Here is my first real attempt at Sci-fi! Please tear it apart. Some predictions would also be awesome. Enjoy..! :)
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A thin teenage girl stared at the night sky as she perched on the edge of a metal parapet slick with rain… exactly nine-hundred and sixty-eight feet above the glimmering jungle of roads that twisted below.
“Nona. You see anything yet?”
The girl, her slanted black eyes almost bored, tossed the remains of a neon-green slushy off the tower and watched as it fell down.. down.. into the underworld of lights, sound, streets, and cars. Finally losing sight of it, she decided to answer the voice buzzing from her earpiece.
“Yeah, actually. I see some cars. A street sign somewhere down there- surprised those are still around. A few skyscrapers. A few more skyscrapers…”
Koji’s voice sounded in her ear after a long moment. “Nona.. If you can’t take this seriously-“
She interrupted, rolling her eyes though she knew he couldn’t see it.
“Take a joke, Jiji.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“ It’s such a cute nickname though- fits you real well.”
Nona smiled to herself as she scanned the rails running almost directly under her perch. She calculated that it was precisely nine-hundred and thirty-seven feet above ground. At some time between 11:00 and 11:05PM the monorail would pass.. carrying tonight’s target.
Despite the jokes, Nona did take her work seriously. She almost felt that it was what she had been made for.. The picture of her in any other line of work was laughable.
Over the whistling of the wind and the faint wail of a siren somewhere in the city, Nona suddenly heard a telltale rattling beneath the parapet.
“Koji- it’s about to pass.”
“You know what you need to do.”
“Wish me luck.”
Nona deftly jumped to her feet. She quickly replaced the earpiece with two earplugs and pinned an ordinary grey baseball cap over her short-cropped, mousy brown hair. Patting the two sleek Aurin-powered handguns hidden by her loose, over-sized blue sweatshirt, she stepped up to the edge and watched as the monorail approached. Counting the cars, she noticed that hers was just about to pass. Here goes.
She stepped off into open air.
For a split second, she fell- air that smelled of metal and rain, the glow of a million Aurin lights, and the sounds of the world’s largest city all rushing past her, tearing at her clothes and at her skin as it all spun upwards.
She crashed into the top of a railcar, landing feet first and bouncing back with the force of impact. The fall would have left a normal person with more than a few broken bones.
Scrambling for hold on the slippery top of the moving car, Nona finally found a place where she could hold on and look around for an entrance. Ah. There. How convenient that these things always have emergency exits on the top..
Stupid design, really. Who knows when an teenage assassin might jump off a nearby skyscraper and try to get in?
Reaching the hatch as the city sped by in a whirl of sound and multicolored lights, Nona realized that it was sealed shut- only able to open from the inside. Well, that’s disappointing…
She looked closer, for a lock she could pick or a lever she had missed… and noticed the luminous blue lines running along the edge of the hatch. It was Aurin-powered.
Of course it is... Everything is somehow connected to the Aurinstone nowadays... It’s almost funny that humanity is so dependent on something it hardly understands.
Nona let that stray thought slip away as she focused on the task at hand. She pulled a device the size and shape of a marble from her pocket and pressed it onto one of the Aurin lines- giving it a second to cancel the energy flow… and unlock the hatch.
The light dimmed a moment later and Nona placed the canceller back into her pocket. Even she didn’t completely understand Father’s inventions, but it was enough that they worked.
Now I get to put that training to use… and as Father likes to say, for a good cause. For the first time since she had started this mission, she felt a twinge of nausea. A lump in her throat that she couldn’t get rid of…
Almost as if Nona was afraid.
But that was ridiculous. I can’t feel fear. I can’t feel pain. Father’s Gift to me.
Regardless, she tried to remember that it was for a good cause when she descended into the train, handguns held out, to kill the men she had been ordered to assassinate. She tried to remember those words and the great cause as shots rang out in a lifeless city and screams split the air.
End of chapter
Continue to next chapter Nona - Chapter 1 Part 2Points:
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Canary word: Present
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140,506 Literary Works • 673,262 Reviews
Hello! Beautiful prologue, I have to say! Just a few things I want to say:
1) Are you sure you want to keep this as a prologue? It seems more suited as a chapter in your book, then really a prologue...Just my opinion.
2) She says the target is in the train, but at the end you say, "to kill the men she had been ordered to assassinate", so I was just a little confused there.
3) A few more details here and there woud make it a little better.
Overall, amazingly mysterious. I love how you throw in a few unfamiliar terms here and there, like Aurinstone. Leaves the reader wanting to know more about it. Also, the ending, where you introduce her Father's inventions, I felt very curious about how they could make Nona not feel pain or fear. I really look forward to seeing Chapter 1!
Thanks for the review!
1) It actually is part of the first chapter, but I titled it "Prologue" because it was so short and only a small part of the unfinished chapter. I might rename it later and publish the rest of the chapter as "Chapter 1: Part 2".
2) Yeah this is a bit confusing- thanks for pointing it out.
Glad you liked it.
Thanks for the review!
1) It actually is part of the first chapter, but I titled it "Prologue" because it was so short and only a small part of the unfinished chapter. I might rename it later and publish the rest of the chapter as "Chapter 1: Part 2".
2) Yeah this is a bit confusing- thanks for pointing it out.
Glad you liked it.
I look forward to seeing the rest!
Hi Aly--interesting prologue you have here!
. I also noticed two places here
What bothered me a A LOT here is the amount of ellipses you include. I like ellipses myself and use them quite a bit, but this time I feel as if you've overdone it. I won't go and point out every time you used it, but when you edit your work, try paying attention to the amount of ellipses you use. Ellipses are typically useful to show something trailing off, whether it be a thought or dialogue, but if it's overdone it loses its emphasis.
My question here is also what POV you're using. Is it omniscient, or deep? It starts omniscient, then zooms into deep? I still think it's deep POV here, so I want to point out some awkward bits--in my opinion. For example, the opening sentence starts with "a teenage girl". If you're using Nona's POV, I'm not sure she'd think of herself that way. This is just my personal preference to start with the main character--at least here--in the first sentence. Feels more attached
and
that I feel have some physical features here that's touching omniscient. Including character features list is not a good idea, but weaving it into action can be tricky.
Here was a slight bit of confusion. It took me a moment to realize who you were talking about.
I was confused about the last paragraph as well. Is it a flashback or it's in the present? There is a problem indeed if I can't tell if it's a flashback or not. Never mind what I said; I read the previous paragraphs more carefully and looks like it's the present after all c:. So my comment there: telling. I appreciate you keeping away the graphic parts, but some description inside the scene would have "telling" in my opinion. You could black out the shooting bit, but letting me peek into the train would have been more interesting in my opinion. You could also build the tension-high setting there.
I'm hoping the prologue isn't the "climax" bit of the story because it's like a spoiler or like a movie, where you just run back two days ago or so. I usually like prologues if they're like a stand-by-themselves, but integral part of the story or so. The other thing I thought was that the tension in this prologue, which--due to an assassination--must be pretty high, fell low to my expectations. Not too sure why, but I'm suspecting it may be because you dedicated many words to Nona's thoughts. I also think there was a lack of setting. Was there a wind blowing past Nona? How fast was the train going? It might be good to add some tiny details that ramp up the tension but not too much of course
To close my review I want to say that what I liked most about your story was that it wasn't too sci-fi heavy. By which I mean you don't gloss over the tech or worldbuilding so much. Nona was the main point. Nona and her mission. Well, I think that's what I gleaned from your work and I hope you have a great time writing!
Thanks for the review Princess Ink!
Having too many ellipses is a bad habit of mine. I really need to watch for that, so thanks for pointing it out. This isn't a climax bit and the very next part of the chapter actually shows what's going on in the train. I guess I have to figure out what's confusing and edit. About your last few points, I actually described the speed and surroundings of the train more than once and this scene isn't intended to be tense but just to introduce Nona, what she does, a bit of the setting, and to show Nona's attitude towards her job.
But yeah- thanks again for the review. A new opinion and some advice is always very helpful.