Gauntlet: An Inception Serial

Author's Note: Hello! I thought that I should explain a little bit about this projected series before I just threw the readers into it, as it might be a bit confusing.

For starters, this idea suddenly hit me as I was listening to the song "Russian Roulette" by Rihanna (an odd choice for me-I really don't like Rihanna). And we all know an idea is like a parasite. :) So I've written out the first oneshot that came to me along this basic concept: a rite of passage for dreamers. A rite of passage is something that signifies a coming-of-age or an initiation into a new group. I thought that the idea of the world of Inception having a trial by fire for its prospective members was an intriguing thing. This story is my attempt to put it in a representation that's accurate to Mr. Nolan's wonderful film.

My second and very brief note is this: these oneshots will not be in order. I'm starting with Ariadne and working backward.

Link to the song Russian Roulette: .com/watch?v=hELsXFY6UiE (WARNING: this is a mature song and deals with the theme of suicide. I don't recommend it for people under 18)

That's all! Thanks! Enjoy!

You are remembered for the rules you break.

- Douglas MacArthur

"Ariadne!"

I took another breath and put the cold metal to my temple, feeling the trigger tense beneath my finger.

"Ariadne, no!"

Around me, the green-tinged world wavered slightly, as it had been doing for the whole time we'd wandered the dream. The only thing that felt real about this dream was the Glock 17 in my hand; the one I was now mashing into my skin, the one I was gripping with white knuckles.

"Go on," he whispered to me encouragingly. "It will be over before you know it. Like you just winked in and out."

I don't know why I chose that gun. A Glock 17, one of the standard handguns in American police and military. It seemed so ordinary for me. I usually had more of a flair than that in the dreams. I would have expected something exotic, like an aristocrat's dueling pistol or a revolver from the days of African expeditions.

Something memorable.

"Ariadne!"

"He's getting closer," he told me, right in my ear. I shivered involuntarily. "Do it now, Ariadne. Get it over with." When I hesitated even more, he smiled against my skin. "You know you want to."

"It's not real," I said, more to reassure myself than to answer him.

"No, of course not. Now do it." There was the noise of footsteps clattering on the fire escape outside the building across from us. "Now, Ariadne," he urged me. "Now or never."

Now or never...now or never...

I closed my eyes and blotted out the memory of Cobb's regret. I couldn't think about Cobb right now, not him or Mal. I had to do this. If I thought about them and how their story had ended, there was no way I would go through with it. "Okay," I said, bracing myself.

My finger curled around the trigger, tighter, tighter-

The window to the right of me shattered with an ear-splitting clamor, spraying me with glass shards. Startled, my eyes opened wide and I turned to the sound.

He's here, I thought, at once terrified and elated. He found me. The sunlight burst around him through the hole the window had left. Without casting me one glance, he raced toward my initiator, a wicked knife suddenly appearing in his hand out of thin air. I hadn't known he'd used knives until that moment. He was more a gun person most of the time.

Guns were quick and efficient, just like him. A knife was passionate, gruesome. Not like him at all.

"No gun, Arthur?" He said, and I could see his smile through the back of his head. "Well, you always were a bit on the psychotic side."

Arthur didn't respond, but the murder in his eyes made me think my initiator had a point. But that wasn't true, I told myself. Arthur wasn't a killer; he was a protector, a soldier. He never killed anyone for himself.

"You found me," I said, my voice strange in the dream.

"This is all part of the test, Arthur," he said, and then the heartless silver of the blade drove itself into his throat. I couldn't look away, spellbound by the horrific image. As his body fell to the floor, I felt the reality of the dream slip just a little. Cracks would start appearing, soon.

"Arthur," I said. My voice was faint.

The instinct to kill still lingered in Arthur's eyes, and he breathed slowly as he crouched on the floor, bowing his head so I wouldn't see him like that. I wanted to tell him that it was okay. That was Arthur, too: the impassioned avenger. I had known that all along, really, when he'd comforted me from my first death in dreams. It seemed contradictory, but it wasn't.

I was all right, now.

"Thank you," I said to him, shifting to a firmer grip on the handgun. I loved him for what he had done for me, but this was still something I had to do. I couldn't explain it to him, not him, ever the rational man.

Arthur saw the intent in my eyes. "Ariadne," he said vehemently, "you don't have to do this. It's pointless, and believe me, it damages you every time. I should have told you before you agreed. I had to go through this, too."

I raised the gun to my head again.

"It's not worth it!" Arthur told me, the fire still in his eyes. "It doesn't make you any more of a dreamer!"

"Doesn't it?" I asked, readying myself one more time. I heard the grind of metal on metal as I pulled down on the trigger once again.

There was an explosion of sound, but it wasn't from me. At the same time I was knocked backwards by a heavy something. Staggering, I lost my grip on the gun. It went flying out of my hand. Uncomprehending, I caught the weight pressing on me and forced my eyelids up again.

"Arthur," I gasped, wrapping my hands more tightly around him as I lowered him to the floor. "Arthur?" I repeated, and then again, "Arthur?"

There were horrible strafing holes all across his chest and torso. Arthur was shaking, and I wanted more than anything for him to stop. I knew he couldn't help it, but his trembling scared me more than that Glock 17 in my hand ever could. "Arthur, talk to me, please," I begged him, leaning over him, pressing my face to his.

With tremors as violent as bullets, Arthur lifted one hand and put it gently to my face, shielding my skin from the sunlight coming in through the window.

Someone laughed. I looked up from Arthur to see another one of my initiators standing in the doorway of the office building, his casual demeanor making my blood boil. "I think you failed the test, Architect," he said, adjusting the strap on the M16 slung across his shoulder.

The tears in my eyes were from anger, not failure. I didn't care if this was a dream; anyone who dared laugh at this, a man dying from machine gun fire, was someone I never wanted to be. It didn't matter if they never considered me a true dreamer, if that's what it meant. I didn't want to lose part of myself to become like them.

"Ariadne."

I took my scarf and caught the blood trickling slowly from Arthur's mouth as he spoke. "Yes?"

Closing his eyes, Arthur nodded once and tightened the hand on my face. "This...is what makes us real." I put my hand over his, trying not to feel like I'd lost him for good. Then he was gone, right out of my hands.

Right then, in that moment of dream-time, I realized that I had uncovered another part of myself. As I felt Arthur fade out of the dream, I knew that I was an avenger, too.

"You'd better get out of here," I distracted the man with the machine gun. "The dream should collapse any time now. Arthur killed the dreamer."

"That's what you were made to think," sneered the second initiator. He was unaware of my slow backward movement. Carefully, I felt around on the floor for my handgun. When my fingers hit against the smooth, cold surface, a rush of relief flooded through me. It would be over soon, and I could go back and make absolutely certain Arthur was alive.

I had to be quick, I told myself. Otherwise he'd catch on and get away. Whatever else happened, I couldn't let him go unpunished for laughing at Arthur's death. I was grateful that I had chosen such a dependable weapon.

With a fanatical twitch, I yanked the gun up and around, in front of me, looping my finger over the trigger-and then felt an odd pressure on my abdomen. I noticed that I wasn't kneeling anymore; I was lying on the ground, my upper body resting on my legs. There was blood on the front of my jacket.

"Failed again, Architect," said the initiator, standing much closer to me now. "Can't do anything right, can you? Maybe you can't even build. Maybe Cobb just hired you because you're cute."

"I can do this right," I said, and raised my gun. my arm felt like it had gained forty pounds while I'd been on the floor, but I was determined to make this shot.

He hadn't been expecting me to come back at him, so he had to scramble to get his gun up to nail me before I took him out. I saw the sparks fly from his barrel as the bullet discharged from mine. The projectile hit him just above his right eye, splattering-

I gasped and sat upright. The cord in my wrist jerked, making me queasy. I hunched with my arms around my stomach, trying to breathe regularly.

"You've presented a very interesting case, Architect," said a voice above me. I met the eyes of the man I knew as Ammon, although I was positive that wasn't his real name. I shivered again as I remembered the feeling of his lips close to my ear. "We'll have to take time to decide whether you passed the rites," Ammon said. Then he turned to the chair next to mine, a disapproving frown on his face. "As for you: you know the rules. No interference and no contact with the novice. You chose to break those."

"Rules aren't sacred," Arthur said. "Principles are."

"Roosevelt," I said, recognizing the old quote.

Arthur looked at me, and I could still see the traces of the avenger in his face. "Yeah," he said, with a flash of a smile. "Roosevelt."

"You interrupted the initiation rites," Ammon reasserted.

"Sorry." Standing, Arthur pulled the cord out of the wrist of the second initiator and began to retract them into the PASIV. "I was adding my own initiation," he explained, as he gently removed the needle from my arm.

"By botching up the original?" snorted the second initiator, Saint-Helens. "Always knew you were a psycho."

"I wasn't planning to get shot," Arthur said, glaring at him. "That was all you."

"True, because I thought I would salvage what I could of the process so we wouldn't have to do it all over again."

"We won't repeat the rites," said Ammon. "She passed or she didn't. That's what we must consider."

I sat massaging the inside of my wrist, putting together what I could remember of my trial. I didn't remember getting to the old office building, of course, because you never can remember how you get into a dream.

But I remembered Ammon's soft pleas for me to take the gun and end my life. He had been so persuasive, and I had been all too ready to blast my own brains out. That kind of scared me. Why had I thought this initiation into the dreams was so important? Maybe Arthur was right about dream suicide; maybe it affected your real-life perspective on killing yourself. It'd been easy for Mal, after all. And hadn't I hated the thought of Arthur dying, of watching him bleed? What made my own body so much easier to discard?

I had been reviled by Saint-Helens and his casual amusement at Arthur's death, and yet I had been about to off-handedly...well, off myself. How sick was that?

"We'll have to deliberate further on your formal admittance, Architect," Ammon was saying, gathering his belongings. "Where are you going next?"

"Russia," Arthur and I both answered. "Moscow," Arthur added, straightening his tie and and slinging on his jacket. I stood, too, absently picking up my tote bag.

"Scribble your next address down and I will let you know how you fared," Ammon said, smiling at me. I didn't return the favor. "And you, Point Man-" The smile turned sour. "If you ever break into an initiation again, I will shoot you myself before you interfere, or perhaps do something more painful to get the message across. Clear?"

"Absolutely." Arthur offered Ammon his sarcastically earnest face. I wondered if the other man noticed. "But you'll have to take that up with the man who helped initiate me. He was a little unorthodox, so I picked it up from him."

"Unorthodox? You must be speaking of Dom Cobb."

Arthur nodded. "You know him well." Then he stretched out his hand to me. "Are you ready to go, Ariadne?"

"Very," I said, grabbing his hand and smoothing his knuckles with my thumb. "Thank you, Arthur," I whispered.

For a second, I could look past the professional and into the man, the one I'd seen in the sunlight from the broken window. The avenger. "You're welcome," Arthur said, softly.

We left, and I intentionally forgot to drop the paper with my address on the chair.