Chasing Imagination

Casper

I helped Amy up to the surface. We just about made it into a little alleyway, the sky above us beginning to turn to a deep, steel grey, before collapsing. Amy was limping badly; she had definitely come out of the explosion worse than me, and she was so exhausted she simply could not go any further. There was a cut on her forehead and another small one on her lip, both dripping blood, which I wiped with a little tissue I found in my pocket. We literally had nothing besides a gun each, a phone each and the clothes we were wearing. Everything else would have been destroyed down in the underground.

How could everything have gone so wrong so quickly? It had all just been a downward spiral; London, then Wolfie’s death and the capture of so many of our friends, then the Kingston invasion and Markus getting shot. I tried Matt’s phone, followed by Felix’s, followed by Jay’s. It was a futile attempt: none of them answered.

It was horrible. Sadness ate away at my heart, tearing it into so many little pieces. Right now, Amy was literally everything I had in the world. My parents were long since gone, and now so were all of my friends. It really was just the two of us now; against the world.

I let her sleep until the sun had properly risen but then, guilty as I felt, I had to wake her. Police would be swarming into this area like the plague today, and two shabby, injured people dressed incorrectly, carrying guns and covered in dust were bound to attract attention.

‘Amy, we have to go,’ I whispered, helping her to her feet and wrapping her arm round my shoulder so I could help her walk with her bad leg. I felt terrible about asking her to drive but, having joined the Dreamers before I’d actually passed my test, she was the only one of us who had any experience behind the wheel of a car.

We sat in silence all morning as we drove to Dover, where we ditched the car just before coming up to the ferry port. Car passengers always had to go down certain routes and through certain barriers, which required multiple passport checks (and we didn’t exactly have our passports on us right now), but getting in on foot was bound to be easier. First of all, we stopped at a service station to clean up a little, and then I found a cheap shop where we bought some crappy new clothes. Neither of us was in the mood to be picky.

With ditching the car, we also had to ditch the guns. That was equally irritating—if we were attacked whilst on the continent, we were defenceless, but if we had them when boarding the ferry we would be captured and thrown in prison for handling illegal weapons. That was the last thing we needed.

We made it onto the ferry and spent the crossing staying low and away from people as much as possible. Amy looked so tired she was practically a zombie, but a journey that was less than two hours wasn’t long enough for her to fall asleep. When we reached France, and managed once again to tactfully dodge border controls on foot, we walked for most of the remainder of the day along endless, bare roads. It was long after dark by the time we reached a little village and checked in at a hotel. There weren’t many hotels around these days because few people travelled very often, but being this close to the coast, this village was marginally better prepared.

The twin room had a little TV. When I switched it on, most of the channels were, understandably, in French, but I managed to find an international one currently doing a broadcast in English.

Amy was just leaving the bathroom, pulling one of her new tops on over her head and towel drying her wet hair. It was nice to see her clean again; we’d both been so filthy all day. Watching her now, her limp was even more accentuated. If I ever found out who let off that bomb, they were going to pay.

It was my turn to go and shower next, but I had to wait first and hear the headlines.

Hearing the familiar language, Amy looked up, more alive than I had seen her all day. She perched on the edge of the bed, waiting eagerly as the bulletin revolved round, coming up to the headlines.

They would mention the Dreamers; that much was obvious. We just had to fear what they were going to say about them.

‘...and also in the headlines today,’ the newsreader said in her clean, Received Pronunciation as I turned the volume up further.

‘An official terrorist base in London, which spans all the way from Kingston to Islington, has been invaded. The invasion took place last night from about midnight onwards, after the police force and the Shadow Police spent months trying to detect the exact location of the main base, and the best location to enter from. The invasion has been deemed a huge success, with at least forty terrorists, who proudly count themselves under the title of ‘Dreamers,’ already being caught. Hundreds of police are still in the base now, and have hopefully sealed off all the exits, thus trapping any remaining rebels inside. It is not known how many in total lived in this underground area, nor how many have escaped, but thirty-two so far have been confirmed dead, and any who still remain will be added to the list of captured.’

I froze, looking at Amy. I could see the tears beginning to leak from her eyes.

‘Thirty-two,’ she whispered.

‘Forty captured,’ I echoed in response.

‘Seventy-two lives destroyed,’ she concluded. It was the best way to sum up the horrific situation.

I went and perched on the bed next to her, pulling her close to me. She closed her eyes, the tears overflowing, as she clutched onto me. We were just two lost souls trying to find the truth in a world that was against us. Suddenly, that world seemed so colossal. It was so much bigger than I had ever imagined it. And they were all fighting us. We were so small and insignificant and unnecessary.

I remembered Markus’s final words to me. Start a fucking revolution. I was going to adhere to those words if it killed me.

‘What can we do?’ Amy sobbed. ‘They’re all gone, and we’re here, but we’re so useless in this huge, stupid world.’

‘We will do something,’ I assured her. ‘I will make sure of it. No one will have died or been captured in vain. I swear.’

She nodded and I pressed my lips gently into her forehead. I didn’t want to let go, and neither did she.

Amy

The following day was spent mostly on trains and in stations. We sped on through France throughout the morning, crossing into Germany later. We were back in a cheap motorway hotel that night, unable to afford anything else. Casper and I didn’t talk much that night; it was really late by the time we got there. Progress had been excruciatingly slow throughout the day; we had to constantly keep low, avoiding people, avoiding police, avoiding anywhere that would require us to have our ID cards.

The next day was not much different. Driving, we could have easily gone from the port of Calais to Berlin in a day, but this way was so much slower. It wasn’t easy. We had to keep low and often walk considerable distances in between train rides. That night, we arrived in another cheap hotel, and I practically fell into the bed. It was a little earlier tonight than when we had arrived last night, but I was still exhausted. I showered and turned on the TV—the number of captured had now been confirmed at fifty-three, and the number dead had now risen to thirty-five, making a grand total of eighty-eight lives ruined. It was sickening to hear.

But they still hadn’t released any specific names or, in fact, any more details at all. In a way, I hoped they would. I wanted to know the fates of my friends, as sickening as it may be.

‘It’s not fair,’ I moaned, sinking back into the crisp, white pillow and wishing that darkness could just envelop me and never let me go. It would be so much easier than living, after all.

‘I know,’ Casper whispered, coming and sitting with me, winding his hand round mine. I enjoyed being close to him. If nothing else, it made me feel somewhat whole again. When he was next to me, I didn’t feel that our situation was quite so hopeless. It felt as if I wasn’t facing the world alone. If nothing else, I had one person who was facing it with me, fighting all the way.

Before I went to bed that night, he kissed me on the lips. I felt selfish for thinking about it considering there were so many more important things I could be thinking about, but I also noticed that it was the first time he had ever done that. At least, if absolutely nothing else, our relationship had been re-ignited. Love was the single thing I could think about that brought me relief from the constant thoughts of death and destruction and ruin. When I was thinking about Casper, I was almost happy.

Almost, but not quite.

He said we would avenge everyone, and I just hoped that he was telling the truth. It was what I wanted to do. I wasn’t going to let anyone have died in vain. I had killed; I had played as much of a part in all this as anyone. And I was going to continue playing that part. I wasn’t going to stop just now. I had discovered so much about myself recently that letting it go would be madness. Maybe, things were only just beginning.

We all knew we were at war now. Markus had confirmed it in words, but it had essentially been confirmed when Nightshade’s base was invaded. If there was one thing I knew about the Dreamers, I knew they weren’t going to take this. They were going to fight the darkness and they were going to make the world a better place.

And I was going to fight along with them.