Hurricane Heart

Hurricane

Desperate times called for desperate measures, so after finishing my phone conversation, we continued driving on the autobahn for a few more hours, always keeping close to the city, and as the blanket of night began to tighten its hold over the world, I sped into Berlin. By the time we reached a tall, many storey hotel close to the city centre, it was late twilight. Lights were coming on in buildings as far as the eye could see, dancing orange and yellow and white, as one with the map of stars beginning to shine above in the perfectly clear sky. The cityscape was silhouetted in black, and hues of blinding orange and gold could be seen on the western horizon where the sun was setting in a sky of fire and blood.

‘Hurricane,’ Arjan said. His eyes were wide. I could sense it too.

There was a storm in the air. The atmosphere was electric with tension that was far too tightly strung, ready to implode with the slightest incentive. The world had gone silent around us. The air was warm but not muggy, the thunder clouds were non-existent, rain was far away. No. This was not a mere storm. This was, indeed, my hurricane.

I threw the bag of whatever clothes and food I had managed to grab from the boot over my shoulder, and then we checked in to a room on the sixth floor, much the same as usual. Heading into the room, I shut the door hard, leaning against it for a few moments until Arjan noticed.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ I replied in a murmur, stepping forward and going to sit on the bed that I claimed as mine. Unusually, this was the one nearest the window. I wanted to be able to look out across the city tonight. Something told me that I would need to.

I had so much I needed to tell him. And, more than anything, I needed to get the secret out of him, whatever the cost. Just for tonight, I would have to put my own emotionless self on hold in favour of the bigger picture. Jonas was getting desperate. But his theory was just a theory; just an idea put across through lack of time and effort as much as anything. He just hadn’t found anything so far.

I wasn’t about to tell Arjan what Jonas had told me on the phone. Not until it was proven true, and ideally that would never be the case. I couldn’t bear to think that all of this would be in vain. But there were a few things I felt he needed to know. If he did possess a secret, then I needed to earn his trust. And I would do that by telling him the truth. And sometimes, the truth hurt.

‘Listen,’ I said as a way of introducing an important topic. He sat up from where he lay resting against the headboard of the bed, instantly alert.

‘What?’ His voice was hushed, little more than a whisper. He knew I meant business.

I took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be easy. For the next few hours, I was going to have to give up everything I knew and every moral I possessed, and tell him everything that it was hard to say.

I moved across the room, perching on the end of his crisply folded quilt so that we were close enough to whisper if needed.

How did I start? I was never lost for words, not ever, but there had to be a first time for everything, didn’t there?

I didn’t want to talk too much about Arjan’s ‘secret,’ because I didn’t want him to think too much about what it could be. If he did, he was more likely to lie, more likely to perfect a cover story, more likely to weigh up the full implications of telling me the truth. I wanted to believe that he was on my side, but you couldn’t be too careful in a world like this, so I could never be sure.

‘I don’t plan for this to go on for much longer,’ I eventually chose to say. ‘I’m sure you understand that I don’t want to be out here anymore than you do.’

‘Yeah,’ he mumbled in agreement.

‘So I was wondering,’ I continued tentatively, as harsh a direction to take as it might be, ‘do you know what’s going to happen when it’s all over?’

Whatever I had planned, his reply was more shocking than I could have prepared for. I had hoped for, but never in a million years truly expected his response.

‘I want to join you,’ he said. ‘For all I’ve said about you, and for all that I still resent you for, you’re actually not that bad. And now you’ve told me so much about the world we live in, I can’t just ignore that, can I?’

Excitement surged through my heart and I could see, mirrored in Arjan’s face, the hope that must be portrayed on mine.

‘You really would join us?’ I asked, my understandable trepidations falling away. ‘Even if it meant never seeing your family again?’

He pulled a face. ‘That’s the hard bit. But I’m here now. I’m surprised you’re even giving me a choice.’

That was when everything became so much harder.

‘Actually, I’m not,’ I said, my voice no more than a whisper. His face, so instantly enlightened by our inspiring conversation, suddenly fell. My heart hurt with the remorse I felt at telling him these things, but there was no other way. At least this remorse showed me that I was still human.

‘What do you mean?’ he whispered.

‘I mean that you may not get a choice at all,’ I said. ‘As much as I wish it could be done another way, the Soulless are still after you, and if they don’t stop, there’s a chance that desperate measures must be taken.’

I could see the panic in his eyes. His breathing grew faster and his hands curled into fists.

‘Desperate measures,’ he repeated in a monotone, ‘like...what?’

And suddenly I couldn’t bear it. Because hurting Arjan would hurt me too. And I was a selfish creature. I couldn’t take the heartache. I was running from emotion; running from everything that made me a human, and I didn’t want it to change.

‘They’re only distant possibilities,’ I lied. ‘Unless something goes horribly wrong, you’re a Dreamer now, Arjan, kind of if you like it or not.’ I smiled through my lies, pushing the guilt to the back of my mind. I couldn’t tell him the truth. I replaced it with a fake and pathetic performance of happiness, acting like I was reading stage directions from a script. Because I wasn’t really pleased that he was with us, was I? He would only be a hindrance.

He looked a little confused; he’d no doubt assumed that my conversation was going to take a darker turn to what it did, but relieved all the same. In fact, he even looked happy.

‘So, we’re partners now,’ he confirmed.

‘Partners,’ I breathed, hating myself, thanking myself, hurting myself. I couldn’t do this. Unless something changed, Arjan might die—nothing was certain just yet, but it was so distinct—and I wasn’t even telling him the truth about that.

But something else was happening in this moment too. The word ‘partners,’ innocent though it was, seemed to have a double meaning.

And everything that the Master had wanted me to do on this mission was falling neatly into place.

Someone once said that we could do anything we put our minds to. I was about to prove that point.

I was going to act emotional.

(Because it was only acting, wasn’t it?)

Of course it was only acting. I didn’t feel anything real for Arjan.

When Arjan had said ‘partners,’ I had thought of working partners. He had thought of romance.

But surely that was what I wanted, purely in terms of what the Master had asked me to do. Surely that meant that this mission was not in vain. If I was going to get him to trust me completely, I had to do that.

So that was the only reason (of course it was the only reason, wasn’t it?) that, when he leant forward, I leant forward too.

‘Guess we’d better get used to spending time together then,’ he murmured, laughing slightly.

‘I guess so,’ I agreed. We were close. Too close if you asked me.

And yet I couldn’t say that I wasn’t enjoying it.

No! It was all an act. It was all acting.

‘You know I don’t dislike you anymore,’ he whispered, his voice intriguing me.

I was playing along. I was only going along with Arjan’s feelings and the Master’s plan. Absolutely nothing more.

‘And you know I don’t think of you as a hindrance now,’ I whispered back in way of reply.

A smile twitched across his lips, his deep, sea green eyes sparkling with thought. They were so close now, gazing into mine, one lock of his dark hair falling across his right eye. I had never really taken it in before, but he was a good looking man. In fact, he was just the sort of man I liked most.

But this was only pretend.

His lips were mere inches from mine, his pupils, large in the dim, yellow light of the darkened room, peering out from beneath thick lashes. And I was leaning in too. I could feel my heart beating almost to the point of explosion. And it was all an act, of course it was only pretend, there was nothing between us...and yet, as I looked into his eyes, full of complexity and hope and intrigue, I forgot about it all. I forgot about the Soulless and I forgot about the danger and I even forgot about Hurricane. This time, I was just myself.

Our lips met, parting ever so slightly, hesitant at first, barely touching, but then I felt his hand on my back, holding me tightly, pulling me closer...

My phone rang.

I pulled away abruptly, shocked out of my spellbound state, shuffling backwards towards the end of the bed.

‘Don’t answer it,’ Arjan said, and my heart ached to agree with him. But only in a pretend way. None of this was real. We weren’t supposed to fall in love.

But when did anything ever happen like it was supposed to?

‘I have to,’ I sighed, pulling an apologetic face. We were so close to getting somewhere in this mission. ‘It could be important.’

I moved across the room, his eyes a heat ray on my back. I picked up my phone with trembling hands, moving as if in a dream towards the bathroom as I pressed ‘accept.’

‘Hurricane.’ It was Carl.

‘Hello,’ I said, my voice whispery. I moved at speed now, sensing urgency in his tone—this wasn’t the first time he’d phoned today—and shut the bathroom door, locking myself inside the room that was too bright, too white.

‘Where are you now?’ he asked. ‘Where’s Arjan?’

‘We’re in a hotel,’ I said. ‘I’m in the bathroom; Arjan’s in the main area.’

‘Get outside,’ Carl instructed, more abrupt and serious than I’d ever heard him before.

‘Why—‘

‘Just do it,’ he said urgently. ‘Grab your bag, and make up an excuse if Arjan asks, but get outside of the room.’

I wasn’t accustomed to doing what other people told me without justification, but this time I agreed. I sensed the tension in the air and the fear in his tone. I knew something was up. I moved out of the bathroom, trembling now even more than before, picking up my bag from the floor.

‘Where are you going?’ Arjan asked, still on his bed, looking at my bag warily.

‘This is important,’ I said, and I could feel how my voice shook with foreboding. ‘And I just need to write some stuff down.’ It was a good enough reason as to why I might need my bag. He had no idea that I actually didn’t have any paper in there.

I moved outside, slamming the door too loudly. The corridor, lit with bright strip lighting, was too silent. Every word I uttered echoed along its entire length. I felt too exposed to even whisper.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Hurricane, you need to get out of there.’ Carl’s voice was so unprecedentedly ferocious that I actually staggered back against the wall.

‘What’s—‘ I began. He cut me off.

‘It’s all been a false alarm,’ he announced.

My world came crashing down.

‘What?’

‘This—you—Arjan—it’s all been a false alarm. I know Jonas expressed the idea on the phone, and you refused to believe it, but it’s true. The Master got involved. And today he hacked into the Soulless database. We’d already looked in the police one, and it’s true: no mention of Arjan. Not anywhere. Regardless of whether he can remember it or not, he’s never come into contact with any of them. The Soulless are following a dead lead. If they’re looking for someone, it’s not that boy.’

I began to slide down against the wall, my legs giving way beneath me so that I was eventually sitting on the floor, staring up towards the ceiling. So Jonas was right in his phone call, then, was he?

‘How can you be sure?’ I asked in disbelief. ‘How do you—‘

‘Trust me,’ he said. It wasn’t something I was accustomed to doing. ‘The Master is certain, and when has he been wrong?’

I was steadily losing faith in the Master, but I couldn’t deny that his record was against me. In nearly six years of leading the Berlin Dreamers, even though I had only been around for less than three of them, he had never once been incorrect.

‘And he wants you to get out of there, Hurricane.’ Carl’s voice was urgent. Only now could I comprehend just how bad things were.

‘With Arjan?’

‘No,’ Carl said. ‘Leave him. Come now, on your own, straight away. Don’t go back into that hotel room. You’ve got your car keys, right?’

So that’s why he wanted me to bring my bag.

‘Yeah,’ I said, barely able to squeeze the words out.

I suddenly realised something. ‘My gun’s still in there!’

‘Leave it,’ Carl said. ‘At least maybe that way it will give Arjan a chance.’

My heart froze.

‘What do you mean, ‘a chance?’’

‘There are at least thirty Soulless swarming on Berlin as we speak—‘ he began.

‘What? Thirty?’ I exclaimed. ‘No!’

‘And they’re all coming for you.’ Carl was certain. ‘Every last one of them; they’re on the way to the very hotel you’re in right now. And they’re looking for one thing.’

‘Arjan,’ I finished for him in a whisper.

‘They don’t know they’ve got the wrong person,’ Carl explained. ‘And whilst that keeps us one step ahead, until they realise, your life is in danger.’

‘But what about Arjan?’ I cried. I could tell this shocked Carl, because he was silent for several seconds.

‘Leave him behind, Hurricane. His life is in danger either way. They will hunt him down, and hunt you down if you’re with him, until they realise their mistake. And then they may kill him anyway, purely out of frustration at themselves.’

I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t even comprehend it. I couldn’t leave him. I had left everything else behind, but Arjan was the one thing that still remained. It was like a great golden knife had come and cleaved my world in two. Suddenly the very universe was being torn down. All this strife, and for nothing. I had changed, but for the worst. And Arjan was condemned. We both lost in the end.

‘I can’t just leave him,’ I said, my voice thick with the emotion that I wasn’t accustomed to experiencing. ‘He’ll die.’

‘I’m sorry, Hurricane,’ Carl said, and he sounded genuinely apologetic. ‘But your friend is dead regardless. The only difference now is whether you survive or not. And believe me: we need you. A lot has happened here in the last couple of days.’

I didn’t even bother to ask what he meant. I didn’t care right now. All I cared about was that I was condemning an innocent man to the mercy of the Soulless. Too many had been harmed on behalf of saving him, only for me to let him slip right through my fingers. Felix had died to protect Arjan and his ‘secret.’ Did that mean his life was in vain?

‘Come on, Hurricane.’ It was like he could read my mind.

I got to my feet, feeling the tears hot and wet in my eyes, all too ready to spill over. When was the last time I had cried before Arjan came along?

And this was why I couldn’t do emotion. It destroyed me. I was willing to save Arjan instead of leave him and save myself. I was willing to die for this cause.

That was why emotion was so terrible. And that in turn was why I left it behind three years ago.

‘Come on, Hurricane,’ Carl repeated.

I took one last glance towards the door. Inside, Arjan was oblivious. I was going to betray him, and he was going to die. And he had no idea.

But then there were the Dreamers.

I knew who I belonged with.

‘I’m coming,’ I said into the phone.