Qk Round 2: Tag, You're Dead VS Amnesiac

Entry Nickname: Tag, You’re Dead
Title: Tag, You're Dead
Word count: 80K
Genre: YA Thriller

Query:

In present-day Chicago, six teenagers play Tag, but with a twist: if you get Tagged, you get Dead.

The three "Its" have their reasons for buying a place in the Game: Brandy, the surgically-enhanced debutante, is dying to destroy a naturally beautiful girl; Robin, the so-so basketball player, desires his target's position on the school team; and Charles, the brainiac, craves a battle against an intellectual equal.

Laura, William, and Amanda, three hand-picked innocents forced to play as “Runners,” want only one thing…to survive.

From the moment the Runners “Go,” we follow their separate paths as the Game rockets them through the city, from the El to Michigan Avenue to the Lincoln Park Zoo. They must plan circuitous routes, for if they head directly to their Home Bases, they’ll run straight into their opponents’ murderous arms. Since the Runners’ coordinates are transmitted to the Its every half hour from smart watches locked onto their wrists, there is no time to rest, and barely a moment to register the threats made against their loved ones should the Runners refuse to participate.

With only so many places to hide, even in one of the nation’s largest cities, the Runners must use their unique skills – Laura’s charismatic personality, William’s brute strength, Amanda’s computer hacking – to outsmart their Its. The Game will not end until someone is Tagged, so the Runners must choose how to play: will they accept death, murder their Its, or create a third option that could end the game before anyone dies?

Six players began the Game. How many will live to see it end?

First 250:

“I can’t choose,” Brandy Inkrott said. “I want to kill them all.”

“Tag,” her mother said. “You want to Tag them all.”

“No. I don’t.”

“Either way,” her father said, “I’m afraid you have to pick one.”

Brandy studied the images of the teenage girls on the screen. Brunettes. Blondes. Asians. Hispanics. Light-skinned. Dark-skinned. Every one of them gorgeous. Every one of them middle-class. No-names. None of them like her. “They’re all so perfect. Can I pick more than one?”

A woman’s voice pierced the air, emanating from the Surround Sound speakers. “The price for two would be extravagant, Ms. Inkrott.”

“But I want—"

“Tagging more than one Runner would also be difficult. Almost impossible.”

“I don’t care. I can do it.”

Her father shrugged. “If that’s what you want.”

“I suggest this,” the woman said. “Play this time with one Runner. If you are successful, you may play again, and go after two.”

“I’m smart,” Brandy said. “I could do it the first time.”

“I know it’s tempting when you see all those beautiful faces, but you’d be setting yourself up for disappointment.”

“What do you know? You’re probably some fat old lady in a trailer park somewhere. I could Tag you."

Silence sizzled over the speakers.

“I’m sorry, Madame Referee,” Brandy’s father said. “She didn’t mean it.”

“Did so,” Brandy said.

“Bran, honey, please.”

The girls’ faces on the television disappeared, replaced by only one, which took up the entire surface of the eighty-inch screen.

VERSUS
  
Entry Nickname: Amnesiac
Title: MINDSWEPT
Word Count: 72,000
Genre: YA thriller with sci-fi elements

Query:

Something went seriously wrong with seventeen-year-old Nessa's memory removal procedure. Ever since that trip to the neuroscience lab, she's been having awful, itchy compulsions to steal everything in sight. And she's pretty sure she hallucinated a creepy old woman wearing a bunny mask in her bedroom.

When Nessa's parents haul her back to the lab to figure out what went wrong, an assistant named Amir pulls her aside and tells her he accidentally implanted another client's memory in her brain. That client just turned up dead. Amir says the freaked-out lab director is planning to scrape Nessa's brain clean to hide their mistake, and she needs to get away. Now.

Nessa's ready to punch Amir in the face, but his story explains her crazy behavior. And running away with him sounds a lot better than risking becoming a vegetable, so she does. Using hypnosis, Nessa and Amir try to dig out the secret memory so they can expose the lab. But the details are buried deep, and every time Nessa gets close, pieces of the memory she thought she had erased -- screeching tires and a boy's head smashing her windshield -- start coming back. She can't face it.

But she needs to face it, because that old lady in Nessa's bedroom wasn't a hallucination. She knows exactly what's in Nessa's brain and she's willing to kill again to get it.

First 250:

I climb into the driver's seat and tug off the wig that's been torturing my scalp for the last three hours. If hair could breathe, mine would be gasping in relief right now.

"Better put these on, Nessa." My cousin Beth picks up my jeans from her seat.

She has a point: I probably shouldn't be driving Grammy’s car wearing a corset and thigh-high stockings. I pull the banana out of the front of my spangly black underwear and throw it in Beth's lap. With a horrified squeak, she tosses it onto the floor.

"What time is it?" I say.

"Almost three," she says. "I don't know what the law is in Florida, but you're probably not supposed to be driving this late. Should we call a cab?"

My knees thump the steering wheel as I kick my heels off and squirm into the jeans. "We're incognito in this old lady car. It'll be fine."

With a nervous sigh, Beth hands me my t-shirt. She played it safe dressing up as Janet for the Rocky Horror Picture Show tonight, in a plain white dress and cardigan. She didn't even need to hide her outfit when we left the house. I, however, required a full costume change in the movie theater parking lot before we went in. And for a few precious hours, I wasn't Nessa Shea, boring Junior class treasurer and crew team captain. I was Dr. Frank N Furter, the deranged cross-dressing alien and red-lipstick aficionado from Transsexual, Transylvania.