‹ Prequel: Chasing Imagination
Sequel: Martyr's Run

Hurricane Heart

Karma

Arjan

I tried to push thoughts of the hideous Operation out of my head, but such a thing was easier said than done. It was always there, lingering in the back of my mind as I showered and changed and ate. It was the nagging fly, buzzing around me, never moving away no matter how many times I swiped at it. It was the thing I could never forget; like a scar, now branded on me for the rest of my life.

Hurricane seemed to be able to sense my mood—for someone so devoid of emotion, she was uncannily good at reading other people—and surveyed me all morning. As usual, when I got up she was already dressed and near enough ready to walk out of the door; this morning just straightening her damp hair as I came out of the shower, which gave her time to think and time to watch.

I sat down with some breakfast; we now had more choice after stopping off yesterday, and she picked at a muffin begrudgingly with her fingernails as though she was resenting whoever had made her eat it.

‘You’re still thinking about the Operation,’ she said curtly. It was a statement; not a question.

‘Yeah,’ I agreed solemnly.

‘Don’t.’ She instructed it like an order. I felt compelled to obey, despite the task being impossible.

‘It makes everyone depressed,’ she continued. ‘When I first heard about it, I was...I was beyond angry. I wouldn’t speak to anyone for a long time—it was just so, so sick, and it was made even worse at the time because one of the Berlin Dreamers had been captured a couple of months beforehand, and was due to face the Operation just a few days after I joined. People in the base wouldn’t stop talking about it.’

I didn’t know how to reply, so I nodded, and made a sympathetic sounding, monosyllabic noise.

‘Do you know any of these other three; the ones that are lined up to face it shortly?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied, giving up on the half-eaten muffin and rummaging for a drink. ‘I didn’t hear their names, remember?’

‘Oh yeah,’ I murmured, remembering how she’d turned the radio off the second she’d heard the word ‘Demobilisation.’ ‘But would you know them?’ I continued. ‘Do you know British Dreamers?’

‘Only the ones who have ever come over to Germany,’ she said. ‘There were a few that arrived a couple of weeks ago when the London base was invaded, although most of the ones that escaped seemed to flee to Berlin or Paris or Bruges or somewhere. But no, hopefully I don’t know them. That doesn’t make things any better, though.’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘Of course it doesn’t. Of course it’s still terrible.’

Hurricane was silent for a moment, gazing at herself vacantly in the mirror, the reflection of her eyes glassy and glazed over with...tears? Could it be so?

For the second time, I might be currently watching Hurricane fight back tears, and I couldn’t help but question her once again. These last few days had revealed more about her than I ever dreamed of finding out, but I still wasn’t sure if she would ever let me see her cry.

So what was it, that first time, when I hardly knew her? Was she really crying, or was it a mere trick of the light...or perhaps she’d just sneezed or sniffed or something, and that had given a similar impression.

I was not convinced.

The second she realised I was still there, she snapped out of her trance, jumping to her feet, her almond eyes clear of any trace that the tears might have been there, the mask put back in place. No, it was only my imagination; this was Hurricane we were talking about, after all.

‘Come on,’ she said briskly, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder and walking out the door. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Where are we going this time?’ I asked as we got in the car. I knew what answer I was going to receive before she said anything.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied coolly, her eyes fixed on the road.

I still couldn’t figure this mysterious woman out. Sometimes, she could be almost nice, and I would think we had finally broken the ice once and for all, but whatever happened, whether we laughed together, cried together, or saved one another’s lives, the following day we were always back to square one. The single difference now was that she didn’t shout at me and didn’t tie me up; thus meaning that she thought of me a little more like a person, but there was still little change. She still kept speaking to a minimum, and refused to tell me anything about herself or her people or her mission. I was still yet to find out why she, or the Soulless, actually wanted me, and I didn’t even know her real name.

But a lot had changed on my part. I had to admit that I still didn’t really like her, although I didn’t dislike her quite as much as I had done either—my family were probably searching all of Western Europe for me by now, but I would stay hidden all the time I was with Hurricane—but she wasn’t as bad as she used to be. There were some nice things about her, and I had to remember that she was a strange person, devoid of emotion and not wanting that to change, but powerful also, confident in herself, perhaps with a tragic past.

All these theories...all these ideas. But no proof. Never any proof.

She decided to put on her music again; a different album by yet another different band. Considering I had never heard proper music before, I realised that if it all sounded like this—men bashing drums repeatedly, a lot of electric sounds which were apparently guitars and, usually men, though occasionally women, singing or shouting or screaming or growling words I couldn’t understand—then music wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Hurricane had decided a couple of days ago; one of the only times she had spoken whilst we were on the road; to explain to me that this heavy, guitar, drums and growling music she liked was called ‘metal’ music. I had never heard any free, pre-Revolution music but the metal music. I wondered what the rest of it was like—it was apparently wildly diverse, with every sound under the sun incorporated into one band or another, but this ‘metal’ all sounded the same.

Today’s was calm by Hurricane’s standards, and she was mouthing along with the words, but I had no idea how she could tell what the words were.

I had learnt long ago never to question Hurricane about her music tastes, for whatever I said it would be interpreted as insulting her precious noise, so I kept quiet and said nothing about my distaste.

We drove on through Poland, further south than before, but it still felt horribly like we were retracing our steps; going nowhere. Well, that was exactly what we were doing, but apparently there was a reason for it. Going west seemed dangerous, as that took us nearer to Holland, and there was a good chance my disappearance had been reported, certainly to the local police, possibly nationally.

But I knew, really, that Hurricane would keep me hidden, whether I wanted to be or not. And my family lived in a tiny town in the north-east; what were the chances we were going to stop there? We were much more likely to just pass through; drive towards Amsterdam or Rotterdam or something, spend a night there, and continue on our way. We may not even go there at all—we seemed to be heading further south now.

Hurricane’s phone began ringing, and she pulled across the lanes, trying to make her way through the vehicles to the stopping point at the side of the road whilst also switching it to hands-free and pressing ‘accept.’

‘Before you say anything, Carl, the kid can hear you, and that won’t change until I get across these bloody cars!’ she snapped; her own individual greeting.

Carl, whoever he was, seemed to have picked up on it too. ‘Nice to see you too, Hurricane. But alright, I won’t say anything useful until you tell me to. How are you?’

‘Pretty-pissed-off,’ she said, staccato fashion as she honked her horn at a car that came past on the outside lane, thus stopping her from pulling across. Eventually, she managed it, and returned to a more comfortable manner.

‘Better now,’ she continued. ‘You?’

‘Not bad,’ said Carl, sounding indifferent. ‘Where are you?’

‘Uh,’ she glanced up, disappointed by the lack of road signs. ‘Well, we left Suwalki this morning, so probably somewhere between there and Olsztyn, though further south.’

‘And have you seen any of Them?’

‘I never told you about the other night, did I?’ she said.

I listened, as she launched into a brief but painful account of the night I had apparently saved her life. After she finished talking, Carl sounded impressed.

‘What, the kid just grabbed a gun and found you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You let him have potential access to a gun?’ Carl asked, taking a different direction to what either of us had been expecting. ‘Do you realise how dangerous that is?’

‘I know,’ Hurricane said with a casual sigh. ‘But maybe it’s karma, right? Or something similar. I was always meant to let him see where the gun was, otherwise I’d currently be sitting in a nice little cell beneath Riga, not doing an awful lot of good, yeah?’

‘If you say so,’ said Carl. From what I gathered, he didn’t like to be beaten. I didn’t know what karma was, although I’d heard the word before, and this whole ‘meant to let him see’ sounded a lot like this thing known as destiny, which I didn’t realise anyone believed in anymore.

‘Anyway,’ Hurricane continued, ‘I’m gonna get out of the car now, and I’m going to lock it, and make sure that Arjan does not get his hands on any guns, so you can tell me whatever you need to tell me.’

She did what she’d just planned out loud, opening the door and letting in a rush of cold air, shutting it and locking it, and walked a few metres off the side of the road, up the small, grassy verge and towards the scrubby trees.

I waited for her to return.