip on my self control.

Love it! That's great! I can feel the anger bubbling up inside her, I can see her digging her nails into her palms! Keep that up. That was really good! Keep up the good work!

peace.love.happiness.

- Rosie

P.S. I've still got my fingers crossed! ^.^

[magickeyboard.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm glad that the emotions came across clearer and there was more show and less tell. I definitely appreciate both the constructive criticism and the compliments so thank you. :-)

[thebonedawg.livejournal.com]

It was Mr. Hartley again and I nearly gave away my presence in the guard’s mind as shock almost broke the shielding between my thouts and his.

I like this line because it really gives you a sense of how close she is to losing it, yet she manages to hold back.

I used the confusion to pull my concentration away from the meeting

Really good line. I could actually see this happening.

I'm glad you added this. It does help to show the story instead of simply telling it.

[magickeyboard.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I was able to show her emotions in a way that came through and made sense, and I'm glad you pulled that first line because it showed me that I spelled thoughts wrong! :-D Unintended benefits.

[thebonedawg.livejournal.com]

LoL. It's so much easier to catch someone else's mistakes than your own. I wrote a scene for my story the other day. And I must have read over it about 5 times, and on the last go around I caught an error that I had missed on every other read through. I was like "OMG, How did I miss that?!" Haha. Oh well.

[thebonedawg.livejournal.com]

Just a few suggestions. =D

Something told me that wasn’t what he really wanted to ask but I played along. I’m fine, just worried about the others.

Since she's a mind reader, wouldn't she already know what he wanted to ask? I doubt people would really enjoy having someone hear their thoughts before they were ready to discuss them. But since she can, you might have her say something about how she had learned that it was more polite or whatever to let people speak their minds in their own time, despite the fact that she already knew what they were wanting to say.

I was as clueless when it came to relationships as the rest of us.

Maybe change "us" to "them."

The others had been caught, they had been on a mission overseas and foreign military agents had captured them despite their impressive abilities. Something had gone wrong. They didn’t know what exactly but they had lost all contact other than their tracking signals, which were implanted at the base of all of our skulls.

She goes from looking into the minds of the other special kids directly to this meeting. She also mentions that what she finds there is "horrible." But she doesn't have much of a reaction to what's going on. A normal urge would be to react in some way -- gasp, sit up on the bed, start pacing the room. Something. Granted, she knows that any "unapproved" behavior would be seen, and later she even mentions that she's trying to act like she doesn't know about the mission, so maybe she is simply resisting the urge to react. If that's the case, you might want to add something about how she felt like getting up or pacing or reacting in some other way, but she knew they were monitoring her so she pretended like she hadn't heard anything.

Oh, you’re wondering about Four? Well, I hate to break it to you but I’m not going there.

I would cut that line. You go from talking about the reader wondering why they're still at the Project, then cut to this assumption about what the reader is thinking, then just go right back to why they're still with the Project. It seemed really out of place.

I like the ending, how you explain why they are still with the Project and all the reasons they are holding off on escaping.

I have enjoyed reading this story so far. It's well-written and I like it being from her perspective. She's right in the middle of the action and still young enough so that the narration reads more real. Kind of like if she was relaying the story to her friends.

[magickeyboard.livejournal.com]

That's a really good point, I went back and added to the line to indicate that she was choosing to only see his surface thoughts and not dig below what he was showing. Thank you for pointing that out! It makes sense and I just hadn't thought of it.

And I have to agree about the line where she's talking to the audience, in the first incarnation of this chapter (many moons ago, ;-) ) I liked it and it fit but now it doesn't really flow and I just hadn't brought myself to getting rid of it. I just delete so much these days in revisions, lol, got to learn to let go.

I'm glad you're enjoying the story and the perspective, I'm not used to first person and was worried I wouldn't be able to pull off the narrative approach so it's very nice to hear that someone is enjoying that part.

Thank you very much for taking the time to review!

[thebonedawg.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I prefer reading stories that are in 1st person. I feel more connected to the characters that way. Although sometimes it's hard to have a 1st person perspective and you need a 3rd person. But I still feel like I can relate to them better when it's in 1st.

I have lines (or even paragraphs) here and there that I can't decide whether or not to keep in the story. I usually just leave them in and resolve to let others read it later and see what they think.

No problem. =D

[rephen.livejournal.com]

Hi, again.

Welcome back to the writing uh, world, so to speak. I know rl can really get messy, and Im glad to see your works back here!

This was much better after the little edit, the meeting and the Project's leaders are better fleshed out, as well as the Shadows' feelings and life. I enjoyed reading it very much.

Your strength lies in how clear you see your characters and their environment, I really like all the little details that you've put in your writings :).

Hope to see more from you!

[magickeyboard.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying the story and that you like how I'm portraying the characters. It's always chancy with characters on whether people will like/identify with them. :-S I definitely agree that the fleshed out scene is better, going to do that with a few other scenes as well. Thank you for commenting!