Anabasis: Part II: 5

[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...

-

Ariadne spent the trip to Sydney working on her designs for the third level. Cobb had originally counted on memorising Ariadne’s design in the lead-up to the job. The less time his mind had to internalise the design, and the more complicated Ariadne’s design was, the less likely it was that his own subconscious could use it against him.

It was still a risk. Ariadne coming along and changing the designs around had lessened that risk, and she spent most of the trip to Sydney frowning over graph paper and the finalised version of her original design. He most decidedly did not find out what she was doing. It was far safer that way.

He couldn’t betray what he didn’t know.

Saito took the PASIV and made the arrangements to have it smuggled on board the 747. The hardest part of the plan (excluding the actual inception itself) was to make sure that the flight Robert Fischer would take was the flight they were going to be on. Saito had bought the airline, but they didn’t know which of the available flights Fischer would be on. Saito’s source proved his worth here, and Cobb didn’t even bother calling Mal to track the flights. That, and a little conversation between Eames and the mechanic and some produced papers had Fischer’s private jet undergoing unexpected maintenance.

It was the night before the job, when Cobb finally made the call. He should have done it earlier, but he had been too much of a coward to even try, until he found himself staring at yet another large glass window, another night city, and with nothing to occupy him except his thoughts and the knowledge that sooner or later, he needed to call Mal, to let her know.

He paced the room, phone held to his ear, waiting for Mal to pick up. The silence stretched. For a moment, he allowed himself to think she wouldn’t. She wasn’t going to pick up. He hadn’t reckoned on the difference in time zones. It was probably going to be unreasonably early in the morning in LA. He felt just a little relief at the thought - and then guilt because he was so relieved. He tightened his grip on the phone, waiting, and then Mal answered, voice slightly slurred with sleep.

“Dom? Is that you?”

She must have checked Caller ID, seen it was an international call and put two and two together. “It’s three in the morning,” she informed him.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Cobb said. His feet retraced the path he’d taken from the other side of the room. “Forgot about the time zone differences.”

She brushed his apology aside, and instead asked, “What is it this time?”

“What about just calling to say ‘I miss you?’” he asked, teasing.

“I think we know it’s been a while since you last did that,” Mal said, bluntly. Maybe it was the hour, but she sounded tired. Or maybe, Cobb thought, they both were. Every time they talked, they seemed older, wearier, and more distant than the last time. He rubbed at his eyes with the free hand. Maybe. Or maybe he was just…tired. Part of him just wanted to close his eyes, wanted to pretend everything was okay, wanted everything to be…simple. Easy.

Part of him just wanted to stop, and go home.

Part of him didn’t. Part of him knew he couldn’t ever go home. It wasn’t just a matter of his charges.

“Okay,” he said aloud, “Point taken.”

“And?”

“I’m in Sydney,” Cobb told her. “I’m going to be taking the flight tomorrow. If all goes well, we should touch down in LA by early afternoon, on the day after.”

Mal went suspiciously quiet on the other end of the line. For a few moments, all he could hear was the even sound of her breathing. He didn’t say anything.

“You don’t need to do this, Dom,” she said, after a while. “I found a lawyer. A good lawyer, very successful. He says your case isn’t entirely hopeless, he can help you…”

“With that many charges?” Cobb asked. He didn’t realise until a few moments later that the harsh, bitter laugh had come from him. “It’s a federal case. Jesus, Mal, he’d have to be a miracle worker to pull that off.”

“He’s good at what he does. I’ve seen his files, his previous cases. You don’t need to pull off something as risky and dangerous as inception. You just need to take that plane to LA and I’ll get him and meet you at the airport. The chances of an acquittal are decent…”

“I can’t do that. I’m already in Sydney. I’ve already agreed to take on this job, remember? I can’t just back out like this.”

“You think it’s even possible?”

Cobb sighed wearily, pressing his forehead against the window glass. It was faintly cool, and his breath misted the surface. “Mal, we’ve been through this before, remember? Inception…inception’s possible. It’s been done before.”

“By who?”

“Trust me.”

“And how are you going to get past security at the airport? If he doesn’t come through for you?”

“Then,” Cobb said, “I’ll see if your lawyer’s as good as you say he is.” Her silence was unamused. He tried again. “Look, Mal, I complete the job, my employer calls in, my charges get wiped. That’s all there is to it.”

“You’re taking an unnecessary risk. If they realise you tried something on your subject…your employer will find it easier to cut all traces to you. Success or failure, you’ll be a liability. A loose end. He could just allow them to arrest you. He might even make sure you’re convicted.”

Cobb found himself pacing again. “You wanted me to stop running,” he said. “You wanted me to come home. I’m doing just that.”

“Are you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“We need to talk. Sooner or later. About us.” He caught the finality in her words, and winced.

Cobb ran a hand through his hair. “Mal, I…” he wasn’t sure what to say. He settled for asking, “What about us?”

“I’m your damn wife, Cobb. If you can’t tell me the truth and be honest with me, then…then I don’t know where we’re heading.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, immediately.

She sighed, resigned. “Don’t be,” she said, “You always say that.”

“It’s true.”

“Then tell me the truth,” she pleaded, “Stop running away from me, Dom. Trust me. I’ve made all sorts of excuses for you, I’ve never said anything about what I saw in your dreams, that day. I’ve never asked, or demanded any kind of reason. I’ve waited and you’ve never said anything. Can’t you at least respect me enough to let me in?”

“It’s…it’s not like that at all,” Cobb said, finally.

“Is it?” Mal asked, bitterly. “I saw him in your head, Cobb. I saw your dreams. Your fantasies. The places you created, and all of them were the - “

Anger surged, and Cobb tried to bite it back. “I didn’t have a choice,” he ground out, fingers tightening around the phone again, until it hurt.

“You didn’t? You created the dream, Dom. Your dream. You chose to run away, and to keep running. You’ve never been very good at facing up to your shit, have you?”

“Well, I didn’t ask to be the scapegoat for Arthur’s shit!” Cobb burst out, utterly furious. “I didn’t ask to be a fugitive and you damn well know it!”

“Dom, I - “

He hung up on her, slammed the phone down with more force than necessary. Somewhere in the middle of that thick red haze in his brain, he realised his knuckles were protesting and realised there was a trickle of blood. He’d punched the wall, and the only thing that had done was to hurt himself.

He glared savagely at his fist, breathing heavily until some of the anger had started to recede, and left a deep and abiding guilt in its stead. Mal, I’m sorry…

He picked up the phone again, and tried to call her back.

This time, she didn’t pick up.

-

This is how it feels to be Mal (Mallorie) Cobb right now:

You’re sick. You’re sick of everything. You’re sick of having to be the strong one. You’re sick of having to lie to the children, to tell them Daddy’s okay, he’s just going to be gone for a while. You’re the one who says, “He didn’t want to go,” and hate yourself afterwards because sometimes…sometimes, you can almost believe it, if you tell it to yourself enough times.

You should know better.

You know better. You know that no matter how you can say circumstances forced you into this, Dom chose to go. He chose to run. He chose to lie to you. He keeps leaving you out of the loop, keeps cradling his pain close to himself, as if it is infinitely precious, and he will never let you catch more than a glimpse of the shape it has taken.

(You think you may recognise the form only too well.)

You’re tired to tiptoeing around what Dom refuses to talk about. You’re tired of his bullshit, his lies, the way he pretends he’s okay when you know he’s not. You’re tired of waiting.

When he first introduced you to his friend Arthur, you knew at once that Dom was never going to be entirely yours. There was a part of him that was always going to belong to his best friend - and you’re fine with that. You decided you were fine with that since the blustery day the earnest young man chased your scarf down one street in Paris, and handed it back to you and clumsily told you you were the most beautiful woman he’d seen, and would you like to head off for a drink with him? You made the decision before you even knew there was something, someone else. You don’t know if you can say Dom loves Arthur. He doesn’t care for Arthur in the same way he cares for you. He tells you everything. He tells Arthur everything, and a little more, things you don’t really know about.

You don’t hate Arthur, because you reason they’re just friends. They’re close, in a way you and Dom will never be, because what Dom has with Arthur just isn’t the same as what he has with you, and there’s no comparison to be made. And although Arthur is a grave counterpoint to Dom’s easy, earnest charm, there’s a sly sense of humour beneath that, and you can’t quite say you resent the ease of their connection.

So they go back, longer than you or Dom will. Sometimes, they can talk in half-sentences. Dom will say something, and before he’s done, Arthur will respond. They anticipate each other well, and you watch the unconscious way Dom leans in towards Arthur, the way they’re so comfortable around each other, and in the space they leave between them, and sometimes, you can’t help but wonder just where you stand in all of this.

You love Dom. You always have, and always will. That’s why you’ve waited. That’s why you’ve tried to be there for him, to wait for him to be ready to talk about what happened with Algol. And that’s another thing that doesn’t compute: that Arthur is Algol, that the young man with the slightly awkward charm is a psychotic serial killer - and that’s the least of what he’s done. That you and Dom have never really known Arthur. That Arthur would try to kill Dom, try to break Dom.

Except that someone was Algol, and if you can’t believe Dom, then your only option is to believe the police. To believe that your husband is Algol. You can’t. You won’t.

There are some things you will never talk about: like what you saw in Dom’s dreams, in Limbo, before you managed to get both of you back out. You’re not sure what disturbs you more: the projection of Arthur or the projection of yourself.

You will yourself not to think about that either. You’ve gotten good at it.

You pull the blankets tighter around you. Your shoulders tremble. You mustn’t cry. You mustn’t. You’re better than this. In the end, it doesn’t matter.

The phone rings. It’s probably Dom, calling back. He’ll say he’s sorry, and you’ll both play the same game again of dancing awkwardly around each other while he never really tells you the truth. While he never really lets you in. He doesn’t trust you, and that hurts, because you aren’t sure where the man you married went.

(You’re not sure if he was ever real, or a person your own mind created because you were so desperate to believe it could work. You’re not sure if you’re finally seeing the truth, and that is all. Because that man never existed.)

And that’s the problem with talking to Cobb. It’s always about him. Or it’s always about you. It’s never about the both of you, when it should be.

You’re sick, you’re tired. You let the phone go on ringing and just lie back in the cold bed, sheets pulled up to your chest and breathe. You’d close your eyes, but the room is dark and it doesn’t make a difference if your eyes are wide open or shut. Just as you think you want to switch off the phone after all, it goes suddenly silent, and in the silence, the room seems even more empty than before.

So maybe you break, a little, in the end. Maybe you sob, because you feel so goddamned uselesss, so goddamned helpless. Maybe you sob because the alternative is to be angry at Dom and you’re too tired to be angry right now. Just resigned.

Here, in the half-empty bed, it is just your pain, your burdens and you, in the dark.

This is how it feels to be Mal, right now.

-

This is it, Cobb thought, watching the airplanes refuel through one of the large windows in the airport. This was the job. He was just surprised that the thick knot of tension in his stomach was a distant sensation, one he could ignore without too much difficulty.

He was aware of just how much depended on this job. But by now, a layer of calm had dropped over him, muffling the tension, giving everything a languid clarity. In a while, they would be boarding the plane. They would be attempting something that no extraction team had ever successfully managed before.

Inception.

He felt, and then saw Saito pause next to him out of the corner of his eye. Saito said nothing at first, content to glance at the airfield through the glass, until Cobb finally grew impatient and broke the silence.

“If I get on this plane and you don’t honour our agreement,” he said quietly, “When we land, I go to jail for the rest of my life.” He didn’t mention the information, but Saito knew. He smiled, sharp and tight.

“Complete the job en route,” he countered, “I make one phone call from the plane. You will have no trouble getting through immigration.”

“And the files?”

“Will be delivered to you, along with your payment,” For a moment, Saito glanced away from the airfield and his dark eyes surveyed Cobb, appraising. “I hope you are not…having second thoughts, Mr Cobb.”

“No,” Cobb said, immediately. “I just want to make sure we’re on the same level here.”

“Oh, that we are,” Saito said, unperturbed. He turned his attention back to the distant planes. “You have accepted my contract. If you fulfil the terms of our agreement, then I will uphold my side.”

Cobb glanced at him for a moment more. Saito ignored him, continuing to study the planes although he must have been aware that Cobb was watching him. He was unruffled, and of course he would be. He had the least to lose of all of them; he had all the cards, and Cobb knew that the only thing he had to go on with was Saito’s word.

He’d chosen to believe long ago that Saito’s word was good.

He turned away from the window, suddenly restless. Saito did not follow him.

-

Ariadne was sitting at one of the small food outlets in the airport, half-eaten sandwich in hand. She was frowning and glancing at her sketchpad one more time, and Cobb considered calling her on it, but decided there wasn’t a point. He found the empty seat across from her and promptly sat down, without any kind of invitation.

She glanced up, and said, “Oh. It’s you,” and almost knocked over the styrofoam cup of coffee on the table. She looked as if she hadn’t slept well, and Cobb felt slightly guilty at the sight. Maybe the stress was finally getting to her.

“Yes,” he agreed gravely, “I hope you weren’t expecting someone else.”

“No, of course not,” she said, distractedly.

“Your coffee’s almost cold,” he told her, propping his elbows on the table. “And you might want to finish that sandwich before boarding.”

“Oh, right,” she said. From her tone, Cobb figured she wasn’t going to touch it and opened his mouth to remind her, when she quickly took a big bite out of the sandwich and finished off her coffee.

“Nervous?” he asked.

“Yeah, kind of,” she admitted.

“Don’t be.”

“And you’re not?”

Cobb had to admit she had a point. “Probably,” he lied.

“Really?” she asked, challengingly, and Cobb raised his hands in mock surrender.

“Alright,” he agreed, “A little. But everyone is.”

The boarding announcement came at last, and Ariadne made a groan of complaint but quickly finished the sandwich and tossed the plastic wrap into the nearest trash bin. Brushing crumbs from her clothing, she grabbed her bags. Cobb waited.

“You don’t have to do this,” he told her, quietly. It wouldn’t matter to Saito. And the job could still be done - even without her. He’d just be back to his original plan.

“Yes I do,” she retorted, staring at him stubbornly. “If I don’t, you’ll have to do it.”

She led the way in the direction of the boarding gate, and Cobb quickly followed and caught up to her.

“It’s not too late for you to change your mind,” he reminded her. She could sit this out, and catch a flight back to Paris. It was possible. Miles would be glad. He’d been resigned when Ariadne had told him she was leaving with the other extractors.

“I know,” she replied calmly, “And I’m going in with all of you.”

He paused, forcing her to draw up short. “You’ve never done this before.”

Ariadne looked at him, knowingly. “You aren’t ready to do this,” she countered, “You can’t, and you know why.”

Cobb drew in a deep breath. “Thank you,” he said instead. She gave him a small smile, and they turned and continued on the long stroll towards the boarding gates.

One last job, Cobb thought. He just hoped things weren’t going to go wrong.

-

As a matter of fact, everything so far had proceeded smoothly. Eames had pickpocketed Robert Fischer, stealing his passport, and when Cobb struck up a conversation with Fischer to return it, he’d managed to slip one of Yusuf’s sedatives into the young man’s drink.

He waited impatiently, counting down. In a few minutes, he got up, fumbled clumsily in the luggage rack above, and tossed a blanket right at Fischer. There was not a sound. Out like a light. Not entirely convinced, Cobb moved over and shook him roughly. When Fischer did not stir, he nodded to Eames, who went to get the flight attendant to bring in the PASIV.

He administered Fischer’s line first, checking for the vein and then slipping the needle in. The others were already beginning to connect themselves up. He glanced at Eames, who gave him a nod to signify he’d checked and things looked to be in order. Fortunately or otherwise, while they hadn’t managed to occupy the entire first class cabin, Saito had purchased the last remaining seat to ensure that no one else would be around. The flight attendant had been briefed in advance; she drew the privacy curtains across the entryway to make sure that no one would catch a glimpse of what was going on.

By now, Cobb didn’t wince at the prick of the needle going into the vein. He sat back in his seat, trying to get comfortable. Not that it would matter, really, until he woke up, and then he was going to be dealing with the inevitable cramps from staying for so long in one position. Still, this was a first class cabin. Cobb had done jobs before in far more uncomfortable locations and positions. As far as things went, this was probably one of the better jobs he’d had.

He closed his eyes, and waited for the somnacin infusion to begin.

-

Rain. A lot of rain. Yusuf didn’t quite like the rain. Here, on an important job, it just made things more difficult. It obscured visibility, made the road slippery, let cars skid…

And he was standing here, shielding his eyes with his hand as he tried to check the landmarks to make sure he’d stumbled upon the correct pick-up location. Water ran off the street sign and Yusuf decided that he had been right.

He gripped the silver carrying-case and tugged his coat more tightly around himself. It didn’t do much against the heavy downpour. He was getting more and more soaked with each moment and quietly, to himself, he wished he’d thought to dream somewhere…drier. He kept his eyes out on the passing traffic, trying to spot where the others were, and wondering if they were sodding taking their own sweet time about it.

Eames found the location almost at the same time as the maroon sedan pulled over. Cobb didn’t need to wind down the passenger window - they were both moving and getting into the car where it was thankfully dry. Yusuf moved towards the back, while Eames took shotgun.

“A bit too much champagne before takeoff, eh Yusuf?” Eames asked, jovially. It didn’t hide the sarcastic edge to his voice. Eames liked the wet and cold rain just about as much as Yusuf did, which was to say, not particularly.

“Ha bloody ha,” Yusuf retorted. His tone made it quite clear he wasn’t too amused with the joke. He held the PASIV on his lap and glanced out the window. Saito was in the back as well, a silent figure who was continuously looking forward but said nothing.

Cobb tried to diffuse the slight tension in the air. “Well,” he said aloud, “We know he’s going to be looking for a cab in this weather.”

Yusuf could almost hear Eames drawl, “Who are you trying to convince?” but miraculously, Eames kept his mouth shut this time.

They cruised the streets, glancing around for a suitable target. Finally, Cobb managed to slip into a lane, right behind a yellow cab and rear-ended it. Yusuf braced himself but the impact still jolted him forward, into the padding of the passenger seat. He tapped Saito on the shoulder - Saito turned and nodded, following Yusuf out of the car quickly. They left the PASIV at the back of the car and Yusuf made his way over to the vacated taxi. The cabbie had gotten out and was arguing furiously with Cobb, he probably wouldn’t be in a few moments but that was Cobb’s business and not his. He was just supposed to drive that cab.

The key was still in the ignition. That was one thing, at least. The engine was still running. He flicked a glance over to the passenger seat to make sure Saito was there; the man was strapping in, and then he started up the cab again and took off in the general direction of…Yusuf wasn’t entirely sure where. Fischer could have appeared anywhere for all he knew but they had a week to coast around this level and find him.

Preferably, locating Robert Fischer wasn’t going to take that long.

Yusuf glanced in the rearview mirror once more to make sure Cobb was following (he was) and then kept on driving. The radio was playing a lively song that seemed to have far more drums and chanting than singing. He considered flipping it off, and then shrugged and turned the volume up.

The weather was miserable. Yusuf didn’t intend to be.

-

Finding where Robert Fischer was in the dream was a tricky task. Yusuf breathed a sigh of relief when they passed the train station and he caught sight of their quarry, speaking into a cell phone. Fischer caught sight of them at perhaps around the same time - in any case, he waved, trying to flag down the taxi and obligingly, Yusuf slowed down and came to a stop.

“Third and Market,” Fischer said, clambering into the taxi. “Snappy.”

“Okay,” Yusuf nodded, and in the next moment, he caught sight of Eames in the rearview mirror. He’d made a bit of a dash for it, hurried into the cab and shut the door, collapsing into the seat with an air of great relief. Yusuf didn’t blame him. The rain showed no signs of abating and wasn’t likely to stop anytime soon. Not for a very long time.

“What are you doing?” Fischer demanded. Yusuf started up the taxi again, pulling away from the train station.

“Oh,” Eames said. He was a little out of breath. “I’m sorry, I thought it was free.”

“No, it’s not.” Fischer snapped.

“Maybe we could share,” Eames offered. Yusuf recognised the tone, knew that Eames must be leaning slightly in Fischer’s direction, trying to offer him a charmingly persuasive smile. Bastard did that enough times when he’d run through Yusuf’s tea supply while crashing at his place to hide from one or two of the people who inevitably seemed to have to want to settle things with Eames.

Fischer was having none of it. In that, Yusuf was rooting firmly for the enemy.

“Maybe not,” Fischer retorted sharply. He raised his voice, “Can you pull over and get this - “

Up till now, Saito had gone quite unnoticed by Fischer. Fischer fell silent when he was confronted by Saito and the wrong end of a gun.

“Great,” he muttered sullenly, and said nothing more. At least it didn’t sound like he’d recognised Saito.

Yusuf sped up, slipping into the centre lane. Fischer probably wasn’t going to be suicidally stupid enough to jump out of a moving taxi but the sooner they got to the warehouse, the sooner he’d feel safe. He hadn’t been into the field too often, but his shoulder blades itched, as if there were snipers in the buildings and he was in their crosshairs. He flicked another glance towards the rearview mirror and thought he caught sight of a dark SUV peeling away from the other vehicles and slipping into the third lane.

Funny, he thought. He could have sworn that the SUV had tailed them past two intersections…

-

Ariadne was sitting on the steps of a convenience store, to take shelter from the persistent rain. When she saw the car pull over, she got up and ran over to it.

“Come on,” Cobb called out impatiently, winding down the passenger window.

She pulled open the door and ducked in and out of the rain. The heavy downpour - no thanks to Yusuf - had sluiced her hair back and it clung to her skin in messy, damp strands. “Where are we - “ she began and then automatically stopped when the row of buildings across the road flared up with a huge roar, bursting into flames which burned on despite the unending rain, sizzling where water met fire. Steam drifted upwards, mingling with the thickening cloud of grey smoke, black where the ash and soot were dense.

“That’s not possible,” she whispered, gaping at the blaze. This was a full-fledged inferno; nearly the entire building was awash in a sea of fire. Tongues of flame flickered upwards, barely extinguished by the rain and wrapped around steel-and-concrete in whole crackling sheets of orange-yellow. It was a stupid thought, and she knew it. This was a dream. What part of this was rational in the first place?

Playing around with dream-physics was one thing. Watching a whole row of buildings engulfed in flame in the matter of seconds - feeling the heat even through the glass window, hearing the sizzle of rain meeting heated glass, steel…that was another thing.

It was very possible.

Ariadne glanced at Cobb, and realised that Cobb was staring at the entire flaming row of buildings. His hands gripped the steering wheel, white-knuckled, and it was probably just as well that the car wasn’t moving because they would likely have crashed straight into something. His blue eyes were very wide, and his breathing was shallow. He was looking at the building - and through it. She knew immediately that he wasn’t there, he wasn’t focusing and that was dangerous.

“Cobb?” she called, uncertain.

Cobb didn’t respond. He gave no sign of having heard her at all.

“Cobb!” Ariadne yelled, trying to shake him out of it. In a moment, Cobb blinked and broke out of his daze entirely. He looked…shaken, she thought. As if he’d seen a ghost or something. Considering what she’d seen buried deep in his mind, she thought maybe it wasn’t that surprising.

They heard the wail of distant sirens. Ariadne wondered if projections had called the firefighters in. In any case, it was time to get out of there before the projections came. They’d all but lost sight of Yusuf in that delay. She didn’t say as much; Cobb made a muffled grunt that could have been a curse or acknowledgement and hit the accelerator.

The car swerved out from beside the pavement and shot off, following the route that Yusuf’s cab was supposed to have taken.

Cobb didn’t glance back. Not once. He stared ahead of him, occasionally glancing to the side as he cut in and out of lanes and slipped in front of a slow blue Ford. To all appearances, he was intently focused on driving. Too focused. From the looks of it, he didn’t want to talk, and neither did Ariadne. She craned her neck and peered behind them, and saw the scarlet of fire engines tearing up the road towards the blaze.

She wondered if they would be able to put it out.

-

Yusuf heard the small, muffled sound of something being tossed - and caught. Fischer said, “It’s five hundred dollars in there. The wallet’s worth more than that. So you might at least drop me at my stop.”

Yusuf snorted. That was one hell of an expensive wallet. He did look back, trying to see how the wallet looked like. Eames held the wallet, a lazy smile touching his lips. He began, “I’m afraid that’s - “ and was cut off by the sound of breaking glass and something, probably metal, striking the plexiglas protector. Yusuf exhaled sharply in shock; that and the acute awareness that the projectile might have gone through to him if not for that seemingly useless sheet.

At the same time, he had just noticed a black SUV swerve in - it was going in the completely wrong direction, against the flow of the traffic until wet tyres screeched to a halt on asphalt and the doors opened and projections armed with - were those automatic rifles? - got out. And then Yusuf realised immediately that the SUV hadn’t been going in the wrong direction. It had been going exactly where it was meant to. This was an ambush.

He hit reverse immediately, peering behind as the car shot backwards. But it was no use. The other SUV - the one that had been tailing them past maybe four intersections was there. Now, it had stopped too and more projections swarmed out of the other SUV.

“Eames!” he yelled, and heard a grunt of acknowledgement. Eames had probably figured out what he meant and had unceremoniously dumped Fischer on the floor of the cab, safely out of harm’s way, and then kept as low as he could, himself.

“What the hell’s going on?” Eames demanded tersely. Yusuf cast about for likely gaps - but the projections had picked a good time for an ambush and they were well and truly trapped in by the traffic; neighbouring cars blocked any possibility of escape. He resisted the urge to pound the dashboard; there was always a way out, he just had to find it. He tried slipping out into the next lane, around the pileup of cars.

“I don’t know!” he exclaimed in answer to Eames’ question. “You’re the one who’s been doing this regularly, you tell me!”

Yusuf gave up. He rammed the taxi into the bumper of one of the blocking cars, trying to clear the blockage by brute force. It was a futile effort, as he’d already guessed. The car he’d hit just slipped forward a little. It wasn’t enough to clear them a gap - not when they didn’t have sufficient momentum to do anything.

Eames knew better than to answer that, with Fischer around and probably still aware. There was no telling exactly what Fischer would pick up on and what he would retain, and the less said, the better.

The passenger seat window shattered, hit by a bullet. Saito was trying to nail some of the projections, although Yusuf wasn’t sure how successful he had been. It certainly sounded like Eames was shooting back. No, Eames was definitely shooting back, Yusuf figured. He dropped one of the projections but it wasn’t enough. They were going to get killed at this rate, and where the hell was Cobb?

Yusuf’s mouth was suddenly very dry as he realised just what death here meant and wondered why he’d taken Cobb’s money and agreed to keep his secret again. All that money meant nothing now; it looked like he wasn’t going to be able to spend it.

The projections closed in all around them, wisely cramming themselves into the small spaces left by the interlocking cars so Yusuf couldn’t even run them down with the cab. He pulled out his SIG and tried to shoot the projection that had popped up right in front of them; he missed the first time but managed to drop the man. This, he remembered, was why he hated going out in the field. He much preferred to leave all this fighting and running to the people who actually spent most of their time doing those things.

Just a simple job, he thought sardonically, shaking his head at his own folly. Just a simple job, shooting one or two projections and driving as if hell was right on his tail. And the pay was good.

Yusuf was not the praying kind of man. But at that moment, he gasped a single word that might have been a prayer or a curse or both and reversed again. The cab’s tyres screeched against the slick surface of the road and he managed to pin a projection between the cab and the car behind them - except the rear window had been entirely destroyed and the projection aimed through the gap. “Eames!” he called out. There was nothing he could do, and then Eames rose up smoothly, aimed and fired in one smooth motion - the kind of almost-instinctive shot that took a great deal of training to pull off.

Eames’ past paid off. The shooter collapsed back against the car, and then dropped limply to the ground.

There was a loud, heavy sound of impact and crunching metal and the first thing Yusuf thought was that the cavalry had come. Cobb must have slammed into the blocking SUV to their rear, because suddenly there was a wide-open gap again, and Yusuf did not hesitate. He reversed at full speed through that gap, swerved and took off like a shot, ignoring the fact that he was going down the wrong side of the road.

Cobb’s car slipped in behind them, covering their retreat.

“You’re alright, I hope?” Yusuf called out, trying to steady his breathing. The sound of the rain hitting the road surface was amazingly, blessedly silent, after the sounds of breaking glass and gunfire. They were out. They were out. He didn’t bother to hide the wide grin on his face, nevermind that they weren’t completely out of the frying pan yet. Or was it out of the fire?

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, I’m okay, I’m okay,” Eames said, and then added, “Fischer’s okay, unless he gets carsick.”

“Saito?” Yusuf asked - and then he glanced at the passenger seat and watched Saito bring his hand away from his chest in a grimace of pain. His fingers were covered in blood, but what drew Yusuf’s concern more was the spreading red stain on Saito’s chest.

It didn’t look good. He considered swapping with Eames so he could see to Saito, but finally decided against it. They were getting closer to the warehouse and his first concern right now was to put more space between the ambush point and their rears.

-

The rest of the short drive to the warehouse was fortunately uneventful. Ariadne was silent for all of it, and Cobb grudgingly gave it to her - despite her persistence and her seemingly insatiable curiosity, she knew that this was not the best time for questions.

He also pretended not to notice her occasional, slightly apprehensive glances. It struck him then that for all they’d practiced for the job, Ariadne had never really been a part of those practices, simply because he hadn’t thought she was going until the very last minute. And for all the times she had been around for some kind of dry run or other, she’d never actually gone into a live fire scenario…or at least, as much as this could be called one.

And he felt the anger too; it was a surprise, and a shockingly unpleasant one to find that Fischer’s projections had been trained and there had been no indication of that in any of the research he’d been sent, whether from Mal or from Saito’s source. Mirfak. Cobb exhaled sharply, his breath hissing out from between his clenched teeth. So he’d been wrong. Their intel had been screwed up.

Ariadne was holding up better than he thought she would, that was for certain, and Cobb revised his already appreciable estimation of her, taking it up a few notches. The more he thought about it, the more he realised that the last time he’d seen her truly off-balance was the first time he’d introduced her to dreamsharing and when Arthur had promptly shot her.

“It’s different, isn’t it?” he said aloud, when he thought they’d lost all pursuit, for the moment.

“What’s different?”

“Actually doing it. Going through the job…getting shot…”

Ariadne shrugged. “That’s usually how it is, isn’t it?”

“Jesus, no,” Cobb said, “The projections - “

“I know,” she responded with a faint smile, “They aren’t usually like that, I guess. I was talking about the difference between theory and practice though. Telling me how the job’s going to be like, and actually being here…”

“Yeah,” Cobb agreed. “Nothing really prepares you for it.”

“Are the projections - “

“It isn’t normal,” Cobb nodded. He glanced to make sure there weren’t any cars and ran the red light. “They’ve been trained.”

“Trained?”

“Yeah,” he said, forcing himself to sound casual. “Fischer’s probably had an extractor teach his subconscious to defend itself. It’s called militarisation.” The anger crept back into his voice as he added, “We’re not prepared for this.”

“But you checked Fischer’s background.”

“It didn’t show. These things don’t always show.” This wasn’t supposed to happen, he thought furiously. Mal usually gave him better intel than that. Saito’s source was supposed to be good. It wasn’t reasonable, and it wasn’t right, but Cobb was angry anyway. Frustrated. What he’d told Ariadne was true: both that these things didn’t always show in a mark’s background and that they weren’t prepared to deal with that kind of security.

The first was irrelevant. The second was far more important. The cab in front of them slowed down; Eames got out and flung the shutters wide open so they could drive into the warehouse. There was no point in being angry, Cobb knew. It was too late to go back; he could not go back. They were committed to this. But the cool, tight frustration that wrapped around him like a second skin gave him a kind of clarity of focus. He welcomed the feeling. He needed the edge it gave him, as he tried to think about just what they needed to do next.

The problem. The problem was the projections. A direct approach wouldn’t work, but they had the advantage. They had Fischer. But it wouldn’t be long before the projections traced them down. They had to keep moving. And time. They needed more time. They needed to change plans. They didn’t have a week anymore.

Time was not on their side.

He told Ariadne to get the PASIV. “Get Fischer in the back!” he shouted out, getting out of the car, but Eames was already on top of things and was doing just that. And then Cobb’s heart skipped a beat, paused, stopped - froze - in that moment as he watched Yusuf haul a body out of the cab. Limp.

No, he thought. Yusuf glanced up for a moment and then returned to what he was doing; Cobb wasn’t sure if he said that aloud. His lips felt numb; he was poleaxed, stunned. The secret untold weighed down on him now. It had been a mistake, a huge miscalculation…

He broke into a stumbling run, hunkering down beside Yusuf, eyes tracing the spreading deep red stain on Saito’s chest. Saito grimaced, hand still going reflexively to his chest until Yusuf gently swatted it aside and told him to rest. And then Cobb breathed; the iron band restricting his chest relaxed marginally. Not dead. Still alive.

Dying.

“What the hell happened?” he demanded urgently. It was something else to focus on, something to think about instead of the fact that his only ticket back to America, his only ticket to the classified files was slipping away.

He remembered Yusuf had some kind of medical training, but Yusuf’s eyebrows were furrowed in pensive concentration as he bent over Saito and fished out a handkerchief from the pocket of his deep grey cotton vest and tried to apply pressure to the wound. “We were ambushed,” Yusuf said quietly. He didn’t look at Cobb. He was too busy trying to discover the extent of the injury and to see exactly what he could do for Saito. It wasn’t much. Saito’s features were a mask of pain but a soft moan escaped him when Yusuf kept the pressure on his wound.

“He’s not going to make it.” It wasn’t just a statement - it was more of a question. What experience Cobb had told him it didn’t look good. But Yusuf was far more likely to know than he.

Yusuf shrugged. “Difficult to say,” he said at last. He lifted his bloodstained hands and glanced at the stain, gauging the effect his efforts had. “Ariadne, the bandages,” he called out and Ariadne handed over the makeshift bandages: strips of torn cloth. “I’m doing what I can but there isn’t much to work with.” He turned a strip of cloth over in his hand, grimacing a little. His hand left streaks of blood on the material. “Fraying,” he remarked aloud. “That will be messy.”

“For goodness’ sake,” Eames cut in, exasperated, “Put him out of it already.” He reached over, presumably for his gun. In that moment, Cobb’s mind realised the danger. He was up and moving - he launched himself at Eames, slammed him against the white van, reaching up to pin Eames’ wrist when the blind panic lifted from his brain at once, like fog, and he met narrowed grey eyes. “What are you doing?” Eames demanded, looking at Cobb as if he was being deliberately slow or obtuse. “He’s in agony. I’m waking him up.”

There was no help for it. “It won’t wake him up,” Cobb said, shortly.

“What do you mean it won’t wake him up?” Eames wanted to know. He folded his arms across his chest. “If we die in a dream, we wake up.”

“Not from this,” Yusuf confessed. “We’re too heavily sedated to wake up that way.”

Eames’ eyes were chips of grey ice, almost as colourless as slush. “So what happens when we do die?”

“We drop into Limbo,” Cobb answered. He was met with perfect, pin-drop silence. Minutes passed. No one said anything. Eames’ lips tightened and he said nothing, just took a few deep breaths. Ariadne frowned, puzzled. The silence started to become oppressing, until finally, Ariadne spoke up.

“What is Limbo?”

“Raw, unconstructed dreamspace,” Eames answered, his voice so controlled that it was almost flat. Beneath all of that, was anger, frost-edged, even hints of disgust. “It’s the furthest any dreamer can go, all the way down to their subconscious.”

“So…what’s down there?”

“Nothing,” Cobb spoke up. “Bits and pieces of…forgotten dreams. Things discarded by whoever who’s been there before.”

“Well, then we’re bloody lucky that the only one who took a holiday there seems to have been you, aren’t we?” Eames said. The disdain in his tone could have peeled paint.

“How long can we be stuck there for?” Ariadne wanted to know, making a valiant effort to get things back on track. Eames snorted.

“You can’t even think of trying to escape until the sedative wears off,” Yusuf explained.

Eames turned on him. “And how long is that?” he asked. His tone made it quite clear that Yusuf wasn’t going to emerge unscathed either.

“Decades, it could be infinite! I don’t know, ask him!” Yusuf retorted, throwing his hands up in resignation. He gestured towards Cobb. “He’s the one who’s been there!”

Cobb made an impatient sound. “This changes nothing,” he said. “We have to move quickly.”

Eames laughed. It was a cutting and bitter sound. “Oh, excuse me,” he said sardonically, “Great. Thank you. So we’re trapped in Fischer’s mind, battling his own private army, and if we get killed, we’ll be lost in Limbo ‘till our brains turned to scrambled egg? And this changes nothing about how we proceed?”

“We knew inception was bound to be risky,” Cobb said.

“We knew it was risky,” Eames corrected him. “We did not know that dying here would be fatal. We did not know that Fischer has his own private army waiting to tear us to bits. Forget it. If we go any deeper, we’ll just raise the stakes. I’m sitting this one out on this level, boys.”

“Fischer’s security is surrounding this place as we speak,” Cobb told them all. While Eames had voiced his doubts, he could see the silent reproach in Ariadne’s expression, the anxiety that Yusuf didn’t quite bother masking. He couldn’t tell when it came to Saito - the only thing that was clear was that Saito was in great pain. He took a deep breath, and continued, his voice level. “Ten hours of flight time is a week on this level. That means each and every one of us will be killed. That I can guarantee.”

He locked gazes with Eames. Blue eyes met pale grey. Neither of them were willing to back down, and after a few moments of silence, Ariadne thought she could feel the tension, like the air right before a storm, humming with static electricity and the sharp smell of ozone. Very slowly, Eames asked, “Is that a threat?”

“No,” Cobb said. “It’s a fact.”

They regarded each other silently for a few more moments, before Eames shrugged and said, “And you have something better in mind?” It was an implicit surrender - with reservations. One thing that could always be said about Eames was that he had a sharp sense of self-preservation. He wouldn’t hesitate to cut himself off from what seemed like a doomed venture. The only way, Cobb knew, was to catch his interest. Eames had a weakness for wanting challenges, interesting jobs with a twist. He had to frame this job in the right way. And more importantly, as long as Eames realised there was a greater danger in quitting, he would work with them. They couldn’t afford to lose anyone.

“Yes. We carry on with the job.” Eames waited. Cobb continued, “We carry on with the job and do this as fast as possible. Downwards is the only way forwards.”

Eames narrowed his eyes. “That’s not much better,” he pointed out.

“It’s the best we’ve got,” Cobb said firmly. Now he waited, knowing Eames was sizing up the situation, deciding what to do. He watched Eames flick a glance at Yusuf, as if measuring him. Only then did Eames nod, slowly.

“Yusuf’s going to have it hard on this level,” he stated.

Yusuf shrugged. “We do what we can,” he said. He sounded the most unaffected of all of them.

Cobb nodded at each of them, knowing they had no other choice but to carry on. “Get ready,” he told Eames. “I’m going to go shake Fischer up a little.”

“I was supposed to have a day to crack him,” Eames said. It wasn’t a complaint - the look in his eyes told Cobb he’d set this aside for now, because he was a professional. But Cobb knew there’d be a price to pay later, once they got out of this. When Cobb really thought about it - he couldn’t blame Eames. He would probably have done the same in Eames’ shoes.

“You have an hour,” Cobb told him. “Get to it.”

-

This is Yusuf:

He went to medical school, but never became a doctor. He left after his internship, after he’d gotten fully registered, to pursue his passion. Somewhere along the way, that had led to a small pharmacy in Mombasa and dealing with custom somnacin compounds…and patching up the people who came through his door, no questions asked. The pay was good, and Yusuf didn’t take sides. That was mostly how he’d been left alone - that and the SIG he kept in a locked drawer below the counter.

He hadn’t had to deal with such a bad wound for a while, he thought, as he shifted Saito to a table where the light filtered in through the translucent panes of glass. It would be hard for the projections to catch a glimpse of the figures through the glass, which had been the whole point of the design. No sense in making them a target. More of a target than they already were. Yusuf bit his lower lip, frowning in thought. For a moment, he thought he’d forgotten most of what he’d learned, all those years ago, but then all of a sudden, it came flooding back, as if he’d just graduated and was going through his housemanship all over again.

There was little more he could do for Saito. In the better lighting, he could catch a glimpse of Saito’s wound, and he knew as he saw it that Saito had been very lucky - as lucky as he could have gotten, anyway, when it came to fatal wounds. The problem, Yusuf knew, was that no matter how fast they moved, there was no evading the fact that Saito would die of his injuries before they could wake up. He would fall through the layers, right into Limbo.

Yusuf did not say that to Cobb. Cobb was content to keep pushing, to keep trying to rush the whole job, and in a way, Cobb was right. If they spent too long, they’d be sitting ducks. Fischer’s projections would take them down, one by one. But there was something else, Yusuf figured. He wasn’t the kind of person to know people; that was what Eames did, but the more Yusuf looked at it, the more he thought that it was Cobb’s way of running away from the fact that Saito was screwed, one way or another.

It didn’t matter. He did what he could for Saito and then finally turned to meet the pair of grey eyes that had been fixed on a point between his shoulder blades for a while.

Yusuf didn’t have to say anything. Eames began, his face curiously blank of any kind of expression. Perhaps that, more than anything, made him seem at least partly accusing. “You knew the risks,” Eames said finally, “And you said nothing.”

“I trusted him,” Yusuf protested, but he knew that wasn’t the point. So did Eames.

“That’s funny,” Eames said softly, “Because I trusted you.”

“None of us knew that Fischer’s security would be so strong.”

“Would you have said it even if you knew?”

“Probably,” Yusuf said. He wasn’t that good a liar.

Eames snorted. “Please. How much did he pay you?”

Yusuf didn’t see the point in hiding it. Eames already knew, anyhow. “His whole share.”

Eames let out a low whistle. “Alright,” he said after a while. “I might have considered it if he gave me that much.” They both knew it was true, and yet the comment still stung a little.

“So,” Eames continued, “Anything else you’re holding out on me?”

“No,” Yusuf said, “Nothing. Oh, except that I wasn’t really in Lahore that week. Just didn’t want to see you stick your ugly mug through that door.”

“Well, I’ll be, you dog,” Eames said, with sly grin. He clapped Yusuf on the shoulder once, tossed him Fischer’s wallet and then went off to go find the panelled mirrors to practice Browning’s form on.

Reflexively, Yusuf caught the wallet. He knew all was not forgiven. That was Eames. He’d put all of it aside for now, but there was always that undercurrent, that hint of insincerity to Eames’ smile.

He was curious, so he flipped open the wallet, ran his fingers along the smooth leather, even sniffed it. “This cost more than five hundred dollars?” he muttered incredulously.

There was a photograph slipped into the wallet: black and white, a small boy holding a pinwheel and what looked to be Maurice Fischer next to him. A much younger Maurice. Yusuf frowned slightly. He would have taken the five hundred dollars except the wallet wasn’t real and neither was the money. But the photograph…might be useful. Eames was far more likely to figure how to use it, so Yusuf went after him.

He pocketed the five hundred dollars anyway.

-

Prologue
Part I: Extraction
1 | 2 | 3
Part II: Inception
4 | 5 | 6