Young Writers Society

Hello! We are the Cidrian Writers' Guild, here to fill you day with unsolicited advice!

Your story is good overall. It's got interesting characters and an even more interesting premise. We don't fully understand the concept of flash fiction (meaning we don't know if they're meant to be expanded upon) but if you were planning on expanding it, we heartily encourage you to do so.

However, we do have a few semantical criticisms. They are as follows:

"'The At-lant Mk II is an unmanned, manned ground assault vehicle meant to be operated by Dolls...'"
Perhaps Allie is simply rereading something she misread, but this sentence gives the implication that the Mk II is both manned and unmanned at the same time. Then again, it could also be a joke. We simply wanted to point this out.

"She heads down the hall, unholstering her pistol, and draws her rifle."
Three things here. 1. Did she not unholster her pistol moments ago in the elevator. Perhaps she put it back, but that we seem to be pointless if she was going to draw it again. Perhaps she just has some nervous energy to deal with 2. If she also readies her rifle, is she now dual-wielding with a pistol in one hand and a rifle in another. She's doing to be terribly inaccurate with that rifle if she is. And 3. (however this one is very unimportant and exists solely to satiate our own ego) People don't really "draw" rifles anymore. The last times people drew rifles would've been in the 1800s when they have rifle sheathes on their horses. Especially since this is sci-fi, she most likely would unsling it from her shoulder or back.

That's all we have for you! As we said, our criticisms are mostly pedantic, so if you disagree with them, please disregard them. We hope you continue to write!

Slàinte Mhaith,

The Cidrian Writers' Guild

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),

Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!! It appears you're new here so Welcome to YWS!! Hope you have a good time here!!

First Impression: Okayy...so this is actually a really solid scene here. I really enjoyed this sense of mounting tension followed by that conclusion there with everything exploding into a chaos, its a pretty well paced scene here.

Anyway let's get right to it,

The sound of footsteps rings throughout the hall as Allie makes her way to the engineering wing of the facility. Along the hallway, she spots a door and quickly enters the room behind it, closing it behind her. “Ash, you better find me another route to engineering, that one isn't going to work.”

Ash replies, “I’m working on it, w-where are you now?” Allie looks around the room. The room was trashed, with large windows on the far side that open into a larger space. It was evident the room was an office with an attached testing facility.

Allie speaks into her radio, “I’m in one of the R&D facilities. I don't know which one though.”

Ash responds, “O-Okay, you are either in U-MGV Development or Doll Development, did you see anything specific?”

The sound of fast-approaching footsteps can be heard from the hall. Allie bolts behind a desk, “I didn't see anything, I’m kinda busy…” she whispers into the radio. They grow in number as they approach the room. They reach the door but pass. Allie comes out from behind the desk and begins looking around the desks to find out where she is.

After a few minutes of searching, she finds a document with the words ‘Prototype’ and ‘At-lant Mk II’. She flips through the pages taking notice of one, “The At-lant Mk II is an unmanned, manned ground assault vehicle meant to be operated by Dolls but can be operated remotely by a human operator, or autonomously.

Allie speaks on the radio, “Ash, I’m in U-MGV Testing'' she walks over to the window.

“Okay, there should be an elevator down the hall that will take you down to engineering.” In the main testing room beyond the windows lies a prototype Mk II. The room itself is large with a blast door on the right side of the prototype.

Allie responds, “Alright, I'm heading there now.” She heads for the door and peeks out into the dim hallway to see that the elevator has been blocked.

“Ash, I think I'm going to need another route or a distraction of some kind, these... things... blocked the elevator.” She retreats into the room and heads to the window.

“I-I don’t see another way for you to get down there…”, after some time Allie gets an idea.

“Ash, this testing room has a prototyping and maintenance room, correct?”

Ash replies, “Yes, all testing facilities here have them. Why?” Allie takes off her backpack and grabs two explosive charges, and starts planting them below the window.

“I’m going to create a distraction. I’ll need you to open the blast door that connects both rooms when I tell you.” Allie finishes with the charges and looks around again, “found it,'' she whispers. She enters through a door and heads up the stairs to observation. Allie reached the room, she looked out the windows which were facing the blast door, the perfect angle to observe, “Ash, you better be ready to open that door!” Allie detonates the charges creating a massive explosion that opens a direct way into the testing room.

Soon after detonation, creatures burst into the office and out into the testing room. “Ash open the door!”, as soon as Allie says those words, the blast door blares its warning as it opens. Creatures throw themselves into the door until it has opened enough that they can get through, they flood into the room behind. “Ok, Ash, I’m on my way to the elevator!” Allie leaves heading for the elevator down the hallway. She reaches the elevator and calls it. Allie positions herself to the left of the elevator and slings her primary weapon and draws her pistol from its holster, and readies it.

After a few minutes of waiting, the elevator doors open, and a few creatures bolt out towards the still blaring alarm from the blast door. Allie enters the elevator noticing a mangled body lying against the wall taking note of its blue blood as she hits the button to engineering. “Okay, Ash, I’m heading down to engineering. Now tell me where the main reactor will be.”

Ash replies. “It is going to be to the left when you exit the elevator. You are going to need a card to get in.”

When the elevator reaches its destination. Allie peers out, looking both ways, and turns left. It’s dark and sparsely lit with emergency lights. She heads down the hall, unholstering her pistol, and draws her rifle. Allie eventually reaches an intersection riddled with corpses, creatures, security, and researchers, looking up, Allie sees an Atlas security turret that is still fully functional. It watches as she approaches. “The defense system is still up.” She says, avoiding the corpses. She stands in the middle of the intersection. The hall in front of her leads to maintenance and storage, the one to her right leading to reactor coolant. Her left goes to primary reactor control. She takes the hall that leads to the reactor, the hall bends to the right and has off shooting rooms, the corridor is sparse with bodies, and at its end is a blast door with the label “Reactor Control.” On the ceiling to the left and right of the door sit two turrets that watch Allie as she approaches. Next to the door is an ID scanner. Allie takes out her card and scans it.

After a second, the door sends out its warning accompanied by flashing lights and a message “Decontamination Initialized.” Allie takes a crouched stance facing the way she came with her rifle ready. ”Ash, you didn't say it had to decon!”

Ash replies in a stressed tone, “It’s Atlas protocol. I thought you knew that!” She reaches for a side pouch on her backpack and takes out a smooth black metallic ball, and sets it on the ground next to her. As she does so, the sound of gunfire sounds throughout the halls. ”Forget it, I’ve got guests to deal with.”