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Young Writers Society


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Survival: The Escape, Chapter 10.4

by KateHardy


Mrs. Kane began with an introductory speech of sorts. Aria tuned it out and took a moment to look around the place. By the cracked concrete walls Aria could confirm beyond a doubt that it was definitely a repurposed storage room, probably one of the oldest ones judging by the fact that even the locks were being controlled by them on command. There was no way that the basic technology they had access to could be jerry rigged to operate anything more recent.

There were several very strategically placed lights that were helping light the place, and although they were scarce they managed to bathe the area in a generous amount of light that was just about enough for the place to be cozy instead of eerie. Only the corners were too dark to make out clearly. They'd also managed to rig a light directly above the stage making a sort of spotlight. Her sweep of the area done, Aria turned back towards the stage to tune into what her mother was saying.

“....to choose the people that will be embarking on perhaps the most dangerous thing that you’ll ever do in your life but since you’re all here, I’m sure it's also the thing you’ve most wanted to do for a long time," said Mrs. Kane, pausing as there was a general murmur around the hall. After waiting for it to pass, she continued. 

"So the four of us discussed this at length and came up with three numbers for the teams. Now the three numbers will require three separate types of plans but they're all going to be equally as effective so we thought we’d leave it up to you guys to decide. Now the numbers are 22,17 and 5. So please raise your hand and tell us which number you would prefer. One at a time.”

The voting began. It took a good forty-five minutes for each number to be called out and the votes to be counted manually by Jake and Eve, with them having to clarify a couple of things here and there.

It slowly came down to the ones at the very back; the three of them. Aria had been thinking hard on which number to pick. 5 was the number that immediately stuck out to Aria. 17 appeared to be a very risky proposition especially considering that an escape might have to take place before the wreckage of the ship had been completely cleared away and 22 was just ridiculous. The time it would take to fit that many people through would be a nightmare.

She raised her hand to indicate that she was ready to give her vote. She could see Harry and Daisy exchange a look before both of them did the same.

"Alright, you three, what's it going to be?" asked Mrs. Kane

"5," chorused the three of them before they looked at each other, surprised to have picked the same thing. Harry proceeded to shrug and the three exchanged smiles.

There were a few minutes spent in silence as everything was confirmed and then Mrs. Kane stepped up with a small slip of paper in here hand.

She began, "Well if I'm reading this correctly, we now have our verdict. It's going to be 5. It was a close call between 5 and 17 but 5 it shall be. Since everyone got a fair chance I don't believe there should be any objections?" Mrs. Kane did a cursory look around. Complete silence reigned for a minute before Mrs Kane continued.

"Alright, we'll move forward with picking five volunteers to be taking up this task as our first cause of action. Before that is done however, we all have to first agree that we will help these five under any and all circumstances. The five that will be selected shortly will be carrying the hopes of all of humanity on them when they set out on their mission so being petty and jealous of them is not going to be an option."

At this point Aria tuned out the speech from her mother. I hope she doesn’t go on for an hour. Such a pointless task. As if humans would ever unite with no strings attached. She looked around to see if there was any face that could prove her point. 

Surprisingly, as far as she could tell, most of the people listening were actually nodding along to the speech, seemingly taking everything to heart. She reasoned that was probably because no one had been chosen yet. She was then jolted out of her thoughts by everyone starting to clap and she turned back towards the stage to hear the last few words of the speech.

“..... start selecting five of us to be carrying out this mission.”


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Wed Feb 02, 2022 9:58 pm
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MaybeAndrew wrote a review...



Andrew here with a review! Excited to be seeing the plans unfold and more of Arias's personality!

Mrs. Kane began with an introductory speech of sorts. Aria tuned it out and took a moment to look around the place. By the cracked concrete walls Aria could confirm beyond a doubt that it was definitely a repurposed storage room, probably one of the oldest ones judging by the fact that even the locks were being controlled by them on command. There was no way that the basic technology they had access to could be jerry rigged to operate anything more recent.

Glad to be getting a description

There were several very strategically placed lights that were helping light the place,
placed lights lighting the place sounds clunky, placed lights brightening the room? or some other different versions of the sentence

"So the four of us discussed this at length and came up with three numbers for the teams. Now the three numbers will require three separate types of plans but they're all going to be equally as effective so we thought we’d leave it up to you guys to decide. Now the numbers are 22,17 and 5. So please raise your hand and tell us which number you would prefer. One at a time.”

Wait, this seems really skimmed over, can we get a more detailed explanation of what's happening here?
I admit, It may be my idiocy, but on my first pass over this it took me a bit to understand that the numbers were the number of people on the mission... not like an assigned number or something else.
I think that might extend from my biggest problem with this chapter, which is that there are a fair amount of missing commas and run-on sentences so it's hard to keep track of what's going on.
Here are some examples
The five that will be selected shortly will be carrying the hopes of all of humanity on them when they set out on their mission so being petty and jealous of them is not going to be an option

to choose the people that will be embarking on perhaps the most dangerous thing that you’ll ever do in your life but since you’re all here, I’m sure it's also the thing you’ve most wanted to do for a long time,


She was then jolted out of her thoughts by everyone starting to clap and she turned back towards the stage to hear the last few words of the speech


I'd advise doing some line editing here to make it easier to read and more grammatically correct.
But that's just my two cents!
At this point Aria tuned out the speech from her mother. I hope she doesn’t go on for an hour. Such a pointless task. As if humans would ever unite with no strings attached. She looked around to see if there was any face that could prove her point.

Gad to see you are not forgetting that humans, however awesome, are often selfish. Something I think can be forgotten when writing stuff like this.
Thanks, and keep writing!
-Andrew




KateHardy says...


Thank youu for the review!!

I will have to slave away for several months to get this thing properly edited xD



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Fri Oct 08, 2021 5:07 pm
RandomTalks wrote a review...



Hey Harry!

RandomTalks here with a short review!

Is this the last part to the chapter? If so, then I guess it was a great place to stop. This was a really exciting chapter, and compared to your previous ones, I like how you took this one on a slow ride. Even though a lot of important developments took place in this part, the pace you maintained was nice and constant without any skips or hurries and it made for a really nice read. I guess most of the excitement will take place in the next chapter when they choose the five members who are going to risk their lives to save humanity, so yes, I am getting quite excited about this.

From your description of the meeting place, I got the idea that this has been planned for quite some time. They are not only organized, but they have made best use of all the resources available to them. I wonder how much role the recent developments played in speeding up this meeting, or if they played any role at all. Whatever they are planning the space ship has to play a big role though. So I am excited to see what you have in store for us.

The idea behind the random selection of the number of people engaging in the mission was quite good. Although, they did feel a little too random to me. 5, 17 and 21 have too much gap in between them, so making up a decision should have been fairly easy. I wonder how you are going to decide the selection process. I am guessing that its going to be random, but I also have a feeling that the three of them are going to have some role, and may be along with those two other main characters you mentioned? I have too many theories at the moment.

Aria seemed more excited about the meeting in the morning than she is right now. She was hopeful about this, and now, she cannot even concentrate in the moment enough to listen to follow what her mother is saying. This sudden disinterest seemed a little inconsistent to me.

That's all!

Keep writing and have a great day!




KateHardy says...


Thank youu for the review!!

Ahh...I love seeing all of those theories...I think I can safely say that chapter 11 will answer the selection theories. The reasons for how this plan happened will kinda be hinted at the end of chapter 12 or 13 I think...I can't remember exactly...but its coming, although the full details of what happens exactly will be somewhat mysterious until the sequel ;)

Ohh and Aria's thing...hmm, I can see why you'd feel its inconsistent, reading through it again. The effect I was trying to go for was sort of with Aria paying attention only to the important bits and like not wanting to listen to things like the introduction speech and the part about how humans should support each other cause she feels like those are pointless things to talk about...but hmm, I do think I ended up making her sound a bit too disinterested...xD, something to fix in the next draft :D

Thanks again!!



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MailicedeNamedy wrote a review...



Hi Harry,
Mailice here with a short review to end this chapter! :D
 
It wasn't as straightforward as I expected here with the meeting, but I'm glad that despite initial difficulties, it turned into an interactive little meeting. You definitely did a good build up here and I liked that the tension here was created by the numbers and Aria's thought processes. With the cliffhanger you manage to make a good jump into the next chapter.
 
In general, I find this chapter a bit stretched. I also noticed that it only has four parts, where I think you could have made the meeting a bit longer, and spread this out for two parts instead of the build up. Having already witnessed this in one of the previous chapters, I got a bit bored here because you didn't manage to hold my interest here, especially in Part 2. You do manage to set the scene well for the characters, but the lift to the plot must have stuck in between. You could have included some of these thoughts from Aria in the meeting for example, maybe a brief power cut where you also briefly insert Daisy's fear again and just a conversation between the three of them during the meeting where maybe Harry tells them to be quiet because he wants to listen.
 
In summary, I didn't like the chapter that much. It had some brief highlights, but overall I think it was one of the weaker chapters, at least because of the stretching. Nothing changes from the writing style and the story itself, as there is still tension there in general.
 
Other points I noticed while reading:

Mrs. Kane began with an introductory speech of sorts. Aria tuned it out and took a moment to look around the place.

Aria, after giving us such a build up, don't you even listen?! :D
Now the numbers are 22,17 and 5. So please raise your hand and tell us which number you would prefer. One at a time."

I'll take 17!
"5," chorused the three of them before they looked at each other, surprised to have picked the same thing.

Nice common ground they have there, all having chosen the same number. I liked Aria's train of thought on this point, because you have once again described beautifully how the numbers are chosen and in what sense the sequel will also turn out.
Such a pointless task. As if humans would ever unite with no strings attached.

Nice quote. I like it.
 
 
Have fun writing!
 
Mailice




KateHardy says...


Thank youu for the review!!

I see your point about the chapter being a bit flatter than the others. It was supposed to be sort of a slightly reflective resting point for the readers, because the next three chapters will rise a decent bit, then we have a slight dip and its full on action right to the end. Although I suppose me trying to meet my NaNo word count goals as I was working through the first draft of this has left a few marks there with it being a bit unnecessarily long.

At any rate, the meeting should be better in the bits to come...its far from over...in fact I believe it only ends in Chapter 12 or I think actually 13, I may have forgotten the exact stopping point...whoops...;)

Thanks again!!





If you're trying to write a reflection, I would try to create a kind of "fall" into the mind, or incorporate other things, like Daisy's fear of the dark, and then see how Aria is afraid of something, and then create a transition from that.

It sounds good (and surprising) that the meeting is still going on.



KateHardy says...


Hmm...I'll think on that a bit more :D



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ForeverYoung299 wrote a review...



Hey! Forever here with a review!!

First of all I wonder about the others in the stage. You told us that there were 4 people on the stage but we still don't know who they were. I do have an idea that those are the people who were there in the first meeting but I think it's better to mention their names once more. I don't know if it's just me but I have already forgotten the other members except Summers. It seems like Mrs. Kane became the spokesperson of the group and the others decided not to speak a single word. There was a humorous man, I remember. Seems like he decided to became very serious.

Now I wonder why they particularly chose those three numbers. I am very curious to know more about the reason behind they chose those three but I guess we will not be able to know that. I am just a bit confused about how the voting was done. Like at the first instance, it seemed to me that each number was called and the people who voted for that number raised their hands but when you talked about the trio, it seemed to me that they asked individual people about their numbers. I need a bit of clarification on that topic.

Aria is kind of right in her opinion of the humans. It might actually lead to a quarrel and some out of order things too can take place if the people are not satisfied by their decisions. I am quite interested to know how they will be chosen. Vote might actually be the best and the fairest way too. The most interesting thing is gonna be seeing who these five people will be. I don't know but for some reason I do have an idea that Mrs. Kane will not be in that group and the trio is gonna be a part of it. As for the other two people, taking Mr. Summers can be a good decision because I don't think three children will be enough without a proper head. About the other one... Can be a new character. The meeting appears to be a big meeting to me because the major portion of the planning is left, basically nothing has happened except choosing the dates. It might actually take the whole night. I am a bit interested to know what date it is when this particular scene is taking place.

Overall, the chapter leads a great way to the plot. Will be getting to the next chapter soon.

Keep Writing!!

~Forever




KateHardy says...


Thank youu for the review!!

Oh the others are kind of just letting Mrs. Kane conduct this bigger meeting to start with, it'll make more sense when we get towards the end of chap 11 and chap 12. It is those three that were in the small meeting earlier and I kind of assumed people would still remember them..xD, but hmm, in the next draft I will add their names again probably :D

Yeah they were asking the numbers person by person, I can see why that would be a bit confusing with that description. :D

Hmm...I won't comment on that theory because it is answered in chap 11 ;)

Thanks again!!



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Coffeeboyjay wrote a review...



hi harry!! i im here to give you a short review

so harry we going to get started

First harry i think i told you that i would be back on reading the chapters to your novel harry and yes i im back from reading your chapter harry and i guess that when i read it harry it was actually impressive harry and i love the way you find some people to collab with you to this and they was nice of enough cause without them we wouldn't had no chapter harry but i know i had read it harry and also i think this one was pretty Excellent this time harry and i wanna know how did you get this chapter so good cause now i im looking at it that your chapters can be like a real book its actually giving me harry potter vibes right now.

My compliment harry is how did you get it so good like blah blah blah i im going to show you harry on your chapter At this point Aria tuned out the speech from her mother. I hope she doesn’t go on for an hour. Such a pointless task. As if humans would ever unite with no strings attached. She looked around to see if there was any face that could prove her point. like at my point i think harry that Aria is my favorite character of y'all right now harry

How you can improve is what is going to be on your next chapter i want something to be really good this time harry like we need a good chapter harry sooner of later harry like harry we going to get something good at harry like i im serious harry like we need something pretty good that would be impressive harry

Keep Writing Harry and stay stafe Harry!!

-jay!!





attempting foot extraction
— Mea