Chasing Imagination

Amy

We walked further through the tunnels until even the temporary lights that had been installed everywhere died out, and we resorted back to torches. It was silent down here but for our four sets of footsteps on the concrete floor, and my ragged, hot breath. I couldn’t seem to get enough air into my lungs, and my heart hammered faster with every step I took, until I felt sure it was going to burst out of my chest.

Casper walked next to me, with Imogen and Matt a little further ahead. Apparently, we hadn’t reached the cameras yet, so we were ok.

‘Are you alright?’ he whispered. In the torchlight, I could see the shadows of his dimly lit face. He looked worried for me, but he was being kind. Maybe I didn’t hate him quite so much anymore.

‘I’m fine,’ I murmured. In a way, this was really it. This was the point of no return. Once I stepped over it, I was an outlaw. I was a rebel. I was a terrorist.

No. I was no terrorist, and perhaps neither were the Dreamers. Maybe we were all just freedom fighters.

He looked at me under the torchlight. ‘Are you sure?’

I just turned away. I wasn’t up for talking right now.

We rounded a corner; just another one of many, but Matt had an announcement for us.
‘We’re going to reach the first of the cameras soon,’ he whispered. ‘Turn the torches off and be quiet.’

We did as we were told, switching the torches off and plunging ourselves into the most intense blackness I had ever been in. There were no lights anywhere, and I felt a hand grab mine.

The surprise of it made me about to squeal instinctively, but I heard Casper’s voice say ‘ssh,’ into my ear, standing closer than I expected him to be, reminding me of how claustrophobic this whole place felt. ‘We don’t want to get lost down here. Imogen?’

‘I’m here,’ came Imogen’s voice from just a little further ahead, and I guessed that Casper had most likely taken her hand too.

‘Whatever you do, don’t let go Amy,’ I heard him say. ‘Otherwise we’ll never find you again.’
I didn’t like that thought at all, so I grasped his sweaty palm a little tighter, refusing to let go under any circumstances. I was not going to let go, and I was not going to jeopardise the trip for the rest of them.

As we continued round another slight bend—I felt Casper’s hand guiding me gradually to the left, as Imogen and finally Matt were guiding him, I could see a pinprick of artificial green light at the top corner of the wall. It was only a small light, barely a spot, but in this darkness it made a great deal of difference.

I felt Casper’s hand bring me further to the right; right so that I was pressed up against the wall furthest from what could only be the dreaded security camera. I didn’t dare speak; I didn’t dare so much as breathe as we shuffled almost silently past it.

We got beyond it, but still I felt no one relax. If we spoke, it was likely to pick us up, and if a torch was turned on, it was likely to sense the extra light. Finally, as we rounded another sharper corner further up, Matt switched his torch back on, temporarily blinding me with the sudden surge.

‘We need to sort out what we’re gonna do about those cameras,’ he said, mostly addressing Casper.

‘Have you spoken to Markus about it yet?’ Casper asked.

‘Briefly; I’ll mention it again tomorrow,’ he replied.

On we walked in silence, and there was no knowing how long we’d been going or how far we’d come. Eventually, however, we came to a large, iron door. There was no need for guessing; it was evidently locked.

Cameras stood either side of it, embedded into the wall.

‘These ones can’t detect sound,’ said Casper, though he still spoke in hushed tones. ‘And we can cover them over, but once we pass them, we probably won’t have long. Hopefully, there aren’t any guards around tonight, but you never know. Either way, we won’t be able to stay for long, so grab anything and everything you can, and if I tell you to run, you run. Understand?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. What else was there to say? How could I not agree?

Expertly, Matt took out a small gun and aimed it directly at the security camera on the left. He pulled the trigger, and I braced myself for an explosion, but none came; at least, not the sort I had been anticipating.

The gun let out a bang, but only a small one, and a sort of ink cartridge was fired at the camera. As it made contact with the screen, it exploded everywhere, coating the camera in a thick, black, sticky liquid.

‘They might have noticed that,’ Casper explained. ‘Sometimes they do, but it’s less risky than leaving them open.’

Imogen moved towards the door and began to tap an eight digit code into the pad on the wall. I was amazed to see that, with only a slight hesitation from her part, the door opened on her first attempt.

‘The Dreamers place cameras everywhere,’ Casper continued to tell me. ‘They’re tiny; invisible to anyone who isn’t looking for them, but powerful. We have plenty down here so we can always find out what the new code is—they change it about every two weeks. There are people back upstairs working at trying to decipher them—it’s all very technical.’

‘It sounds it,’ I said, impressed. With a hefty shove, Matt managed to slide the large door open. And this was it. We were going in.

Matt was first in, switching his torch on as soon as he got inside, swinging it around wildly to make sure we weren’t about to be attacked. Imogen followed, and Casper and I stayed close behind her.

Other than the torchlight, it was dark in the Vault, but what I could see from the pools of yellow light were shelves upon shelves upon shelves reaching right up to ceiling height, way above us, and going along many, many aisles as far as the eye could see. It was many times bigger than the biggest supermarket, and every spare bit of space was crammed full with...stuff.

It looked like it had been organised somehow, but the sheer volume of various items that were in here meant it still seemed cluttered and messy. Right now, we seemed to be in a book section, and with barely a moment’s hesitation Matt headed left and Imogen headed right.

‘Stay with me, just for tonight,’ Casper suggested. I was only too happy to comply—I had no idea what I was doing whatsoever, and I was completely inexperienced.

He walked down the aisle straight ahead, moving swiftly like a shadow towards the far end. I had to run to keep up with him, and I was conscious of every footfall I made on the concrete ground.

‘What are you looking for?’ I whispered.

‘We’re in the book section,’ he replied. ‘I’m looking for anything that looks interesting. And, of course, these things called Bibles, though I imagine they’re kept locked up in Vault One, or at the very least in the Restricted sections.’

I wandered along the shelves, my movements strangely paralleled with what I had been doing in the library earlier, only sped up, as if a recording put into fast forward. It was strangely surreal; browsing the endless shelves upon shelves of old, dusty books, forgotten in the deep recesses of time, left to rot and die. I had always heard of books, and I’d read books, just never books like these. Within these books were stories of literally endless possibilities. With the power of imagination, the writer could have set the book on the other side of the universe, or too far forward in time for us to even comprehend. In fact, the boundaries weren’t even limited to this universe—imagination could create entirely new universes. It was fascinating.

‘Quick,’ Casper ushered, his arms already full. ‘Grab anything you can. It’s usually better if you can get an idea of what you want before you come down here—perhaps you’d better start off in the clothes section.’

The clothes section sounded easier, so I followed him round the corner of one of the aisles, past another couple, and to where Imogen was standing. He then ran off further right, to find more stuff, whether that was more clothes, films, music, or something else entirely, I had no idea.

Imogen’s arms were full of clothes; the first one of which was a large, red dress. It crossed my mind how it would make things so much easier if we brought wheelbarrows or boxes with us, but it was at about that moment that I heard the clattering of wheels, and Matt rounded the corner with a pleasingly large trolley, already half full with CDs. CDs went out of fashion decades ago, but when the first government started to worry about imagination, people started to transfer their newly downloaded music back to the discs so as to be able to hide and protect it.

He also carried several things which I knew from history lessons were called ipods. There were at least five of them in his trolley, into which Imogen hastily chucked all the clothes, throwing a pair of studded boots in on top of them, and continued moving down the aisle.
Unthinkingly, I grabbed as many things as I could find, just so I could be of some use, including some black jeans, an almost luminous pink t-shirt, a couple of belts from higher up, and a brown leather jacket.

‘They conveniently stack trolleys down the end,’ Matt said to me with a gesture of his head. ‘Probably used them to bring all the stuff down here thirty-seven years ago, and couldn’t be bothered to take them all back up. Works for us, though.’

I laughed politely, dumping my clothes into the trolley, where he forced them down to make the maximum amount of room, and I continued to browse through the shoes.

‘Is there anything they don’t have down here?’ I mused.

‘No food,’ he said, in a sort of mild attempt at being funny. ‘But Vault Fourteen is just the tip of the iceberg—there are seventeen similar places like this underneath London and the surrounding towns. Vault One is the one we all want to get into, but of course that’s the most heavily guarded. Vault Fourteen is almost completely just books, clothes, music and films, so it’s not so important if we steal stuff. They still don’t like it though—it’s a punishable offence; could land you in prison.’

‘Don’t turn her against this place already,’ came Casper’s voice as he appeared behind me from out of nowhere. He laughed, but there were undeniably cold undertones to his voice. He dumped a pile of about ten books and several DVDs into the trolley, which was quickly filling up.

‘Do you want me to go and get another trolley?’ I offered, trying to make myself useful.

‘We only bring one trolley per group,’ Matt said. ‘Obviously, you can’t really run or fire guns when you’re pushing it, so we don’t like too many people to be taking them. Normally, there’s a raid into one of the Vaults from our base about once a fortnight though.’

‘I think we should suggest the far right for next time,’ Casper said to Matt. I didn’t get what he meant, but he sounded like he was talking about something technical and knew what he was doing, so I just watched, moving to the end of the aisle and using the step ladder to climb up to one of the higher shelves and grab a couple of handfuls of jewellery.

When Imogen returned with another pile of clothes from the adjacent aisle, the trolley was completely full.

‘Let’s move on out,’ Matt said. Casper led the way, pointing his gun out of the main door before venturing out after it once he was surer that no one was out there.

I followed, staying close behind as Imogen quietly locked the door.

‘They’ll probably have seen us by now,’ Matt murmured, and his tone was so quiet that I was sure I’d misheard him.

‘Seen us?’ I repeated incredulously.

‘Just keep moving,’ Casper assured me. ‘And they won’t catch us.’

I followed him almost at a running pace through the concrete tunnel, through arches and small chambers and out another door.

And just like that, it seemed my first assignment as a Dreamer was over.