Dom Cobb was sitting in his living room watching Phillipa and James play with their toys. He was still thinking of his wife Mal, but in a different way. Cobb knew he had to move on with his life, he almost jeopardized the last mission because of her, and they would have succeeded without a problem if Mal did not show up. Cobb felt something in his pocket as he reached into his jacket. His totem, which he forgot about for weeks after he arrived home. He looked at it, examining it, the shiny surface reflecting the lamp on the ceiling. But then the phone began to ring and bringing Cobb out of his concentration. He picked up the phone and answered. "Hello, Cobb's residence."
"Hey Cobb, Arthur here." The voice on the other end replied and Dom recognized it.
"Hey! How are you? I thought I lost contact with you after a while." Cobb neither called nor seen his teammates in a long time.
"Looks like you haven't. I am doing good at the moment, but had to worry growing but not much."
"Why are you worried?"
"The reason I have called is because we have been summoned to do another mission, another inception." Cobb was silent for a few seconds. He thought they were done forever, apparently not.
"Who requested us?"
"Might be a bit strange but Saito requested us, alongside Robert Fischer." Cobb was at the loss of words. "The info I got from them so far is all that someone is rising in the business industry and is becoming richer every second, buying almost every business she can get her hands on." She? Now Cobb didn't know what to think, should he laugh or cry? The biggest spender Cobb knew was Mal, and if Mal would have been a CEO of a company, she would do the same thing. "Now," Arthur continued, "What they are requesting is to implant an idea in their mind that she has to share her wealth with them. This is not going to be easy, as they told me, that she is terribly greedy. They admit to being greedy as well but she's a monster."
"That is definitely not going to be easy. OK, where should we all meet to discuss this?"
"I found an abandoned warehouse in Los Angeles. Saito bought it and now we can use it when we like. I already called the others, tomorrow is our meeting day."
"Great, I will see you then."
"Good, see you tomorrow!" Then both men hung up.
Cobb was unsure of himself if the next mission will succeed. What if Mal showed up? What is Mal killed the Target and then the Target would grow old in Limbo and forget everything? He put the thoughts to the side and looked at his kids. The worry seemed to is just melt away.
The next day, Cobb called his mother-in-law to come and watch the kids as he is going to a "business meeting" which could take a while. When she came, Cobb hugged her and the kids and left.
Cobb had some trouble finding the abandoned warehouse but found it as soon he saw Ariadne entered the building. He parked the car and followed her in. As he entered the building, he could see he was the last one to arrive. "Hey! Look who finally made it here!" Eames stood out from his seat and hugged Cobb. Cobb founded awkward at first but then gave his hugger a pat on the back. Eames let go and showed Cobb his seat. The warehouse had many windows where most of them where broken. The concrete floor had fissures in it and there where empty boxes lying all around. There was some graffiti, but nothing vulgar of graphic. As Cobb sat down, Yusuf entered the room from the back door with coffee and snacks for everybody.
"Sorry, huge line-up and slow worker." Yusuf apologized. He handed everyone coffee, they thanked him and the meeting began.
"So tell us, Fischer and Saito, more of the nemesis of yours." Cobb asked the two CEOs.
Saito was the first to speak. "My corporation has been contacted by her and have been labeled a price. We got a month of time to decide, if we say yes, she will change the name of my corporation and make it hers. If we refuse, well, she could kill me and take over anyway."
"Same here," Fischer added, "She is ruthless and brutal, and I can prove it to you with this." He handed Arthur a folder with files and pictures of her. She was 5'11", brown hair (shoulder-blade length), green eyes, slim, seen always wearing a suit and sometimes even a tie. Arthur finds her quite attractive but a close up on her face reveals dark shadows under her eyes, that tells him there is something wrong with her. The picture is a recent one as well. Her eyes are not as bright too, he noticed. He continued to look through the files. She is an orphan, had a good childhood, her teenage years where rough and a couple of mental institution hospitalizations. Wait a minute…
"Mental institution hospitalizations?" Arthur cried out. Cobb, Ariadne, Yusuf and Eames went behind Arthur to look over his shoulder to see what he has found. "A mental breakdown, then again, then a diagnosis… Psychosis?"
"This is going to be harder than we thought." Cobb said.
"Well, with a person completely overly happy with herself will be hard to crack, or even convince her to anything." Eames joked lightly.
"It would be possible to go deeper into her mind, maybe even Limbo if we have to, to implant even the slightest idea." Ariadne proposed.
"You could be right on this one." Arthur said. "The deeper we go the easier it is to implant something. But since her instability, we could face many things we don't want to. It could be complete chaos the deeper we go, nothing could make any sense to us. So we need to take every precaution there is."
"I have included the record of the psychiatrist's dream analysis. That gives you a view of things she dreams of." Fischer pointed to the folder. Arthur searched for the record and found it. He read it and became astonished yet frightful.
"That darling dreams big." Eames commented.
"She can fly with ease, control lightning and fire like a god, is completely immortal except for falling buildings she is in, and sometimes goes completely insane? What is going on in her head?" Ariadne stood in awe.
"When she knows she is dreaming, she takes complete control of the dream. She creates a new life, with new memories she calls "Fake Memories" and acts accordingly. She seems to be a master in dreaming." Cobb said to himself but the others still heard him.
"And what's her name again? I forgot." Eames asked sheepishly.
"Her name is Sonny Sterling." Arthur pointed to the top of the page where her name was printed and Eames smacked his forehead.
"A very nice and unusual name." Ariadne smiled.
"She is something." Cobb said. "Ok, I got a job for you Eames." Eames acknowledged the Extractor. "I want you to do what you do best, study her, how she really behaves, see if she is on medication or not, as it doesn't say in there, and come back with more information about her. We need to know 90 percent of her behavioral patterns so we can lessen the chaos if need be. Ariadne," Ariadne looked at Cobb, "You build the best mazes there are…" Then an idea popped into Cobb's mind. "And make them to her liking, someone with an unstable mind should feel secure and happy in a place they prefer. Once Eames comes back with more info you can construct the dreams then. We don't want to end up in Limbo at the first level."
The team came up with further ideas. Fischer's dream security can bring Sterling down if need be. Arthur goes under and trains himself how to fly and use superhero like powers, since guns are going to be useless with Sterling. Yusuf tried to make a solution for use in the dream on Sterling that will calm her down and loose the lucidity of the dream, once the lucidity is low, she won't be able to be god-like anymore.
Eames got home earlier to get ready for the spy work on Sterling, Saito set him up for the advisor job with Sterling which is the closest position Eames can get. The closer the better, Eames thought.