Chapter One

I rub my eyes, clearing the sleep out of them. Sitting up, all I can see is bright white. I blink, but still, the white remains. As my eyes adjust, I notice a table next to the bed I'm on, but that seems to be all. Where am I? I spot a door and go through it, hoping for an explanation, but am disappointed when all I'm rewarded with is a sterile white bathroom. A flash of red catches my eye and I whirl around to see a devious-looking tan face with shocking red hair, short and brushed up off to the left. I stare for a second, then jump as I realize I'm looking at a mirror. I take a closer look, noticing my bright red eyes and white nondescript clothes. I go back out into the room, hoping to find another exit. A cold glow seems to emanate from the walls and ceiling. My eyes snap to one of the walls as it slides open, an extremely pale person with white hair and eyes walks through, face expressionless. I can't tell if they're female or male.

"Come," they say, turning and walking out without looking back to see if I'm following. Out of curiosity, I do, and as soon as I walk out of the room, the wall partition slides shut with an almost inaudible hiss. I follow her silently, searching for anything in the halls beside the color white. We take a bunch of turns that I immediately forget before a wall slides into a doorway.

"Where do you get those door-slash-wall things? That would be a really neat trick for a secret base. You could just open up the door and secret entry. Close it and voila, no secret entry... Also, the pranks you.. could... play..." I trail off as they continue to ignore me. The person walks through the opening and I follow, not sure what else to do. There's a person identical to the one next to me sitting at a desk, while a third identical twin or something is wiping down a collection of glass sculptures.

"What do you guys have against color?" I ask, but am ignored again. None of them react at all to my voice, and it's not like I'm being quiet. I turn to the one next to me, waving my hand in front of them and making funny faces.

"Hello?" I ask, poking their shoulder, which feels almost like I'm poking... metal? I breathe in deeply and catch a whiff of metal. Are these things even alive? I focus on my senses, feeling like I'm missing something important here. My vision sharpens, seeming impossibly clearer, while I can hear the light rustling sound of the ghost-person in the corner. A hissing noise catches my attention and I turn my focus to the wall across from me, which opens to reveal a person, a man, that's alive. I can hear him breathing, or maybe that's me. I listen harder for a second and realize that I can hear two sets of breathing, mine and his. I can’t hear the other two ghost-people breathing. His eyes and hair are silver like theirs, but the biggest difference is his skin, which looks silvery but alive.

"Greetings, strualk," he says, his voice incredibly loud. I clamp my hands over my ears, frightened by the volume of his voice. "I can guess you've messed with the auditory settings already."

"What?" I ask, as quiet as I can. He looks annoyed, as if I should know this already.

"The auditory sensors we set up. Try focusing on lowering them."

I do, and a few seconds later, when I can't hear our breathing nearly as well, I try talking again. "What do you mean, auditory sensors?"

"What's your name?"

"Uh..." I search my mind for my name, for any name really, and latch on to a woman's voice saying, Telyn Owen. "Telyn. Telyn Owen."

"Telyn. I'll put that on file. For the past four months, I've known you only as Patient_04. I'm Alekey Berg, director of the Advanced Cybergenetics Research Institue, or ACRI for short. You were brought here unconscious and almost dead, and we did everything we could to keep you alive, which included installing some cybernetics. Follow me." Alekey turns and walks out the door he came in from, and I follow, intrigued and a little confused. How did I get here? What did I almost die from? What kind of institution is this? We go through more white hallways and enter a room with chairs, kind of like a waiting room. Two people are sitting in opposite corners of the room, expectantly. Alekey leaves and the door closes, leaving us three in the room together.

Both of them are guys, and both of them are wearing the same white outfit as me, but other than that we all are very different. The guy on my right has silver hair and eyes, like Alekey, but more metallic. He and I have about the same skin tone. His arms are crossed and he looks a bit like a spoiled child whose mom won't let him have candy. The guy on my left looks to be of a different ethnicity than us, tanner with a bright blue head of hair and eyes. They're equally eyeballing me, and the room is deadly silent.

"I'm Telyn, I say, taking the seat closest to me.

"I'm Tiago," the blue-haired guy says. His voice is kinda high for a guy. The silver guy huffs and rolls his eyes.

"So you'll talk to her and not me?" he says, voice full of annoyance. "Whatever. It's not like I tried to talk to you at all, while you sat there ignoring me."

We sit in awkward silence for a moment as Tiago avoids eye contact with Silver. Suddenly, an explosion blows a hole in the wall, making our ears ring. The smoking black explosion marks are in stark contrast the bleach white wall, and the rest of the facility. Three heads peek in, one of which says, “Who the **** are you guys?”

Author's Note

Telyn- tell-in
Alekey- ahl-ehk-ee-ih
Tiago- tea-ah-go

Reviews

[JayG]

The primary problem I see is that you're writing this like a chronicle of events: "This happened...the place looked like this...I did that...then that happened...and after that..." Problem is, it's data, and every bit as exciting as a history lesson—which explains why you lost interest after a few chapters.

Yes, the reader learns about the place and the situation, but do you read fiction primarily to learn, to be informed on the progression of the plot, or to be entertained?

The things that happen in a story matter only in so far as they motivate the protagonist to react, and take action. But that doesn't happen here. Instead, we get a dispassionate voice explaining the situation (remember we hear none of the emotion in the narrator's voice, and can see none of the storyteller's performance).

Were you to wake in a room such as the one you describe, I'm betteing that your first reaction would be, "What in the hell is going on?" You might wonder if you're dreaming. You'd think back to the last time you were awake, You'd try to make sense of what you see. But she does nothing but act as the eyes and ears of the reader, and talk about what they would see in the film version. Informative? Sure. Entertaining? No.

And that's your problem. Instead of TELLING the reader a story you want to make them live it. instead of telling the reader that she's frightened, you want to make the reader feel that fright as-if-they-were-living-the-scene in parallel with her.

But...can you do that with the writing skills we all learn in school? Hell no.If you use those skills you will, as you've been taught, tell the reader what CAN be seen, not what matters to her in the moment she calls now. If you use those skills your writing will be narrator-centric and fact-based—in other words nonfiction writing.

Spend a bit of time picking up the specialized knowledge and tricks of the fiction writer and your writing will become emotion-based and character-centric. It's goal will be to entertain. And in line with that he story will seem to take place in real-time as it's read, in the protagonist's moment of "now."

Is the change-over easy? No. No profession is a snap to learn. Is it a matter of, "Do this instead of that? To an extent, yes, but your writing reflexes, honed since first grade are not going to yield control easily. But they will, and the difference on readability will please you, and your reader a great deal.

My personal suggestion is to dig up a copy of Debra Dixon's, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict from any online bookseller, or in hard copy from Deb's site. It's a warm easy read, that covers the nuts and bolts issues of building a scene that sings to the reader. And read it slowly, with time to think about the points she raises, and how they relate to your storytelling. Practice the points, too, so you'll not simply learn about them and then, have forgotten a week later that you even read it.

You might want to dig around in my writing articles for a kind of lite version of the points you need to address, to give an idea of why you need do more then simply write what "feels" right. Those articles were written for the newer writer, for one of my publisher's newsletters.

But whatever you do, hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/

[A.Tarek]

That was quite an opening.. I see you got a solid feet for a long story.. I liked the mystery around your lead at the beginning.. can't wait to read the next chapter.. but tell me, Is it only 3 chapters? :(

[Locke Redwyne (night sys)]

No, I just got a bit of writer's block on the fourth chapter XD
But you're right, this story is planned to go far and eventually meet back up with the original timeline