I often have little inspiring quotes at the beginnings of my novel drafts, just to keep me going and remind me what its all about. Anyway, here is the first chapter of the first novel I have fully planned out. Will it be a success? Only time will tell. Enjoy.
“People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people.” –V.
Chapter One
“It is exactly like the Art of War,” Linus whispered emphatically, just as another Rogue appeared on the other side of the street. Alexis raised her pistol, shot him nonchalantly and turned her attention back to Linus. Everyone had come to accept Alexis’ belief that they didn’t count as real people, but they still cringed every time she shot one.
“Anyway,” Linus continued, “Sun Tzu maintained that ‘the skilful leader subdues the enemy’s troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdoms without lengthy operations in the field.’ And that, my friends, is exactly what we will aim to do.”
The streets in the area were mainly empty at that time of night, with the exception of a few Rogues that would be terrorizing the city if Alexis were not killing them on sight.
“And what if, in all his wisdom, Sun Tzu didn’t reckon for a city like Licentia City? For a kingdom like Lightened England?” Edan asked, much to Linus’ dismay.
“Have I not taught you anything? The Art of War is universal. What worked in 5th century BCE China will work right here in 2006.”
Edan acquiesced and Alexis wasn’t listening.
“How much further until we get to the police station?” she asked while straining her eyes on a figure somewhere in the distance. She thought she had seen another Rogue, but it was just a pile of rubbish bags.
“We’re about 10 minutes away,” the ageing ex-general by the name of Linus Ritter answered, “which is perfect because it is 10 minutes until midnight.” Edan smiled to himself; Linus always knew the exact time yet he didn’t own a watch.
They walked in silence for the rest of the journey. Alexis and Edan were side by side, while Linus walked a few steps ahead.
The city was just as glorious as ever. The cracked and dirty walls of the run-down tenements (as this was a purely residential area) climbed upward several stories toward the depressingly starless sky.
There was no horizon in Licentia City. Many children that had been born there had never been in an area wider than the space from one building to another. Some people had seen the edge of the city, or indeed been beyond it, but security was so tight that no one bothered anymore. Edan knew the arduous task of entering the city, but he was part of a great minority in that respect in Licentia.
The city was a cage; everyone knew it but they didn’t know why. The three individuals that now walked the streets, drawing closer to their destination, knew the whole story, and what a chilling story it was. In fact, they were on their way to tell the story to a new audience: a seventeen year-old girl.
They rounded the final corner on their way to the designated meeting place just as Alexis spied another Rogue. It was too far away to shoot, and in the opposite direction to the police station they were headed to. Begrudgingly, Alexis let him live.
The Southern Quarter Police Headquarters was to the right of the street, as they saw it, so they crossed over to that side without a change of pace. They looked at it briefly as they reached it, and kept walking until it had faded out of their sight behind them. Just beyond the station was an alley, which was their real goal.
In the dirty yellow light that seeped into the alley from the streetlights, Linus and his companions saw someone standing deeper into the alley. “Who’s there?” Linus said rather loudly.
“Nobody.” The female voice sounded heavy in the darkness, although it was no higher in pitch than Alexis’ voice. It resonated for a brief second between the walls on either side and then disappeared into silence.
This was, indeed, the proper response, and the one that the group expected. “That is right; you are nobody,” Linus said as he approached the girl. “For that is why you, and we, are here.”
She said nothing while Alexis and Edan followed suit and approached her. “We are nobodies as a group, but as individuals, this is Edan and this is Alexis.” He pointed to them respectively.
She smiled apprehensively, greeting them.
“First of all, Lucy, I am both glad and saddened to be meeting you in this most wondrous of settings,” he said obviously sarcastically, but without a trace of it in his voice.
“Why?” she asked, her voice not sounding so heavy now that the silence was not so all-enveloping.
“Because although your apparent devotion to our cause is both admirable and promising, I am afraid you are too young to join us.”
Instantly, she looked crushed. She opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again after finding no words. Instead, she just stared at Linus, hoping for some kind of recognition of how she felt.
After watching her forlorn and silent plea for a second, Edan interrupted. “We understand how you feel. You obviously know, as we know, that something needs to be done about the problems of this country, but are you sure you’ve thought about what joining us will mean?”
“Of course I have. Ever since I found out about you I’ve been turning it over in my head repeatedly. Something really does need to be done, and I want to be a part of it.”
Linus and Edan exchanged glances, while Alexis simply stared at Lucy. The teenage girl was rather short, with short brown hair that still managed to plunge over her face and partially cover her left eye. She was dressed entirely in plain clothing: plain black pants, plain blue t-shirt, plain white sleeves protruding from a long-sleeved shirt underneath. However, despite the minimalist look that greatly contradicted what was considered ‘fashion’ in Licentia City, Alexis found herself concluding that she was a pretty girl. Alexis often made these judgments on other girls, mainly out of simple objective observation.
Linus turned to look at her again, this time with what was almost a smile on his face. “I stand by what I said; you are too young. However, I am forced by the desperate situation of our group to include anyone that is willing, even if they are not fully able. It is highly likely that if you join you will not take part in any major activities. Is there any particular skill you have that you could use to help the cause in other ways?”
Nothing came to mind immediately. She was a smart girl, but Societechture had all the intelligence it needed in the three people standing in front of her. She didn’t have any skills in any area that seemed necessary for a revolution, but in fear of admitting she had nothing to bring to the table and therefore not being accepted, she blurted out the only thing she was good at it. “Painting. I can paint. And draw,” she said, and immediately she knew how stupid it sounded.
“Hmmm. We might be able to use you after all. If we accept you, are you sure that you’ll be able to dedicate yourself entirely?” Linus asked her.
She had no idea what he had in mind for her, but at least she was to be a part of the revolution that would either save her life or destroy it.
“Yes,” she answered solidly.
“Are you sure that you are willing to take part in activity that you may not feel comfortable with, in the name of bringing down the government?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure that you have no problem breaking laws, engaging in underhanded activity, even putting yourself in potential danger, so that one day we might see change?”
She hesitated momentarily. “Yes.”
“Then Lucy, welcome to Societechture. From now on you will continue your life as normal, only to be interrupted by word from myself and only myself, at which point you will not be Lucy Deane, but a Societecht. Above all else we demand secrecy in all that you do as a Societecht, and inconspicuousness in all that you do outside of our group.” At this point Linus extended his hand and shook Lucy’s as she reciprocated. Edan and Alexis both did the same in turn, after which Linus asked her one last thing. “Do you have any questions?”
She pondered for a moment. She had many questions about the movement, the government, their future actions and many other subjects, but the foremost question came to her and could not be ignored. “I know something is wrong, and that that is why people such as ourselves must rise up, but why can’t the government be defeated by the process of democracy?”
Edan had answered this question many times since joining Societechture and asking it himself, so he was the one to give an answer. “Because, Lucy, this is a dictatorship. Only no one knows it except the dictator.”
The words hit her like a train of abandoned political science theories. “You mean Etteridge?”
“Who else? He leads this totalitarian government from behind a façade of democracy.”
“But... how? How can he fool everyone like that?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. There simply isn’t enough time to paint the whole picture right now.”
Lucy nodded with a look of concerned mystification, as if she was scared by what she obviously didn’t know.
Linus spoke again, but this time to close the conversation. “This meeting is over. If we have need of you, you will be contacted. Until then, continue your life as normal. Please wait here for a few minutes after we leave to avoid suspicion. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” she repeated, although there was so much more she wanted to learn. The three individuals that were the top tier of the group known as Societechture left her alone in the alley. The last she saw of them that night was the figures of Alexis and Edan turning the corner and heading to the right, and Linus heading left, back toward the police station.
Lucy waited for what felt like an hour, but was in reality only three minutes.
...breaking laws...
...potential danger...
The words of the ageing man flew violently around in her brain like a belligerent gust of wind. Not only had she now officially joined what was, in reality, a terrorist group, but she might have to face pain and even death in the name of social change.
But why?
Everything in her mind screeched to a halt.
She had convinced herself over a period of weeks that it was the right thing to do. She had given herself wholly to the idea that something had to be done. She had pushed the thought of her father as far back into her consciousness as possible, but now she could no longer deny it.
It’s all for him.
He was a man Lucy used to know. They live in the same tenement, but they used to actually live together; he helped create her, but he used to be her father. Now he was a silent man who slept all day and worked all night, always coming home a little bit closer to his imminent death.
Without change, he’ll die too. Just like Mum.
After the timeless freefall through the magnitude of what she had just done, she took her first steps as a Societecht. They weren’t savoured, or even really recognized at that moment, but Lucy Deane walked out of the alleyway near the Southern Quarter Police Headquarters as a new person. A criminal? A terrorist? No, she reasoned. A freedom fighter.
The Southern Quarter was the worst part of the city, but luckily this particular area was relatively clean. Every time she heard a noise she would increase her pace, even to the point where there was a pain in her legs. If she didn’t get home quickly she would surely be caught by one of those horrid Rogues. She had heard of the things they did to people they caught: rape, murder, torture, all sorts of vile things.
Luckily, her tenement was not far from the site of her Societechture induction. It was a five-minute walk, which still made her uncomfortable. She had been straining her legs for five blocks now and the only thing keeping her going was fear. She was part of something bigger than herself now, but they couldn’t help her if she was caught.
Eventually she reached the steps to the front of her tenement building. Like most of the other buildings in Licentia, it was old and dilapidated. Even though it was part of the Second Stage, the tenements were incredibly small and crippling. The building was fifteen stories high, with perfectly identical layouts on each floor. The walls were made of large grey bricks that screamed the word “PRISON” to anyone who saw them, and the floors weren’t carpeted or tiled; they were just cement in all its icy glory. She entered the building and climbed the stairs to the seventh floor. Tenement 7C belonged to her and her father. When she entered the four-room claustrophobia attack, it was empty. She knew it would be. Her father would be out crawling the streets for another five hours yet. Streetcrawlers, they called them, ironically – the lowest and most dangerous of jobs in the ‘Justice System’, as they called it. Most of them ended up dead, if they weren’t injured to the point of immobility first.
Lucy locked the door behind her and went straight to her room. Like the rest of the tenement, and nearly every single room in the Southern Quarter, it was tiny. There was barely enough room for a bed, a small table next to it and a bookshelf. She didn’t have a desk for her homework, so she either did it on her bed or on the small, but sufficient, floor space she had. Her clothes had to be folded on the floor in piles next to the bookshelf, as there was nowhere else to put them. There was, in fact, only one thing in the room she was glad for: her books. While most people lived through their friends, Lucy had very few of them, so she inevitably turned to reading to live through vicariously. In that bookcase were many different existences she had been through, all of them changing, not with days like mortals, but with the turning of everlasting pages like those who live forever.
She always told herself that she’d live forever.
She got changed into an old green shirt that she only wore for sleeping, took off her pants and climbed into her bed. The mattress was hard and the pillow was about as supportive as a gas cloud, but she had learned to sleep in these conditions. At the moment, she couldn’t sleep for other reasons. Her mind was full of the uncertainty of the future, along with the crushing certainty of not being able to turn back from what she had done. Its not that she wanted to abandon the group, she just wanted to find out a bit more. Linus had ended the meeting so abruptly that she didn’t find out what exactly she will be required to do when the time comes, or even what Societechture was like as an organization. She knew Societechture: The Idea, but not the group of people behind it. Alexis and Edan both seemed alright to her, but surely there was something more to them than just being figures that stand behind Linus.
Unordered thoughts floated around in her head until eventually tiredness overcame her and drifted off. She was meeting Alana, her only friend, tomorrow, and she knew she’d be extremely tired in the morning.
Alana will understand. She always does.
) Take out words which seem unneeded and can make the sentences flow better, those making the story flow better. It will bring the story together in a tighter way. Here's an example from the end:
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