The Storyshop of [Mister Saint]'s Sashenka, which I won't paste here because I'm not sure he would want me to. This was done for Storyshop.

[Annie]

General Feelings

I would say this is a very interesting story. I was unhappy at the end that I didn't get to find out who the girl was. :P Beckett seems nice and a little crazy. ;) In general it seems like you've got something here. I also like the title. I have no idea what it is yet, but it's just one of those titles where you know it has something to do with the story and it's something cool. You can't help but guess what it is...the name of the girl, the name of some top secret ingenious plan by the doctor...
Also, I don't know if you meant it to be this way, but Beckett doesn't seem much like a doctor. He seems more like a mad scientist.

Nitty Gritty Stuff

I'm just going to make a blanket statement here - you could afford to be a lot less wordy in some areas.
Examples:

1) "Under the harsh glow of three fluorescent panels a folder of case files lay haphazardly flung upon the bunk of Marcus Beckett."
For a first sentence, this is a LOT to swallow.

2) "With half an English muffin still in hand, freshly aroused from his only restful sleep in days, he no more looked the part of a brilliant physician than a ballerina."
I love the ideas here, but give them to the reader smaller pieces. There's the muffin, which is an English muffin, and it's only half of a muffin. Then we switch to thinking about Beckett, who is freshly aroused from sleep, which is the only restful sleep he's had in days. Then we switch to his looks, which are ridiculous. You use a simile here and it's great, but it would be even better on its own I think. Instead of shoving it into the end of the sentence where we're already struggling to keep up, just give it it's own spot.

Also, here's some things that I just thought along the way that aren't continuous things.

1) The sentence "Take that which is not ours, and make it so." is really great. I think it's bold and lays a great foundation for the story. I also think you could make it a little better. Does "make it so" mean make it into reality or make it ours?

2) Where you're talking about his pillow, it says "a plain foam pad encased in sterile white, lay partially" etc. I think you should put in "sterile white CLOTH" or something because it jumps too quickly from sterile white to lay partially. I know there's a comma and the sentence structure is correct and all, but it's just too quick. I kept thinking "What is white lay?" :P

3) What does "unsung" mean?

4) In the part of this sentence: ";those who had not been literally dragged from Sunday Mass had even neglected to put away their playing cards, chess boards, novels, and magazines in their collective rush." you use the word "even." This makes me expect something outrageous. Then all it is is them forgetting to put away their trinkets. Who ever puts away their magazines or novels? If you're in the middle of a chess game you don't put that away either. All the things you say that these people didn't put away don't seem like things anybody would put away, so when you say "even," I'm thinking "Wow...that was uneventful." I feel jipped. I'm expecting like "They even forgot to flush the toilets" or whatever. :P

5) You use haphazard twice pretty close together. First in the beginning, then when describing Beckett's hair.

6) "five o' clock shadow" is a bit cliche.

7) Okay, this is just my personal craziness, but everytime you say "bird," referring to the chopper, I think you mean a "bird" as in a pretty woman or something. :P

Strengths

You're grammar is simply astounding (aha, I am British today). The story is pretty grasping. I would keep reading it if I didn't know you I think. If I had just found it on a bookshelf somewhere, that is. You have fun ideas and similes.

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[Eleanor]

General comments

I think you definitely have something here in terms of a plot. We are drawn in by your description of your characters, by the immediacy of the situation, and the mystery surrounding the whole proceedings. 

Brutal comments

In the italicized introduction, there are certain phrases which bother me, even after several readings: “from the movement of life, there originates death”. What do you mean by “movement”? How does death “originate”? When you say that mankind has power over death, you have repeated yourself: to cause it is to bring it to bear, to stymie it is to hold it at bay. I know that you are not satisfied with just saying two of those things, so maybe you can think of some other way in which mankind has power over death. In the second last sentence, the period after principle makes the next sentence a non-sentence grammatically. It would be more correct to change the period to a comma and include the next part as a subordinate clause.

I would add a comma after “fluorescent panels” in the first paragraph, just to separate them from the folder of case files. The pillow is a confusing object. It is a foam pad encased in white. White what? It lies partially exposed from its pillowcase. Is it a white pillowcase that it’s encased in? Is it something else? This just kind of stopped me and interrupted the flow of my reading, every time.

“Cool, crisp weather dominated that particular morning” -- just get rid of the “on”, you don’t need it. You have used the word “subdivision” to describe where the Institute is tucked into the Carpathian Mountains. I have never heard mountains referred to as “subdivided”.  It doesn’t ring true with me. I guess it depends on what you are trying to describe here. Because it is sheltered from the weather, it might be a crevice, or a nook, or an overhang -- but not a subdivision. Also, the Institute is not a person, it does not “feel” the weather. I personally would have written “experienced” instead of “felt”. That might not have been right either. You say that the inhabitants of the Institution “buzzed”. Bees buzz, even conversation buzzes. People do not buzz. Sorry.

A little farther on, Beckett is yelling at Jens, his “compatriot”. This word would be fine if we knew what nationality they both were, but we don’t. You haven’t revealed that yet. So, perhaps you could change compatriot to “fellow Icelander“ or whatever it is in this case.

While holding his half of an English muffin, Beckett is freshly roused, not “aroused”. That is something else (nudge nudge wink wink). Your description of him is very cool, he really does have a mad scientist air about him. However, the scent of his bedding’s detergent clinging to him like creepers is weird. I would get rid of the word detergent altogether, and just have the lavender scent of his bedding; after all, we don’t know if it’s detergent or fabric softener or if the maid sprays it with a lavender mist when she makes the beds. Really. Also, scent doesn’t cling to you like creepers, unless it’s tendrils of scent. See the difference?

“Beckett waged a losing battle against his half-rational sense of dread.” Is his sense half-rational, or is it only partially irrational? Half-rational is like a hiccough. It interrupts the flow of the reading. 

“His plan of action stood ready...” The word “stood” seems to indicate that the plan might fall over. Maybe just “was” would work. “...and yet, somehow, he wished that the chopper could hang in the boiling sky and whirl forever.” This is a beautiful phrase. Only one change I would recommend, and that is change “could” to “would”. He wishes it would whirl forever: a nice interrupted alliteration there.

Later on, you’re describing the chopper’s descent to the helipad. You say that the darkly dressed landing crews (that should be “crew” since it already denotes a plural) were guiding the pilot. Then you start the next sentence with “it”. To what are you referring: the pilot? the chopper? Please be more specific.

Then towards the end a gust of wind catches Beckett’s attention, carrying an evocative odor for him. I would switch the position of the word “bitter” in the sentence so it goes thusly: “A gust of wind caught his attention, carrying the scent of ashes from the facility’s incinerator. The bitter odor reminded him pointedly of the results of failure.”

Your writing is good, grammatically unproblematic, but sometimes your metaphors and similes don’t seem to be in sync with what you are actually describing. This story seems like a fast-paced adventure, in the style of Robert Ludlum. If this is the case, you want it to be a page turner, not the kind of thing where people linger over turns of expression and poetic descriptions. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices. However, if you can make it descriptive without slowing down the pace of the action and keep the reading smooth, it is very good.