PART I
Chapter 1 - Fractured dreams
The small pewter top spun atop the mahogany dining room table. Its centripetal dance flirted with the laws of physics, batted its eyelashes teasingly at the concept of time, tiptoeing outside the grasp of any universal principle. Whether or not infinity existed could have been deduced from the eventual faltering of the tiny, seemingly insignificant object. Nothing is forever, it wanted to say to anyone who'd listen. The ultimate truth is- But its cries were stifled by the gloved hand of an intruder.
Dominick Cobb did not witness the very act that took his reality hostage.
Finally things were going to be okay, Cobb thought in a euphoric daze as he stood on the patio outside his kitchen. He'd returned home intact to his and Mal's children and regained his sense of purpose as a normal, loving father. They would make him whole, just as Saito's call had reestablished him as a law-abiding citizen. A happy ending. For once.
Clutching Phillipa and James to him tightly, one in each arm, he exhaled in satisfaction but found that he couldn't help but listen for the falling of the top. His waking life was surreal, having accustomed himself to encountering his memories in dreams. There was no solid definition in between the two states of being, only the reassuring feel of cool metal against his thumb. Old habits are hard to break.
"Go play on the swings, sweeties. Daddy will be back in a second to push you," Cobb murmured sweetly as they cheered and ran off together, illuminated under the brightness of the sun, racing to the swing set. I have to be sure...
He was a man of average height and build, clad in a formal two-piece suit and tie due to his elite status as the best extractor in his profession. Before circumstances had changed, he'd been able to cherry pick jobs from discreet clients on his whim. But, of course, nothing lasts forever.
Cobb craned his neck but, hearing no toppling noise against the hard table, brushed himself off and turned to squint intently against the grain of the sunlight into the house.
A silhouette. Perhaps Miles had picked it up...
Cobb walked back through the sliding door and into the kitchen, where his eyes adjusted to reveal a familiar man holding his totem. Just the sight of it in someone else's grip made his knees quiver and his stomach lurch, as if his innermost secrets had been plundered and violated.
It was the thin man. The man from Cobol who'd first offered him a ticket out of the States—a pact with the devil—standing in the exact spot that he occupied that day.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" he growled menacingly, stepping towards the intruder and clenching his fists. Then in a softer voice as the initial burst of outrage fizzled into a sense of dread, "I thought I was done with this. This is all in the past."
Two men came up from behind him as if they'd appeared out of thin air—interrupting his thought—each grabbing one of his arms firmly. Taken aback, he struggled initially but found that their solid hold might as well have been forged of iron.
"Oh, no, Mr. Cobb. I'm afraid you're quite mistaken," the suit smirked cruelly, twiddling the top between his forefinger and thumb like a perplexing novelty item. "Not to be cliché but you can run but you can never hide from the truth. You are every bit the same Dominick Cobb you used to be, always have been. The one who owes us his life."
"We settled the score, didn't we? Didn't Saito give you a call?" he demanded with a furrowed brow. Saito promised a free pass, didn't he?
"Ha. Proclus Global has no power over us: we merely wanted to steal some of their engineering secrets. But I am more than certain that our own department will come to some sort of discovery by and by," the obvious leader of the pack explained as he slipped the top into a pocket and retrieved a gold-plated Zippo lighter in its place.
"But we're even now. You don't need anything from me because I don't have your secrets anyway."
"Quite the contrary, Mr. Cobb. You see there's nothing we hate more than filthy backstabbing rats... like yourself," the man started as he slipped a cigarette out of the pack in the inner pocket of his jacket, lighting it swiftly. "We had a deal. We saved you from apprehension by state and federal authorities for murder. And in this country we don't take that lightly."
"Fuck you. You've killed more people than you can count by the looks of you," Cobb argued, his eyes glaring daggers into the gleeful villain. Rat? You'll wish you never made such an insinuation.
He simply waved it off with one hand and stepped up to Cobb, blowing smoke into his face, taking his time to play with this curious new toy, as if he were no different from the top. "This is irrelevant. What you did was cheat Cobol Engineering out of our end of the bargain, and no one fucks Cobol, you understand that?"
He took a nice long draw from the cigarette, the end becoming ashy and sprinkling onto Cobb's patent loafers, the orange glow traveling down the white stick. Cobb flitted his eyes from side to side, trying to form a stratagem and checking his peripheral vision for an escape route. He'd just made it home... only to realize that it wasn't as familiar as he'd remembered it. He and Mal's wedding picture hung, framed with a thick black rim, in the hallway leading to the front door, her eyes staring at them... at him, like the ever searching gaze of the Mona Lisa.
A shadow was cast along the hardwood floor and it loomed larger as it paced toward them. Oh thank goodness, he breathed. That's right: Miles had come home with him to help with the children since Marie had returned to France to visit relatives.
"Miles! Don't come in! Run! Call the authorities!" Cobb shouted as quickly as he could to alert the old man. But instead his figure came into view without a hint of tension, shoulders proud and relaxed, triumphant even.
"I should have guessed you wouldn't have expected anything, Dominick," Miles stated solemnly. "You were never the brightest of the brood after all."
"What are you talking about?" Cobb blurted out in dumbfounded shock. "Get these assholes out of my home!"
Miles tsked sharply, "Rudeness, though, you did possess. I always thought you had a questionable upbringing. And I will do no such thing: these men are my invited guests."
"You called them?"
"Why yes. Glad to see those gears working in that dim-witted Cro-Magnon cranium of yours," Miles chortled primly, continuing in his leisurely pace towards Cobb. He nodded towards the Cobol agent, who stepped aside with a tip of the head. "You know the feeling of viewing a slanted painting on the wall? You get the urge to set it straight, right? Mm, well, see, that's the same impulse that overtakes me when I see an imbalance in the universe. An imbalance of justice that is."
"Miles? But you helped me get home. Why are you ruining things... with my children playing outside just yards away?" Cobb fumbled with his words, still dumbstruck.
"This you will understand soon enough, Dominick. But in the meantime..." Miles wound up and punched Cobb mercilessly in the gut, knocking the wind out of him instantly.
"This is for Mal."
He groaned and saw a flash of brightness, which shattered into shards of every color imaginable. A wave of nausea induced by shifting organs and lack of oxygen suffocated his senses. The last thing he was able to remember was stars dancing around Miles' crescent moon smile and then... darkness.
Consciousness returned to Cobb in disjointed pieces. He vaguely remembered lying on the floor of a moving vehicle, his head aching, ostensibly from the impact as they tossed him into the van like a rag doll. But he was still blind, his breath stifled by what felt like the rough texture of burlap rubbing against his face with every stop and turn.
He wanted to vomit, but he was certain he'd choke on his regurgitation and die an agonizing death of acidic asphyxiation. Even in that twilight state he wondered to himself, would it really be so bad after all? In comparison to what they're going to put you through? Still... the image of Phillipa and James, beaming faces illuminated in the Californian sun as they called for him upon his long-awaited arrival... this kept his resolve alive, however shaky its existence.
The rumbling of the motor halted along with the rolling of the automobile. Cobb couldn't tell if it had been minutes or hours, but he awoke from a pseudo-dream state, in which he imagined a reunion that hadn't been broken up by treachery. He longed to close his eyes and return where he'd left off, but the thought had already drifted away, forever out of reach. Cobb heard voices echoing faintly as the grunts joked vulgarly amongst themselves.
Kidnapping, assault, execution... It was just everyday, mundane work to them... as extraction had been to him. They didn't... couldn't stop to think for a second the effects of their actions would have on an endless line of victims, for the sake of their conscience. Selfish bastards. He felt a pang of guilt in his chest, but he refused to inquire as to why. Shelve it, he told himself. But Cobb was speedily running out of space in his library of emotions put on pause.
"Where should we hold him, Johnny?"
"Eh, Cell Five is empty."
"No, no. Put him in Cell Two. Now that'll be an interesting show," the thin man's voice rang out, the end of his phrase nearly drowned out by raucous laughter of the part of the others.
He then felt a tug on his leg and another hand grabbing him carelessly by the collar. "Git up and fuckin' walk. We ain't carryin' you 'gain, ya sack o' bricks."
Grudgingly and unsteadily he sat himself up and felt for the edge of the base. The goon guided him roughly onto solid ground and promptly pushed him forward, poking a cold blunt object into his back. "Go."
As soon as he stood, the blood that was pooled at the back of his head rushed downward, and he felt dizziness envelop his mind. Jostled and snapped from side to side, the Cobol underling led Cobb through what felt like a winding labyrinth to his unwelcome new abode.
After opening one last door, his captor said, "Okay, in here. Home sweet home." He could just imagine the excited sneer on the man's face as he sadistically exercised power over a vulnerable, for once not being at the bottom of the company food chain. Scumbag.
The first thing that struck him about the cavern he'd set foot in was the musty smell, as if the ventilation system hadn't been checked in years, and mold and dust were allowed to accumulate freely in the corners. Arthur wouldn't survive more than five minutes in this place, he mused with a morbid grin.
Then as the sack was lifted from his head like the unveiling of a bride, he realized the full extent of the dinginess of his accommodations. The ground was made of concrete and the walls of large, heavy stones, in whose crevices he could discern strains of mildew. The temperature was chilly yet damp, a strange sensation after having just soaked in the rays of the summer sun. It was a decently-sized room for a single person, but, as he recalled, the cell would house two.
On his right sat the largest piece of furniture in the sparse room, a bunk bed with mattresses that may as well have been made out of stone themselves for how hard they appeared. A stainless steel toilet hid behind the military-style sleeping arrangements, and a tiny intercom in front of the extractor was lodged awkwardly into the wall, where a stone had to have been cut to make space for the modern appliance.
Looking to his left, he spotted by far the worst feature of the already-soiled room: an emaciated version of the architect he once knew, sitting in a corner with his knees drawn up in the fetal position, unwilling to meet his eye. Greasy hair and tattered clothing as if he'd been denied all but a few sprays of a garden hose and a couple beatings a week. Nash.
Cobb wanted to laugh aloud. It was almost too perfect, the irony. He was so much above this pathetic, cheating rat, and yet they'd again found themselves in the same predicament. He felt another strange pang stabbing his chest, stronger this time, and he, at that second, wished fervently for the quick release of cardiac arrest.
"Hope you enjoy the amenities, kid, 'cause this ain't one'o'them fancy schmancy legal prisons like San Quentin," the ruddy guard joked, albeit unsuccessful in his attempt at humor. "This ain't yer granny's jail cell, that's fer sure."
The door closed behind them, and there was nothing but eerie silence, stalled only by the sound of a drop of water hitting the ground. Of course they didn't bother fixing leaks. People don't stay long enough in these "suites" for the conditions to matter.
Ignoring the other man's presence for the time being, Cobb sat down on the bottom bunk bed. Yep, like a rock, he sighed. All he wanted to do was to rest his sore body, to return to those beautiful images in his recent dream, to end this interminable day once and for all. He lay down.
"That one's mine," a weak voice cried out from the opposite corner.
The nerve of the sniveling bastard... How dare he even speak to me after all he's done? "Fuck off," was all he managed, attempting to keep his lip from twitching in anger.
"I see you're in one of your better moods," Nash coughed, stretching out his atrophied vocal cords.
"Don't you have some team members to betray? I don't want to hear you speak, much less talk to you."
He heard a shuffling noise as Nash arose, taking painstaking steps forward. His familiar form, just as he'd remembered it, though thinner and paler. No. Cobb looked away, in contempt for every molecule in the room.
"Dominick Cobb, you are one deluded motherfucker," he chuckled low and sarcastically.
"I don't know what you're on about. Do they keep you on amphetamines in here or what?" Cobb replied. Keep cool, Dom. He's not worth it.
"Are you that far gone now? Did you go and re-imagine your life, making yourself out to be some saint?" Nash asked, firmer now in his words. "Because I can tell you firsthand that you're far from it."
"Shut up," Cobb commanded, his tone threatening. "You don't know anything about me."
Nash could do nothing but laugh, the whole of his slender frame rocking.
"Leave me the fuck alone, or you'll regret it." Sweep it under the rug along with everything else, Dom. Stay steady.
"I can't say I don't already regret it, Dom. 'It' being ever meeting you because, you know, you're the worst thing that's ever happened to me," Nash said, with a hint of what one could call sadness. "But anyway, what are you doing here?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, shouldn't you be with your beloved kids? That is if they're even yours," he taunted. "Truth be told, they look nothing like you."
It had been a rough day, and Cobb had had a colossal mound on his proverbial plate. He had only one reaction available to him.
Pay it forward. He slid out of bed, stumbling forward and, in a rage, wound back and punched Nash squarely in the face, following through until his fist couldn't reach any further. He felt a distinct crack under his knuckles, the satisfying crunch of once-rigid cartilage giving away to a dominant force, a spurt of blood spraying over his fingers as he drew back.
The ex-architect yelped in surprise and pain, his hands flying up to his misshapen snout.
"I-I told you to fuck off," Cobb uttered shakily, trying to justify his action to himself. This was wrong, boiling over. He was so used to keeping himself contained, under control, but the events of the day, the Fischer job, seeing his children, and being soundly betrayed... they were hammering at his protective exoskeleton, splintering it as soundly as Nash's nose.
In fact, it was too surreal to be anything but a dream. Cobb clutched at his pockets furiously, ignoring the bloodstains he was rubbing onto his suit, but to no avail. The guards had taken everything from him, including his sense of reality. He sprawled back onto the bed and did his best to block out what had just happened, closing his eyes and losing himself in his thoughts.
However, as he stroked his temples, massaging his brain to work, he realized there was one item they'd neglected to take from him: his wedding band. He first stared in disbelief, then rubbed at the band furiously as if he'd found a magic lamp. Instead of being an indicator of his current state of existence as he'd fervently wished, all the genie accomplished was to conjure up doubts about things that even he had taken for granted. Had any of this been real?
It took him what felt like ages to fall asleep as his mind was inundated with repeating questions, symptoms of a distorted psyche. Should I wake up? Can I wake up? How would I kill myself? I have to get back to my kids. Will my kids still remember me when I'm out? Will I ever escape? I'm so sorry, Mal...
Staring at the wooden beam holding up the mattress above him, he almost felt like he could sense their presence above. Phillipa would be hushing her brother up as he jumped up and down, creaking the springs. "Stop it, James. Mom's going to find out, and then we'll both be in trouble." James stuck his tongue out, his fingers in his ears, bouncing ever rowdier to her dismay. And Mal would be watching from the doorway, unbeknownst to the children, giggling inaudibly.
"Off to sleep now," she would finally say with a smug grin, causing James to plop down on the bed in surprise. "There will be plenty of time to wreck the furniture tomorrow."
James pouted in the shame of discovery as his mother guided him to his own room, turning the lights off behind her.
But even in the dark, Cobb knew he couldn't sleep. Because the heart-wrenching truth remained that there was no one upstairs, no loving caress from a mother's hand, no picturesque family portrait. And there never would be again.
Yet the lullaby of a quietly sobbing architect rocked him to his slumber.