Inception: Dream or Reality? Part 1
A/N: Welcome to the first chapter of my new Inception story, which will have some twists in it that I expect will surprise you guys. *smiles evilly*
Read, review, and enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Inception, Batman, or Doctor Who. I only own the characters that I created.
CHAPTER ONE: BUSINESS
The faint light of dawn touched a sandy beach ringed with volcanic rocks, and had waves crashing onto it; as new waves rolled onto the beach, they tossed on to the wet sand a scruffy-looking man dressed in rumpled dark green clothes, and he lay there, gasping and choking on the salty water.
The shout and laughter of a child reached his ears and he lifted his head, where he saw a little blonde-haired boy, wearing blue clothes, was crouching, with his back toward the ocean, and was watching the tide eat away at a sandcastle. A blonde-haired girl, wearing a red dress, joined the boy, shoving some of her hair behind her ear. The man raised a hand slightly and tried to call to them, but they ran off with the girl screaming, and he passed out with the waves continuing to wash over him.
As the sun rose higher into the sky, a Japanese security guard approached the unconscious intruder and used the barrel of his rifle to poke the man's back; not getting a response, he then flipped up the back of the man's jacket and discovered a gun.
Concerned now, he removed the gun, rolled the man onto his back, and then called up the beach to a colleague, who was leaning against a jeep. Behind them was a cliff, and on top of that, was a Japanese castle.
Inside an elegant dining room, located within the castle, an elderly Japanese man was sitting at the dining table, eating as an attendant spoke to him in Japanese while the security guard from earlier waited in the doorway.
"/He was delirious,/" the attendant explained, referring to the intruder. "/But he asked for you by name. And…/" he nodded to the security guard. "/Show him./"
The security guard then entered the room and approached the table. "/He was carrying nothing but this…/" He placed the handgun on the table and the elderly man reached for a tall glass of red wine. "/…and this./" and he placed a small pewter top alongside the gun.
The elderly man paused for a moment and then picked up the top instead; he stared at it intensely for several seconds and then spoke to the attendant and the security guard. "/Bring him here,/" he ordered in a raspy voice. "/And some food./"
A short time later, the man was now seated at the opposite end of the table, having been half carried and half dragged in, and was eating a bowl full of rice; the elderly man watched him for several minutes, his wrinkled hand resting on the gun.
"Are you here to kill me?" he asked in perfect English and the man glanced up at him before returning his attention to his food, but there was a look of uncertainty in his eyes, almost as if he knew that he was there to do something important, but he couldn't remember what it was; the elderly man then picked up the top and rolled it between his fingers. "I know what this is," he said, placing it on the table, and started it spinning. "I've seen one before. Many, many years ago…"
He stared at the top, mesmerized. "It belonged to a man I met in a half-remembered dream…" and the top continued spinning as the younger man looked up and stared at the top, too, almost as he was starting to remember something important. "A man possessed of some radical notions…"
"What's the most resilient parasite?" asked Dominick "Dom" Cobb, a man, who was 35 years old with blonde hair that was slicked back, blue eyes, and was wearing a tailored dinner suit; he was seated at an long ebony stone table with a young Japanese businessman named Saito, who had black hair, dark eyes, and wore an unique dinner suit, a third man named Arthur Gordon, who had dark hair that was slicked back, dark eyes, and was also wearing a tailored dinner suit, and a woman named Emma Gordon, who had her dark hair done up in a bun, dark eyes, and was wearing a sleeveless black silk dress.
"A bacteria?" Cobb suggested as Saito ate and he gestured at their feast with his wine glass. "A virus? An intestinal worm?"
Saito paused in his eating, his fork hovering above the plate as an uneasy expression crossed his face; while Cobb smiled slightly, Arthur spoke up as he exchanged an exasperated look with his wife. 'Easy on the teasing, Cobb.' "What Mr. Cobb is trying to say-"
"An idea," Cobb interrupted and Saito looked at him, curious as he resumed eating. "Resilient, highly contagious," he explained. "Once an idea's taken hold in the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. A person can cover it up, ignore it."
"But surely to forget…?" Saito suggested, sipping some of his wine now.
"Information, yes," Cobb confirmed, sipping his own drink. "But an idea? Fully formed, understood? That sticks…" he tapped his forehead. "In there, somewhere."
"For someone like you to steal?" Saito inquired.
"Yes," Arthur answered. "In the dream state, your conscious defenses are lowered and your thoughts become vulnerable to theft," he explained. "It's called extraction."
"But with subconscious security, you'll be able to protect your mind from someone attempting extraction," Emma added.
"And we, Mr. Saito, we can train your subconscious to defend itself from even the most skilled extractor," Cobb said confidently.
Saito raised his eyebrows. "How can you do that?" he seemed skeptical, but it was also clear that he was interested, too.
"Because I am the most skilled extractor," Cobb responded. "I know how to search your mind and find your secrets. I know the tricks, and I can teach them to your subconscious so that even when you're asleep, your guard is never down." He then leaned forward, locking eyes with the Japanese businessman. "But if I'm going to help you, you have to be completely open to me," he added. "I'll need to know my way around your thoughts better than your wife, your analyst, anyone." He stood with his glass and gestured around the room, as there was a faint rumbling sound in the distance. "If this is a dream and you've got a safe full of secrets, I need to know what's in that safe. For this to work, you have to let me in completely."
A smile flickered across Saito's face as he dabbed his mouth with his napkin, glancing to the right slightly with his eyes, and then he stood up; behind him, a bodyguard opened a set of double doors, revealing a lavish party. "Gentlemen, lady," he said as Arthur and Emma also stood up. "Enjoy your evening while I consider your proposal." He then left and the doors were quickly closed behind him.
Worried, Arthur and Emma turned to Cobb, who was sipping his wine. "He knows." Just then there was a tremor that made the lamps in the ceiling shake and they steadied their glasses on the table.
Frowning, Arthur glanced upward. "What's going on up there?" he wondered, Emma also frowned, and Cobb checked his watch, where the second hand was slowly moving-
-and then the second hand moved fast in Cobb's watch, who was sleeping in a chair that was on top of a cabinet that was next to a steaming bathtub, and the bottom of the chair legs were level with the rim of the tub; unlike in the dream, here he was wearing a cream-colored business outfit with a blue shirt, and his hands were clasped in front of him.
Outside, there were explosions going on, along with shouting, and the pounding of feet; a sweating man named Nash, who was wearing an open-collared blue shirt, jeans, and boots, winced as there was another distant explosion, the noise rumbling through the room. Worried, he went into the next room, which was a bedroom, and Saito, who was wearing a gray business outfit with a gray vest and a white shirt, was lying on the bed, fast asleep with two thin yellow tubes taped to his left wrist.
Nash checked the connection before moving to the nearby window and he parted the curtains. Outside was a chaotic city, and the street was filled with rioters, who were smashing and burning everything in sight, heading toward the building; swallowing, he returned to the bathroom and checked on Arthur, wearing a similar cream-colored business outfit, who was asleep in an armchair with a silver briefcase lying on a cabinet next to it, which had tubing traveling from it to the sleepers.
Nash then went to Emma, also wearing a cream-colored business outfit, only she had a skirt and heels, too, who was sleeping in a chair next to the door, her head resting against the doorframe and checked the tubes taped to her left wrist; he then went back to Cobb and checked the tubes attached to his left wrist as there were another explosion outside.
Down in the dream world, a low tremor rumbled through the castle, and Cobb, Emma, and Arthur, now outside, steadied themselves against the wooden railing; several tiles and pieces of masonry fell off the roof. Below them a black sea churned and other guests were wandering the massive terraces.
"Saito knows," insisted Arthur while Cobb sipped from a glass of lime-flavored water now. "He's playing with us."
"I agree," said Emma, shivering slightly in the wind, wishing she had a coat or something. 'Whoever said that a person can't be cold in a dream clearly has never done this before.' "Saito is stringing us along."
"I can get it here," Cobb said confidently, ignoring their concerns. "The information's in the safe − he looked right at it when I mentioned secrets."
Arthur and Emma nodded, having seen the same thing, and then they noticed something over their friend's shoulder. "What's she doing here, Cobb?"
Wondering what it was that Arthur was asking, Cobb turned and saw a beautiful woman with lustrous dark hair that curled at her cheeks, gray-blue eyes, and was elegantly dressed with a black cloak wrapped around her off-shoulder black lacy gown, was staring out at the sea.
'Not again.' "You both just get to your room," Cobb advised, ignoring their suspicious expressions. "I'll take care of the rest." And he headed toward the woman.
"See that you do," Arthur called after him, annoyed. "We're here to work." Shaking his head, he took Emma's hand, and they headed back inside.
"It's never a good sign when she shows up," Emma muttered and her husband agreed as another tremor rolled through the building, and both feared that the dream was going to collapse around their ears before they got the job done.
Cobb walked over to Mallorie "Mal" Cobb, who was now peering over the wooden railing at the water below, sipping his drink again.
"If I jumped, would I survive?" she asked with a strong French accent, glancing at her husband with an inquiring look.
Cobb also glanced over the railing at the water below. "With a clean dive, perhaps," he guessed and then sighed, facing his wife. "Mal, why are you here?" he asked, hoping that this wouldn't end up being a repeat of their last few jobs; nearly every time Mal showed up during a job, it blew up in their faces, and knowing Arthur and Emma, if it happen again, he would never hear the end of it.
Mal turned to look at him, amused. "I thought you might be missing me," she told him, smiling.
"I am," said Cobb sadly. "But" he sighed "I can't trust you anymore."
Mal stared up at him, inviting. "So what?" she asked slyly.
Soon they were in a bedroom, where Mal was sipping champagne as she studied a painting by Francis Bacon. "Looks like Arthur's taste," she commented, turning to face her husband. "Or maybe Emma's since they have similar taste in artwork."
"Actually, Mr. Saito is partial to postwar British painters," Cobb corrected her while pulling on black glovers and peered through the window at the guards that were patrolling the outside of the castle along the shoreline; once he had the gloves on, he turned to his wife and gestured to a chair. "Would you sit down?"
Sighing, Mal lowered herself gracefully into a leather wingback chair; Cobb approached, pulling out a length of black rope and knelt at her feet, and she looked down at him. "Tell me," she requested as Cobb tied the rope around one of the chair legs. "Do the children miss me?"
Cobb paused and he let his gloved fingers lightly touch Mal's ankle, and he looked up at her. "You can't imagine," he whispered.
Mal looked away, uncomfortable and Cobb got to his feet, letting out the rope as he moved back to the window. "What're you doing?" she asked, looking back at him.
Instead of answering, Cobb opened the window and tossed the rope out. "Getting some air." He then tugged on the rope, testing it, and the weight of the chair, with Mal on it, held. "Stay seated, Mal," he requested, hoping that she would stay out of the way. "Please." And with that, he jumped backward out of the window, and Mal considered the open window, smiling slightly.
Moving quietly and quickly, Cobb rappelled down the wall, darting past windows, and then he stopped at a particular one, peered through the glass and then started to pull out a glass cutter-
WHOOSH!
'What the-?!' Startled, Cobb suddenly felt himself dropping toward the beach below.
Back in the bedroom, the now empty chair slid across the floor and wedged itself under the window. Mal had disappeared completely.
Grunting, Cobb jolted to a stop 15 ft. lower and he looked up at the bedroom window. Shaking his head and muttering a curse, he started climbing back up to the window, got the glasscutter out, and quietly sliced through the glass.
Soon, Cobb dropped silently from the window into the darkened kitchen; he pulled a pistol from his belt, screwing a silencer onto the barrel as he glided across the room.
In their bedroom, Arthur and Emma were waiting for Cobb to arrive with proof that he'd been successful and so that they could get out of the dream and back to the world above; Emma was sitting on the bed and looked up toward the ceiling uneasily as there was another low rumbling sound.
Arthur was pacing and occasionally glanced at the door that lead out into the hallway, straining his ears for the sounds of footsteps; like his wife, he was worried about the unexpected arrival of Mal, and what it could mean for the success of their job. In the past few months, Mal had ended up appearing during a critical part of the job they were working, and it nearly always resulted in going horribly wrong.
"Arthur, how much longer do you think it'll take him?" Emma asked, breaking the silence and was fiddling with her wedding band, a gold ring made out of roses, nervously. 'I wish I had my sketchbook, I so need to sketch something right now.'
"I'm sure it won't be much longer," Arthur said reassuringly, kneeling in front of his wife and clasping his hands over hers. "Cobb is good at his job."
Emma returned the smile – just as the door was kicked in and Saito's security swarmed in, grabbing them both before they could react, and then dragged them back out into the hallway, ignoring their struggles, questions, and protests.
This so wasn't a good sign!
A/N: And I end this on a cliffy to torture you all! HAHAHAHAHAHA! Also, Happy Easter! R&R everyone!
