The Ghost Network, 5/13. A/A. NC-17
Title: The Ghost Network
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: NC-17.
Pairing: Ariadne/Arthur
Disclaimer: Everyone here belongs to Christopher Nolan and not to me. I like making his toys do naughty, naughty things.
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-movie. For the
inception_kink meme prompt: Serial killer or Assassin Arthur, victim or FBI agent Ariadne, and Stockholm Syndrome. It's an AU fic, folks, but I tried to keep them as IC as possible! Also written for the "wild card" box on my
hc_bingo card.
Summary: Someone has been killing people involved in sleep labs. As part of the Sleep Crimes Unit of the FBI, Ariadne has to help track down the Dream Killer. Things go very wrong very fast, and she's exactly in the last place she wants to be.
Prior chapters:
One - Entering The Dream
Two - Building The Maze
Three - Going Under
Four - A Different Point Of View
There was chocolate in the next food drop, along with the supplies that Ariadne had requested and the finished laundry. She had listened to the sound of the washing machine and dryer through the wall, a steady low hum that was almost comforting. It was a normal sound, something that ordinary people did. She could almost close her eyes and pretend she was in the laundry room in her building as opposed to being kept captive for over two weeks.
It was worse because she was having nightmares now, and she was fairly certain that Arthur knew about it.
She could hear him moving around upstairs. The insulation couldn't be that thick in the basement, though no one seemed to hear her screaming during the day. Wherever he had been before, now Arthur was staying in the house on a regular basis. There were sounds that could have been a dishwasher, and the heat/cool cycle of the boiler kicked on and off more frequently. The light was continually on in the room, but Ariadne could fall asleep anytime, anywhere. The light didn't bother her or disrupt her sleep.
It was knowing she couldn't leave. It was knowing that Arthur was walking around, holding her captive.
She knew when she was dreaming, but she had never been a lucid dreamer. For all of her ability in the dream world, she had never been able to manipulate her own dreams that way. They always seemed to move of their own volition, despite her fear or wish to change things. She was an observer or a participant, sometimes both at once, but she could never seem to take charge in her dreams.
She had never known the name of the man that had kidnapped her. He never told her what to call him, for all the time that they had spent in the dream world. He hadn't been interested in her ability to talk, after all. In her dreams, he was silent and loomed large over her. She was ten again, small and caught in his web. She was tangled up in IV lines that dispensed somnacin, and while she could watch her childhood self struggle, she couldn't reach out to untangle the lines to get the girl free. The somnacin dripped, oily and evil, coating the ten year old Ariadne in a black, viscous shell. Ariadne screamed, trying to wipe it off of the younger Ariadne's mouth and eyes, but it kept pouring out of the lines, kept covering her. When the girl's mouth opened, more poured out. More seeped out through her eyes, and her dark hair became nothing but oily black goo. Somnacin wasn't black in real life, but it was in this dream. The goo streamed down from the child's skull, then hit the floor and shattered into droplets.
Then the looming shadow towered over Ariadne, and she screamed herself awake.
***
Arthur closed the door behind him when he came to bring Ariadne things. He pulled the chair from the desk and sat on it before passing her a Hershey bar. "Maybe that'll help you feel better," he murmured.
"Thanks," she replied, taking it. He watched her unwrap it slowly, and she felt as though her skin was crawling. "What?"
"What are your nightmares about?"
Ariadne shot him a churlish look. "Why do you care?"
He sighed. "I'm trying to help you, Ariadne."
It was maddening to keep hearing that repeatedly. "It's not helping me to keep me here."
"Do you have any idea what Cobb would have done to you?"
She curled her lip at him in derision and pointed at him with the chocolate bar. "You have no idea what you're talking about."
"He makes people sacrifice for him, and takes no responsibility for it. He uses people to get what he wants. His wife is a pathologist. She should have been promoted at least a dozen times over by now, but that would take him out of DC and out of the chain of advancement. So they stay."
"You have no idea what kind of relationship they have..."
"He picks the best and brightest dreamers and grinds them to dust," Arthur continued as if she hadn't spoken. "They get flat and useless after a while. There's no imagination, no spark, no fire. They just burn out, and he sets them loose to other departments. Turnover is high in the SCU, and it's not because they can't do the job. After a while, they can't do the job that he wants them to do. They can't dream anymore."
Ariadne thought of Cobol as she bit into the Hershey bar and was silent. Arthur may have a point, though she wasn't willing to concede it.
"How far do you think he would have pushed you if I hadn't intervened?" he asked quietly.
Ariadne flinched, and that was answer enough.
"I watch people," he said in that same quiet, lulling tone. "I can read people. Traumatized kids always can. So says the research, anyway. We know how to look at people, how to gauge their reactions, how to become the people they want us to be. We do it so we don't get hurt again, so we're liked, so people think we're as real as they are."
"I'm real," Ariadne sputtered hotly. "Don't you even start."
"What was your nightmare about?"
She looked way, feeling the chocolate bar melting within its wrapper under her fingers. She took a bite and chewed slowly, though it didn't taste like anything anymore.
"Ariadne." She didn't look at him, didn't respond. He moved to sit beside her on the couch, and he rested his hand on her arm. "Ariadne, it's okay. I understand."
"Shut up," she said, jaw tightening. She refused to look at him. She refused to acknowledge this. She was better than this, stronger than this. She wasn't a weak little girl any longer.
"I had a sister," Arthur said abruptly. "We were taken when I was eight and she was three. They found me, but they never found her."
Ariadne turned to look at him, eyes large and shining, lips stuck together. What happened? she almost wanted to ask, but that would imply caring, and she didn't want to care.
"We were in the playground near our house. My mother turned away for just a second, but that was all it took. That was all it ever took." Arthur's voice was steady, but his eyes burned through her. His fingers moved restlessly over her arm, the only other sign that something was wrong. "I had to watch what he did to her, and she had to watch what he did to me. He made us do things to each other while he watched. It went on forever, it seemed like. And one day while I was under, she wasn't. I didn't know how long I was under, but I could barely move when they found me, and I was in the hospital for two months."
"I'm sorry," Ariadne rasped.
"Ask me how long I was away," he said, his hand suddenly tight around her arm like a vise. She shook her head, unable to speak. "Ask me."
"How long were you gone?" Ariadne asked, voice hoarse and throat closed tight.
"Two days."
Ariadne sucked in a breath when Arthur let go of her arm. She had been gone for three.
He leaned forward and gently pressed his lips against her temple. "So I do know, Ariadne," he murmured against her skin. "I know exactly what it's like."
Ariadne shut her eyes against the tears that threatened to fall. She could feel Arthur wind an arm around her shoulders, almost embracing her. All she had to do was lean into it, take the comfort and understanding that he offered.
It was tempting. It was more tempting than it should have been.
It took every ounce of strength that Ariadne possessed to hold herself still and away from his touch, to keep from leaning in and pretending that it would all be okay. Arthur's fingers trailed across her shoulder in a comforting gesture, his touch a light caress. His lips were still near her temple, his breath warm against her skin. She had been held by an ex-boyfriend like this once; he was an ex because he hadn't been able to handle the thought of her doing better than he did on exams in college.
Arthur moved to kiss her cheek, then pulled back, his fingers trailing along the back of her neck. She shivered at the contact and pulled her arms in around herself tightly. Damn her sensitive skin. Damn the fact that she had even noticed he was handsome. Damn it all to hell that she was a premenstrual wreck. Usually she was better than this. Usually she could just run it off and be done with it, then focus on her work. But she had no outlets here, nothing to do but jog in place, and that didn't do it for her the same way that running outside did.
"You don't like that I touch you," Arthur observed.
Ariadne could hear disappointment in his tone, and her stomach twisted. She was only afraid he wouldn't come back. That was it. She was only afraid that he would leave her to starve to death. She didn't care what he thought. She couldn't.
"Would you prefer if I didn't?" he continued. His voice sounded so neutral, but Ariadne could hear cadences in it. His expressions were mostly blank, but she was starting to realize it was his body language and his eyes that told the real story. "Ariadne?"
"Do you have to do it?" she asked instead of answering, her eyes fixed to the floor. "Is this how I'm supposed to earn food and clothes?"
At his indrawn hiss of breath, she looked up. He looked as if she had struck him, as if he couldn't even begin to figure out how to respond to her.
Guiltily, Ariadne looked down at the floor again. "Never mind. Forget I said anything."
"Ariadne," he began, his voice raw sounding. "Look at me."
After a moment's pause, she did so. "What is it?"
"I would never hurt you. Never." There was something fierce in his expression, something almost frightening to behold. "I know you don't know me yet. You're scared, and you're still convinced I'm going to hurt you somehow. You don't know what you're saying. I can forgive this." He backed up a step and left behind another bag of food for her. "Perhaps we need some time apart."
Yes, we do. I need to find a way out of here, Ariadne thought, her arms still tight around her middle. When Arthur left the room, it only occurred to her that he was her only source of food, water and clean towels. She heaved a sigh and covered her face in her hands. Fuck.
***
Ariadne came to in a darkened room, a hand stroking her cheek gently. This was different; over the past week and a half, Arthur had simply dropped off food and left the room without saying a word. There was soft light coming in from the doorway, and she could make out the dim profile of Arthur's face. Her breath caught around a scream, and she made a choking sound that alerted Arthur she was awake. "Is it worse because you're here?" he asked. There was no inflection in his tone, and Ariadne didn't know how she should answer the question. Arthur pushed her hair aside, his touch gentle. He traced the curve of her ear. "I didn't think this would make you remember, too. I should have thought of that. I should have known about that."
She could hear the self castigation in his voice, and it hurt to hear. She shifted position on the couch so that she was lying on her back, looking up at his drawn expression. It was startling to see some kind of emotion on his face. Or maybe she was just learning how to read him. "You couldn't have known. You don't know me very well."
His hand was just about cupping her face, and he drew his fingers across her lips. Ariadne managed not to flinch or suck in a breath at the contact. "I've studied you. I've memorized your entire profile. I've been in the same place you were. I should have known."
"You can't know everything," she protested.
Arthur shook his head. "It's my business to know things about people."
"The Ghost Network, you mean," Ariadne guessed. There was no point in hiding the fact that she knew about its existence.
He smiled, and she could see the dim light flash against his teeth. "Not just that. You've been very resourceful, Ariadne."
"Are you going to hurt Yusuf?"
Arthur frowned at her. "Why would I?"
"Because he told us about it. He gave me his access codes."
"Of course he did. He wouldn't want to be arrested or go to prison. Prison wouldn't be good for a man like him," Arthur said with a shrug. "He cares about the sleepers, he does what he can to make sure they get what they need in a respectful way." His fingers brushed across her jawline. "It's a calling for him, I can see that. He's done his work to make their lives better, at cost to his own. I understand he needed to work with the FBI to stay in the business and to stay out of jail. I don't punish self preservation."
"Then what do you punish?"
"What was done to us. The abuses in the system." Arthur ran his fingers across her parted lips. "There are no laws against it, you know. The government and military has its monopoly, so there's no need for them to really regulate anything. They don't need to. So directors or observers can do whatever they like, and the sleepers can't do a thing about it. It's especially true in the underground, you know that."
"It still falls under current law..."
Arthur covered her mouth with his palm, his long fingers curling over her cheek. "What was done to us never would. No physical evidence. It would be charged as kidnapping and giving drugs to a minor. There would be no charges for rape, no charges for endangering our welfare. It was just a dream, after all. The law thinks we can forget it ever happened, forget that we lived for months or years under the somnacin." There was a hard, frightening edge to his tone. "They do it again. Like any other predator, any other pedophile. There's nothing to stop them, nothing to make them want to stop."
"Is that why you created the network?" Ariadne asked, pulling his hand away from her mouth.
He gave a short, bitter laugh. "No. But when I realized what it could be used for..." His eyes flashed in the dim light. "They still don't understand. They just complain, but no one does anything about it. Your friend Yusuf at least created new compounds in response to complaints about side effects. If someone abuses their power, though, all Network users can do is complain. There's no way to police it if the director has a monopoly in an area."
"You police it."
Arthur's hand fell to the rise of her chest, though he made no move to fondle her. "Yeah. Someone has to."
"Why you?"
"Why not me?" He glanced at her with an empty expression. "Why not you?"
"I work with the SCU. It is me."
He flashed her a sardonic smile. "Did you ever really get to do that, though? Did you ever really punish them for their true crimes? Or was it all for illegal distribution of somnacin and breaking patent laws?"
Ariadne managed not to sigh, because he was exactly right. "They still get punished."
Arthur leaned forward, face hovering over hers. "The punishment has to fit the crime, Ariadne. Otherwise, they learned nothing."
"How can they learn anything if they're dead?" she asked, voice sharp.
He laughed, and almost looked like an ordinary kind of handsome. "They don't die right away. They don't die until they beg for it."
Ariadne shivered and looked away from his face. She could still see him out of the corner of her eye, even though she was facing the side of the couch. "Just because you can doesn't mean that it's right."
"Oh, Ariadne," he sighed, pressing his forehead against her temple. "Somehow you managed to become an idealist."
"We know what they're capable of, right? Then that means we have to be better than that. We have to show them how it should be done," she insisted. She stiffened as Arthur shifted position, his arm coming to lie over her stomach.
"I should show you what I do," Arthur murmured, lips near her ear. "You can't judge what you don't understand."
"I know what it's like in the dreamscape."
He smiled, and she could almost feel it against her skin. "I saw. Professor Miles was most impressed with all of your test scores. He couldn't understand how you could be so talented. One of the brightest minds he ever had the pleasure to teach, he said." His hand moved restlessly over her stomach, and Ariadne found it hard to breathe. "I would love to see that. I would love to see how you move in the dreamscape. He said you were a natural, that you had a gift at manipulating the dream."
"You're going to put me under?" she gasped, eyes wide. She couldn't tell if she was afraid or excited. Perhaps she could convince him to let her leave...
"Would you come with me?" Arthur murmured against her ear. "I've been working alone for such a long time. Come with me, into the dream." He was almost crooning against her ear, his breath warm against her skin. Ariadne shivered, and idly wondered why she wasn't pushing him away. "It would be so beautiful."
She could convince him to let her go. She could go into his dreams and find out what he was afraid of. She could find out more about him, could draw him out and make him trip up. As soon as he made a mistake, she could escape and get back to the FBI. She could make this work to her advantage.
"Yes," she whispered, making sure to sound almost reluctant. Her heart hammered in her chest as his lips brushed across her cheek, as his hand tightened on her shirt. "Yes, I'll go into the dream with you."
"Thank you," he breathed. Arthur shifted and moved so that his lips were just over hers. "Thank you." His kiss was soft and gentle, but it rocked her to her toes. Ariadne gasped at the sensation of it, and her mouth opened under his. Arthur shifted his hand to slide beneath her shirt. He kept his hand over the skin of her stomach and her side, and didn't wander anywhere else. His tongue darted out to touch her lips, exploring slowly. It was electric when his tongue touched hers; it had been too many years since she had been kissed like that. Ariadne made a soft noise deep in her throat that might have been encouragement, and Arthur smiled against her lips.
He pulled back slowly, fingers gently stroking the skin of her side. "You're wonderful, Ariadne. That's why I had to do this. The dream will be fantastic."
Afterward, Ariadne touched her lips with her fingers as she lay in the dark. The rasp of the lock sliding into place was impossibly loud, and she could still feel the pressure of his lips against hers. She could still feel the soft slide of his hand across her skin. She was almost looking forward to the dreaming.
She was in serious trouble.
***
***
To chapter 6!
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: NC-17.
Pairing: Ariadne/Arthur
Disclaimer: Everyone here belongs to Christopher Nolan and not to me. I like making his toys do naughty, naughty things.
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-movie. For the
inception_kink meme prompt: Serial killer or Assassin Arthur, victim or FBI agent Ariadne, and Stockholm Syndrome. It's an AU fic, folks, but I tried to keep them as IC as possible! Also written for the "wild card" box on my
hc_bingo card.
Summary: Someone has been killing people involved in sleep labs. As part of the Sleep Crimes Unit of the FBI, Ariadne has to help track down the Dream Killer. Things go very wrong very fast, and she's exactly in the last place she wants to be.
Prior chapters:
One - Entering The Dream
Two - Building The Maze
Three - Going Under
Four - A Different Point Of View
There was chocolate in the next food drop, along with the supplies that Ariadne had requested and the finished laundry. She had listened to the sound of the washing machine and dryer through the wall, a steady low hum that was almost comforting. It was a normal sound, something that ordinary people did. She could almost close her eyes and pretend she was in the laundry room in her building as opposed to being kept captive for over two weeks.
It was worse because she was having nightmares now, and she was fairly certain that Arthur knew about it.
She could hear him moving around upstairs. The insulation couldn't be that thick in the basement, though no one seemed to hear her screaming during the day. Wherever he had been before, now Arthur was staying in the house on a regular basis. There were sounds that could have been a dishwasher, and the heat/cool cycle of the boiler kicked on and off more frequently. The light was continually on in the room, but Ariadne could fall asleep anytime, anywhere. The light didn't bother her or disrupt her sleep.
It was knowing she couldn't leave. It was knowing that Arthur was walking around, holding her captive.
She knew when she was dreaming, but she had never been a lucid dreamer. For all of her ability in the dream world, she had never been able to manipulate her own dreams that way. They always seemed to move of their own volition, despite her fear or wish to change things. She was an observer or a participant, sometimes both at once, but she could never seem to take charge in her dreams.
She had never known the name of the man that had kidnapped her. He never told her what to call him, for all the time that they had spent in the dream world. He hadn't been interested in her ability to talk, after all. In her dreams, he was silent and loomed large over her. She was ten again, small and caught in his web. She was tangled up in IV lines that dispensed somnacin, and while she could watch her childhood self struggle, she couldn't reach out to untangle the lines to get the girl free. The somnacin dripped, oily and evil, coating the ten year old Ariadne in a black, viscous shell. Ariadne screamed, trying to wipe it off of the younger Ariadne's mouth and eyes, but it kept pouring out of the lines, kept covering her. When the girl's mouth opened, more poured out. More seeped out through her eyes, and her dark hair became nothing but oily black goo. Somnacin wasn't black in real life, but it was in this dream. The goo streamed down from the child's skull, then hit the floor and shattered into droplets.
Then the looming shadow towered over Ariadne, and she screamed herself awake.
***
Arthur closed the door behind him when he came to bring Ariadne things. He pulled the chair from the desk and sat on it before passing her a Hershey bar. "Maybe that'll help you feel better," he murmured.
"Thanks," she replied, taking it. He watched her unwrap it slowly, and she felt as though her skin was crawling. "What?"
"What are your nightmares about?"
Ariadne shot him a churlish look. "Why do you care?"
He sighed. "I'm trying to help you, Ariadne."
It was maddening to keep hearing that repeatedly. "It's not helping me to keep me here."
"Do you have any idea what Cobb would have done to you?"
She curled her lip at him in derision and pointed at him with the chocolate bar. "You have no idea what you're talking about."
"He makes people sacrifice for him, and takes no responsibility for it. He uses people to get what he wants. His wife is a pathologist. She should have been promoted at least a dozen times over by now, but that would take him out of DC and out of the chain of advancement. So they stay."
"You have no idea what kind of relationship they have..."
"He picks the best and brightest dreamers and grinds them to dust," Arthur continued as if she hadn't spoken. "They get flat and useless after a while. There's no imagination, no spark, no fire. They just burn out, and he sets them loose to other departments. Turnover is high in the SCU, and it's not because they can't do the job. After a while, they can't do the job that he wants them to do. They can't dream anymore."
Ariadne thought of Cobol as she bit into the Hershey bar and was silent. Arthur may have a point, though she wasn't willing to concede it.
"How far do you think he would have pushed you if I hadn't intervened?" he asked quietly.
Ariadne flinched, and that was answer enough.
"I watch people," he said in that same quiet, lulling tone. "I can read people. Traumatized kids always can. So says the research, anyway. We know how to look at people, how to gauge their reactions, how to become the people they want us to be. We do it so we don't get hurt again, so we're liked, so people think we're as real as they are."
"I'm real," Ariadne sputtered hotly. "Don't you even start."
"What was your nightmare about?"
She looked way, feeling the chocolate bar melting within its wrapper under her fingers. She took a bite and chewed slowly, though it didn't taste like anything anymore.
"Ariadne." She didn't look at him, didn't respond. He moved to sit beside her on the couch, and he rested his hand on her arm. "Ariadne, it's okay. I understand."
"Shut up," she said, jaw tightening. She refused to look at him. She refused to acknowledge this. She was better than this, stronger than this. She wasn't a weak little girl any longer.
"I had a sister," Arthur said abruptly. "We were taken when I was eight and she was three. They found me, but they never found her."
Ariadne turned to look at him, eyes large and shining, lips stuck together. What happened? she almost wanted to ask, but that would imply caring, and she didn't want to care.
"We were in the playground near our house. My mother turned away for just a second, but that was all it took. That was all it ever took." Arthur's voice was steady, but his eyes burned through her. His fingers moved restlessly over her arm, the only other sign that something was wrong. "I had to watch what he did to her, and she had to watch what he did to me. He made us do things to each other while he watched. It went on forever, it seemed like. And one day while I was under, she wasn't. I didn't know how long I was under, but I could barely move when they found me, and I was in the hospital for two months."
"I'm sorry," Ariadne rasped.
"Ask me how long I was away," he said, his hand suddenly tight around her arm like a vise. She shook her head, unable to speak. "Ask me."
"How long were you gone?" Ariadne asked, voice hoarse and throat closed tight.
"Two days."
Ariadne sucked in a breath when Arthur let go of her arm. She had been gone for three.
He leaned forward and gently pressed his lips against her temple. "So I do know, Ariadne," he murmured against her skin. "I know exactly what it's like."
Ariadne shut her eyes against the tears that threatened to fall. She could feel Arthur wind an arm around her shoulders, almost embracing her. All she had to do was lean into it, take the comfort and understanding that he offered.
It was tempting. It was more tempting than it should have been.
It took every ounce of strength that Ariadne possessed to hold herself still and away from his touch, to keep from leaning in and pretending that it would all be okay. Arthur's fingers trailed across her shoulder in a comforting gesture, his touch a light caress. His lips were still near her temple, his breath warm against her skin. She had been held by an ex-boyfriend like this once; he was an ex because he hadn't been able to handle the thought of her doing better than he did on exams in college.
Arthur moved to kiss her cheek, then pulled back, his fingers trailing along the back of her neck. She shivered at the contact and pulled her arms in around herself tightly. Damn her sensitive skin. Damn the fact that she had even noticed he was handsome. Damn it all to hell that she was a premenstrual wreck. Usually she was better than this. Usually she could just run it off and be done with it, then focus on her work. But she had no outlets here, nothing to do but jog in place, and that didn't do it for her the same way that running outside did.
"You don't like that I touch you," Arthur observed.
Ariadne could hear disappointment in his tone, and her stomach twisted. She was only afraid he wouldn't come back. That was it. She was only afraid that he would leave her to starve to death. She didn't care what he thought. She couldn't.
"Would you prefer if I didn't?" he continued. His voice sounded so neutral, but Ariadne could hear cadences in it. His expressions were mostly blank, but she was starting to realize it was his body language and his eyes that told the real story. "Ariadne?"
"Do you have to do it?" she asked instead of answering, her eyes fixed to the floor. "Is this how I'm supposed to earn food and clothes?"
At his indrawn hiss of breath, she looked up. He looked as if she had struck him, as if he couldn't even begin to figure out how to respond to her.
Guiltily, Ariadne looked down at the floor again. "Never mind. Forget I said anything."
"Ariadne," he began, his voice raw sounding. "Look at me."
After a moment's pause, she did so. "What is it?"
"I would never hurt you. Never." There was something fierce in his expression, something almost frightening to behold. "I know you don't know me yet. You're scared, and you're still convinced I'm going to hurt you somehow. You don't know what you're saying. I can forgive this." He backed up a step and left behind another bag of food for her. "Perhaps we need some time apart."
Yes, we do. I need to find a way out of here, Ariadne thought, her arms still tight around her middle. When Arthur left the room, it only occurred to her that he was her only source of food, water and clean towels. She heaved a sigh and covered her face in her hands. Fuck.
***
Ariadne came to in a darkened room, a hand stroking her cheek gently. This was different; over the past week and a half, Arthur had simply dropped off food and left the room without saying a word. There was soft light coming in from the doorway, and she could make out the dim profile of Arthur's face. Her breath caught around a scream, and she made a choking sound that alerted Arthur she was awake. "Is it worse because you're here?" he asked. There was no inflection in his tone, and Ariadne didn't know how she should answer the question. Arthur pushed her hair aside, his touch gentle. He traced the curve of her ear. "I didn't think this would make you remember, too. I should have thought of that. I should have known about that."
She could hear the self castigation in his voice, and it hurt to hear. She shifted position on the couch so that she was lying on her back, looking up at his drawn expression. It was startling to see some kind of emotion on his face. Or maybe she was just learning how to read him. "You couldn't have known. You don't know me very well."
His hand was just about cupping her face, and he drew his fingers across her lips. Ariadne managed not to flinch or suck in a breath at the contact. "I've studied you. I've memorized your entire profile. I've been in the same place you were. I should have known."
"You can't know everything," she protested.
Arthur shook his head. "It's my business to know things about people."
"The Ghost Network, you mean," Ariadne guessed. There was no point in hiding the fact that she knew about its existence.
He smiled, and she could see the dim light flash against his teeth. "Not just that. You've been very resourceful, Ariadne."
"Are you going to hurt Yusuf?"
Arthur frowned at her. "Why would I?"
"Because he told us about it. He gave me his access codes."
"Of course he did. He wouldn't want to be arrested or go to prison. Prison wouldn't be good for a man like him," Arthur said with a shrug. "He cares about the sleepers, he does what he can to make sure they get what they need in a respectful way." His fingers brushed across her jawline. "It's a calling for him, I can see that. He's done his work to make their lives better, at cost to his own. I understand he needed to work with the FBI to stay in the business and to stay out of jail. I don't punish self preservation."
"Then what do you punish?"
"What was done to us. The abuses in the system." Arthur ran his fingers across her parted lips. "There are no laws against it, you know. The government and military has its monopoly, so there's no need for them to really regulate anything. They don't need to. So directors or observers can do whatever they like, and the sleepers can't do a thing about it. It's especially true in the underground, you know that."
"It still falls under current law..."
Arthur covered her mouth with his palm, his long fingers curling over her cheek. "What was done to us never would. No physical evidence. It would be charged as kidnapping and giving drugs to a minor. There would be no charges for rape, no charges for endangering our welfare. It was just a dream, after all. The law thinks we can forget it ever happened, forget that we lived for months or years under the somnacin." There was a hard, frightening edge to his tone. "They do it again. Like any other predator, any other pedophile. There's nothing to stop them, nothing to make them want to stop."
"Is that why you created the network?" Ariadne asked, pulling his hand away from her mouth.
He gave a short, bitter laugh. "No. But when I realized what it could be used for..." His eyes flashed in the dim light. "They still don't understand. They just complain, but no one does anything about it. Your friend Yusuf at least created new compounds in response to complaints about side effects. If someone abuses their power, though, all Network users can do is complain. There's no way to police it if the director has a monopoly in an area."
"You police it."
Arthur's hand fell to the rise of her chest, though he made no move to fondle her. "Yeah. Someone has to."
"Why you?"
"Why not me?" He glanced at her with an empty expression. "Why not you?"
"I work with the SCU. It is me."
He flashed her a sardonic smile. "Did you ever really get to do that, though? Did you ever really punish them for their true crimes? Or was it all for illegal distribution of somnacin and breaking patent laws?"
Ariadne managed not to sigh, because he was exactly right. "They still get punished."
Arthur leaned forward, face hovering over hers. "The punishment has to fit the crime, Ariadne. Otherwise, they learned nothing."
"How can they learn anything if they're dead?" she asked, voice sharp.
He laughed, and almost looked like an ordinary kind of handsome. "They don't die right away. They don't die until they beg for it."
Ariadne shivered and looked away from his face. She could still see him out of the corner of her eye, even though she was facing the side of the couch. "Just because you can doesn't mean that it's right."
"Oh, Ariadne," he sighed, pressing his forehead against her temple. "Somehow you managed to become an idealist."
"We know what they're capable of, right? Then that means we have to be better than that. We have to show them how it should be done," she insisted. She stiffened as Arthur shifted position, his arm coming to lie over her stomach.
"I should show you what I do," Arthur murmured, lips near her ear. "You can't judge what you don't understand."
"I know what it's like in the dreamscape."
He smiled, and she could almost feel it against her skin. "I saw. Professor Miles was most impressed with all of your test scores. He couldn't understand how you could be so talented. One of the brightest minds he ever had the pleasure to teach, he said." His hand moved restlessly over her stomach, and Ariadne found it hard to breathe. "I would love to see that. I would love to see how you move in the dreamscape. He said you were a natural, that you had a gift at manipulating the dream."
"You're going to put me under?" she gasped, eyes wide. She couldn't tell if she was afraid or excited. Perhaps she could convince him to let her leave...
"Would you come with me?" Arthur murmured against her ear. "I've been working alone for such a long time. Come with me, into the dream." He was almost crooning against her ear, his breath warm against her skin. Ariadne shivered, and idly wondered why she wasn't pushing him away. "It would be so beautiful."
She could convince him to let her go. She could go into his dreams and find out what he was afraid of. She could find out more about him, could draw him out and make him trip up. As soon as he made a mistake, she could escape and get back to the FBI. She could make this work to her advantage.
"Yes," she whispered, making sure to sound almost reluctant. Her heart hammered in her chest as his lips brushed across her cheek, as his hand tightened on her shirt. "Yes, I'll go into the dream with you."
"Thank you," he breathed. Arthur shifted and moved so that his lips were just over hers. "Thank you." His kiss was soft and gentle, but it rocked her to her toes. Ariadne gasped at the sensation of it, and her mouth opened under his. Arthur shifted his hand to slide beneath her shirt. He kept his hand over the skin of her stomach and her side, and didn't wander anywhere else. His tongue darted out to touch her lips, exploring slowly. It was electric when his tongue touched hers; it had been too many years since she had been kissed like that. Ariadne made a soft noise deep in her throat that might have been encouragement, and Arthur smiled against her lips.
He pulled back slowly, fingers gently stroking the skin of her side. "You're wonderful, Ariadne. That's why I had to do this. The dream will be fantastic."
Afterward, Ariadne touched her lips with her fingers as she lay in the dark. The rasp of the lock sliding into place was impossibly loud, and she could still feel the pressure of his lips against hers. She could still feel the soft slide of his hand across her skin. She was almost looking forward to the dreaming.
She was in serious trouble.
***
***
To chapter 6!