1000 words (or so) down. Here's the first part. Sorry about double posting but, there you are.
My own criticism of this part mostly involves the end of the sample. It feels weak to me, rather like I was petering out towards the end. I'll probably
shift to a higher gear and extend that particular flashback a little to make things feel a little more coherent in the final draft version.
Somewhere in the bowels of a facility built a hair under three hundred years before, a young woman worked her craft. It was a job with few truly skilled
practitioners left, but those who had survived to this era were among the best in the world. In an unpowered elevator car, she rummaged around in her belt and
produced a tube similar in design to a toothpaste tube, running a bead of the contents around in a circle on the floor wide enough to accommodate her
shoulders. She then pressed a small, eraser head sized piece of black material into the grey compound and, in a single motion, launched herself straight up,
back through the maintenance hatch in the top of the car.
There was a sharp, hissing sound followed by an audible, if soft, wrench. Several seconds after that there was a muffled metal on metal sound from somewhere
far away. The woman slid back down into the elevator car to admire her work.
Beyond her overall frame there was little to really tell about her, her clothing concealed essentially every aspect of her identity save for her biological sex
and general frame. She was slight, if the scale of the elevator car was accurate, though with broader shoulders than many. A lifetime of training and exercise
had done impressive things for her overall physique. All of this was bound up in a protective sneaking suit, though. Further information was restricted. She
clipped a line onto the side of the hole, bracing both ends of the clamp against the floor from top and bottom, and dropped through.
In another time and place, not so far removed from the base, a man and woman were talking. "So, bro, what's your plan?" Her build was appropriate
for being the woman in the suit. She was pale, though not ghastly so, with dark red hair and violet eyes. She wore her hair rather long, actually, flowing down
her back in a ponytail.
The man's voice was clipped, not wholly the tone someone would expect from a brother and sister talking with one another. It was a little too stern.
"The Duke's Specials have mobilized to this facility in Chicago," he noted. The owner of the voice wore his hair clipped short, and concealed his
eyes behind a pair of dark glasses that revealed only that there was a shallow scar along one eyebrow that exited on the cheek below it. He was another
redhead, though his hair was a blonder shade. "According to family records, this was one of Zero's private facilities."
"Like where he developed things like the Mirage during the War?"
"You could use the proper name but.. yes."
"Too many vowels."
The sigh the man allowed to escape called an abbreviated end to that debate. "Be that as it may. I'm going to distract the Specials. You're going
to go into the base and see what the Specials want in there so badly. There were many things that Zero had developed during the early days that we don't
want the Duke getting hold of."
"Yeah. Hate to see what he could do with the old bastard's toybox."
"You could be a little less crude too."
Female laughter carried matters back to the task at hand. Dangling at the end of the line from earlier, the woman in the suit swung back and forth, eventually
catching a maintenance ladder. The whole thing creaks in a slightly uncomfortable fashion, thanks to the age of the materials involved. After a couple of
moments of silence, however, the infiltrator makes her way down the ladder quickly.
At the bottom of the shaft she produced a collapsing baton from a pocket built into the thigh of the suit and inserts it into the lowest set of doors. Several
moments later the doors pry apart far enough for her to squeeze her way in and roll out onto the floor in a crouching position.
Her head tilts one way and then the other for a moment before, seemingly at random, she vaults towards the wall and runs along it for several paces, dropping
down to the ground several meters beyond where she initially started. As she lands, dust kicks up and reveals a network of tripwire lasers at around ankle
height behind her.
Moving forward from there she places her feet carefully on the ground, following a preset pattern in the checkered floor that begins inches from where she
landed, as if the contractors had run out of white tile and begun to put in black at some point to help stretch it further.
Another place and time, a bit further removed from the present, the actors similar to before. The girl is a little smaller. The man is, perhaps, a bit less
tense, though he still wears his hair high and tight. He has green eyes, as is revealed by the lack of his sunglasses and the absence of his scar.
They both have black eyes in the making, and look like they're responsible for one another's conditions, as they catch their breath. Mountains can be
seen in the near distance, on the horizon, but from where they are now it's mostly just open space. An old farmhouse can be seen in the distance as well.
"How long until flyover?" she asked.
The man responded without hesitation, "One hour."
"Pretty rough business, giving your little sister a black eye," the girl teased as she sprang back up to her feet. "I'm gonna have to make
up a good story tomorrow at school."
"You walked into a low hanging tree limb, perhaps?"
"Should probably stop doing that. I might look like a pirate one of these days if I don't."
"The road to mastery of the family methods is fraught with peril."
"I call ninja bullshit on that one. You're just falling back on stock quotes now."
"Not ninja..." the man replied, "Knight!"
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead
My own criticism of this part mostly involves the end of the sample. It feels weak to me, rather like I was petering out towards the end. I'll probably
shift to a higher gear and extend that particular flashback a little to make things feel a little more coherent in the final draft version.
Somewhere in the bowels of a facility built a hair under three hundred years before, a young woman worked her craft. It was a job with few truly skilled
practitioners left, but those who had survived to this era were among the best in the world. In an unpowered elevator car, she rummaged around in her belt and
produced a tube similar in design to a toothpaste tube, running a bead of the contents around in a circle on the floor wide enough to accommodate her
shoulders. She then pressed a small, eraser head sized piece of black material into the grey compound and, in a single motion, launched herself straight up,
back through the maintenance hatch in the top of the car.
There was a sharp, hissing sound followed by an audible, if soft, wrench. Several seconds after that there was a muffled metal on metal sound from somewhere
far away. The woman slid back down into the elevator car to admire her work.
Beyond her overall frame there was little to really tell about her, her clothing concealed essentially every aspect of her identity save for her biological sex
and general frame. She was slight, if the scale of the elevator car was accurate, though with broader shoulders than many. A lifetime of training and exercise
had done impressive things for her overall physique. All of this was bound up in a protective sneaking suit, though. Further information was restricted. She
clipped a line onto the side of the hole, bracing both ends of the clamp against the floor from top and bottom, and dropped through.
In another time and place, not so far removed from the base, a man and woman were talking. "So, bro, what's your plan?" Her build was appropriate
for being the woman in the suit. She was pale, though not ghastly so, with dark red hair and violet eyes. She wore her hair rather long, actually, flowing down
her back in a ponytail.
The man's voice was clipped, not wholly the tone someone would expect from a brother and sister talking with one another. It was a little too stern.
"The Duke's Specials have mobilized to this facility in Chicago," he noted. The owner of the voice wore his hair clipped short, and concealed his
eyes behind a pair of dark glasses that revealed only that there was a shallow scar along one eyebrow that exited on the cheek below it. He was another
redhead, though his hair was a blonder shade. "According to family records, this was one of Zero's private facilities."
"Like where he developed things like the Mirage during the War?"
"You could use the proper name but.. yes."
"Too many vowels."
The sigh the man allowed to escape called an abbreviated end to that debate. "Be that as it may. I'm going to distract the Specials. You're going
to go into the base and see what the Specials want in there so badly. There were many things that Zero had developed during the early days that we don't
want the Duke getting hold of."
"Yeah. Hate to see what he could do with the old bastard's toybox."
"You could be a little less crude too."
Female laughter carried matters back to the task at hand. Dangling at the end of the line from earlier, the woman in the suit swung back and forth, eventually
catching a maintenance ladder. The whole thing creaks in a slightly uncomfortable fashion, thanks to the age of the materials involved. After a couple of
moments of silence, however, the infiltrator makes her way down the ladder quickly.
At the bottom of the shaft she produced a collapsing baton from a pocket built into the thigh of the suit and inserts it into the lowest set of doors. Several
moments later the doors pry apart far enough for her to squeeze her way in and roll out onto the floor in a crouching position.
Her head tilts one way and then the other for a moment before, seemingly at random, she vaults towards the wall and runs along it for several paces, dropping
down to the ground several meters beyond where she initially started. As she lands, dust kicks up and reveals a network of tripwire lasers at around ankle
height behind her.
Moving forward from there she places her feet carefully on the ground, following a preset pattern in the checkered floor that begins inches from where she
landed, as if the contractors had run out of white tile and begun to put in black at some point to help stretch it further.
Another place and time, a bit further removed from the present, the actors similar to before. The girl is a little smaller. The man is, perhaps, a bit less
tense, though he still wears his hair high and tight. He has green eyes, as is revealed by the lack of his sunglasses and the absence of his scar.
They both have black eyes in the making, and look like they're responsible for one another's conditions, as they catch their breath. Mountains can be
seen in the near distance, on the horizon, but from where they are now it's mostly just open space. An old farmhouse can be seen in the distance as well.
"How long until flyover?" she asked.
The man responded without hesitation, "One hour."
"Pretty rough business, giving your little sister a black eye," the girl teased as she sprang back up to her feet. "I'm gonna have to make
up a good story tomorrow at school."
"You walked into a low hanging tree limb, perhaps?"
"Should probably stop doing that. I might look like a pirate one of these days if I don't."
"The road to mastery of the family methods is fraught with peril."
"I call ninja bullshit on that one. You're just falling back on stock quotes now."
"Not ninja..." the man replied, "Knight!"
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead