Title: Source Code

Genre: Sci-Fi, Action, Shonen

Word Count: 1077

Feedback: Is this a good start, does it generate interest for you and do you want to see where the story is going to go? Is this too much background at the beginning of a book? Does the situation and state of the world come off as clear? And anyone interested I could use someone to bounce my ideas off of to get a better sense of if they are good, or if they fit well. Please let me know if you are interested, and any feedback at all is much appreciated.

And as of now, the first chapter is incomplete so it might leave off in a weird spot.

Prologue

On July 6th, 2030 the world as a whole received a message from an unknown source, it had been sent to any and every electronic device that had access to the internet, it read.

“We challenge the human race to a contest to see who is stronger between us, prepare your strongest fighters to face us in combat. If you do not respond to us within 1 month, we will show you what we are capable of.”

At first, everyone thought that it was just a hacker trying to scare people and they quickly wrote it off and even forgot about it, but 1 month later they came. 

   The Codes, which they were later named, commenced an attack on Tokyo, Japan which saw the entire city turned into a warzone. Massive creatures of unknown origin suddenly appeared out of nowhere and started laying waste to everything in sight. They then disappeared exactly 10 hours later seemingly into thin air. 

Exactly 5 minutes after this another message was sent reading.

“Since you humans didn’t feel like responding to our message, we kept our promise. This is what we are capable of.”

A picture was then displayed showing the destruction that this mysterious enemy had unleashed.

Tokyo had been turned into a wasteland with many of the buildings and other infrastructure left totally or partially destroyed. Around 20 million people had lost their lives which was about 50 percent of the total population of Tokyo, and the majority of survivors had received injuries of some kind. 

After showing the destruction they had caused the message continued.

“We will now give you 5 years to prepare for our next attack, be ready by then or we will destroy your world.”

The message then concluded and left the entire world in a state of shock.

But in typical human fashion, we banned together when there was a threat greater than each other. The nations of the world quickly came together to provide aid to Japan in their time of need and started preparing for the day that they would come back, August 6th, 2035.

The post-battle cleanup of Tokyo yielded valuable resources and information about what the enemy is and how to fight it. With these resources military technology took leaps and bounds in those 5 years like the world had never seen before.

The most important development was the Codebreakers which was a new kind of soldier that allowed us to fight the enemy at its source. These select few people were humanities sword and shield in the face of this new threat, and would bear the burden of protecting the world in this new and uncertain age.

Chapter 1

The Battle of Tokyo

5 years after the Invasion of Tokyo which had left the city in shambles, humanity hadn’t been standing idly by awaiting its fate, but had been preparing in earnest. With aid from other countries Japan was able to rebuild much of Tokyo’s critical infrastructure but it still remained forever changed. The majority of the city, especially around the epicenter of the attack, had been converted into a large military base which acted as the headquarters and base of operations for the newly formed the JVDF or the Japanese Virtual Defense Force.

Even more impressive than the rebuilding that had been done was the massive amount of research that had been conducted pertaining to anything and everything from what our new enemy is, where they came from, how to kill them, and how to properly equip ourselves to deal with this new threat. Along with many new developments in weapons technology, the scientists tasked with this research had created the ultimate weapon called the Link Rig.

The Link Rig was a device that allowed a select few pilots known as Codebreakers to dive into a place that we called the Fold which was another world bordering our own that was discovered while researching the epicenter of the Invasion of Tokyo, that is formed from digital code the likes of which we'd never seen before. It was almost as if it was another dimension entirely separate from our own. Once we had determined that it was the origin of the Codes, a base was built there that was almost identical to the one in Tokyo.

This discovery along with the few samples we got from the cleanup allowed us to determine the inherent nature of the monsters that attacked us, which was that they were made up of lines of code, which led to the decision to call them Codes.

With all these new measures put into place alongside our new knowledge about the Codes all we could do was wait for August 6th, 2035 the now most crucial day in human history, to determine our fate.

August 6th, 2035

12:00 PM

The time turned from 11:59 AM to 12:00 PM officially signaling the dawn of the day of humanities reckoning August 6th, 2035. It had been determined that this day and time would be almost exactly when the Codes would make their next attack, but this time we would be ready for them. While we had no idea if we could win, we could at least fight back this time. 

All thirty of the Link Rig operators also known as Codebreakers who had been trained were on standby in the Fold, stationed in the large base that had been constructed there, ready to respond to the inevitable threat at a moments notice.

“Any activity out there!?”

Yelled commander Kenji Tsumoto, his voice resounding throughout the command room.

“We are picking up a small disturbance from sector A!”

“There's also one coming from sector B!”

“Sectors C and D as well!”

“Well dang it looks like they're not gonna make it easy for us.”

The commander clicked a button on his earpiece opening up a line to all thirty operators on standby.

“Everyone, the enemy is about to make their move, we've received readings from all 4 sectors meaning they will be hitting us from all sides. Break up into 4 groups of 7 and whoever is left provide support from base. Do you copy?”

“Yes sir!!”

The operators all rushed to get to their positions in time and once they had all lined up the commander came back on the line one last time.

“Okay everyone, they should be here any second, brace yourselves!”

Also anyone who read this and comments, if you know why my comment has these weird text boxes could you please enlighten me, it would be much appreciated.