Hurricane Heart

Arjan

‘Get up! Arjan, get up!’

I opened my eyes drowsily to see Hurricane standing over me, fully dressed in a new, rather eccentric outfit—a short, white, patterned dress type thing over leggings and boots with her usual leather jacket and lots of necklaces. It was all far too conspicuous for public, but she didn’t seem to mind.

A more pressing matter was at hand.

How had I fallen asleep? I’d done everything I could to keep myself wide awake, only to find out that it was the next morning, and it was, she, Hurricane, who was waking me up.

How had it happened?

And it had happened so fast—there was a strangely short time between closing my eyes and feeling drowsy enough to fall asleep.

Had she known what I was going to do?

How? Could she read minds? Was she even stranger and more powerful than I thought?
And then I saw the half-full bottle of water lying close to my pillow. I hadn’t thought anything of it last night, but the bottle she had taken out for herself had been of a different brand. And, whilst this one was full, it also wasn’t properly sealed at the top.

Had she put something in the water, and used the two brands to differentiate between which was hers and mine?

She was even more dangerous than I thought.

‘Get up now!’ she ordered, grabbing me by the arm and practically wrenching me to my feet. I stood for a moment, unthinking, swaying a little, before wiping my eyes and running a hand through my hair. I also noticed that my need to go to the toilet was getting increasingly uncomfortable. However, the thing that clawed at my insides most fiercely was the knowledge that I'd had a chance to escape, and I'd forsaken it.

‘Get your sleeping bag rolled up, change your clothes—you can go through there—and then we’re going,’ she snapped, watching me with hawk eyes as I went about my business. Yes. She knew me. She knew me only too well. And she didn’t trust me at all.

But I had no choice but to comply. She pulled the ropes tying my hands together apart and gave me a nudge. Grumbling, and still a little dazed from my unnaturally deep, drug-induced slumber, I headed through the tunnel, just out of sight, to get changed. There was no point in running here. I had no idea where this tunnel led, or what lurked beyond, and Hurricane was so alert that she would probably hear my footsteps moving away.

‘Arjan!’ she cried from back in the little room. ‘Get a move on!’

I came back in to see her standing there impatiently, waiting for me. Down here, it looked no different to when we’d arrived in the dark—there was no way at all of telling whether it was day or night outside, but she obviously had a watch or something. She seemed like the sort of person who would be on top of things like that.

Getting changed had given me just enough time to get my story sorted, so I began upfront.

‘Did you drug me, Hurricane?’ I demanded.

I didn’t know what I’d expected—perhaps I thought she was going to play innocent. Either way, I was quite surprised when she spoke so honestly.

‘Of course I did,’ she said as though it was obvious. ‘Did you think I was going to let you try and get out of here? I’m not stupid, Arjan, I know there’s no use in taking chances.’

Shame. I’d sort of bargained on that as the pivotal part of my escape plan.

She didn’t hang around. ‘Hurry up,’ she snapped, ushering me out of the room the second I’d picked up my stuff. We walked briskly through the tunnel, still with the need for torches even though it was apparently daylight, until we reached the door, and we followed yet more old, neglected pathways up to the surface.

It was almost a surprise to reach the far end and see the bluish glow of daylight shining down the stairs, the sky still not visible from this angle. We stepped into an altogether sunnier, albeit cool, morning than any I had seen for a while, and a blustery wind whipped my hair about my face.

I expected Hurricane to lead me to the car, but she did not. We started in that direction, but instead turned right along the currently silent pavement rather than crossing the road to the little lane in between two high-rise buildings where we had parked.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘I thought you wanted the bathroom,’ she muttered.

I was quietly relieved that we were going, not just so that I could use the bathroom, but mostly just because I was sick of sitting in cars and living underground and in darkness. It felt like ages since I’d properly walked with wind in my face and the sun on my back, even though it was a cold, blowy day, far from ideal. Nevertheless, merely fresh air felt better than anything I’d been getting. I’d been feeling increasingly groggy and ill from endless hours in the car, not exactly eating well, not drinking enough, not getting any air and not really adhering to normal sleeping hours.

Whether Hurricane was feeling the same way, she did not let on, but something told me that she was perfectly fine. She seemed like one of those annoying people who never got ill or tired or hungry...or maybe she just did not show it, in the same way as she did not seem to show any emotion.

In the distance, I saw a welcome sight; a large, almost fluorescent yellow ‘M’ protruding into the sky from a large, single storey building, the bright word ‘McDonald’s,’ written bold on the side. Whatever happened after the Revolution, it seemed that fast food was too much a part of our culture to ever get rid of. After all, it wasn’t like we had no life—we still ate out, and bought takeaways, and things like that; it was just a lot more limited than it had apparently once been in the past. Though from what I’d heard, places like England and America were a thousand times stricter than continental Europe. Perhaps I should be glad for that; not that I had ever been allowed to have an opinion on anything with a political nature. The government said; the citizens did. No questions asked. It was the way of the world now.

There were so many restrictions nowadays too, and one of them was exactly what Hurricane was wearing. It was only now that it dawned on me that, as she strode along in her fancy long top and her lace-up boots and her leather jacket, with her pink and black hair, we were almost definitely going to get caught. I was probably not a lot better, though at least my hair was still its natural colour.

‘You can’t go in dressed like that!’ I cried.

She turned round, looking unbothered.

‘Arjan?’ she cocked her head slightly to one side. ‘I’ve been to England. I can manage anything. Simply to get over the border into the UK, I had to change my hair colour and wear green—that was the fashion at the time. But compared to that, Europe’s a piece of cake. How do you think I normally get food? Do you think I just wave a wand and it appears?’

I frowned; I had no idea what she was on about.

‘What’s a wand?’

She made a sound that sounded like utter disbelief, before striding off without answering. However, I faintly heard her mutter something like ‘you’re pathetic life is even worse than I thought.’

As we neared McDonald’s, though, I noticed how she tucked the pink parts of her hair into the top of her dress, leaving only the black parts hanging out. A moment later, just before we crossed the road, she took off her jacket despite the cold and shoved it towards me.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Take it!’ she snapped. ‘I’m gonna order the food, so they probably won’t even look at you.’

I still felt horribly self-conscious. ‘Am I going to look alright?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, her tone severe, yet somehow carefree. ‘I picked an easy time to do this; black is in fashion; jackets are in fashion. You look great.’

I didn’t feel it—I was pretty confident that it was strictly blue jeans at the moment; black was only for the more eccentric dressers, and it was years since I’d worn a brightly coloured t-shirt, but she seemed confident enough that we could be ok. And from what I’d heard, lie detectors were now advanced enough that I could blame everything on her and be able to get away with it—after all, it wasn’t lying at all to say that everything I’d done had been forced on by her.

That was another idea, though it wouldn’t be too easy to put into practice. Hurricane was an incredible fighter, and she had a loaded gun beneath the seemingly innocent floaty dress-top she wore. She would have me whisked out of there in no time at all, and then I’d most definitely pay.