On a rainy morning in early April, Arthur sat alone in the sitting room of a rental home in Colorado. Under normal circumstances, he would be watching the news with a cup of coffee, waiting for everyone else to get up. That said, today, the circumstances were, in fact, normal. He was usually the first one up. Sleep did not come easily to him, or to others in his profession. Over time, diving made the subconscious less ready to emerge naturally. But he rarely used the device to artificially trigger dreams. So, he woke up early, watched the news, drank his coffee, and sat by the phone waiting for a call he knew would never come.

"Any good news?" asked the house's only female resident, Ariadne. Arthur turned to her, not having heard her come in.

"You're up early. Couldn't sleep?"

"Oh, I slept well. I just thought you might want to see this." She hefted her laptop. "I got a message. A job."

Arthur's mouth went a little flatter, the closest thing to a frown he ever gave. "Ari, we just got off of the worst job possible. I don't think we're ready for something right now."

She huffed. "It's been two months since the inception job. We're all bored out of our skulls. Why do you not want to do a job?"

"The usual gap between jobs is about a month, generally so that the team can recover. It's not an easy thing we do. That last one, though… I don't know if we're ready to take on another job."

"Could you do it?" Her question was pointed. Arthur seemed to waver for a minute, then said, "Yeah. I could. Do you know about Eames?"

"He's the one who posted the want ad."

At this Arthur stopped, fuming. "He what?" That was one of the rules: Stay under the radar. Once they started openly announcing the fact that the best and most infamous extraction team was active, all hell would break loose. Supposedly.

Ariadne scoffed. "Oh, please. You can't claim you aren't bored too. Don't blame Eames for trying to get a break from monotony. Yes, he has his sidelines. I have my classes. But do you really want to sit in this house all day, waiting for Cobb to call?"

This shook him to the core. Was it really that bad? Seconds later, he answered: yes. "Do you think he'll ever come back?"

"After all he went through? No. He wants to be a father to his children. Don't begrudge him that. Inception was his last job."

Arthur thought a moment. Was it really worth it to sit here and do nothing, or did he want back, with all the dangers and possibilities? And there, he decided. "Alright, show me the message."

She smiled briefly, then opened her computer. With a few keystrokes, she brought up an email, sent via anonymous proxy server.

I HAVE FOUND MYSELF IN NEED OF A VERY SPECIFIC TYPE OF SECURITY. IF LEGALITY IS NO BARRIER, THAN PRICE IS NO OBJECT. IF INTERESTED, PLEASE GO TO THE 5TH FLOOR OF THE B.O.A. BUILDING IN DENVER ON APRIL 10TH AT 2:00. ASK FOR MR. GERALD SMITH.

Arthur sat, unmoved, planning the meeting already. It was two days from now, but they would have to move quickly. Ariadne seemed unnerved, though.

"Art, this is kinda cryptic. You'd think they'd send a bit more information to go on."

"No, they wouldn't," said Art, in the tone he had used most often when teaching. "Services like ours require anonymity, run on it. Just another bit of paradoxical architecture. We run on information, but we survive by not having it. Just comes with the territory."

At that moment, a thin man with a shrewd face walked in, apparently having just woken up. Unlike Arthur, who drank coffee out of habit, Eames seemed to use it like fuel. He required caffeine nearly constantly before noon to wake up, and was rarely fully conscious until then. Today, however, his second stop (after the coffee machine) was a chair in the den next to Arthur and Ariadne. And, for once, seemed fully wake at eight in the morning. "Finally hearing about our little plan, are we?" he said by way of greeting, though in his normal ironic tone. "Oh, and don't give me that shit about 'laying low'. I'm bored."

"Eames, you should have told us you were going to do this…" Arthur began, but was cut off.

"And gotten what, out of you? 'Oh, we aren't ready, we need to lay low'. Even if you were just going to quit, I'm not."

Arthur managed to pick back up the thread of thought after having it stepped on. "Thanks anyway. We seem to have a job right as I'm ready for it."

This seemed to quiet the normally-talkative Eames for the moment, out of sheer surprise. "Ah. Well, then. Let's get planning, shall we?"