Dayhawk, I hope you don't mind, I stole your feedback questions. If you're reading this and have time, I would appreciate some feedback, critique, review, whatever you have to offer. The questions (copyright Dayhawk.
smile ) are for a guide.
Do the characters seem believable? As in, do they seem like real people?
Are the scene set-ups well developed or lacking?
How does the dialogue flow? Well or clumsy?
Grammar and Spelling?
Word choices? Should it be more varied or are some words not needed?
What do you feel about the story? The characters? The setting?
Do you think you can predict the outcome of this story? If so elaborate.
Lastly, are there any style tips you wish to share?Feel free to answer some of them, all of them, whatever. I would just like some response. Enjoy (I hope)!
Prologue
1.002.656 A.D.
“Vaughn’s down, sir. We got him.”
The whole room breathed, the tension in the air fading like a heartbeat. Moments ago, the suspense had been suffocating Vladimir, wrapping a noose around his throat and tauntingly tightening the knot. But he knew, even as he sighed and congratulated the other members, the damage had still been done, and innocent lives had been lost under his watch.
“Mach,” Vladimir called over the holo-screen. The soldier projected on the video feed stood at attention.
“Yes, sir?”
“Do we know the number of casualties?”
The room fell silent again, all shaking hands and rare embraces lost in the realization that at least one hundred citizens of Kosmos were dead. Possibly more.
Probably more, Vladimir thought, bracing himself for the death toll.
The G.L.O.K. agent hesitated and cleared his throat. “The number is much higher than we anticipated, sir.”
Vladimir nodded. “I expected so. Headquarters tried to find a cargo ship travelling in that area, but the flight records only showed a passenger ship going from Xiang to Ialu.”
“That was my mistake, sir. I made an error of judgment when determining the logo on the side of the ship. My deepest regards, sir,” he replied, face like steel.
“It’s not your fault, Mach. Error in judgment or not, Vaughn would have been on the same ship. What’s the count?”
Mach turned around for a moment, clearly talking to someone off of the screen. Vladimir could hear the dust settling on the table.
The man cleared his throat again, and for the first time in Vladimir’s life, he saw a twinge of remorse tug at the soldier’s lips.
“So far, sir, we’re at five-hundred.”
Vladimir hung his head and stared at the bruises beneath his chipped fingernails, listening to the Council’s mixed reactions. Valkeri prayed quietly in her native tongue, while Liuken kissed the cross hanging from his neck. He looked up to see Zhao drawing fading symbols in the air with his light stylus, making a sweeping motion with his right hand after every cipher evanesced; shepherding the dead to their resting places, according to his religion.
To Vladimir, watching the Council pray to their separate gods was like swallowing an anchor and feeling it sink to the pit of his stomach. He believed in no gods, nor a single entity. Nothing with a greater power would allow so many people to die in such a horrific manner. He did, however, believe that when a man or woman placed their faith in a figure more powerful than themselves, they would slowly morph into a pawn, making decisions by the hand of a nonexistent god. Luckily, he’d escaped that trap and had quickly discovered one thing.
Mankind didn’t still exist because of the interference or will of a deity. It existed simply because humans hadn’t lost the motivation to live, yet. Maybe someday, the breath within the lungs of humanity would lie dormant, not longing for any release. Maybe. Vladimir had a feeling that day was a very long ways away. Until then, every man, woman, and child, whether they realized it or not was a carpenter of their own physical reality, crafting their worlds based on their decisions. Vladimir was a molder, and a shape-shifter of his personal universe, and his mind created his future, piece by piece. He needed no god.
Which meant the blame for this massacre would be a solitary burden upon his shoulders.
The room had been sucked into silence, the digital clock chipping away at each eternal second.
Mach, who had been almost forgotten amidst the emotion in the cramped room, cleared his throat and spoke.
“Sir, Commander Torq has a much more accurate report on video-feed B.”
Vladimir nodded, sitting in his chair, ready to face the final estimate. “Thank you, Mach. You’ve done your job well. At ease.”
The General saluted and disappeared, leaving the holo-screen on an eerily blank projection.
“M.A.G.I.C.”
The ship’s master computer shifted out of hibernation mode, its inner mechanisms whirring to life. The voice-responsive task-manager responded.
“Yes, sir?”
“Switch our connection to video-feed B on the G.L.O.K. line, please.”
“Right away, sir.”
The screen came to life again, only this time, there was a dark-skinned man standing at the ready, waiting for his orders.
“Torq, what is the final count? I want to know the number of dead, wounded, and living,” Vladimir demanded, leaning forward in his seat, fists clenched together.
“Yes, sir,” Torq began, his deep voice like gravity, drawing the full, inevitable attention of everyone in the room. “There were two-thousand passengers aboard K.A.V.S. one-o-five. There are none wounded, and one-thousand three-hundred and thirty-four alive. The death toll is calculated at six-hundred and sixty-six, sir.”
The Council members looked around at one another, all eyes eventually falling on Vladimir, judging his reaction. He kept his face expressionless.
“You’re positive, Torq? Six-hundred and sixty-six?” he inquired, mind spinning around the number like ghosts around a medium.
“Yes, sir.”
Six-six-six. He knew it was a number referring to the dawn of the apocalypse, according to ancient Christian beliefs. Judging by the faces of the council, those who still actively followed Christianity were shaken colorless by the mere mention of it.
“What does your G.L.O.K. squad make of that, Torq? Was the number an accident, maybe?” he suggested, folding his hands together.
“No, sir. The number appears to be of importance to Vaughn.”
A few members around Vladimir tensed. “How do you figure?”
Torq hesitated, and to anyone who didn’t know the man, it would have seemed normal under the circumstances. But to the Council, he might as well have burst into tears.
“Upon examination of all of the bodies, sir, it appears Vaughn carved the number ‘666’ into the forehead of each victim with a sharp object,” he reported calmly. “We suspect he may have used an orb containing an unharnessed piece of the original Magic.”
A collective gasp circled the table.
“You’re talking about the Magic we implanted into our Geo-Ionic Computers in order to create the technology M.A.G.I.C.?” Vladimir asked in disbelief.
Torq nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Great Kosmos,” he muttered instinctively, trying to believe what his ears had clearly heard. “How the hell did get a piece of it? Was there a break-in at the Magic Stock H.Q.?”
“No, sir. You would have been the first to know had that ever occurred. He had to have gotten in by other means.”
“There should be no other means…” he mumbled, tucking the thought away for later speculation. He sighed. “Make sure everyone is safely transported to the nearest Cure Center and taken proper care of before you bombard them with the thousand questions I’m sure you have ready to fire at them…”
A rare, but brief smile crossed Torq’s lips. “You know my squad all too well, sir. We will find out how he obtained the Magic and report back to you as soon as possible.”
“Good man, Torq.”
Vladimir reached for the disconnect button on the holo-screen projector, but Torq stopped him.
“Sir, before you retire for the night, I think there’s something the Council needs to see. I’ll send it over the video feed now.”
Within seconds, a picto-gram popped onto the feed, and all eyes locked onto the photo.
On a white wall, inside what appeared to be one of the restrooms, blood smears lined every corner, there was a distant
drip, drop that echoed through the room. A moment of interference caused the screen to bounce with static, giving the words written on the wall the sound of a pulse. It read:
The future of humanity is spelled: G-E-N-O-C-I-D-E. Almost just as quickly as the picture had opened, it was gone, and Torq’s massive torso reappeared
“Sir, do you or the members of the Council believe this statement is a possible significant threat to the public of Kosmos?”
Vladimir looked around at his colleagues, keeping himself composed. All of their eyes were wide with confusion, mouths twisted into mixtures of disgust and sorrow, and none willing to input a single breath, much less an opinion.
“No, Torq. It means nothing to us, and we do not believe the public is in any form of danger as of this time.”
“Very good, sir. I will get back to you personally about the source of the Magic the second we find anything.”
Vladimir nodded. “Good. Get that mess cleaned up, and the people taken care of.”
“Yes, sir.”
Vladimir hit the disconnect button, and the screen disappeared. He stood up and briskly exited the room without a second glance back at his colleagues. He would leave them to their thoughts; they were capable of thinking without him. It was the reason they were chosen to be on the Council.
For now, though, he needed to be alone, to gather himself. The image had been disturbing, to say the least. It wasn’t the picto-gram that had caused his muscles to clench, his jaw to lock, stomach to churn, rolling over in its own acid. The blood hadn’t even bothered him—he’d had enough nosebleeds as a child to not be affected by the sight of it.
No. The sinister serpent slithering and wriggling down his spine was because of the memory the words on the wall conjured.
He’d seen them before—those exact words. His wife sliced “genocide” into her wrists when she was suffering from the late effects of the parasite Cancer. Then she’d cut the same message into one of the glass windows in their home.
Two weeks later, he found her body, head smashed in, dress caked with her insides, the number ‘666’ embedded into her forehead with a note written on a piece of paper in her blood.
The future of humanity is spelled: G-E-N-O-C-I-D-E. No matter how many times he tried, Vladimir could not make anything of the riddle, nor could he shake the image of his dead wife from his mind. She was around every corner in his quarters aboard the Kosmos Council ship, staring, watching from white, empty eyes. And she was in his bed when he laid down to sleep, the ghost of her screaming in his ear over and over.
Genocide. Genocide. Eventually the screams gave way to the Vladimir’s thumping chest, and he knew the spirit was gone.
For now, he reminded himself.
For now. 
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