Hurricane Heart

Hurricane

‘Carl,’ I said, looking artificially pleased to see him, running a hand casually through my hair as I moved towards him. As I had hoped, Jonas, dark haired and pale skinned, moved in behind him.

‘Hey Hurricane,’ he said, followed by Carl’s greeting.

‘Hi Jonas,’ I replied, genuinely sort of glad to see him. ‘Long time no see.’

‘I know,’ he agreed, moving further into the room and closing the outer door. For a short moment, we stood around; two friends and one outsider who felt she had found a place in this group.

‘Where is he?’ Jonas asked. ‘Can I see him?’

‘He’s in there,’ I said, gesturing behind me towards the cell, knowing this time that I had done the right thing. As Jonas stepped forward, Carl gave a nod of approval directed towards me.

‘You left the key in the lock,’ he commented, looking down at the door handle.

‘Oh, yeah,’ I said awkwardly. For once, I decided to opt for the half truth. ‘We only arrived about five minutes before you got here, and I was just in the process of putting Arjan in there when I heard the door up above.’

Jonas nodded, giving me a slightly curt smile. ‘Sure.’ Although it sounded innocent enough, I had no doubt there was a little sarcasm hidden in that ‘sure.’

He unlocked the door and stepped inside. A small, slightly grimy, dimly lit room revealed that Arjan had indeed found the light switch, but it wasn’t really bright enough to be comforting. Peering in over Jonas’s shoulder, I saw him sitting in the corner, putting on quite an impressive ‘depressed prisoner’ performance, but, knowing him as I did, something that was most definitely acting. Was this where we were then? Was our relationship now so good that we felt the need to flat out lie about it to other Dreamers? That was not good. We should never have reached this stage.

But that was where it became complicated. Because I was supposed to ‘get close’ to Arjan. So surely he was supposed to think our relationship was better than it actually was. So maybe that was all that was happening—I was playing my part in a very convincing manner, and he in turn was falling for it. Perhaps when I said that we had to hide from the Dreamers it was merely further ‘proof’ for him that we were ‘in a relationship.’ If we weren’t, I’d have nothing to hide from my friends. But he believed we were in love, or at least close friends, and he believed that the Dreamers wouldn’t support that, so he believed he had to act. It was complicated.

But we weren’t in love, and we weren’t friends, so that was okay. Surely everything we were was nothing more than an elaborate performance, right?

‘You haven’t chained him up,’ Jonas commented. Was this all part of the ‘performance,’ or was he just expressing his opinion on how non-Dreamers should be treated? Or was this whole thing more complicated than I preferred to analyse?

‘Like I said,’ I said, ‘I was in a rush.’

‘Yeah,’ Jonas said, but I still felt that there was an underlying sarcastic note. ‘Well, are you going to do it now?’

‘If you think I should,’ I said, acting more sure than I felt.

‘Might as well,’ he said. ‘He’s our prisoner.’

I moved across the room and, even though it was small, it was like crossing to the other side of the world. I had three sets of eyes resting on me, all accusing, and all for different reasons, to the point where I couldn’t tell which were real and which were made up, and I had never felt more conscious of every tiny move I made than at that point.

I was the Hurricane. I could do this. What did it matter what any of them thought?

Bending down in front of Arjan, I couldn’t tell whether the fear in his eyes was real or pretend, but it scared me all the same, and I refused to make eye contact with him after that as I reached for the shackles at the side and bound his wrists with it, also fixing him to the wall.

‘That’s better,’ Jonas said. ‘Come on.’

I followed, feeling strangely reluctant about it, shutting the door and locking it despite the fact that there was no way Arjan could get out of those chains.

He sat down, now relaxed, in the armchair that Arjan had occupied scarcely ten minutes ago, and Carl took the sofa, leaving the second chair for me. I sat in it, taking off my jacket and trying to relax despite the tension building inside me.

Jonas began to laugh. Carl and I both looked, first at each other, then at him, as though he was mentally deranged.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘What have you been doing to him, Hurricane?’ he asked, surprisingly cheerful. ‘The guy looks frickin’ terrified! It’s hilarious.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, failing to feel the same enthusiasm as Jonas, but hoping I could pass it off as one of my constant ‘anti-emotion’ moments.

‘You’re supposed to be getting closer to him, though, aren’t you?’ Carl pointed out. ‘He’s not going to trust you enough to tell you what he knows if you continue treating him like this—not that I’m complaining as such.’

‘What do you expect her to do?’ Jonas asked. ‘He’s our prisoner—if I were her, I’d bloody make sure he was treated like one. He’s a non-Dreamer, therefore he doesn’t count. I would be way harsher on him if I were you. I wouldn’t let him out of the chains in the first place.’

‘Jesus, guys!’ I cried out incredulously, not exactly emotional, but still passionate about what I was saying. ‘Whatever I do, it seems to be wrong!’

‘No!’ Carl said, ‘I think you’re doing great, it’s just that you’ve kind of been asked to do two things that completely contradict each other. Keep a prisoner and build a pretend relationship with him.’

And that was when I began to get confused. Because that was when I began to lose track of what was real and what was pretend. Did I like Arjan? Was I pretending to like him, or was I still treating him like a prisoner? Did he like me? When I went in to chain him up, was the fear on his face genuine or all a performance? And what did that mean for our relationship?

‘Yeah,’ Jonas said, ‘it’s not an easy task. But what is your relationship like anyway? Do you think you’re at the stage where he’d trust you with any of his secrets yet?’

‘Don’t forget what I told you ages ago,’ Carl added, ‘he might not even remember this memory. You might have to somehow trigger it.’

‘And it may not be a memory at all,’ Jonas continued, ‘there are thousands of ways in which he could be special.’

‘How long do you think it will be before he confides in you?’ asked Carl.

I felt like screaming. I nearly did, but I managed to snatch it back at the last second and maintain my somewhat emotionless exterior. Inside, I was a warzone, but nobody had to know that.

‘Seriously you two!’ I said, ‘give me a chance to think!’

‘Sorry,’ Carl said a little sheepishly.

I had no idea how much to tell them, because, once again, I had no idea what was real anymore. I was losing touch with the real world.

This was when imagination became dangerous. When the lines between reality and fantasy became blurred and distorted, imagination had the power to destroy you. Almost as much as emotion. And I had never experienced this before; reality and dreams had always been kept separate in my mind, but things were changing, and it was all Arjan’s fault.

For instance, did I tell the Dreamers that Arjan and I had shared some beautiful, even emotional moments together? I didn’t know, because I had no idea whether those moments were something I was acting and Arjan thought were true; something Arjan was acting and I thought were true; something that we were both acting, or something that really was genuinely real. God, this mission would be the death of me!

I had no idea whose side I was even on anymore; the Dreamers, Arjan’s, or both. Could I be on both at the same time? Surely I could, and yet they seemed to contradict each other. One wanted my captive to be a prisoner; the other wanted him to be a friend.

So I kept quiet. It was all I could do.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, knowing it was most unhelpful. But, like Arjan told me, I was running from my life. I didn’t know the difference between truth and lies. I had so many secrets that I couldn’t even tell if they were secrets anymore. I was used to not telling people anything they didn’t need to know.

‘I agree,’ I continued, trying to bring some point into this visit, ‘if it’s a memory we’re looking for, I really don’t think it’s one that he remembers. But other than that, I can’t answer any of your questions, or your theories.’

Did I tell them what Arjan had really said on the subject: the whole thing about how if he knew what I wanted from him, he would tell it to me? Or did that mean that I was fighting for the wrong side? And should I even give a fuck about whose side I was on? It was my decision, and no one else’s.

That was ridiculous. I was Dreamer until the end. I was Hurricane; the best Dreamer there was; the invincible Dreamer, invincible because I had nothing to lose and therefore nothing to fear. It didn’t matter if I died, and I had no one else to worry about—no one else’s death or pain to fear, no other responsibilities, so there was nothing I couldn’t do. And that couldn’t, wouldn’t change. Not even for Arjan.

I changed the subject, looking at Carl and Jonas’s slightly dejected faces.

‘How long do you think this will go on for?’ I asked despairingly. ‘Because even once I get this secret from Arjan, the Soulless will still be hunting us, they’ll still want him, and we’ll still have to keep hiding until that changes.’

Carl and Jonas looked at each other.

‘We have three theories on that,’ Carl said.

‘The first,’ Jonas said, as though he was speaking on behalf of his friend, ‘is the ideal one. It’s the idea that once the Soulless find out that you’ve got this so-called secret from Arjan, they will give up hunting him. Maybe they’ll hunt us; maybe they’ll hunt you; but they hopefully won’t hunt him, because there’s now nothing to gain from doing that.

‘The second idea is that it will come down to force. If you get this information from Arjan and they still pursue you, either because they don’t know that you know his secret, because they still need him or because they want to punish him, we’ll have no choice but to retaliate. And if it comes down to war, then we’re at war. There may be no choice.’

He smiled grimly. I didn’t.

‘I’d rather not, actually,’ I said. Whatever Casper and that lot said about war right now, that was England. Things were undoubtedly getting worse all around Europe—Europe officially lost contact with America recently (and I hoped that that was a good sign, i.e. the Dreamers coming into power over in the states, but I also doubted it highly) but it was nowhere near as bad as it could be. We weren’t at war just yet.

I noticed the prolonged silence, tense and growing more unbearable as every second passed.

‘So, what’s the third theory?’ I prompted. Jonas looked at Carl, muttering ‘your turn,’ so I knew it was bad even before I heard it, but it still stabbed me like a knife through my heart the moment Carl uttered the words.

‘The third theory,’ he said ominously, ‘is not one we’d choose, but may turn out inevitable. The third theory is that we have to kill the boy.’