Hurricane Heart

Hurricane

He looked at me like I was insane. Maybe I was. Why was I even telling him this?

‘What?’ he whispered.

‘Other people don’t dream. You said that you do.’

‘More lies,’ he said resentfully. ‘Any more that you’d like to confess to whilst we’re here?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, lost for any better words.

‘But I thought—‘ he stammered. ‘You said—‘

‘I know what I said!’ I cried, ‘but it was all to make you feel better! Yes, Dreamers dream—it comes with open-mindedness and imagination, but normal, non-Dreamer civilians don’t dream. Not by day; not by night. These days, people’s minds are not fuelled enough for such subconscious acts of imagination to occur. Maybe once on occasion, but you said...’

‘I said I did it more nights than I did not,’ he finished for me, his tone hushed. ‘Do you dream? Did you dream?’

‘I do now,’ I said. ‘But before, when I was still just a normal person, it was no more than a few times a year, if it was even that. And they were such boring, mundane dreams as well; barely dreams at all. Not like the ones you have.’

He shook his head, lost in quiet contemplation.

‘But why me?’ he whispered. ‘Why do I dream when others don’t? Is there something wrong with me?’

‘No, Arjan,’ I said. ‘If anything, there is something incredibly right with you. It’s the rest of the world that’s got it wrong.’

‘That’s not what I mean,’ he argued. ‘You’re saying that so-called normal people don’t dream, but I do. I do it so often. Why? What’s different about my brain?’

‘I don’t know,’ I whispered, looking down at my hands. I felt genuinely bad about not being able to tell him a thing about what was ‘wrong’ with him. I forced myself to look up, meeting his wide, forest green eyes. ‘But I tell you something now:’ I continued.

‘What?’ he asked, intrigued.

A seldom-seen smile broke out across my face. ‘It’s fucking brilliant.’

We charged through empty street after empty street, the dead hours of the night fully upon us, until we reached the city centre, which, of course, was anything but dead.

The first sign of Dreamers in the vicinity was the sound of two gunshots, fired less than a second apart. Straight after, a third came, then more still. I shoved Arjan round a corner as two people came running into view from round a building, but they were Dreamers. As they got a little closer, I recognised them.

‘Mark!’ I cried out. ‘Anke!’

Anke’s face lit up when she saw me, her pale blonde hair in disarray as it fell across her shoulders. She was out of breath, but her eyes were bright with the idea that we were finally having a proper fight.

‘You seen any more Soulless in this direction?’ Mark asked, catching up with his girlfriend, his dark curls bouncing almost comically above his round face.

‘Don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Anyway, gotta—‘

‘Is this him?’ Anke asked. Even being one of the Dreamers, she seemed incapable of calling Arjan by his real name.

‘Yeah,’ I said unenthusiastically, realising how badly we needed to go. ‘Anyway, I’ll see you two later.’

‘Sure thing,’ said Anke cheerfully. Mark watched me as I hurried off, Arjan right behind me. As we rounded the corner, two Soulless came into view.

They saw us at the same time we saw them. I didn’t recognise them; a man and a woman, both athletically built, wearing similar Venetian style masks.

The man fired his gun at me, which I dodged as I dived behind a building, screaming at Arjan to get down.

‘Get back here!’ one of them cried as I ducked for safety, sticking my arm out and firing my own gun multiple times. It hit the man but missed the woman entirely, and suddenly they were there, in front of us.

‘Get down Arjan!’ I screamed. He was diving and the woman’s bullet missed him by a hair’s width. He began to run down a side road to take cover and I began to scream in his direction, ducking behind a bin as some kind of protection from the man. The last thing I needed was to lose him again.

The woman ran after him and I watched helplessly as I fired repeatedly at the Soulless. He sprung from side to side, ducking behind a post box and then behind a parked car and then running closer and trying to get a better aim at me before doubling back and throwing himself momentarily into a narrow alley between two large buildings.

A bullet sliced through the air close to me, causing me to stagger back slightly in my crouched position. I was only half paying attention. There was no way I was letting Arjan out of my sight again.

The Soulless man dived back in behind the car, but I fired a bullet that shattered straight through the back window. Even though, by that time, it had lost enough power to hit him, he still leapt clumsily back out, in a state of sudden shock and I fired again, missing yet again by inches, and he retaliated back with multiple shots.

‘Get...the hell...away from here!’ I screamed, firing again and again and again. The first hit another car window, causing several shards of glass to disperse and slice their way through his bare arms. He howled out as multiple daggers scratched right through his flesh, some of them embedding themselves in there, and the pain distracted him enough for me to run closer, shooting my gun, making contact first with his shoulder and then with his chest.

There was a scream uttered from his lips, cut short by the second bullet that ripped through his black shirt, and he collapsed backwards. I was sickened by the ending of another life, but what else could I do? It was his life, or mine. And I was not going to die tonight. Staggering slightly, I regained my power and made to dash down the alley that Arjan had disappeared down.

‘Hurricane!’ As I whipped round, I saw Carl charging towards me, leaping over a cracked paving stone, his gun out ready.

‘Carl!’ I cried back. ‘What’s been going on? You got any news?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, stopping and doubling over, placing his hands on his knees as he slowly regained his breath. ‘Yeah,’ he repeated. ‘Where have you been?’

I shrugged casually. ‘Long story. Cut short; I’ve run through half the city, shot quite a lot of people, been almost shot by quite a lot more, and lost Arjan again.’

‘Oh.’ Carl’s response was breathy and drawn-out. ‘Ok then.’

‘And you?’

‘Well, I’ve been fighting,’ he said, humbled by my description. ‘What more can I say?’ He was impressed by me. This alone was enough to make my ego swell to about a hundred times its normal size.

‘Killed anyone?’ I prompted. ‘Done any good moves?’

‘Hell yeah,’ he cried enthusiastically. ‘Loads of good moves. There was one moment where this guy was charging towards me and firing his gun and he missed a couple of times but there wasn’t really anywhere to go so I just, like, jumped onto this car in one big leap and he was still shooting me, and I flipped off the other side and down behind it, and then I fired my gun once and got him straight in the chest. It was incredible!’

I nodded, knowing how I was pretending to patronise him, and knowing how it annoyed him.

‘I think you had to be there,’ I said condescendingly.

‘Hey!’ he cried.

A bullet raced past the side of his head, making its way down the tunnel of the long, straight road that was so stupid to be standing in the middle of right now.

At once, we were alert, stopping the chat and leaping round in unison, guns out, preparing to face whatever bullets came our way.

Another Soulless.

Well, who else was it going to be?

Another shot dashed past the side of my head, slightly angled, shattering through a large office window behind me. Instinctively, I ducked, throwing myself on the ground, back behind the bench that I had last used as refuge. Another bullet ripped through the wooden slats right in front of my face so that they splintered, rebounding off in all directions—thick, thorn-like needles of wood, some of them missing my face by a perilously short distance, a burnt hole smoking in the now collapsed seat. I recoiled in shock, shielding my face with my arms as I fell backwards and abruptly got to my feet, only to duck back down before even getting the chance to fire once. The bullet shot through where my head had been less than a second ago, crashing into another glass window behind me so that once again I had to throw myself back down face-first and shield myself from the raining shards.

Jumping up again and brushing the glass powder off of my back, which thankfully hadn’t been able to touch my skin, I fired my gun at the Soulless man who I’d barely even managed to get a look at since he appeared and made me hide. On the other side of the road, ducked behind the same parked car that the last Soulless had used for refuge, was Carl. He looked through the smashed glass panes, making eye-contact with me, glancing down briefly at the dead body of the last Soulless, who was white and lying in a pool of his own blood. I had seen so much death in my life, but it still made me want to gag.

Another round of bullets came at that moment, but I managed to get my act together this time and fire back. Looking up over the bench for just a moment before having to duck back down again, I got my first proper glance of who I was fighting. Before, I’d only seen the black shadow—hardly unusual, considering almost all the Soulless went around in black or dark colours, but this time, I saw the swish of a cloak and the shine of a metallic-style shirt, not to mention the long hair swinging round as he whipped in a half-circle to face Carl.

Scarrus.

Of course it was Scarrus.

Why would he never just die?

Scarrus trying to shoot Carl down, and thankfully missing, gave me just enough time to leap up, the shattered glass of the enormous window cracking further beneath my boots, and fire my gun several times. Scarrus jumped round, recoiling backwards, jumping out of the way of the bullets just quickly enough. Carl shot too, but I had reason to believe that he only possessed a stun gun, and Scarrus began to back away, down the street, and then I was out of my refuge, running after him, chasing, firing, missing, almost hitting, missing again.

And then I dodged a bullet which came so close that my heart went into triple time, and I dived into the little alcove of an office entrance, the door set back a little from the rest of the street. I leant out and fired again, but I needed to be going back the other way. Every second I left, Arjan could be getting further away, getting into deeper trouble. I would leave Carl if he had bullets, but I knew he didn’t—the guy wasn’t like that. He normally fought in a pair; he wounded and then the other, often me, killed. He wasn’t a fighter; he was an intellectual. He worked back at the base ninety per cent of the time.

So I leapt back out into the firing line, just long enough to fire a few bullets at Scarrus. He was moving constantly; speed and agility had always been his strong points, and so the first few missed, but the next one finally hit, albeit only his leg.

Sadistic hope surged through me all the same, as I saw him double over and hiss in pain. He still managed to fire his gun in my direction, however, which kept me imprisoned in the alcove of the office entrance, leaning back against the cool slate exterior, reaching round to fire before bringing my arm back to safety. I should be taking advantage of his injury—it seemed that he wasn’t talking anymore. He’d learnt from his mistakes, and now he was just down to the pure, brutal fighting. But I couldn’t. I got my breath back and Carl fired several stunning bullets, but missed from the distance he was at, still back at the solitary parked car.

Scarrus began to retreat backwards, limping badly as blood seeped down his leg. Nevertheless, he held his gun out like a shield, knowing that no one was about to fire whilst it remained there.

Carl looked at me, our eyes meeting. Still I tried to shoot, but, even in injury, Scarrus was quick, and he moved down the next conveniently placed side road. I was ready to go after him, my thoughts bleeding with evil, murder the only thing on my mind, but Carl cried out my name before I had taken even two steps back out into the road. I leapt back into my alcove instinctively, expecting his call to be a warning and for multiple bullets to come rushing past me, but no such thing happened.

‘Go,’ he insisted, shouting at me across the distance. ‘Go and find Arjan.’

‘But he’s getting away!’ I screamed through gritted teeth, gesturing in the direction Scarrus had disappeared in. ‘I won’t lose him again!’

‘Go!’ he cried again, even more urgent than before. ‘What’s the worst that Scarrus can do if he survives tonight? Now compare that to the tragedies that could occur if the so-called Secret were to die.’

I looked at him, subconsciously moving closer to him across the road. He was doing the same, walking in my direction, sincere eyes never leaving my face.

‘I thought you believed he was a false alarm,’ I said, almost accusing, but without enough emotion in my voice to convey the venom of blame.

He shrugged, a slightly smug smile crossing his features.

‘He means something to you, Hurricane. And I trust you. Sort of. You must be onto something here.’

Carl’s belief, especially accompanied with his awe from earlier, was unprecedented, and it spurred me on.

I put a hand on his shoulder, the two of us finally within touching distance.

‘Thanks.’

I turned and ran.