(A/N: Prequel-ish story to "Forged." It was originally called "Betrayal and Consequence," but "Generation" suits this story better.)
Generation
By Shembre
"Are you two ready to talk?"
Eames looked up and shook his head.
Under Eames's finger sliced the knife blade, peeling back his thumbnail like the rind of an orange. Searing pain flowed up from his finger, through the bones of his forearm, to his elbow. He flexed and curled the fingers of his throbbing hand, from which every hard bit of keratin had been torn up by the root. The pain migrated up to his shoulder. Five red-smeared nails scattered the concrete floor with drying flecks of blood. Frayed, nylon ropes dug into Eames's bare forearms and kept him strapped down to the arms of his chair.
"Darling, you should really work on your manicuring skills." Eames gave a breathless laugh. The ropes across his chest strained when he took a breath of sour, stale air. "The current state of my cuticles just won't do. I'd hate to see what your pedicures are like."
When the knife prodded his naked, raw, and bloody nail beds, Eames sucked in a breath and bit the inside of his cheeks. He summoned all his will when he locked eyes with the long-faced, fair-skinned man who preferred to extract information the slow and tedious way.
The man with his knife took a step back and sighed and scratched the tip of his slightly hooked nose. The horrible, florescent lights in the unfinished basement sharpened the shadows on his angular face. He raised a blood-tinged hand to smooth back his black, slicked-back hair. He then turned to the younger man who was strapped to another chair opposite of Eames.
"And what about you? Hmm?" the man asked Arthur. "Ready to talk?"
Shivering with anger and fear, Arthur shook his head. The left side of his face was bruised, and the thugs who'd captured them had split Arthur's upper lip open, but he was otherwise unharmed.
Yet… Eames thought.
Arthur swallowed thickly but only shook his head again.
Good lad.
"Well, okay then."
The man returned his attention to Eames and pressed the cold, wet blade against the cartilage of the forger's ear. Eames tried to twist away, but the man grabbed a fist full of brown hair between his fingers and wrenched— a game of tug-of-war with the roots buried in Eames's scalp.
"One more time," the man said calmly. "What did you find when you were in Jack Moller's head?"
"Piss off…" Eames hissed. Inwardly he cringed when Arthur stiffened and widened his eyes. Eames muttered less strongly, "Just shove that tool of yours up your arse."
Sharp pain drilled into Eames's head as the blade pierced his ear drum.
Half of the world seemed to empty out of his ear canal, and everything went mute on that side of his head.
He couldn't help but cry out in agony.
His temple pulsed rapidly. Blood ran down his jaw and neck.
"F-f-fuck!"
When the man removed his knife, he punched Eames's wounded ear.
Eames's vision spun horribly from the collision—his stomach hitched, jostling up his throat as if it were riding the vertebrae of his neck. He clenched his eyes shut and held in his other screams and the contents of his turned stomach.
"I've always heard that pain is in the mind, gentlemen," the man said, voice slightly muffled and vaguely distant. "I bet you two wish you were still dreaming. I could do this all day and all night. I sleep little."
"Is that so?" Eames gritted out between his clenched jaws.
Now the knife tip balanced on the top of his thigh. "Yes." The man placed half his weight on the knife.
Who knew Mal could be so sadistic... I wonder if Cobb knows? I know this is part of Arthur's training, to prepare him for the worst of the dreamshare, but she's doing quite the convincing job of it all. Perhaps she's even surpassed my skills as a forger.
"We're not gonna tell you a thing if it's information that you want," Arthur spoke up. His voice broke from nerves when he uttered the first 'you' and 'thing,' but otherwise held steady.
"Every man has his limits," the tall man Mal was masquerading as replied.
The knife cut deep, opening up a long wound from the middle of Eames's thigh to his kneecap. Eames yelped, but quickly caught his tongue between his teeth.
"What did you mean by 'if it's information you want?'" The tall man walked over to Arthur. "Of course it's information that I want."
"You could hire us," Arthur replied, though the way his voice turned up at the end made his suggestion sound like a question. "Is there someone better you'd want some dirt on?"
"I am not interested. I only—only—want the information you found while in Jack Moller's head."
Nice try, Arthur. This isn't a lesson on how to get out of torture. It's a lesson on how to withstand it until they stop toying with you and throw you away like garbage.
Arthur's face fell slightly and the shadows under his eyes deepened. Regardless, he said quietly, "Then I think we've reached an impasse."
The man tsked. "Like I said, every man has his limits."
Eames shut his eyes when the man grabbed Arthur's earlobe. The young man cried out, and when Eames opened his eyes, he saw that Mal's knife had sawed away the lower half of Arthur's ear, which now lay on the basement floor.
"So I'm deaf and he's just can't get that ear pierced?" Eames complained. He was sure he was shouting.
The projections should be here soon to save Arthur. I can already hear a row on the streets above us.
Arthur's upper lip curled and his skin looked ashen and sweaty. Tears of pain stood in his narrowed eyes. He glared at Eames and then at their bloody-fingered tormentor.
"Either of you had enough?" The dark-haired figure circled back towards Eames. "No? Well, I'm willing to make one deal…" The man slowly smiled. "First one to tell me what I want gets to live."
"We'll never tell you anything," Arthur said angrily. He sat up a little straighter now, while the blood trickled down his face and onto his shoulder. The blood blossomed on the fabric of his shirt. Arthur set his gaze on Eames.
His eyes pleaded with Eames.
He expected Eames to play along.
Teamwork.
I get that you want to stick together, but never expect to get caught with someone so trustworthy…
Eames felt the words cross his lips, and they felt dirtier than all of the profanity in his vocabulary. "We extracted information from Jack Moller regarding his affairs with prostitutes."
"Why?"
While Arthur remained silent, and gave Eames a 'fuck you!' glare, the latter looked up at the man and continued, "Because his prostitutes were sex slaves. The person who hired us wished to expose Moller's affairs to the public as a trafficking scandal."
Arthur furiously struggled against the ropes strapping his forearms to his chair.
"Good boy."
Eames winced and averted his eyes when he saw the gun. Before Arthur could react, the man shot him three times in the chest. Arthur's head went forward and he went limp as his life spurted out of the gaping holes.
"I think you liked this a little too much, Mal." When Eames closed his eyes and opened them again, the man had reshaped himself into the brown-haired French woman.
"I think you did, too, a little, Eames," she replied without pleasure. "And I told you I'd get you back for insulting my cooking." She rested her hand on his shoulder.
"All I said was that vegetables alone isn't a dinner. You just couldn't throw me some meat, could you? I'm a growing man." He then looked at the ropes on his arms. "We're getting out of here soon, but would you mind…?"
Mal took her bloodied knife and cut Eames free. He stood up and looked over at where Arthur had been sitting, but only found an empty chair and some blood.
"Don't think we scared the lad off, eh?"
"I think it will take more than this to do so," Mal replied. "He showed courage."
"Even when most of us would be shitting ourselves," Eames added, rubbing his sore arms. He bent down to pick up one of his bloody fingernails at his feet.
Eames opened his eyes and immediately looked over to the thin, young man up on the couch. Arthur was just sitting up, and from his view on the floor, Eames could tell he was trying to hide how rattled he was.
"How'd it go?"
"Right as it could," Eames told Cobb. He looked to his right and saw that Mal was sitting up from her position on the floor, too. He sat up as well. He watched Arthur again, but then self-consciously averted his eyes. "You know… torture and all that business."
"Are you all right, Arthur?" Mal asked, standing up and sitting down on the couch next to the young man.
Arthur's eyes shifted to Mal, but he did not move otherwise.
"Check your totem," Cobb ordered. He was standing in the middle of the den room with his arms crossed over his chest, like a father telling a child to double-check a homework assignment.
Arthur still didn't move, but he shrunk away under Mal's hand, and only relaxed when she removed it.
"Check your totem," Cobb repeated. "You know it was a dream, but it's a good habit to have."
Arthur nodded and came out of his trance. He stuck his hand into a pants pocket. The bright, shiny, red die rolled over the palm of his hand as he fondled it with his long fingers.
"We want to prepare you for the worst. Dreaming can accomplish everything, but there are consequences," Mal remarked. "You might run into the wrong people. We make deals with the devil sometimes so we can dream freely."
"I understand." Arthur sat there for a moment before he shook his head slightly and stood up. He nodded to Mal and Cobb, but ignored Eames. Before anyone could answer him properly, as he was walking out of the room, he muttered, "Will you excuse me a minute?"
When they heard the bathroom door close, Cobb rubbed his face and sighed. "He just needs time to take all of this in. He understands that we've all been through this training, right?" He looked at Mal.
She nodded. "We told him before we started the exercise."
Eames's chest tightened a little. The 'exercise' was something he had picked up while in the military. In the military, aside from its use as a training medium, the exercise was also used as a simulation for if you were captured by the enemy and held as a prisoner of war. He'd helped over a hundred men complete the exercise, just like with Arthur, and every new soldier had given Eames the same, awful, betrayed look of hatred—the treachery of someone offering you up as a sacrifice. Trading your life for their own, as if theirs was more valuable. Most participants moved on, and chalked the experience up as a generally unpleasant initiation…
Let's just hope that our little would-be point man moves forward, too.