Sneak Peek at The Untold Stories!

The plan was to post the entire first chapter from Grant's short story in The Untold Stories, unfortunately, that plan has changed.... only because I feel like crap and don't have it in me to finish editing it right now.

So here's some of the first chapter:

Chapter One

I glanced up at the monitors, trying to make sense of the information that sat before me. “How is that even possible?” I mumbled, reaching for the tablet that sat on my chair.

“That can’t be right.” I tapped on the icon on the lower right hand side of the screen and zoomed in on the Program’s readings. She wasn’t supposed to react to the images.

She shouldn’t have reacted to the images.

But somehow, she had managed to do just that.

A loud bang sounded from the hallway outside of the room shortly before Charles McVeigh came barging in. I could see the frustration on his face, the irritation in his eyes, as he attempted to keep his anger in check. “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said. “Thompson, I thought I’d made myself clear. You were not to draw Emile out. You were simply to implant these images within her programming.”

I forced myself to focus, knowing that if I allowed myself to lose control, he’d begin to question me, and that was the one thing I needed to avoid. At all costs.

I turned my attention back to the monitors, trying to retrace every step.

I knew that I’d done everything right.

I had performed this procedure numerous time.

It had been implanted in my memory.

And yet, even though I’d done everything correctly, something had still caused things go to go awry.

McVeigh hovered over the Program, his eyes looking for something abnormal, something that would explain her readings, but I knew he’d find nothing. I’d done the exact same thing myself.

As he moved in beside me, I pressed my tablet to my side, making sure to remind myself to remain calm. There were some secrets meant to remain hidden, I’d told myself.

I was one of them.

He glanced back over his shoulder, his eyes locking onto mine with burning questions – ones that I held no answers to. “Sir, I assure you that the system was functioning properly. I’m not sure what happened.”

I knew the moment that the words left my mouth that they wouldn’t change his way of thinking. Charles McVeigh had made up his mind the second he’d entered the room.

“Functioning properly?” McVeigh scoffed. “If that were so, Thompson, that Program would have had the proper files installed onto her hard drive.”

I dropped my gaze to the tablet within my grasp. Tell me about it, I thought to myself.

Something was different about this Program. I’d had an idea of what it could be, but I refused to accept it as truth. Surely that wouldn’t be the case. Would it? I asked myself.

A snapping sound came from inside of the Pod as the Program’s hard drive clicked out of place. McVeigh moved in closer, hovering above the Program, meeting her stare as she opened her eyes. He pressed his finger to his bottom lip before speaking, “You need to fix this, or else she won’t be the only thing facing deactivation.”

On the health side of things:

I've been a bit better. I've mainly been focusing on work and blogging over here. (If you're a Marvel fan, follow us! We're a pretty great group.) I'm still having terrible headaches, and I'm still having dizzy spells and a general lack of energy. But my throat isn't closing - that's probably because I've started cutting dairy out of my diet - so that's still a plus.

I will start focusing more on writing starting this next week, which means you'll finally get some DEFINITE release dates from me soon!

<3 Nicole