Hurricane Heart

Arjan

I was afraid. I wasn’t about to deny it. But when I looked at Hurricane I saw no fear at all. She was almost erupting with power. Her eyes possessed a dangerous, demonic shine with which she looked directly into Scarrus’s dark eyes.

‘Hurricane,’ he replied, his voice just as dangerous as she looked.

‘You’re not alone though, are you?’ she asked, taking a step closer so that I remained behind her. ‘No, you’re too afraid to come alone, ever since the hotel...shall we say ‘incident.’’ She laughed mercilessly.

‘I’ll be the one smiling when we have you locked up in an Institution,’ he hissed. ‘You haven’t been in there for a while, but do you know what they do to you Dreamers these days?’

‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ she quoted passionately. If she still feared the nightmare of the Institution, that fear was buried deep within. I could see no trace of fright in her powerful expression.

‘Unless it’s the Operation.’ A malicious grin spread across Scarrus’s face.

Hurricane’s gun was out before I could even blink. She stood, holding it straight towards Scarrus’s face. He was currently unarmed; she would be able to shoot before he could take his gun out, if he was even carrying one. Her hand quivered with the force with which she gripped the handle.

‘I’ll kill you this time, Scarrus,’ she said. I knew full well that she meant it. She said she didn’t like killing; it didn’t mean she was beyond it.

‘You won’t,’ he said. ‘You’ll take out your other one; the stun-gun. You’re too afraid.’

Hurricane whipped out a second gun.

‘Arjan?’ she called lightly behind her. ‘Take this, will you?’

It was all one big show; a great stage performance like one I’d never been able to see, and these were the best actors the world could offer. Everything now done was done simply to enhance the dramatics of this elaborate scene. They were acting; pretending to be brave; pretending to take things easy; trying to say anything that would scare the other. It was not real...it was just a show. Reality didn’t work this way.

Even so, I stepped forward, my heart thudding at quadruple the beat of my footsteps, taking the gun from her hand, gripping it tightly. It was a stun-gun—I knew, because it was the one that had so nearly been used on me on previous occasions.

We were at deadlock. Hurricane wouldn’t shoot, and neither would she put the gun down. And until she did one or the other, Scarrus was not about to relent. I had no doubt that they had a long and complex history together—the first time they met had evidently been long before the hotel ‘incident.’ Where it would end, though, I did not know. I had my suspicions, however, that it would not be tonight.

‘Arjan,’ Hurricane said slowly. She made no attempt to be subtle or quiet. ‘I want you to run. I want you to get out of here. Go.’

‘I’m not leaving you,’ I said, my voice so low it was little more than a growl.

‘It’s you he wants!’ she cried without taking her eyes off of the masked man.

‘Oh, I think I’ll be happy if I can cart you off to the police instead,’ Scarrus jeered. ‘The others will deal with the boy.’

‘I have the power to kill you right here; right now,’ Hurricane said, clearly prepared to make a deal. ‘But I won’t if you tell me what I want to know.’

A slight smile spread across Scarrus’s face. ‘Go on,’ he agreed, ‘but I’m not promising anything.’

‘What do you all want with Arjan? Why are you following him?’

Scarrus laughed.

‘If I told you that, there’d be no point left in this mission. In fact, you’ve just proved something fantastic for me.’

Hurricane narrowed her eyes. ‘What are you on about?’

‘You’ve just proven that you Dreamers are still in the dark about our little quest here,’ Scarrus said. ‘And that’s just what we needed.’

She narrowed her eyes further, until they were little more than vibrant, darkly outlined slits.

‘Don’t think I don’t have my suspicions.’

Scarrus laughed that cold, merciless laugh once again.

‘What?’ she demanded.

He shrugged lightly, as though he wasn’t held up at gunpoint, as though we weren’t having a life or death style conversation, as though this moment wasn’t important at all.

‘Tell me!’ she snarled dangerously. ‘Tell me, or I will kill you.’

Scarrus continued to laugh, the eyes behind the mask betraying nothing.

‘You don’t have the courage. You’re not as strong as you think, Hurricane.’ He spat her name, as though he didn’t want to say it; as though it was some sort of a derogatory term.

Suddenly I had raised the gun I held up in front of my face. It was only a stun gun. It wasn’t going to kill anyone. But my hand still shook with tension. The lights flickered around us. Hurricane stopped and even Scarrus ceased laughing when he saw me.

‘You’re gonna get your pet to work for you?’ he jeered, still aiming most of his insults at Hurricane.

‘Don’t you dare talk to her like that,’ I whispered.

‘Arjan.’ It was Hurricane who spoke. She looked concerned, as though I was going to get hurt. As though she was afraid of me getting hurt.

And yet, this potential fear for my safety that she might or might not possess spurred me on. It gave me a reason to fight Scarrus. It gave me a reason to hurt him. If she cared about me, then that was a good enough reason to help her get out of here.

‘You’re getting him to shoot me with a stun gun, because you’re too afraid,’ he hissed to Hurricane. ‘You’re. Too. Weak.’

I pulled the trigger and the electrical volt shot from the end of my gun before I knew what I was doing. I heard Scarrus cry out, and the walls shuddered and shook as he crashed into them. My eyes were wide with shock and sick fascination. It had been a blind shot; an unplanned shot; a shot in the dark.

And yet he was clutching his head, slipping into unconsciousness.

‘Oh my God,’ I whispered, staggering back, staring at the gun in my hands, unable to comprehend what I’d done; that these fingers were even mine. It wasn’t even a bullet gun, but the principal was still the same.

Footsteps roared down the tunnel from behind Scarrus, charging towards us, and suddenly there were more people here—Felix and others whose names I did not know, and I could barely contemplate how they shot Scarrus down—was he dead? Were they just stun guns too? I couldn’t tell; I didn’t know; there was little that I could even comprehend right now. Bullets clattered through every inch of the tunnel, which was flashing into light and back into shadow like a lightning show in a thunderstorm, and it was so noisy and so confusing and so insane that I had no clue what was going on.

Hurricane did not hesitate. As soon as she saw Scarrus recoil back, she ran towards me, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me away down the corridor. I felt too distant as we charged down the tunnel and she threw me round a corner. I fell against a wall as her fiery eyes blazed down on me.

‘What the hell was that?’ she gasped.

‘I—I don’t know—I’m sorry—‘ I stammered, little more than a terrified rabbit caught in headlights.

She pulled a face.

‘You’re sorry?’

This stopped me in my tracks.

‘You fired a gun for the first time ever, completely unthinking, barely even with a chance to aim, and you shot the bastard straight in the head!’ she cried. Her tone of voice made it impossible to tell whether she was excited or raging, but her words suggested that she was hopefully the former.

More shots thundered through the tunnel, too close for comfort, and there was more running.

‘Are there more of them down here?’ I asked with a shudder.

Hurricane nodded absent-mindedly, her eyes turned towards the tunnel we’d just come down, even though the fighters weren’t yet in sight, and her ears pricked.

‘There must be,’ she murmured. Without warning, she turned, looking at me for the briefest moment with wide eyes, and took me by the wrist once again.

I was surprised that she was running away; I’d fully expected her to stand and fight, yet that wouldn’t be practical anyway. Secretly, I was glad that we were running.

She waited until we were far enough away from the fighting that the gunshots were no more than muffled, background noise before stopping again, just long enough so we could catch our breath.

‘What do we do now?’ I asked. ‘Shouldn’t we help?’

I couldn’t believe that the words were coming from my mouth, and I couldn’t believe that Hurricane was disagreeing.

‘We’re the bait, Arjan,’ she told me. ‘Wherever we go, the Soulless will follow. Staying behind to fight is useless.’

And with that, we were running again.

Hurricane

The tunnels underneath Hanover were like a maze. There was never just one passage, and I felt sure that at some point we were going to arrive right back where we started. Perhaps this had been a bad choice all along. I had no idea of any way out apart from the occasional signpost when we were close to a road or a train station.

But just when I thought we’d outrun them, I heard heavy footsteps coming from the left.

‘Get back!’ I hissed to Arjan, pushing him behind me before he had a chance to respond. I held out my gun in preparation.

Two men flew round the corner, almost crashing into the wall with the speed at which they rounded the bend.

‘Don’t shoot!’ he cried, throwing his hands up in the air.

I froze, my hand just millimetres from pulling the trigger as it was so instinctive to do. Felix and the other man slowed down, jogging towards us, looking panicked.

‘What the hell are you still doing down here?’ he asked, leaning on his thighs to catch his breath. ‘Why haven’t you left?’

‘We were trying,’ I said, ‘but the Soulless still think we’re down here. We need them to catch sight of us or they’ll continue fighting you.’

Felix sighed dramatically, crying out in his thick Irish accent. ‘The whole point of this was for you two to get the hell out of here! Otherwise this invasion will have achieved nothing for us.’

‘What’s going on back there?’ I asked, gesturing with my eyes to the left as though I knew that that was where the base was located.

‘It’s all in chaos,’ he breathed. ‘They set fire to something, and there have been a hell of a lot of fights.’

‘Shit,’ I whispered. ‘What happened to Scarrus?’

‘Who?’

‘Scarrus; the one with the coat and the mask,’ I said. ‘Is he dead yet?’

Felix shrugged. ‘I dunno. I stunned him. I think Jay did too.’ He gestured to his friend that stood beside him.

‘We only came prepared with stun guns,’ Jay explained apologetically. ‘Back in London, that was virtually all we used.’

I blinked. ‘You came from London?’

‘Yeah,’ Felix said, as though it was obvious. Considering his strong Irish accent and his predominantly Latin first name, it most definitely wasn’t.

‘There are some people back in Berlin who came from London,’ I said. My face stayed serious, but Felix and Jay’s eyes lit up.

‘There are?’ Jay asked. ‘Who? How many of them? I heard that practically everyone from London was killed or otherwise missing. I know a couple of them got to Paris, but I haven’t heard anything about Berlin.’

‘They only arrived about two days before I left,’ I said. ‘But do you know Amy and Casper?’

Felix and Jay exchanged surprised glances. It looked as if a miracle had just been cast. I didn’t allow myself to rejoice in the happiness.

‘Yeah, Casper was, like, one of my best friends,’ Felix said.

‘What about Leah, Linzy and Dan?’ I asked.

‘No way!’ Jay cried. ‘They’re all there?’

‘Yeah. But seriously, we need to go—‘

‘I think we should come back to Berlin with you,’ Felix decided on the spot, his face igniting into a broad smile. Judging by how amazing the happiness looked on him, I came to the conclusion that he hadn’t been especially happy for quite a while.

He looked around, pulling a grim face. ‘Hanover is already fucked; we need someplace else to hide.’

‘You go back to Berlin then,’ I said quickly, realising the urgency of moving on and getting out of here. ‘Pass on the message about what happened here. But we’re not going back just yet.’

‘Why not?’ asked Felix. ‘Where’re you going?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But seriously, we’ve got to head off before they—‘

‘What’s this then?’ The chilling voice came from the end of the tunnel.

‘—find us,’ I finished in a whisper.

I drew my gun at the same time as Felix, Jay and even Arjan drew theirs. We were all prepared.

A man and a woman strode down the corridor, both wearing masks. The man was wearing a suit. The woman had on a short black dress and a lot of make-up, with immaculately preened blonde curls.

‘Get out of here now,’ Felix said, looking at all of us.

‘What?’ I whispered, suddenly afraid, as much as I insisted on suppressing it.

‘I don’t know why everyone wants Arjan so much,’ he said, ‘but my guess is that he’s seriously important, therefore you gotta get yourselves out of here. Jay, go with them.’

‘I ain’t leaving!’ Jay cried, considering that Felix thought this way as a personal insult.

‘Stay then,’ Felix snapped, ‘but get out of here, Hurricane!’

‘Any one of you move, and we’ll shoot,’ the Soulless woman warned. Underneath all her make-up and fake beauty, her voice was rough and cold.

‘Too late for that,’ Felix jeered. Up until now, I thought—no, I knew that my mind worked at something close to twice the capacity of a normal person’s—that was why I could never sleep—but before even I knew what was going on, Felix shoved me backwards so that I staggered into the wall.

‘Run!’ he yelled. ‘Just get out of here!’

There was nothing I could do. The Soulless had their guns out—bullet guns; not stun guns. It was run or fight, and we couldn’t risk fighting; not whilst Arjan was with me. He meant everything to the Dreamers, and still I had not a clue why.

‘Come on,’ Arjan whispered in my ear, walking backwards, his eyes always on the Soulless who were barred from reaching us by the wall of Felix and Jay that stood between the two parties. He began to run; now it was his turn to drag me. He took my hand in his; both cold and sweaty at the same time, pulling me back faster and faster. Despite how my mind begged to break away from him, my feet wouldn’t comply, and they followed his pull, giving in to the hopelessness of the situation. We turned and hurried off, round the corner, and numbly I felt myself press on.

Not two seconds after we were out of the firing line, I heard one colossal blast, followed by a cry of agony. He called out my name and I froze, crashing into the wall in my shock, the world spiralling into insanity. I couldn’t tell for sure who had screamed, but it sounded horribly Irish.