Anabasis: Part III: 7

[coldthermistor]

Title: Anabasis
Author: coldthermistor
Artist: ellegen
Rating: R just in case, mostly for violence. There is no porn.
Word count: 80,617 words
Warnings: A little violence (possibly graphic), implied torture, and swearing.
Pairings: Cobb/Mal, Arthur/Cobb
Summary: Dominic Cobb is a man on the run. He's on the run from a marriage slowly falling apart, from being framed for a crime he didn't commit...and on the run from the memories of a betrayal that haunts him still. He remembers little of the night except for one thing, burned into his mind: Arthur betrayed him. Arthur cannot be trusted. Now, a business man, Saito has come forward: with what seems to be Cobb's best hope of learning the truth about that night so many years ago...and with Cobb's best hope of clearing his name. In return, he only wants an impossible job performed. Inception. There is no room for failure. The stakes are too high. But there is an enemy haunting Cobb's footsteps...an enemy wearing the face of a man that Cobb knows only too well: Cobb's former point man, Arthur...

-

Part III: Eidolon

Robert Fischer hadn’t been too hard a nut to crack. An impatient threat to Browning, and Fischer rolled his eyes and threw a random number at them. Cobb knew it was random, and that it wasn’t going to be significant - yet - but he kept up with the charade, enough for Fischer to realise he was in deep trouble. “You’re going to have to do better,” he said roughly, and dropped the canvas bag over Fischer’s head once more, dragging the protesting man out of the room and hustling him into the van. Fischer struggled, calling out, trying to make sure Browning was fine - Yusuf put him out quickly with a sedative, while Eames freed himself easily and strolled out of the room. He’d dropped the forge.

He pulled Cobb aside, to say, “That boy’s relationship with his father’s worse than we thought!”

“The stronger the issues, the more powerful the catharsis,” Cobb replied. One thing after another was going wrong, and he was strongly determined not to let the job go down as a failure again. “Work something out. Can you help Yusuf get Saito down the stairs?” Eames nodded briefly and headed off after Yusuf.

“What are you doing?” Ariadne wanted to know, as Cobb rummaged through the storage crate. For all that they hadn’t been prepared to face such heavy
firepower, they had expected some resistance and he pulled the sniper rifle out, and checked it quickly.

“Shooting some projections off our tail,” he replied - and was promptly distracted by pounding on the door.

Cobb frowned - he didn’t like the sound of that. He dropped the rifle, and pulled out his Beretta instead. Chances were, the projections had good cover by now, and dealing with the unlucky projection pounding on their door or trying to break it down was going to be exceedingly close. He waited for Eames and Yusuf to carry Saito to the van - Eames raised an eyebrow. He’d picked up on the pounding too.

Eames pulled out his own gun and came up to Cobb. “I don’t suppose you’re volunteering yourself?” he asked, with just a touch of the sardonic to his voice.

Cobb didn’t bother. He was already walking in the direction of the door. He just nodded. “Cover me,” he called back over his shoulder. He paused in front of the door, glanced to check where he could dive for cover, and yanked it open.

As Cobb was moving out of the line of fire, the figure moved in, quickly, out of the rain and slammed the doors firmly shut. By the time Cobb’s brain caught up with him, he realised he was staring at a very drenched and thoroughly soaked Arthur, who had two guns pointed right at him, and that he was holding one of them.

“Hey,” Arthur said, deadpan. There was almost something funny about how casually he was taking the whole thing.

Eames’ eyes had narrowed, almost to slits. “What the - “ he began, and then recovered with admirable speed. “Alright, whose projection is he?” Eames demanded. Cobb did not miss the accusing glance that Eames shot at him.



“Fischer’s security projections almost had you boxed in,” Arthur said, matter-of-factly, to Cobb. “Three snipers. I took them out and bought you some time, but there’s going to be more. You’ll need to move fast.”

Cobb hesitated before he nodded sharply and engaged the safety before he put the Beretta back. “Alright. Get in the van.”

“Excuse me?” Eames asked. His gun did not waver. It was still pointed squarely at Arthur.

“What?” Ariadne asked, in disbelief.

“He’s coming,” Cobb said, firmly.

Eames shrugged, and put his gun away. “Alright,” he agreed pleasantly. He turned to climb into the van, as if dead colleagues popped up as projections every time he was on a job. “I suppose another person can’t hurt. Especially if he’s anywhere near as good as the real thing.”

At the same time, both Cobb and Arthur tensed up - and then their eyes flicked to each other. The tension did not leave their stances. “Cobb,” Ariadne began, tentatively. “I’m not sure if - “

Cobb exhaled. “We don’t have the time for this now,” he said, curtly. It was almost as much to himself as it was to all of them. “Get in the van.”

Arthur nodded and followed Eames. Ariadne didn’t move. She hesitated, staring after Arthur’s retreating back. “Is that wise?” she asked, quietly.

“I want him where I can keep my eyes on him,” Cobb said, just as softly. “I don’t want him wandering around the level where he can…” he trailed off. “Eames can take care of himself,” he concluded. “Come on. He was right. We don’t have much time.”

She wanted to ask, But will you shoot him? The question went unasked. Ariadne wasn’t certain if she’d like the answer. Tamping down on her misgivings, Ariadne followed the rest of the team into the van, and hoped that Cobb wasn’t going to be terribly wrong about this.

-

As the van sped on, jolted a little over rough parts of the road, Cobb had gone straight back to business. “Fischer’s security,” Arthur mentioned. “It’s going to get worse as we go deeper.”

“I know,” Cobb said. He frowned a bit, thinking, and then shifted in his seat. “I’m thinking we run with Mr Charles - “

“No,” Arthur cut him off. “Bad idea.”

“Who’s Mr Charles?” Eames wanted to know. “For those of us who aren’t part of someone else’s subconscious.” Evidently, he wasn’t as blasé about the projection business as he’d first appeared to be. But no one would have been. No one could have been. And Eames had known Arthur, before he died. Ariadne could only guess how it must feel to be confronted by Cobb’s projection of Arthur.

“The second we get into that hotel and approach Fischer, his security’s going to be all over us,” Cobb retorted. “We run with Mr Charles - “

“Have you even tried it out?” Arthur countered.

There was a painful silence.

“Well,” Eames said, cutting in, “There’s always a first time, isn’t there?” Ariadne studied him, wondering if he was being optimistic or just sardonic.

“We need some kind of a distraction,” Cobb told Eames. Arthur looked grimly unhappy, but he said nothing to challenge that.

“No problem,” Eames said. He glanced up from finding the vein on his arm, and there was a hint of a boyish smile on his face. “I have a lovely lady whom I’ve used before.”

Cobb nodded, acknowledging it. “Listen, drive carefully, alright?” he said, turning to Yusuf. “The dream down there’s going to be as unstable as hell.”

“Yeah, alright,” Yusuf said, just a little impatiently. “I’ll play the music to let you know it’s coming. The rest is on you.”

“Thank you, Yusuf,” Eames said pleasantly. “No pressure.” He loosely pulled the canvas bag over his head and lay back in his seat, making sure he was strapped in. Cobb did the same. None of them wanted to get prematurely jolted out of the second layer.

“You ready?” Yusuf called out.

“Ready,” Eames responded, and then Yusuf depressed the trigger to activate the somnacin outflow…

-

Ariadne glanced, just a little suspiciously, at Arthur. He tugged lightly at her arm, guiding her into the lobby of the hotel, where he found a seat that allowed them an unobstructed view of the bar. She caught sight of the figure there - Cobb, tugging on his suit jacket to neaten up before he walked in.

“Who, or what is Mr Charles?” she asked, cautiously. Cobb’s projection hadn’t been immediately hostile the last time she’d entered his dreams and she could only hope this was going to be true once more.

“An idea,” Arthur replied, quietly. “A crazy one, that probably shouldn’t work.”

“What?” She asked, confused.

“There he goes,” Arthur continued. They watched Cobb walk up to Fischer, now alone, as the blonde took her leave, and Ariadne realised with a jolt that the blonde had been Eames. That was what he meant by the lovely lady he’d used before!

“What’s he doing?”

“Mr Charles is a gambit,” Arthur explained, “Designed to turn Fischer against his own subconscious.”

“Then…why don’t you approve?”

Arthur looked at her and shrugged. “It’s a bad time to start experimenting now. And Mr Charles involves telling the subject that he’s dreaming. Which creates a new set of problems, and attracts a lot of attention to us. Relax,” he added, “Don’t give the projections any reason to be suspicious.”

“I thought Cobb said never to do that,” she muttered, but tried to relax. Still, Ariadne thought she was performing admirably, considering she was sitting fatally close to Arthur.

She glanced at Arthur, and noticed he was watching the distant figure speak with Robert Fischer, a reluctant and wistful smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Like this, she thought, Cobb’s projection was softer, far less deadly. There was a kind of sad regret to him, almost tired. She could almost believe that he was completely different from the first time they’d met, when he’d shot her. “Yeah,” he said, after a while. “But you must have noticed how much time Cobb spends doing things he says never to do.”

“Why are you like this?” she blurted out.

Arthur looked back at her. “Like this?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Nice. Just…sad.”

Arthur laughed shortly. “I haven’t been told that in a long time,” he said.

“Why are you helping us?” Ariadne wanted to know.

Arthur shrugged again, and said evasively, “Yeah, well, it looked like you needed a hand.”

She would have replied, except that for a moment, she felt the sudden snap, the electric tension in the air that always happened when the projections became aware. They were glancing around the lobby, and Ariadne realised that the feeling of maybe fifty pairs of eyes on them all at once was exceedingly disconcerting. “What’s happening?” she asked aloud.

“Cobb’s drawing Fischer’s attention to the strangeness of the dream,” Arthur explained, “Which is making his subconscious look for the dreamer - for Eames. Who isn’t here at the moment, so he should be safe.” Except they’d noticed the jacketed security figures heading after Eames, Ariadne thought. “Eames can take care of himself,” Arthur said, echoing what Cobb had told her earlier. It was so eeriely similar that Ariadne almost wanted to laugh. “Quick,” he said quietly, “Give me a kiss.”

Contrary to his words, he leaned in and kissed her. It was quick, perfunctory, and when he quickly pulled back, Ariadne was still gaping at him. “They’re still staring at us,” she said, which was the first thing that came to mind, right after I kissed Cobb’s psychotic projection and I am going to die.

“It was worth a shot,” he admitted ruefully, and she resisted the urge to punch him lightly on the arm. She wondered, vaguely, what the real Arthur had been like. Would he have done something like that? And there was that too. Arthur wasn’t real. He wasn’t real. He was just part of Cobb’s subconscious, part of Cobb’s idea of who Arthur had been, what Arthur had been like. In a way, that made it even weirder. She’d kind of gotten kissed by Cobb and kind of hadn’t at the same time. Ariadne decided it was better she didn’t think too hard about it. She thought she could understand why Eames directed the occasional hard glance at Arthur. It just didn’t seem right, to be sitting next to someone who looked exactly like someone he’d known, but wasn’t that person.

“C’mon,” she said, instead. “Maybe we’d better move.”

“Alright,” he said easily, standing up after her. “Lead on.”

-

Time, Eames thought, for a little game. He didn’t need to glance behind him to notice the two projections following him. He’d picked up on their faint reflections in the glass long before they’d come anywhere near. He considered his options. Killing them had the charm of being rather terminal, which would mean those two wouldn’t be back to bother him anytime soon. It would, however, cause an undue amount of alarm, particularly right here, where all of Fischer’s projections were.

He sped up a little, walking just a bit faster. First, he needed to get out of here, to move to somewhere less populated. Dropping the forge wouldn’t help him, not when the projections were tracking the wallet rather than his physical appearance, but it’d confuse them. And then…

Divide and conquer. Eames always fancied himself just a bit of a strategist. This is how you lose a tail, he thought, recalling Cobb’s dismal performance in Mombasa. He was well aware of the security projections approaching his back: they were speeding up now, perhaps sensing they were going to lose him, and Eames considered how quickly he could dig the handgun out from his purse when the lift doors opened.

Aha, Eames thought. So that was where Saito had gone. He pushed forward anyway, hand snaking up to grip the lapels of Saito’s jacket, crowding him back into the lift. He let the lady’s lips move in a vaguely shameless smirk as he whispered, “Can I have a minute?”

He hit the button for the floor, noticed a moment later that it’d been the eighth floor. No matter, the further the security projections got from the fifth floor, the better it’d be for them. “Ah…” Saito stammered, and Eames grinned at the man’s obvious discomfort - even if it was obvious that Saito wasn’t exactly unappreciative of the attentions of a lovely lady, in the cramped space of an elevator.

He focused on the panelled mirrors that formed the walls of the elevator, and dropped the forge layer by layer, watching as the three reflections lined up in the mirror’s depths shifted and became the same thing: Eames, forger. He blinked and dropped the last layer and then he was Eames again, purse gone, grey cotton jacket settling loose and comfortable on his broader shoulders, Fischer’s wallet settled comfortably in the pocket of his pants.

Saito pushed him away, a little roughly. “Very amusing, Mr Eames,” he said, thoroughly disapproving.

“You look a little perkier,” Eames said lightly. He reached into his pocket to produce the wallet, flipped through it. There was the same photograph, Maurice and Robert Fischer and Eames frowned down at it. Was it - ?

The lift trembled them, shuddered and vibrated as if something hard had struck them for a moment. Saito glanced upwards, as if he could see through the elevator walls and outside at whatever had generated the disturbance. “Turbulence on the plane?” he asked, neutrally.

Eames shook his head, considering it. He pocketed the wallet again. “No, feels closer than that. Should be Yusuf’s driving.”

He wondered what, exactly, was going on up there. He suspected he knew. Yusuf was getting chased throughout the city by Fischer’s projections. If you keep this up, mate, Eames thought, at a conspicuously absent Yusuf, this is going to be a hell of a rough ride. He didn’t say any of what he was thinking. Instead, Eames handed the wallet over to Saito. They needed to buy Cobb a little more time. “Get off, dump the wallet, and keep moving,” he instructed. “Security will try to track it down. Meet me in the lobby.” The lift chimed and the doors slid open. Eames lightly shoved Saito through the gap and then hit the button for the fourth floor.

Before Saito could say anything, the lift doors slid shut again.

En passant, Eames thought smugly, and waited for the lift to reach the fourth floor. He figured he had a few moments before the lift reached the ground level, and security went to search for them. His little trick would probably have them splitting up, and on a whim, Eames pressed the buttons for every floor except the ground floor, blocking the lift doors from closing with his outstretched forearm as he did so. It was more of an annoyance than anything serious, but right now, the longer he kept security tied up, the more time he had to set the charges and prime them.

After all, they weren’t the ones with an unlimited supply of manpower.

He stepped out of the lift and started heading down the corridor, counting doors as he went along. The whole point about splitting up was to have them chasing Saito instead of him. It probably wouldn’t work perfectly, and he rather suspected that whoever had trained Fischer had done a bang-up job of it. Those projections were persistent and they hadn’t even been quite thoroughly antagonised yet.

491, Eames counted, and slipped the keycard out of his jacket pocket and slid it into the electronic lock, slipped it out again, waited for the green light, and turned the door handle, pushing against the door. He angled himself so he was shielded by the door, glancing quickly to see if any of Fischer’s projections had gotten to the room and breathed a sigh of relief.

The room was unoccupied. He shut the door behind him, and went to look for the safe. According to the design Ariadne had created, this room was going to be right below 528. He entered the password, opened the safe, extracted the charges, and set to the task of figuring out where they should be set.

-

By now, Yusuf was thoroughly convinced that the problem wasn’t going to be driving carefully. The problem, he decided, was making sure that none of them got killed. He’d taken it as well as he could, because none of them were waking up until that sedative had a chance to wear off. He tried to recall the programming on the outflow monitoring chip and gave up. The flow should have been programmed to terminated almost twenty minutes before landing. They’d need all that time to perform inception, but there had been a back door. A very small back door, built in because he and Cobb had both agreed that they might just need someone on the outside, and a flight attendant wasn’t going to be experienced enough to cut it.

None of the dreamers could be spared. Eames, Ariadne, and himself were all integral to the stability and the functioning of the dream layers, and to yank one of them out would have jeopardised the stability of the other dream layers, possibly even breaking down the entire dream as a whole. Instead, the programming that monitored the outflow into Cobb’s line had been modified: the timer had been reprogrammed to shut off the flow at approximately five hours, half of the total flight time.

Yusuf could appreciate how important that back door was, and yet it wasn’t going to be of use now. They had to rush through the job, and that only meant that they had maybe three and a half days on this level before someone could shut off the flow, instead of seven days. It didn’t do them a load of good, not when none of them were going to be able to wake up until Cobb’s line terminated.

Which was approximately three and a half days later, three and a half days of time they did not have and could not afford to spare.

Yusuf growled something mildly imprecative as he caught sight of more projections trying to catch up to him. Rain splashed, and he tried to peer ahead, through the blurring curtain of rain. There wasn’t a sign of the black SUVs - he’d managed to lose them a few turnings ago, but now, he was being pursued by projections on motorcycles. More nimble, but with much smaller mass. Not that it would do him any good, unless he crashed the van into them.

And then, through the side mirror, Yusuf caught sight of a projection pulling out what looked like a sawed off shotgun.

“Wonderful,” he muttered. He hit the accelerator and kept going.

-

“What are we doing?” Ariadne hissed, as Arthur made his way across the lobby to where security projections were waiting in front of the elevator with the air of impatient men.

“How many levels are there?” he demanded.

Ariadne frowned, trying to think of a way to express how she was sure it wasn’t a good idea to explain any intricacies of the dream’s architecture to a projection with a track record of sabotaging their jobs when Arthur held up a hand and said, “I just need to know where the stairs are.”

“To the right of the lift,” she blurted, “There’s a turning there, and you’ll see the fire escape stairs.”

“Thanks,” he said, and continued onwards, quickening his pace. Ariadne hurried to catch up with him.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, amending her earlier question.

“Cobb needs some more time,” Arthur said quietly, glancing back over his shoulder for a moment in the direction of the bar. “Fischer’s projections will be drawn to whoever’s the bigger threat at the moment. Eames’ trick with the wallet’s gotten them on him, but they’re going to find it soon, and they’ll be back after Cobb and Cobb’s got Fischer. It’ll be dangerous. 528, Cobb said?”

“Yes,” Ariadne began, “But - “

The corners of his mouth quirked upwards in a slight smile. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I can handle a few security projections.”

“That’s not what I meant!” Ariadne called after his retreating back, but Arthur gave no sign he’d heard her. The lift doors opened. Arthur moved fast: with a yell, he hurled himself forward, tackling one of the projections. The first man stumbled into the lift in a tangle of limbs, fell, and staggered to his feet. Arthur rolled to his feet first, extricated himself, and in what seemed to be a continuous, graceful movement, flowed into a shoulder throw that slammed the projection down. This time, he didn’t get up. Arthur darted out of the lift, left hand snaking up behind the other projection’s head, yanking him forward, and introduced his right elbow to the man’s chin. Ariadne heard a sharp crack and the projection’s face snapped upwards from the elbow strike - he staggered to the side, dropped, and the moment Arthur wasn’t in the way, the lift doors closed.

The display didn’t change: in a few moments, the lift opened once again, and the first projection had pulled out a gun and opened fire at Arthur. Arthur had paused for a moment, enough for the projection to catch sight of him and then fled towards the fire escape stairs, bent forward as much as he could, making himself a moving target. She wondered Arthur was running for a moment, and then caught sight of the projections crowding the atrium. All of them had their eyes fixed unerringly on Arthur, and in his absence, they were now looking right at her.

Oh. That.

Ariadne forced herself to appear unobstrusive, to pretend to be another projection, and casually moved to the lift and pressed the button, waiting with thinly veiled impatience for the lift doors to open. She hit the button for the fifth floor, and breathed a sigh of relief when the lift doors slid shut.

At least she wasn’t going to be in danger of shooting anyone anytime soon.

-

“Think, Mr Fischer, think,” Cobb commanded, arms folded across his chest, watching Robert Fischer. Fischer bent over the sink. He’d splashed water on himself, as if hoping this was some kind of ersatz dream he could wake up from, rivulets of water trickling off his face. He watched the water funnel down the basin and drain out. “What do you remember?”

“There was…there was rain,” Fischer said slowly, frowning as he tried to remember. “Gunfire. A van - Uncle Peter!” He glanced up abruptly, staring at Cobb, aghast. “We were kidnapped!”

“Where were they holding you?” Cobb prodded. He had to lead Fischer, one conclusion at a time, enough to get Fischer to recall the locater.

“I don’t know…” Fischer said reflexively, and then frowned. “A van,” he decided, “In the back of a van.”

“That explains the gravity shifts,” Cobb said, as if he’d had a sudden revelation. “Your body’s bouncing around in the back of a van right now! That’s very good, come on, keep going…” It was an effort of will not to glance at the door, not to wonder why Fischer’s security wasn’t closing in on them as they spoke.

“It was…there was something about a safe,” Fischer said, eyes screwed firmly shut as he tried to remember. He rubbed at his temples. “Christ, why’s it so hard to remember?” he muttered.

“It’s like trying to remember a dream after you’ve woken up,” Cobb explained. “It takes years of practice to be able to do it. So they’ve pulled you and Browning into a dream so they can steal something from your mind. What is it?”

“They wanted…they wanted the combination for a safe,” Fischer said, finally. “Something…there was something else. Something about the first few numbers to pop into my head…”

“That’s it!” Cobb hissed. Fischer glanced at him, startled. “This is a hotel,” he explained. “They extracted a locater from you. A number from your subconscious that can be used in any number of ways…like room numbers. What was the number you gave them? I need you to remember this for me, Mr Fischer. It’s very important.”

Fischer opened his mouth, and then hesitated, frowning. “Five…two…six…no, four,” he hastily amended. “Five…two…eight…four….something. I can’t - “

Cobb held out a hand to forestall any further attempts. “That’s good enough,” he said, and then dialled the number on his cell. “Fifth floor,” he said into it.

“Got it,” Eames said curtly. He hung up.

-

Sound carried in the enclosed space of the fire escape. Eames paused, listening for a moment. And then he heard it again: footsteps, getting closer. Were Fischer’s projections using the stairs? He tensed, reaching for his gun and paused, waiting. He could elude them, of course, but a cardinal rule that Eames lived by was that he liked to see them coming. He didn’t mind a good chase, of course, but entirely on his terms. Playing someone else’s game was a dangerous proposition, and some risks…well, they weren’t worth taking, no matter what the rewards were.

He was, to put it mildly, surprised to see Arthur come tearing up the stairs - and a security projection hot on his heels. He was, to put it mildly, even more astonished at the way his gut clenched and he felt a kind of discomfort and disdain, glancing at what he knew to be a facsimile of a former colleague and alright, a decent copy at that, but Cobb had worked more closely with Arthur than he had.

Still, Eames was nothing if not professional, and the first thing he did was to snap, “Arthur!”

He’d worked with Cobb and Arthur before. And what Cobb knew about some of their methods, this Arthur knew as well. As Arthur dropped straight down to the ground, as low as he could manage, hands moving to cover his head, as the pursuing projection turned the corner, Eames half-exhaled and put a bullet right through him. The first missed, but the second went right into the projection’s torso. Eames shot him again, this time in the head, but did not relax until he’d gone over to the projection and nudged the body with his foot. No sense in being monumentally stupid.

“Are you getting up?” he asked, not looking over his shoulder.

He’d got a muffled groan in response, and the sound of heavy breathing.

“You’ve gotten out of shape,” Eames said pleasantly. “Must be the time spent stuck in Cobb’s mind, I take it?”

“If you don’t mind,” Arthur retorted, straightening up. His breathing was starting to steady. “Cobb’s probably going to be in 528 by now. Reckon we should head up there.”

“Oh, not at all,” Eames smiled. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Don’t mind me, go on now.”

“Where’re you headed?”

Eames considered if he should answer the question, and did. Mostly for the same reasons he’d shot the projection on Arthur’s tail. It was funny, really, when he thought about it. He’d have thought being a forger meant he’d be a lot less squeamish about this projection who looked a lot like Arthur but wasn’t. Somehow, it still sat just a little uneasily with him, turning over in a vaguely uncomfortable knot in his gut. Maybe the real Arthur would have laughed at him because Eames wasn’t a terribly sentimental man, but at that moment, Eames would have rather had prickly, annoying Arthur than this doppelganger which wore Arthur’s features and looked and acted just a little too much like the real thing for comfort. “I thought I’d pop down and get Saito,” he mentioned briefly. “I suppose it’s fine, since you’re heading up.”

Everything about the terse statement suggested he did not want Arthur heading down with him, and mercifully, Arthur just nodded. His eyes narrowed.

“You’ve a problem with me?”

Darling, Eames wanted to say, each word laced utterly with sarcasm, I have no problems with dead colleagues popping up in the middle of a job. What he said instead, “How perceptive. Your…predecessor wouldn’t have needed me to fish his sorry hide out of the frying pan.”

It was childish, but Eames couldn’t help himself.

Arthur snorted, and turned to walk up the stairs. “Hong Kong, Mr Eames,” he called out. “Don’t forget, you still owe me.”

Eames stood there a while longer, listening to the sound of Arthur’s footsteps recede. He wondered briefly when Cobb had known about Hong Kong, and then shrugged it off with a simple motion of his shoulders. Perhaps during Macau, there’d been ample opportunity for Cobb to figure it out.

He nudged the body to the side with his foot. There wasn’t enough time to hide it, and anyway, he didn’t think projections would be coming up the fire escape anytime soon. Instead, Eames continued on downwards, towards the landing on the ground level, where he could go pick up Saito and hope that his employer had, at least, pulled his weight and managed to elude the projections.

After all, Eames thought, he’d already played the white knight a few times today. A little more and it was going to get distinctly…tiresome.

-

Fischer wasn’t the only one to startle at the two figures who waited for them, just outside room 528. Cobb blinked and hesitated for a moment when he saw Arthur, standing there, waiting with Ariadne. He was suddenly acutely aware of what a fragile thread their deception hung on. If Arthur chose now…

If Arthur chose to turn on him now…

He was aware of his hand slipping towards the purloined Beretta. Arthur looked straight at him and gave him a sharp nod. For all that he seemed motionless, his dark eyes met Cobb’s squarely, and right then, Cobb couldn’t see what he thought he knew all along, that Arthur was going to betray him, sooner or later. His hand hesitated. He paused, and then carefully let his hand drop, relaxed, by his side.

Fischer glanced at him, uncertain, and Cobb took a step forward. “They’re with me,” he said, willing himself to sound certain and reassuring. It was a far cry from how he felt. Fischer didn’t look too convinced, but said nothing, letting him take the lead. Cobb didn’t need to gesture towards the door; he turned his head to glance at it, to let Arthur pick up on his intentions, and then headed towards the door.

He tried to listen in. He wasn’t sure if any of Fischer’s projections had ended up in the room, but one stray bullet could put an end to the entire job. There was nothing, not a sound. He all but felt Arthur take up his position, slightly behind him, all but saw Arthur out of the corner of his eye, all but felt his mouth threaten to curl in a smile. Well, alright. This was almost the Cobb-and-Arthur game again, and as he straightened up, he felt perfectly calm, perfectly in control.

Arthur would have drawn, Glock directed right at the door, Cobb leading, Arthur covering him.

(His back was to Arthur; a bullet through the spine would quite effectively kill him.)

Cobb exhaled, did not think about that, and let himself relax, focusing right next to the lock. He took a deep breath and then lashed out in a front snap kick that slammed the door open with a loud enough crash. Cobb winced a little, feeling the impact in his foot, but then darted in, moving quickly to the right, because he knew Arthur would swap and head left and further in, which meant that it was Cobb’s turn to cover him.

Arthur took the lead now, and headed towards the bathroom, while Cobb checked the closet area, making sure no projections were lingering or lurking around. Eames and Ariadne had evidently done the job well, because the room was empty. Fischer and Ariadne had the sense at least to keep behind them, and out of the way.

“Mr Charles!” Arthur called out. He walked out of the bathroom. The Glock was gone; he held up a brushed-silver briefcase, and Cobb recognised it immediately.

“Do you know what that is, Mr Fischer?” he asked, turning back to Fischer.

Fischer shook his head at first, but then nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think so…yeah.” Arthur took the PASIV over to the bed, opened the casing, and deftly checked it.

“They were trying to put you under,” Cobb explained, and now this was the hard part, convincing Fischer that he had to be put under. His mind raced ahead, trying to think of just what could persuade Fischer to do so. Self-extraction? That Fischer had to remember what his kidnappers had wanted from him? That it was the only way he could elude his pursuers until the sedative had worn off?

“I’m already under,” Fischer pointed out, slowly, as if he wasn’t quite sure if Cobb was making any sense.

“Under again,” Cobb said. “A dream within a dream. Remember your training, Mr Fischer,” he said, as earnestly as he could, willing the man to believe him. All of it wouldn’t matter if Fischer balked now. His alarm would draw his security onto them, thicker than flies. Keep talking. Keep talking. A successful deception worked because it lulled the target into complacency. The smoother he was, the more he could draw Fischer in and have Fischer accept his words without thinking about them too much…“A dream within a dream’s entirely possible if they’ve gotten hold of the right sedative, and I…and I believe they’ve done just that.”

It was a long moment before Fischer nodded, slowly.

“Shhh,” Arthur hissed, interrupting them then. When they glanced at him, surprised, he motioned for silence. And then Cobb heard it, footfalls in the corridor outside, getting closer. Arthur moved towards the door then, looking back at Cobb for a moment. Cobb gave him a slight nod of acknowledgement and moved into a position so familiar that it was almost instinct. Arthur would ambush the eavesdropper, and Cobb would cover him. He produced the Beretta again, and gave a light cough to let Arthur know he was ready.

Arthur moved to open the door - but in that instant, whoever who was behind the door opened it. Arthur’s hand snaked out as he stepped forward, closing his fingers around the intruder’s wrist and then he pivoted off his rear foot, using his momentum to help the intruder forward. At the same time, he swept his leading foot into the projection’s feet. The man’s footing gave, and his grip on the door gave him no purchase at all. The door swung wide open, dumping Peter Browning to the ground.

Arthur didn’t relinquish his tight grip on Browning’s wrist. The other hand trained his Glock at the back of Browning’s head, hand on the trigger. He didn’t take his eyes off Browning, but Cobb knew Arthur had things under control and slipped the Beretta back into his waistband.

“Uncle Peter?” Fischer asked, incredulously. Cobb went over and took the keycard from Browning’s unresisting hand. So that was how he had gained entrance.

“You said you were kidnapped together?” Cobb asked, neutrally, turning to look at Fischer.

“Not exactly,” Fischer offered, hesitantly. “When I was there…um, they already had him, uh, they were torturing him.”

“And you saw them torturing him?”

Fischer exhaled, uncertain. Cobb didn’t say anything further, let Fischer think about it. More often than not, silence made people nervous. It made Fischer toy with an idea that he normally wouldn’t have, made Fischer wonder, made Fischer doubt. From the beginnings of doubt sprang the first cracks…which Fischer’s projection of Browning should send right back to Fischer in a negative feedback loop. “The kidnappers were working for you?” he asked Browning quietly. His voice wavered, threatened to crack, and something in Cobb’s gut clenched in reflexive sympathy.

He realised why a few moments after he recognised the emotion in Robert’s voice (when had he started thinking of him as Robert?), processed Robert’s expression, his posture.

Betrayal.

He breathed, focused for a moment on the pattern of his breathing. He couldn’t afford this. Not now. One way or another, he had to perform the job, and it’d go much easier if he put aside any feelings of sympathy towards Robert Fischer.

It wasn’t easy. They’d both been in the same place before.

“Robert…” Browning pleaded.

And there it was. Fischer’s projection had picked up on his insecurity, his doubt, and was feeding it right back to him. It was a downward spiral: Fischer’s doubts about his godfather affected the way the Browning projection behaved, and that, in turn, only raised more doubt, and more suspicion. It was a trick that was elegant, in its simplicity.

That was another critical moment, another part of the job that slipped neatly in place. Cobb tamped down on his misgivings and wished it felt more like a victory than it did at the moment.

“You’re trying to get that safe open? So you can get the alternate will?”

“Fischer-Morrow has been my entire life,” Browning retorted. “I can’t let you destroy it.”

“I’m not going to throw away my inheritance!” Fischer snapped, exasperated. “Why would I?”

“I couldn’t let you rise to your father’s last taunt!”

“What taunt?”

“The will, Robert,” Browning said, tiredly. He sagged against Arthur’s unyielding grip on his wrist, head bowed. The fight and the anger had left him. “That’s his last insult: challenging you to build something for yourself by saying you’re not worthy of his accomplishments.”

“Yes,” Fischer said, softly. He turned away for a moment, his hands going up to his face. It was one moment, two moments before he turned back, pale blue eyes glinting. Maybe just a little too brightly, in the lighting. “Well, that he was uh…disappointed?”

“I’m sorry,” Browning told him. “But he was wrong, Robert. You can build a better company than he ever did.”

Fischer said nothing. Cobb was still considering the problem of how to get Fischer sedated and quickly - and then, it struck him, all at once, in a flash of inspiration. Improvisation was always a matter of using what you had to get what you wanted. What did he want? To persuade Robert Fischer to let them into his mind, down another level. Without causing Fischer alarm - his subconscious security was going to pick up on any distress and any hostility and then they’d be in for it. What did he have?

Tension between Robert Fischer and his godfather. The beginnings of doubt. The beginnings of distrust. Browning, who was essentially a projection of Fischer’s subconscious. Entering Browning’s mind would effectively be the same as entering Fischer’s.

“Mr Fischer,” Cobb said quietly, cutting into their conversation. He took a step closer to Fischer, and whispered, much softer so Browning couldn’t pick up on it, “He’s lying.”

“How do you know?” Robert asked. There was something wild at the edge of his light blue eyes, something pleading and a little desperate that struck a chord and a deep resonant note in Cobb’s throat. He pressed on before it would betray him, before it could threaten to close up.

“Trust me,” he breathed. “It’s what I do. He’s hiding something and we need to find out what it is.”

Arthur picked up on that; they’d always been excellent at working off each other, and Arthur must have known because Cobb did, or perhaps because he’d overheard. He hauled Browning to his feet and forced him aside, out of the doorway, and into a nearby chair. At that point, Eames and Saito appeared in the doorway: Saito’s eyes narrowed when he glanced at Arthur, and he looked like he wanted to say something. Eames picked up on that, and nudged Saito, glancing at Fischer. Saito noticed, and said nothing, although the expression that flickered on his face was almost…puzzled?

“How?” Robert wanted to know.

“Do to him what he was going to do to you,” Cobb replied. “Penetrate his subconscious and find out what he doesn’t want you to know.”

It was the final step, the final test. For a moment, Cobb thought Robert was going to refuse, but then he nodded. Arthur relinquished Browning to Eames and went to set up the PASIV, producing one of the lines and running it up to where Browning sat in the chair. At the same time, with a little prompting, Robert sat on the bed, rolling up his sleeve. Deftly, Cobb found the vein and slid the needle in, reaching back towards the PASIV. It took a few moments to reprogram it to start the flow to only Robert’s and Browning’s lines ahead of time, and then he activated the somnacin flow. In a few moments, Robert was lying back against the bed. Cobb snapped his fingers above Robert’s eyes - there was no response. He decided against checking. The compounds should have put Robert under by now.

“Browning?” he asked aloud, and Arthur answered him.

“Out,” he said. He didn’t ask about Robert.

“Wait,” Ariadne said slowly, settling into the other unoccupied chair. “Whose subconscious are we going into?”

“We’re going into Fischer’s,” Cobb told her. He sat down on the floor, rolled up his sleeve, and located the vein. “I told him it was Browning’s so he’s going to be a part of our team.”

Arthur nodded slowly. “Brilliant,” he said, in admiration. “He’s going to help us break into his own subconscious.” He nodded to Cobb, moving to sit down on the floor as well before he inserted his own line. Cobb resisted the inevitable question he was wondering about - and that Arthur must surely know was running through his head. For how long more were they going to be on the same team?

“It’s going to get rough down there,” Eames said brusquely to Arthur.

“It’ll be tricky enough up here,” Arthur countered, lying back against the floor. “Security’s going to run you down hard.”

Eames snorted. “They can try. I’ve got some tricks of my own.”

“Good luck. You’ll need it.”

“Shut up and sleep already.”

Cobb hesitated, right before he inserted the needle. There was a flicker, a flicker of bright orange at the corner of his eye, just outside the window, and a sharp acrid smell that filled his lungs…

“Hey, you alright?”

It was Arthur who had spoken, Arthur who was glancing at him with…sympathy. Cobb took a deep breath and fought the reflexive tensing of his muscles, the smell of smoke which clung doggedly to his lungs, the tearing coughs that threatened to rack his throat.

They were memories. They weren’t real.

Except this was a dream. Here, memories and ghosts were just as real as…as the memory who was glancing at him, concerned.

“Yeah,” he replied thickly. “I’m fine.”

The needle went in.

-

A sterile, almost blinding-white, even through the snow-goggles that protected his eyes, and the sharp, crisp, clean smell that seemed to linger in the air in winter brought Cobb back to himself and grounded him back in the shifting realities of a dream.

He gripped the sniper rifle tightly, peered through the scope at the facility that lay spread before them, beneath the sweeping cliff. He’d remembered most of this level, but he knew Ariadne had swapped around critical points. All this to make sure that he didn’t know enough about what lay before them. It had kept part of their plans from Arthur before. He’d have to trust that it would continue to do so.

What had originally been a hospital had been transformed by Fischer’s subconscious security into what looked to be a fortress, bristling with military presence and a most palpable air of menace. Cobb breathed sharply and lowered the rifle, blinking to clear his vision. He couldn’t see much from this distance, only the indistinct shapes of sentries making their way along the thick walls. Typical - nothing about this job was going to be as easy as it seemed.

“Cobb?” Ariadne asked quietly, and he almost started before he remembered she’d come up right there, behind him. There was no sign of Fischer, no sign of Saito, no sign of Arthur.

Cobb could only hope that didn’t mean trouble.

“What’s down there?”

Cobb shrugged. “Hopefully,” he replied neutrally, “It’ll be the truth we want Fischer to learn about his father.”

She accepted that with a nod, but pressed on. “I meant what’s down there for you.”

The truth I don’t want to learn, he thought, with a trace of irony, and then dismissed the thought. It was still a level too high, and he wasn’t populating this dream, wasn’t planting his secrets inside it.

Except it wasn’t true, was it? It was one of the principles he’d learned about dreamsharing. Things got out, one way or another. It was dreamsharing for a reason. The more you opened up your mark, psychologically, the more of yourself you left open. It worked both ways, and the most they’d ever done was to minimise what leaked out, and to keep it as intangible as possible, relative to the concrete and physical manifestations of the psyche that were too common when it came to the mark.

“I’m going to try raising Arthur on the radio,” Cobb told her instead, ignoring her question. Ariadne pursed her lips and might have argued with him, except he moved a short distance away and tried the radio. He tried Arthur, then Saito, but got nothing except a blur of static. He tried Arthur again, and this time, he succeeded.

“Where did you end up?” he demanded.

“Near a series of terraces,” Arthur replied. “Can see the facility pretty far ahead. Looks well-guarded. Looks like there’s a series of cliffs behind us. I’ve got Fischer and Saito. Where’re you?”

Well, that was two headaches solved, at least. And from the sound of it, Fischer and Saito were both still operational members of their team, which meant Arthur hadn’t…

Cobb reminded himself not to think about it. Not now.

“I think I see the terraces. Can you make out two figures on the cliff?”

“Don’t suppose you thought of a map.”

Nice try, Cobb thought. He said aloud, “No, sorry. I don’t know the layout.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Unfortunately, no. Look, I’ve got the architect and the dreamer with me. We’ll find our way towards you. I think I see the terrace you’re referring to.”

“Right, okay,” Arthur replied. “Arthur out.”

This time, Cobb brought the scope up to his eyes and tried to scan the terraces for any sign of white-clad figures. It was a proposition even more tricky than it already sounded. The suits blended into the snow, which meant he couldn’t expect to pick them up as figures, but as movements. He widened his focus and swept through the area - and then he spotted it. A flicker of movement. He frowned and focused in, and then found he was right. It might have been Saito. It didn’t matter. He knew where they were.

He motioned for Ariadne to come forward, and pointed out the terraces to her. “I need you to guide us to them,” he told her. “Arthur’s got Fischer and Saito, and they’re already there and waiting.”

He could almost hear her bite back the instinctive question - if it was safe to leave Fischer and Saito out there, with Arthur.

In truth, Cobb wasn’t too sure of the answer himself.

“C’mon,” he said, instead. “We need to get moving.”

-

Eames glanced at the slumbering figures for a moment, and then heaved a sigh. Arthur had been right about that, at least. Security was going to be on to him anytime soon. They’d have picked up on Fischer going under again, and on the Browning projection going off the radar, so as to speak.

He took one last look around, and slipped out of the room and back into the corridor. No sense in standing around. That was one thing: if security was on to him, this whole place was going to become a right mess, bullets flying everywhere, the works. Eames rather thought that they’d had enough of a run-in with collateral damage the first time around and that they’d be in for it if one of the others got shot.

He carefully looked out of the door and checked the corridor. It looked clear, but where the Browning projection had gone, Fischer’s other projections could follow. Eames wouldn’t put it past them. He started at a brisk walk down the corridor. He figured they’d be far more likely to come from the lift than the fire escape, and moved towards the sharp turn at the end of the corridor which would hide him from sight. The thing about running and hiding, Eames knew, was that it wouldn’t do to completely lose sight of whoever was tracking you.

This went doubly so if your only aim, particularly in Eames’ case, was simply to tie up security for a little bit. It was all about ground, engaging with them on his terms and not theirs, which meant it had to be at a time and location of his choosing.

Behind him, he heard the sound of the lift reaching the fifth level, and the lift doors opening. And then brisk footsteps, behind him but getting louder. The carpet didn’t muffle the sounds as well as a real one would have. That was the whole point.

Eames smiled: it wasn’t a terribly pleasant smile, and far closer to a reckless grin, all bared teeth, and reached for his gun and waited.

-

Prologue
Part I: Extraction
1 | 2 | 3
Part II: Inception
4 | 5 | 6
Part III: Eidolon
7 | 8