Hello all! Hazel Sparks again here, with another story... This one's going to be a bit different than my older (Avengers) one (but see if you can find how they're related!) and I hope it will be even better, too!
ATPS will be posted in seven installments on about a biweekly basis. I do not own Inception. Only the OCs are mine, though for reasons partially explained in the closing A/N even that isn't wholly true, and therefore I stake no legal claims. I cannot stop you from using them, but please credit and notify me if you do. Some of the places depicted in this story are real locations, but are used in a fictitious manner. All characters are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any resemblance to the fictional characters of the canon material, or to others who may have seeped into my nightmares, is not.
I am still doing the thing where if you are an author and review my story - positive or negative, it only needs to be honest - I will go review yours as well. I want to be very clear that while you're welcome to leave as many reviews as you want, I am capping my returns at 1-2 per person because there are a lot of you and only one of me...
Well, I think that's about all I have to cover right now. Sit down, settle in, and grab your totems - here we go!
~ For Fell. Wasn't about to waste all those nights you wouldn't let me sleep. ~
"Of all the things you choose in life, you don't get to choose what your nightmares are. You don't pick them; they pick you." – John Irving
Los Angeles would have been a thing to behold.
The skyscrapers, smog layer, taxi jams, urban bands, the masses and the movie stars, all compacted into one hive of millions. It was busy even now, as the sun retired for the night. The last orange rays were divided in razor fragments along the sides of the glassed high-rises. The city shone like crystal, the light blurry at the horizon in the distance. From the heat, probably. Heat and jetlag.
Ariadne stood with her nose to the glass wall, rocking on her toes twenty stories from the ground. It had been a full two days since they'd arrived in the U.S., their work complete. Cobb had vanished from the airport – unbarred, to the team's relief. Saito, shaken as he was, had paid them quickly and with short thanks, and returned to his home country the next day. Arthur was nearby, taking care of their supplies and the responsibility Cobb had abandoned at the sight of his family. Eames and Yusuf, having become quite good friends, had elected to take a holiday on some obscure island off the Golden Coast, where they would presumably spend a good portion of their earnings.
Not all of it, no – it would take anyone longer than a holiday to spend what Saito had granted them for their work. Ariadne was still in partial shock. Her stipend, tucked in a briefcase in the hotel room safe, was more money than she'd ever had at once. It would finance the rest of her architecture degree. No loans, no debt. She could live here, even.
Elating, but, strangely, she couldn't see it. Even a mind that thought in unparalleled pictures could not see it. When she thought of her future – which, unabashedly, she'd done almost nonstop since they'd gotten off the plane – earning the degree just wasn't in it. There was just this void. Every time she tried, there was only the half-dazed memory of the inception job on her mind.
They had gone into a boundless world. They had done the impossible. They had come back.
It had taken her a few times of cycling through it all to realize that she didn't really want the degree anymore. It was an especially crushing revelation to have while standing on the cusp of one of the greatest centers of architecture in the world. Below lay a maze Ariadne had no doubt she could dominate. Los Angeles' spread encompassed the work of masters, all fitted seamlessly together in a clockwork mechanism of a city.
So it would have been impressive. But, even in its shining glory held against but the fuzzy ghost of the dreamworld, it was just another maze.
There, on the other hand, architect held a whole new meaning. There they were gods.
It had taken only a moment to decide, but these two whole days to realize fully: she had to do it again.
Somehow, she had to do it again. If her architecture school was her favorite place on earth, the dreamworld was Paradise itself.
Ariadne expected to be offered a role in the next job, whenever that would be. But before then, even, she wanted to practice. Her mazes, as they'd learned, were not yet unbeatable, and she shuddered to think of what would happen if they ever came across someone more resourceful than Mal.
It was dark now, and, ironically, she didn't see herself getting to sleep anytime soon.
Arthur, she decided. She would go see Arthur. He was staying only two floors up, and, as last she'd heard, was in possession of the Pasiv device. Ariadne stepped backwards from the window, the dizzying height almost starlit now. She strolled into the tiny kitchen. It was equipped with a minifridge and several specialized appliances atop a marble counter, much nicer than her now-vacant dorm. At least she could stay in the dorm for weeks with the nightly cost of this place.
She grabbed her room key from the countertop and walked to the stairs. The hotel wasn't busy tonight; only the plastic plants in the hallway greeted her.
Upstairs it was nearly the same. The carpet was a lighter shade of green, and the fake plants represented aloe rather than orchids. Ariadne walked down the narrow hall, and soon arrived at Arthur's door. A small mountain of room service plates lay just outside the frame. He'd only been out once, when they'd eaten breakfast at the buffet by the lobby. She'd gone out shopping yesterday afternoon, but had since been advised to lay low for a while. To see if the effects of the job played out. To make sure they got away with it.
Arthur opened the door before she even knocked. Despite being holed up in his room for two days, he looked relatively put together. His hair was combed, a stack of paperwork was under his arm, and he'd changed out of his pajamas into actual clothes. It was more than she could say.
"Hey," he said quietly. She bit her lip.
She'd been working with the man for weeks now, and still she was reminded every time she saw him that there wasn't anyone quite like Arthur. He played with con-men and felons, but she couldn't bring herself to call him a criminal. Outwardly he was a gentleman, but he could pull off that mask with a quirk of his mouth. A natural teacher, she found him helpful where the others saw him as bossy. And of course, the only things more flawless than his appearance were his job schemes.
When Ariadne finally responded, she forgot to return the greeting.
"I'd like to do it again. To – to use the Pasiv."
Arthur smiled. The real world wasn't enough anymore, after all. He lowered his voice, "There'll be more jobs, you know. Don't worry."
"I know. But I want to practice. I mean, if we get another job, and if – if there's another Mal . . . I need to be better. I froze. Twice. She figured out the vents, and that made things horrible. It's only a few minutes here, right?"
It would be nice to get out for a little while, even if it wasn't real, he thought.
"Alright," Arthur said, holding the door open for her, "Just don't build us another goddamned hotel. I'm getting cabin fever." She smiled.
Arthur bolted the door behind them; he didn't like the idea of going under alone. Here. Now.
But, god, he had to go somewhere, and like Ariadne, the dreamworld held a certain appeal for him. The work was good and the skills he'd developed for it were exceptional, but the creativity was unmatched. And to see Ariadne explore it was always fascinating.
She watched as he pulled a silver briefcase from under the bed. It was simple and sleek, and embellished on one side with PASIV MV-235A in tiny lettering. They went through the well-versed routine of setting it up: Arthur opened the case, unfurled the tubes and adjusted the timed sedative reserve. Ariadne turned on a bedside lamp in the dying evening sun, and sat. She took a slender tube from the coil beside the briefcase on the mattress.
"How long do you want to go?" Ariadne asked.
"Maybe ten minutes or so," Arthur mumbled, tweaking the sedative. "The hotel's not, uh, secure, and we haven't gotten word on the Fischer job yet. I don't want to be gone long." He reclined on the opposite side of the bed, and glanced up once more to check the door was locked. It was.
"Shared build?" He inquired. Most dreams had a lead architect, as they were centered around the subject of the heist, and the others had jobs to do. With only a couple people involved, however, the design of the dream could be made malleable to both parties.
"Mm-hmm."
Ariadne felt a slight prick as she slipped the needles into her arm, and leaned back against the headboard. They must have looked like a strange pair; she'd often wondered what someone normal would think of them if they were to walk in and find them this way. The handsome, sophisticated-looking fellow to one side and the innocent businesswoman to the other, both out cold with IV's in their veins. The most clean-cut druggies to ever live, probably. Her quickly-muddling thoughts turned to what lay ahead.
Arthur mumbled something, eyes already closed, but she didn't catch it. They were gone.
/ ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ /
It wasn't raining.
It wasn't sunny, though, either. The sky was lit a pale blue all around, the light from some indiscernible single source, like a film on an omni screen. Clearly daytime, though. The dome was dusted with wispy clouds, none of which were in any particular hurry. The air was calm and sweet, and, as in every of Ariadne's dreams, held the same scent of that in her childhood hometown. A lingering blessing of the subconscious mind.
The grass was soft and short under her feet – they were bare – but crisp and drying all around. The field rustled softly as one. At the edges lay a band of pomegranate trees. Streams of water could be heard beyond them.
Arthur stood by her side. He'd traded his business suit for a more casual shirt-and-khakis outfit. Behind them, leading to the field and their little circle, was a dirt road, but he knew they had not come by it. There was never any getting here in this world. Only being here.
Arthur breathed in the air – real-ish, outside air – deeply.
"So," he said, "what do you want to learn?"
But Ariadne was already off walking, a pair of sandals materializing on her feet, her brown hair swaying behind her. She was heading for the line of trees. Arthur followed.
"Did you build this place?" he asked. It was common, of course, for the architect to prepare the dreamscape as they entered, but on occasion the main elements were left entirely to chance – or entirely to the subconscious, that is – for changing later. This field was lovely, but it was whimsical. A child's dream. Not a practical thing for training against the more unsatisfactory products of the subconscious mind. Monsters crawled out from dark corners, not wildflowers.
"No. It is nice though. I think my grandmother lived near a field a little like this, is probably it. I'm creating what's ahead." Her strides became more determined.
It took them many minutes to reach the dense, interwoven line of saplings and brush. Only mere seconds in real time. They slipped beneath it, stepping almost directly into Ariadne's waiting handiwork: A living labyrinth.
Ahead, the brush arced into an entryway twenty feet high, the vines and topiaries still slithering into place as the pair approached. Deep green walls nearly equal in height extended to each side as far as they could see. Arthur watched as a towering adamantine gate creaked open before them. Within the entryway to the maze, the path diverged immediately in not two, but three different directions.
Arthur laughed. "You do know we're only staying two hours, right?"
Ariadne smirked. "I've been designing this one for a while – thought it'd be a good way to try some things out. It's more of a classical labyrinth – but it's not a hotel, is it?" She held out one arm to the maze, palm open. "Your lead."
He walked slowly in, choosing the leftmost of the three paths. Ariadne followed close behind. She stayed quiet, her focus directed on carefully manipulating the dreamscape. She saw him hesitate every few turns, memorizing their route thus far.
Of all the members of their little band of unconventional criminals, Arthur was the cleverest. He was the strategist, the one whose responsibility it was to solve the problems unforeseen. Who figured out how to drop people without gravity, and how to slip undetected into throngs of foreign projections . . .
That was why Ariadne loved for him to test her mazes. If it was challenging to him, to the average projectional deterrent of their theft it would prove impossible.
Around another bend in the bramble-walled path the trees overhead disappeared, and a new burning sun beat down on their shoulders. Arthur shrugged off his jacket. They walked on.
Every second turn, the maze forked in three. They only had to double back once before Arthur settled into the pattern. He looked unimpressed, considering it had been so easy to sort out. So unlike Ariadne . . .
Once, the path opened into a small stone plaza, a perfect square with an exitway on three sides. Arthur paused, examining. To the fourth side, the vines were woven over a lattice, forming a sanctuary from the burning sun. A basin of clear liquid sat beneath it. It was designed to look like cool, refreshing water to the exhausted maze-goer, but in reality it was something much worse.
Ariadne bit her lip. Against hope that her new maze prevailed, she found herself hoping that Arthur would catch her trap before it caught him. Though of course dying in this dream would be inconsequential, the poison would still cause pain.
She was about to call out a warning when Arthur paused at the edge of the shade on his own. He turned around, curious, and plucked a twig from the nearby wall. He dropped it into the basin, and it dissolved almost instantly.
"Booby traps?" he somehow looked pleased, yet frowned. He hadn't seen her rig a maze like this yet. Impressive.
"I was gonna tell you before you tried to drink it. I just wanted to see how close–"
"No, it's good. But focus on confusing the victim. Their bodily needs may vary depending on their condition in real life, and projections might not have any at all. But illusions are universal." Ariadne took note of the advice, but her mind paused a moment on the word victim – it made the whole criminal thing seem very real, more so that the oft-used subject.
"Now, how about a hint or two?" Arthur gave a small smile. Clearly the pattern here was not as he'd thought, and they probably had only an hour or so until the music started.
Closing her eyes in concentration, Ariadne tugged at the vine walls. The plants slithered forth and closed all three of the paths to the plaza. Arthur's eyebrows went up. He paced around the center of the square, looking up and over the walls. Eventually, as if in realization, his gaze dropped to his feet. Ariadne suppressed a smile. Hidden in the varying shades of stone was a mosaic, a profile image of a siren singing.
Suddenly, it clicked. Arthur grabbed the basin of liquid from beneath the shade and, with care, took it over to the mosaic. He poured it over the siren's mouth, pulling his shoes out of the way just in time. The stones began to hiss and smoke. Then, without warning, they fell away, cascading into a dark pit.
Revealed was a spiral staircase below.
Ariadne nodded, and together they descended into the dark. They followed a narrow passageway beneath the initial maze. Arthur checked that his pistol was secured to his hip.
"So?" she asked
"The false patterns are good. Could be applied to an urban setting. Booby traps are a nice idea – but we'd have to warn the team first," Arthur replied as they walked. "My turn, now."
An almost-spiral staircase materialized in the gloom ahead. The twisted, iron silhouette could just barely be seen by the shaft of light poured over it. It reached like a radio tower spire up into the blinding white.
Arthur led them into a climb. They climbed. And climbed. And climbed. There was no way it had taken this long to descend, Ariadne thought.
"Arthur," she gasped, "We can't stay all day."
He smirked. "You're right. We should hurry." And he broke into a run.
"Arthur, this isn't funny!" She gripped the rail, trying to keep up. It was as if they were ascending a castle turret; the place was dotted with blackened windows and portways every few strides. Arthur disappeared from sight, his long legs carrying him upward much faster. Blindly, she kept climbing. Suddenly she felt–
She felt hands close around her collar from behind. Oh god. Every muscle in her body tensed with panic. Panic panic panic panic. She could feel the labyrinth overhead trembling, blurring . . . Who . . ?
"The labyrinth's greatest weakness should not be its architect," Arthur whispered in her ear. His hands slid down to her biceps. "Don't freeze."
"Arthur! You –" she turned and glanced over her shoulder at him. The trembling stopped and the dream stabilized.
"What? You said you wanted to practice," he released her and feigned innocence.
"Never mind that you scared me – how did you do that?"
"These are what you would call a type of Penrose steps. I merely went a few paces ahead of you."
Ah. Arthur's famous paradoxical staircases. She started walking again, tentatively. "So we could climb these forever?"
He nodded. "Infinitely, until your brain figures it out completely. But that's more complicated. It's a paradox. Maybe sometime I'll teach them to you."
Well, that was promising. His knowledge of paradoxes he held particularly close to his chest. She'd already glimpsed it twice, now, and few others ever saw it at all.
A pathway materialized to one of the adjacent portways in the wall, and from there a ramp led them out from the underground. Ariadne tried to make small talk as they went.
"So, where are you going after we get cleared?"
Arthur thought for a moment. "Staying in the States – but probably with Dom, eventually. He seems to think there's a potential client to be had in Italy or Spain or something, but I don't know the details. We might have to handle future jobs without him, though, considering. You?"
"I don't know yet. I'd like to keep doing . . . this, but I know Dom had some issues with it in the States."
"Yeah," he replied quietly, "Highly illegal, even without his unique tragedy. The military came up with it initially, you know, but all their work today is classified. If we keep doing this kind of thing, we can't get caught. It ruined Cobb's life. Eames and them remember that, but you need to know the stakes if this is what you want to do."
"Okay. I know. I just . . . don't think I could live without this anymore, knowing it exists. Knowing what I can do," she said. They were almost to the end of the passage now, to daylight.
"I understand." He gave a small smile. "Cobb pulled me in early, and for a while it was just us. I used to be that kid that wouldn't even break curfew, you know? Never thought I would end up in this kind of work. I tried to walk away twice, but I . . . just couldn't. Nothing like it." Ariadne shook her head in agreement.
The pair emerged into a quaint town square. Market stalls were set up beneath tile-roofed buildings, and a few projections bustled about. Most paid the new arrivals no mind, but a few stopped what they were doing to stare in a way that made Ariadne shiver. But Arthur was behind her in an instant, whisking them around the corner onto a quieter street. She sighed inside. Secretly, she was hoping he'd kiss her again, seeing as it had worked so well last time.
"I used to work at a place like that, once," she pointed to a small coffee shop across the way. It was a cramped little place with a light green awning out front, and wonderful smells drifting from the open doorway.
"Oh yes?" They made their way across the street.
"Yeah, but it was a little different . . ." Ariadne squinted and concentrated on the building, and, all at once, it started to change. The awning turned scarlet, and round windows appeared beneath it. The style of the tables within changed as the pair approached.
"Ariadne, be careful," Arthur warned.
"Relax. I think we've had enough today to let us know we're dreaming," she twirled her totem between her fingers.
"Ariadne . . ." Never create real places.
They had reached the sidewalk now, and everyone in the coffee shop paused to stare at them again. At Arthur especially. A mother stopped chiding her toddler, tugging at her blond curls, to follow them with her eyes. The barista was a statue when they arrived at the counter. Arthur calmly ordered them drinks, and that seemed to put the projections off of the matter.
They sat at a table – a small, glass one at the window – and no projections seemed to be the wiser. It was only when Arthur's totem, the red loaded die, clattered onto the tabletop, that Ariadne noticed.
She noticed him. Staring.
At the next table down – behind Arthur – sat a lone figure in all black. There was not much extraordinary about him, at first, except that he stared. He was of average height and build, and indiscernible age. A few wrinkles (they might have been frown lines or laugh lines or time, she couldn't tell) accented his cheekbones. Shocks of graying-black hair were visible beneath his trilby. But his deep brown – no, ruby – eyes seemed to bore directly into her soul.
She felt naked. She froze. Something wasn't right.
Arthur was talking to her again, but she couldn't hear it.
The man's eyes drifted to the die on the table for an instant, then, very slowly, made their way up to Ariadne's face once more.
And she swore he understood.
And he grinned.
And he must not have been a he after all, truly, because that hideous smile revealed a set of perfectly pointed teeth. No, this was a monster.
"Arthur," she gasped. She must have looked as horrified as she felt, because he turned to follow her gaze without her having to say any more.
And then the dream collapsed.
It was violent, more so than normal. There was a jolt that ripped through everything – every glass, every tablecloth, every chair, every projection – and reduced things to atoms at random. Ariadne's nerves seared with pain. The world began to come apart. The floor fell up just as much as the ceiling fell down. Arthur and Ariadne and the coffee shop and the stranger smiling across from them were crushed as this temporary universe folded, shuddering, into itself.
/ ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ /
Arthur's eyes snapped open, back in the hotel. His head was pounding – actual, physical pain, not a remnant of the dreamworld – and it took a few moments for the fog to clear from his vision. He rolled over to check the Pasiv.
Eight minutes. According to the Pasiv, they'd only been gone eight minutes. Whatever that had been had been something strong enough (strong? traumatic enough? scary enough?) to rapture them out of the depths of a mature dreamworld. No easy feat.
What the hell was that?
Ariadne stirred. Moaned first, then stirred.
Joke all you want about a girl moaning in bed, he thought cynically, but that one wasn't a pretty sound. That was pain. Distress.
After hurriedly replacing his own tube in the Pasiv case, he reached out and removed hers with delicate fingers. Once the Somnacin was out of her vein (and now dribbling into a smelly puddle on the sheets as he went to manually override the flow) sleep paralysis lost its effect. Fully. Her eyes fluttered and her breathing became irregular. Moans became gasps. In a bad way.
"Ariadne. Ariadne it's alright," he said. She turned her head to look at him. Wide eyes. "It's alright. We're back."
The risings and fallings of her chest became gentler, more regular. Her first sentence matched his first thought.
"What was that?"
"I . . . I don't know. Like a kick – a bad kick – but I didn't do it. Did you?"
"No, no."
Arthur shook his head. He looked around. No one in the room. Nothing seemed displaced in the real world. Nothing to have caused it from here.
"What about that . . . thing? The man – projection – in the coffee shop. Was he mine or yours?"
"I don't know. I've never met anyone like that. Don't know where he would've come from," he said. But the subconscious can do strange and terrible things.
"Me neither."
Arthur was turned around now, pulling his loaded die from his pocket and rolling it on the nightstand. Twice. Three times. Six times until he was satisfied. Ariadne took out her own totem and flipped it in her hand. Normal. They were definitely back.
"Has this, uh, ever happened to you before?" she ventured.
"Not without a kick," Arthur said after a moment. "I don't think we're in any danger. Probably just a stray fear dressed up as a projection. Are you feeling dizzy? Nauseous?"
"No." Maybe a little.
"Good. Me neither. Probably no physiological damage, then."
An awkward silence followed. Arthur busied himself by re-organizing the contents of the Pasiv case and snapping it shut.
"Don't ever create real places, Ariadne."
"I'm sorry–"
"No, I don't think that's what caused this. Just, in general."
"Okay. I guess I'll, um, I'll head back to my room, then," Ariadne said. She mumbled an apology as she walked to the door. Arthur assured her it was alright. Nice to have some excitement, even, half-joking.
"Goodnight," he said when she reached the door.
"Goodnight."
Back in her room, Ariadne was at the window staring at the city, exactly as she had been less than twenty minutes ago. An eternity ago. She could not convince herself to eat dinner.
What was that? She thought of the whole evening over. The window. The money in the hotel safe. Arthur. The dreamworld. The labyrinth. The Penrose stairs. Arthur. It.
It wouldn't have been so bad, really, if this had been some child's night terror in the dark woods. But it wasn't. What was terrifying was that everything had been so normal, coffee and sunshine, and then freaking Venom or someone just decided to pop in on his lunch break.
It wasn't – shouldn't have been – a big deal; it was just a guy. One guy.
A guy that tore the whole world apart.
She knew that man in the coffee shop had something – everything – to do with the collapse. It was silly, of course; he was only a projection. There was no one else in the hotel room.
Projections didn't do that, though. Projections set in motion events – the knives the air ducts the shooting the limbo – that did that; not alone, though. Not with a mere twist of the mouth. Recognition did not dawn on projections' faces like that. The only guess Ariadne had was that she had panicked, and caused the dream to become unstable.
Finally, she decided the answer did not lie in the maze before her, and went to bed on the plush little bunk in the room across from the kitchen.
/ ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ /
She was back in the coffee shop. She hadn't built it this time, but she was back in the coffee shop. Shock alone alerted her that she was dreaming.
This wasn't like a Pasiv-induced dream, though. This place was fuzzy, frayed around the edges. Everything seemed to be moving just a bit too slowly, and her field of vision wasn't quite what it should have been. She felt removed. At the edges of her consciousness she could sense her body, her real body, still in bed. She thought about trying to wake herself, but no – she was too curious.
Ariadne was behind the counter, this time. That made her relax a little, because it indicated this was probably only a normal memory-dream of when she'd worked here. Not uncommon. The dream characters went about their robotic lives, sitting and standing and pacing and wandering out into the lonely street. None stared. Ariadne robotically handed the customers their lattes.
With a great amount of effort and focus she gained a bit of control over her dream-limbs, just enough to command them to fetch a scone from the shelf. It was difficult without assistance from the Pasiv drugs; this doubt that she might be (was yes definitely was) awake kept trying to shove its way in. She nibbled at the scone, looking absently out at the street through frosted windows. She was in the middle of getting herself a free cappuccino – no managers to nab her here – when she saw him.
Him. It.
Sitting at the table in the corner. Staring.
He said something.
He stood, but never got any closer to her. He didn't have to – everything else had gone dead silent – but she still couldn't understand him. His . . . speech was a layered jumble of grunts and whispers and hisses and sneers, like Parseltongue shouted much too loud for a snake. Like the echoes of ghosts in an old, bad haunted-house movie. The sounds that projected did not match the words that his thin lips were forming.
His brow furrowed, and Ariadne got the feeling he'd asked her a question – a pointed, important question.
She shook her head, violently, and tried to back into the wall. He snarled. Ariadne's skin crawled and prickled with goosebumps, her feet were frozen in place (typical), and she couldn't look away.
Suddenly, a sharp pain flared on her left hand. She yelped and dropped the coffee mug she'd been filling, realizing it had overflowed. It shattered into a dozen little ceramic shards, islands in a tiny ocean of piping liquid on the floor.
And it smelled . . . awful.
It smelled like gasoline.
It smelled like gasoline flowing out of the open spigot, too, and Ariadne pushed and pushed at the thing's lever but couldn't close it. All at once every spigot opened, each gushing putrid rivers of the same yellow-green, oily liquid onto the tile. The streams shot out from all machines on the counter behind her, and those to the side. The puddle on the tile was growing fast, sloshing over her toes, spreading across the floor.
Ariadne vaulted over the front counter, stumbling as she landed. The man was still standing there, staring. Had he done this? It seemed like whatever he'd tried to talk to her about before, he was done talking. She stared back. He didn't smile – gnash his terrible teeth – this time, but he did smirk. One rough hand made its way inside the pocket of his trenchcoat, and it came out with a tiny flame. Still smirking.
(see I've come to burn your kingdom down) she thought absurdly.
And that smug bastard dropped his lighter. Flames spread from the ground around his feet, out in a wave of extraordinary color across the building. First blue, then brilliant orange. Ariadne screamed the cliché silent scream of nightmares and clambered onto a table. Her heels almost caught on the edge, and for a terrifying moment she teetered over the hungry fire. Her stockings melted painfully into the flesh of her calves.
The flames licked the underside of the tabletop, and smoke was rising, clouding the room. The other projections started to run. Most ran out into the street, and, strangely, slammed the cafe doors behind them. Bolted them, even, locking her in.
Ariadne's chest was tingling with the ice-cold bubbly feeling of fight-or-flight panic. Her fingertips were numb. Through the fog, the man/monster had stopped smirking. He stood as a statue, expressionless at the edge of the room as chaos unfolded around him.
The fire alarm went off. It was blaring, only feet behind Ariadne's head. She clamped her hands over her ears and doubled over.
The fire alarm was ringing, ringing, ringing.
The alarm was –
/ ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ / ~ /
– ringing, ringing, ringing.
Somewhere, Ariadne unconsciously regained just enough motor control to reach out and close her hand over the telephone. She retracted her arm, pulling the receiver to her pillow without opening her eyes.
The noise blessedly ceased. She curled her other hand around the blankets, pulling them to her chin. Not quite awake yet, not dreaming, but not wanting to wake yet, either.
"Ariadne?" a voice said softly. It was Arthur's voice. Arthur's voice, calm and so sweet and . . . right in her ear.
Arthur?
She opened her eyes all at once.
Oh God – what had she done? Shit shit shit shit shit.
She flailed and rolled over, dropping the telephone. A moment of confusion when her arm landed only on empty sheets. His voice was still there, though muffled, somewhere.
She realized, suddenly, and, feeling silly, scooped the phone off the floor. Her fingertips were still numb.
"What?"
"I said, 'hello' and 'did I wake you?'"
"Yeah, uh – I mean no, no, I'm fine. It's better."
"Alright . . . Are you okay?"
"Yes. What is it?"
"Turn on the TV. Channel seven." He waited.
Ariadne fished for the remote in the tangle of blankets, and turned on the set. On channel seven – the news – a jumpy cellphone video played, depicting a very animated pack of reporters crowding around none other than their own Mr. Fischer. He walked hurriedly out from an office building and down a street, surrounded. He ducked his head away from the barrage of camera flashes and microphones held eagerly out to him. The mob of press was shouting dozens of questions, none of which Ariadne could make out because the volume on the video was so low.
The Channel Seven news anchor was giving a voiceover of the story, describing the "shocking reports" coming out of the young heir's headquarters this morning. People were furious, she said; he was going to break up the dazzling business empire his father had left to him, just after the man's death, and not to mention take a trip to Dubai next month with his CFO, only to –
He was going to break up his father's empire.
"We did it," Ariadne breathed. She could hear Arthur smiling on the other end of the line.
"Yeah," he said. There was a pause as they both watched the conclusion of the story. Arthur for once was quiet, rather letting things just explain themselves.
"I've gotta call Saito. And Dom," he said when the show went to commercial. "Don't go anywhere just yet."
She said, "Okay." The line went dead.
One down, six to go. Let me know what you think so far - leave a review below! - Hazel