It had been exactly two weeks since the Fischer job and Ariadne felt it was safe to say that everything was beginning to beat in sync with routine – she was just any other college student again. Professor Miles had just finished an extensive lecture and Ariadne waited as the students slowly filed out of the lecture hall. Miles looked up and noticed her, still sitting, against the background of exiting students. He smiled and nodded at her as the last student shuffled out of the room. Ariadne descended the stairs of the hall, hands tucked in her washed out jeans.

"Hey prof," she said and smiled as she neared his desk.

"Ariadne," said Miles, as he settled in a small metal frame chair, "what can I do for you?"

"Well, actually," replied Ariadne, repeatedly shifting her weight from her heels to her toes, "I have a question that has nothing to do with this course."

"Oh?"

"I can't help but wonder how Cobb is doing now."

Miles gave her another kind smile. "Thank you for your concern Ariadne. I am quite confident that the man has reached some sort of closure in dealing with such a great loss. Actually, I will be flying over to L.A. this evening since it is reading week after the weekend. Would you like to come? You could chat with him personally and see the children, too."

Ariadne, having only seen the children in the dream state, opened her mouth to reply, when she suddenly felt her phone vibrate in the back pocket of her jeans. She whipped her phone out and frowned.

"Who is it?" asked Miles.

"Cobb… he says he needs to see me – and that it's an emergency," Ariadne said, her eyebrows furrowing.

"Well, I guess you don't have a choice then," chuckled Miles uncomfortably.

-/-/-

Dom Cobb tapped a pen impatiently against a long desk in a conference room that he had booked for two hous from a local library. He looked at his wrist watch every few seconds, his tapping steadily becoming faster with each glance.

"There's no use in being so impatient," said Arthur, from the other side of the conference room. His hands were in his pant pockets and he was wearing a three-piece, single-breasted brown suit. Arthur's outfit was topped with an untied gray tie: a reflection of the great rush he was in to be able to arrive punctually. "Pretty much all the people you want here had to travel from the other side of the world."

Cobb opened his mouth to retort, when Yusuf, in a khaki coloured sweater, and Eames, in a button down purple dress shirt, came scrambling in.

"Traffic," panted Yusuf, wiping a bead of sweat on his forehead with the sleeve of his pullover.

Eames nodded at Cobb and raised his eyebrows at Arthur, "Hello, nice tie." At that, Arthur glanced down at his chest and scowled when he noticed the untied cloth. He tied it lazily and took a seat opposite to the one Eames had just settled in.

Ariadne was the last to come in and gasped at the sight of the now reunited team, "Oh, hey everyone."

"Hi," the team replied in unison, with the exception of Cobb who narrowed his eyes and said, "hurry up." Ariadne hurried to a seat.

"We're missing the tourist," noted Eames, crossing his arms and leaning back on the chair.

"It's because he is the problem at hand at the moment," replied Cobb, standing up. "I have been informed that Fischer has become aware of what we have done."

"And Saito is a problem because…?" piped up Ariadne.

"He never did a proper background check with that blonde flight attendant."

Eames swore under his breath.

Yusuf frowned. "So she was working for Fischer?"

"Not working for him per say," said Cobb carefully, "but, rather, her allegiance wasn't completely with us. We all know Fischer was aware of extraction, based on his militarized subconscious. As he was asleep the entire flight, maybe a little bit of paranoia took over. So he bribes the blonde and, done, she spills the beans about how she helped us. Of course, Saito never bothered to find out that this woman was young and in debt, thus easily susceptible to bribery."

Arthur stood up as well. "The good news is that he would initially assume that we were trying to perform an extraction. His company could be after all of us at the moment – maybe for questionning."

"His company?" asked Yusuf. "He has not dissolved the empire yet?"

"Fischer hasn't mentionned anything of the sort," said Cobb, "not publicly, anyway."

Eames shook his head. "Then he knows." Cobb nodded in solemn agreement.

"Cobb and I," Arthur continued the discussion, "do have a plan. When we first tried extraction on Saito, he led us into believing that we were the ones running the show – but in actuality, it was his 'audition'. We can trick Fischer in the same fashion when his goons come along and try to extract what we had done in the dream."

"A thoroughly flawed plan," Eames replied quickly, "you can't just guarantee that Fischer doesn't remember the dream during the flight."

"Actually, we can," replied Cobb, placing both hands on the conference table, "because Fischer interacted with Saito perfectly fine in the dream – especially the third layer. Thus his conscious was too focused on the idea we were feeding him – and not the details of the faces and places. He was obviously aware that his company's biggest competitor was sitting only metres away from him during the flight. Fischer doesn't remember."

"How do you know," asked Ariadne, "that Fischer would send extractors after us? Wouldn't it just be easier for the law to take care of it?"

Cobb shook his head. "An extractor could guarantee such a big company much more detail than a monitored investigation and tons of media coverage ever would."

"Trust him," nodded Arthur, "he would know."

"If you want to work with our plan," Cobb said, cautiously making eye contact with every single person in the room, "we will have to work fast and get Fischer before he gets us. If you want to deal with this on your own, I would suggest you leave now."

Nobody moved. The team's race against time was on.

-/-/-

Ariadne stood by the corner of the room as she watched Cobb, lifting James up in the air with his left arm and hugging Phillipa with his right.

"Daddy," James said thoughtfully, tugging on a strand of his father's hair, "I thought you said you didn't have to go away to work anymore!"

"Yeah, please don't go," Phillipa chimed in.

Cobb bent down, lowering James to the floor and held their faces with each hand. "I promise I'll be back quickly."

"That's what you said last time," replied the quirky Phillipa.

A tear slid down Cobb's cheek. "I know. I'll try my best."

"Pinky promise?" James offered his pinky.

"Promise."

"Corporate espionage," sighed Miles, coming up behind Ariadne, "once you're in it, you are never out. An endless cycle."

Cobb heard. He turned around and nodded once at Ariadne. "I'm sorry."

"No," replied a hopeful Ariadne, "I'm confident that… we will all be able to reach a closure after this final job."

With one last kiss for each children and a hug for Miles, Cobb left the house, with Ariadne following closely behind him. Miles sat at the kitchen table, with his head on his hand – disappointed. As for the children, the familiar feeling of loneliness had crept back into their hearts.

Arthur was waiting for Cobb and Ariadne outside. He was leaning against a small, black convertible, holding the keys with his left hand and running his right hand over his hair, slicked back with gel.

"Where to?" asked Cobb.

"Airport," replied Arthur.

Ariadne groaned. "I'm getting sick of plane rides already."

"Sorry." Arthur offered her a quick smile. "We'll have to be on the move if we want to buy ourselves any time."

The three entered the car, Arthur the driver. "We'll be on a five hour nonstop flight from here to Toronto, Canada. Saito has saw to it that we ride his private jet."

Cobb bit his lip angrily at the thought of Saito. Ariadne, on the other hand, was puzzled. "Toronto? Why Toronto?"

"Exactly," said Arthur, "it's likely his extractors would look for us in Sydney. Then try to look for evidence and retrace our steps in Japan, France, or even Kenya."

"So while they're distracted with searching for evidence as to where we could be," Ariadne said thoguhtfully, "we'll be finishing our planning on the other side of the world?"

"Yes," Cobb answered for Arthur. The silence that followed was tight and uncomfortable.

-/-/-

The entire team – including Saito – was already on board when Cobb, Arthur, and Ariadne entered the plane. Yusuf was seated, looking troubled as Eames and Saito who were speaking to each other quickly in low voices.

"I hope this flight doesn't have anymore pesky flight attendants," said Eames.

"No flight attendants this time," replied Saito. "I have already apologized."

"You may have apologized to Cobb," shot Eames in his British accent, "but I have not yet heard one from you."

"Eames." Arthur stepped forward and put a hand on the man's shoulder. "Calm down."

"Sorry," Saito interjected in an indifferent tone of voice, and sat down. Eames, breathing heavily, shook off Arthur's hand, straightened out his suit and settled in a seat as well.

Ariadne was suddenly flooded with a feeling of fear. The team had worked well on the original Fischer job since they cooperated as one unit. Now, everyone was so hot headed and perturbed by their emotions.

Arthur saw her expression and touched her arm. "Hey, don't worry," he whispered, "everyone is just angry now. All of us – we're the perfect team; the epitome of togetherness." Ariadne nodded.

The epitome of togetherness.

Let's just hope you're right, she thought to herself.

NOTE: I know that Pilot is more of a television term, but I really do want to see how well this goes before writing any further.