Hurricane Heart

Arjan

As Hurricane moved in an almost dreamlike state out to the sofa, she sat down and the exterior that I was so tantalisingly close to cracking hardened and solidified once again. She looked at me with her usual stare—for just a few moments tonight, she had dropped her guard, and those moments had been precious, but now the walls behind her eyes were back up again.

‘Go and sleep,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay out here.’

I didn’t need telling twice; as much as I wanted to stay with her, I knew our beautiful moment had ended, and I was near enough dead on my feet by now anyway. I shuffled into one of the bedrooms, collapsing onto the narrow but surprisingly comfortable bed before I’d even taken my shoes off, and fell asleep within seconds. Tonight had been a long night.

Once again, I had no idea where I was. Gaseous lights burned in the air; just like in the last dream, they could have been stars or they could have been city lights, or they could have been something else entirely. Thick, grey smoke filled the air so that I could not see more than a few feet ahead, and there was a rhythmic chugging sound coming from my left. When I turned to see the source of the noise and the smoke, I discovered a machine. It was a great, ugly, industrial beast; somewhat resembling a steam engine; the sort of machine that I had never seen in real life; only in historical books.

And then, I heard a sound from behind me.

Turning, I saw Hurricane. She was wearing her dress again; the dress the colour of blood, which blew in the wind, also whipping her hair into a dark halo around her head. She held a gun out ready, and for a moment, I was afraid, but then I realised I was holding one too. She pointed it past me and walked forward. I turned to face the direction she was facing, and walked with her. We passed through the thickest cloud of smoke yet; so thick that it almost obscured the myriad of lights that danced iridescently around us, and walked right up to the machine.

In the centre of the machine were people. Their faces were blurry, but I knew who they were. Rudolph Reinhardt; the German Dictator; was the first person I recognised. Kristine van der Veer; the Dutch Dictator; was the second. Then followed Robert Cattermole and John Kempton; the leaders of Britain and America. The more I looked, the more familiar, yet unfriendly, faces I saw.

And before I realised what was going on, bullets were shooting from both mine and Hurricane’s guns; an ugly, destructive symphony, and the leaders of the world were all falling; falling like dominoes; falling before they could even scream. They collapsed to the floor in a great heap, some of them crashing back against the dark, steel walls of the gargantuan machine we seemed to be surrounded by.

The last one to go was Reinhardt. He was Hurricane’s job. As she pointed her gun right in between his eyes and fired, he fell, and all the sparkling lights that surrounded us went out. At the same time, the machine silenced itself; stopping its noisy chugging instantly, the steam it produced slowly dissipating into the atmosphere. We were left in silence and darkness, but I was not afraid. Instead, I merely walked over to van der Veer; the ruthless woman who had ruled over my home country all my life, and placed my foot on her chest in victory, firing a triumphant bullet high up into the air. In this darkness and silence, Hurricane and I had won.

I woke up. Someone was banging on my door.

‘Arjan?’ It was Hurricane. She sounded in a bad mood.

‘I’m...awake,’ I called out, still half asleep. I rolled over onto my stomach, my face pressed against the musty smelling pillow. As I blinked, a still image, like a paused movie, of my dream burned into my mind.

What the hell was that all about?

It was the most lucid dream I had ever had. Totally unambiguous, it was stronger than even my memories of times as recent as yesterday. I could remember every last detail.

‘Arjan!’

‘I’m coming,’ I groaned, loud enough for her to hear, rolling off of the bed and up onto my feet, where I swayed slightly and walked over to the door.

Hurricane, as usual, was already fully dressed, even down to her jacket and her shoes. Her eye makeup was perfectly applied. Her hair had been carefully straightened so that it hung in a sweeping black and pink curtain down her back, still damp at the ends from where she’d washed it. Needless to say, I hadn’t even showered yet. I was still wearing my clothes from yesterday.

‘Hurry up,’ she said curtly, looking even more alert and on the edge than usual. Memories of yesterday explained to me why it was so important that we were fast. We were truly on the run now—the Soulless could be standing outside, ready and waiting, for all I knew. But every second earlier we got out of here was a second’s difference we put between us and the enemies.

Twenty minutes later, we were leaving the little building and running out into the cold, crisp May morning, not stopping for even a moment as we threw everything into the car boot and jumped into the two front seats.

‘Where now?’ I asked.

Hurricane shrugged, pretty much as I had expected her to. ‘I don’t know. Anywhere. We just need to get out.’

It seemed that she really had no idea where we were going, because as we joined the main road, we ended up going east, back round the outskirts of Hanover, and then continuing in the direction of the signposts to Berlin.

I could think of nothing but last night. The horrors, however, of Felix’s probable demise, had been pushed to the back of my memory. Instead, my mind was filled with the events that had taken place afterwards.

Hurricane. I had been so close to cracking her—so close, much closer than ever. Victory was tangible, and I hadn’t even told her anything about myself. I had almost seen what was behind the iron mask.

Because I knew, for sure, that once I saw who she really was; once I helped her overcome this hurdle of emotion and let her show her true thoughts to me, my challenge would be achieved. I could be satisfied. I didn’t even know why I needed to get through her so badly; I just had to.

I still didn’t know what she wanted from me, but perhaps, if she knew herself, I would tell her. I knew from the day we started out that she had never expected me to compromise—anything she wanted from me would have to, in her eyes, be forced out, but it wasn’t like that. If she wanted to know something that would help her or her people, I would tell her. Why shouldn’t I?

Because the simple truth was that now I had spent this much time with her and faced so many near death situations with her, I liked her. I hated it—I hated admitting it even to myself, and there was no way I would ever tell her—she would probably kick me out or erase my memory soon enough anyway, but it was true, and I couldn’t deny it. I liked her.

***

I wasn’t sure what made me do it. Maybe it was an inexplicable but strong moment of sudden kindness. Maybe it was the revelation that I did, for some strange reason that was even more inexplicable than my kindness, actually like Hurricane. Or maybe it was just pure curiosity on my part.

But whatever the reason, after two hours of driving in silence down the autobahn, I decided to mention my dream.

‘Hurricane?’ I began tentatively. Even after all this time, I still couldn’t quite get used to calling her by that name, even though I’d never known her by any other.

‘Yeah?’ she asked. ‘Yeah’ was a good sign. ‘Yeah’ signalled a better mood than if she’d asked ‘what’ or ‘huh’ or just told me to be quiet.

‘Well,’ I said, unsure how to begin. I wasn’t used to actually bringing up conversations with her. We spoke when we needed to speak, and on most other occasions she either started it up or speaking was simply a necessity; such as last night, when the opportunity had been too good to miss. ‘Last night, I had a dream.’

I didn’t need to say anymore. To some, saying this would have been something to be treated with severity; to be suppressed and punished. To some, this was to be commended. And to some, such as all those who had lived in the world long gone—the better world by far—it would have been simply insignificant.

But Hurricane’s reaction was as though what I had just said could have caused life or death.

‘You had a dream?’ she repeated, almost in astonishment. I didn’t know why she was quite so impressed. She knew I dreamt all the time, and so did everyone else, whether it was spoken about or not. ‘What was it about? Tell me Arjan!’

‘I—‘ I stammered. Of course, that had originally been the natural next part of my conversation anyway, but the way she asked made me forget everything I was going to say.

‘What was it about, Arjan?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘the reason I mentioned it—because dreaming isn’t that unusual, right?—the reason I mentioned it was because I think it means something. You were in it with me—it was all dark and confusing, and every country leader from around the world was there.’

By this point I was genuinely surprised that Hurricane hadn’t crashed the car yet. There was no way that any of her attention was focused on the road ahead. She was looking at me more often than she looked at the highway.

‘Go on,’ she prompted.

‘There was this giant machine, too. It was really loud and producing lots of steam and keeping the lights on. But we shot all the dictators, just like that. And as you shot the last one, the machine went silent and all the lights switched off. And then I woke up. I have no idea what it was about. Do you?’

She was silent for a long time, but I didn’t dare interrupt, however I did seriously think about offering to drive the car before she killed us both. She was deep in thought.

‘Machine,’ she mused. ‘And then the machine went off...’

‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘Do you—do you want me to drive?’

‘No,’ she said a little sharply. But then she pulled abruptly across the lanes of the autobahn, going so quickly that I had to hold onto my seat. She stopped at the side of the road and got out of the car.

‘Where are you going?’ I called, unbuckling my seatbelt and jumping out after her.

‘I need to think,’ she said, shouting over the roar of countless car engines. ‘But I can’t do it with all this noise and distraction.’

She turned and disappeared with a sweep into the trees. I hurried after her.

‘Hurricane,’ I said apprehensively, ‘this isn’t a good idea. You know the Soulless are after us.’

I could barely believe it. I was talking about her and the Soulless and all of it like I knew what was going on.

‘Shut up,’ she said, typically coldly. ‘I need to get away from the road.’