The next thing Christi knew, she was standing outside in pouring rain. A red car pulled up on the sidewalk.

"Come on," a man said to her. He gently took her arm and led her to the car.

"I don't even know you," she said, wrenching her arm out of his grasp. "Why would I come with you?"

"Believe me, you'll be safer if you do."

"Why should I trust you?"

"Because we know your friend, Ariadne. And she's going to want to have you with us."

"You know where Ari is?"

"You'll see her soon. Just come with us for now."

Every muscle inside of her screamed for her not to, but this guy looked trustworthy enough. Besides, he had a lovely British accent, and he looked absolutely gorgeous. And there was something about his voice that seemed kind of familiar. So against her better judgment, she decided to follow him.

She squeezed into the back of the car with three other men while the man she had spoken with got into the passenger seat.

"Couldn't have peed before you went under?" one of the men asked another.

"Sorry," the second man replied.

"Bit too much free champagne before takeoff, huh, Yusuf?" the man in the passenger seat threw back.

"Ha ha bloody ha."

"We know he's gonna be looking for a taxi in this weather," the man driving said as he looked up at the rain.

"What are you all talking about?" Christi asked.

"We'll explain in a minute."

"I know you," she said to the man as he drove forward. "You're that man Ari met with. The one who gave her some job she couldn't tell me about."

"The one and only."

Christi was beyond confused by now, but by the looks of it, it was the wrong time to try to figure out what they were doing.

The blonde man drove into the back of a cab which caused both cars to quickly stop. The cab driver got out of his car and started heading towards theirs.

"Hey, man! Why don't you try—"

He stopped talking when he saw that the driver had a gun. "Walk away," the blonde man demanded.

Two of the men in the back got out of the car and went inside the now vacant taxi.

Meanwhile, the red car followed the taxi's path to wherever it was they were going.

"Alright, here's the short version," the blonde man said to Christi. "My name's Dom Cobb, those two in the taxi are Arthur and Saito, the one next to you is Yusuf, and this guy is Eames. Our job is to go inside people's minds while they're asleep and extract information. Only this time, we're putting information there."

"Wait a second, we're asleep?"

"Yes."

"That's not possible."

"Oh, really? How did you get here, Christi?"

"Well, I just came…I…"

"Exactly. I asked Ariadne to work with us, and because this isn't exactly legal, that's why she couldn't tell you about it. Her job is to design the layout of the dream. You were kidnapped by people from Cobol who are after me for a failed extraction. We took you with us to keep you safe from them. All of us are actually sitting on a plane hooked up to a device called a PASIV. Right now, we're trying to find Robert Fischer and convince him to break up his father's company. It's called Inception."

"This is crazy," Christi mumbled.

"We've all been there."

The taxi stopped and Eames got out and opened Christi's door for her. "Stick with me, darling," he said with a small smile. Still confused, she obliged his request, because what else could she do? They both ran to the taxi and slid inside where another man, who she assumed was Fischer, was sitting.

"What're you doing?" Fischer cried as the man and woman slid in next to him.

"Oh, I'm sorry, we thought it was free," Eames said.

"Well, it's not."

Well, Fischer certainly wasn't very polite.

"Maybe we could share."

"Maybe not. Can you pull over and get this—"

He looked up and Saito pointed a gun at him.

"Great," he murmured.

"What are you doing?" Christi frantically asked Eames.

"It's all part of the plan, love. Trust me."

"You're making it pretty hard for me to do that."

Fischer pulled out his wallet and tossed it to Eames. "There's 500 dollars in there. And the wallet's worth more than that. So you might at least drop me at my stop."

Eames smiled at little. "I'm afraid that it doesn't—"

Gunshots suddenly pierced the window, and Arthur was forced to stop the taxi. His head whipped around, examining his surroundings, and he knew that nothing good could come from all the black vans that had decided to corner them.

"COVER THEM!" he screamed to Eames.

"Get down!" Eames shouted to Christi. She ducked her head as Eames covered Robert's head with a burlap sack. Eames then shot out the rear window at the shooters, occasionally taking a look at Christi to make sure she was still with them. As Arthur skidded the taxi all over the place to avoid the shooters, Eames got down and used his body to shield Christi's. But she couldn't understand why. Why was he being so protective of her?

"Get him!" Arthur yelled.

Eames shot up and hit the shooter Arthur had trapped between the taxi and another vehicle.

"Are you alright?" Arthur called back.

"Yeah, I'm alright, I'm okay," Eames breathed. "Fischer's okay, unless he gets carsick."

"Saito?"

The Asian man put his hand to his chest where blood was beginning to soak his shirt. He had been hit.

Eames helped Christi up onto the seat again. "Are you alright?"

Christi looked at him incredulously. "You are all insane!"

"I'll take that as a yes."

Arthur and Cobb drove their cars to a warehouse for them to set up everything. Eames hopped out and opened it up so the cars could pull in.

"Ari?" Christi cried as she ran up to her friend.

"Christi!" Ariadne exclaimed, hugging her. "Thank goodness you're alright!"

"Get Fischer in the back room now!" Cobb ordered as he yanked the man out of the back of the cab. "Get him in the back room! Move!"

Yusuf grabbed Fischer and left with him while Arthur pulled Saito out of the front seat.

"What happened?" Arthur asked frantically.

"Has he been shot? Is he dying?" Cobb asked as he knelt down.

"I don't know. Where were you? What happened to you?"

"We were blocked by a freight train."

Arthur looked at Ariadne. "Why would you put a train crossing in the middle of a downtown intersection?"

"I didn't," Ariadne protested.

"Well, where'd it come from?"

"Well, let me ask you a question!" Cobb snapped. "Why were we ambushed, huh?! Those were not normal projections. They'd been trained!"

"You're right," Arthur admitted.

"How could he be trained?" Ariadne asked in disbelief.

"Fischer's had an extractor teach his subconscious to defend itself, so his subconscious is militarized. It should've shown in the research. I'm sorry."

"So why didn't it?!" Cobb furiously demanded.

"Calm down."

"Don't tell me to calm down! This was your job! This was your responsibility! You were meant to check Fischer's background thoroughly! We are not prepared for this type of violence!"

"We have dealt with sub-security before. We'll be a little more careful and we're gonna be fine!"

"This was not a part of the plan! He's dying!"

Eames walked up and joined them. "So we put him out of his misery." He held up a gun and prepared to shoot Saito.

"No, no! Don't do that!" Cobb exclaimed as he pinned Eames to the cab.

"Cobb, hey, hey!"

"Don't do that."

"He's in agony, I'm waking him up."

"No, it won't wake him up."

"What do you mean, it won't wake him up?"

"It won't wake him up."

"When we die in a dream, we wake up."

"Not from this," Yusuf intervened. "We're too heavily sedated to wake up that way."

"Right. So, what happens when we die?"

"We drop into limbo," Cobb admitted.

"Are you serious?" Arthur exclaimed.

"Limbo?" Ariadne asked.

"Unconstructed dream space."

"Well, what's down there?"

"Just raw infinite subconscious. Nothing is down there. Except for whatever might have been left behind by anyone sharing the dream who has been trapped there before. Which, in our case, is just you."

"Well, how long could we be stuck there?"

Yusuf started nervously stammering, "Can't even think about trying to escape until the sedation is—"

"How long, Yusuf?" Eames interjected.

"Decades! It could be infinite! I don't know, ask him! He's the one who's been there!"

"You people are all lunatics!" Christi screamed. "Complete lunatics!" She turned to look at Ariadne. "How can you possibly be okay with all of this?!"

"I didn't know this was going to happen!" she defended herself. "And besides, you encouraged me to go back!"

"I didn't realize this was what you were doing!"

"Christi, you've got to calm down," Arthur told her.

"How am I supposed to calm down when I've been forced into this whole thing completely against my will?! You are all crazy!"

Suddenly, everyone looked at her as if she had grown a third eye. She looked down at her hands, and saw that they were not her own.

"How did you do that?" Eames asked.

"Do what?"

"You changed your appearance. You're a whole new person."

Christi looked at her hair which was now a blonde color and she was wearing a knee-length green dress. She looked back up at everyone. "I've been doing this ever since I can remember. I can't control my dreams, but for years, I've changed what I look like without being able to control it. I thought it meant nothing."

"You're a forger."

"What the heck is a forger?"

"You can change your appearance in a dream. That's my job in this plan. And it's very difficult, but you're a natural."

Christi then changed back into her normal self. The team realized that she must change during situations of high distress and then change back when she felt normal again.

"Just get him upstairs," Arthur finally said, referring to Saito. He and Yusuf gently lifted him up and led him away.

"Great," Eames said sharply to Cobb. "Thank you. So, now we're trapped in Fischer's mind battling his own private army, and if we get killed, we'll be lost in limbo until our brains turn to scrambled egg, hmm?"

Cobb said nothing before they all went to go join the others as they lifted Saito up onto a table.