[Inception] The Cast of the Die, Chapter 3
“Mal,” he breathed. “What are you doing here?”
She gazed steadily at him, her eyes glittering yet so empty in that beautiful face. “Arthur, it’s been a long time.”
Arthur’s heart fluttered in his chest. He was in a dream, he was almost certain, because Mal would not be standing in front of him. She had been dead for months.
Still, he itched to dig into his pocket and toss his die to make sure.
“Don’t move,” she snapped as Arthur started lowering his right hand towards his totem. He paused then slowly raised it back up over his head.
Mal smirked knowingly. Sometimes, the division between dream and reality were blurred, even in the most impossible situations. She-and Dom-knew the anxiety very well.
“Mal,” said Arthur in his calmest voice, keeping her gaze. “We’re here on a job. The kick is going to come any minute from above. You heard the music because Dom heard it, I know.”
Mal cocked her head to one side, her gun arm level on his forehead. “Dom had thought you wouldn’t come back after that first dream. He said you weren’t willing to understand the power of such creation, such imagination, as building a dream.”
Arthur endeavored to keep his face solemn, though he couldn’t help wondering why she-or Dom…she was Dom-would want to bring this up now.
“But I told him, no, give him some time. He’ll be caught by the net, I’m sure of it,” Mal whispered, cocking the gun.
Arthur tried to keep his breathing level and calculated the odds successfully tackling and stealing the gun before Mal could shoot. It would take him at least half a second to lunge, another second to get in position to wrench the gun away from her hands.
If she were as proficient as Dom was with a gun, she could blow three holes right in his head before he could even reach her.
“He feels sorry. He feels guilty. He wonders what he would do if you were taken by the dream too. You, dear Arthur, dear point man.”
Arthur clenched his jaw.
“Can you tell what’s real anymore?” she hissed. “Do you wake up in the middle of the night, sweating, scared that maybe the bullet in your heart, that knife in your gut finally killed you?”
“Mal,” he said sharply. “Lower. The. Gun.”
She grinned.
“You don’t want to do this, Mal!”
BAM!
The last thing Arthur saw before the gunshot was her pupils dilating, her eyes becoming pools of black emptiness. Arthur squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled sharply, muscles tensing for the killing blow.
“Arthur!” someone cried in the background. An enraged scream followed.
Arthur slowly opened his eyes, half-expecting to see a big hole blown in the middle of his chest, half-expecting to wake up in a VIP room of a nightclub attached to tubes pumping sedatives in his brain.
“ARTHUR, MOVE!”
Neither scenario happened.
Dom was holding a gun behind Mal, and in the blink of an eye, he tackled his late wife to the ground. It took a moment for Arthur to register what happened. He wasn’t dead. Dom had shot Mal in her gun arm. The two were wrestling on the ground for the dropped gun.
Fueled by pure adrenaline, Arthur turned and ran from the scene, following Dom’s halting instructions on how to locate the safe for the bank account number.
The music was louder. The kick would happen any minute!
BAM! BAM!
Arthur ducked as wooden chips of the walls sprayed his face. German curses and shouts soon followed.
Great. The target’s subconscious was finally riled into action.
Arthur slid on the marble floor and ran into a door leading to a labyrinth. Leading his pursuers here would buy him some time at least.
How is she here?
Arthur asked himself the same question over and over again as he ran through the labyrinth. Something akin to panic flooded him, but he narrowed his eyes and firmly pushed the wave of emotion from his mind and tightly sealed it in a compartment in the corner of his brain. He would deal with it later. For now, he needed to find the safe.
Arthur finally emerged from the labyrinth and found himself outside of the bank. He paused and scanned the streets for what Dom described to him. The people on the sidewalk and street vendors stared at him conspicuously. They knew he was an intruder, but they weren’t sure how to deal with him. At least, not yet. He had to hurry.
Arthur jogged along the sidewalk, crashing into hostile projections as he went along. Finally, he found it.
It was a normal ATM machine, located in the front lobby of a bank, not unlike many ATM machines found in New York or any other big city. Clever to hide the greatest secret out in the open.
Arthur pulled on the glass doors protecting the ATM, and unsurprisingly they didn’t budge.
Without a second thought, he pulled out his gun and shattered the glass. Alarms went off, and the projections all stopped mid-step. They turned, and like possessed automatons started towards Arthur. The world started to quake. The dream was collapsing.
Arthur didn’t hesitate. He shot the projections closest to him to buy some time and stepped into the lobby. Arthur swiped the ATM card their sponsors provided for him and Dom into the ATM, and within seconds, the screen flashed and strings of code appeared. Arthur managed to punch in the pin number before the projections started grabbing for him. The screen flashed again, and as the projections tore at his suit and kicked him to the ground, Arthur finally saw the string of numbers they were looking for.
Got it.
When Arthur opened his eyes, he was in the dark. For a terrifying second, he felt pure, unadulterated fear. Was he dead?
“Get up,” a familiar voice hissed and strong hands pulled him from his chair.
Arthur blinked again and let his eyes adjust to the dim room. They were in the VIP room of the club. The German man next to them was still sleeping.
“Did you get it?”
Arthur turned to Dom and nodded curtly.
“All right. Let’s get of here.”
Arthur obliged.
They exited the room and split up. Dom headed towards the back exit, and Arthur to the front. Arthur descended the stairs and onto the dance floor. He squeezed by the dancing mob as quickly yet casually as he could, the rhythmic thrumming of techno music pounding in his ears. Suddenly, he felt himself slamming into someone. He steadied the woman, apologies on the tip of his tongue, until he found himself staring into startlingly clear blue eyes. Perhaps it was the lighting, but her eyes and her curly hair reminded him of-
“Let go of me, baby,” the woman slurred, her lips twisted in a lopsided smile.
Arthur shook his head slightly. He wasn’t dreaming anymore. It couldn’t be her.
“Sorry about that,” he said to the drugged woman before pushing past her. He shoved his hand into his pocket and fingered his die. He couldn’t tell whether the bass or the pounding of his heart caused the tremors in his body.
He exited the club and ran into an alleyway. When he was sure that he was away from prying eyes, he bent over and vomited against the wall.
…
That wasn’t the last time he would see Mal’s projection, and while he dreaded seeing her, he secretly hoped that she would talk to him again. He needed help.
Arthur knew that sometimes Dom sedated himself to sleep. Arthur once confronted Dom about it, but instead of reacting with anger, Dom turned his head away quietly and asked him to leave.
Arthur desperately wanted to help Dom, but he didn’t know how.
He wished Mal weren’t dead. Or better yet, he wished she could tell him how to fix Dom. But other than that dream with the bank and ATM, Mal never approached him again. He caught glimpses of her in his peripheral view, or either she captured him and shot his kneecap, like the one time she did in Saito’s dream. But never again did she speak with him, even if he demanded her attention. Arthur suspected Dom was behind it. Dom knew Mal said something to him, but he never asked Arthur about it, like Arthur never asked why the hell Mal was materializing in every single dream.
The wound was too deep for Dom, and Arthur felt helpless.
They were in Paris at Dom’s behest while Dom searched for a new architect and delivered gifts for his children to his father-in-law. Arthur, in the meantime, combed the city for an appropriate headquarters for their operation. One of his contacts directed him to a large warehouse, and Arthur paid the rent without hesitation.
When she and Dom walked in, he was assembling a number of chairs around the Pasiv device.
“Arthur, hook up our new architect,” Dom’s voice called from the doorway.
Arthur turned around and stared at the new architect. The first thought he had was, She’s too young. He kept his gaze on the girl as she followed Dom into the warehouse and towards him. She seemed a little anxious, and Arthur couldn’t blame her. She was following a strange man into a warehouse on whatever misplaced faith she had in her professor’s word. Either she was incredibly brave, or incredibly foolish.
She finally acknowledged his stare and she looked up, lips tightening in defiance. Arthur caught the smile before it touched his lips.
“How much does she know?” Arthur asked Dom, tearing his curious gaze from her wide brown eyes.
Dom shrugged, a shadow of a grin on his face. “Not much.”
“You should tell her more than what you told me when I first went it,” Arthur warned.
“She’ll manage. She might even handle it much better than you did.”
“You guys know I’m right here, right?” the girl interjected sarcastically. “I’m not invisible or anything?”
Arthur stared down at her again. “This isn’t a game,” he blurted out more sharply than he intended. “This is business, and if we fail-”
“Arthur,” Dom interrupted. His steely eyes rooted Arthur in his spot. “Hook her up.”
Arthur clenched his jaw and glared at Dom.
“She’s good,” Dom said more softly. “She’ll get the hang of it in no time.”
Arthur started up the Pasiv device, watching from the corner of his eye the young architect lower herself on one of the lawn chairs so hopelessly out of place in this sunless warehouse. Arthur came in between Dom and the girl. Dom relaxed in the chair and let Arthur insert the IV into his arm, as he’d done hundreds of times before.
The girl looked apprehensive, and it was no secret to Arthur that she was trying her hardest to keep her breathing normal. Arthur crouched down next to the girl and appraised her again. She was dressed in jeans and a red jumper, but contrary to her childish image, her resolve was stronger than steel.
“I’m Ariadne, by the way,” she said suddenly. She turned to him, eyes sparkling with anxiety and excitement. “What’s your name?”
Arthur was surprised at her boldness. “Arthur.”
She nodded at the needle in his hand. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Arthur almost scoffed but settled for smiling wryly at her. “I could do this in my sleep.”
“Is that a joke, or are you actually being serious?” she wondered as he prepared the IV.
Arthur located a vein and inserted the needle with the precision of a surgeon. He caught the slight tensing of her muscles and the very visible wince on her face.
“Just relax,” he said soothingly, “and remember that it’s only a dream.”
She half grinned at him. “Thanks for…the…warning…” she murmured as the sedatives entered her bloodstream and sleep overcame her.
Arthur set the time and watched the red LED timer display count down from 5:00. He glanced at Dom and then at the architect named Ariadne. He felt something strange when he looked at her, like a small squeeze in his throat.
Five minutes went by all too quickly.
Arthur didn’t realize he had been staring at the architect for the whole duration of the five minutes until he saw her eyelashes flutter open. He saw her expression of distress, and he knew immediately that the dream did not end well.
“You okay?” he asked unbidden.
She started at his voice. “What?”
“It’s never just a dream, is it?” Cobb asked, sitting up in his chair. “And a face full of glass hurts like hell, doesn't it? While we're in it, it's real.”
“That's why the military developed dream sharing-a training program where soldiers could strangle, stab and shoot each other, then wake up,” Arthur added, closely watching the architect from the corner of his eye. She was frazzled, bewildered, and excited.
“Let's go another five minutes-“ Dom started before Ariadne interrupted.
“We were only asleep for five minutes? We talked for an hour at least…”
“Five minutes in the real world gives you an hour in the dream,” Arthur approximated, walking over to them and setting up the Pasiv device again.
Dom sat back. “Let's see how much trouble you can cause in five minutes.”
Arthur stared briefly at the architect before he pressed the button. He watched them fall into a sedated sleep and wondered, How much trouble? She was scared and slightly traumatized by how ever the dream ended for her, but she jumped back into it quickly. He would bet that she could cause a lot more trouble than either of them could imagine.
He walked over to the small table where he was arranging his papers on the target, Robert Fischer, but his eyes kept straying to Ariadne.
Was it a coincidence that the girl had such a prophetic name? He couldn’t help but wonder whether she would be able to find her way out of Mal’s labyrinth, this time with Dom and himself following her.
Whatever purpose she would serve, she had never previously figured into his calculations. His mind told him she would be a liability, but the rest of him-whatever was left of him besides his mind-felt otherwise.
Out of habit, Arthur threw his die and breathed out to see that it landed on the correct face. But whatever control he previously had on this situation-the unlikely bargain with Saito, the near impossible job of incepting Fischer-he felt it slipping away.
He glanced at Ariadne again, watching her eyelashes fluttering rapidly in whatever dream she was in.
She was the final wildcard, and Arthur hoped that she would bring them more luck than misfortune.
…
END CHAPTER
← Chapter 2
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She gazed steadily at him, her eyes glittering yet so empty in that beautiful face. “Arthur, it’s been a long time.”
Arthur’s heart fluttered in his chest. He was in a dream, he was almost certain, because Mal would not be standing in front of him. She had been dead for months.
Still, he itched to dig into his pocket and toss his die to make sure.
“Don’t move,” she snapped as Arthur started lowering his right hand towards his totem. He paused then slowly raised it back up over his head.
Mal smirked knowingly. Sometimes, the division between dream and reality were blurred, even in the most impossible situations. She-and Dom-knew the anxiety very well.
“Mal,” said Arthur in his calmest voice, keeping her gaze. “We’re here on a job. The kick is going to come any minute from above. You heard the music because Dom heard it, I know.”
Mal cocked her head to one side, her gun arm level on his forehead. “Dom had thought you wouldn’t come back after that first dream. He said you weren’t willing to understand the power of such creation, such imagination, as building a dream.”
Arthur endeavored to keep his face solemn, though he couldn’t help wondering why she-or Dom…she was Dom-would want to bring this up now.
“But I told him, no, give him some time. He’ll be caught by the net, I’m sure of it,” Mal whispered, cocking the gun.
Arthur tried to keep his breathing level and calculated the odds successfully tackling and stealing the gun before Mal could shoot. It would take him at least half a second to lunge, another second to get in position to wrench the gun away from her hands.
If she were as proficient as Dom was with a gun, she could blow three holes right in his head before he could even reach her.
“He feels sorry. He feels guilty. He wonders what he would do if you were taken by the dream too. You, dear Arthur, dear point man.”
Arthur clenched his jaw.
“Can you tell what’s real anymore?” she hissed. “Do you wake up in the middle of the night, sweating, scared that maybe the bullet in your heart, that knife in your gut finally killed you?”
“Mal,” he said sharply. “Lower. The. Gun.”
She grinned.
“You don’t want to do this, Mal!”
BAM!
The last thing Arthur saw before the gunshot was her pupils dilating, her eyes becoming pools of black emptiness. Arthur squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled sharply, muscles tensing for the killing blow.
“Arthur!” someone cried in the background. An enraged scream followed.
Arthur slowly opened his eyes, half-expecting to see a big hole blown in the middle of his chest, half-expecting to wake up in a VIP room of a nightclub attached to tubes pumping sedatives in his brain.
“ARTHUR, MOVE!”
Neither scenario happened.
Dom was holding a gun behind Mal, and in the blink of an eye, he tackled his late wife to the ground. It took a moment for Arthur to register what happened. He wasn’t dead. Dom had shot Mal in her gun arm. The two were wrestling on the ground for the dropped gun.
Fueled by pure adrenaline, Arthur turned and ran from the scene, following Dom’s halting instructions on how to locate the safe for the bank account number.
The music was louder. The kick would happen any minute!
BAM! BAM!
Arthur ducked as wooden chips of the walls sprayed his face. German curses and shouts soon followed.
Great. The target’s subconscious was finally riled into action.
Arthur slid on the marble floor and ran into a door leading to a labyrinth. Leading his pursuers here would buy him some time at least.
How is she here?
Arthur asked himself the same question over and over again as he ran through the labyrinth. Something akin to panic flooded him, but he narrowed his eyes and firmly pushed the wave of emotion from his mind and tightly sealed it in a compartment in the corner of his brain. He would deal with it later. For now, he needed to find the safe.
Arthur finally emerged from the labyrinth and found himself outside of the bank. He paused and scanned the streets for what Dom described to him. The people on the sidewalk and street vendors stared at him conspicuously. They knew he was an intruder, but they weren’t sure how to deal with him. At least, not yet. He had to hurry.
Arthur jogged along the sidewalk, crashing into hostile projections as he went along. Finally, he found it.
It was a normal ATM machine, located in the front lobby of a bank, not unlike many ATM machines found in New York or any other big city. Clever to hide the greatest secret out in the open.
Arthur pulled on the glass doors protecting the ATM, and unsurprisingly they didn’t budge.
Without a second thought, he pulled out his gun and shattered the glass. Alarms went off, and the projections all stopped mid-step. They turned, and like possessed automatons started towards Arthur. The world started to quake. The dream was collapsing.
Arthur didn’t hesitate. He shot the projections closest to him to buy some time and stepped into the lobby. Arthur swiped the ATM card their sponsors provided for him and Dom into the ATM, and within seconds, the screen flashed and strings of code appeared. Arthur managed to punch in the pin number before the projections started grabbing for him. The screen flashed again, and as the projections tore at his suit and kicked him to the ground, Arthur finally saw the string of numbers they were looking for.
Got it.
When Arthur opened his eyes, he was in the dark. For a terrifying second, he felt pure, unadulterated fear. Was he dead?
“Get up,” a familiar voice hissed and strong hands pulled him from his chair.
Arthur blinked again and let his eyes adjust to the dim room. They were in the VIP room of the club. The German man next to them was still sleeping.
“Did you get it?”
Arthur turned to Dom and nodded curtly.
“All right. Let’s get of here.”
Arthur obliged.
They exited the room and split up. Dom headed towards the back exit, and Arthur to the front. Arthur descended the stairs and onto the dance floor. He squeezed by the dancing mob as quickly yet casually as he could, the rhythmic thrumming of techno music pounding in his ears. Suddenly, he felt himself slamming into someone. He steadied the woman, apologies on the tip of his tongue, until he found himself staring into startlingly clear blue eyes. Perhaps it was the lighting, but her eyes and her curly hair reminded him of-
“Let go of me, baby,” the woman slurred, her lips twisted in a lopsided smile.
Arthur shook his head slightly. He wasn’t dreaming anymore. It couldn’t be her.
“Sorry about that,” he said to the drugged woman before pushing past her. He shoved his hand into his pocket and fingered his die. He couldn’t tell whether the bass or the pounding of his heart caused the tremors in his body.
He exited the club and ran into an alleyway. When he was sure that he was away from prying eyes, he bent over and vomited against the wall.
…
That wasn’t the last time he would see Mal’s projection, and while he dreaded seeing her, he secretly hoped that she would talk to him again. He needed help.
Arthur knew that sometimes Dom sedated himself to sleep. Arthur once confronted Dom about it, but instead of reacting with anger, Dom turned his head away quietly and asked him to leave.
Arthur desperately wanted to help Dom, but he didn’t know how.
He wished Mal weren’t dead. Or better yet, he wished she could tell him how to fix Dom. But other than that dream with the bank and ATM, Mal never approached him again. He caught glimpses of her in his peripheral view, or either she captured him and shot his kneecap, like the one time she did in Saito’s dream. But never again did she speak with him, even if he demanded her attention. Arthur suspected Dom was behind it. Dom knew Mal said something to him, but he never asked Arthur about it, like Arthur never asked why the hell Mal was materializing in every single dream.
The wound was too deep for Dom, and Arthur felt helpless.
They were in Paris at Dom’s behest while Dom searched for a new architect and delivered gifts for his children to his father-in-law. Arthur, in the meantime, combed the city for an appropriate headquarters for their operation. One of his contacts directed him to a large warehouse, and Arthur paid the rent without hesitation.
When she and Dom walked in, he was assembling a number of chairs around the Pasiv device.
“Arthur, hook up our new architect,” Dom’s voice called from the doorway.
Arthur turned around and stared at the new architect. The first thought he had was, She’s too young. He kept his gaze on the girl as she followed Dom into the warehouse and towards him. She seemed a little anxious, and Arthur couldn’t blame her. She was following a strange man into a warehouse on whatever misplaced faith she had in her professor’s word. Either she was incredibly brave, or incredibly foolish.
She finally acknowledged his stare and she looked up, lips tightening in defiance. Arthur caught the smile before it touched his lips.
“How much does she know?” Arthur asked Dom, tearing his curious gaze from her wide brown eyes.
Dom shrugged, a shadow of a grin on his face. “Not much.”
“You should tell her more than what you told me when I first went it,” Arthur warned.
“She’ll manage. She might even handle it much better than you did.”
“You guys know I’m right here, right?” the girl interjected sarcastically. “I’m not invisible or anything?”
Arthur stared down at her again. “This isn’t a game,” he blurted out more sharply than he intended. “This is business, and if we fail-”
“Arthur,” Dom interrupted. His steely eyes rooted Arthur in his spot. “Hook her up.”
Arthur clenched his jaw and glared at Dom.
“She’s good,” Dom said more softly. “She’ll get the hang of it in no time.”
Arthur started up the Pasiv device, watching from the corner of his eye the young architect lower herself on one of the lawn chairs so hopelessly out of place in this sunless warehouse. Arthur came in between Dom and the girl. Dom relaxed in the chair and let Arthur insert the IV into his arm, as he’d done hundreds of times before.
The girl looked apprehensive, and it was no secret to Arthur that she was trying her hardest to keep her breathing normal. Arthur crouched down next to the girl and appraised her again. She was dressed in jeans and a red jumper, but contrary to her childish image, her resolve was stronger than steel.
“I’m Ariadne, by the way,” she said suddenly. She turned to him, eyes sparkling with anxiety and excitement. “What’s your name?”
Arthur was surprised at her boldness. “Arthur.”
She nodded at the needle in his hand. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Arthur almost scoffed but settled for smiling wryly at her. “I could do this in my sleep.”
“Is that a joke, or are you actually being serious?” she wondered as he prepared the IV.
Arthur located a vein and inserted the needle with the precision of a surgeon. He caught the slight tensing of her muscles and the very visible wince on her face.
“Just relax,” he said soothingly, “and remember that it’s only a dream.”
She half grinned at him. “Thanks for…the…warning…” she murmured as the sedatives entered her bloodstream and sleep overcame her.
Arthur set the time and watched the red LED timer display count down from 5:00. He glanced at Dom and then at the architect named Ariadne. He felt something strange when he looked at her, like a small squeeze in his throat.
Five minutes went by all too quickly.
Arthur didn’t realize he had been staring at the architect for the whole duration of the five minutes until he saw her eyelashes flutter open. He saw her expression of distress, and he knew immediately that the dream did not end well.
“You okay?” he asked unbidden.
She started at his voice. “What?”
“It’s never just a dream, is it?” Cobb asked, sitting up in his chair. “And a face full of glass hurts like hell, doesn't it? While we're in it, it's real.”
“That's why the military developed dream sharing-a training program where soldiers could strangle, stab and shoot each other, then wake up,” Arthur added, closely watching the architect from the corner of his eye. She was frazzled, bewildered, and excited.
“Let's go another five minutes-“ Dom started before Ariadne interrupted.
“We were only asleep for five minutes? We talked for an hour at least…”
“Five minutes in the real world gives you an hour in the dream,” Arthur approximated, walking over to them and setting up the Pasiv device again.
Dom sat back. “Let's see how much trouble you can cause in five minutes.”
Arthur stared briefly at the architect before he pressed the button. He watched them fall into a sedated sleep and wondered, How much trouble? She was scared and slightly traumatized by how ever the dream ended for her, but she jumped back into it quickly. He would bet that she could cause a lot more trouble than either of them could imagine.
He walked over to the small table where he was arranging his papers on the target, Robert Fischer, but his eyes kept straying to Ariadne.
Was it a coincidence that the girl had such a prophetic name? He couldn’t help but wonder whether she would be able to find her way out of Mal’s labyrinth, this time with Dom and himself following her.
Whatever purpose she would serve, she had never previously figured into his calculations. His mind told him she would be a liability, but the rest of him-whatever was left of him besides his mind-felt otherwise.
Out of habit, Arthur threw his die and breathed out to see that it landed on the correct face. But whatever control he previously had on this situation-the unlikely bargain with Saito, the near impossible job of incepting Fischer-he felt it slipping away.
He glanced at Ariadne again, watching her eyelashes fluttering rapidly in whatever dream she was in.
She was the final wildcard, and Arthur hoped that she would bring them more luck than misfortune.
…
END CHAPTER
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