Sequel: XY Revolution

XY Revolution

1/1

Twelve months. Twelve months ago I’d been shoved into a steel van, driven off to the ‘United Nations,’ and then taken to the place of my captivity for the next twelve, long fucking months. I was finally getting out – to be auctioned. I was going to be sold, and married.

Sally whimpered in front of me. She was twenty-five years old, having managed to duck the auctions for nine years. She’d been with us for only a few weeks and I couldn’t help but feel a little awed over how long she’d managed to hide, in plain sight. Luckily for her, she had the body of a young teenager, easily disguised. She fled to China, the place of her birth, about a month before her sixteenth birthday and worked in the rice paddies. She was eventually discovered and shipped to the US, like myself, to be auctioned in the monthly ‘English speaking’ twenty-five and under category.

Sally was scared, and so was I but for different reasons. As the rules stated, only men twenty-five and under could participate in these auctions. Not even the men wanted creepy old guys with young women, women they could have for themselves that is. Sally was scared because she knew only men in their later twenties would go for her, and if no one wanted her, they’d allow the twenty-five to forties to bid. It was a very real possibility for her. No one wanted to go to the twenty-five to forties lot; rumours of brutality in that age group was a topic of great urgency and discussion in the underground.

They took my glasses away whenever I didn’t ‘need’ them, so I sat in the long line of girls, towards the end, only just being able to make out Sally’s features when she turned around. I looked out at the crowd. The boys in the room had flown here from all over the English speaking world. Not too many looked like Riley, thankfully. One of them caught my eye – I think – and nodded, making the more discrete hand signal of the resistance to me. He then grabbed his nose and I grinned. That was Riley alright.

Cover-up was all over my arms and my legs, hiding my bruises. Make-up was smeared on my face, not to make me ‘prettier’ like they did to some girls, but to hide the shiner and the ugly yellow bruise on my left cheekbone. I caught the guard’s eye and made a drinking motion with my hands. He nodded and chucked a soda (due to sponsorship) bottle at me. I quickly took a few swigs to make sure I looked genuine, and then started getting the little band off, that sits under the place where the lid screws off.

After torturing my fingers, I managed to get the little band off. I bent it in half, more on one side than the other, and continued weakening it. It was hard with the handcuffs, and I knew they’d have to put them behind my back just before I went up on the stage so I had to get this done as fast as possible. Not an easy task. I wish they made plastic around the damn bottles more rigid, that or not so fucking thick. I couldn’t snap it.

Luckily for me, the wooden pen we were in had lots of nails in it. One stuck out of the side, not even a full centimetre. I leaned forward and placed my fingers around it. This would work much better than the stupid plastic. I pulled at the nail. I knew that under normal circumstances, I would never have been able to yank it out but adrenaline does strange and totally awesome things to people. I got it out.

I dropped the plastic and slipped the nail in between the crevice between a couple of fingers. I took the still mostly full bottle of soda and poured it over my legs and my arms. It was sticky but it was the only thing I had to wipe off the make-up. The black, blue and yellow bruises soon showed up again. I dabbed my fingers in the soda and wiped it carefully over my face. I wiped my face on the ugly grey dress and smirked as I saw the remnants of make-up on it.

Sally was dragged through the door of the pen and they put her handcuffs on around her back. They then marched her up the stairs to the stage and pulled me through the door. I’d gotten pretty good at concealing things between my fingers, so it wasn’t too hard to get them to re-handcuff me without seeing the nail. They placed my glasses on my face and I was very grateful for the sudden clarity of vision. Then one of them slapped me.
“What are these bruises? You were ordered not to rub the makeup off, you stupid bitch.” One of them bellowed at me.
“I was just going to show the boys the merchandise.”
“You think you’re the first of your kind I’ve seen? You showing these just means you’re going to go to the…rougher men. Because someone will take you, believe me. We never have leftovers.” Not with the new law stipulating that men could have more than one wife, no. “You just made life a lot harder for yourself, sweetheart.” I got a baton in the gut and then I was shoved into another guard, who held me at the bottom of the stairs.

“Do I have two thousand over here? Two thousand? Two thousand,” the auctioneer said, “oh, three thousand to the gentleman over there. Four thousand! Anyone for five thousand? Oh, ten thousand! To the gentleman in the back. Ten thousand? Anyone going to beat ten thousand? No? Going once, going twice…sold for ten thousand!” The auctioneer beamed and Sally burst into tears as a tall, thin guy stepped onto the stage. It was only when I saw his face that I understood why she was crying so desperately. The sadistic smirk on his face, the excitement in his eyes, this guy was bad news. They unlocked her handcuffs and the man grabbed her, laughing. He dragged her off the stage, to pay the sum and to get the marriage certificate, otherwise known as the ownership licence. It took a lot of strength to stop myself from launching after them, from tearing him to pieces.

The guard pointed his gun at my back and forced me to walk up the stairs. The noise the crowd made when they saw my face was enough to make anyone in close proximity go deaf.
“Don’t you try anything,” the guard whispered before jabbing me with his gun, hard. I winced but held my chin up high. I wasn’t going to be broken after a whole year of ‘prep.’
“Freya Belmont, age seventeen. Previous member of the resistance,” yeah, previous, “five feet and two inches tall, normally muscular build, brown hair, dark blue eyes, medium breasts and glasses are the only medical requirement.” They talked about me, about all of us, like we were pieces of meat. I couldn’t stand it. “Often expresses aggressive and anti-social behaviour, has been in solitary confinement for almost a third of her time in rehabilitation facilities and has been submitted to the maximum punishments in the aforementioned facilities. Will need restraining and cannot have anything that may be turned into a weapon around. Let’s start the bidding at twenty-five thousand.” My jaw almost dropped. Surely no one would pay that much for me, for the rebellious little girl.
“Thirty thousand!”
“I have thirty-no forty thousand. Oh, fifty to the, sixty! Seventy-five. Will you go eighty, sir? Yes, eighty thousand! One hundred thousand to the young man! One hundred and ten…”

It went on and on. I looked around to make sure there wasn’t a guard behind me, which there wasn’t, and started picking the lock on the handcuffs with the nail. They clicked as they released but I wouldn’t drop them just yet. I checked to see where the guards were stationed. Ten along the front of the stage, six in the pen, three snipers, usually there were four outside the doors, one guard a foot away from me on the stage, and two who re-did the handcuffs before we got to the stage. All carried weapons.

“And we have two hundred and fifty thousand, going once, going twice, sold!” I looked around desperately before Riley walked up onto the stage. He smiled at me and tapped the briefcase in his hand. It would be lined with money, and most likely another gun. I knew he’d have a machine gun inside his jacket. Men were allowed to carry guns everywhere, without there being a security breach and without question.

My guard drew closer, going to undo the handcuffs. I beat him to it. I shook them loose, and grabbed the rifle from the stunned man. I cocked it and quickly shot him in the head. Riley pressed up against my back, machine gun out. He quickly took out the snipers in a torrent of bullets, and then the guards in the pen. I took out the ones from the crowd with clean shots to the head. The rush of having a weapon in my hands again was spectacular. The doors burst open and more guards came in. Riley and I took them all out.
“Shut the doors!” Riley ordered, and members of the resistance barred the door, stopping the crowd of men from escaping. “Down, on the ground! Pull a weapon and you will be shot.” I looked up at where the enemy snipers had previously been stationed, where the resistance’s own stood now with their weapons at the ready.

The auctions were televised worldwide. It was practically mandatory to watch them, well at least the ones that spoke your language. Resistance members had taken out the camera crew and gained control of the cameras. Riley nodded at me and I returned the gesture before turning my attention to the camera. This was the best way to show the world we were still fighting.

“Well, well, well. Twelve months since my last broadcast isn’t it? I’m under the impression that you believe the resistance has died out. Just because I’ve been incarcerated doesn’t mean a thing. The resistance is alive and well. World leaders, I believe you wanted to make an example of me, by capturing me and auctioning me off: a warning to those who do take a stand, so I figured I should show the world what you did do to me. What you do to those who refuse their food, who refuse to behave orderly, who refuse to comply with your bullshit rules. All twelve months of torture.” I turned around and lifted the grey dress off me, standing in only my underwear and a bra, standing so that they could see the whip marks on my skin, on the back of my neck, the bruises all over my body where I had and hadn’t washed the makeup off, and the burns of guards’ cigarettes between my shoulder blades.
“This is what they do, if you get caught.” I pulled the dress back on. “If you, women, go peacefully, you will be forced to marry some man who has complete control over you. You will be forced to give your body to the United Nations, to the XY Revolution, to the vermin. Join us. We want our rights back and we will take them back. What do any of you have to lose now? Your life is the only thing you have left. Die for the resistance, and you will die free.
“Those who stand against us, I’ll show you exactly what we do to pigs like you.”

I stalked off the stage, into the ‘marriage booth’ where Sally was standing with a gun pointed to her back, by her buyer, writing in the marriage book. I shot the man in the arm and he dropped his gun. I grabbed the marriage book and ran back onto the stage, Riley and another guy dragged Sally’s buyer.
“This is what we do,” I repeated. Riley handed me a lighter. I stood on the writhing buyer’s balls and lit the marriage book on fire. I straddled the man and held the burning book onto his face. He screamed and I held in my own yelps of pain as the flames licked at my hands. I pulled away and stood up, facing the camera. “World leaders, you wanted a war. You’re going to fucking get it. Unlike you, we have absolutely nothing to lose.” I grabbed the rifle again and shot out the camera lens.
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This will eventually become a full length story. I wrote this scene a few weeks ago because the idea for it whirring around in my head kept growing so much that I had to write it out before I went insane with it XD Hopefully it makes some sense...
Comments would be much appreciated.