Mutant

RIOT

«Don't smile too much when you get caught» she said to me with a subtle irony in her voice. She has unforgettable dark eyes: they contain a certain evil disguised as determination, photographs of battles difficult to imagine and a pure desire to be the strongest. They both amaze and frighten me. After looking at her, I inevitably ask myself if such gaze will ever be similar to mine, and when I understand that eyes like hers are unique, I feel envious and relieved at the same time. She told me: «I'm sure this operation will be a success» and when she says something like this, you have no choice but to trust her. It doesn't matter what you think. Thus, I let some anonymous human arrest me and bring me in this isolated yet suffocating cell just because she said to me that being put in a cage was part of the plan. I don't know what she's looking for exactly, and I don't really care as long as she finds it: if she believes something may be useful, then it is worth all my pain.

Mother told me: «Bring Volt with you, he can help». She doesn't normally care about whom we bring in our missions, therefore I suspect there must be a reason for him being with us right now. Unfortunately, I can't think of a valid one. Volt is young and inexperienced, he's still discovering what he's capable of doing with his power and far too innocent to become a member of our group. We're killers, he's a kid. I never talked to him for long enough to be in the position of judging, but being who I am, I learnt to understand people by the way they look. It's a matter of studying their faces, their eyes, their smile, their skin, even the way they talk. You can understand a lot by observing in silence. Volt has the potential to become very dangerous, but not the temper necessary to be a destroyer: he is incapable of considering violence as an option to success.

I sigh and think about what just happened to us. I have nothing else to do in this cell: boredom is killing me slowly, it is draining me of all my energy, it is weakening my body like a disease. We have enough food not to die of hunger, but there's nothing else left, the room is empty, the corridors silent, the people tired and uninspired. Life has not been life, recently. I don't know why I accepted to be part of Mother's plan - nobody wants to be imprisoned without knowing the reason, but she told us that you have the right to crave for freedom only after having become a prisoner. She's good at convincing people. We followed her instructions carefully so to reduce collateral damage to the minimum; we weren't expecting the Mutant Police to be that furious, but we managed it quite well anyway. Unlike Volt, the Police knows violence and it's not afraid of using it whenever it's needed. We had to pretend fighting for a little bit, we responded to their anger with patience and weak shots and we lost our battle quietly; I'm surprised they didn't notice the trap they were putting themselves into. This is just the beginning, we are exactly where we're supposed to be: on our way towards a bigger power. I have faith in Mother's words. 

The first time I met her, I was 13. I lived with my parents in Florida, back then, but as soon as I saw her jet-black eyes I understood she was going to be my future. She was in my town looking for young prodigies to bring to her so called "School for mutants" in New York and she looked at me in a way I had never been looked at before - like there was more of me beneath my mixed race face and my long red hair, like I actually meant something. At fist, my father was suspicious. He never accepted my "condition" - as he would call it whenever the topic came up - with levity, and he firmly believed that my ability was more of a curse than a gift. He was sure that our existence in the world was just another source of discord among men, and that humanity was not able to use what they were given by God to do good. I never thought he could be right in so many ways: following the creation, that same year, of the first weapon powered by mutant blood, it became clear that peace was not an option anymore. However, since my mum was sick and Mother promised my family the money necessary for her medical bills in exchange for my application to the "School for mutants", my father had no choice but to let me go. Even though I wasn't happy about leaving my parents, the attraction I felt for that woman with black eyes filled my heart completely, leaving no space for the rest: I wanted to discover everything I could about her, and instead she ended up discovering everything about me - all my fears, my invisible scars, my most intimate thoughts. 

New York was the huge caldron I imagined it to be; I was overwhelmed when I fist set foot in it. I was used to the skyscrapers and tall buildings of Florida, but walking through the streets of New York was a new experience for me. There were people everywhere, and cars, and windows and lights. It was for real the city that never sleeps and living in it made me feel invincible, full of life, ready for whatever was coming. My room in Mother's school was bigger than the one I had at home, and for the first time in my existence I was surrounded by people like me and who could understand my situation. Most of my schoolmates had background stories similar to mine: strict parents, a community unable to accept them, powers yet to discover and an unconditional love for the woman who was taking care of us -  expect for a ghostly figure who could barely be seen around the school, with blond hair and a fleeting gaze that couldn't really be caught.

The school seems to belong to a past far away, and the atmosphere of those years is nothing more than a memory by now. The cell I'm in today is a cold space that doesn't look at all like a place where people could live for long. There's a bed in the corner and a night table next to it; a sink and a mirror; a wardrobe; a bare floor and an equally bare ceiling. I know I'm being punished but the boredom I'm condemned to is almost as difficult to bear as torture would be. It is indeed a torture for the mind. Not even my powers can save me from it. I'm not used to the idea of being useless, for my whole life I fought to find my place in the world and now I find myself reduced to the biggest nothingness. This is all M.I.A's fault: they were able to turn us into nothing more than rejects, not human, not mutants, but something in between. They created the revolutionary Cure, a toxic substance for the mutant's body which inhibits the power in our blood. Inhaling it makes us temporarily unable to use our superhuman abilities, injecting it in our veins has devastating effects on our system, turning our blood in a black sludge that corrodes our cells, burns our vases and erases our powers forever. It is illegal to use it in the latter way, there are however no laws against the first, and M.I.A is using it on me and my friends today. This is one of the reasons why we are stuck in our prisons and one of the reasons why we need to get stronger. I want to destroy everything M.I.A did so far just like they are destroying right now everything we are. It's either our freedom or theirs, either war or death. My father was right: as long as we live in it, our world in not made for peace.