We were meeting at Adam's old flat, that we in fact changed into our new base. I was glad to be back in the old flat, reminding me of when Adam trained me to be a Forger, how I fought Arthur for the first time, and other memories. I kept the same things in there, the old couch that was used for our meetings and notes that were stuck on the brick wall opposite of the kitchen, and other little things. But it was harder to see that Cobb as already inside the flat, his arms folded and the look of seriousness on his face. How did he get into the flat without the key that I had? I walked it, along with Arthur holding my hand, with a confused look on my face.
"Your flat was broken in to." Cobb said aloud in a low tone, and I looked over at Arthur with worry in my eyes as I broke away from him and over to the wall with notes. That's when I noticed some notes were missing, since the last time we were here two months ago. I had a bog portion on the wall, and half were down.
"They were trying to find us" I said aloud suddenly now knowing the answer to the question I was asking myself: Why us? They broke in to find us, and get us there. The very thought gave me a chill, we were no longer the hunter, but the ones being hunted.
"We found the man who was behind your break-in." Cobb told Arthur and myself, then looking over at Eames, "And your run-in at the bar. He was a past mark who, after interviewing some of his associates found out that we Extracted his information. He's been trying to find us for some time."
"How did he find us in America?" I asked aloud to Cobb.
"Well once they found your flat and got what they needed, one of his associates works in New York, and he made him do a field check." Cobb explained aloud to us.
"Field check?"Eames asked aloud with some confusion in his voice.
"He works federal, probably for the FBI." Cobb replied back to us as he went to sit on the couch and run his hands through his hair.
"So we extracted from a man who had a FBI associate? How did we get past that?" Arthur asked aloud, he was more confused since he was the Point Man. He must of known about that, could he? I knew Arthur was never one to miss something, it would kill him if he did.
"Because the associate wasn't working for him at the time of the of the Extraction, he was hired right are we took his information." Cobb replied, but I knew it was still frustrating Arthur.
"Never mind that, how are we going to keeping dodging this guy?" I asked Cobb aloud from my spot at the wall, "He seems like the type of the guy will stop at nothing until each one of us is killed."
"We get him back." Cobb replied, looking up finally at all of us, who all had confused looks on our faces.
"And we're going to do that, how?" Eames asked, shoving his hands in his pockets. Cobb got up from the couch, rubbing the back of his neck, like he was in deep thought.
"We're going to extract from him, getting more information that we would need." he replied, having me change the shift in my stance, thinking it was some kind of joke. But who was Cobb to joke with.
"You want to extract from him again, only to get him back?" Eames asked in a scoff as he walked over to the refrigerator and was fishing through it.
"That's not the whole thing." Cobb said, but it was in a lower tone. Eames stopping fishing through the refrigerator and looked up from his spot to Cobb, as did Arthur and I to see what he meant.
"Our mark killed James." Cobb replied to the three of us, all of us looking at each other gravely to see that this mark meant serious business. He knew what we did to him, and now he wanted us all dead.
"Not only that, but James was affiliated with him, and he wanted to get to us through James. James knew our mark, which is why we hired him to help us in our last job here. " Cobb explained some more to us and it all started to make sense to me. James knew our mark, we hired him to get through his mind easier, and now the mark killed him to get him out of the way. So this was mark was skilled, and if his projections in the dream before were highly trained, then what was going to happen next.
"His projections back then were skilled, very trained. If you think we can extract again and come back out in one piece, you are out of your mind." I said to him in a low tone, thinking it was true that if we tried again, we were going to die.
"It won't be like that." Cobb said to me trying to protest, but I knew I was right.
"No, Georgie has a point. We were doing three dreams on him, and we barely made it out, she was stuck in between dreams and almost died. If we go back, we're all going to end up in limbo." Arthur explained aloud in almost a lower tone than what I had. At least he was on my side with this, and we all knew this was completely crazy. Cobb nodded his head, showing he was listening to us.
"We're going to have to be smarter than before, not to mention a step ahead of him." Eames said aloud, looking down at his watch, "Suppose we need a chemist then?"
"Chemist?" I asked in curiosity.
"This would have to require a powerful sedative. I know a man in Mobasa who can give us what we need in order to survive this, if we are going to go through with it." Eames said aloud, his eyes lingering to Cobb to see if he was really going to go through with it.
"Well, if you don't mind me asking, how are we going to do this?" Arthur asked aloud, "We can't go in his mind in one go, he'll know something's going on and his projections will be after us as soon as he's under."
"We're going to get him, slowly but surely. I think we get to his associates, then his loved ones, and he'll be last." Cobb said in reply to Arthur, and I saw the look of surprise on his face.
"We make him weak." I said to finish him, "By extracting all he knows from others in order to make him more vulnerable."
"This will have his projections less likely to attack, since his mind will be weak." Arthur added in, and I could tell this was becoming more of a plan than a failure. It seemed logical, making him weak by extracting from his associates, family members and loved ones. By making him more vulnerable in his mind, we would get him easily and get out.
"How many extractions will we need to do in order to get to him?" I asked Cobb, seeing him think about it in his head.
"We'll need to get his assistant, then his boss, and later his wife." Cobb said, having me look at him for a mere second of shock.
"His wife? Are we really going to get to her too?" I asked him in a weary tone.
"If we want to get to him and weaken him, we have to get to her. And we have to start researching them all." Cobb explained, looking at both Eames and myself. I nodded my head at him once, showing that I understood.
"We'll get on it." Eames replied in a huff and I saw he was a bit agitated about the situation. I would be too, in fact I was a wee bit agitated about the fact that we had to go through plenty of smaller jobs to get to the big one. It was jumping through hoops, which seemed to be more on fire than plain hoops.
"Arthur, start finding out everything we need to know about this guy, plus more that we missed in the past four years." Cobb replied aloud to Arthur, who just nodded his head and agreed, better to agree than to fight about it. So after another minute or two to plan it out, we decided to pack it in for the night and meet tomorrow for official planning.
"What do you think?" I asked Arthur as we laid in our bed that we got that night after getting a few things together. After our meeting with Cobb and Eames, we got our furniture and other things for our home, getting it moved it before that late night. Alice was already asleep in her new bed in her new room, and the two of us finally got a chance to talk about it.
"It seems like a well thought plan, though I think going through smaller jobs for a big one does seem time consuming." Arthur replied back to me in his normal job tone. I nodded my head in agreement.
"Why would he kill James?" I asked in curiosity.
"He knew James was working for us, he knew James was involved in the Extraction . And if we don't do something about this, he'll come after us. Cobb and his family, Eames..." Arthur explained to me, trailing off as he thought about it a little bit more.
"Us? You, me and Alice together." I ended his remark, seeing him look over at me with a grave look in his eyes.
"If we don't do this, we'll have to be in the run for the rest of our lives, and I know you don't want that for Alice." Arthur explained to me, holding my hand tightly in his and I nodded my head, "Cobb knew, this was the only way we can live. I know we wanted a normal life, but when were we ever normal?"
"Very true, since we met doing this job, since all we knew was this profession. Normalcy was never a part of our lives." I agreed with him. After some deep thought about it in the past few days and week, normal for us was to have a gun close by and under our pillow when we sleep, when we observe people and their mannerisms, and when we used any force to stay out of the prying eye of the police. So we weren't normal to begin with.
"But if we do this, what are we going to do about Alice. We'll be on the job constantly." I asked him aloud. He smiled slightly at me.
"I already talked to Miles. He's still working at the college and he's more than willing to watch Alice." Arthur explained to me and I was a bit shocked about that revelation.
"Miles, as in Mal's father?" I asked him, since I never met the guy but heard about him from Cobb and Arthur every once in awhile. But from what I have heard from him, he was a nice man and non the less a professor, since he taught Cobb what he knows about Extraction.
"We're going to meet him tomorrow before we start our research." Arthur said to me in a reassuring tone and a small smile on his face, "You'd like him, he's very nice and insightful. When Cobb was on the run and away from his children, Miles was watching him."
"He sounds nice, hopefully he can handle our daughter." I said to him in a grin, seeing his own smile widen.
"I bet he can."
