Hurricane Heart

Arjan

The fear was paralysing. I had to get away. I had no idea what she was doing or where she was taking me. I struggled against her, but she was so inhumanly strong, as though she was highly trained in the art of kidnapping and performed it regularly.

And then she pulled a rope from the back seat of her car, and before I could get away, she had both of my hands behind my back, binding them tightly with it.

‘Get off me!’ I yelled, still trying to wrench myself away, even with bound hands and no chance of escape anyway. I didn’t care that she had a gun. I didn’t know where she was taking me; perhaps being shot really would be a better option.

And then, she shoved my head back and pulled a bag over my face, pushing me forcefully inside the door. I fell, face-first into the car seat, unable to see anything, and I felt her shove my legs inside, slamming the door behind me. I lay there, face down on the back seat, and I couldn’t move or see or scream. I could barely even breathe, and it was hard to turn my head to the side in order to gasp for enough air.

I heard the front door on the left open, and she got in, saying nothing, though I could hear the gentle creaking of the leather seat. The door slammed shut and the ignition roared into life.

Still I tried. I kicked at the seat; it was the least I could do.

‘Do that again and you’ll pay for it,’ she said threateningly, pushing down on the accelerator and moving off. We were really going; she was really driving me away.

I was so angry and so scared. Where were we going? What were we doing? Why did she want me? What had I done wrong? I couldn’t even speak—I could barely breathe to ask her, and she wouldn’t answer me anyway. What reason would she have to? I was in her control. She could do whatever she liked to me.

That was perhaps what frightened me most. She could kill me, she could torture me, she could lock me up for the rest of my life, and I would have no chance of escaping. I did not know, and I could not fight it. It was horrifying.

Her

We sped out of Hamburg, joining the autobahn and beginning to head east. We’d go to Berlin; then we’d see how things went from there. Perhaps we’d go underground...anything to get rid of the Soulless.

They were everywhere. I could see them; sense them lingering in the shadows. I had to know what they wanted. Only then would I find out how I could defeat them. Things had changed in recent months; they were growing in numbers, and becoming more famous and, worst of all, more intelligent. They weren’t the same people they used to be.

I’d almost been too late. They’d caught Arjan sleeping; that was the most vulnerable time. They were swarming through this city like a plague, surrounding him on all sides. I had to know why they wanted him. They’d been following him for days. What was so important about this guy? He didn't look like anything special.

And yet, it was only because I was in the vicinity that the man in the hotel room had tried to actually attack Arjan whilst he was sleeping rather than just kidnap him. Now that Arjan was with me, he was both safer and much more endangered. One of us alone was dangerous; two together would attract every one of the Soulless in the area.

I could hear him in the back seat of the car; he had to grip on with his feet every time we sped round a corner, and he still writhed about, though a lot more hopelessly than before. He was beginning to realise that he was not about to get out of here.

Once we got to the autobahn, he calmed down a little. He had finally understood. Thankfully, the Soulless also seemed to slowly dissipate. We could hold them off for a bit longer; they wouldn’t attack if they knew I was guarding him. They wanted me too, but that had always been the case.

I continued to drive until the first traces of dawn could be spotted on a pearly grey horizon. After that, I took the next junction off the main road and drove off into the woods. I kept going down these smaller roads until there was one sufficiently small enough that no more cars were likely to follow us down. The sun began to rise behind a thick sheath of cloud; a grey, bleak day, perhaps promising rain.

I slowed the car, and I could tell that this alerted Arjan, lying there in the back, moaning occasionally. I opened the door, striding round and opening his, and he tried to sit up, unable to see what he was doing.

There was no need for him to try so hard. I grabbed his still bound wrists, and wrenched him up into a sitting position.

He squirmed, as though trying to loosen his bonds, but a stern hand on his shoulder stopped him.

‘Can I trust you?’ I asked, keeping firm and business-like. He nodded and I pulled the bag off of his head. He blinked rapidly, unused to the sudden light after all that darkness, and began to splutter, taking large gasps of air as though he hadn’t been getting very much all that time. He coughed a few times, and looked at me both angry and frightened.

‘What do you want with me?’ Arjan asked, yet now he was weak and pleading. All the strength had gone from his voice, and now he was little more than a terrified boy.

At that moment, my phone rang. Without a word, I slammed the door again, locking him back in there, and answered it.

‘Master,’ I said.

‘What news?’ the Master asked from the other end.

‘I have a lot,’ I said. Even though I couldn’t see him, I could tell how his eyes would have widened and his ears would have pricked at this notification.

‘Go on,’ he told me.

‘I followed a Soulless into a hotel,’ I began, before I was interrupted - rather rudely, in my opinion.

‘Why was he going into a hotel?’ the Master asked.

‘I didn’t know at first,’ I said, continuing with my story. ‘But he went into a particular room. He picked the lock as easily as if it was not locked in the first place. I hurried to catch up, and when I got in there, he was leaning over a man, about my age, sleeping. I feared what he was about to do—he had one of those old-fashioned swords they often carry, and he wouldn’t get out, so I had no choice but to shoot him.’

‘And what of the boy?’ probed the Master.

‘He is sitting in the back seat of my car at this very moment.’

I heard the Master gasp. ‘You’re not in the car right now, are you?’

‘No, of course not!’ I reassured him. I was a little insulted that he thought I would be so careless. ‘I locked him in the car whilst I came to talk to you. But I don’t, for the life of me, know what the Soulless want with him.’
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ he said. That wasn’t good. The Master normally seemed to know everything.

‘What should I do?’ I asked.

‘Don’t let him escape,’ the Master instructed. ‘Take him to Warsaw—‘

‘Warsaw?’ I repeated, my voice shrill. ‘I was heading for Berlin!’ There was a prolonged silence from the other end of the phone. ‘Master?’ I eventually asked.

‘Yes,’ the Master said, drawing his words out slowly. I waited with my breath held for whatever news was so terrible that he was having a hard time just telling it to me. ‘It would perhaps be best not to come to Berlin right now. I’m not letting anyone in or out of the base for the moment; it seems the government has their eye firmly fixed on us.’

That was never good. ‘Oh,’ I said, breathing the word out, my lips frozen in a perfect ‘o’ shape.

‘Yes,’ the Master continued, back to his business-like tone. ‘Take him to Warsaw. We need to find out who he is and why the Soulless want him—I’ve never seen them go after a normal citizen this intently before.’

‘O...k,’ I said unsurely. ‘What about when I get to Warsaw? The Soulless are going to follow us.’

‘You’ll probably only be there for a short amount of time,’ he said. ‘I might need you to go somewhere else, with him of course—perhaps Riga or Stavanger or Gothenburg. I don’t know. North somewhere. Or maybe south.’

I had even less idea what the Master was talking about than before the conversation began, but I just had to run with it. I was used to his strange, non-conforming ideas that always somehow seemed to turn out just right by now enough not to ask questions. He was a little like me after all; he didn’t always make sense, and he didn’t always have a good reason for doing something. But he did it all the same, regardless of what anyone thought.

‘I’ll talk to you soon,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ the Master said. ‘Don’t do anything irrational, though—I know what you’re like. I need to do some research. What’s his name?’

‘Arjan van Berkel—don’t ask me how to spell it,’ I said. ‘He’s Dutch.’

‘Ok, good,’ he said. ‘Goodbye.’

‘Bye,’ I replied. ‘I’ll speak later.’ I hung up, walking back to the car. I swung the door open, and Arjan flinched away, fear on his face.

‘You should eat,’ I told him, making sure it sounded like an order. I looked in the boot, where I had thankfully brought plenty of food, knowing ever since Carl mentioned the assignment that I was going to be travelling for a while, and threw an unopened loaf of bread and bag of apples through to him, before moving back round to the back seat and untying his hands. He seemed to relax just a little, and I couldn’t help but feel a trace of guilt at kidnapping him like this, and guilt was not something I’d felt for a very long time. But I couldn’t risk him escaping. I just had to leave the emotion behind.