Young Writers Society

I've been working on a novel for a little while and this is what I have so far. I'm headed in a couple of directions after this part and I still don't have a title. I'm just hoping that I can get a little feed back. Thanks!

Chapter 1

Dark. Damp. Cold. All these were things that described the windowless cell that Amran had been forced into. When Amran stood up to his nearly six foot height the ceiling loomed less than an inch above his head. The corners of the cell were plugged up by webs that were home to spiders. These spiders and the occasional cockroach proved to be the only life that Amran had seen in the entire time in which the cell had become his home. Rations only came twice a day and when they did come they were scarce more than two slices of bread and half a cup of water. Amran was almost certain that they were drugging his water but still he drank. He said not a word because there was not a soul that could here him even if he screamed. Even the food was sent threw a slit in the titanium door of the cell so that no one would come in physical contact with Amran. In his entire life of fifteen years these were the worst conditions he had had to endure.

Amran lay down on the moist floor of the cell eyes half closed. Not a day went by when Amran didn't think to himself, why? Why, and how. How could this have happened? His experience not only defied the common beliefs of every person in the world, but also changed the way things are, were and would be.

Amran may have been all alone in his cell but he was not for one second bored. That was because Amran could stare past the hollow eyes of people into the elixir that were their thoughts.

Not in the sense that he could know what someone was thinking, but he could tell what they were intending to do. Just then he felt a slight pressure weighing down on his mind. To anyone else this feeling would just seem like a petty migraine but Amran knew better. What he was feeling was another human mind coming within seeing range of Amran’s aberrant power. Moments after, he heard footsteps outside his cell. This light feeling on his mind had proved to be a warning to him that someone was close enough to him to have their mind seen into by Amran. He peered into the darkness that was the guard’s intentions and he could tell immediately that he was just here to slide the miserable rations that were provided through the cell door. Sure enough within a few seconds he heard the familiar creek of the slit being opened and a plate slide through the slit into the room.

His extraordinary ability proved to be both a blessing and a curse to Amran, his family, and anyone who knew him. This was the very reason that he was where he was at the moment, locked up in a room where the only resource he had was his mind. This in itself had proved to be a greater weapon than any piece of weaponry a soldier might carry. This had been proved time and time again since the very beginning of his life. Amran shut his eyes completely and thought back to how it had all begun.

*****

From very early on in his life Amran new that his ability to see into peoples minds was not normal. Because he realized it so early on he never mentioned it to a soul. He did however track his progress and remember all he learned about how to sneak into the minds of people.

By the age of eight Amran could tell what someone was going to say to him before they even began speaking. This would make him rather impatient when someone was speaking a lot of information to him because he already knew what was going to be said. This led his teachers and the other alike students to believe that he had ADD or something of the sort, and they all thought him to be unintelligent. This was fine with Amran because he didn’t care what people believed as long as they didn’t suspect what really caused him to be restless.

Amran had always been fascinated with every aspect of history. Having a history professor as a father at the nearby university propelled his interest a great deal. Another part of the reason he was so fascinated with history was because the country he lived in was home to a group of the oldest monuments on the face of the earth, the pyramids. He often compared life back in the days of the pyramids to what life was like now in 2100.

Egypt was no longer ruled by one or just a few men as it was back in the days of the pyramids or even just a few centuries ago, it had become a full fledged democracy with rights for all, and one of the smallest percentage of poverty-stricken peoples in the world. Egypt had blossomed into a powerful nation because of its string of astounding leaders, both political and economical, the likes of which the world hadn’t seen since the American Revolution.

Egypt had become a very tight rival of the United States in all issues the most hotly contested of which being the economy. The United States had been brought down a peg after centuries of worrying about everyone else’s problems had led them to forget about their own at home and because of this its economy nearly imploded. This caused a slump in everything from sales to foreign trade that just fell short being the second Great Depression.

To most people Amran seemed no more different than many other kids throughout Egypt. He was a bit quieter and shyer than most other eight year olds who seemed to be filled to the brim with energy. His height, which at the time was a tad over 5 feet, was a phenomenon that no one seemed to be able to explain either as neither his father nor his mother was ever very tall. No one would really think Amran as too much out of the ordinary, just a nice kid, none too bright, but with a good future ahead of him. Just a normal kid was what everyone thought he was, everyone that is, except his father.

His single refused to believe anything the teachers told him about his son being slow because he seemed very interested in his father’s job as a history professor. Even at the age of eight he would sometimes catch him reading the books that he would issue to his college students. Amran though did not seem at all upset by being conceived as stupid in his school so the only thing he did at the time was to place some of the books he used in places where he knew his son would see them when he was away at school.

Amran’s mother had been an American FBI agent and she and Amran’s father had met at a Crispy Crème shop, the only donut chain left as within 25 years of its opening it had crushed all competition. She had been in Egypt working on a case when they met but once she completed her assignment they began dating and after a few months they were married. The marriage created quite a problem for the two as it became very clear that one of them would have to move and become a citizen of the other’s country. Amran’s mother took the burden upon herself and became a citizen of Egypt and gave up her job in the FBI. Soon after she became a citizen she became pregnant with Amran and he became both her and her husband’s greatest concern. She and her husband devoted themselves to Amran but when he was only one year old his mother was murdered, the assassin was not caught but as soon as Amran had been old enough to understand what had happened to his mother he swore to devote his himself and his ability to finding the killer.