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And with that, Chapter One wraps to a close. Now begins Chapter Two.

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Chapter Two

James R. Foster steepled his fingers against his lips while he was debriefed. Molten anger churned in his blood but his grey eyes remained calm and attentive. He could feel years of research, bridge-building, and breakthroughs sliding out from beneath his feet. Carefully laid plans were beginning to burn at the corners.

“Several of the hiding places we found in the subject’s sleeping quarters contained copies of documents requiring upper-level clearance,” an advisor said. He was a thin man, slightly too pale to be considered healthy. He wore a plain suit and tie and held an opened manila envelope in the crook of his arm. As he spoke, he produced a thin stack of photocopied documents from the envelope and passed them across the rosewood desk.

Foster took the papers and browsed through them as the advisor continued. Several of the pages contained private orders to the senior staff of his facilities. Two others showed simplified drawings of the facility, including restricted areas. Many of those areas, Foster noted, had been circled. All were later crossed out except for one.

“From our initial estimates, the subject had been… disillusioned, for several weeks prior to his escape,” the man said.

“Where did he get these?” Foster said.

“We’re still trying to find that out, sir.”

Foster dropped the papers on the desk, staring at the dark grain of the wood. He hadn’t considered the possibility of a subject going rogue, and he felt like a fool.

“Do you know where he went?” Foster said.

“Southeast,” the man said, “There was a break-in at a pharmacy in Trinidad, about thirty miles from the facility. Our team found the owner at the premises when they arrived, but the subject wasn’t present. The owner thinks it was a burglary.”

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Heh... I ended it awkwardly. I'll see about amending that tomorrow.

The raep scene was a lie! I have been deceived. :(

It's good. I went back and read the entire story from the beginning. You asked about believability, so my only critique is that, upon finding out a security system has been alerted, Sebastian should show some tension or "hurriedness" for a lack of a better word. Knowing that the break-in was reported, he'll surely figure his captors won't be far behind, but he seems a little too calm and taking-his-time as he gets dressed.

Other than that, 'tis good. Write moar! :)

^^ I'm glad you saw him as too calm for what was going on. I was hoping to get that across as a way to hint at the readers that he isn't just fleeing, he's thinking as well. Though I should make it clearer that his pursuers had lost track of him on his way to Trinidad. I can see where that gave a false impression that they were just down the street.

This is a story I'm definitely going to be jumping back-and-forth on with editing. I'm not sure if you guys are keen on keeping track on all the edits I make, but I'll probably at some point re-post the entire first chapter after its first revision on the front page so it's there as a complete entity. No post-scrounging for you guys after that, ^^

Thanks, I went back and fixed the goof. Should be highlighted. ^^ Glad to be getting some help with critiques even when I'm not updating huge walls of text.

Kinuki had a good idea, to highlight my edits so people would know a change occurred. That, and I get to see how much actual text gets changed after its first draft. Neat process, I think. ^^

Not catching a lot of grammatical mistakes, and caught a similar word awkwardness in the secong posting, or did you mean for it to be discordant?


'The darkness of sleep quickly resolved into the redblack of his own shut eyelids'...or something similar?

Yeah, and I fully expect similar reciprocation on my own story, bucko. 'Cause I'm prone to these as well.

Oh, that line was actually intended to read that way. Supposed to outline unconsciousness to consciousness. I could probably play around with the word "darkness," seeing as it's not a really powerful word. But in general, I was trying to be artsy-fartsy, ^^

Aw crap... I havta study for two days and already I have missed a couple pages of this!

Gotta catch up with the story tomorrow. I assume you've made it very much worth it? :P

^^ You guys are too much.

I'll see about combining everything thus far (Chapter One) in my first post so it's a bit easier for you guys to read. Nothing very fun about searching for updates in multiple pages of thread.

Finally, I found a spare moment to flesh out the first complete scene of Chapter Two. This is your introduction to the man behind the curtain, the guy pulling the strings of the facility Sebastian escaped from.

I'm not too worried about grammar right now, so if you want to focus your critiques on what worked/didn't work for you that'd be fantastic. Seriously, you guys are the audience. I would really like to hear from you all what you didn't like, along with what you did. ^^

EDIT: This is the revised version of Chapter Two, Scene One!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Fancy Border~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Chapter Two

James R. Foster steepled his fingers against thin lips while he was debriefed. Molten anger churned in his blood but his grey eyes remained calm and attentive. He had to be. Yet, he could feel the years of research, bridge-building, and breakthroughs of his company sliding out from beneath his feet. Carefully laid plans were beginning to burn at the corners.

“Several of the hiding places found in the Sebastian’s sleeping quarters contained confidential documents requiring administrative clearance,” Foster’s advisor said. He was a thin man, too pale to look healthy but his suit and tie spoke of a large salary. A manila envelope dangled between his fingers. As he spoke, he produced a thin stack of photocopied documents and slid them past a silver-framed photo on the edge of Foster’s desk.

Foster paged through them, keeping his breathing deliberately slow as he read. Several of the documents were addressed to his company’s senior staff, some of whom were dead and buried according to public record. The last two sheets were black-and-white blueprints for two halves of a massive facility. He immediately recognized them to be the Spanish Peaks complex.

The drawings had been scaled down to display a gridwork of fine lines representing the miles of corridors that wove around countless labs, each the size of a postage stamp. Several restricted zones along the outer perimeter of the facility had been labeled with dashed lines, with a handful circled in black ink. Foster noted each circlehad been systematically crossed out, save for one.

“One of our liaison officers assigned to his block told us today he had noticed Sebastian had stopped talking to human personnel as well as Hybrid residents. From what we can gather, he had been… disillusioned for at least three weeks prior to his escape.” The advisor leaned forward, tapping at a cluster of points on the map with a ballpoint pen, “This morning, he used two sticks of directional explosives to shear open this bulkhead and the reinforced concrete we covered it with on the opposite side. The area he escaped into, here, used to be part of the storage bunker the facility expanded out from at the beginning of construction. The bulk of it is empty space until you arrive, here, at the outer blast door.

“This control booth is made up of concrete and bulletproof glass. He must have found a way to get power flowing into the bunker before the escape, because everything inside that booth was functioning when he got to it.”

The thin man paused for a moment, and then decided he had said all that was worth explaining. He set the pen on Foster’s desk and straightened. Foster glanced at him before drawing his hand over his mouth, scratching at the light shadow of stubble. He held up the documents and stared at his advisor, “Do we know how he acquired these?”

“Not yet, sir.”

Foster slapped the papers onto the rosewood desk. The advisor didn’t flinch. Both watched the sheets spread, settling into a disjointed collage. A failure like this shouldn’t have been possible. The resources he had spent, the time and effort, and his History should have been all that was needed to keep them docile, under control.

And yet, this, Foster thought, and took a steadying breath, “Do we know where he went?”

“Southeast,” the advisor said promptly, “He was shot at least one time while in the restricted zone, though we’re unsure of the severity of his injuries. Even so, there was a break-in reported at a pharmacy in Trinidad, about thirty miles from Spanish Peaks. The results of his Fitness and Stamina Test a month ago suggest he could have run there in the time between the incidents here and at Trinidad, assuming he knew where he was headed.”

“Could he have gone someplace else?”

“We have retrieval teams exploring other potential routes he could have taken, sir,” the advisor said, “And we’re monitoring police frequencies for sightings. We’ll find him.”

Light glinted off of the silver picture frame, catching Foster’s eye. He grimaced, “Don’t be so certain.”

The advisor hesitated.

“Nevermind,” Foster said, “Is there anything else to report?”

“This is all we have at the moment, sir,” the man said.

“Keep me informed if anything changes,” Foster said, and gestured toward the door.

The advisor turned and left, swinging an oak door shut behind him. Foster stared at the mess of documents strewn across his desk. The blueprints lay at the top of the pile. He focused on the heavy black circle that hadn’t been crossed out. The one that shouldn’t have been drawn in the first place. The one that threatened exposure.

Two decades of preparation on the edge of destruction, all because of two inches of ink.

Foster’s face twisted, his hands crumpling into fists as they rose up and crashed onto his desk. Slicing pain erupted from his right hand where it had sheared the metal pocket clip off his advisor’s pen.

He forced himself into calmness as he produced a handkerchief from his breast pocket, wrapping it around the shallow gash in the side of his palm. The white cloth bloomed crimson.

Foster looked up at his desk and saw that the silver-framed photo had fallen backwards on its stand. He stood it back up with his bleeding hand, and paused to look at it a moment longer. A slender sable-haired woman wearing a curving wedding gown held a bouquet of roses in the crook of one arm. She stood next to a young man not yet in his thirties. Foster could still remember the wedding, and the vows he had scribbled together the night before the rehearsal. He was thinner back then, and his brown hair had yet to turn that handsome grey at the temples his wife would never get to see. The two grinned at the camera, the hazy outline of the Spanish Peaks spread out over the plains behind them.

He smiled for a moment, and then it was gone. He picked up his phone’s receiver and dialed. The other line picked up on the first ring.

“Fawkes,” a heavy voice answered.

Foster leaned forward, his eyes fixed on the black circle. “Andrei. The schedule’s changing.”

Well, first, the guy's a masochist isn't he. Second, aren't supposed to want to escape, huh? Is this volunteer work they've got going on or are they doping them? Third,

There's just something about these situations that seem either completely insane or incredibly genius. Makes you wonder "what if there had been another similar break-in 30 miles in another direction?"
Forth,

...Why? I guess that's more two points but 1)I'm not touching this one because it feels too much like a plot point. and 2) Why would you not have your soldiers at least be aware of the secret area? I consider that poor preparations. and 3) Twenty-four people? Well, shouldn't be too hard to find the mole.

I think that's it for now. Sometimes I feel like a dick when I write like this. Was I too much of a dick here? Do I even have the right word? Well, good stuff, keep it coming and whatnot.

Not quite sure what you're trying to say in your first few lines. Foster's obviously the story's antagonist, though I'm hesitant to say he's a masochist. As to why they aren't supposed to want to escape, it ties into the line that you quoted referring to Sebastian becoming "disillusioned." I don't want to spoil anything, but no, nobody is being drugged and it isn't volunteer work. I guess I don't quite understand what tripped you up here.

At your second point, referring to the discussion of Sebastian's whereabouts, that's tricky. Plain and simple reason as to why he went in an easterly direction? Because the blast door he escaped from was on the east side of the Spanish Peaks, as mentioned in the first chapter. Path of least resistance. Any other direction would have taken him up or around a mountain, and that's a waste of time and energy when you're bleeding from two gunshot wounds. I'll explain the "whys" a little later on. This isn't a short story, so I've got a lot of room to spread out information. When this is finished, I plan on it being novella-length. (Also, Trinidad is the closest community east of the Spanish Peaks)

On your third point, yes, it is a plot point. So I can't really go into it in detail right now. I can say that I'll likely play around with the wording of that part. The soldiers know the original bunker that the facility was expanded out of exists, but they don't have intimate knowledge of its layout. As for any kind of "mole," I won't say if one does or doesn't exist.

Trust me, you're not being a dick this time. Critiques like these may seem unnecessarily negative when you write them, but they give me a very rare glimpse into what you were thinking as you read. This lets me know whether or not you're on track with the story, and if I've prepared you enough for the next scene. That's why I'm always saying not to waste time showing me where my grammar was amiss, and rather telling me what you didn't like. Because I know you guys aren't reading this without flinching once or twice. Tell me when you flinch, and why. Or I'll beat you.

I'm afraid I have to agree on the point of the break in. I think it would be suspicious, and worth sending people to investigate, but immediately assuming that it's Seb is foolish. They need a reason to be assuming that, or they need to not assume at all, methinks.

Also, why am I that woman's hair?
And where's my raep scene? Rawr! ∑XD≤