Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for violence.
Chapter 9:
Jack and Jane gazed in horror at the room’s contents.
There was blood everywhere; the crimson liquid stained the entire wall opposite the entrance to the room, as well as most of the carpet. The source of the blood was a mutilated corpse of something which seemed to have been a human. Its guts had been ripped out violently and ripped to shreds. By the corpse was a butcher’s knife. Jack could tell by the scent that the ‘body’ belonged to Dr Fergus.
“Someone got here before us,” Jack stated coldly.
“What could’ve done that?” Fox asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“It’s not a bad idea to consider that he would’ve had a few enemies,” Jane theorised.
“For now, we’ll have to stay here and figure out our next move from here. We need to go into hiding if we don’t want to end up like Caruso.”
Fox cast a look at Jack, which told him clearly not to mention that name.
“Sorry,” he responded.
Suddenly, there was a loud yell:
“Gotcha!” Fox watched in horror as Jack fell to the ground unconscious. She hesitated and turned around to run, but her route was quickly sealed close by a tall man. Fox was about to use her speed to get out, but she soon felt her strength draining from her body. She fell to her knees and straight onto the man’s black shoes. The last thing she heard was Dragon’s high-pitched squeal before he also fainted.
***
Fox woke up to the “beep… beep…” of a cardiogram. She was on a hospital bed, still in her human disguise, with an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. Fox was now in a hospital ward, though she had second thoughts whether she and her friends will get out alive. She could smell that Dragon and Jack were somewhere nearby. She also noticed two doctors standing over her. What she couldn’t sense, though, was Jane.
“Sir,” one of them said, turning away from her. “She’s awake.”
“Grand,” a deep voice said. Soon, a tall, muscular half-lion in a suit walked up to her bed. “Good day to you, Fox. There is no need for you to be alarmed, you have my word. My name is Ryan Hunter, just call me Ryan. I’ll explain everything in more detail later, when you are fully awa-”
“I am fully awake,” Fox replied as she took off the oxygen mask. She sat up and looked Ryan dead in his orange eyes as the doctors left them alone. “What do you want from us?”
“I want to help you,” Ryan answered.
“And I should believe you because…?”
“You’re on the run from a group of satanic scientists who also sent an Enhanced after you and killed one of your friends. They also attempted the murder of Dragon Noir, but the latter ended up turning into a baby dragon. I’m assuming you’ve figured out how I get all that information.”
Fox run through her mind all the possible suspects, until she suddenly realised:
“It was through Jane, wasn’t it?”
“Precisely. Jane was sent to London two days after you and Dragon decided to make yourselves public. Her primary goal was to assassinate you - you were seen as a threat to reveal our minority to the world - although…” Ryan seemed to be holding something back. “Something changed the way I looked at your duo. I decided to wait with your execution, knowing the government or an anti-Enhanced group will end up murdering you. But soon, I took a liking to your duo, I-”
“I’ll ask one last time,” Fox interrupted, closing her eyes in annoyance. She heard too many people in her life talking the same way as him to be fooled. “What. Do. You. Want?”
Ryan took his time to think about an answer.
“I need your help,” he finally confessed. “Those scientists need to be stopped, before more innocent people are affected by their sick ambitions.”
“Do you think this is an excuse to murder a former scientist who gave up his work to live a normal life?”
Ryan remained silent.
“If he ended up dead,” he said solemnly after a while. “Then he must’ve gave my people some trouble. By that, I mean he attempted to kill them.”
Fox found it unbelievable, yet plausible at the same time, soon making her uncertain whether she’s making a good move by listening to him.
“What made you change your mind about me and Dragon?” she asked. Ryan turned away from her.
“I can't tell you. If I do, blood will spill,” he replied.
“Tell me, unless you want a river of blood in here.”
Ryan gazed at her incredulously.
“Even if I told you, it’d still be a river, because I know how protective and clingy you are of a certain individual.”
Fox never felt this confused.
“Wait, did not kill us because I'm too protective of Dragon?”
“You've got the consequence right, but not the cause.”
Fox closed her eyes and fell back onto her bed.
What could it be? She thought. Then, she noticed there could be a way to persuade him to spill.
“Is it to do with anyone I am close with?”
In response, Ryan looked at her and nodded slowly.
“Is it Jane?”
He nodded again. After a while of silence and an intense thought process, Fox gave up.
“Just tell me already!” she yelled. Ryan thought through whether it was a good idea; he came to a conclusion pretty quickly:
“Jane confessed her love for Dragon to me. She didn't want to kill you two because of her love for him.”
Author’s Note: I hope you enjoyed this chapter! I'm looking forward to any feedback you may have. Once more, I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Just a quick thing before I finish, I have decided to make a schedule for my writing, so next week I'll be writing Ice Queen and the week after that I'll write Que Sera Sera, and so on.
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125,029 Literary Works • 672,781 Reviews
Almost caught up...
Nit-picks:
A positive thing not a nit-pick per se <-- need to come up with a term for that
I like the continuation of the ironic "heh"ness. That was a weird description, but I hope you know what I mean. *consumes more caffeine*
I would expect Jack to be the one more broken up about it, having seen it, or for them both to feel as bad as each other.
I'm unsure if she'd know immediately what it was.
Bit repetitive. (<-- I keep spelling that so baaaad)
Nice moment (<-- what I think I'll call these)
Ahhh nice bit of info about Alice. Interesting...
Nowwwww it makes sense! I think you should have one of the characters wondering about this earlier, but this is a very good explanation.
I kinda got that
This seems to be from Fox's POV and Fox wouldn't know this.
Overall:
Character: I really like the bit from Fox's POV. She is definitely my favourite character. You introduce Ryan well, though for some reason I feel like he should have a more interesting name, or maybe even a codename. As for Jane... Finally an answer!! I'm really satisfied by this, but I do think her falling in love is a bit quick. Fancied, or had a thing for, might sound more realistic.
Setting: I'm getting a much clearer idea of the world this is in now and the immediate setting for the scenes is good as well.
Plot: Another bombshell haha! I like that this is related to Dragon's personal life again and I'm looking forward to seeing Jane's opinion on this. I for one think Dragon's a bit of a douche, and he seems like someone you'd need to be close to to really get enough to fall in love with, so I'm interested to see what she has to say. As for Fox, poor thing caught in the middle of all this. I am interested to see how they interact with the other unusual people and how all that goes.
Hope this helps,
Biscuits
Hi, Dragon! I'm back from my holiday and jetlagged to hell and back, but I still want to get on with reviewing this chapter.
Nice to see another chapter which isn't so action heavy. Glad to get some answers about Jane's involvement too, and to see the story moving towards a more purposeful direction. Fox's dialogue remains strong, too; her scenes are definitely my favourite. I'm interested to see how she reacts to the revelation that Jane was supposed to assassinate the both of them.
I'm going to start with nitpicks and move onto overall points after. Here we go!
Nitpicks
It's not as bad as some instances, but I think you should delete the bold. It's telling writing. Instead you should try and show their horror. Ask yourself how they would react to seeing a body; would they gag or clutch their mouth, or recoil? Just a line about their instant reactions would enrich the writing and make their discomfort more believable.
If I'm to believe that it's Ryan's lot who killed him, I find it pretty weird that a secret agent would fight with a butcher's knife. And that they'd kill him so brutally, come to think of it. If it was just a reactionary killing as Ryan suggested, you'd think they'd have just shot him or something - it makes no sense for them to mutilate the body. And no sense for them to use a knife.
You're writing in passive voice again. Have I mentioned passive voice before? I'll just run through it again quickly.
Passive and active voice are two styles of writing characterised by where the subject and object are in the sentence. An active sentence has the subject first and the object second, like this:
The girl smacked the door.
The passive voice, however, inverts the subject and the object, like this:
The door was smacked by the girl.
I think you'll agree that passive voice has less impact than active. It distances the reader from the action, which is why it tends to be used to write lab reports and other kinds academic work. In a novel, it doesn't have much place, so try to write in active voice wherever you can. If you were to rewrite the quoted clause, you might have something like:
but a tall man blocked her route.
I think the line would have more impact if you deleted the bold. Besides, it seems unlikely she'd be aware if he fainted or not given that she's out of it.
I second MJ in saying that you don't need to repeat that Fox is on a hospital ward after having already said it. There's also a tense slippage in this sentence as well - it should be 'she had second thoughts about whether her friends would get out alive'.
Why would Fox fight the dead scientist's corner this much? She barely knows him, and she's never come across as a champion of morals and justice. It seems strange for her to be so didactic about it, especially considering that she knows so little about how the scientist was killed.
Must've given, you mean.
Tense slippage again. It should be 'soon making her uncertain whether she was making a good move by listening to him'.
Considering the reason is just that Jane was in love with Dragon, why would blood spill if he told her? I don't get why he treats it with such caution.
What way is this? She doesn't do anything particularly tactical or persuasive. She just asks him more questions.
I'll end the nitpicks by saying that I noticed no dialogue punctuation mistakes! Huzzah!
General Points
1)The big reveal at the end about Jane loving Dragon. There's a few things to say about this. I'll start by seconding MJ and saying that I find it very strange that Jane's affection for Dragon would be enough to convince Ryan to forgo assassinating them. If her emotions were compromised, he'd surely just take her off the case and give it to someone else. Organisations like that don't prize personal feelings over what needs to be done. It would be more convincing if he changed his mind because he realised that he could use them for a purpose - killing the scientists, for example.
I'm also a bit 'eh' about the revelation that Jane is in love with Dragon. It wasn't wholly unexpected, but that's more because I'm used to sudden romance popping up between male and female characters. The two have had very little meaningful scenes together. Because the story has been so action heavy and fast paced, we've never really had the chance to see the characters interacting and bantering with each other in normal context. I don't really feel like Jane knows Dragon enough to love him. Not to mention that, beyond a bit of crying, she didn't seem too badly affected when he died.
The only way to resolve this is in redrafting. You need more writing in the earlier chapters. We need to see the two of them laughing and bantering together, and to see Dragon loosening up and becoming less narcissistic and more human around Jane. Follow the 'I love you' rule when writing romance - if either one has to say that they love the other for the audience to realise it, you're not writing the romance effectively enough.
2) I'm still seeing a lot of 'she did this in horror' and 'he did this in annoyance' kind of writing. You're relying too much on clarifying the reasons behind actions rather than letting us infer them for ourselves. Describe the scene like a fly on the wall and resist the urge to explain.
3) I'm holding out for a more tangible explanation as to why the Satanic scientists are doing what they're doing. 'Because the devil says so' isn't a particularly intriguing motive, nor does it make much sense if they don't have an actual end goal in all of this. Ryan has said that the scientists need to be stopped, but does that simply come from a wish to stop individual human suffering? Or is there something else that the scientists are planning? It's all in your hands, but I think this story does very much hinge on making sure the antagonists are good villains.
Always a pleasure to read more from you. Particularly glad that you've got your dialogue punctuation under wraps! I'll review The Ice Queen next and get back up to date.
Keep writing!
~Pan
Thanks for the feedback! I'm very sorry for the mistakes I made and I'll make sure I improve for future chapters. I'm glad you're enjoying it nevertheless!
Don't apologise for mistakes! It's how we learn.
Hey there Dragon! MJ here for a quick review
This makes it seem like Jack can tell by smelling the body that it was Dr. Fergus, which isn't really possible. There might be a few different smells, but regardless I would imagine that most corpses smell the same, or at least so similar it would be impossible to pick out of the millions of possible victims one particular person.The first section was pretty much spot-on. I just have one nit-pick-
The second section is where things started to get a little more confusing, and where I had some more nit-picks. The first one is pretty minor, but I wanted to mention it regardless.
You already said she was in a hospital ward in the first sentence, so it's not necessary to mention it again.
Another thing I would like to hear mentioned is how Fox feels right now. You mentioned her irritation later on, but since she was in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask, her injuries must have been fairly serious. Does she feel woozy? Does she, strangely, feel fine? Does her head throb from the drugs, is her throat raspy, is her face sore from the mask?
And finally, I find it a little hard to believe how Ryan would be OK with his assassin's inabillity to kill the target. It seems like he wasn't upset at Jane at all for letting her emotions get in the way of her job, as many assassins are trained to keep their emotions separate from their job. Jane had plenty of opportunities to kill Jack, Fox, and Dragon, even in the beginning, but her decision not to would almost certainly be frowned on by the leader of the operation.
Overall, I thought that this chapter was a good time to reveal Jane's true motives and also bring in another character to add to the plot. I liked how Fox was still calm and controlled, at least in the beginning, under pressure, since that was in character for her. Ryan's schemes were a little cliche, but there really is no solid way to introduce an assassin in an original way- their goal will be the same no matter what twist you put on it. I did enjoy this chapter, and I look forward to seeing the next in two weeks! Until then, you'll see me around
Best wishes,
MJT
Thanks for your feedback! Referring to the part about Ryan and his explanation on Jane's inability to kill Dragon and Fox... If you were Ryan, would you want to reveal if you punished Fox's bestfriend in means of torture or some other form of punishment (regardless of the fact that you just told her that Jane was supposed to kill her)? Now, Ryan would know what Fox and Dragon are capable of, which is why he wouldn't do that.
Either way, I really appreciate your feedback and I'll make sure I make chapter 10 an awesome chapter! Oh yeah, just a quick question, how would you react to Dragon being reverted to his original form?