RinK

This is a young adult novel I'm currently working on, set in the future, in which the world has given up freedom in order for stronger national security. It centers around a group of teenagers (mainly Ross Evans), who are trapped in living quarters all their lives to be brainwashed, and know nothing of the outside world. Becoming what the outsiders view as rebels, they uncover the past to discover a dark secret about why they are here and what their society has become. Freedom - a terrifying, long-forgotten concept - is brought back to life, but with freedom comes grave sacrifices.

Quarter 13 is just a temporary title (simply because I hate to have to write Untitled - it sounds so lazy). Titles always change for me the farther I get into a story. The excerpt I'm about to post is either just the prologue or chapter one (haven't made up my mind yet), but I hope I can get some serious help and critiquing with this one. I was hoping I could do better than this, but ah well. Please, tear this apart... What's good? What's bad? What's absolutely awful? I'd like as much help as I can get.





I

"I.D. card and transpass, please."

The crowd swarmed at the doors like a horde of rats, delivering their passes into the card slot and flushing into the tiny, congested rooms of the subway. Ross Evans stood at the entrance, glaring with anger and frustration into the robot's cold, detached eyes as anxious citizens threaded through the lines and cut into the front.

God, why did it always have to be so hard?

It was the same daily routine, worming through the chaos...trying (and generally failing) to sneak into the center of a large cluster, where he could secretly board the subway without a pass. Now, here he was, in his typical daily confrontation, his heavy bag weighing down on his shoulder and a throng of overwrought citizens hollering complaints from the rear of the line.

The subway station was divided into various columns for multiple lines of people, and each subdivision was separated by a pair of white lines. The subway was parked in such a way that each of its rooms was in line with each individual sector of the station. Ross glanced over at the next sector, wondering if maybe he'd have better luck there, then decided against it.

All robots were the same.

"Please, I have to get through!" Ross pleaded, watching impatiently as the countdown clock on the wall above the entrance worked its way to zero. It was currently at 00:01:15 to takeoff. "You don't understand…my sister just boarded that subway, and I must get on!"

"We apologize for your inconvenience, sir," the machine stated matter-of-factly. It's voice box was nothing more than a monotonous string of prerecorded syllables, lacking any hint of concern or enthusiasm. "But, due to recent difficulties, the I.D. card and transpass are now essential in transportation. Without a pass, no one may board the subway."

Ross drew in a shaky breath and struggled to piece his wits together, but he could feel his face burning scarlet with distress and contempt, and he was suddenly overcome with violent thoughts. His heart hammered in his chest as he imagined ringing his psychiatrist's neck, tearing her limb for limb, and throwing her body in a hole for what she'd done.

No, no, he insisted to himself, shaking the thoughts away like a dog ridding itself of fleas.

He was not a violent person, and he never followed through with his impulses…which, in a
way, he supposed, had actually created this mess to begin with. If he'd been strong-willed and determined, inclined to stomp his foot and fight for what he wanted, maybe she would have retracted her decision.

Why did you do this to me, Dr. Chandler? his mind raged. I've always been behaved and compliant, never a rebel! Why did I deserve this punishment?

Ross shuffled from one foot to the other, his eyes flicking back at the clock, which now read 00:00:54. After a moment of nervous anticipation, he began to wail, his words rushing into each other like a surge of crashing waves. "Please listen to me! My sister has been running away frequently in the past couple months, and she never returns until days, even weeks, later! We wound up in a huge disagreement, and now she's taking off somewhere…God only knows when she'll be back…and I have to follow her! I need on that subway…"

"How old is your sister, young man?" the robot interrupted.

With a question such as this, Ross was sure the damn thing was simply stalling time so he would miss his flight, but he responded nonetheless, that little light of hope still shimmering inside him that the robot would, yet, permit him to board.

"She's thirteen."

"Hmm…thirteen." The android's eyes flickered assorted colors, as though it were pondering this. "Don't you believe that, at this age, she is old enough to take care of herself?"

"Well…" Ross hesitated, then gave one hard shake of the head. "No…no! She is not old enough... Oh my God, why am I even wasting my…"

A strangely false and mechanical smile crossed its face, an expression that Ross couldn't quite make out, but had a trace of amusement in it. "And, young man, does she, may I ask, have a transpass?"

Rolling his eyes, he muttered, "Um, obviously, or you wouldn't have let her board, as you have made blatantly clear…"

"If I do not offend you, may I point out a little fact? If she has a transpass, and you do not, then it would appear that she is more responsible and more to be trusted than you are, am I correct?" the android inquired with an odd mix of politeness and acerbity. "So why, sir, should you have the right to control where she is headed?"

Ross gazed at the robot guard with utter bewilderment, realizing he'd been outsmarted and instantly feeling trapped. "Well…I…but…" He bit his lip and he let out a deep, dramatic sigh, a shudder slithering through his body and into his toes. "I had a dream," he whispered finally, "that…that something was… I can't explain it, but I just know that something is going to happen. Something bad. Brotherly instincts, I guess. But it's really important. You have to let me on!"

There was a sudden blow to his back between the wing bones, and Ross felt the oxygen knocked out of his lungs. His bag flew out of his arms and sailed across the floor, making a smooth landing in the corner of the subway just as the doors were three seconds from closing. (It was just a tad ironic, he couldn't help but think, that his bag had more guts than he did.) Toppling to the ground at the robot's feet, Ross gasped for air, which seemed to harden before it could reach his throat, and peered up through double vision at the man hovering over him.

"Freak! Get the hell out of our way!"

The result was a stampede of citizens shoving each other out of the way and beating one another into walls for their turn to board. Ross could understand their anxiety; after all, the subway wouldn't come around again for another twelve hours, and no one wanted to be stuck in Quarter 13 all night…with nowhere to eat, shower, or sleep. One time enduring that misery was enough for Ross to learn his lesson. But still, was everyone so selfish? Did no one care when a frightened seventeen-year-old boy's sister went missing?

Ross scrambled to his feet and prepared to make a run for it, but a cold, metal hand jerked him to a halt. The grip was firm and painful, and he cried out and squirmed as the android dragged him away from the doors. Suddenly, he felt like such a moron. Instead of arguing with the robot, why hadn't he just waited until the last three seconds to make a run for it, when he could have followed the swarm without drawing any attention to himself?

Although, on a typical day, things were so much more organized…almost everyone who needed to board got the chance, and there was no need to swarm. He'd been the one to make the day not typical, with his two minute holdup.

"No one boards without a transpass," the android reinforced. Ross slumped to the floor, drenched by a wave of defeat as the doors closed and the engine began to roar. The robot left him there, slumped in that position on the hard, concrete floor, and marched up the stairs and into the light.

After the android had disappeared, Ross staggered to his feet, once again, as the wheels of the subway began to roll. It moved slowly at first, as if egging him on, and then, as it began to accelerate, Ross plunged through his sector of the dimly lit subway station and made the dangerous leap.


II

Catching hold of a metal rung on the back of the subway just as it took off (thank God for antigravity football practice), Ross almost exploded with a nerve-wracking scream (though nothing actually came out; instead, it was squelched in his stomach) as the rush of wind peeled the skin from his face and piled intense pressure on his lungs. His surroundings blurred, brain rattled in his skull, and palms burned and hands ached to the bones, but he managed to keep holding on.

Ross forced his dry eyes and mouth shut, and dedicated all his concentration to maintaining his grip on the crosspiece. The world swayed and spun as the subway turned, his body flapping back and forth like a flag in a violent gust, nearly smacking against the steel walls, and missing by about a foot. His head flared with pain and his eyeballs felt like they were being torn out of their sockets.

Help me. Please, stop the subway, he struggled, but the words would not form on his lips.

And even if they did, who could hear him? Who would know?

No one. No one would know of Ross Evans' presence, nor would they recognize his name or his face. Probably not even the man who'd sucker-punched him in the station.

Freak, the man had hissed at him.

In a bizarre way, maybe that's how he liked it. Maybe that's how he was most comfortable…where things made sense. Hiding in the shadows, sitting alone at the table in the lunch quarters, slipping into a crowd where no one could see him. He wouldn't deny being a freak…even he knew it…but maybe that's how he wanted it.

To be left alone.

On the other hand, that's what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. They said he was paranoid; they said he needed help, and, to an extent, maybe they were right. But he knew when something was wrong, when it didn't smell right…he had a skill for that. No, this ability was not anything weird or supernatural, he was sure (though he couldn't quite figure out what went through the head of his screwed up psychiatrist), but he had a strong sense of when a situation wasn't quite right.

And he didn't think that made him paranoid.

Tearing his eyes open, Ross could just barely make out his surroundings…and see what was coming up in the distance.

Oh, God no. You've got to be kidding me.

Tightening his grip on the rung, Ross plastered his whole body against the back of the subway, sweat prickling on his arms and eyelids, and rolling in beads from his chin to splash the rusty track. An immediate, over-powering fear was now embedded in his chest, and his head swam with terrifying pictures of his upcoming fate.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he tightened his grip and silently prayed that he would come out of the ride alive. Soon, he felt his body begin to turn with the incline, his feet dropping away from the subway to dangle in midair.

Stop climbing. Oh, please stop climbing.

Gravity tugged at Ross's feet - grabbed at his ankles and hauled him down - and sweat moistened his palms. His brand new shoes, which he had left untied in the morning's haste (they call it a "bad habit" for a reason, you know), slid from his feet and dropped away into the oblivion below.

Ross swung, the strain cutting into his muscles, and struggled to latch his bare feet onto something, anything…but, instead, he spun in the air and swung away from it in an equal and opposite reaction to another of its turns. Letting out a loud grunt that was barely audible over the vibration, he hurled his legs up toward it, and felt his pant leg catch on something sharp jutting out of the wall.

Uttering a faint gasp, he swayed the other way, hearing a loud ripping sound pierce the air…and then his legs felt strangely free. Ross reached down with a sudden, involuntary hand to retrieve his pants. The remains fell away from him, leaving him hanging with one hand and a pair of exposed legs, all complete with little boys' underwear.

Pain shot up into his shoulder, as if his arm wanted to pull out of its socket, and there was so much pressure on his upper body that he could hardly breathe. The air bearing down on him kept his other arm by his thighs so that he could not reach the rung, and Ross knew that letting go to catch his pants had been the biggest mistake he'd made so far, because already his fingers were beginning to slip.

Blisters were cropping up on his fingers, the skin had begun to tear until there were tiny dots of red on his knuckles, and sweat was building on the inner sides of his hands; but, up until this point, that had been the least of his concerns. Now, however, he could feel the rung becoming moist and slippery, and his fingers were slowly sliding away from it until he was hooked only by his fingertips.

The track started on more of an incline, and Ross broke free and fell into the darkness.

[Continued in the next post...]

RinK

III


For a moment, the world dropped out from under him, as if he would fall into the Underworld, a feeling that was surreal and dizzying. It was as if he'd been embraced by a distant freedom he never knew had existed, though that feeling had never quite registered in his mind (or at least, on the conscious level) in the time it took before he made contact.

A splash shot out as Ross smacked his belly with full force (his legs stung the most, having been bare), and then he was drenched, his hair and clothes clinging closely to his skin, flailing his arms and legs in a wild attempt to rescue himself. Something floated through the water and stuck to his face, and he felt disgusting from his head to his toes as he struggled to find the shore.

Grasping onto solid ground, Ross lugged himself out of the water and dropped, face-first, soaked and dirty, on the cold ground. As he struggled to his feet, he groped along the nearby wall, blind and frustrated in the nearly pitch darkness.

"Ohhh," he groaned, mostly just to hear his own voice, to assure himself that he was, in fact, still alive. "Ross, you're such an idiot. But you sure do have a luck streak, that's for sure, landing in a stream of water rather than cracking your head open. I'll take the former any day."

There was silence for a long moment, and then he heard a sound in the distance. It was a loud, angry snarl, but underneath was something gorgeous, pleasing to the ear. "Who's there?"

Ross stopped dead in his tracks and held completely still, in a position of near paralysis, trying to control his breathing. He hadn't known there was someone here… What if he found himself in major trouble, this time even worse troublethan what his psychiatrist had put him through?

"I asked you a question! Who's there?"

A light came on and shined in Ross's eyes, and, once his pupils had adjusted, he looked up to discover a girl about his age, with long dark hair and hazel eyes, and freckles scattered all over her pale cheeks.

"Um…m-my name's R-Ross," he stuttered, his voice still shaky from his frigid body and the terror of getting in trouble. "Who are you?"

"Love the outfit," she teased, lowering the light to the lower half of his body. "What were you doing, skinny-dipping?"

Ross's face flushed as he looked down at his legs, remembering that he was almost naked. He moved his hands toward his underpants and attempted to cover himself up, though it didn't work very well.

Great choice…not wearing your boxers today, genius.

"Uh…no, my pants tore on the back of the subway."

The girl cocked her head at him and raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "On the…what? The subway!? You were riding on the back of the subway!?" She stared at him as though he were some kind of psychopath (there it was again, that attitude toward him), and then shifted the flashlight up toward the track, as if trying to figure out why anyone would do such a thing.

"It was my sister," he tried to explain. "I needed to…"

"So let me get this straight. First, you ride on the back of a subway, then you jump from the back of the subway, and now you're streaking in the sewer." She shook her head. "Wow, some people just can't get enough thrills."

"Like I said, I had a good reason to. My…" Ross hesitated a second, and then an expression of pure disgust crossed his lips. "Did you just say sewer?"

"Uh, yeah. What did you think it was, a swimming pool?"

Peeling off the thing that had stuck to his face, in the light, he discovered that it was a piece of toilet paper, smeared with someone else's…well… Ross gagged and flicked it away from his hand, throwing up a little in his mouth. "Oh my God. No way."

The girl brought a hand to her mouth to stifle her giggles. "Sorry, it's none of my business what you like to do for your weekend fun. Anyway, my name's Kristen, but my friends call me Kristy…well, the friends that I have left, anyway." Sadness crept into her deep brown eyes, but she immediately shook it away. "This is my hiding place…where I go to be alone."

He smiled, because he understood how that felt…yearning for some time to just be himself, when the rest of the world didn't interfere. If he'd ever found such a hideout as this - dark, cold, and eerie, though it was - he knew it's where he would have spent all his days and nights.

"What is it?" Ross asked quietly, stroking the walls where he could feel letters embossed. "Where are we?"

"In the tunnels beneath the quarters," Kristy whispered, her eyes flashing in the dim glow of the light. "Where the sewer runs, and the subway transports citizens from one building to the next…and where…" She paused for a moment, as if not sure whether or how she would say the next thing. "…And where rebels come to truly express themselves."

Blinking, Ross gazed at her with curiosity and surprise. "Rebels? What rebels? We don't have any…well, we have, but all of them have already…"

Ross didn't finish his sentence.

Kristy tossed him the flashlight, encouraging him to take a look, and he caught it in his filthy hand and shined it around the tunnels. Everywhere he looked, angry words and illustrations were carved deep into the walls, phrases he'd never heard before, and couldn't understand what they meant.

Live free or die...
Give me liberty or give me DEATH...
DESTROY THE ESTABLISHMENT
We will no longer be silenced...

"What is it all supposed to mean?"

Kristy shrugged. "Never really figured it out. I mean, it's like we've been caged or something.
But it sounds like rebels, doesn't it?"

He nodded, though he really had no idea. Still, he could remember learning about such things in his classes, and how it had made him feel so…so gothic, so dirty. Had he just stumbled upon the most dangerous demonstration in history?

"It sounds exactly like rebels." Shivers shot down his spine, and he suddenly felt as though he were in the presence of the ghosts of past evils. "Maybe we should get out of here…"

"Oh, come on!" Kristy insisted, and her eyes were still alit. "You rode on the back of a subway, stood in your underpants in front of a girl, and jumped in a sewer, all in one night. Touch it."

"What?"

"Touch it," she buzzed, her breathing quick and harsh. "Touch the carvings and tell me how it makes you feel."

Hesitating, Ross glanced at the walls again, the rebellious carvings, and quivered a little. "I…"

"Ross! Touch the wall!"

Giving in to the pressure, he stroked one dirty, shaky finger along the letters, "F-R-E-E." A thrilling sensation danced through his entire body, as if he, too, could taste freedom's magic…as if the power of the message was drowning him in his own excitement.

He mouthed the words on his lips, the light now playing in his own eyes, and, for the first time, Ross was truly jolted to life.

"Live free or die…"

winkash

Hi, Rink!
When I first started reading, I wasn't really enthusiastic because of the young adult thing, you know. However a few lines ahead, I realised that I was still reading and more interested in what was going on. Almost finishing, I hated the android, worried about the girl, pitied Ross and wanted to beg the writer to not make him suffer. I love this in-crescendo thrill and involvement.
I know he is not going to die, otherwise your novel... well, wait, now that I think about it, it is quite unpredictable. You left the door open to inimaginable events.
Don't ask me about grammar, I am one of the black sheep here.

Oh, I see that you've just posted III! (Haven't read it yet).
What are packrats? I guess you refer to an anxious and dull crowd.

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"All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost - the most legitimate - passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one."
Marquis de Sade

chimchimski

Okay...on first read through...I am enjoying it !!! Now give me a chance reread it through and I'll give you a more detailed critique!! Nice Work!!

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~Robin~


~Chimmy Has A Brand New Bag~

RinK

Thank you both so much for the kind words! I really appreciate the encouragement. And, winkash, I'm glad you noticed the in-crescendo style - that's kind of what I was going for, a build up of action and suspense.

RinK

RinK

Sorry to bump this, but I was wondering if anyone else wanted to give some feedback...? If this thread went unnoticed, then I'd like to bring it back up again. If hardly anyone has responded for a reason, then I'd like to know what turned readers off. Thanks.

Raging_Hopeful

Hey Rink!

This is an excellent beginning to a YA novel. I read it through in one go and thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the android bit. My suggestion though would be to back off on the italics a bit. Yes they are effective in emphasizing particular passages, but when there are too many, its just distracting. Otherwise, I'm really enjoying the characters you've created here!

Keep writing!!

Cheers,
Linz

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