INCEPTION – Operation Alternate
By: the Aspergian Mind
Chapter 1 – The Dream is Collapsing
Tom was our Mark, our ticket out of here to join the rest of the Insurrectionist movement.
We're all that there is of it, a merger band hiding where we're trapped in the system on the planet, but we have the most important weapon that needs to get to command.
It will change the course of the war just as it is going to change our fortunes right now.
I and Point Man, Karl, tried to overwhelm this Tom. I was holding by the collar with my set of hands while Karl used his own to hold the shotgun point-blank.
Not quite working. He is breaking sweat, but resilient enough to look us straight in the eye.
Hope we will break him, deep down within, when we reawaken his trauma. His last job had a perilous encounter with an elite.
"Give me the access codes for clarification." I said firmly, letting go and backing up, leaving him for someone, or something, else.
An elite enters through door, bloodied and war-torn like he'd met the monstrosity version of the species at New Harmony.
"How…?"
"I have my ways. We are after same thing. Now you do it my way."
"You sold us out!"
"No, just your cause, they decide to spare the species and replace the government. You can join ours and live."
The elite came swaggering close to Tom. Something was terrible with its posture. Its walk was that of a tip-toeing human.
"You give me the combination." It huffed, trying very hard to lift him up above his head.
Tom's tense face and stifling breath became relaxed and controlled. The fear eliminated from Tom.
"You can only push it so far." The elite dropped him, huffed again after letting go of a load that was actually strenuous for him to carry.
Bad choice. My desperation is catching up with me to ruin my performance. Sometimes real things in life can seem like you were dreaming as well. This will be the death of me.
There's suddenly a deep rumble sourced from the street 53 floors down, not on just this building but the entire bedrock. The Dreamer is lost.
What the hell? Sid is too professional to fall to something like an old man projection on the street.
I stand right at the window. What's the first to go? It all starts at the base in most buildings; stability is what goes first ahead of the form. But for this pinnacle object as long as a moon's equator, it would be taken out at the top.
Due to the cut off, the counter-weight is lost, and the long, long, long pipe will be wobbling aimlessly unless the whole centrifugal force of planets rotation would send it all falling in an exact easterly direction.
Speaking of…the top. There 'she' is. She always picked the most isolated locations to avoid being spotted for her foreign irregular appearance.
She waves with her even-digit hand. I only see her in the jobs now, my only dreams. Some would worry how their past comes back more literal than ever in this. But some reason I can't fathom she never harmed me.
Though it was not to last when her gaze look beyond me, beyond the building.
…And there it is. That space elevator, one hundred miles of a single shaft, come crashing down laying. The thickness alone is taller than any buildings here.
Once its flimsy form lies where it could stay indefinitely, a tidal wave of rubble buries the city. I still see it laid to rest on such a tiny city-lot compared to it.
And the whole city blocks become dominoes and the sky is encompassed by a tsunami of ash.
The target building has been collapsing; I have forgotten being surrounded by larger happenings. And the residue of the lower levels being crushed –one, two, and three— sent up in a major waft up to me.
And not to mention this bomb in my trench coat that I haven't gotten to use yet.
The bomb, the shotgun, jump, or be crushed.
Four options out; all painless.
Awake it's all a blur. It's kind of like a hospital experience. To have conveniently snap out when it'd collapsed and wake up lying in bed. Though there's no pain as I groggily get
Overlapping conversations take place from above, though it ain't the doctors. And this ain't a hospital; it's a shack small enough for civilian warthog.
"How did they get to you?" Karl pushes Sid.
"It wasn't the projections. We had an intervention, from outside the box."
"So the rumors are true. They are going telepathic with this technology too. We lost the edge, thanks to you." Karl points his finger as strenuous as possible to the guilty party, me.
I get up from my chair cut in-between the two to get the table. "Anyway, nice walking. Little less like high heels would have done it."
"Look, my only physical reference close to the anatomy of an elite was that brunette prostitute with highest heels two jobs ago." Cobb Kawski explains. "Not to mention its just appearance, not strength." Reenacting his strangling with his arms.
I have my totem; a top to a salt shaker. Under worst circumstances would be more needed, but it becomes a habit to do it no matter. Shifts uniquely to the appendage I placed inside when I flip it. No one knows it other than me.
She's not real. I know it, because it could not have ever come true.
Peeking outside through the slits of the shutters I see a full dozen ODST on the south side. And to the horizon, the cityscape on the southwest and the light strobes from the space elevator to the southeast, all intact.
Surrounded. Reality has finally caught up with us. Thank you!
A/N: So ends the first chapter of my Inception/Halo crossover. This story version you read here is something called "Scanning the First Act." You'll find out how much you will be shown to read.
If you're interested, you could read it again and this time, play the Inception soundtrack with it. You know which song it is.