Chasing Imagination

Casper

I lost sight of the man for a moment as he rounded multiple corners and I was left behind, charging relentlessly towards the armoury. I didn’t think for a moment that he might be intelligent.

As I skidded round a corner, an explosion shot through the air and, as a bullet crashed into the wall behind me, creating a shattering sound as the old tiles splintered and rebounded in all directions, I realised that he had been hiding in wait for me.

And I had run into his trap like a fool.

As another shot came, followed by another, I dived for cover round the corner. Once I was just out of sight, I leant round the corner and fired at him, but he was hiding in an alcove too. I didn’t dare take refuge in another room in case he was able to get past me and out of sight.
He had the same idea, though.

Diving for the nearest door, he sprinted, and I took the opportunity to fire as many bullets as possible as he crossed the short distance. Every single one missed him.

He had run into one of the computer rooms. Keeping my position, knowing that there was only one way in and out of that room, I waited.

He waited too. I barely took half a step closer when his arm swung round the doorframe and bullet after bullet was fired in my direction. I leapt back, crying out in shock, and reverted back to hiding in my original place.

Amy. Where was she? She hadn’t followed me which, in hindsight, I was glad about, but I was worried about where she was and what she was doing right now.

A bullet that ricocheted off of the wall too close to my face brought me back to the current situation. I needed to get in that room.

I aimed, waiting until I could get a shot. His face peered out—that sly face with the pointed chin, and the shaggy brown hair that fell over it—to get a better look.

I fired.

For possibly the first time ever, I was in luck.

It got him, not quite in the face as I was hoping for, but in the shoulder, close to the base of his neck. He screamed out, doubling over and falling out of the door and onto the ground. In his blind pain, he tried to scrabble back inside the safety of his little stronghold, but blood was staining the floor tiles, and I wasn’t about to show him any mercy. The bottom line was that he had tried to kill me; why should I not do the same to him? Why should I show him any mercy if he wasn’t going to show it to me in the reverse situation?

Now or never.

I couldn’t really look as I fired. The first shot made him cry a bloodcurdling scream; the second shot cut that scream short. Instead, there was just a collapsing sound as he crumpled, face-first, onto the ground.

I felt sick to the stomach. I didn’t care what Matt said about me laughing; that wasn’t who I was.

But I had killed the Marauder. I didn’t really want to rejoice, but it was an achievement all the same.

I didn’t want to step in his blood as I drew closer, gunshots still resounding in the distance, but it was flooding the hall. I didn’t want to touch him either, but I felt I had to. The mask he wore concealed much of his face, but I recognised the shaggy hair and mischievous eyes, and I wanted to know if it could be...

Con. That was what he called himself, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t Con one of the high up ones?

A weird sort of hope mixed with sickness lurched through me in a rather unpleasant fashion. I had killed someone, but that someone happened to be Con. Con, who had stolen so much information from us a few months ago that he was able to sabotage three of our missions; one of them almost single-handedly. Con, who had notoriously shot Lucinda; one of Markus’s favourite Dreamers, almost a year ago.

And I had killed him.

Gunshots from further back up the tunnel brought me rushing back to my senses. Immediately, I made to run off back to the centre of the action. Inside, I was feeling disturbingly elated at my first victim of the evening, but I was going to do no good standing back here. And besides, I had to find Amy.

I rounded the corner and crashed into a moving boulder.

It nearly knocked me backwards, and I cried out, fully expecting to be ripped apart by bullets any second—how stupid; not looking round corners could pose any number of problems—but nothing came. In fact, I heard the boulder cry out too—a weirdly Irish sounding cry, and as I shook my hair out of my face and looked up from where I had crashed against the wall, I saw Felix. He looked defensive, but relaxed as soon as he saw it was me.

‘Casper!’ he cried. ‘What the heck are you doing, man? You could’ve got us both killed!’ Nevertheless, he began to chuckle loudly, placing his gun down by his side.

‘Sorry,’ I muttered, ‘stupid mistake.’

‘Where you been anyway?’ he asked, bordering on incredulity.

‘I chased a man almost to the armoury,’ I said, still out of breath both from shock and my sprint back. ‘I shot him.’

‘Who?’ Felix grew eager.

‘You remember Con?’

‘Con?’ he repeated. ‘You shot him? Did you kill him?’

‘Of course,’ I said, feeling sick at the enthusiasm in my tone, but unable to help it.

‘Damn!’ he cried. 'That's great!'

‘You got anyone yet?’ I asked.

‘Shot a blonde woman,’ he said vaguely, ‘and a guy with a beard. Dunno who they were, though. And I didn’t kill them. Missed a lot too.’

I laughed briefly, anxious to get going again.

‘Where were you going anyway?’ I asked.

‘There was a woman headed down this way,’ he said, ‘I don’t think I was the only one who saw her, which is good, 'cause I lost her.’

‘That wasn’t clever, was it?’ I asked, allowing myself to be a little patronising.

‘Piss off,’ he said jokingly. ‘I’m sure someone else’ll have her.’

‘You’d better hope so,’ I said. ‘Anyway, you seen Amy?’

‘Amy?’ he repeated. ‘No, don’t think so. Since when?’

‘Since we were in the common room,’ I said, sure that he was going to try his utmost hardest to give me a ‘witty’ response about having seen her a couple of hours previous. Sure, Felix had a great sense of humour, but it wasn’t always appropriate during these war-like situations.

War. It was like Nightshade had predicted. I’d told Amy not to take her notice too seriously, but I hadn’t quite believed everything I was saying myself. And now it was all playing out before our eyes.

‘No, ain’t seen her then,’ Felix said. ‘Sorry.’

‘’S fine,’ I replied in a mumble. ‘Anyway, I gotta go.’

Just thinking about the idea of war was making my good mood deflate. Maybe that was good in hindsight; it wasn’t right to be so happy about shooting someone.

Amy was right to be afraid of people like me.