Hurricane Heart

Arjan

I opened my eyes groggily. The world was a blurry mess, and the only thing that I could really make out was that everywhere was grey. There was a faint light to the left...or was it kind of coming from above?

I blinked several times, allowing the world a chance to come into focus, and tried to lift a heavy, throbbing hand to my head, which felt as though something had exploded inside it.

My hand caught where it was, sending a surge of fear shooting through my nerves. Looking down and blinking a little more, I noticed that the hand I had tried to lift, along with my other one, were strapped to the sides of a chair.

I began to panic, my heart racing. However I had felt when Hurricane had kidnapped me, it was nowhere near as bad as this. Only now did I realise how ridiculously safe I once felt with her, even before we were ‘friends.’

There were people in the room. They were quiet, but I still heard them, chuckling slightly, before I saw them. Looking over, wide-eyed and scared, I saw them all sitting in the corner, in the shadowy area. The main lights of this room were off, but a couple of lamps had been turned on, both of them situated close to me.

We seemed to be in an office or something. Craning my neck round, I could sense that there was a window behind me, but I couldn’t see where we were or how high up we were. On the left, the room opened out, large and lined with many desks, each with their own computer and chair. Four Soulless were sitting around these desks now. Two of them I recognised as Bruno and Elize, and the other two were ones I had not seen before. All of them were unmasked.

‘Well, would you look at that,’ jeered one of the two whose names I didn’t know; both male. ‘The Secret has woken up.’

I wanted to retort, but my breath was coming in ragged gasps. I was tied up. Hurricane, wherever she was, had no idea what was going on. What the hell was about to happen?

‘Who are you?’ I gasped, though essentially it was obvious. I just wanted some answers, whatever they were. I was growing so tired of these increasingly deadly games. ‘And what the fuck do you want with me?’

‘Oh, where are my manners?’ said the Soulless who had first spoken. ‘I’m Erik. My friend here is Jeroen—he’s Dutch, just like you. And I hear that you’ve already met Bruno and Elize?’

I had nothing in particular to say to him, so I kept silent. Why did I care if Jeroen was Dutch? The fear was consuming every other thought that I might be having right now.

‘Now, Secret,’ Erik continued, ‘I think you should tell us something now.’ Elize stood up and stepped forward. Despite the fact that I had shot her three times, the evil that her eyes were bleeding was carefully concealed behind a disguise of sexy intimacy and intrigue. Without her mask, she looked somehow even prettier, her eyes better defined with thick, black liner, but so deadly.

‘What?’ I demanded, careful not to agree to anything. The Soulless were my enemies. Whatever I had considered last time Elize was clinging to me, it was all a lie. Hurricane had come back for me. She might have left again, but I still believed that she wouldn’t risk coming out here for no reason. She would go to the edge of the park, whether it was after ten minutes or two hours if she was in a sticky situation, and she would wait, just like I’d intended to wait for her.

‘Tell us something about Hurricane, why don’t you?’ Elize suggested. She made it sound like I had a choice, but even I could detect the threatening undertone.

‘Why should I tell you anything?’ I challenged.

Erik came forward, standing next to Elize, leering at me. He was skinny and pale with a narrow, gaunt face and white-blonde hair, and significantly taller than any of the others.

‘I heard that you were an intelligent young man, Arjan,’ he said slyly. ‘Do you really still not know?’

‘Wow, Hurricane has told you even less than we expected her to,’ said Jeroen with a spiteful laugh.

‘You shut up about her!’ I cried out before I could stop myself.

‘Didn’t stop their plan from working, though,’ Erik cackled, looking to the others as they began laughing again.

My heart skipped a beat.

‘Plan?’ Again, it was out before I could hold my tongue.

‘Oh yes,’ Elize said, relishing the chance to slag off Hurricane as though she was a teenage girl bitching about her rival at school. ‘Darling Hurricane always has a plan.’ She laughed coldly. ‘You mean to say you thought she actually loved you?’

I was sinking. It was like the floor had opened up beneath me, and I was falling down through the abyss. It was true. I had thought she loved me. Before she left, I thought we were getting somewhere, and when she returned to me in the park, I had believed every word she said.

I wanted to scream that they were all liars. I would have done, but suddenly what Elize was saying sounded so probable. Why else would someone like Hurricane, who was so devoid of emotion anyway, fall in love with someone like me? We had no reason to be in love. We had nothing really in common. And Hurricane refused to love anyone. She was so stubborn; it would take someone really special to change her mind about emotion. And I was nowhere near that special.

‘You’re lying!’ I hissed, still desperately willing to believe that Elize wasn’t telling the truth. I couldn’t face it. Not now; not after all this. And yet it was so likely. It was the only plausible reason why Hurricane would have ‘fallen in love’ with me in the first place—as an elaborate act.

Elize seemed to have read my mind. Both she and Erik—and the other two, to a lesser extent—seemed to be enjoying tormenting me way too much.

‘Why would someone like Hurricane want someone like you?’ she challenged. ‘You’re not even a Dreamer.’

I narrowed my eyes. ‘I am now.’

Bruno practically jumped up at this.

‘Oh, even better! That means you’re straight to the Institution when we’re finished with you!’

Oh God, what had I done?

This was just getting worse and worse. And yet, nothing could compare to the gaping hole in my heart that had opened again after so many repeated stabs. Hurricane couldn’t...she wouldn’t...

But she really would.

‘So, now that you’ve learnt the truth, do you feel like telling us anything?’ Erik asked. ‘We do, of course, offer a little persuasion...or maybe you’d more likely call it a threat.’ He took his hand from where it neatly sat behind his back—a position which I had thought nothing of until now—and in it was a very unpleasant looking knife.