Sequel: Hurricane Heart ›
Chasing Imagination
Preparation
Casper
I found Imogen and Matt and we all went off to Markus’s. It seemed like he was summoning a few people, but to go on separate missions. We were concentrating on Vault 14. Most of them were nearer London, or further north, but 13, 14 and 15 were all close to Kingston.
In the end, Markus only had a very brief chat with the four of us.
‘Go tonight, but wait until it’s completely dark,’ he explained. ‘Go through the tunnel entrance; I don’t think they’ll be any guards.’
‘Can you be sure about that?’ Matt asked. Matt was the sort of person who could challenge Markus—he was a year older than me, tall and strong and an excellent fighter. He’d been on numerous successful assignments; everything from trips to the Vaults to Institution invasions to practically leading raids on the Marauders’ bases.
‘We’ve set up a third camera down there since the last time you went, Matthew,’ Markus said. ‘Of course, if they’re further up the passage way, that’s a different matter, but now there’s scarcely an inch of that final walkway that isn’t covered by one of our monitors.’
‘That’s good,’ Matt said. ‘And is there anything specific that you want us to find down there?’
Markus shrugged, uncrossing his legs as he took his feet off the table and leaned forwards.
‘You’re the ones going down there! What do you want?’
We all looked at each other, unsure whether we were supposed to give him an answer or not.
‘Of course,’ he continued, his voice growing louder and rougher as he got more into what he was telling us, ‘I would like a way into the Restricted section. Or, of course, a key to Vault One, but that’s Nightshade’s business really.’
Once again, we all looked around.
‘Euh, we’ll try, Markus,’ Imogen said uncertainly, ‘but I don’t think it’s gonna be easy.’
‘I know it ain’t easy, that’s why I’m not expecting it,’ he said. ‘But you get your hands on one of them books known as Bibles, and I will love you forever.’
He gave a slightly sarcastic, but otherwise friendly smile.
‘What’s Vault One?’ Amy asked in a small voice. I’d almost forgotten that she was there. ‘And what’s the Restricted Section?’
‘Oh goodness I forgot about you,’ said Markus ostentatiously, stating my private thoughts in a much more verbose manner. ‘Yes, Vault One is right underneath the Houses of Parliament. All the most important documents in England are stored there. Because of this, it’s CCTV galore down there, and there are security guards patrolling every inch of outside of it. Of course, none of them are allowed in—no one ever goes in, so it’s all a big bloody waste of space, but it makes you wonder what could be so important that they’re keeping from us. As for the Restricted section in Vaults 14 and 15, they’re the most important parts of those particular Vaults, but they’re sealed off too. I reckon if they’ve got any of those fancy religious books down there, that’s where they’ll keep them.’
Bibles and all other religious books had been, rather unfortunately, banned with the rest of fiction. No one had yet proved the existence or lack of a God or other higher power, but the current government, led by that fucker Cattermole, were non-believers, so they’d dismissed anything religious as works of imagination. Poor, sad Bibles and Qur’ans and countless other religious, sacred texts had been locked up and burned with the rest of science-fiction and fantasy.
‘Are we going above ground this time?’ I asked.
Markus shook his head. ‘Not this time. No; the girl’s too new to this place. They’ll be looking for her—the police and the rest of those sad gits. We can’t risk anyone seeing her. And the tunnel’s probably safer.’
‘It’s safer, yeah,’ I agreed, ‘but there’s a load of cameras to dodge, and it takes a goddamn long time.’
Markus seemed to like it when I cursed, contrary to every other authoritarian figure that had ever been a part of my life. He’d always thought of me as quite a privileged, well-educated, well-spoken young man, and seeing me swear like he did always seemed to bring about some sort of amusement.
Markus seemed to have finished, so Matt turned to the rest of us, his usual leader characteristics showing through. He used to be a nice guy, but I was beginning to like him less and less every day. It was probably just down to shallowness and jealousy, but I couldn’t help it. I would have loved to be in his position right now—strong, clever, respected and powerful.
[i[Amy
Casper said that I should change into some dark clothes so that the cameras were less likely to pick us up down there in the dark. I was in no position to disagree, so I pulled on some tight black leggings and a jacket over my top and kept the boots that I was growing to like more and more. When Linzy arrived briefly to pick something up, I asked her to show me where all the fiction books were kept, and she pointed me in the right direction.
The library was different to any that I’d seen before, mostly down to the fact that, when I got in there, it was divided in two—fiction on the left, and non-fiction on the right.
I’d never seen story books like this. There had been a few—four or five, perhaps, by Leah’s bed last night, but to be honest I’d been almost too scared to touch them. Now, though, there were literally thousands of them at my expense.
Of course, I didn’t really have a clue where to start, so I looked for the Harry Potter ones. They were sorted by author—different to normal libraries, which were sorted by subject, and then subdivisions of that particular subject, so I wondered along.
Luck was on my side. There were four Harry Potter books on the shelf. The Order of the Phoenix was currently in Leah’s room, and evidently two others were being read by someone else—I’d heard that they were well-known, famous books of the twenty-first century, and therefore they were probably popular around here too, so I was lucky to get any.
I took one of them off the shelf—it was called The Half-Blood Prince. I hoped that there would be something, perhaps inside, to tell me what order they went in. I’d seen it in reference books before—‘other titles by this author’ and I was lucky enough to find out that the Harry Potters also shared this trait.
Apparently, the first one was called The Philosopher’s Stone. It seemed that I didn’t understand what most of the titles meant—what was a Philosopher? I’d briefly heard of them in History and Ancient Religion lessons—weren’t they something to do with thought and imagination? I didn’t know beyond that.
Either way, the first book was on the shelf, so I gladly took that, before returning back to my room and spending the rest of the evening reading. That was, until we went to eat, and then I only had a short amount of time, which I spent with Casper and Imogen, before we departed.
‘You alright?’ asked Casper, looking at me with concern on his face.
‘Yeah,’ I murmured. ‘I’m fine.’ In truth, I was experiencing fear like never before I’d met the Dreamers. Before, my idea of fear was the anticipation before receiving my exam results. Now I was here, running around in secret tunnels beneath the city, stealing back the imagination the government had taken from us, going completely against the law.
Casper looked at me with fear in his eyes. His expression was serious. ‘Remember, if they come for us, it’s every man for himself. If one of us gets caught, and you go back to try and save them, they’ll only get you too. And it’s not worth it; really it’s not.’
At that moment, Matt appeared, sitting down next to Imogen. ‘Yeah, you really don’t want to end up in one of the Dreamer prisons.’ He shuddered at a thought obviously coming into his mind. ‘They’re called the Institutions; I expect you’ve heard about them on the news.’
‘Yeah I have,’ I said.
‘They’re not pretty,’ he murmured.
‘Have you been in one of them?’ I asked, surprised that I now knew people who had been to prison.
‘I went to normal prison first; it was how I first became a Dreamer,’ he explained. ‘Caught on CCTV drawing a picture on my notebook when I was at University. Stupid really.’
‘You went to prison for that?’ I cried, outraged. I suddenly remembered the occasions when, dead bored at the back of a duller history lesson, I would scribble on the back of my planner or draw little borders around my page. It wasn’t strictly drawing, but I guess it could be counted as imagination.
‘It wasn’t just a doodle,’ he explained. ‘It was a proper picture—a sketch of this weird, fantasy world. It was seriously foolish—I think I’d seen it in a dream the night before, and I couldn’t work out where it came from. After all, they can’t track your dreams, can they?’
‘No,’ I mused, thinking deeply about any drawings I’d ever done and the last time I'd had a dream, which I could scarcely remember back to.
‘But now look where I am,’ he glanced from side to side, shrugging casually. ‘Perhaps the best thing that ever happened to me. But those normal prisons aren’t like the Institutions, which are for Dreamers only. I got taken into an Institution just over a year ago—six months of rehabilitation, after getting caught stealing and identified as a Dreamer. It was like hell. I’d have taken my first prison sentence ten times over rather than face those six months. And I’ve now used up one of my chances.’ His face looked dark and haunted with the memories. It was certainly somewhere I hoped never to end up. ‘Anyway, we need to go.’
Abruptly, he got back up, and the rest of us followed suit.
And it suddenly hit me: this was it. If I was caught now, there was no escape. I was stuck in six months of hell, as Matt had so truthfully put it. It wasn’t a pretty lifestyle. Being a Dreamer wasn’t going to be glamorous or exciting or action-packed. It was real. We were innocent people, some of us barely out of school, hiding in the underground with little food and little water and someone else’s clothes, having to steal everything we owned. We were risking our lives every moment of every day, and we were on the run from the entire rest of the world.
And yet, now I was down here, even if I was given the choice, I didn’t feel I could ever go back.
I found Imogen and Matt and we all went off to Markus’s. It seemed like he was summoning a few people, but to go on separate missions. We were concentrating on Vault 14. Most of them were nearer London, or further north, but 13, 14 and 15 were all close to Kingston.
In the end, Markus only had a very brief chat with the four of us.
‘Go tonight, but wait until it’s completely dark,’ he explained. ‘Go through the tunnel entrance; I don’t think they’ll be any guards.’
‘Can you be sure about that?’ Matt asked. Matt was the sort of person who could challenge Markus—he was a year older than me, tall and strong and an excellent fighter. He’d been on numerous successful assignments; everything from trips to the Vaults to Institution invasions to practically leading raids on the Marauders’ bases.
‘We’ve set up a third camera down there since the last time you went, Matthew,’ Markus said. ‘Of course, if they’re further up the passage way, that’s a different matter, but now there’s scarcely an inch of that final walkway that isn’t covered by one of our monitors.’
‘That’s good,’ Matt said. ‘And is there anything specific that you want us to find down there?’
Markus shrugged, uncrossing his legs as he took his feet off the table and leaned forwards.
‘You’re the ones going down there! What do you want?’
We all looked at each other, unsure whether we were supposed to give him an answer or not.
‘Of course,’ he continued, his voice growing louder and rougher as he got more into what he was telling us, ‘I would like a way into the Restricted section. Or, of course, a key to Vault One, but that’s Nightshade’s business really.’
Once again, we all looked around.
‘Euh, we’ll try, Markus,’ Imogen said uncertainly, ‘but I don’t think it’s gonna be easy.’
‘I know it ain’t easy, that’s why I’m not expecting it,’ he said. ‘But you get your hands on one of them books known as Bibles, and I will love you forever.’
He gave a slightly sarcastic, but otherwise friendly smile.
‘What’s Vault One?’ Amy asked in a small voice. I’d almost forgotten that she was there. ‘And what’s the Restricted Section?’
‘Oh goodness I forgot about you,’ said Markus ostentatiously, stating my private thoughts in a much more verbose manner. ‘Yes, Vault One is right underneath the Houses of Parliament. All the most important documents in England are stored there. Because of this, it’s CCTV galore down there, and there are security guards patrolling every inch of outside of it. Of course, none of them are allowed in—no one ever goes in, so it’s all a big bloody waste of space, but it makes you wonder what could be so important that they’re keeping from us. As for the Restricted section in Vaults 14 and 15, they’re the most important parts of those particular Vaults, but they’re sealed off too. I reckon if they’ve got any of those fancy religious books down there, that’s where they’ll keep them.’
Bibles and all other religious books had been, rather unfortunately, banned with the rest of fiction. No one had yet proved the existence or lack of a God or other higher power, but the current government, led by that fucker Cattermole, were non-believers, so they’d dismissed anything religious as works of imagination. Poor, sad Bibles and Qur’ans and countless other religious, sacred texts had been locked up and burned with the rest of science-fiction and fantasy.
‘Are we going above ground this time?’ I asked.
Markus shook his head. ‘Not this time. No; the girl’s too new to this place. They’ll be looking for her—the police and the rest of those sad gits. We can’t risk anyone seeing her. And the tunnel’s probably safer.’
‘It’s safer, yeah,’ I agreed, ‘but there’s a load of cameras to dodge, and it takes a goddamn long time.’
Markus seemed to like it when I cursed, contrary to every other authoritarian figure that had ever been a part of my life. He’d always thought of me as quite a privileged, well-educated, well-spoken young man, and seeing me swear like he did always seemed to bring about some sort of amusement.
Markus seemed to have finished, so Matt turned to the rest of us, his usual leader characteristics showing through. He used to be a nice guy, but I was beginning to like him less and less every day. It was probably just down to shallowness and jealousy, but I couldn’t help it. I would have loved to be in his position right now—strong, clever, respected and powerful.
[i[Amy
Casper said that I should change into some dark clothes so that the cameras were less likely to pick us up down there in the dark. I was in no position to disagree, so I pulled on some tight black leggings and a jacket over my top and kept the boots that I was growing to like more and more. When Linzy arrived briefly to pick something up, I asked her to show me where all the fiction books were kept, and she pointed me in the right direction.
The library was different to any that I’d seen before, mostly down to the fact that, when I got in there, it was divided in two—fiction on the left, and non-fiction on the right.
I’d never seen story books like this. There had been a few—four or five, perhaps, by Leah’s bed last night, but to be honest I’d been almost too scared to touch them. Now, though, there were literally thousands of them at my expense.
Of course, I didn’t really have a clue where to start, so I looked for the Harry Potter ones. They were sorted by author—different to normal libraries, which were sorted by subject, and then subdivisions of that particular subject, so I wondered along.
Luck was on my side. There were four Harry Potter books on the shelf. The Order of the Phoenix was currently in Leah’s room, and evidently two others were being read by someone else—I’d heard that they were well-known, famous books of the twenty-first century, and therefore they were probably popular around here too, so I was lucky to get any.
I took one of them off the shelf—it was called The Half-Blood Prince. I hoped that there would be something, perhaps inside, to tell me what order they went in. I’d seen it in reference books before—‘other titles by this author’ and I was lucky enough to find out that the Harry Potters also shared this trait.
Apparently, the first one was called The Philosopher’s Stone. It seemed that I didn’t understand what most of the titles meant—what was a Philosopher? I’d briefly heard of them in History and Ancient Religion lessons—weren’t they something to do with thought and imagination? I didn’t know beyond that.
Either way, the first book was on the shelf, so I gladly took that, before returning back to my room and spending the rest of the evening reading. That was, until we went to eat, and then I only had a short amount of time, which I spent with Casper and Imogen, before we departed.
‘You alright?’ asked Casper, looking at me with concern on his face.
‘Yeah,’ I murmured. ‘I’m fine.’ In truth, I was experiencing fear like never before I’d met the Dreamers. Before, my idea of fear was the anticipation before receiving my exam results. Now I was here, running around in secret tunnels beneath the city, stealing back the imagination the government had taken from us, going completely against the law.
Casper looked at me with fear in his eyes. His expression was serious. ‘Remember, if they come for us, it’s every man for himself. If one of us gets caught, and you go back to try and save them, they’ll only get you too. And it’s not worth it; really it’s not.’
At that moment, Matt appeared, sitting down next to Imogen. ‘Yeah, you really don’t want to end up in one of the Dreamer prisons.’ He shuddered at a thought obviously coming into his mind. ‘They’re called the Institutions; I expect you’ve heard about them on the news.’
‘Yeah I have,’ I said.
‘They’re not pretty,’ he murmured.
‘Have you been in one of them?’ I asked, surprised that I now knew people who had been to prison.
‘I went to normal prison first; it was how I first became a Dreamer,’ he explained. ‘Caught on CCTV drawing a picture on my notebook when I was at University. Stupid really.’
‘You went to prison for that?’ I cried, outraged. I suddenly remembered the occasions when, dead bored at the back of a duller history lesson, I would scribble on the back of my planner or draw little borders around my page. It wasn’t strictly drawing, but I guess it could be counted as imagination.
‘It wasn’t just a doodle,’ he explained. ‘It was a proper picture—a sketch of this weird, fantasy world. It was seriously foolish—I think I’d seen it in a dream the night before, and I couldn’t work out where it came from. After all, they can’t track your dreams, can they?’
‘No,’ I mused, thinking deeply about any drawings I’d ever done and the last time I'd had a dream, which I could scarcely remember back to.
‘But now look where I am,’ he glanced from side to side, shrugging casually. ‘Perhaps the best thing that ever happened to me. But those normal prisons aren’t like the Institutions, which are for Dreamers only. I got taken into an Institution just over a year ago—six months of rehabilitation, after getting caught stealing and identified as a Dreamer. It was like hell. I’d have taken my first prison sentence ten times over rather than face those six months. And I’ve now used up one of my chances.’ His face looked dark and haunted with the memories. It was certainly somewhere I hoped never to end up. ‘Anyway, we need to go.’
Abruptly, he got back up, and the rest of us followed suit.
And it suddenly hit me: this was it. If I was caught now, there was no escape. I was stuck in six months of hell, as Matt had so truthfully put it. It wasn’t a pretty lifestyle. Being a Dreamer wasn’t going to be glamorous or exciting or action-packed. It was real. We were innocent people, some of us barely out of school, hiding in the underground with little food and little water and someone else’s clothes, having to steal everything we owned. We were risking our lives every moment of every day, and we were on the run from the entire rest of the world.
And yet, now I was down here, even if I was given the choice, I didn’t feel I could ever go back.