‹ Prequel: Chasing Imagination
Sequel: Martyr's Run

Hurricane Heart

Guilt of an Innocent

Hurricane

He wasn’t going to be in the hotel. Arjan may not be a Dreamer per se, but he wasn’t stupid either, and he knew only too well the danger he was in.

The danger that he wouldn’t be in if I had stayed by his side.

It was all very well being high on hope; drugged by dreams, but it was useless if it wasn’t actually going to achieve anything. The simple truth, however was that I simply hadn’t experienced emotion like this for too long. Not guilt; not sadness, and also not happiness; not hope; not adrenaline. Not like this. Because this time, just tonight, I was doing something real. Tomorrow the emotion would be all locked up again in the back of my mind, but tonight was my chance.

Carl was coming. And hopefully he would bring some others with him. If he told them that it was Soulless-frying time, they would come. They would come in their hundreds. He just had to word it right.

There were more important things at hand now. I abandoned the car outside the hotel and raced off down the street with no bearing and no direction. I hadn’t seen any Soulless yet, but I was hopeful in a weird, twisted sort of way that they would know where Arjan was. At least that way they would lead me to him.

I sprinted round a corner, always peering before I went. Carl had said thirty Soulless, which was a lot anyway considering there were only two of us, but there would be more coming soon. They had a base in the west of Berlin, and they could bring in a hundred fighters as back up with five minutes’ notice.

I rounded another bend and froze, seeing three men walking towards me. Forcing myself deep into the shadows, I watched and waited as they drew closer, my breath baited, but they were unmasked. Without masks, there was no proof that they were Soulless; nothing to separate them from the rest of the world. And they didn’t skulk either. Or prowl. It seemed that they were just three innocent men, non-Dreamers of course, but innocent all the same, out for the evening.

I wanted to phone Carl, but I hoped also that he was away from his desk on his way out here and I had no idea who, if anyone, had replaced him.

Almost as I was thinking this, I felt my phone vibrating in my pocket. Yes, I really had thought of everything. If I was hiding or preparing to launch a secretive attack on a Soulless, the last thing I wanted was for my plan to fall through because my ringtone had given me away.

I picked it up.

‘Hello?’

‘Hurricane.’ It was the Master. Of course it was the Master. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked coolly, striding purposefully to the other side of the road. At the same time, I was trying to predict Arjan. Would he head for civilisation, or would he look for a hiding place? People were predictable enough that it was always going to be one of those things.

I was on the main road that led past the end of the hotel road now. Simply because of what was in the area, I opted for civilisation.

‘You know what I mean!’ the Master growled. ‘And I want you to get back here now.’

‘No,’ I said defiantly. As much as I despised a lot of authority, the Master, or any Dreamer leader for that matter, was someone I had always respected. But now, something had to change. Even now, he was only working in my best interests, but he had been wrong, and that incorrect judgement had cost lives. Again, I inadvertently thought back to Felix.

‘What?’ he asked incredulously. ‘Hurricane, I want you back here now, with me. I’m doing this for your sake. It’s too dangerous out there!’

‘I don’t care about what happens to me, in case you haven’t noticed yet,’ I said, ‘but for once I’m going to do something good in this world. It comes nowhere near to making up for everything—‘

‘Don’t tell me this is some sort of personal redemption mission,’ he groaned.

‘No. Kinda,’ I said, unsure what to tell him. ‘But you were wrong. You said that Arjan is a false alarm, but keeping him alive for the last few weeks has cost lives. I’m not going to let him die in vain. And, as much as I despise Casper, he’s right too. We can’t just let him run to the police and get us all destroyed!’

‘You’re clever, Hurricane,’ the Master said, ‘but that’s why we all need you to stay alive. You die tonight and everything goes wrong.’

‘And that’s why I’m not going to die!’ I cried through gritted teeth, practically hissing down the line.

‘Get back here now, Hurricane. It’s an order.’ The Master was not messing around.

‘Well fuck that,’ I hissed venomously into the phone.

I hung up.

It felt brilliant!

Arjan

I charged into a small but conveniently placed shopping centre. There were very few people around at this time, but the supermarket was still open and in full business, and so were some of the shops.

But they had been waiting for me.

As I ran in, I heard a shout from close behind, from just outside the entrance, and two men charged in through the automatic doors. Their heavy boots clonked on the hard floor which reflected dozens of headache-inducing white strip lights lining the ceiling.

I skidded round the corner far too fast, almost losing my balance and falling face first onto the floor. A middle-aged lady with several supermarket carrier bags jumped out of my way, crying out and shouting at me in German. I didn’t take time to translate what she was saying. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

Behind me, I heard her yell out once again as the two burly men charged past her only a few seconds later, before she was even fully round the corner. No one had any idea what was going on, but I heard her, followed shortly by a young supermarket assistant, cry out ‘Polizei!’ I didn’t have to be an expert in German to know that that meant police.

Suddenly there was an ear-splitting crack, followed by a colossal smash and more screams than there were people in the vicinity. A great window in the entrance of the supermarket shattered into a million pieces, cracking and dissipating as though there was nothing there in the first place. Shop assistants dived behind counters and shelves and the few customers that were out this late ran for cover as glass rained like hailstones down on them. It was total chaos, but I couldn’t help but see also that whatever was in the gun—volts or bullets—had missed me by inches.

Another one came, and this one missed me further, crashing into the wall as cracks mapped their way up the newly applied, crisp paint. It left a round, smoking dent in the plasterboard.

There was a third, fired from so close behind me that I couldn’t believe how it had missed. More screams came from every direction as I continued to pound through the shopping centre—there’d better be a way out at the far end. If there wasn’t, I was well and truly done for.

To my horror, though, one scream, from a woman just ahead who was hiding behind a large stand-alone sign advertising a sports shop, was loudest of all. She collapsed backwards, a thud resounding out even over the clamour and chaos, and I could see only too clearly that the bullet—for it was indeed a bullet—that was meant for me had hit her.

I dived for cover behind a row of chairs. The men were so close behind that I had mere seconds, if that. Close to me, where she now lay, sprawled out and clutching at her stomach on the floor, was the woman. She was middle-aged and blonde, her face, which might have been pretty otherwise, contorted and twisted into a beastly mask of pain.

‘No!’ I yelled out, the stun gun out of my pocket before I even knew what was going on. I was firing it repeatedly, aiming at the men. They were moving targets, charging towards me from the right as they saw me crouched behind the chairs that I was now using as a shield. They were huge—big, beefy men with muscles and black trench coats. If they got their hands on me, I was dead.

I struck one of them in the shoulder and missed a few more times, before getting the other in the leg. Both staggered back in pain as the volts collided with their flesh, spreading out through their body so that they collapsed and convulsed. It wouldn’t be for long though. I fired many more times, jumping up as another bullet, followed by a second, was clumsily aimed at me. I leapt out from my vantage point now that they were injured, going as close as I dared, firing repeatedly time and time again until both of them lay temporarily unconscious on the ground. Innocent customers and members of the public continued to scream and some made a run for it when they saw the two big men demobilised.

‘Somebody help her!’ I screamed as I looked helplessly at the wounded woman. Her hands were stained scarlet as so much blood streamed from the gaping gash in her stomach. It was a small waterfall, dripping across her cardigan and all down her side as she writhed and screamed. ‘Someone call an ambulance!’

I saw phones coming out of pockets, but they would be calling the police too. If I stayed any longer I would be caught and accused of being both a Dreamer and now also a murderer—it wasn’t my fault, but they weren’t going to blame the Soulless, were they? I had to make a tough decision there and then, briefly bending down beside the woman, who was turning pale almost to the point of being tinted blue, and coughing up droplets of the blood that she so desperately needed to conserve. I squeezed her crimson hand, knowing that her lifeblood was now on my skin, knowing that I could so easily get framed for this attack, but not caring about that. I wasn’t a terrorist. I wasn’t heartless. I could do some good in this world.

‘Look at me,’ I whispered into her pale eyes. They briefly flickered towards mine, but she was in so much pain that she kept squeezing them shut, biting her lip, screaming for some kind of help, though I could barely understand her language.

‘It’ll be alright,’ I insisted. ‘I promise.’

Another man; one of the shop assistants, ran over now that he was certain the Soulless were temporarily down. He looked at me; looked at my unfashionable check hoodie; looked at the hair that, even after just a couple of weeks, was a little longer than would pass regulations for men; looked at my black jeans.

He could have been kind. I might have been a Dreamer, but it was only the Soulless here that were murderers.

The man’s eyes, however, were cold and steely as he practically shoved me out of the way to reach the woman.

‘You scumbag,’ he said, his English heavily accented. His words rang in my mind, twined their way through the coils of my brain. ‘You’re a terrorist. You’re a murderer.’

I stood up, staggering backwards. Behind me, one of the Soulless’s eyes were half open.

I had to go.

So I ran.

There were doors, like I’d hoped, on this side of the little shopping mall, but as I felt accusing eyes on my back, I realised I didn’t care so much anymore. I hadn’t even hurt the poor woman—I’d tried to help her if anything, but life wasn’t fair for a Dreamer. Hurricane was right. We really were nothing.