XY Revolution

There’s nobody at the desk when I go up to level one to drop off the phone, but when I return to my room, Travis is sitting on my bed.

“Make yourself comfortable,” I mumble.

“Hey,” he says. “I heard you talked to your family.”

“I did.”

He raises his scarred eyebrow.

“It didn’t go well?” he tries and I chuckle humourlessly.

“My mum thinks I’ve turned into a soulless murderer or something.”

“It’ll take time for her to adjust.”

He sounds annoyingly similar to her at the moment and I frown.

“I’m her daughter. She should trust me. She’s known me my whole damn life for God’s sake,” I argue.

Travis raises his arms in defence, telling me, “Hey, I’m not arguing with you. Just try and understand it from a regular person’s point of view.”

“So I’m a freak now, right?”

He rolls his eyes.

“Stop being so sensitive. It’s stupid and bratty.”

I grit my teeth together.

“Anyway,” he continues, “Imagine having raised you; this pudgy little blonde baby who ends up flashing her tits at a mob of men and pisses everyone off, gets whipped, could’ve very easily died, and then a year later, decides to join the Resistance. It’s probably a suicide mission, in her eyes. To join this super-bad organisation, she kills her neighbour without almost a second glance-”

“He killed my friends!” I protest.

“Regardless, you killed this boy you’d been friends with for years. So you have to ask yourself, this baby you’ve raised, do I really know her if she can do that so easily? How many more people will she kill without it registering on her conscience?”

“It registers,” I state and he goes quiet for a moment, green eyes boring into mine.

He then says, “It’s not me you need to convince. I’ve been working with soldiers for years now. I’ve been around killers my whole life. You’re not emotionless, Freya. But you will do whatever it takes to survive, right?”

I nod.

“That scares a lot of people, even if when it comes down to it, they’d do the same.”

I look down, almost ashamed, at my hands before sitting down next to him on my bed.

“Thanks,” I mumble.

“No problem,” he says, running his hands through his unnatural hair. “I need to talk to you about your training anyway.”

“The results are back already?”

“Yes.”

He then passes me a piece of paper and explains, “This is your timetable. Stick it on the wall or something. You’ve got your swipe card anyway, but basically, you really need to get your cardio and hand-to-hand stuff up to scratch.”

“How the hell am I supposed to get good when you’re impossible to hit?” I ask, frustration evident in my voice.

Travis chuckles and says, “You may as well learn from the best.”

“Ugh, do I really have to spend two hours on a treadmill?”

“You’ll alternate. Treadmill every second day, weights and gymnastics on the others.”

“Gymnastics?”

“Your balance is pretty shit, and we can’t have that when you’re running around on building tops and clinging to pipes.”

The look of disgust on my face would make anyone assume I just ate something foul. Or had to drink horse urine – something like that.

“Pierre is very excited to work with you,” Travis offers and I smile. “He wants to hone in on your sniper skills, and work with moving targets, and targets that shoot back.”

“Well, that sounds okay.”

“Julia will have you working with real blades in no time, too.”

“Also okay. But what’s this massive chunk here?” I ask, pointing to a shaded area on my timetable.

Travis gives me a sympathetic look, then tells me, “That’s your hand-to-hand training.”

My jaw drops.

“That’s freaking massive!” I shout in horror.

“Well you need to massively improve!” he snaps back.

“How much am I going to use it anyway?” I whine. “This is way out of proportion to the rest! Can’t I do more sniper stuff?”

“No, you can’t. You have to learn this, and unless you want it to get really fucking difficult, you need to practice and not be so whiny. I’ll beat your ass if you’re not prepared,” he informs me, tone suddenly more sinister.

I raise an eyebrow and ask, “Do you think Henriette would be too happy if she found out that you were beating me up on purpose?”

“Do you think Henriette would prefer you alive or dead? Because these skills are going to keep you alive.”

“Can you go now?” I growl, the pair of us glaring into each other’s eyes.

“Fine.”

I go to sleep furious.



When I reach the gym at 0700 hours, there are about ten others close by, with a trainer watching us all.

“Belmont,” he calls and I walk over to him.

“Yes sir?”

“Go spot for Schmidt. After he’s done twenty reps, change the weight to ten kilograms, and we’ll see how you go with that,” he orders.

All I’m thinking is how the hell I’m going to be able to lift that. I have next to no muscle in my arms. How does he expect me to spot for Phil, who is lifting weights which are probably as heavy as I am?

“Hi Freya,” the blonde says cheerily as he climbs onto the bench. “I see you’ve met the coach.”

“Lovely man.”

Phil laughs but assures me, “He grows on you. He’s strict, but he’ll have you being able to lift more than your own weight in no time.”

“That’s just what I wanted to do with my life. How did they know?”

After Phil’s done his first rep he responds with, “It’s too early for sarcasm, Freya. You won’t get any happier if you just try to be angry all the time. This is all to make us better.”

“Yeah, I’ll try and keep that in mind.”



My muscles are screaming by the time Phil and I wander over for hand-to-hand combat with Travis. The blue-haired teen’s eyes see right through me, like I’m invisible when he counts how many pairs we have.

“Phil, you alright with the newbie?” he asks.

The newbie?

“Sure am!” Phil responds without a second thought.

“Alright then, everyone, one of you is on the offense, the other, defence. In ten minutes, you’ll switch. Go,” Travis commands.

Phil and I find a corner with enough space, and take our positions.

“Do you wanna defend first?” he asks me.

“Sure.”

Phil doesn’t waste any time in throwing his first punch. I swerve around it easily, keeping light on my feet.

“Freya! Stance!” Travis yells.

It’s that moment where I lose my concentration and Phil uses the window to land a throw square in my gut.

I glare over at Travis who has the nerve to say, “Stay focused!”

I rub my stomach a bit, and Phil and I circle each other. There’s no malice on his face at all, but I can just see Travis’ stony visage, which pisses me off no end. Phil goes for a middle-kick and I grab his foot, yanking it so he crashes to the floor on his side. Before I know it, I’m raining punches down on him left and right.

I’m vaguely aware of people shouting, but I’m too far in the zone right now to care. I don’t want to hear their reason. All that matters is me releasing this rage through my raw knuckles.

There’s a sharp jab to my side and I keel over; strong arms pulling me off Phil.

“The fuck is wrong with you?!” Travis screams.

My breathing is ragged and I’m seeing red.

“You’re what’s fucking wrong!”

I then yank his arms off me and stalk off back to the gym. I run on that treadmill till the air burns my lungs and black spots cover my vision.



“I didn’t think we’d see you back so soon, Miss Belmont,” a bored voice states. “What a pleasant surprise.”

My eyes open slowly to bright fluorescents. Dr Walsh is of course hovering around with his tablet – his expression as void of emotion as his greeting.

“I didn’t think to be here,” I croak back at him.

He hands me a glass of water and I down it, cooling the fire in my throat.

“You did some serious damage to Mr Schmidt. Upstairs is not happy.”

Shame settles in my stomach and I turn my pounding thoughts to the poor guy I unleashed my fury on – fury I didn’t even know I had.

“Oh God. Phil. Is he okay? I didn’t mean to. I just got carried away and-”

“He’ll be fine. He just requires a few days to recover. You broke one of his ribs and there was some internal bleeding…”

“Internal bleeding?!” I shout, alarmed.

Dr Walsh rolls his eyes and says “We had that sorted in minutes. Fortunately Mr Hunt was there. I fear if you’d been left alone, you would’ve killed the poor boy.”

“I don’t…why did I do that?” I whisper.

The doctor sighs.

“That’s what we need to talk about. The results of your psychiatric test revealed some…interesting factors.”

This is it. I’m going to be locked up for being a nut-job. Fantastic.

“Your temper is uncommonly short,” he explains. “Nigh on uncontrollable too.”

My frown deepens with confusion.

“I’ve never had problems before though.”

Dr Walsh gives me a knowing look with his bored chocolate eyes.

“You ran away several years ago to avoid the pre-auctions. You wrote ‘fuck you’ on your breasts for said pre-auctions, and killed your life-long neighbour.”

“Okay, I have a bit of an anger problem,” I concede, “But it’s never been this bad.”

“You are under far more stress than you are used to – physically and mentally. But you see how this poses a serious problem to the Resistance. You could compromise future missions if your anger gets in the way of following orders. You were unable to follow Hunt’s orders today and injured your teammate. You are now a potential risk.”

“Is there anything that will help? Some pill I can take?” I plead.

He shakes his head and tells me, “No. But for now I’m recommending that you are to spar only with our specialists. You will be given private lessons from Mr Hunt. At least you won’t be much of a danger to him.”

And with that, he leaves me along in the eerily white room. Even the air tastes sterile.



“Do you understand what you did?” Travis spits and I look up.

I hadn’t even realised my door was open. The sea and clouds of home are as stormy as my morning was.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Do you honestly think it’s me that needs an apology? Was I the one you pummelled?”

“You were the one I wanted to pummel,” I snap.

He looks like I’ve just slapped him.

“But why?” he asks, dumbfounded.

I turn my gaze back to the window.

“You get on my nerves.”

“That’s your reason?”

“You infuriate me, and I don’t know why. Actually, it’d probably help if you didn’t ride my ass so much.”

“Excuse me? I’m doing my job.”

I roll my eyes and suggest, “Maybe you should go about it differently then. I don’t like being shouted orders at when I’m trying to concentrate.”

He sighs.

“Freya, what do you think happens in a real fight? There are so many things going on at once, you have to focus on it all. You have to process everything, or you die. You have to be able to follow orders and make the adjustments immediately, or you die. This isn’t just a ‘who’s the best’ contest. This is war. I’m only trying to help keep you alive,” he explains.

I’m silent on that one.

“Phil…you beat up my best friend, and he did nothing to you.”

“I know,” I say, burying my face in my hands. “I didn’t think. I couldn’t think.”

“I’m just wondering where the hell that fighter has been hiding. You didn’t show half of that yesterday.”

“You didn’t piss me off as much yesterday,” I retort.

He runs a hand through his hair and asks, “Am I really that bad? Because I don’t understand what I’ve done to you, Freya.”

“I…I don’t know.”

“Awesome,” he spits. “So I suppose there’s nothing I can do to help you out with this little problem of yours?”

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “For everything.”

“You have a meeting at 0800 hours tomorrow. Level 1A, room 3.”

He slams my door on the way out.