Hurricane Heart

Arjan

Hurricane’s eyes were practically on fire with fury as she slammed the car door shut so hard that the vehicle shook, and roared the engine into life without even a glance at me. I didn’t dare ask what was wrong. She was quite clearly a bomb, needing only the slightest reason to explode.

Her foot slammed onto the accelerator and the car shot forward so fast that my head smacked back into the headrest. I was too smart to complain.

We didn’t speak again until sometime during mid-afternoon—I’d given up actually looking at the clock long ago, because it only ever depressed me—when I noticed her pull onto yet another rode signposting Berlin.

‘Are we going to Berlin?’ I eventually plucked up the courage to ask. Hopefully she had calmed down enough after our early morning ordeal with the Soulless and her exasperating conversation with Carl shortly after.

‘We’re going where we’re not about to get killed,’ she muttered, her tone bitter. ‘If that’s Berlin, then so be it.’

I knew we weren’t supposed to be going back to Berlin. Although I’d learnt by now that Hurricane made her own rules, she was, unfortunately, bound by this man who I thought was called the Master, who was evidently in charge of her group. And I knew that he wanted us to stay away. Why? I had no idea, and I’d given up trying to ask.

I didn’t dare argue, though, for fear of worsening her mood even further, so we fell back into a tense and uncomfortable silence. The hum of the air conditioning was the only sound to be heard inside the car, accompanied by the tuneless roar of countless motors driving past.

About an hour later, Hurricane’s phone rang. She practically growled in frustration, but was currently driving on the outside lane, therefore found it easy enough to pull across onto the hard shoulder and answer it.

‘Carl,’ she muttered, unbuckling her seatbelt and swinging the door open. The next part of the conversation was obscured as the car door slammed shut, creating a wall between us. I already knew, however, that this was abnormal. From the routine we’d got into over the last couple of weeks, I knew that Carl only seemed to call every couple of days. The fact that he only last called about six hours ago unnerved me.

Hurricane

‘What do you mean we’re not coming back to Berlin?’ I demanded, angry lava boiling up inside of me, not dormant for long, but all too ready to erupt. ‘You expect me to stay out here, a sitting target until the Soulless find us?’

‘I’m not expecting you to stay a sitting target,’ Carl said in such a patronising voice that I wanted to throttle him, ‘but the Master says he doesn’t want you coming back just yet.’

‘And I want to know why,’ I said furiously.

‘Because otherwise, the Soulless will be on us in minutes,’ he replied. ‘Wherever you go right now, trouble follows, and coming back here isn’t going to be an exception.’

‘And when’s it gonna change?’ I challenged. ‘What stops me from being out here for the rest of my life?’

‘You said you wanted something different,’ Carl muttered. It was the wrong thing to say.

‘You—‘

‘I’m sorry!’ he cried from the other end of the phone. ‘I know this isn’t what you wanted! I was just—‘

‘Being an idiot,’ I finished, largely unforgiving.

‘Yeah,’ he said, realising now that agreeing with me was the only way forward. ‘But I’ll come out and meet you tonight, if you like. There isn’t really any news, but we could still, y’know, talk.’

This was unexpected. Suddenly, the anger within me waned, if only a little, and was replaced with a strange kind of thrill. Happiness was shallow, though, not to mention extraordinarily fragile, so I locked it away quickly in the back of my mind and replied with intense indifference.

‘Yeah, if you like,’ I said. ‘I’m sick of non-Dreamers.’

‘Where are you now?’ he asked. It was a stupid question, considering that the only reason he had called was because I had been spotted far too close to the outskirts of Berlin for the Master’s liking.

‘’Bout an hour west of Berlin,’ I said. ‘You should know that now.’

‘Meet me at Base Four then,’ he decided. ‘You’ll be able to get there by nightfall easily, and I won’t be long after.’

‘Good idea,’ I said, knowing how much it hurt to say such a thing to Carl. He’d never let me live it down.

‘Wow, I think being out there in the real world has changed you, Hurricane,’ he said.

‘Shut up or I’ll take it back,’ I snapped, my bad mood having not entirely passed.

‘’Good idea,’’ I heard him quoting quietly but proudly in the background. ‘Hurricane said I had a ‘good idea.’’

‘I’m hanging up now,’ I warned. As much as anything, I didn’t want Carl to put me in a good mood. Because happy emotion could destroy just as much as sad emotion could. And going from one extreme to the other as quickly as I was doing was the worst thing of all.

‘I can’t promise I’ll be alone, though,’ Carl added. ‘In fact, I probably won’t.’

‘Not Tobias this time, though,’ I told him. Normally, it would have been said like a question, but I didn’t run that risk. I couldn’t act like I was giving him any choice in the matter at all.

‘I’ll try,’ he said, not promising anything. ‘If I can, I’ll bring Jonas, but I’ll have to see what the Master says. See you later.’

‘Yeah, see you,’ I said indifferently, hanging up and sighing incredulously. As close as the Master and I were to one another, I was beginning to dislike him more and more each day.

I got back in the car and took the first turning off of the motorway that we came across.

‘Not going to Berlin anymore, then?’ Arjan asked.

‘Not really,’ I replied indirectly.

‘Where are we going then?’ he asked.

‘Base Four, not that that means anything to you.’

Nevertheless, he still asked the question.

‘Where’s Base Four?’

‘None of your business.’ Another thing he had to hold against me. I had no doubt that it would crop up next time we had an argument, regardless of what it was about to begin with. Whatever we started fighting about, it always ended up being about me and my past and my emotion and my life philosophy. It got damn tedious sometimes.

It didn’t help that, after my mental rant about the Master, I was now doing just what he did to me to Arjan. But I’d been told not to tell Arjan anything. And I was following that. I didn’t like authority, but I followed the Master. He was the only Dreamer leader in Berlin I had ever known, considering he’d been in the position nearly six years. There would be an election soon, in fact—June sometime, possibly July? And I had voted for him last time. And I might even vote for him again. He might be terrible at justifying why he got me to do stuff, but at least he was giving those tasks to the right person. I certainly couldn’t say that life as a Dreamer was boring. And he understood me as much as anyone in the world could attempt to understand me.

We drove south for another three hours or so, feeling horribly like we were just going back down the path we’d travelled up yesterday, and arrived down the secluded forest road by the time the sky was a deep, inky blue.

‘Oh yeah,’ I added, my mood having finally improved enough to talk to people like they were humans again. ‘Carl’s coming along tonight.’

I remembered that I had forgotten to tell Arjan the most productive part of my phone conversation.

‘What?’ he asked. I wasn’t sure what emotion I could detect flashing behind his eyes. There was undoubtedly a little excitement and intrigue—anything that meant that something was happening was exciting when you were sitting in a car for eleven hours a day. But there was also undeniable fear. I remembered all too vividly what had happened last time we’d had a visit. Arjan had ended up in a cell, and I ended up feeling more remorseful and upset than I had in the last three years put together.

We moved swiftly and silently into the base, hopefully without being detected by any Soulless, and shut the door, before venturing downstairs together. This base was much the same as all the others, and definitely one that I had been to before, though exactly when I couldn’t remember, but it still felt a little comforting. We were home after a long day out; it was just that home changed its location every night.

Arjan seemed to be growing used to these places now. He went and sat in one of the armchairs without thinking twice about the tatty upholstering or the creaky frame.

‘When are they going to arrive?’ he asked.

‘Soon,’ I said vaguely, unsure of anything more specific. Looking at how relaxed and, well, ordinary he looked sitting in that chair made me hurt thinking about what to say. But I knew Jonas, who was hopefully coming with Carl, and, as nice a person as he was, he was notoriously unforgiving towards non-Dreamers after a harsh upbringing, and he would save no mercy for my ‘prisoner.’

‘Arjan,’ I began apprehensively. He sat up straight and looked alert simply because this was the first time I had ever been apprehensive about anything. ‘I’ve no doubt that whoever ends up coming tonight is going to treat you much the same as Tobias did. So for your own benefit, I recommend that you go into the prison room now.’

He looked scared, but didn’t take it as badly as I had feared. At least he didn’t argue or resist.

‘When are they going to realise that I’m on your side?’ he asked with a sigh.

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘When all this is over. When you choose to come back with me—if that’s what you choose. When they witness some of the great stuff you’ve done.’ Okay, I was being far too kind towards him. I was acting like I cared about him, once again. Of course I didn’t care about him. Yeah, we were friends, kind of, but that was it. All this jumping in front of a bullet for him crap was just about saving the secret. No. I didn’t care about him anymore than anyone else.

So why did my heart also bleed for him?

‘You do understand that if I knew what you wanted from me, I would tell you the whole truth here and now, don’t you?’ he asked. I was a little taken aback at his honesty, but he was a good person like that. A good person, but only for the sake of the Dreamers. I couldn’t make my war personal. I couldn’t let emotion back into my life. Everything I did, every time I smiled at him, every time I told him to run and took his hand and handed him a gun and saved his life, it was all just for the sake of getting close enough to him to find out his secret. The Soulless couldn’t get their hands on him if we wanted to survive. That was all he was: another strategy in this unending war.

‘I know that,’ I said, making my voice soft. That was the point all along: to get close to him. That was what I had to do. But it was all pretend. It had to be pretend. ‘But I don’t know what I’m looking for, so what hope have you got?’

I heard the clattering opening of a door upstairs and my heart leapt into action.

‘Quick!’ I said, hissing in a loud whisper. ‘In that door.’ I pointed to the one on the far right and, resentfully but obediently, Arjan swung the door open and shuffled inside, glancing around. I shut it and locked it before he’d even found the light switch, and I heard him protest, but what could I do? I could already hear footsteps coming down the stairs and I’d barely got my act together and stopped fretting (not that I would ever admit to being stressed or panicked) by the time the lower door bleeped open and the handle turned.