Alex.

In a dystopian future, corrupt police are replaced by a mechanized patrol force known as the COPs (Computer Operated Police). Cold and brutal, the COPs are met with opposition from rebels.

Three days. How time flies. But it has now been three days. Three days since Alex disappeared. Nobody knows where he is. Nobody knows when he disappeared. He just never came home. The search is ending today. I can see his mother, still in tears, holding her husband tightly. They are worried. They don’t know where Alex is.

But I do…

                The COPs, or Computer Operated Police, are a mechanized task force meant to replace the human police force. Corruption had led the police from law enforcement to acts of brutality and terrorism. If anything, the COPs were much worse. Programmed to uphold the law, the COPs have no emotion, and miscommunication has led to using force, resulting in death. They don’t listen to reason. Neither does the company that builds them. They see profit. They won’t reprogram the robots, and see rebellion as a need for more production.

                Alex and I live in NY district #236, formerly known as Manhattan. The island is blocked off from the rest of the city, in order to keep the high crime rates confined. It’s also where the main headquarters of the Earth Rebuilt robotics company, which produces the COPs and many other robots, is located. The city is a terrible slum, torn apart by the many roving gangs as well as the mysterious Bloodfist rebels, who fight to eradicate the COPs and put humans back in control.

                Alex and I stood silently on the low roof of an abandoned gas station. Two COPs were patrolling the street, marching silently. The only sounds were the soft whine of the motors that moved them, and my own heartbeat.

“Twenty yards,” I whispered. “Drakon, do you have a visual?”

“Copy that,” Drakon whispered. He was lying down with a rifle in front of him, with his sights set on the androids before us. He was the Bloodfist’s top sniper, born into one of the smaller Assault Tech divisions, and raised as an incredible weapons designer.

Alex looked up from his laptop. He had been studying a diagram of the COPs. “They’re each running a ZX45 microprocessor. You’ll only have less than a second to take down the second one. Be ready, or this could get ugly.” Alex was our battlefield tech. He was a teenage genius, and an expert in robotics.

“Taking the shot,” Drakon whispered. He steadied his breath and fired twice. The COPs went down in a fit of shakes.

We ran down to the street. The COPs were still convulsing. Stuck to the side of each of their heads was a small EMP device, currently scrambling their systems and disabling their computers.

“We only have a minute or two before the EMPs lose their power,” Alex muttered while scrambling with plugs and wires. He connected one COP to his laptop, and began typing in codes. His hands were a blur as he struggled to break down the firewall and reprogram the android. “Got it!” he shouted excitedly. The COP sat up, then stood and saluted Alex.

“Nice work,” Drakon said impatiently, “but there’s still-“ he was cut off by the hand that had just wrapped itself around his ankle. Kicking free, Drakon spun around in bewilderment to face the COP that had regained control and was drawing its weapon.

Alex quickly typed a code into his laptop. The reprogrammed android turned to the COP just in time to block the barrage of bullets aimed at Drakon. We dove behind a rusted car, and Alex reached into his backpack.

“Use these!” he shouted, tossing me metal gloves, and a headset with a visor. I put them on and my body prickled as electricity shot through my brain. An image flashed onto the visor. I was controlling the android. I quickly punched at the gun, but was thrown back by a blow to the torso. I began to punch at the head, attempting to disable the visual sensors. COPs are programmed to have strength equal to an average human, but Alex learned how to override this. Their true strength is nearly five times that of a normal human.

“Try to turn it around,” Alex shouted to me. “Drakon has another EMP. Draw its attention so he doesn’t shoot you.”

The COP aimed another blow at my left side. I grabbed the arm and punched at the elbow, breaking it in half. I swung the arm around, trying to put a bit of distance between us. The COP grabbed the arm and pulled me in, smashing his knee into my face. Half my visor went dark, meaning he just wrecked one of the cameras, throwing off my depth perception. I swung at the robot, but he simply sidestepped to dodge each of them.

It was toying with me.

I was baffled. Robots can’t toy with victims. They need emotions, intelligence. Even Alex was years away from artificial intelligence. How was this one COP able to fight like this? And it had overridden its own program, so it had been using its full force from the start.

I tried sidestepping around it. But the COP changed tactics. It jumped on me, and began to pull at my head. I flipped him over me and brought him crashing into the pavement behind me. But as quickly as that had happened, a hand shot in between my legs and pulled, tripping me. I tried to get back up, but couldn’t. I couldn’t feel it, but I could see through the visor why I couldn’t move; The COP was on top of me, viciously ripping into my back. He’s going for the power source!

“Take the shot!” I shouted to Drakon. The shot rang out and the COP fell. Alex quickly rushed out to reprogram it.

I slumped down onto the sidewalk, pulling off the gloves and visor. My back tingled, as if I were the one being ripped open, not the android.

“You alright?” Drakon asked. This hadn’t been the first time we had done this. Drakon, Alex and I had started this team, the Scout and Recovery squad. We had brought nearly twenty androids to the Bloodfist. They usually shot at us, or used basic brawl-style fighting against us, but none had resisted as bad as this. The last few missions had been very strenuous, and had left a small mental scar. I had never felt that helpless in my life.

“Don’t worry about me. Keep your gun trained on that thing.”

“That ‘thing’ is now a surrogate of the Bloodfist rebels,” Alex said, standing next to the android. “The other one may be fixable, assuming the power core is still intact.”

“Have the good one carry it,” Drakon pointed to the android, but was looking everywhere else. “They must’ve seen what happened, because that definitely was not typical COP combat training. We need to go now.”

We didn’t get very far. A missile slammed into the side of a building, barely missing us. I turned to see a COP carrier car closing in fast. It stopped twenty feet short of us and ejected six COPs, all with weapons trained at us. As we prepared for their assault, I was startled by the roar of an engine. A large, heavily armored SUV screeched to a halt in front of us, taking the gunfire that almost took our lives. The doors opened, and two Bloodfist soldiers leaped out, quickly loading our androids into the truck.  Two more got out and began to fire back on the COPs. Drakon and I were pulled into the truck, but Alex was still outside. I struggled against the soldiers, trying to get out, but they held me back. Finally, I spotted Alex. He was crouched behind a wall typing furiously on his laptop. Suddenly, the undamaged android pushed its way past me and out of the truck. It ran into the crossfire and began firing at the COPs. Alex knew all the weak spots to hit on the androids, so he began to destroy them easily. But he was still in danger. I still struggled to get to him, but it was no use; more carrier cars were approaching fast. One pulled up right near Alex. A man, not a COP, but a man stepped out. Both of his legs were robotic, gleaming in the sunlight. His arms were also robotic, his right hand changing into some weapon. He held up a small device, and turned to the wall Alex was behind. He raised his right arm. Over the gunfire I heard him yell “Gotcha ya little-,” before he blasted the wall. It exploded, sending Alex flying. Battered, and bruised, Alex stirred in a daze. He managed to roll onto his stomach, and weakly crawled to his laptop. The man began walking toward him. Alex only had a few seconds before he was caught. As the man grabbed Alex and lifted him with ease, the hacked android kicked him in the back. The man simply dropped Alex, put one hand on the robots shoulder, and the other around its neck. Then, with barely an effort, he ripped the head right off, and tossed it at our truck. At me.

The doors slammed, and I all I could do as the truck sped off was watch as Alex was beaten, and carried into the carrier car, along with his laptop. And like that Alex was gone.

Drakon was busy talking to Tech, another of our computer technicians. He was reading codes that were being received from the COP dispatch. “They’re taking him to Earth Rebuilt,” Tech said, still reading.

“Why would they take him?” I asked. “Weren’t the COPs were ordered to shoot rebels on sight?”

“Yes, but think about this. Who else in the entire Bloodfist rebellion, besides Alex, is able to hack into and reprogram the COPs?”

I paused. I had no idea that Alex was the only one.

“This probably means,” Tech continued, “that they want to know how Alex hacked them, so they know how to prevent it in the future.”

“This is gonna put a crutch on the Project Surrogate,” Drakon sighed. “We need more androids before we launch an attack. Twenty and a half isn’t gonna cut it. We need Alex.”

I sat back to let this all sink in. The Bloodfist wasn’t the only ones that needed Alex. Alex was my brother in arms. I needed him, and he needed me.

We found each other when I was nine. My parents had died when I was two, in a COP attack on the Bloodfist’s Southwest division, one of the smaller, but well known assault divisions. My mom was a messenger, traveling secretly between hideouts and the Central Command. My dad was a strategic coordinator, specializing in tactical and guerilla warfare. He led small scale attacks against Earth Rebuilt and its robots. His planned large-scale attack, Project Surrogate, was his greatest stroke of genius. But when he failed to reprogram the COP he caught, the hideout was tracked, and attacked. I remember being found by a COP, but before I could be killed, the robot was shot, and I was saved by the woman I learned to call abuela. She was an old Latino lady, in her mid-seventies. She took me in. I would often play with the children in her neighborhood on the outskirts of Manhattan, where the East River and Hudson split from the ocean. We learned to hide when the COPs patrolled, and even made games out of it; we would throw rocks from rooftops and trip them with rope snares. Abuela raised me until I was five, when she passed in her sleep. After that, I learned to survive on the streets. I had to live on small animals, usually a stray dog or cat. I’d often come across gangs. Not all were bad. One day, I was too hungry to run from a COP. I had only known to fear the COPs, so I threw rocks at it. When it raised its gun at me, I was deafened by a barrage of bullets that tore through the android. The gang didn’t say much, but each gave me a small piece of food, and a handgun. I later learned that it was because of the jacket I was wearing, a tattered brown military jacket that abuela had wrapped me in when she found me. A jacket with a red hand sewn to the back…

 Alex was only seven when I found him. He was playing with a toaster that he called “Max”. Within three days, Max could bark, fetch, and toast bread all at once. He had also made some small scouting drones that would fly around the city. He used them to avoid COPs, and help him find food. He too had been born into the Bloodfist, but his division, the Northern division, had only been attacked two years ago. They were our main Tech division, attempting to hack Earth Rebuilt and often taking down some of their systems. His father had learned of Project Surrogate, and was attempting to restart it himself, only to reach the same fate as my father. I wasn’t the best with technology, but Alex would spend countless nights reading over his father’s notes. I would have left him by himself, but he wasn’t cut out for survival. I had to protect him multiple times from COPs and gangs. Eventually we grew inseparable from each other. We survived together for two years before we came across the strange gang again. Alex had picked up their signal, and we found their hideout. The gang turned out to be the Bloodfist Rebellion. They searched the jacket I was wearing, and found a flesh drive containing my father’s Surrogate work. We were taken in by the Bloodfist, and brought to the Central Command. Being one of the very few survivors of each attack, and after learning of our parentage, we were taken in personally by our leader, Armin “Blut Vene” Sorovich, and his wife. I began studying combat training, where I learned my hand-to-hand fighting skills. I also competed in simulative war games, planning out assault and defensive lines. Blut Vene himself took notice, comparing me to the tactical genius my father was. Alex, however, would spend days at a time obsessing over the notes, until the day he discovered the error his father had made. He was the only one who understood how the COPs worked, and when he was sixteen, he announced to Blut his official restart of Project Surrogate. Because of the danger of the operation, we were given an Overwatch named Drake, better known by his codename, “Drakon”. Now, after so many years, Alex, Drakon and I were brothers. I wasn’t sure how I could live without Alex, and I could tell Drakon felt the same way. We had been through so much. I didn’t know what to expect, but I did know one thing; I was not going to sit around and wait for a miracle. I turned to Tech.

“Send a message to the Bloodfist. Tell them to keep it quiet, we don’t want to start a war. We need an infiltration team. No less than three days, the best that we have. In three days, we’re going after Alex.”

The building was a fortress. In the three days since Alex was taken, Bloodfist monitors had picked up major constructive activity. There was now an enormous wall around Earth Rebuilt, sixty feet high, and spanning an entire square half mile, with robotic sentries stationed around it. The only way in was by jetcar, flying cars owned by the wealthy.

“The sentries are using long range thermal detectors,” Tech announced. We were a little over a half mile away from the wall.

“How long is their range?” Drakon asked. Tech lit a flare and chucked it about ten yards ahead. The sentry whirred around and blasted a twelve inch hole in the ground where the flare was. A few Rebels backed away.

“Anything above 57 degrees, which is just above the max core temperature of a COP, gets a big helping of .50 caliber explosive rounds crammed down their throat.” A squirrel darted across the street. The sentry turned and fired, blasting a line into the ground, but not hitting the squirrel until the last second.

“Interesting,” Drakon muttered.

“What?”

“Squirrels can sprint up to twenty miles an hour. The sentry was only slightly faster.”

“Then we can assume,” Tech said, addressing the group, “that the sentries cannot turn to follow anything over twenty five miles an hour.” He turned to me. “I’m not in range to disable any of them, and we don’t have any vehicles that can take a hit like that, or dart across a street like the squirrel.”

“Then I guess we’re up.” I said, turning to Drakon. He turned to the ten men we had brought with us.

“S-Team, gear up,” Drakon commanded. Five men pulled out metal visors and controllers. Drakon did the same. From the truck, six androids sprang to life, and leaped to the street. Two were carrying a large crate.

“Tech, I hope you know what you’re doing,” I said quietly.

“Alex and I both worked on this. I used his notes to finish it, but it hasn’t been tested yet. Just be glad he had all the neural work done.”

“Are you sure it will work for me though?” I asked nervously.

“Alex designed the prototype for you specifically. I trust his work, even over my own.”

“Alright,” I sighed with relief. “Do it.”

The androids opened the crate. Alex hadn't been able to fix the android that I had destroyed, but he made different plans. Tech typed in a code, and the androids began to work with mechanical precision. Within minutes, my arms and legs were coated in black and red metal. Tech typed another code, and the armor began to move, contracting, lengthening, interlocking. A helmet formed over my face, blocking my vision. From outside, I heard Tech giving instructions.

“Are you sure you want to do this? It may be irreversible. It may even kill you.”

“Or it may save Alex and give us back our fighting chance against Earth Rebuilt. I’m ready.”

“The pain will be-“

“I said DO IT!” I yelled. “Every minute we lose could mean the difference between life and death for Alex. Do it NOW! That’s an ORDER!”

Tech paused. Then he calmly muttered “Brace yourself.”

My body exploded with pain as the armor drilled into my spine. Had it not stayed rigid, I would be writhing on the ground with pain. But it kept me secure, so all I could do was scream. Within seconds, it was done, and the pain subsided quickly. My vision flickered in, as Tech began running diagnostics.

“Welcome back, Robo-Cop.” He snickered. “The armor has successfully tapped into your neural network. I’ve increased your dopamine levels so you could ignore the pain. You have full motor control-“

“Then why can’t I move,” I asked flatly.

Tech typed in another code. The armor loosened, and I began moving my arms.

“Full motor control,” he continued, “Night and thermal vision, auto targeting. The armor can withstand up to .45 caliber bullets, to an extent, and has accelerated your overall physical abilities.”

I walked to a nearby wall. I punched at it, my fist easily tearing through the six-inch concrete. “He definitely had me in mind when he built this.”

 “Then let’s break it in properly,” Drakon mused. The S-Team drew their guns. Tech put on his own visor. Another android sprang from the truck, Techs own modified robot.

“Why do you need this?” Tech asked as he ran diagnostic on his own android.

“So I can’t lose connection. I need to stay completely connected and protected. There’s no signal to block.”

“Makes sense.” Then he paused. “Get me close enough to disable the sentries. I’ll bring the men back.”

“Where are you going?” As soon as I asked, the whir of a COP gunship signaled that we had been found. The men piled into the truck. One climbed into the heavy gun on top and took aim at the ship. The gunship closed in steadily. Finally, the truck roared to life, and tires screeched as it tore down the road. The gun blazed at the gunship, successfully getting its attention. It turned and followed the truck. The truck turned a corner and vanished into the mass of Manhattan.

“That buys us time,” I addressed the androids around me. “Let’s not waste it.” I turned to Drakon, the robot with a red dragon painted on it. “Let’s go get our brother.”

By the time we got Tech in range, we had already lost four men. Drakon and I were escorting Tech’s android, but the turret kept picking off the others. After disabling the turret, it was me, Drakon, Tech and one other guy.

“How are we getting past this wall?” Tech asked, stared at the top.

I dug my hand into the wall. I looked at the top of the wall.

“Anybody ever wish they could be Spider Man when they were kids?”

Drakon had already leaped at the wall. Then Tech. Soon, we were all making our way up, pulling ourselves hand over hand, until we had fully scaled the titanic wall. I looked toward the building. Two gunships were circling about thirty feet below us. But that wasn’t our big problem.

“Guys,” Tech gasped, his voice wavering, “Small problem. The ship stopped chasing us here in the truck. It’s headed for the wall.”

But it was already too late.

The engines roared as the gunship rose behind us. It fired missiles at us. I grabbed Tech and jumped to the side just as the missiles blasted a hole in the wall. I looked, with relief, to see Drakon on the other side of the fifteen foot smoldering crater. My relief faded away when the other two gunships rose next to us. Now it was just me, Drakon and Tech, against three battle ready war machines. Simultaneously, they all opened fire. Drakon leaped to the side again. Tech jumped down the wall, digging his powerful arm into the wall to slow his descent. I leaped at one of the ships. Digging into the steel hull, I climbed up to the missile launcher. The ship took aim and fired at Drakon. I grabbed the missile as it shot from the barrel, and hurled it at the engine of another ship. As the engine exploded, I ripped the launcher off of the ship, stabbing it into the hull, detonating the missile inside. I launched off the wreck, propelled by the explosion, crashing into the engine of the last ship. Finally, I slammed into the wall, clawing at it to slow my fall. I hit the ground, cracking the pavement, Drakon landing next to me. We quickly made our way to the building.

“I’m almost in,” Tech muttered. “There.” The doors slid open. Behind us, the flaming gunships crashed into the ground, destroying a small section of wall behind us. Tech stumbled backwards.

“We’re almost there, Alex.” I said to myself, marching into the building.

Drakon and I drew our guns. We walked carefully, wary of our surroundings. I was expecting a small army would be there to welcome us in the lobby, or at least a few blazing barrels. But instead one man was leaning on the reception desk.

“I been waitin’ for ya.” He chuckled softly. “I was watchin’ that outside. Hope yer not too tired from that.” His voice was rough, with an Irish accent. “I know why yer here.”

“Yeah. I’ve come for your Lucky Charms.”

He laughed with delight. “Ah, they’re always after me Lucky Charms. But yer lookin’ fer somethin’ else, huh?”

“Where’s Alex?”

“Alex?” he said, straightening up. His robotic limbs whirred as he moved toward me slowly. “Alex… Oh. Ya mean that little bugger I hunted down the other day. Yea, he’s in bad shape. They used electroshocks on ‘im, but I think he’s used to all that, workin’ with robots ‘n all.”

“You’ve been torturing him?” My hands whirred as I clenched my fists tighter, anger slowly burning inside me.

“Well, not at first. I started with the real torture today. He's got bamboo shoots under his fingernails, an’ he’s just an all-around bloody mess. He would’ve cracked, had you not shown up. But I was expectin’ men, not toys.” He pulled a small device out of his pocket and pressed a button. Drakon and Tech fell down.

“Severed their signal connections. Good. They don’t need to see this.”

His smug grin wavered. “Why are you still here?”

I pulled back the visor, exposing my face. He grinned again.

“Yer like me, eh?”

“No. I am NOTHING LIKE YOU!” I launched myself at him, taking aim at his head. He grabbed my wrist and whipped me into the wall. He tried to slam me to the ground, but I landed on my feet. Straightening up, I began to punch at his chest and stomach. His arm shifted, and he fired his cannon at my chest. The blast sent me sprawling. I felt my armor pushing into my chest. Any more hits like that would be bad.

“Get up.” He growled. “I know that didn’t kill ya.” He grabbed me by my neck and stood me up. Then he began to punch my stomach.

“Why don’t ya fight back, eh?” He taunted. “Yer friends countin’ on ya.” He pulled another device out of his pocket. This time, it was a screen. The face I saw was bruised and bloodied, but I still recognized it. I stood up straight, and lashed at his torso with all I had. His face paled and contorted. Blood poured from his mouth. I looked down to see my arm buried in his stomach. I brought him close, twisting my fist inside him. “WHERE IS HE?”

“Floor… twenty… three,” he sputtered. “Tech… lab.”

I pushed him to the ground. He aimed his cannon at me again. I stomped on his shoulder, breaking the arm off. The sound of footsteps told me the stairs were not an option. The silver elevator doors, however, told a different story. I wrenched the doors open, and climbed to the top of the car. I dug my hands into the concrete, and began to climb. That’s when the gunfire erupted beneath me. I looked down to see three COPs climbing up to me. I ripped a chunk of the wall off and whipped it at one. He dropped from the wall with a crunch. The others began to hop from wall to wall. I continued climbing, pulling down large chunks of the wall. The two COPs dropped to the bottom of the shaft. I reached the twenty-third floor. As I ran through the halls, pain began to grow in my body. My dopamine levels were returning to normal, and my body was beginning to reject the suit. It grew heavy as I moved onward. I couldn’t give up. Not when I was this close. I stumbled into a room. Notes, screens and wires covered the walls. Tables were cluttered with tools and half-finished bits of machinery. Hanging from his wrists in the middle of the room, Alex moaned in pain. I climbed atop one of the tables and snapped the chains that held him. He collapsed to the floor as I fell off the table. The pain throbbed all throughout my body. Alex crawled painfully to my side. In his hand were long wires, connected to a computer. He connected them to my suit, and typed at a keyboard, watching the monitor. An image of my suit came up.

“You’re dying,” he croaked.

“I know,” I whispered, “I took the risk. Had to save… my brother.”

He typed again at his keyboard. My suit fell apart. It began to re-assemble, now a machine that began meticulous work on my spine.

I barely heard the blazing gunfire over my own piercing screams. Drakon rushed into the room, still fighting off the COPs that were heading towards us. He lifted Alex onto his shoulders as Tech began hacking into the computer Alex had been using. More gunfire and explosions came out from the hall. Bloodfist soldiers poured in, lifting me up to carry me out. As I was carried into the hall, the gunfire stopped. In the middle of the hall, I faced a large, muscle bound man. He wore camouflaged pants, combat boots, and a blood red tank top.

“Blut Vene,” I wheezed.

“Rest, warrior. The Bloodfist is in your debt,” he said softly. His voice was deep, but smooth like an ocean wave, rather than his usual thundering roar. “You brought us back our advantage, Alex. Not only are we able to launch the Surrogate plan, but you have brought us directly into the heart of the enemy.”

I looked at Alex. He was sitting up, talking with Tech. Drakon was cleaning his wounds.

“You owe me no debt. I need nothing, so long as I have my brothers.”

Author's Note

This story is one that I really want to expand, and I have an idea of how, but I want to see what others think first. What could I expand on? What could I have done better? How was the action? Please remember that I'm still kind of new to this so please don't be TOO brutal in your reviews. Lengthy reviews welcome.

Reviews

[Marie]

For the sort of science fiction is, this is good. I don't know what you wuold expand it to. Maybe you want to tell more about the robots; work on their history. Or the history of the Bloodfist.

You have one of your characters "laying down with a rifle in front of him." He should be "lying" down.

[Lord Guru]

Well, thank you for reading. I'm glad you liked it.

[Devon Michael]

I like where the story starts, no windup, no lengthy exposition, just straight in to the action. Science Fiction is good like that, since there's so much information to get across authors get lost in explaining the minutiae and readers get bored in the details.

At the beginning of the story all the things you tell me about the COPs, you then show me through action just a moment later, so if you'd rather, you could use that space to let me get to know the main character better, and why I should care if he gets beaten up by robots or not :) Or maybe just add a bit more about this main dude that I'm meeting for the first time. Figured out pretty immediately that he's a robot-fighting badass.

I wish the end was more nail-biting. A lot of tension resolves in that last paragraph. Other than that your doing great keeping me on the edge of my seat! When you continue the story and want to chop it up in to chapters keep in mind where your best action and suspense is. Like when the lads meet Mr. Lucky Charms. That'd be a great start to a new chapter: just inside the door when they think the worst is behind them and instead meet a psychopathic cyborg-leprechaun. That's the kinda cliffhanger you put at the end, and you definitely know how to write them.

I liked it, I definitely think you should keep it up, but you said you're waiting to hear what other people think first. Nooooo!!! Don't wait to write the story until other people tell you its a good idea. Write the story if you want to tell the story and see it exist in the world. If you have something else you want to write that you think is better than this, you should listen to yourself and write what inspires you most.

Liked the story a lot. Got to read it first thing as I woke up sitting here with a cup of coffee. Good thing it was short or I would've spent a whole morning avoiding writing and just reading 'Alex'.

[Lord Guru]

I've been told it was a good story, but this is the best I have EVER heard about it! I'm so excited to work more with this story. I'm glad you enjoyed it so much.

The reason I wanted to wait is because I wasn't sure what my next move with this would be, so I wanted to see what other writers liked/didn't like, to get an idea with what points I could go deeper with. I also posted what I had because I've been told that people are less likely to read lengthy stories, so this is like the bait on the fish hook. I'm currently working with the story (I'm PUMPED after reading your review), so I'm adding in and such.

Thanks again!

[BrynnaW.]

Usually when I review someone's work I try to be tough and critical but also point out everything that I enjoyed. With your story, however, I see only minor errors, a few grammatical and a random 3 at the end of the dialogue and maybe slight overkill on short sentences in certain areas. The plot itself was very good and hooked me in right away. The plot had many layers and you captured the history of both sides in a way where it didn't get boring or repetitive to read. It reminds me of one of my own Sci - Fi books that I've been working on. If you were to make this into a novel I could see it being successful but what you would need to expand on is the very beginning possibly, of when it all began, even before the Bloodfist team, so just a bit of narration and then you could break off into your first person. Another thing you could expand on is what happened during the 3 day wait, at the Bloodfist headquarters you could describe what's going on and all the people that are involved, etc. Then, of course, from where you left off this story, you could expand to show if there efforts were worth it or not. The action was very well done, it does get a bit confusing though but it's understandable since it's pretty difficult to actually write out a fist- type fight (or at least that's been my experience). Hope this review isn't too long, sorry. I really enjoyed reading this, not something I say everyday either so good job! If you ever post more to this let me know, it's difficult to formulate a new type of plot for a Sci - Fi book but I think you've got one that could be different from the rest. You even got me emotionally involved, that's good writing right there haha. Keep up the good work and Happy Writing!

[Lord Guru]

Thank you! I'll look into the expansion and short sentences (as well as the random 3). I'm really glad you enjoyed it!