XY Revolution

“Please sit down, Agent Belmont,” Henriette tells me when I arrive.

There’s some woman with glasses already seated, hair pulled back in a tight bun and a tablet in her grasp.

“Good morning,” I greet.

“Would you like some water?”

“Yes please.”

Henriette quickly pours me a glass and places it in front of me before taking a seat next to the stranger.

“This is Dr Francis. She’ll be assessing you today.”

“Hi Freya, it’s nice to meet you,” Dr Francis says warmly. “Just relax. This isn’t going to be some nasty, cold questionnaire. You may be a little uncomfortable, but this examination will not last long. Do you have any questions before we start?”

“How much of an impact will these results have on my work?”

She opens her mouth but quickly shuts it, turning to Henriette.

“It really depends, Freya. Hopefully we won’t need to put you into rehabilitation, but it’s a possibility. Otherwise, we’d like to be able to continue with your schedule as is,” Henriette informs me.

“Okay.”

“Alright, so Freya, we’re going to be playing a video on the screen. All you need to do it watch it closely.”

I nod in response and then the screen flickers into life.

There’s a lovely, sunny room with a few people sitting at a table, drinking orange juice. Then another man comes over, whispering into the ear of the head of the table. My eyes widen in realisation.

“This is from the mission,” I state, alarmed.

“Yes. Please watch it closely.”

My body has completely frozen. I don’t think I could tear my eyes away from the screen if I wanted to, and God, I want to. I want to run from this room and never come back. Why are they making me watch this? Why? Are they trying to torture me?

I watch myself in that cream dress get to my feet, and suddenly, a blade appears in my hand and I stab it into the other man like it’s nothing. There’s no change in expression on my face in this video. The man has dropped to the floor and I don’t waste a second glance on him.

Shouting begins and then Xander is on top of his father. I watch Michaels’ face all over again as I dig the blade in my shoe in his shin. Then I’m threatening him with these terrifying turquoise eyes that are mine, and not mine. There’s an animal standing in my place, a demon. And this demon is so distorted the only resemblance it bears to a human is the cream dress on its body.

Her eyes are alight and crazed. Her smirk is sadistic, and cruel. She doesn’t even bat an eyelid when she pulls out her gun, shooting one, two, three, four, five, six people. She just kills one, two, three, four, five, six people without another thought.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

Every time that trigger is pulled, the sound resonates in my head like I’m watching this all in slow motion. The demon just threatens, and kills, and suddenly her partner is on the floor, bullet in the head and she explodes.

Her hands on a man’s throat, every muscle in her body is tense. Her mouth is twisted into a snarl and if I hadn’t known what was about to happen, just looking at her would’ve told me. She wants his blood, she’s hungering for the kill, and she’ll devour anything in her way to get to this poor son of a bitch.

His head hits the back of his chair.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

With such high detail on the screen, I can actually see fragments of skull leaping from the wound. He doesn’t stand a chance. Neither does any other man in that room now. This is her game. They’ve just locked in a bunch of baby-antelope with a starving lioness. There is no hope.

I’m still in shock when the screen goes black.

“Was that…me?” I whisper.

“Yes, Ms Belmont, it was,” Henriette tells me.

I pick up my glass of water with my shaking hand and gulp it down. My throat is somehow raw, and dry, and has a lump in it somewhere with only one form of release.

“I was…a monster.”

I can hear the frown in Dr Francis’ voice when she states, “You haven’t reacted to the death of your colleague.”

“It kind of pales in comparison to the hurricane afterwards,” I respond.

I’m sure I’ve gone even whiter than my hair, and my stomach feels sick. I’m just grateful I couldn’t see my black, black eyes. I was some tanned girl, who looked just like an Ideal, and that girl killed all those people. It was that girl who became the beast.

“I thought that’s what would upset me most,” I admit. “But I…that can’t be me.”

“You’re a hunter, Freya. You were starving for your prey, and your prey was like a meek, injured little kitten,” Henriette says. “But you’ve always been a hunter.”

I don’t know how to respond to that, I just gape at her, eyes watery. Henriette does not offer me solace though. Her face is stone; unreadable.

“Can I go now?” I whisper.

“Yes.”

I don’t think I’ve ever run from a room so fast in my life.



I knock on the door frantically.

“Coming,” a voice calls from within and I’m soon met with the bare, scarred chest of Travis.

“Freya?” he asks. “What are you doing here?”

“Can I come in? Please?”

He steps aside and I walk past, into his room. It’s almost identical to mine, but there are posters on the wall – Resistance ones – and a couple of old pictures. Travis is as blue-haired as ever in them, and I immediately know who he’s standing with. His mom’s hair is bright green and down to her waist. Her eyes are the same colour as Travis’ and her smile is as wide as anything. She clutches the young boy tight to her side. His dead mom.

In the next picture is a young girl with dark, curly hair. She could’ve been a young Travis, in a dress and with dark hair. His little sister, Sierra.

“What’s wrong?” he asks me with a frown.

“Did you see the video?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The video, from breakfast. The day-”

“Yes.”

I collapse on his bed and put my face in my hands.

“What’s happening to me?” I cry.

He sits next to me on the bed and then wraps a tentative arm around my shoulders. I wince with that slight pressure on my wound, but that’s the least of my problems at the moment.

“You’re becoming a soldier, Freya,” he tells me softly. “It’s scary, I know.”

“Did you even watch the video? I was a demon. I was…I just…I was terrifying.”

“That’s what I thought when I saw the video from my first mission too.”

“Henriette told me that you tried to hurt her, when you first joined.”

He shakes his head and goes pink.

“I didn’t want you to know that. It was…disgraceful. I was so feral back then. I had no control. I just had so much anger, like you. But when I saw myself, twisting necks and dragging my knife through throat after throat, I changed. I just…my mom would’ve been so ashamed. I couldn’t handle that.”

“How did you do that though? How can you just change?” I question him incredulously.

He shrugs.

“Mind over matter, you know. I just let it all go. I took a walk in the desert and I watched the coyotes. I saw how they hunted, and why they did. There was purpose to it all. Our purpose here, isn’t to kill as many people as possible, it’s to bring equality back to the world. I kill now, only when I’m threatened. Not everyone with a gun is a threat, and you need to learn to listen to your gut. Don’t shoot because your aim is the best and you don’t even have to think about it. Shoot because you know it’s your only choice in that situation, because it’s the only way to stay alive.”

“Your mom though, and your sister, how can you just let it all go? It’s not exactly a flick of the switch.”

“No, it’s not. But there’s a thing called directed anger, you know? I let it go into something productive. When I plan a mission, all my anger is going into that. My motivation, my anger isn’t tied up in murder, it’s in bringing the UN to justice.”

“But they, Travis, they scarred you all over,” I say, eyes roaming up and down his body before raising an eyebrow when our eyes meet.

He actually laughs. I’ve never seen his face light up, and his smile spread so wide as it has right now.

“Freya, these scars aren’t from the UN! What would the UN want with a gutter-rat like me?”

I frown.

“Then how the hell did you manage all that?”

“I told you, I grew up in cities. This,” he points to the scar across his eye, “Was from a mugging when I refused to give a guy the food I’d got for my little sister. This,” he points to the scar on his stomach, “A gang tried to open me up when they thought I’d taken their drugs, even though I’d never met any of them in my life. And these,” he touches his lips, “These were done by another gang who controlled my neighbourhood in Toronto. They ‘stitched’ me.”

Then it’s me who’s laughing, understanding why he found my accusation so ridiculous.

“It’s hard to think that there are some people out there who are just messed in the head, without being in the UN, you know?” I explain.

He nods.

“Yeah, I can see how you’d think that, country girl.”

I roll my eyes and then I turn, lifting up the back of my shirt.

“This is what happens in the XY regime. Twenty public lashes. I didn’t even make it to the fifteenth conscious.”

Suddenly there’s a cool sensation on one of my scars. Travis’ finger is touching my marred skin, tracing the length of that particular whip mark. My body goes tense and my breath becomes shallow. I close my eyes as he tickles my skin, sending goose bumps up my spine.

“What are you doing?” I breathe.

I can hear him as he jumps away, like he’s been electrically shocked.

“I’m sorry,” he tells me hurriedly. “I didn’t mean to.”

I pull my shirt back down.

“It’s okay,” I murmur, but don’t turn around. This is awkward enough as it is without Travis seeing how pink my face has gone from just that touch. In my defence though, it was oddly intimate. “They are pretty cool scars.”

“I still think mine are cooler.”

I pull down my shirt and turn around, nose curled up in distaste at his words.

“That is so not true. Just because you’ve got them on your face doesn’t mean they’re cooler,” I argue.

He then does something so immature I nearly die of shock; he sticks his tongue out at me, revealing a silver tongue piercing.

“Why do you have piercings?” I blurt out and Travis sinks back into his bed, hands under his head. It’s a pose my father loves.

“Because I wanted them. It’s kinda like asking someone why they have tattoos.”

“I don’t understand that either. I didn’t enjoy it all too much,” I say and my hand instinctively flies to the imprint of my ID number on my arm.

“It’s not about it feeling pleasant, you know. It’s more of a cosmetic ‘fuck you’. Tattoos aren’t acceptable on women, so lots of Resistance women get tattoos. Piercings too. I mean I won’t get whipped if I have piercings, but you can’t tell me it’s something you’d see on an Ideal.”

I nod. It does make sense. But I frown, suddenly remembering the slip-up with my ID number.

“I’ve got a really bad feeling that they’re going to find me, you know.”

Travis sits up straight, expression unreadable.

“Why would you think that?”

“My number,” I touch my arm pointedly, “It was showing that morning. They could bring it up on video. If Michaels puts it all together, he’ll know who I am and put my entire family at risk.”

“I forgot about that,” he states with a sigh. “Henriette will not like your presence known so early, but she’ll just have to deal with that.”

“What about my family, Travis?!”

He waves me off.

“Don’t worry, they’re safe. We made sure of that the moment your video went online.”

“Okay. What about Kevin though? You guys didn’t tell me what they’d do to him.”

Travis gives me a look like I really shouldn’t have asked, but he doesn’t spare me.

“First he’ll be interrogated under a basic lie-detector. If he’s telling the truth, that he just forgot, he’ll be under strict supervision with loss of privileges for six months. He’s supposed to be the best at what he does, and we can’t afford slip-ups. If it was intentional, then he will be tortured for information, tried in front of the Resistance Home Base and sentenced to execution.”

“A loss of privileges isn’t that bad though, right?” I ask meekly, thinking of the vibrant, flamboyant man I have already come to love.

“He will be separated from Derek for that entire time. Food will be limited to the bare essentials, regardless of spoils from raids. No luxuries. No calls to family. And he’ll lose his window.”

“The window?” I gesture to the skyline of Toronto above Travis’ bed.

“Yes.”

I shudder.

“Let’s hope this doesn’t get out then,” I say and Travis sighs sympathetically.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re public enemy number one this time tomorrow.”