Sometimes, Yusuf felt a little under-appreciated.
It wasn't a big deal, really. He wasn't in the business to stroke his own ego or anything. He was in it because he was good at what he did. He understood, almost intuitively, how to craft compounds that would enter the bloodstream and trigger certain receptors in the brain but not others, how to leave certain processes intact but inhibit others, and, most importantly, how to have it all wash away, so all that was left by the time the subject awoke was the small wound from a needle and a vague feeling of drowsiness, easily dismissed as normal.
He had been a bit bored with his life, actually, that day when Cobb, Eames, and Saito visited his shop. It had been two months since his last job, and that had been very simple – keep the mark and the team asleep and dreaming for half an hour. He could have easily just handed the team a bottle of his #12 and taken the money, but it wasn't his style. No, he researched the past medical histories of all team members as well as the mark – he deduced which compounds would be most effective and which ones wouldn't work as well. It took him a week to design a specific, artfully crafted formula for this specific job. He tested it, retested it, tweaked it here and there. Finally, when he deemed it perfect, he handed it over, quite pleased with his thoroughness. The extractor had grunted and thrown an envelope stuffed with money at him.
Yes, sometimes, Yusuf felt a little under-appreciated.
That day when Cobb, Eames, and Saito walked into the shop, he immediately sensed that this job would be different. Initially, he was put off by the idea of going in with the team; he really preferred to remain grounded in the world of reality and his chemicals. The more he heard, though, the more Yusuf found himself drawn in by the complexity of it.
Inception.
An impossible task?
Perhaps not, not with his help….