Again, fifty points additional to those who critique this due to its sheer length. Please point out any mistakes! Thanks! Also, please tell me if you don't understand, and what you don't understand. ^^ I will try to fix it.
-Start-
Chapter 1
Under typical circumstances, a teen who misspells their name would not get into much trouble. Perhaps chided lightly by their parents, but never anything serious. It wasn’t something that would change your life.
Unfortunately for Rayne, hers wasn’t a typical circumstance.
They named her Rain Sinclair when she was born. It meant that she was the eighteenth embryo of the Sinclair batch.
She stared at the paper in front of her, pen in hand. Everybody in the world would turn a year older today, herself included. She, along with the others in the Sinclair batch, would turn eighteen. She should sign the card and submit it to the android waiting outside. Rain glanced at the white door and sighed.
R-A-I-N.
It sounded so plain. It wasn’t a unique name at all. Plenty of other girls in the other batches have been named Rain too. She knew because she heard the android talking to a girl from a different batch. A little girl who was also named Rain. She chewed her lower lip. She didn’t want to be known as Rain. No. She wanted to be different.
But every time someone called her Rain she turned. She couldn’t imagine turning to the name Resha, or Regina. No, she needed something that sounded like her name.
R-A-Y-N-E.
It was still pronounced Rain, wasn’t it? They’d never notice the difference. The corners of her lips twitched into a smile. Yes, from now on, she’d be known as Rayne Sinclair.
She finished signing the card and slipped it under the closed door. The android picked it up and Rayne waited with bated breath. Would the android return a blank card and tell her to spell her name properly? She pressed her ear to the door, hoping to hear something.
Footsteps echoed through the hall outside. Excitement welled up in her. Yes, she wasn’t Rain any more. She was Rayne now. The same, yet different. She grinned and flicked away a strand of black hair.
She was doing her stretching exercises when the door opened. Rayne expected to see her teacher at the doorway but to her surprise, no one was there. The door simply stood open. Rayne blinked. Wasn’t her teacher going to come and pick her up, lead her to her daily lessons?
She peeked outside the door. The white hall seemed to stretch on forever. She knew where it would lead if she turned right. But what if she turned to the left…?
Would it hurt for her to just explore the Institution for once? She never actually saw all of it; she saw only the parts she passed on her way to the shooting range. And all the hallways she passed on her way there were white, with floors of white marble, walls of white paint and ceilings of white cement.
Rayne glanced down the opposite end of the hallway. There was no one. She bit her lower lip and smiled. This was not good. This was wrong. They told her never to run away, or else Father would be very angry. He’d come searching for her and he’d kill her, they said. But can he? Rayne thought herself better than the other Differs they trained here.
Rayne stole one last glance down the hallway before running away. She headed towards the left, away from her classroom. She felt lighter; free. Father needn’t come look for her. She’d come back tonight. She just wanted to see the world as it was, with all its brilliant colors.
She turned left every time she could. She had to get away from her lesson.
Rayne stopped running when she heard footsteps coming towards her. She scanned the hallway for a hiding place but all she saw were identical white doors with golden knobs. All of them ajar. Quickly, Rayne chose one and slipped inside the room. She made sure to leave the door as she found it – slightly open.
The room was an exact replica of her own, except that her bed was messy while the bed in this room was made. She heard voices around the corner and quickly dove under the bed.
“I suppose it’s fair to let her rest on the one holiday the world has, but I’m worried about her,” said a voice she recognized as her teacher’s.
“Why?” The stiff, cold voice could only belong to an android.
“She’s strange. And the egg used to create her was one from an Affiliate’s mistress. What if she walks down the same path her mother did?”
“Her mother was a civilian,” said the android. “Rayne is a Differ. She knows things her egg donor never will.”
Their voices became louder as they approached, as did their footsteps. But one sound made Rayne’s heart flutter. It made her excited, so much that she wanted to peek outside and risk getting caught. It was the flutter of wings - the soft flapping of an angel’s wings.
“It doesn’t change anything. What if something does happen to her?”
“You act as if she is your child. Perhaps your angel hasn’t been sufficiently broken?”
The fluttering stopped and a whimper replaced it.
“She’s doing her job,” snapped her teacher.
“You have become attached to the angel. She must be replaced.”
“Whether or not Father likes it, everybody bonds with their angel. We can’t all be emotionless chunks of metal.”
Rayne suppressed a giggle.
“I am not merely ‘chunks of metal.’ I am much more than that. I am – “
“The future of artificial intelligence, I know. I’ve heard it all before so don’t remind me of it any more than you need to.”
Their voices faded. The footsteps became more and more distant until Rayne couldn’t hear them any more. She crawled out from under the bed and crept out the room. A smile playing on her lips, she ran towards the other direction. How long could she play this game before she got caught?
Suddenly, someone yanked her collar and pushed her on the floor roughly. Rayne managed to break her fall, get up and face her assailant. To her surprise, it was an android. It seemed as if the game was over.
“What are you doing here?” demanded the android.
“I-I got lost on my way to my lesson,” Rayne stammered..
“You’re of the Sinclair batch, aren’t you?”
Rayne wondered how the android could tell. Did she look so similar to the others from her batch? In fact, how did she look? She could tell the color of her hair, and that her hair was long and wavy, but what else about her appearance did she truly know? She was pale-skinned, she was…what?
“You don’t have lessons today. You are being released. You will leave at once, Civilian.”
Rayne’s eyes brightened. A civilian, eh? She could leave and come back tonight. By tonight they’d be searching for her. By tonight everything would be cleared. For now, she was going to go out into the world and do everything she wanted to. Run, skip, mingle with people.
“Yes, ma’am.” Rayne scrambled to get up and sprinted out of the building with a grin on her face.
As she burst through the final two white doors, warmth greeted Rayne’s face. She looked up and squinted at the sun before looking around her. Identical buildings, all white. But their shapes were fascinating. And the streets! The little alleys between the buildings and the gray color of the pavement were beautiful to Rayne’s eyes. But most of all, Rayne loved the green plants that lined the streets. The trees by the road and the grass outside the buildings were an obnoxious green color.
The civilians walked around, followed by their angels. She trembled with excitement. The angels had majestic wings, pure and white. She wanted to touch one so much. Her teacher told her she would eventually hunt wild angels. Beautiful, savage and majestic wild angels. She’d capture them, he’d told her, and she’s give them to Father. Father would love it very much if she captured one, her teacher said. They weren’t easy to find, apparently, but Rayne knew she would capture one soon.
The angels all wore a white coat over their clothes. Did wild angels wear white coats too, or was this something Father imposed on the broken ones? It didn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter.
The people wore strange clothes in different designs. Rayne had never worn anything but her white blouse and white pleated skirt. Everything in the institution was white, and she was sick of it.
Here outside though, the people wore different colors. Some wore plaid red and black coats; others wore bright yellow clothes. Some wore vibrant orange shirts, and others preferred blue. And they all acted differently, walking their own way, unmindful of each other. They spoke to their angels and lived their lives. Rayne saw the world as it was for the first time.
And she loved every bit of it, not knowing that everything would go wrong later that night.
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Thanks for taking the time to read!
On Character: We've only met one character properly, but be that as it may you've developed Rayne's character remarkably given the short amount of time. We definitely want to see more of her character as she is a credible and therefore intriguing person. Even those couple of characters who we only saw briefly, like the android and teacher, are pretty strong characters given the airtime you've given them. You've used dialogue to its full potential there. Very emotive and strong.
Gender:
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