Two men in sharp suits stood at the end of the hallway, their hands clasped behind their backs and the latest communication technology clipped onto their belts. "Team 406, follow us," the taller of the two said, and the two of them turned on their heels in sync and started striding down the hallway.
Darien, Myra, Skylar, and Rae all exchanged questioning glances, but it was clear that there was only one way to proceed. And that was by following these two suits down the hallway.
~
The suited men led the group down the narrow, brightly lit hallways that twisted and curved like the insides of a labyrinth. Even though the entire facility was underground, the fluorescent lights made it seem alive, and there were always people moving through the hive. They twisted around several corners until any outsider would have been disoriented, but Skylar still knew exactly where they were. She had a perfect mental image of the entire facility and could navigate her way to any location from any starting point.
They reached an office with a sybaritic plaque that read in thick black font: "Office of Robert E. Doyle, Assigner". One of the suits opened the door, and inside was just as luxurious as the outside, with a lush black leather couch to the right, a large oak desk stacked high with papers and black ballpoint pens, and a bookcase filled with thick tomes. Robert E. Doyle was sitting at his desk scratching away at a document in front of him, but as soon as he heard the door open, he dropped the pen and sprang up. "Team 406! What a pleasure! Please, come in, get comfortable."
The four of them stepped inside and all adopted the same posture of hands clasped behind their backs, standing tall and proud next to each other. "To what do we owe this honor, Mr. Doyle?"
"I have an assignment for you. One that has been coveted by many, and one that our scouts have been working hard to assign for the past few months. Initially, we wanted to wait until we had gathered more data and analyzed it more thoroughly, but we have realized that we do not have that much time. Without further ado, allow me to introduce you to Assignment Rebirth.
"Rumors about Assignment Rebirth have circled around this facility for months, but no one has known the official name for it. Until just now. This assignment is the most radical and the most dangerous we have ever attempted, but I know that the four of you are up for the challenge. We will spend the next day ensuring that you are fully prepared for this task, both mentally and physically. Afterwards, you will embark on an intense journey that will begin when you assassinate the crown prince."
If the room had been quiet before, it was as silent as a coffin now; the entire team stiffened in unison, and Myra's lip started to quiver slightly. After a pause, Darien said, "You want us to assassinate the crown prince?"
"Yes. And I know you can."
"But why?" Darien asked.
Mr. Doyle sighed heavily, clasping his hands behind his back and beginning to pace around the room. "We have been keeping our eye on the crown prince for quite some time, and he has aligned himself with several dangerous radical groups that have threatened to eradicate minorities from our society. We cannot allow that to happen, and it has become increasingly clear that no amount of reason will convince him that what he is doing is wrong and benefits nobody. He has begun to influence more and more people to join their side, and if we allow people to fall into the trap of believing that certain people groups are superior and have the right to rule over others, our country will lapse into the same line of thinking that led to the War of Extremes that resulted in thousands of deaths and an incalculable amount of destroyed property. If we do not remove an extremist with such power, both politically and socially, from the playing board, our country will suffer the fallout. Innocent people will lose their homes, their families, their lives, because of the political maneuvers of extremists who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals.
"So he has left us with no alternative. We must sacrifice one for the good of the many, and since the law will not dole out justice in this regard, the lot has fallen on us."
Skylar steeled herself and said, "What do we do after that?"
"Afterwards, there will undoubtedly be several investigations, and it's highly likely that one or more of you will be implicated in the crime. Therefore, you must be prepared to defend yourself against multiple different forces. You will face not only the full strength of the royal army, but also guerilla warfare from the radicalist groups who will be extremely upset at losing their power within the royal family."
"So how do we prepare for that? How do we brace for an attack like that?" Rae asked, her perfectly sculpted brows pushing closer together.
"We have set up a bunker with the most high-tech security system there is. As soon as you have completed your assassination, you will flee to the bunker and lay low there for about 6 months, until the news has passed, defending yourself from any forces that may try to attack you. The key is to keep low profiles; do everything in your power to avoid being seen in public or tipping anyone off to your location, but keep in mind that it is, in all probability, you will be discovered and you will be attacked. So keep sharp; stay up on your training, know how to defend yourself, and have a plan for how you are going to survive when you start to face ambushes and sieges.
"I know that was a lot of information, and you will all be receiving a proper assignment file that contains all of this. But do you have any questions that immediately come to mind?"
After a brief pause, Mr. Doyle clapped his hands together and spun on his heels. "Excellent, then. If questions arise, you know where to find me. Unless I've missed something, I believe we're done here. You will be escorted to your rooms, where you will have time to discuss this amongst yourself further. Sirs, when you are ready." Mr. Doyle nodded to the guards, who opened the doors.
Skylar and Darien exchanged a glance, both apprehensive, but then led the rest of their group out of the room and obediently followed the suits back to their rooms. Somehow, in light of their new assignment, the lights seemed a little more blindingly white and the hallways a little narrower.
End of chapter
Continue to next chapter Assignment: Rebirth 1.1Points:
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140,831 Literary Works • 673,694 Reviews
Heyo Tuck! I remember I didn't wanna review this part because I'm waiting for the revised version, but I changed my mind. I want to see a bit more of this story before I go to the next draft, for whenever you post it. Hopefully this review speeds you up ahaha
As opposed to the other only way to proceed XD
You repeated twisted here
You have a lot of descriptions in the beginning of this place, which is okay but I would definitely like to see some integration of these descriptions with the characters or story. Like, have the characters interact with the setting a bit more to weave it into the story more.
Mmmmm, this is another case of telling versus showing. Like, we don't need to have this Mr. Doyle let us know that this is a "coveted" mission, but we could show that by reactions of the other team members later on in the story. Also, this conversation right now just feels very rigid, like it's polite but too polite, if that makes sense. It feels like this conversation is more about info dumping, or for the plot instead of the dialogue <--with this point, there is definitely a balance, because I think dialogue for dialogue's sake slows the pace, but dialogue only for plot's sake feels too rigid and can feel out of character.
Yeah, so to continue my point above, what person would say this about a mission? This feels more like a synopsis or a short pitch for the story more than something that would actually be said. However, for me personally thank you SO MUCH for telling me this because now I have a lot more of an idea of what this story is going to be for the next draft.
*Cough* info dump *cough*
This Mr. Doyle definitely seems like an over-sharer, but boy this is such a huge paragraph of info dumping. I'm reading this for the next draft and this still made my eyes glaze over, so just imagine what it would do to the average reader.
This sure was a lot of information. In fact, 90% of this chapter was info dumping for this mission. For the next time, let's spread it over a few chapters. Like, let's show the file and have the crew member's reaction to those files, right? Because, here's the thing. There's almost none of our main characters in this chapter. There's really no reaction of theirs. And that's unfortunate. For research purposes, though, I thank you for the info dump of a chapter haha
NOW, ONTO THAT NEXT DRAFT? YES? yES
Yeahh, 14-year-old me thought this was a creative way to present this information, but 16-year-old me recognizes that it's just an info-dump all dressed up. I'll fix that up next time through.
So, uh, in the next draft, they don't attempt to assassinate the crown prince xD I may? revisit the plot line, but iirc, they assassinated the crown prince in the beginning and then I was like "uh, so now what" and the plot just kinda fell apart and died. On the current draft, it's more of an army-versus-army kind of deal, which seems to work better for building suspense and having more drawn-out action/battle scenes.
Thanks for the review!
STILL NO LIKE wow what a world we live in
Okay! So, I would like to help you out with worldbuilding methinks, because that might be a weak point for you. Give me three paragraphs on your plans for the story so I have a baseline
I'm gonna PM you a pad
Hey Tuck! I'm back again
don't touch their suits they recently used a whetstone on them to sharpen them again.
Wow! How creepy!
I mean, technically there are other ways to proceed, but they are unanimously choosing this one. They could run back off down the hall they came from. They could simply choose not to follow. They could kill the suits. There are many other ways to proceed.
You're getting into more description here and I LOVE IT. *grabby hands* GIMME ME MORE.
YES more delicious description
I mean, idk how tall everyone else is, but can they really stand tall next to Darien?
sorry my reviews evolved from "nitpicky" to "pure snark"1) Who is saying this? Are they all saying this at the same time, because I Don't Like That
2) Is it? How important is his position to this underground (rebel??) base? You said he's the Assigner, which makes me think that he's not the leader, so I'm not sure why they're acting for formally? I would have expected them to come in and for him to tell them why they were there, but then again, I could be misinterpreting the social construct of the world you've built!
Also, if they're Team 406, I have to wonder how many teams there ARE or HAVE been, and where they are or what's happened to them*rolls credits*
THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY however I now understand where that hook you mentioned is. Now that I'm here, I... almost wish it had started with that? Started with, as in the team getting called for a new assignment and winding up straight for that punch of "so, you're going to assassinate the crown prince! yay! : )". I'm sure you wanted to go for the character relationships and establishing them early on, but I'm still going to stand by what I said previously in that there was no plot established before, and I think there should have been. I think the story needs to start before the characters' relationships begin to really develop and form, and doing something radical like, you know, assassinating a PRINCE would be a great way for them to come together as a team, and/or establish the tension in the meanwhile that was mentioned in 1.3.
Bold of you to assume all coffins are silent.
I love how you use the scenery interaction based on Skylar's mood!
Okay, so, let's run through all that.
So, this underground organisation wants to assassinate the crown prince because he's aligning himself with supremacy groups and wants to eliminate some minorities group. We know what the crown prince's motivation is then, but what about this underground organisation? What do they want, what is their drive? Do they want to help the common people and maintain peace (I think that's what it is, because Robert mentions the war and wanting to prevent that)? Will they gain something else for doing this? I'm immediately suspicious of what the motives are of this organisation that the main cast is working for, because I don't know anything about them, and having an organisation the main characters believed they could rely on but was secretly being Not Good is a favoured twist. I think knowing more about the organisation would alleviate that somewhat.
Let's say they do assassinate the crown prince. What about the political fall out? Do they know that the prince hasn't installed other extremist agents into the royal court? Or that the other monarchs aren't involved? Aside from the fallout that the main cast will inevitably face, having to disappear underground and whatnot, what about the fallout from the crown prince dying? There seems to be a "kill the crown prince and we'll solve the problem! obviously not you're problem of being hunted, but The problem!" but like, the crown prince is only aligning himself with these "radical" groups. What about those groups leaders? What about all these people that Robert said the prince is swaying to his side?
SORRY this is SO MANY QUESTIONS that I'm sure would be answered later, it's just always the doubts I have when I'm writing anything on a big scale like this so I waNNA KNOW. If I sound like I don't like the hook, that couldn't be farther from the truth. GIMME THAT POLITICAL DRAMA AND PRINCES BEING NAUGHTY. I'm so, so on board.
On that note, now I really hope you end up returning to this, because now I wanna know, Tuck. I wanna know.
i know you're busy with robotics though. *shakes fist* curse the limits of human body and needing sleep and things like time constraintsAnyway! I think that's all I have for you today! Keep up the good work!
<33
ahh thank you so so much! I was just thinking today that if only you and @JabberHut reviewed my novels I'd be beyond content (not to discredit any other amazing reviewers that follow me; I'm beyond appreciative of their work as well, but you and Jabber give me everything I need in reviews -- screaming, snark, constructive criticism, and plot predictions). As always, I really appreciate all of your attention to detail and the thoughtful questions. all of the questions are answered in the upcoming chapters, so perhaps I'll revive this project and write you a few more chapters to give you closure lol. Hit me up in March and I'll see what I can do
Once again, thanks a ton! <33
Hey Tuck! Back again to review.
Small Comments
What do you mean by this, exactly? Some kind of radio? A smartphone? A more precise description might help. This is a good opportunity to hint at the world and setting, because we can generally glean from the technology whether we're in a futuristic or contemporary or vintage story.
You do a great job here of showing us what kind of character Robert is going to be, via how you describe his office, his movements, and the way he talks. He seems like a scatterbrained charmer. Perhaps a little too comfortable in luxury.
For one, this dialogue's kind of overblown to me - it sounds like something you'd say more to a price or a knight than a commanding officer. Also, who says it? Do the four of them chant it in unison?
Great closing line!
Overall Thoughts
Okay: two main criticisms, or at least things to think about and mull over. The first is that this plan of theirs seems like a pretty strange and chaotic thing to do. I love that royalty is being drawn into this, because it lends a slightly different angle to the overused 'dystopian government' card. In general, I'm a bit of a sucker for stories featuring royals and aristocrats - especially when those royals and aristocrats are pretty sucky people.
Eat the rich, am I right?The plan to assassinate the crown prince is great as a hook, as well - though I do think your discussion of why he needs to die gets a bit long-winded. It might actually be more intriguing if they didn't question it so much, because then you'd retain a little mystery and we'd get to learn more about this prince bit by bit. Nevertheless, the biggest issue is that I don't see why Mr Doyle thinks that assassinating the prince openly is going to solve anything. If they just need to get him out of power, why isn't the plan to kill him in a way that's subtle, so that it looks like he died of natural causes? Why are they intentionally bringing an army down on themselves? Plus, said prince is probably just going to end up as a martyr, fanning the flames for whatever extremism he's already kindling. It'd be one thing if they were killing the prince to send a message, alerting the world to their rebellion, but that doesn't seem like the goal here.
My other, more minor criticism is that there's no discernible POV in this chapter, really, which I think weakens the characterisation. Skylar, Darien, Rae and Myra seem to act like a hive mind throughout. I think it'd have been stronger if you'd grounded it more in Skylar's perspective so we got more of her personal reactions.
Aside from those gripes, I am really glad that we're getting our teeth into the plot now. It's going to be really interesting to see how they approach the assassination and whether they start to question if it's the right thing. I hope we get to see this prince character and learn more about him first-hand, because I'm still not sure whether to trust Mr Doyle's motivations or not. It'll also be fascinating to see how each of the four main cast tussle with the idea of killing somebody.
The story's hotting up and getting interesting now! I can't wait for the next bit.
Keep writing!
~Pan
Oh, this is so exciting!! A cybernetic world of high-tech gadgets and secret agencies and royalty and war and politics and drama and omg! Omg it has everything AND I'M SO EXCITED. You literally have eveRYTHING that I love and I'm sososojdal;fkajs;dlfjasdf EXCITED.
Okay, so I love this brief tour of their base. This gives such good insight into their little underground world and the agency they work for. In fact, I'd have liked to see brief descriptions of the kind of work employees do down there. Should I be seeing lines of computer monitors or engineers standing on ladders fixing up jets or narrow corridors crowded with people reading reports on their tablets/clipboards.
Then again, you might have the desire to keep a secretive air about this facility! We still don't really know the name of this agency or what their mission statement is, things like that. Perhaps that's part of the grand plot and great mystery of this story! Is this mysterious agency they work for the good guy?!
That said, while we don't know the agency's mission in generall, we do know their next assignment. It's so fascinating to think this agency has interest in maintaining the political structure of their home country (or kingdom or region or whatever it is they're protecting). It also sounds like they haven't discussed anything with the king or king's guard or security or what have you -- that all the work is done by the agency alone, and they're taking it upon themselves to handle the situation. It's very... Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.-esque! Good guys, but in a rogue-ish kind of way!
And I think that kind of group could still work in this kind of situation because their mission is to eliminate a prince who sounds very Hitlery, and that kind of threat will always require help to extinguish. I'm excited to learn more about this prince and why he does what he does, if he's just a psychopath/sociopath or if he actually has legitimate concerns and is simply solving them the wrong way. It'll be fun! Bad guys are so fun to explore!
I also love the team dynamic here. Myra seemed legitimately heartbroken or at least afraid about the news she's heard. I'd imagine they knew of some kind of threat if minorities have been dying, but they probably didn't expect it to be this big. (Unless living underground, they never get any news at all. Omg maybe this agency breeds its assassins without outside contact to better ensure their alliance and cooperation?? O.O) She clearly doesn't feel comfortable knowing the prince himself is behind such crimes! I look forward to hearing the reasoning behind her feelings. Maybe she knows the prince? Maybe she had a girlish crush on the prince for a while? Maybe she's uncomfortable with such a high-treason crime?? She has so much heart, whatever the reason. D:
On the flip side, Darien and Skylar remain focused and clear-headed. And I love this. Despite the differences they had before, the conversation they literally just had outside Rae's room, they were (as the narration said) still a team! I love characters like this as much as I love heartful characters like Myra. They're necessary to the team! And because they both remained cool-headed, it gives the impression that agents are supposed to be trained as such. They keep their cool and remain focused on their objective. Even Myra does so, though she can struggle in extreme situations it seems.
I'm eager to see what Rae feels. Even if the three hadn't been following the crimes above ground, Rae must have gotten some information since she's always behind a computer screen. I'm guessing she's an expert hacker, so even if they disconnected her from the internet, she'd find a way back online without being noticed. Unless she's not that magically skilled or that level of skill doesn't exist (like what do I know about hacking ??), but she could also pick up rumors or messages from higher-ups as well. I wonder if she'll have an opinion, or if the agency is SUPER good at keeping this kind of information out of reach and, therefore, she's just as in the dark as the rest of them.
OH, and before I forget, I love how this segment ended with the lights more blinding and the hallways even narrower. It gives that feeling of anxiety, where it's hard to breathe and the uncertainty of their mission is triggering their nerves. I love it.
Okay, I babbled my little heart out and clearly am FULL of conspiracies, so I'm just going to have to wait for the next segment. But I love this and how much informatoin and intrigue we get, and also how much insight into our team's personalities we get. This tells us a LOT, and while the mission itself seems a bit overwhelming, I actually remembered quite a bit of it by the end. So I'm not too concerned abotu that and simply want to see what happens next!
I look forward to reading more! Keep writing!!!
Jabber, the One and Only!
Thanks so much for the review! I always love to hear your theories and character impressions
I%u2019m glad you%u2019re enjoying it so far!