Terrible Things, 2/4. NC-17.
Title: Terrible Things
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Ariadne/Arthur, Cobb/Mal
Disclaimer: They belong to Christopher Nolan, and I borrow them out of love.
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-movie. For the second round of i_reversebang. I received prompt #1033 by nessismore. Additional warnings for violence and mentions of suicide. It's similar in scope to the movie.
Summary: One day, Arthur woke up and discovered that no one remembered Ariadne and the Fischer job never happened. Finding her only led to even more problems...
Prior chapter:
One - Defining Reality
Two - Shadow Play
Arthur woke in a lab. He was surrounded by clinical white and sterile blue, the sound of beeping monitors and the steady drip of an IV line. He could hear the susurrus of cloth rubbing against cloth as someone stirred beside him. It took him a moment to calm his breathing, and he could feel an IV in the crook of one arm as well as electrodes along his temples and scalp. The ceiling above his hospital bed seemed familiar and strange at once, as if he should have remembered where he was but somehow couldn't. Raising a hand experimentally, he noticed that he was dressed in green scrubs, a thin hospital grade blanket drawn over his legs for comfort. His hand seemed almost alien to him. It didn't look quite right, and he couldn't figure out why.
Turning his head, he saw Ariadne stretch and sit up. She withdrew her own line with brisk precision and pulled a piece of unsterile gauze from an open package beside her own hospital bed to press against the bead of blood that rose from the needle site. Her bed was lower down to the ground and the side rails hadn't been raised. Throwing her legs over the side, she easily stood up and approached his bed. The recognition in her eyes was different from what he had seen in Athens or throughout their entire relationship prior to that. There was a sense of clinical efficiency about her, as if she was exuding the professional shell that Arthur used to. She was dressed in a blue top and khakis beneath a white lab coat. The name tag read A. Riordan, which hadn't been her last name.
What the hell was going on?
She came over to Arthur's side and removed one of the lines feeding into the main IV line. She looked at Arthur, a hand resting on his arm. "You're okay," she said softly, lips curling into a slight smile of concern. "You're okay."
Arthur looked up at Ariadne with wide eyes. "Wait, Ariadne," he murmured, reaching for her.
Frowning, she patted his arm gently. "There's still some of the sedative in your system. A little flumazenil ought to flush that right out, not to worry." She moved away to the table near the head of his hospital bed. He watched her set up the syringe and needle, then draw out a measure of the clear fluid from a small glass vial. She injected it into one of the membranes on the IV line still attached to his arm. Capping the needle with the attached safety lock, she opened up another drawer and drew out a wrapped saline flush. As she flushed the line, she turned away from Arthur and faced another person. "Joseph, did you raid my drawer again? I've only got one more five mL flush left," she complained, pronouncing the measurement as mill.
Arthur couldn't quite follow what she was saying, and looked over at the person she was talking to. He froze when he saw Yusuf standing beside a sleeping Eames, who was hooked up to an IV line with different saline drips attached to the line. It was a setup just like Arthur's. In the bed beyond that was Saito. On Arthur's other side was Cobb.
What the hell was going on here?
Yusuf - Joseph in this strange place, but it was still Yusuf - shook his head at Ariadne. "Of course not, Alice. Maybe Tadashi never refilled the stock? He came through for inventory check a few hours ago, I know that. I have tens if you need any more flushes."
"Yeah, that'll help," Ariadne said. Alice. Her name here was Alice.
Arthur watched her come back to his side with three wrapped ten mL flushes. She smiled at him, and he could feel his heart stutter in his chest. "Hey. You're more alert already."
"Alice, you need antagonist over there?" Joseph called from Eames' side. He had a clipboard in hand and was copying data from the monitors attached to Eames.
"Nah. I stopped the somnacin feed, so it should flush out on its own in a few minutes." Alice had her own clipboard and made notations on it from the monitors behind Arthur's bed. She leaned against the hospital bed with that half smile on her face. "Major, you ought to start feeling more like yourself soon enough."
Arthur watched her face carefully. "You keep calling me Major."
That seemed to throw her for a loop. "Of course I would. That's your title."
"What are you talking about? I left the army years ago."
Visibly disturbed, Alice put her clipboard down and reached into the breast pocket for a penlight. "All right, then, Douglas. Let's do a neuro check."
Arthur frowned deeply at her. "That's not my name." Well, it hadn't been in years, at least.
She compressed her lips unhappily. "Let's do that neuro check."
He cooperated as she swung the light into and out of his line of sight, checked his visual fields, reflexes, muscle strength and sensation. It was a rigorous exam, apparently more than what was usually given. Joseph wandered over to Alice's side with a frown, watching them. "What's up, Alice?" he asked sotto voce.
She didn't answer, but kept going through the exam and monitoring the vital signs on the machines. Arthur found it fascinating to see her facial expressions. Alice had that same single minded concentration that Ariadne did. Her name tag hovered close to his eyes, just inside the optimal focal length. The letters blurred, making him read it as Ariadne.
"Alice?" Joseph asked in concern.
"I think it's another drop attack," Alice replied, tension in her posture and tone.
"Shit. Annabelle still calls herself Mallorie."
Arthur swung his eyes toward Yusuf in shock. No, not Yusuf. Joseph. It was hard to keep things straight, because none of this made sense.
"Yeah, I know," Alice muttered. "If that's what this is, we need to pull the plug."
"They're not going to like it," Joseph muttered, shaking his head. "Sullivan wants results."
"Sullivan can kiss my ass," Alice snapped. "I'm the lead on the IRB forms, I'm the one that calibrated the drops and levels. We can go elsewhere if it comes to it," she added, pulling herself up to her full height. She was tiny, but her attitude more than made up for it.
Joseph raised his hands in mock surrender. "It would still be part of the alphabet soup, Alice. The DOD wants a viable product."
"Not at the expense of their minds."
"Preaching to the choir, my friend," Joseph told her with a smile. He nodded at Arthur. "CNS intact there. Might as well move along to the debrief protocol. I'll check the rest of the crew while you do that."
Alice thanked him and then led Arthur to a plain white painted room. His knees had buckled when he first got off of the bed, and Alice had to support part of his weight until he sat down across from her. There was a digital recorder, a thick manila folder and a three inch binder with the label "Somnus" on it in sans serif font. Arthur vaguely remembered the Somnus Project when he was in the army; it had been a virtual training playground, where they could shoot and kill each other with impunity.
She ran through the binder's standardized questions, dutifully taking down his answers in detail, no matter how ridiculous they seemed. Arthur watched her closely, once or twice making the mistake of calling her Ariadne. She didn't seem to like the name, but it wasn't something that she corrected him for. He stopped trying to censor himself after a while, which made her frown even more often.
Finally she slammed the binder shut, making Arthur jump slightly. "Jesus Christ, Major," she said, shaking her head. "This was not supposed to happen." Arthur realized there was a tremor in her hands as she pushed the binder away from her. The notes in her hand were fluttering. There was a stricken expression on her face as she looked up at him, and for some reason he was dreading what she would say next.
"Let me take you to your quarters," she said finally. "Let me figure this one out."
"What's there to figure out?" Arthur asked. It only just occurred to him that he didn't have a totem with him. His totem was lost somehow, and he balled his hands into fists on his lap. This was how it started for Mal, wasn't it? She had her totem, but didn't trust it and stopped using it to check if she was in reality or not.
"Hopefully the damage isn't permanent," she continued as she stood. Arthur did as well, eyes fixed on her face. She flushed almost uncomfortably under his gaze. "This wasn't meant to happen, Major. I'm really sorry..."
As she passed next to him, he caught her arm in his hand. She stopped, panic flaring in her eyes as she looked up at him. "Ariadne," he murmured, brushing his fingertips across her cheeks. "I know that whatever happened, we'll make it right."
Her eyes dilated and her lips parted. She wasn't as unaffected as she pretended to be, so Arthur would have to be content with that for now. He could play along until he figured out where they were and why everything he had ever known was being corrupted.
***
The research complex was part of an army base. That much was easy to figure out. Arthur thought that perhaps the army had gotten better at hiding what they were doing with these projects, though it could just as easily have been because the public simply didn't care. As long as they got their reality TV, junk food and public assistance benefits, no one seemed to care what defense spending covered. All right, Arthur admitted to himself after a moment, that wasn't exactly a charitable thought. But he had been on his own and working hard for years before going on the run. He wasn't used to being dependent on others or having this much free time on his hands. Even when on the run, he tended to fill up his time learning new skills or doing background reading on different corporations.
Arthur wasn't fond of free time before, and he absolutely detested it now. He wandered through the complex halls he was permitted to walk through, mindful of the automatic rifles that guards carried in certain areas. He mapped out their location and guessed at what those labs contained, though he gave no overt indication that he was curious about them.
His biggest shock was seeing Mal in the mess hall.
She was delighted to see him, which seemed to set Joseph's teeth on edge. He had been trying to talk to her, though he insisted on calling her Annabelle and reminding her that she didn't have any children. Mal brushed him off and gave Arthur a kiss on either cheek. "I'd say I'm glad to see you," she began, smiling at him. "But I'm not sure that's a good thing."
Her voice was exactly the same. It was accented the same way and carried the familiar cadence he remembered. Arthur didn't plan on telling her that he had last seen her as a murderous projection in Cobb's mind. Some things she didn't need to know.
"Well, for better or worse, I'm here," Arthur told her. "Dom's still..." He gesticulated with his hand, shaking his head. "Marie has taken over care of the kids. We went on the run, since he didn't want to be charged with your murder."
Mal sighed and leaned back in her chair. She was still beautiful, even in the bland clothes that the military seemed to put everyone into. "I tried to tell him, but he simply wouldn't listen."
"It's Dom," Arthur reminded her. "Did you really think he would?"
"I didn't give him too many options," Mal replied churlishly. Both were ignoring Joseph, who was unabashedly listening in on their conversation. "He should have come with me."
"But he couldn't. He's still trying to find a way to clear his name enough to go home and take care of the kids. Someone had to, Mal." Arthur ran a hand through his hair. It was getting too long to go without gel or pomade, neither of which he was given. He supposed he should have been thankful he even got clean clothes that weren't scrubs.
She pulled a face and reached across the table to tug on his hair. "Oh, Arthur. What are they doing to you here?"
"Right now? Asking lots of questions they don't want to hear the answer to. How about you?"
"Annoying me," she said, giving Joseph a pointed look. "It's their job, but still." She leaned back in her chair. "I think they do this for all the dreamers they catch outside the confines of law. I thought we were better protected than that, but..."
Arthur sighed. "Mal, even you know better. Some things just aren't what they seem."
She smiled faintly. "I should have realized." She grasped his hand tightly. "Come. You tell me about my husband and all you've been up to since I escaped."
It wasn't difficult to recount Dom's difficulties and the trouble Arthur went through to keep him afloat. Mal didn't seem to notice when his accounts didn't quite match up to one particular timeline. He couldn't be sure what was real or wasn't, or if the Fischer job even happened. The thread of his tale was consistent, however. They did job after job after job, moving ahead of Interpol or any European authorities, trying to find something that could prove his innocence or give him enough money to bribe his way home.
"My poor Dom. All he had to do was trust in me..."
Arthur snorted artlessly. "This is Dom we're talking about. The only one he truly trusted is himself, and even that is open for debate." He smiled when Mal laughed, and reached out to touch her arm gently. "God, it's good to see you, Mal. You know you're a shade in his mind? He's completely broken without you. He's got a good game face, but Dom isn't functioning nearly as well as he wants me to believe."
Mal sighed and looked toward Joseph out of the corner of her eye. She could tell by his expression that he hadn't meant to tell her that, but they had always been close. She didn't think they ever had secrets from each other; she had been up front with him from the start that their world wasn't real, but he had chosen not to believe her. To be entirely truthful, she couldn't exactly blame him. "They won't let me go in and help him. They think I'll hurt him." Now she turned and glared at Joseph. It was the same expression that Cobb's shade had before she pulled the trigger on him. "They also call me by the wrong name."
"He thinks he's helping you," Arthur intoned, seeing Joseph's hurt expression before he smoothed it away. From what little he had seen of Joseph, he was like Yusuf. While he didn't necessarily go out of his way to do heroic deeds, he certainly didn't want to harm anyone and he cared about the people he worked with.
"He likes to watch," Mal sneered with a bitter and angry look on her face. "They all do. Don't tell me you haven't noticed the cameras, Arthur. They watch us all the time. And if you even try to wake up another level, they come for you with the sedatives to knock you down."
Arthur felt a chill roll down his spine. "How many times have you tried, Mal?"
"I lost count at seven." She glared at Joseph. "You can tell me, can't you? How many times have I tried to wake up and you stopped me?"
Joseph didn't flinch at her tone. "You attempted suicide ten times, Annabelle," he told her evenly. "We couldn't let you do that."
"There are places without cameras," she hissed at him. "I could find one of the hallways where your cameras can't see..."
"Annabelle," Joseph began in a soft but firm tone. "This hasn't gotten us anywhere. Is this really working for you?"
Mal snorted. "The psychiatrists are more fun to wind up. They walk around with their needles and pills and think they know anything about what's going on. I've fooled better minds than theirs, don't think I haven't."
This wasn't the Mal that Arthur remembered, not exactly. This one was bitterer and angry, more eager to inflict damage on others. He hadn't lied to Ariadne when he had said Mal was lovely. She had been, once upon a time.
"Oh, but you're my handler, not a psychiatrist," Mal continued, oblivious to Arthur's growing discomfort with her tone. Once she was angry, it was difficult to contain. "You don't pretend you know what's on my mind. You just ask the same fucking questions over and over. I'm not going to say anything different, Joseph."
"This is reality, Annabelle," Joseph told her. He had the air of someone that had done this very same thing thousands of times and knew that he would do it another thousand times. "There are no further levels up. This is it, and you need to accept that."
Mal abruptly stood. "As lovely as it is to see you, Arthur, I have no appetite to stay. I'll see you later... they lock the interesting places, so there are few places we're allowed to go."
Joseph sighed and stood to follow Mal. "Annabelle..."
"Ferme sa bouche!" Mal snapped angrily. She wagged her finger in his face. "You do me no favors, Joseph. Everything you say is a lie. I need to wake up. This world is not real, and you can't convince me otherwise. My husband will follow me and then we'll be with our real children in the real world."
Arthur couldn't breathe. This was a problem; he had just come from the dream world into this place, and this felt like reality. It wasn't one he liked, since Ariadne didn't remember him, but he could still work with it. Probably.
But you thought that world was real, too, his mind whispered at him. How can you trust anything you see? What if she's right? Mal was right about that other world. It wasn't real. How can you be so sure that this is real?
But down that path lay madness. He could see it in her eyes, shining like a beacon. It was bad enough to see the autopsy reports and hear Cobb telling him about seeing her broken body at the hotel. He had never been able to grieve for Mal as he shored up Cobb, and he had simply moved from one situation to the next to avoid even thinking about it. Now that she was alive, he wouldn't have to go to such extremes. Arthur didn't want to find her corpse here, soulless strangers staring and judging her. He didn't know how he could handle that on his own with nothing to distract him. Perhaps that was why Ariadne had become so important to him. While with her, he didn't have to think about anything else. His demeanor had been different, as if he had sloughed off a skin of pain.
"I'll see you later, Mal," he said, not sure if he could really say anything else at this point. Mal had a way of doing whatever she pleased and neatly trapping others into doing what she wanted them to do. Whatever name she carried, she still had that skill.
Joseph shot Arthur an apologetic look then followed Mal out of the mess hall. Arthur told himself that he would try to find Joseph and actually talk with him. Yusuf had always been good to talk with; he had been very widely read in many topics and tended to wax philosophical as he was titrating his compounds. Arthur had enjoyed those conversations. As much as Yusuf didn't enjoy the hunt of a new job, he did understand Arthur's need for a job well done.
Arthur wasn't alone in the mess hall, however, and his eyes lit on the back of Alice's head. She was facing away from him, quietly eating and going over reading material in a thick black binder. He couldn't help but think it was related to the Somnus Project.
He was at her side before he was consciously aware of it. Her eyes flicked up at him, almost warily, and Arthur tried to smile at her. "There's not much to do here," Arthur told her by way of explanation. "I'm surprised you aren't babysitting me the way Joseph's babysitting Mal."
Alice's lips thinned in unhappiness. "Sometimes it's not good to leave her alone."
The words were diplomatic, but Arthur could hear the concern behind it. "The suicide attempts she mentioned," he murmured. She nodded then shut the book she was reading. "I won't kill myself, Ariadne."
"That's not my name," she told him gently.
"Are you sure?" he challenged. "Things change over time, especially down there," he said, making a vague gesture toward where the sleep labs were. "The Mal I just met isn't the Mal I knew before. I don't feel the same as I was before."
"Oh?" Alice stilled. It was subtle, as if she didn't want him to know that she was worried, but Arthur had been watching her closely. She might not have thought that he knew her well, but he did know all of her tells. She didn't think she was Ariadne, but there was enough of her in Alice for Arthur to be able to predict her responses.
He touched her arm, fingertips light across the inside of her wrist. Her lips parted in suppressed desire exactly as Arthur hoped. "I was more reserved before. Quiet, I suppose. It was all work, getting the job done, being the consummate professional." He slid his fingertips along her wrist in a soothing motion, watching her eyes track the movement. "I had wants. I had needs. I just didn't act on them. I didn't succumb to temptation, didn't fold under pressure, didn't crack under torture." He turned her hand over and traced lines into her palm. Ariadne had laughed delightedly at his slow seductions, had loved the feel of him against her. It had been almost decadent to lie in bed for hours, learning the responses to different sensations. He missed her like a physical ache, even if Alice was sitting right there.
"And then came you," Arthur murmured. "You didn't think you were special. You didn't think you were important. But all of us trusted you and everything seemed to change once I truly got to know you." He traced a pattern into her palm, making her breath catch. Arthur leaned in slightly, not enough to startle her or make the armed guards think he would harm her, but just enough for her to be even more aware of his presence. "You are worth it, Ariadne. I was devastated when you went missing. Maybe you thought you had to protect me, maybe you thought I was better off alone. Whatever the reason, I needed you. I've never had that response to anyone before. I could understand why Dom was so upset when Mal killed herself. I was the exact same way."
Alice closed her eyes as if that would stop the words from coming out of his mouth. "But my name isn't Ariadne. That woman you're talking about isn't real."
"You're real," Arthur told her in a firm tone of voice. "Whatever else this place is, you are real."
She turned to face him and was startled to see their faces too close together, as if they were about to kiss. "My name is Alice Riordan," she told him, voice a little breathy. "I'm a neurologist doing a research project. I'm not an architecture student named Ariadne."
And if I kissed you, you would respond just like Ariadne. If we were alone together I would know just how to make you scream my name, he thought, fingers still moving along the inside of her wrist.
"This place," he began slowly, eyes intent on hers, "changes people. Part of you understands that, don't you? This isn't the real world. I can't prove it, but I know this isn't real. I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe, Ariadne. I promise you that. I know there are terrible things out there, but I promise you that I can keep you safe from them. You don't have to be afraid of the dream share community or any of the contacts I've made. I can protect you."
"Major," Alice began, pulling away slightly.
Arthur seized her wrist, and she fell still. Her golden eyes were wide with fright, her breath frozen in her chest. "Ariadne," Arthur said, his voice soft and velvet smooth even with the undercurrent of danger. "I'm going to find out what happened. I will hurt whoever has made you afraid, and I will fix it. What happened to Mal and Dom won't happen to us."
He gave in and kissed her then, a feather light kiss that was more like the one they shared on the Fischer job. Instead of the half smile on her face, she looked more gobsmacked. He stood up and left the mess hall, wandering through the accessible portions of the base. He thought best while in motion, and this was certainly a puzzle that needed to be pulled apart. His fingers itched for a pen and a Moleskine, but he would have to make do with his own memory.
The last thing that he knew was real with any kind of certainty had been that last dinner in Paris months ago. It could very well have been that he was put under while asleep, and Ariadne was abducted. He had enemies, and not all of them could be considered gentleman thieves. Arthur would have gone further in and out of dream levels at that point; the three levels for the Fischer job had been unprecedented, but there was no actual limit that he knew of. Theoretically, if there was sedation and a steady surface for the subject, there could be infinite levels without actually hitting limbo. Three steps to the subconscious was rather arbitrary. He didn't have his totem, so he couldn’t check if he was in someone else's dream or not. He didn't like the idea of shooting himself in the head to find out, on the off chance that he was wrong, but it was at least open for consideration. This could be another dream layer to work through, and perhaps that was why everything seemed to echo with his memory but still feel off kilter. He wasn't able to shift the walls around or warp space and time, but if he wasn't the dreamer he wouldn’t have that ability. He wasn't the architect; his own skills were rudimentary at best, suitable for training runs and practice sessions amongst peers. As the subject, he would be at the mercy of whatever rules the dreamer set down for the dream.
Alice Riordan was a neurologist working with the United States army. This was of course assuming that she was exactly as she appeared to be, which Arthur doubted. Project Somnus had been disbanded years ago, and its surviving members had been transferred to other black ops missions or simply deleted if they didn't go quietly. Arthur had simply disappeared, taking a PASIV device with him.
Now that he thought about it, he found it odd that there was no PASIV here. The dream sharing tech was crude, still in its rudimentary stages. There was no PASIV, no clean or neat way to monitor brain activity other than using the net of probes and gritty conductive paste along the scalp. There were seven others in that sleep lab, and Arthur thought of Yusuf's comments about his dream den. He had up to twelve people in his dream den at any given time, all sharing the same dream. They moved in and out of it at various times, bringing in their new experiences and expanding the universe of the dream. Yusuf hadn't needed to experience it for himself and hadn't wanted to test how clear the dreams could be. "I do not explore this way," he had told Arthur as they prepared for the Fischer job. "They dream because they must, ten or twelve hours a day, then they wake to keep their body healthy. That is all. Their true lives are within the dream. Who am I to determine their reality?"
Arthur had thought it odd at the time and dismissed it. Now he thought it was a rather prescient statement to make.
Mindful of Mal's words, he tracked the presence and absence of cameras as he walked through the halls. He could almost detect the pattern to their placement, therefore guessing the sensory range for each one. That also told him exactly where the hidden alcoves were.
"You don't ever shut it off, do you?" Ariadne had teased him, laughing when he told her about his tendency to memorize maps and escape routes, even when safe and on holiday.
"You'll thank me for it, someday," he had replied, lips curling into a slight smile. "It's a useful habit to get into." Of course he then decided to memorize the curves of her body all over again, much to Ariadne's delight.
He was memorizing the army base and its security measures. This wasn't like any of the bases he had been on in the past, so the map was new. Arthur looked at everything with sharp eyes, assessing the strength of the guards and what the likely response time would be. He still felt like he was in good shape, but he would have to be overly critical of his own skills and underestimate his abilities to be sure that he would survive an escape. He wouldn't leave alone, of course, but he had to get more reconnaissance done before he could comfortably plan something of that magnitude. He didn't intend to leave anyone behind.
***
Joseph met Arthur in the rec room, one of his ever present clipboards in hand. "Hey," he called, getting Arthur's attention. Alice slipped up and called him Major or Douglas, which he hated and corrected every single time. Joseph avoided the issue by trying not to call him by name. Arthur understood the impulse and thought it was fairly indicative of his non-confrontational style. He nodded at Joseph and watched him sit down across from him. Arthur had been pretending to read the National Geographic magazine that had been left out on the coffee table, and talking with Joseph was bound to be a welcome distraction.
"Joseph," Arthur responded as a greeting. It was close enough to Yusuf that the researcher didn't notice any slips Arthur made.
"Mind if I run through some follow up questions?"
"I already did a debrief."
"Three hours ago, yes," Joseph agreed, nodding. "Tadashi had to do it since I was otherwise occupied and couldn't run the debrief myself."
"Because of Mal. Where is she now?"
Joseph pulled a face and barely suppressed a sigh. "She is currently sleeping. She got agitated and attacked a guard trying to escape."
"She was sedated," Arthur said, voice bland.
"Yes," Joseph agreed, this time releasing his sigh. "They didn't want to harm her, but she was trying to kill Fischer."
Arthur stilled and looked at Joseph. "What?"
"One of the guards that is part of her security detail. Fischer and Browning have been there from the beginning, and she tried to kill Fischer." He rubbed his jaw tiredly. "I'm not supposed to even be telling you this, but you're her friend. You always have been."
Unbidden, Yusuf's words came back at him. They dream for ten to twelve hours a day. Who am I to tell them which is reality?
"So why are you telling me this?" Arthur asked carefully.
"I know you don't believe us," Joseph said quietly, not looking at his clip board. "But we were doing research on multiple drops within the dream state. It's a few levels in, a few more, back and forth between levels. You and the rest of your team volunteered for this, since you did so well on the initial trials." His expression was so painfully earnest that Arthur could tell that he utterly believed what he was saying. "I don't know what went wrong. Alice is beating herself up over this trying to figure it out. But somewhere along the way, Annabelle stopped believing in her true identity and started believing that the persona she adopted in the dreams is her real one. During one of her wake up checks, she went after one of the other dreamers in the lab."
"The drop attack that she mentioned," Arthur said, meaning Alice Riordan. He couldn't quite make himself call her Alice when he still thought of her as Ariadne.
"Yeah. Alice probably mentioned it. She's worried that's what's happening to you. You still remember being a major in the army, you still remember the name Douglas at least." Joseph smiled wryly at Arthur's glower. "I read the notes, too. Just because Alice is the lead on this project doesn't mean that I don't know what's going on."
"I go by Arthur now."
Joseph nodded and raised his clipboard. "Shall we?"
It was a neat sidestep, exactly what Yusuf would have done. "My answers won't change," Arthur told him evenly. He found himself falling back into his usual professional demeanor with him, as if the overly attached version of himself never existed.
Interesting. Was that the true cost of multiple drops into dreaming? They killed and suppressed projections indiscriminately, willfully fractured their psyches into convenient and inconvenient fragments to be discarded. It was a more elaborate way to explore facets of their personality, wasn't it?
Arthur had never found philosophy to be all that interesting in any of his former personae, but now it was becoming almost necessary to explain what he was experiencing.
He went through the packet of questions with Joseph, answering them as succinctly as possible while still giving the appropriate amounts of detail. "If I had a notebook," he offered afterward, "I could probably detail thoughts and ideas during the day as they came to me."
"You would do that?" Joseph asked, surprised.
"I want to find out what happened just as much as you do, if not more," Arthur told him with all honesty. "This is my mind we're talking about here, my reality. I'm more than a little invested in the entire situation, don't you think?"
Joseph smiled and nodded in agreement. "For certain," he agreed. "I'll see what I can do, but I doubt it'll be anything fancy. Spiral notebook and ballpoint pens are okay?"
Arthur looked down at the loose sweats emblazoned with the army's logo and thought of the tailored suits and boots he had worn, as well as the bespoke suits in the dreams. "I'll make do," he told Joseph with a shrug. It wasn't as if he had any options.
"We'll get all this sorted," Joseph told him in a reassuring tone. For a moment, Arthur froze and simply stared at him. That was Yusuf's tone of voice and phrasing. That was Yusuf telling him the side effects of the tailored somnacin wouldn't last, that the kick would still be clean enough for what they needed. Just one more test, Arthur? You know Eames wouldn't let me tip him out of a chair or smack his face even if it was necessary...
Joseph didn't seem to notice the shift in his speech pattern. He was gathering up his paperwork and then looked at Arthur. "I can probably get you access to a few more rooms, but there isn't much to do here if you're not in the research project. Annabelle was bumped out three weeks ago and she still complains there's not enough to do."
"Maybe I could help during the next scheduled wake cycle," Arthur offered. It was coming soon, he knew. He wanted to see the others in the sleep lab, see if they remembered him as Arthur or as the man he had left behind to become Arthur.
Joseph sighed and shook his head. "Sorry, I can't. Protocols, you know. You're out of the program, so there really isn't supposed to be any contact. It might bleed through into the others in the project."
"There are already echoes," Arthur told Joseph in an abrupt tone. He thought of Mal and her sharp eyes, the sleepers in the lab, the attack on Fischer and the curve of Ariadne's wrists as she scribbled in a notebook.
"Yes," he agreed in a firm tone of voice. "And my job is to minimize further echoes from being introduced into the system. What we have already is bad enough. Too much and the entire project falls through."
Arthur was starting to think it might not be a bad thing.
***
***
To chapter three!
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Ariadne/Arthur, Cobb/Mal
Disclaimer: They belong to Christopher Nolan, and I borrow them out of love.
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-movie. For the second round of i_reversebang. I received prompt #1033 by nessismore. Additional warnings for violence and mentions of suicide. It's similar in scope to the movie.
Summary: One day, Arthur woke up and discovered that no one remembered Ariadne and the Fischer job never happened. Finding her only led to even more problems...
Prior chapter:
One - Defining Reality
Two - Shadow Play
Arthur woke in a lab. He was surrounded by clinical white and sterile blue, the sound of beeping monitors and the steady drip of an IV line. He could hear the susurrus of cloth rubbing against cloth as someone stirred beside him. It took him a moment to calm his breathing, and he could feel an IV in the crook of one arm as well as electrodes along his temples and scalp. The ceiling above his hospital bed seemed familiar and strange at once, as if he should have remembered where he was but somehow couldn't. Raising a hand experimentally, he noticed that he was dressed in green scrubs, a thin hospital grade blanket drawn over his legs for comfort. His hand seemed almost alien to him. It didn't look quite right, and he couldn't figure out why.
Turning his head, he saw Ariadne stretch and sit up. She withdrew her own line with brisk precision and pulled a piece of unsterile gauze from an open package beside her own hospital bed to press against the bead of blood that rose from the needle site. Her bed was lower down to the ground and the side rails hadn't been raised. Throwing her legs over the side, she easily stood up and approached his bed. The recognition in her eyes was different from what he had seen in Athens or throughout their entire relationship prior to that. There was a sense of clinical efficiency about her, as if she was exuding the professional shell that Arthur used to. She was dressed in a blue top and khakis beneath a white lab coat. The name tag read A. Riordan, which hadn't been her last name.
What the hell was going on?
She came over to Arthur's side and removed one of the lines feeding into the main IV line. She looked at Arthur, a hand resting on his arm. "You're okay," she said softly, lips curling into a slight smile of concern. "You're okay."
Arthur looked up at Ariadne with wide eyes. "Wait, Ariadne," he murmured, reaching for her.
Frowning, she patted his arm gently. "There's still some of the sedative in your system. A little flumazenil ought to flush that right out, not to worry." She moved away to the table near the head of his hospital bed. He watched her set up the syringe and needle, then draw out a measure of the clear fluid from a small glass vial. She injected it into one of the membranes on the IV line still attached to his arm. Capping the needle with the attached safety lock, she opened up another drawer and drew out a wrapped saline flush. As she flushed the line, she turned away from Arthur and faced another person. "Joseph, did you raid my drawer again? I've only got one more five mL flush left," she complained, pronouncing the measurement as mill.
Arthur couldn't quite follow what she was saying, and looked over at the person she was talking to. He froze when he saw Yusuf standing beside a sleeping Eames, who was hooked up to an IV line with different saline drips attached to the line. It was a setup just like Arthur's. In the bed beyond that was Saito. On Arthur's other side was Cobb.
What the hell was going on here?
Yusuf - Joseph in this strange place, but it was still Yusuf - shook his head at Ariadne. "Of course not, Alice. Maybe Tadashi never refilled the stock? He came through for inventory check a few hours ago, I know that. I have tens if you need any more flushes."
"Yeah, that'll help," Ariadne said. Alice. Her name here was Alice.
Arthur watched her come back to his side with three wrapped ten mL flushes. She smiled at him, and he could feel his heart stutter in his chest. "Hey. You're more alert already."
"Alice, you need antagonist over there?" Joseph called from Eames' side. He had a clipboard in hand and was copying data from the monitors attached to Eames.
"Nah. I stopped the somnacin feed, so it should flush out on its own in a few minutes." Alice had her own clipboard and made notations on it from the monitors behind Arthur's bed. She leaned against the hospital bed with that half smile on her face. "Major, you ought to start feeling more like yourself soon enough."
Arthur watched her face carefully. "You keep calling me Major."
That seemed to throw her for a loop. "Of course I would. That's your title."
"What are you talking about? I left the army years ago."
Visibly disturbed, Alice put her clipboard down and reached into the breast pocket for a penlight. "All right, then, Douglas. Let's do a neuro check."
Arthur frowned deeply at her. "That's not my name." Well, it hadn't been in years, at least.
She compressed her lips unhappily. "Let's do that neuro check."
He cooperated as she swung the light into and out of his line of sight, checked his visual fields, reflexes, muscle strength and sensation. It was a rigorous exam, apparently more than what was usually given. Joseph wandered over to Alice's side with a frown, watching them. "What's up, Alice?" he asked sotto voce.
She didn't answer, but kept going through the exam and monitoring the vital signs on the machines. Arthur found it fascinating to see her facial expressions. Alice had that same single minded concentration that Ariadne did. Her name tag hovered close to his eyes, just inside the optimal focal length. The letters blurred, making him read it as Ariadne.
"Alice?" Joseph asked in concern.
"I think it's another drop attack," Alice replied, tension in her posture and tone.
"Shit. Annabelle still calls herself Mallorie."
Arthur swung his eyes toward Yusuf in shock. No, not Yusuf. Joseph. It was hard to keep things straight, because none of this made sense.
"Yeah, I know," Alice muttered. "If that's what this is, we need to pull the plug."
"They're not going to like it," Joseph muttered, shaking his head. "Sullivan wants results."
"Sullivan can kiss my ass," Alice snapped. "I'm the lead on the IRB forms, I'm the one that calibrated the drops and levels. We can go elsewhere if it comes to it," she added, pulling herself up to her full height. She was tiny, but her attitude more than made up for it.
Joseph raised his hands in mock surrender. "It would still be part of the alphabet soup, Alice. The DOD wants a viable product."
"Not at the expense of their minds."
"Preaching to the choir, my friend," Joseph told her with a smile. He nodded at Arthur. "CNS intact there. Might as well move along to the debrief protocol. I'll check the rest of the crew while you do that."
Alice thanked him and then led Arthur to a plain white painted room. His knees had buckled when he first got off of the bed, and Alice had to support part of his weight until he sat down across from her. There was a digital recorder, a thick manila folder and a three inch binder with the label "Somnus" on it in sans serif font. Arthur vaguely remembered the Somnus Project when he was in the army; it had been a virtual training playground, where they could shoot and kill each other with impunity.
She ran through the binder's standardized questions, dutifully taking down his answers in detail, no matter how ridiculous they seemed. Arthur watched her closely, once or twice making the mistake of calling her Ariadne. She didn't seem to like the name, but it wasn't something that she corrected him for. He stopped trying to censor himself after a while, which made her frown even more often.
Finally she slammed the binder shut, making Arthur jump slightly. "Jesus Christ, Major," she said, shaking her head. "This was not supposed to happen." Arthur realized there was a tremor in her hands as she pushed the binder away from her. The notes in her hand were fluttering. There was a stricken expression on her face as she looked up at him, and for some reason he was dreading what she would say next.
"Let me take you to your quarters," she said finally. "Let me figure this one out."
"What's there to figure out?" Arthur asked. It only just occurred to him that he didn't have a totem with him. His totem was lost somehow, and he balled his hands into fists on his lap. This was how it started for Mal, wasn't it? She had her totem, but didn't trust it and stopped using it to check if she was in reality or not.
"Hopefully the damage isn't permanent," she continued as she stood. Arthur did as well, eyes fixed on her face. She flushed almost uncomfortably under his gaze. "This wasn't meant to happen, Major. I'm really sorry..."
As she passed next to him, he caught her arm in his hand. She stopped, panic flaring in her eyes as she looked up at him. "Ariadne," he murmured, brushing his fingertips across her cheeks. "I know that whatever happened, we'll make it right."
Her eyes dilated and her lips parted. She wasn't as unaffected as she pretended to be, so Arthur would have to be content with that for now. He could play along until he figured out where they were and why everything he had ever known was being corrupted.
***
The research complex was part of an army base. That much was easy to figure out. Arthur thought that perhaps the army had gotten better at hiding what they were doing with these projects, though it could just as easily have been because the public simply didn't care. As long as they got their reality TV, junk food and public assistance benefits, no one seemed to care what defense spending covered. All right, Arthur admitted to himself after a moment, that wasn't exactly a charitable thought. But he had been on his own and working hard for years before going on the run. He wasn't used to being dependent on others or having this much free time on his hands. Even when on the run, he tended to fill up his time learning new skills or doing background reading on different corporations.
Arthur wasn't fond of free time before, and he absolutely detested it now. He wandered through the complex halls he was permitted to walk through, mindful of the automatic rifles that guards carried in certain areas. He mapped out their location and guessed at what those labs contained, though he gave no overt indication that he was curious about them.
His biggest shock was seeing Mal in the mess hall.
She was delighted to see him, which seemed to set Joseph's teeth on edge. He had been trying to talk to her, though he insisted on calling her Annabelle and reminding her that she didn't have any children. Mal brushed him off and gave Arthur a kiss on either cheek. "I'd say I'm glad to see you," she began, smiling at him. "But I'm not sure that's a good thing."
Her voice was exactly the same. It was accented the same way and carried the familiar cadence he remembered. Arthur didn't plan on telling her that he had last seen her as a murderous projection in Cobb's mind. Some things she didn't need to know.
"Well, for better or worse, I'm here," Arthur told her. "Dom's still..." He gesticulated with his hand, shaking his head. "Marie has taken over care of the kids. We went on the run, since he didn't want to be charged with your murder."
Mal sighed and leaned back in her chair. She was still beautiful, even in the bland clothes that the military seemed to put everyone into. "I tried to tell him, but he simply wouldn't listen."
"It's Dom," Arthur reminded her. "Did you really think he would?"
"I didn't give him too many options," Mal replied churlishly. Both were ignoring Joseph, who was unabashedly listening in on their conversation. "He should have come with me."
"But he couldn't. He's still trying to find a way to clear his name enough to go home and take care of the kids. Someone had to, Mal." Arthur ran a hand through his hair. It was getting too long to go without gel or pomade, neither of which he was given. He supposed he should have been thankful he even got clean clothes that weren't scrubs.
She pulled a face and reached across the table to tug on his hair. "Oh, Arthur. What are they doing to you here?"
"Right now? Asking lots of questions they don't want to hear the answer to. How about you?"
"Annoying me," she said, giving Joseph a pointed look. "It's their job, but still." She leaned back in her chair. "I think they do this for all the dreamers they catch outside the confines of law. I thought we were better protected than that, but..."
Arthur sighed. "Mal, even you know better. Some things just aren't what they seem."
She smiled faintly. "I should have realized." She grasped his hand tightly. "Come. You tell me about my husband and all you've been up to since I escaped."
It wasn't difficult to recount Dom's difficulties and the trouble Arthur went through to keep him afloat. Mal didn't seem to notice when his accounts didn't quite match up to one particular timeline. He couldn't be sure what was real or wasn't, or if the Fischer job even happened. The thread of his tale was consistent, however. They did job after job after job, moving ahead of Interpol or any European authorities, trying to find something that could prove his innocence or give him enough money to bribe his way home.
"My poor Dom. All he had to do was trust in me..."
Arthur snorted artlessly. "This is Dom we're talking about. The only one he truly trusted is himself, and even that is open for debate." He smiled when Mal laughed, and reached out to touch her arm gently. "God, it's good to see you, Mal. You know you're a shade in his mind? He's completely broken without you. He's got a good game face, but Dom isn't functioning nearly as well as he wants me to believe."
Mal sighed and looked toward Joseph out of the corner of her eye. She could tell by his expression that he hadn't meant to tell her that, but they had always been close. She didn't think they ever had secrets from each other; she had been up front with him from the start that their world wasn't real, but he had chosen not to believe her. To be entirely truthful, she couldn't exactly blame him. "They won't let me go in and help him. They think I'll hurt him." Now she turned and glared at Joseph. It was the same expression that Cobb's shade had before she pulled the trigger on him. "They also call me by the wrong name."
"He thinks he's helping you," Arthur intoned, seeing Joseph's hurt expression before he smoothed it away. From what little he had seen of Joseph, he was like Yusuf. While he didn't necessarily go out of his way to do heroic deeds, he certainly didn't want to harm anyone and he cared about the people he worked with.
"He likes to watch," Mal sneered with a bitter and angry look on her face. "They all do. Don't tell me you haven't noticed the cameras, Arthur. They watch us all the time. And if you even try to wake up another level, they come for you with the sedatives to knock you down."
Arthur felt a chill roll down his spine. "How many times have you tried, Mal?"
"I lost count at seven." She glared at Joseph. "You can tell me, can't you? How many times have I tried to wake up and you stopped me?"
Joseph didn't flinch at her tone. "You attempted suicide ten times, Annabelle," he told her evenly. "We couldn't let you do that."
"There are places without cameras," she hissed at him. "I could find one of the hallways where your cameras can't see..."
"Annabelle," Joseph began in a soft but firm tone. "This hasn't gotten us anywhere. Is this really working for you?"
Mal snorted. "The psychiatrists are more fun to wind up. They walk around with their needles and pills and think they know anything about what's going on. I've fooled better minds than theirs, don't think I haven't."
This wasn't the Mal that Arthur remembered, not exactly. This one was bitterer and angry, more eager to inflict damage on others. He hadn't lied to Ariadne when he had said Mal was lovely. She had been, once upon a time.
"Oh, but you're my handler, not a psychiatrist," Mal continued, oblivious to Arthur's growing discomfort with her tone. Once she was angry, it was difficult to contain. "You don't pretend you know what's on my mind. You just ask the same fucking questions over and over. I'm not going to say anything different, Joseph."
"This is reality, Annabelle," Joseph told her. He had the air of someone that had done this very same thing thousands of times and knew that he would do it another thousand times. "There are no further levels up. This is it, and you need to accept that."
Mal abruptly stood. "As lovely as it is to see you, Arthur, I have no appetite to stay. I'll see you later... they lock the interesting places, so there are few places we're allowed to go."
Joseph sighed and stood to follow Mal. "Annabelle..."
"Ferme sa bouche!" Mal snapped angrily. She wagged her finger in his face. "You do me no favors, Joseph. Everything you say is a lie. I need to wake up. This world is not real, and you can't convince me otherwise. My husband will follow me and then we'll be with our real children in the real world."
Arthur couldn't breathe. This was a problem; he had just come from the dream world into this place, and this felt like reality. It wasn't one he liked, since Ariadne didn't remember him, but he could still work with it. Probably.
But you thought that world was real, too, his mind whispered at him. How can you trust anything you see? What if she's right? Mal was right about that other world. It wasn't real. How can you be so sure that this is real?
But down that path lay madness. He could see it in her eyes, shining like a beacon. It was bad enough to see the autopsy reports and hear Cobb telling him about seeing her broken body at the hotel. He had never been able to grieve for Mal as he shored up Cobb, and he had simply moved from one situation to the next to avoid even thinking about it. Now that she was alive, he wouldn't have to go to such extremes. Arthur didn't want to find her corpse here, soulless strangers staring and judging her. He didn't know how he could handle that on his own with nothing to distract him. Perhaps that was why Ariadne had become so important to him. While with her, he didn't have to think about anything else. His demeanor had been different, as if he had sloughed off a skin of pain.
"I'll see you later, Mal," he said, not sure if he could really say anything else at this point. Mal had a way of doing whatever she pleased and neatly trapping others into doing what she wanted them to do. Whatever name she carried, she still had that skill.
Joseph shot Arthur an apologetic look then followed Mal out of the mess hall. Arthur told himself that he would try to find Joseph and actually talk with him. Yusuf had always been good to talk with; he had been very widely read in many topics and tended to wax philosophical as he was titrating his compounds. Arthur had enjoyed those conversations. As much as Yusuf didn't enjoy the hunt of a new job, he did understand Arthur's need for a job well done.
Arthur wasn't alone in the mess hall, however, and his eyes lit on the back of Alice's head. She was facing away from him, quietly eating and going over reading material in a thick black binder. He couldn't help but think it was related to the Somnus Project.
He was at her side before he was consciously aware of it. Her eyes flicked up at him, almost warily, and Arthur tried to smile at her. "There's not much to do here," Arthur told her by way of explanation. "I'm surprised you aren't babysitting me the way Joseph's babysitting Mal."
Alice's lips thinned in unhappiness. "Sometimes it's not good to leave her alone."
The words were diplomatic, but Arthur could hear the concern behind it. "The suicide attempts she mentioned," he murmured. She nodded then shut the book she was reading. "I won't kill myself, Ariadne."
"That's not my name," she told him gently.
"Are you sure?" he challenged. "Things change over time, especially down there," he said, making a vague gesture toward where the sleep labs were. "The Mal I just met isn't the Mal I knew before. I don't feel the same as I was before."
"Oh?" Alice stilled. It was subtle, as if she didn't want him to know that she was worried, but Arthur had been watching her closely. She might not have thought that he knew her well, but he did know all of her tells. She didn't think she was Ariadne, but there was enough of her in Alice for Arthur to be able to predict her responses.
He touched her arm, fingertips light across the inside of her wrist. Her lips parted in suppressed desire exactly as Arthur hoped. "I was more reserved before. Quiet, I suppose. It was all work, getting the job done, being the consummate professional." He slid his fingertips along her wrist in a soothing motion, watching her eyes track the movement. "I had wants. I had needs. I just didn't act on them. I didn't succumb to temptation, didn't fold under pressure, didn't crack under torture." He turned her hand over and traced lines into her palm. Ariadne had laughed delightedly at his slow seductions, had loved the feel of him against her. It had been almost decadent to lie in bed for hours, learning the responses to different sensations. He missed her like a physical ache, even if Alice was sitting right there.
"And then came you," Arthur murmured. "You didn't think you were special. You didn't think you were important. But all of us trusted you and everything seemed to change once I truly got to know you." He traced a pattern into her palm, making her breath catch. Arthur leaned in slightly, not enough to startle her or make the armed guards think he would harm her, but just enough for her to be even more aware of his presence. "You are worth it, Ariadne. I was devastated when you went missing. Maybe you thought you had to protect me, maybe you thought I was better off alone. Whatever the reason, I needed you. I've never had that response to anyone before. I could understand why Dom was so upset when Mal killed herself. I was the exact same way."
Alice closed her eyes as if that would stop the words from coming out of his mouth. "But my name isn't Ariadne. That woman you're talking about isn't real."
"You're real," Arthur told her in a firm tone of voice. "Whatever else this place is, you are real."
She turned to face him and was startled to see their faces too close together, as if they were about to kiss. "My name is Alice Riordan," she told him, voice a little breathy. "I'm a neurologist doing a research project. I'm not an architecture student named Ariadne."
And if I kissed you, you would respond just like Ariadne. If we were alone together I would know just how to make you scream my name, he thought, fingers still moving along the inside of her wrist.
"This place," he began slowly, eyes intent on hers, "changes people. Part of you understands that, don't you? This isn't the real world. I can't prove it, but I know this isn't real. I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe, Ariadne. I promise you that. I know there are terrible things out there, but I promise you that I can keep you safe from them. You don't have to be afraid of the dream share community or any of the contacts I've made. I can protect you."
"Major," Alice began, pulling away slightly.
Arthur seized her wrist, and she fell still. Her golden eyes were wide with fright, her breath frozen in her chest. "Ariadne," Arthur said, his voice soft and velvet smooth even with the undercurrent of danger. "I'm going to find out what happened. I will hurt whoever has made you afraid, and I will fix it. What happened to Mal and Dom won't happen to us."
He gave in and kissed her then, a feather light kiss that was more like the one they shared on the Fischer job. Instead of the half smile on her face, she looked more gobsmacked. He stood up and left the mess hall, wandering through the accessible portions of the base. He thought best while in motion, and this was certainly a puzzle that needed to be pulled apart. His fingers itched for a pen and a Moleskine, but he would have to make do with his own memory.
The last thing that he knew was real with any kind of certainty had been that last dinner in Paris months ago. It could very well have been that he was put under while asleep, and Ariadne was abducted. He had enemies, and not all of them could be considered gentleman thieves. Arthur would have gone further in and out of dream levels at that point; the three levels for the Fischer job had been unprecedented, but there was no actual limit that he knew of. Theoretically, if there was sedation and a steady surface for the subject, there could be infinite levels without actually hitting limbo. Three steps to the subconscious was rather arbitrary. He didn't have his totem, so he couldn’t check if he was in someone else's dream or not. He didn't like the idea of shooting himself in the head to find out, on the off chance that he was wrong, but it was at least open for consideration. This could be another dream layer to work through, and perhaps that was why everything seemed to echo with his memory but still feel off kilter. He wasn't able to shift the walls around or warp space and time, but if he wasn't the dreamer he wouldn’t have that ability. He wasn't the architect; his own skills were rudimentary at best, suitable for training runs and practice sessions amongst peers. As the subject, he would be at the mercy of whatever rules the dreamer set down for the dream.
Alice Riordan was a neurologist working with the United States army. This was of course assuming that she was exactly as she appeared to be, which Arthur doubted. Project Somnus had been disbanded years ago, and its surviving members had been transferred to other black ops missions or simply deleted if they didn't go quietly. Arthur had simply disappeared, taking a PASIV device with him.
Now that he thought about it, he found it odd that there was no PASIV here. The dream sharing tech was crude, still in its rudimentary stages. There was no PASIV, no clean or neat way to monitor brain activity other than using the net of probes and gritty conductive paste along the scalp. There were seven others in that sleep lab, and Arthur thought of Yusuf's comments about his dream den. He had up to twelve people in his dream den at any given time, all sharing the same dream. They moved in and out of it at various times, bringing in their new experiences and expanding the universe of the dream. Yusuf hadn't needed to experience it for himself and hadn't wanted to test how clear the dreams could be. "I do not explore this way," he had told Arthur as they prepared for the Fischer job. "They dream because they must, ten or twelve hours a day, then they wake to keep their body healthy. That is all. Their true lives are within the dream. Who am I to determine their reality?"
Arthur had thought it odd at the time and dismissed it. Now he thought it was a rather prescient statement to make.
Mindful of Mal's words, he tracked the presence and absence of cameras as he walked through the halls. He could almost detect the pattern to their placement, therefore guessing the sensory range for each one. That also told him exactly where the hidden alcoves were.
"You don't ever shut it off, do you?" Ariadne had teased him, laughing when he told her about his tendency to memorize maps and escape routes, even when safe and on holiday.
"You'll thank me for it, someday," he had replied, lips curling into a slight smile. "It's a useful habit to get into." Of course he then decided to memorize the curves of her body all over again, much to Ariadne's delight.
He was memorizing the army base and its security measures. This wasn't like any of the bases he had been on in the past, so the map was new. Arthur looked at everything with sharp eyes, assessing the strength of the guards and what the likely response time would be. He still felt like he was in good shape, but he would have to be overly critical of his own skills and underestimate his abilities to be sure that he would survive an escape. He wouldn't leave alone, of course, but he had to get more reconnaissance done before he could comfortably plan something of that magnitude. He didn't intend to leave anyone behind.
***
Joseph met Arthur in the rec room, one of his ever present clipboards in hand. "Hey," he called, getting Arthur's attention. Alice slipped up and called him Major or Douglas, which he hated and corrected every single time. Joseph avoided the issue by trying not to call him by name. Arthur understood the impulse and thought it was fairly indicative of his non-confrontational style. He nodded at Joseph and watched him sit down across from him. Arthur had been pretending to read the National Geographic magazine that had been left out on the coffee table, and talking with Joseph was bound to be a welcome distraction.
"Joseph," Arthur responded as a greeting. It was close enough to Yusuf that the researcher didn't notice any slips Arthur made.
"Mind if I run through some follow up questions?"
"I already did a debrief."
"Three hours ago, yes," Joseph agreed, nodding. "Tadashi had to do it since I was otherwise occupied and couldn't run the debrief myself."
"Because of Mal. Where is she now?"
Joseph pulled a face and barely suppressed a sigh. "She is currently sleeping. She got agitated and attacked a guard trying to escape."
"She was sedated," Arthur said, voice bland.
"Yes," Joseph agreed, this time releasing his sigh. "They didn't want to harm her, but she was trying to kill Fischer."
Arthur stilled and looked at Joseph. "What?"
"One of the guards that is part of her security detail. Fischer and Browning have been there from the beginning, and she tried to kill Fischer." He rubbed his jaw tiredly. "I'm not supposed to even be telling you this, but you're her friend. You always have been."
Unbidden, Yusuf's words came back at him. They dream for ten to twelve hours a day. Who am I to tell them which is reality?
"So why are you telling me this?" Arthur asked carefully.
"I know you don't believe us," Joseph said quietly, not looking at his clip board. "But we were doing research on multiple drops within the dream state. It's a few levels in, a few more, back and forth between levels. You and the rest of your team volunteered for this, since you did so well on the initial trials." His expression was so painfully earnest that Arthur could tell that he utterly believed what he was saying. "I don't know what went wrong. Alice is beating herself up over this trying to figure it out. But somewhere along the way, Annabelle stopped believing in her true identity and started believing that the persona she adopted in the dreams is her real one. During one of her wake up checks, she went after one of the other dreamers in the lab."
"The drop attack that she mentioned," Arthur said, meaning Alice Riordan. He couldn't quite make himself call her Alice when he still thought of her as Ariadne.
"Yeah. Alice probably mentioned it. She's worried that's what's happening to you. You still remember being a major in the army, you still remember the name Douglas at least." Joseph smiled wryly at Arthur's glower. "I read the notes, too. Just because Alice is the lead on this project doesn't mean that I don't know what's going on."
"I go by Arthur now."
Joseph nodded and raised his clipboard. "Shall we?"
It was a neat sidestep, exactly what Yusuf would have done. "My answers won't change," Arthur told him evenly. He found himself falling back into his usual professional demeanor with him, as if the overly attached version of himself never existed.
Interesting. Was that the true cost of multiple drops into dreaming? They killed and suppressed projections indiscriminately, willfully fractured their psyches into convenient and inconvenient fragments to be discarded. It was a more elaborate way to explore facets of their personality, wasn't it?
Arthur had never found philosophy to be all that interesting in any of his former personae, but now it was becoming almost necessary to explain what he was experiencing.
He went through the packet of questions with Joseph, answering them as succinctly as possible while still giving the appropriate amounts of detail. "If I had a notebook," he offered afterward, "I could probably detail thoughts and ideas during the day as they came to me."
"You would do that?" Joseph asked, surprised.
"I want to find out what happened just as much as you do, if not more," Arthur told him with all honesty. "This is my mind we're talking about here, my reality. I'm more than a little invested in the entire situation, don't you think?"
Joseph smiled and nodded in agreement. "For certain," he agreed. "I'll see what I can do, but I doubt it'll be anything fancy. Spiral notebook and ballpoint pens are okay?"
Arthur looked down at the loose sweats emblazoned with the army's logo and thought of the tailored suits and boots he had worn, as well as the bespoke suits in the dreams. "I'll make do," he told Joseph with a shrug. It wasn't as if he had any options.
"We'll get all this sorted," Joseph told him in a reassuring tone. For a moment, Arthur froze and simply stared at him. That was Yusuf's tone of voice and phrasing. That was Yusuf telling him the side effects of the tailored somnacin wouldn't last, that the kick would still be clean enough for what they needed. Just one more test, Arthur? You know Eames wouldn't let me tip him out of a chair or smack his face even if it was necessary...
Joseph didn't seem to notice the shift in his speech pattern. He was gathering up his paperwork and then looked at Arthur. "I can probably get you access to a few more rooms, but there isn't much to do here if you're not in the research project. Annabelle was bumped out three weeks ago and she still complains there's not enough to do."
"Maybe I could help during the next scheduled wake cycle," Arthur offered. It was coming soon, he knew. He wanted to see the others in the sleep lab, see if they remembered him as Arthur or as the man he had left behind to become Arthur.
Joseph sighed and shook his head. "Sorry, I can't. Protocols, you know. You're out of the program, so there really isn't supposed to be any contact. It might bleed through into the others in the project."
"There are already echoes," Arthur told Joseph in an abrupt tone. He thought of Mal and her sharp eyes, the sleepers in the lab, the attack on Fischer and the curve of Ariadne's wrists as she scribbled in a notebook.
"Yes," he agreed in a firm tone of voice. "And my job is to minimize further echoes from being introduced into the system. What we have already is bad enough. Too much and the entire project falls through."
Arthur was starting to think it might not be a bad thing.
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To chapter three!