Young Writers Society

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night (whatever it is when you get around to reading this),

And another review,

First Impression: The story is getting close to the actual problem now I believe. We now have a decent sense of who's good and whose bad. We still have no idea exactly what the climax is but it is starting to take shape.

So, on with it,

Alice watched as the door to the room she was being brought towards was opened, and Alice screamed as a horrible creature walked out. It looked vaguely human, but all misshapen. One of its eyes was way higher than the other one and was completely green. Its arms were covered in green blotches, and its white clothing was stained with blood that was leaking out of its mouth.

Good description there. Really makes you picture it. I feel the need to summon my sword.

“Shut up,” snapped the woman. The weird thing didn’t shut up, and instead it lunged at her and attacked her. The woman’s eyes widened, and she attempted to shoot it. Unfortunately, it snatched the gun out of her hand and punched her. It must’ve been quite strong, because she flew across the room and slammed into the wall. Alice’s escorter whipped out his machine gun and with a loud series of bangs peppered it with holes.

Good bit of description showing how this operation is taking place.

Pain. It hurts. What are they doing? thought Alice through her semi-consciousness. She tried to remember what was going on, but it eluded her mind. Who was she? She couldn’t remember. All she knew was that she was hurting. A lot. She attempted to open her eyes, but they wouldn’t open. She then realized that she couldn’t move a muscle. And the pain… the more conscious she got, the more she realized how much it hurt. All of a sudden she felt a jolt and she blacked out again.

She woke up again.

Pain, I remember pain… it was gone. She didn’t feel pain anymore. She opened her eyes to see two people in white lab coats talking. They seemed excited. However, she couldn’t hear them. Also, they looked green. Why did they look green? And why were they hazy? She realized that everything looked green, and that she was in some sort of container with liquid. Green liquid, apparently. She also still couldn’t remember anything.

This is really good. Does a good job of conveying her confusion and surprise. I think we have something sinister going on now don't we?

Alice? came a voice in her head. It sounded familiar… she couldn’t remember where she had heard it before. Actually, she couldn’t remember anything. Alice, what happened to you? You’re… different. I can communicate with you telepathically, said the voice again.

Quiet, Shadowscale. This was a different voice. More harsh and gruff. Kill the scientists in front of you. Alice looked at the two people who were staring at her in amazement. She didn’t want to kill them. Somehow she knew that killing was bad. No, Alice. Killing is good. It’s fun. Now kill them.

Alice, don’t kill them, pleaded the other voice. She was beginning to get a headache. She realized her name must’ve been Alice. Her gut told her to trust this voice, not the voice that was telling her to kill people. Alice, if you come to me, I can give you your memories back, continued voice one.

He’s lying. Kill the scientists and come to me. I will give you your memories, not him, said voice two, the gruff one.

“It… it finally worked!” shouted one of the scientists, who was no longer staring at her speechless. The scientist turned to her partner and grabbed his arm. He was still gawking at Alice.

“Ten years… ten years… I can’t believe after all that time working on it… I just can’t believe it…” he trailed off.

Alice, please, don’t listen to Donnovan. He’s lying. He's the person who took your memories in the first place, said voice one.

As Donnovan responded to Shadowscale, Alice closed her eyes and concentrated. Who should she trust? She stared at the two people in front of her. The person apparently named “Donnovan” wanted her to kill them. The other guy, Shadowscale, was begging her not to, and instead to come to him. What was going on? She wished she knew the answer. Mostly, though, she wished she had her memories.

They both said they could give her her memories back, but could they? And how were they communicating in her head? The two people in front of her weren’t. Anyway, she needed to decide. Kill the scientists and go to Donnovan to get her memories back, or go to Shadowscale and get her memories from him. That was assuming either of them could even give her her memories anyway. Maybe neither of them could. The scariest part was knowing that if she went to the wrong person, they might give her fake memories. She didn’t know if that was possible, but she hoped it wasn’t.

After much consideration, she made her decision.

Okay that whole last bit is really nice. I feel like that Isaac foreshadowing of "What if dragons had come earlier?" is starting to make more sense. This looks to be going in a really good direction now. I can't wait to see what happens though I have a sinking feeling that I know that Alice makes a bad decision. This is getting really good and I feel like I barely had any criticism here.

So overall this is a really nice plot, the characters are starting to take form though Violet and Josh now seem to be totally unimportant to the plot. Or are they important later?

Anyway I have more to review so onward I march.

Stay Safe
Harry

Hey, Necromancer! I was looking for something to review and I saw this in the back of the Green Room, so decided to read it! I know I haven’t read previous chapters but I hope this will help anyway.

So, despite not having read previous chapters, I felt like I knew what was happening and I understood everything. I think that shows the clarity that you’re communicating through your work, as well as the fact that the plot seems to be unfolding in a really nice and smooth way.

This was really fascinating, and mildly disturbing lol. Obviously these scientists were trying to discover/complete an experiment—and it worked on Alice. Her floating around in green liquid is a really interesting idea (it kinda reminds me of Star Wars!). Anyway, I like that a lot. Is the liquid up to her head? It seems like it is, because everything she viewed is green. How can she breath?!! Unless.... she can breath underwater now?? :0

I’m not familiar with the characters Shadowscale and Donovan, but the back-and-forth of them trying to convince Alice was nice. I think to add to suspense and to make Alice’s decision more difficult (thus, making it a “better” or “worse” decision depending on who she tries to follow—which has potential to change her character), I think Donovan’s promise should be a bit more worrisome. I mean, Alice has the choice to listen to a familiar voice who’s telling her not to kill people, or a strange voice that it telling her to kill people. The former seems much more appealing. I think if Donovan’s promise was more.... fulfilling? Or contained lies maybe? That could make it more intense.

She looked down, and saw that she was both floating and had various tubes and other things attached to her. She also noticed lines along her skin, like seams, as if they had taken her apart and had put her back together. Well, that’s a disturbing thought.

She walked down the hallway, noticing that some other people were also being led out of their cells and into a strange room at the end.

Alright, sorry for the wait, but I'm excited to be reading another chapter! Since the previous one had views of both Shadowscale and Isaac, I would expect Alice to be the next view here, and I think I'm right. ^^ Let's get on into it then.

I'm trying to get a grasp on this current timeline, as I think "ten years" is throwing me off.

The prologue of this starts with Shadowscale arriving to Earth, thanks to the unnamed (if I recall correctly) scientist and her machine/invention. And so I guess I could have missed where Shadowscale could have been here for ten years already, in order for these scientists now (I assume working for I.S.U.E., or for higher ups in the organization,) to be trying to construct their own kind of "Dragon" or "powered" being. If I'm wrong about that, please correct me! I'm just trying to piece this together, or maybe more information will be provided about what kind of experiments/reasons why these scientists have been doing all of these things to people for a decade.

Alright! I wasn't expecting Alice to be turned into something else. I do remember her being threatened with experiments, but I didn't think it would be quite this soon - if there was some kind of small time skip it would make more sense to me, as why would they immediately start testing on this random teenager, but then again, if the scientists have been doing this for years, they could have lost all sense of good humanness and a very simplistic form of right/wrong/principles and things like that. Also, of all the colors -- green tends to make people look more sick, and ugh, the image of that first poor person was sad.

Ohh! Is Donnovan meant to be the person that actually attacked her parents' house and all that, since I know it wasn't Shadowscale that actually did it. That would make a lot more sense in my head. I do wonder how he could've taken Alice's memories, but maybe that will be revealed later! I do think that there is a bit of confusion here on my end, as I feel like Alice would be either freaking out more/trying to process everything by behaving some kind of way frantically - maybe she doesn't recognize the wiring at first, but then she starts shaking because now she can feel all of the connections into her skin ... which really doesn't sound fun.

This is a very interesting way of ending this chapter and to start in a whole new arc for Alice'c character, as now she's some kind of modified/morphed/changed human! Ooh! And I'm very curious as to what kind of decision she will make next chapter. Nicely done as ever!