Would you turn the page? (REUPLOAD)
I posted this just hours ago, and yet some people let me know the writing style wasn't very pleasant—and God forbid (no sarcasm implied), too much like a certain website programmed to aid writers...
I have had a phase of being addicted to the site, so I knew the moment I opened my chats that they were right, so despite not being very confident in my style, I've decided to share a snippet of chapter one rewritten in my previous fashion and ask:
would you keep reading?
CHAPTER 1- Our Spy
The night was calm, accompanied by a pleasant breeze.
The pair walked the main boulevard, sliding in and out of shadows and glows of the streetlights in peace, and yet a storm brews beneath.
Sheriff Adams barely had time to turn before a man came stumbling toward them, gasping for air. 'Sheriff—!'
Kenneth stepped forward and caught him by the shoulders before he could collapse. 'Hey—easy. Breathe, son. What happened?' The man tried to speak, but the words snagged in his throat, his eyes wide and unfocused; 'Our whole department—'
The sound of sirens swallowed the rest, tearing through the air from the south urgently. A second later, the smell hit: burning flesh, intense, and loud.
Kenneth froze, and his jaw tightened. He knew that smell. It never quite left his nose—how it rolled in thick and sour, clinging to the back of the throat. The young officer behind them reacted the strongest of the three and gagged, doubling over as he emptied what little was left in his stomach onto the pavement.
'Car. Now.' Kenneth demanded. No one argued.
Ngari shoved the officer toward the backseat and climbed in after him; Kenneth slid behind the wheel and floored the gas before the doors had fully shut. The city blurred past them in uneven, hazed strokes.
Up ahead, the night sky pulsed with red and orange, like the horizon itself had split open. Heat seeped through the glass, through the metal, through everything—the closer they got, the louder the sirens became, until they morphed past noise into what that made Kenneth's heart beat achingly fast.
For once, the sound of police sirens didn’t make the people in the dome feel safe; it made even the cops flinch.
Kenneth gripped the wheel tighter. He knew what he was driving toward—some part of him had already been there—and yet, it wasn’t enough to prepare him for the picture painted with the dome in mind, proud and bold:
The world had already come apart, and the building had burned from the inside out. Flames clawing through windows and the rooftop, and too many bodies laid tangled together in familiar blackened heaps. Some were still moving, some not. Screams accompanied them like a horror soundtrack.
'…shit.'
The smell dragged him elsewhere.
Heat, smoke, gunfire—all blended in a nauseating mix. A voice, sharp and formal, cut through it all: 'Soldiers. Fellow warriors. Today, we conclude the Seven-Day War.'
Kenneth's breath hitched, and with it, the present flickered, the past greedily holding his attention hostage.
Marching lines, endless; boots crunching through dirt and blood, and Kenneth had the misfortune of having heard half a million screams at once.
The memory fractured at last—heat became heat again, and fire, fire, but the smell… The smell never changed.
Kenneth blinked hard, and the world snapped back into place. He didn't give his eyes time to settle—he was already moving.
The car door slammed behind him before Ngari could react, the lock clicking down immediately after. He makes sure the car door remains jammed with the key left broken inside its latch.
Ngari lunged forward, breaking past her frozen state, and slammed her hands against the window.
'KENNETH! KENNETH, LET ME OUT! ARE YOU INSANE?!'
He turned just long enough to meet her eyes—'Don’t you dare come out,' and he was gone, running straight towards the fire.
Behind him, people shrieked, Some while running, though most didn’t move at all. Flames clung to bodies that still stumbled forward, arms reaching, voices collapsing into silent whistles, like their vocal chords were the first fatality of the fire.
Kenneth’s stomach twisted.
For a split second, he saw Ngari there—burning, reaching—He shoved the thought away and kept running. Not now…
'MOVE!' he shouted. 'GET THEM OUT! NOW!' But no one did.
An officer stepped forward, shaking. 'But sheriff—' Kenneth didn’t let him finish. He didn't decide, he just moved, grabbing a nearby bucket of water and dumping it over his head, and upon deciding he was drenched enough, he ran straight into the building.
Inside, the air hit like a wall. Smoke swallowed everything, and the ceiling groaned overhead, pieces of it already giving way, the metal warped and dripping.
Somewhere deeper inside, something hissed: gas.
This was not an accident. Kenneth pushed forward anyway.
'Anyone alive?!' he shouted, coughing. 'Sound off!'
A weak cry responded, giving him directions—a blueprint to follow—and he found them one by one.
A man, pinned under debris, a barely conscious woman just a few steps away, someone crawling to the side, their skin blistered and raw—he hauled each of them up, one at a time, and dragged and lifted and carried, anything to get them out.
In, out, and back again. It was automatic. After all, he had done this before.
By the fifth person, his arms trembled and his lungs burned. His vision was beginning to blur at the edges, but despite his urges screaming, begging him for rest, he continued.
Kenneth looked back toward the interior. There were still more, figures on the ground—some unmoving, and sme not, eyes tracking him, waiting. His throat tightened.
'Easy…' he rasped. 'I’ll be back. I swear.' and alas, he forced himself to turn away, however, on his way out, something caught his eyes: Metal, still intact.
A gas cylinder, half-hidden beneath debris, its surface warped from heat, but not yet ruptured.
Kenneth froze.
The hiss was louder now. Too loud, too close—not to him, but to the victims, the cops, and the pillars that barely held the roof together, bent under its weight.
Outside, Ngari’s voice cut through the chaos. 'Kenneth!!! Did you seriously just lock—'
'GET BACK!' he shouted, stumbling out of the doorway. 'GET AWAY FROM THE BUILDING!'
Heads turned, and yet, no one moved. They didn’t understand, they didn’t see it.
Kenneth did.
Distance or time, there was not enough of either. His pulse erupted past his ears, blood and sweat hotter than the flames.
Gunfire echoed in his mind once more—endless, rhythmic. One shot after another, one for each lost soul, each empty bunk bed back in the base, each empty chair in a family's dining room. Reload and fire, again and again, until their arms collapsed and they cried no more.
And yet, his step died halfway forward.
His own face on that pile of burning bodies, he saw it clear as day, like it had always been waiting for him—and in a sense, it had been; the moment that graduation picture for the final ranking exercise had been snapped, he gave away his rights for life with it.
Kenneth looked around, desperate. Maybe, just maybe, someone else will step forward, though he knew it was false hope. It should have made him hesitate, the thought of being another face in a photo frame catching dust by a stranger's attic.
It didn’t. He couldn’t watch it happen again.
He ran straight toward the cylinder before he could stop himself. 'KENNETH!' Ngari screamed.
He didn’t stop.
For a moment, everything went quiet—muffled, like the world had drawn in a breath, and once it was released—
Light heat, impact, and nothing more.