Part 3

Feathered Filly, Thank you so much for the comment about the page breaks, I didn't realize how differently the stories read/looked from writing them on Microsoft word to being uploaded on ! All the big breaks I'd put between parargraphs were now shortened to one line so that must have been annoying to read!

Cobb's shoes ran lightly down the creaky wooden steps and he emerged into the badly lit basement. Four pairs of wary eyes looked up at him in silence, and he made an effort to keep his face as calm and collected as possible.

"Nice to see you again, Cobb. I trust you're in good health?" Russo asked from his seat at a rickety wooden table.

Cobb snuck a glance at his two teammates seated handcuffed on the floor as he walked confidently towards the table, briefcase in hand. Eames had some bruising around his face though bravely (and somewhat predictably, Cobb thought to himself) kept a rebellious smirk on his face. Arthur had some dried blood on his shirt shoulder and a thin line of dried blood on his neck, but more troublesome to Cobb was that his dark eyes burned with a smouldering intensity that he wasn't happy to see. Keeping calm, cool and collected during situations like these was extremely important and something you could only learn with age. It was a reminder of how much younger Arthur really was than the rest of them, which was something Cobb often forgot due to the professional way the younger man carried himself.

Cobb arrived at the wooden table, and placing the briefcase on top he clicked it open, revealing the assortment of IV's and buttons.

"I can't say I have any experience with this sort of thing, Mr. Cobb-" Russo began.

"Well if you did, you'd know this was impossible, Mr. Russo." Cobb interrupted, frustrated.

"Ah, you didn't say impossible before, Mr. Cobb. I believe you just said it was risky for your team." Russo smiled a thin smile as he looked over at Eames and Arthur. "Now, as you can see, I've made it riskier for your team if you didn't do it. Sound logic, if I've ever heard it. Don't you agree?"

Cobb chose not to respond, and instead seated himself across from the crazy man.

"Which hospital is your brother in? You'll have to arrange for us to be transferred there. My team and I will also need somewhere to work and discuss how best to do this."

"My brother is in the other room. We have a nurse come in to care for him, and all the medical equipment required to keep him going. As you may have heard, he wouldn't be safe in a hospital. The men who did this would certainly have finished the job by now if he were."

"Well, we will still need time to go over this, Mr. Russo. If you'll just give us a day or two to work on the architecture and general research I'm sure it would be in the best interest for everyone involved. Especially for your brother, whose mind must be quite fragile from the coma."

"My brother? My brother? You will not be getting any more time, Mr. Cobb. I won't have one more night spent with my brother in my head! He's always there, pleading, bothering, eating away at my mind! I haven't slept in months." His eyes flashed with raw insanity, and Cobb leaned back a bit as Russo viciously began digging at the wooden table with his knife, a vicious scowl distorting his calm face.

"I need him out of my head. If he's in his own head, he's out of my head, and it's my head, not his head. My head." He muttered quietly.

"Uh, right well, you've hired the best in the business Mr. Russo." Cobb interrupted this dangerous train of thought with a smooth reassuring smile. "We'll get him out of your head, don't worry." He grinned nervously, seeing for the first time how delicate the other man's mental stability really was. He'd had inkling, but had no idea it was this bad.

A short brawny man emerged from another room with a swollen broken nose, pushing a gurney that held a small thin man that may have once resembled Russo's twin brother. An IV bag dragged behind him, and the feeding tube seemed almost to take over his emaciated face. He deposited it several feet away from where Arthur and Eames were, before positioning himself silently at the stairs.

"Well, Mr. Cobb. Get to it!" Russo said, his face once again calm, showing no signs of the mental breakdown he had seemingly just suffered. Cobb glanced warily at him before grabbing the suitcase and relocating it to the floor just in front of Eames's feet.

"Any ideas?" He crouched down, looking at their two faces. Eames returned his stare incredulously.

"How in God's name are we going to pull this off?" He hissed. "Have you ever even been in coma victims head?"

"No, he hasn't. But let's start focussing on something that will actually help us out of this mess." Arthur snapped back, and Eames felt the words sting a bit.

"Well excuse me if I'm not mister optimist right now mate, but next time you get the impulse to call 'your old buddy Eames' up for a couple of drinks, do us both a favour and don't!" Eames retorted bitterly, and instantly regretted them as he saw the hurt flicker in Arthur's eyes as he slumped against the concrete wall.

"Hey, would you two just quit it already?" Cobb glared at them both. "Why would you even think we had time for this?"

Both of the men sulkily stared down at their feet. Tensions were understandably high but Cobb was right, this was counterproductive and they both knew it.

"This man has most likely built a world in his subconscious. It's his new reality. I don't think building anything new for him would do any good." Arthur quietly spoke up.

"Arthur's right." Eames responded, doing his best to extend an olive branch. He was more than a little embarrassed by his outburst. "Though it'll be bloody dangerous to enter his dream world, I don't see any other alternatives."

"I don't see anyone dreaming yet...!" Russo interrupted them from across the room in a sing-song voice.

Exchanging knowing glances, Cobb began to gather up the IV's. Inserting one IV into the comatose man first, he knelt by Eames and Arthur pausing for a moment while they were hidden from Russo's view.

"If anybody has a chance of getting out of this mess, it's the three of us, OK? We can do this!" Cobb looked confidently into the two men's eyes, giving them a nod of assurance.

Eames envied the way Cobb could take control of a situation and keep everybody focussed and calm. Though he hated the idea of where he was, and what he was being forced to do, he had a sneaking suspicion that he would have hated even more to hear through the grapevine that Cobb and Arthur had been killed in a crazy man's basement, all alone, with nobody to help them. A little surprised at himself, he realized it had been a very very long time since he'd had anybody in his life he would actually risk his neck for.

"All for one and one for all..." he mumbled drowsily to himself with a hint of a grin on his face as Cobb pressed the button and the three of them sank into a pool of darkness.

Hope you all like it, it's a bit rushed as I have to get to work and there's not much action, but next chapter they'll be in the head of a dangerous coma victim (dun dun dun) ;) So just hold out a little bit longer and excuse this chapter! 3 And thanks again for your great reviews, I appreciate every one of them! :D