Chasing Imagination

Amy

What did I do? What would be better: going to the police station and waiting out my reunion with my parents, followed by my punishment and sentence from the police with Casper, or going back to the Dreamers and trying to rescue him from another angle?

If I went with them, then I’d see my parents again.

It was only now that it truly dawned on me for the first time in many days that I had never chosen to be a Dreamer. I hadn’t for one moment ever actually wanted to be trapped down there.

And Dreamers who confessed to being Dreamers and gave themselves in willingly and apologetically always got lighter sentences than those who had to be forced into the police station. It was what they’d always said.

And my parents...

I wanted to see them so badly. I hadn’t even said goodbye. If I didn’t go with the police now, the chances were that I would never see them again.

‘What are you going to do with me?’ I asked.

‘We’re just going to take you back to the station,’ the policeman said again. If he was impatient, he wasn’t showing it. ‘We’re going to need a statement from you, and we need to know absolutely everything you can remember about the past couple of weeks and your reasons for disappearing. And we know you’ve done some bad things tonight—we have reasons to suspect you of being in the company of a Dreamer—‘

‘I’m not a Dreamer.’ The words were out before I could stop myself.

‘We posed the suggestion to your parents,’ the policeman continued, ‘they never believed you would be.’

Betrayal. It stung me inside. My parents never believed that I was capable of doing some of the things I had done recently. They thought of me as good, kind-hearted, innocent Amy. I had proven them wrong. I had betrayed them.

‘Listen,’ the policeman continued, ‘if you confess to being in the company of a Dreamer, forcibly or otherwise, and cooperating with his plans, then your sentence will be far, far lighter than his. I do not know what it will be yet—it depends on the extent of your crimes and what you have witnessed, but anyone can survive a month or two in prison, can’t they? Or even in the Institution. That way, you can come out forgetting all the trauma you’ve experienced recently, and you will have been completely rehabilitated. You won’t have to worry about using your imagination ever again. And you’ll get to go home with your parents again.’

It sounded so tempting. I wanted to deny that I was persuaded, but I couldn’t. I liked the sound of it. Even the Institution sounded disturbingly appetising, the way the policeman twisted its motives into sounding like an innocent rehabilitation clinic. Of course it wasn’t—the Dreamers had said it was a prison, and I believed them, but maybe, just maybe they’d exaggerated it a bit. And even if it was a prison, then I could survive a few months, right? I’d certainly serve less time now than if I went back to the Dreamers and then got caught again by the police, no matter how many weeks, months or years into the future that may happen.

Because it would happen. If I left now, I was a Dreamer for the rest of my life. And no one could outrun the police forever. Even if I survived ten or fifteen years escaping by the skin of my teeth, which was unlikely—I was not courageous, I was not that great with a gun, and I was not a particularly fast runner—I’d still get caught eventually.

‘You’ll take me to Casper,’ I whispered.

‘We’ll see Casper,’ the man said in way of reply. I looked behind him; the third man was regaining consciousness, rolling over and moaning in pain as he tried to get to his feet.

‘You’re not a criminal, Amy,’ the policeman coaxed, still so worryingly gently. ‘You’re a victim. And you will receive victim support, even if there is a small punishment accompanying it. If you come now, you’re not a Dreamer in the eyes of society. You can be initiated back into your old life so easily.’

It all sounded so tempting. I didn’t for one moment expect him to be lying to me. The police may be ruthless people, but they weren’t liars—that was contradicting everything they were arresting people for. But I had to know a few things first.

‘When will I see my parents?’ I asked.

‘When we get to the station.’

That was good. That was a straightforward, honest answer. If I went with him, I would see my parents again, and I could say everything I had longed to say for the past few weeks.

‘When will I see Casper?’ I continued.

‘Soon.’

Soon. That was not such a good answer. ‘Soon’ could mean so many things.

I narrowed my eyes.

‘When?’

‘Soon,’ the man replied, his face pleasant, his eyes betraying nothing. If you asked me, I would have said they were almost too emotionless.

But I could see my parents.

And not just them either: my sister, my uncle, my grandparents, all my friends. I could go back to my house and continue studying history, which I found so fascinating, and then I would grow up and get married and have two or maybe even three children of my own, bringing them up in a safe, secure society. If I turned away now, I would never get the chance for any of these things. As a Dreamer, every move I made, my life was in danger. Like Casper, I would be peering round every corner and examining every shadow.
Could I really live like that?

I stepped forward.

‘Good girl, Amy,’ the policeman said kindly. The other two behind him, one still recovering from his injury, looked a little less enthusiastic, but they nodded at me all the same.

‘You’re making the right choice, kid,’ said the one who hadn’t been knocked unconscious.

Like an illusion, I saw Casper’s face in the forefront of my mind. It was sad, hollow.

But I would see him again. I would see him at the police station.

In my mind, he began to speak to me.

Or maybe it was myself; my inner conscience; my imagination that was speaking to me.

Was everything they told you so meaningless? The conscience asked.

Operation...Institutions...dystopia...oppression.

Casper.

I was not two feet from the main policeman by now. His face remained cool and professional whilst I knew that mine was insane, and a grin spread across his face. It was a smile that did not touch his eyes.

I lifted my gun.

‘What are you doing, Amy?’ the policeman asked. Was he blind?

‘I’m leaving,’ I whispered.

I was close enough that I got him in the head on my first shot.

The policemen behind erupted into chaos, shouting at me, at him, at each other. It all felt like a dream. They ran forward, and I shot one of them at close range, this time in the chest. It was the one who had already been unconscious once tonight, and he staggered backwards as though drunk, crying out and falling to the floor in pain.

The third seized me, trying to grab the gun from my hand, but it was my lifeline. I wasn’t about to let it go, no matter what. He twisted my arm round so that I screamed, but it also enabled me to get the gun into the perfect position to shoot him at a range of just a few centimetres, right in between the eyes.

He crumpled before he could even scream. Wrenching my arm back and almost sinking to my knees with shock and pain, tears in my eyes, I pointed it at the still conscious man, lying on the floor, shooting two more surges of electricity through the air until he too lay still.

I managed to stagger round the corner, my mind a storm, before collapsing to my knees and throwing up.

I had shot three people. Twice. Some with more than one bullet. It didn't matter that it was a stun gun; it was still a gun.

How much of a monster did that make me?

I didn’t want to know.

Had I made the right decision? I had a horrible feeling that it was all wrong—I had done something good, yet something terrible also, and I was going to pay for it. I was never going to see my parents again, I was never going to have a life or a family or children or a house or a job.

But the reason the Dreamers told me all they did was because they thought they could trust me. And furthermore, they wanted me to use that sick knowledge and act upon it, creating the change that we all wanted to see in the world. It was what every Dreamer strived to for their entire lives.

I didn’t believe I could have ever betrayed that.