In Dissident, we are introduced to a new POV (point-of-view) character: Connor Sinclair.
Connor is typical in many ways: a history major in his first-year of university, just shy of his eighteenth birthday, with a tight-knit circle of friends and a favorite café hangout.
He’s also a Hoarder (one of the bad guys).
“Dystopian … Ah yes, the dark side of science fiction.” (anonymous comment)
I like writing dystopian stories. As they say, “a candle shines brightest in the darkness.” In a dark, daunting, and dystopian setting, the actions of the few who refuse to be cowed into submission become truly heroic.
For example, there’s no super-powers involved. No special abilities. In a dystopian world, heroes are ordinary people, called upon to accomplish extraordinary things.
…
Aubrey reels from the news. Her heart pounds and dizziness threatens to overwhelm her. This can’t be happening. Why me?
It’s easy to feel resentful.
She’s doing the best she can, carving out a life for herself after the Hoarders completed construction on their walled Enclave.
Two years after what should’ve been her high school graduation — an event she’d only heard stories of — she moved north to a small village in search of work.
She doesn’t mind her job at the ramshackle café. Her boss is gruff but fair, and Aubrey managed to rent a tiny, but affordable, house in town. And when Thomas and Sarah moved in next door, Aubrey knew they’d become good friends. Things were looking up.
Her sense of well-being is short-lived.
Tonight, Aubrey sits in Thomas and Sarah’s kitchen, listening with stunned horror as they explain what a Tracker is, what it’s capable of, and the sinister meaning of “Harvest.” Their description of the soul-less creature is daunting enough, but Aubrey can’t fathom why it should matter to her, living so far from the Enclave.
Until a somber-faced Thomas pulls out a scanner, and Sarah gently turns the conversation to Implants.
All links via Books2Read
The “Death in the Alley” scene represents a turning point (neither the first nor the last) in the fast-paced story of Tracker.
The first meeting of the two main POV characters, Amos Morgan and Aubrey Carter, isn’t your typical “Good afternoon, charmed to make your acquaintance introduction.”
Amos arms himself with a combat hunting knife, wishing for something deadlier. Aubrey’s life flashes before her eyes, and she almost forgets to breathe.
Everyone’s nerves are on edge, to say the least. Amos and Aubrey’s companions—Don, Sheila, Stephen, and the acerbic Jane “Snake Lady” Avery—share the same jittery trepidation. Narrowly averting disaster, the new acquaintances dare to relax, breathing a collective sigh of relief.
Then a third POV character—a Tracker—shows up.
And the body count starts to rise.
Trackers may be considered “soul-less,” but they are grimly efficient in their obsession with the “Harvest.” That Runners must die in order for the Trackers to collect their Implants is of no concern.
Amos is right—a combat knife is a mediocre defense against the brutality of an enhanced killing machine. But it’s all he has . . .
Amos was running long before he knew he was a Runner. The trauma from his twelfth year drove him, stalking his dreams, corroding his waking hours.
He did his best to control it, to put a clamp on the accusing inner voice, to block out the recurring nightmares.
Over time, he’d learned how to cope, to carve out a semblance of normalcy in the chaotic world they’d inherited after the Hoarders abandoned them.
Until the day it was confirmed by Doc Simon: the hated Hoarders had buried an Implant in his body — somewhere. And now he was fully a Runner, a human time bomb, and a threat to anyone close to him if his Implant activated.
And he was also a target for the subhuman Trackers. The blood-thirsty creatures would stop at nothing until they’d gutted him for the microtechnology hidden in his body.
So Amos did what any Runner would do.
He ran …
All links via Books2Read
The Enclave’s walls are impenetrable, insulating society’s richest — the Hoarders — inside their protective barriers. Outside, the majority of humanity is left to survive as best they can.
Two generations later, the Hoarders began kidnapping and experimenting on those outside their walls. The Implants — micro-technology surgically forced on their unwitting victims — convert ordinary people into lethal time bombs waiting to activate.
Thomas and Sarah are on the run, narrowly eluding the Trackers, the sub-human killing machines programmed and deployed by the Hoarders to exterminate anyone with an Implant.
The young couple’s instinct for survival is second only to their determination to save their friends, victims of the Implants, from certain annihilation.
This isn’t what their first year of marriage was supposed to look like.
And the Trackers are closing in.
