Eames grits his teeth and undresses as slowly as he can. It's not hard; he's aching from the cold and his head is pounding from the residual of whatever they put in the gin. Along with everything else, it pisses him off that these wankers would ruin good Boodles with drugs.
A grunted order in Russian; not hard to figure out, and Eames turns in his boxers, giving the man a dry stare. "I'm getting there," he snaps, and reaches for the jumpsuit on the wooden table. It's a long shapeless affair of blue-grey denim, chilly to the touch. He climbs into it, vaguely amused that it seems to fit well-enough, although it's short at the ankles, and the snaps that run up the front are hard to close.
"I do get to keep the shoes, right?" Eames asks conversationally, his eyes on the way the man is holding the taser in a death-grip.
Clearly an amateur and a nervous one at that.
The guard doesn't understand until Eames waves to his feet; he nods then, and Eames puts his loafers back on, glad of the residual warmth in them. He sniffs a little because the drying blood in his nose tickles, and then looks at the guard. "After you, sunshine."
It's a pity, leaving a nice set of khakis and a decent Bali Bahn shirt behind like that, along with his wallet, totem and hotel card, Eames sighs. Still, it's also not the first time, and he knows a thing or two about sleight of hand. The guard waves him out, and Eames saunters. It's too cold to do it well, but he suspects it will unnerve the twit behind him if he does, so Eames smiles and ambles out.
He's herded down a white, bare hallway to a room at the far end; there are voices and as Eames steps inside, he sees Ariadne and Arthur, each in a jumpsuit as well, sitting in cold metal chairs against a wall with a small table between them
Ariadne's jumpsuit is three sizes too big, and she glares at Eames, defying him to make a comment. He doesn't, but grins anyway, since it's the only reassurance he can give her for the moment.
"Haf him sit zere nixt to ze ozzer man-" a woman's voice orders, and Eames looks at the speaker. She's a lean crone in a lab coat, with short-cropped grey hair, thick eyebrows and a pair of dark moles clustered on her whiskery chin. Eames blinks, thinking she should have a gingerbread cottage in a forest somewhere.
Obediently he sits on the only other empty metal chair and catches Arthur's gaze; they nod to each other.
The woman is looking inside Ariadne's mouth and making notes on a clipboard. Ariadne's expression indicates that she's considering biting the doctor, and while Eames approves in spirit, he knows it would bring trouble, so he shakes his head at her.
"Forty-vun kilograms," the old bat says. "Note for dosages. Your lest period?"
Dead silence among the four men in the room.
Eames watches as Ariadne flushes at such a personal question; he feels a sympathetic rise of anger at the invasion. "Mine was two weeks ago," he offers loudly.
It's a joy to see Arthur shoot a sidelong glance at him, the very faintest of smirks on his chiseled lips, and even the hard numbing jolt of the taser doesn't take away the feeling of triumph as Eames flinches and slumps in his chair, determined not to pass out or fall off.
He grunts, working to steady his breathing as the bastard with the gun grins and turns to Arthur. "You got anything to say?"
"Sorry. I can't remember my last period," Arthur tells him, and Eames snorts a laugh.
Arthur writhes as the voltage shoots through him, and Ariadne shouts. "Jesus, stop it! About nine days ago!"
"Birs control?" the witch-doctor demands, not even looking at Eames or Arthur. Ariadne shakes her head, fury in her eyes easily visible, and it's enough to make Eames fall a little bit in love with her right then, her fierce, petite self ready to take on two guards and Baba Yaga on their behalf.
But the crone merely picks up a syringe and flicks a finger along the barrel. "You may feel a zlight sting—"
"Bloody HELL!" Eames rasps, still tingling, but unable to get his body to follow directions. Arthur is lunging, but his coordination is even worse, and he falls heavily on the floor, the breath wooshing out of his lungs.
Ariadne is staring at the needle. "What the hell is it?"
"Depo-provera," the doctor snaps. "Hip, plees."
The two guards look more than ready to re-apply their tasers, and Eames is shaking his head, but Ariadne grits her teeth. "Okay."
She starts to undo the snaps of her jumpsuit, and Eames abruptly turns his head, vision suddenly stinging and blurry now, and it's not the taser that's done it.
00oo00oo00
A lot of people think that Arthur Brewster is a cold-blooded, calculating killer, who has three plans for every mission, and weighs his associates by merit rather than emotional ties.
A lot of people would be wrong about the cold-bloodedness and merit-judgment parts, but the rest of it stands scrutiny, and Arthur has never really cared about his reputation in the Dreaming community anyway. Dom was always the lead; the poster boy for sly, successful Extractions while Arthur stayed in the background, gathering data and making sure the whole enterprise worked.
But ever since the success of the Fischer job, Dom's been content to be a stay-at-home father, and Arthur's been left to run on his own, pulling together his own teams. It works; not as well as with Dom, but Arthur doesn't mind, because it's a comfortable living, if one doesn't stress too much about being watched by Interpol and having to bank with the Cayman Islands.
Arthur knows he'll never have the interpersonal skills that Dom does; consequently he sticks with people he knows and trusts. Eames is one, Ariadne another, and over the last year, almost against his will, Arthur has become fond of them. Certainly he feels a strong sense of obligation in looking out for these two, his protectiveness complicated by deeper emotions that occasionally rise up from his calmer depths.
Neither Ariadne nor Eames make things easy, of course—both of them are stubborn and feisty, which usually adds to their charm in almost any other situation. But here—in the clutches of this serious threat, it's not helping one damned bit.
Arthur scowls, and rubs his face, annoyed at the bristles coming in. By his best guess, they've been here nearly two days, and in that time he hasn't seen anyone official but the guards who bring the food and escort him to the toilet. His cell is small—barely the size of a walk-in closet and Arthur knows Eames is in the one left of him, and Ariadne is on the right.
He knows this because there is a small mesh grating in the wall near the floor, and through it, Arthur's been able to see and talk to each of his compatriots. It's not dignified to lie on the floor, but given the situation it doesn't matter; being able to communicate to his people is a hell of a lot more important.
They're holding up, and Arthur's proud of that. For Eames, unexpected incarceration isn't unfamiliar territory, but for an upstanding citizen like Ariadne—and yet, she's okay. Bored and tense, but a lot tougher than Arthur had given her credit for up to this point.
Although Arthur hasn't found any hidden cameras or bugs in his cell, he's been speaking in French to the two of them; an added measure of privacy, he hopes. Eames' accent is straight out of Marseille; a rough growling sort of sound, while Ariadne clearly has Canadian intonations in her speech.
It's funny, the things you notice under stress, Arthur muses.
So far they haven't been mistreated, just ignored, and Arthur wonders if this is part of the torture. Certainly listening to Eames bitch in his longshoreman's French is hard on the ears, although it tends to make Ariadne laugh, and the pervasive cold makes it damned uncomfortable to stay stretched out on the stone floor.
"I think I'm falling in love with your ear, darling," Eames tells him sardonically, "given that it's all I can see of you."
"Yeah, well I'm not going to do a Van Gogh and give it to you," Arthur mutters, turning his head to glare through the grating. "How many people are here anyway?"
"Four at least," Ariadne chimes in from the other side, and Arthur shifts to look at her. She's curled on her side towards the grate and he sees most of her face. "That doctor, Rossiter, and the two guards. Where they the same ones who brought us in from the jet?"
"They were," Eames agrees. "Russians, and punks at that, working their way up, I should think."
"So where are the vors?" Arthur muses. "You'd think they'd be tapping us already."
"I'm not in any rush," Ariadne mutters, "Believe me."
"None of us are," Eames assures her from the far side of Arthur. "I think the bigger question is why grab us at all? If they couldn't afford our prices, there are other teams in the business. Not nearly as good as we are, darlings, but the basics of Pasiv modulated subconscious manipulation are pretty damned much the same."
Arthur had been pondering the same point for hours now, and gave a grunt. "Unless there's more to it. Some . . . variation."
"I don't like the sound of that," Ariadne admits, and her voice is slightly shaky. Arthur wants to be able to comfort her somehow, but the grating is too fine to permit more than a fingertip through it.
"Nor do I," Eames adds. "This is not the sort of bedtime story I want to hear, Arthur."
"Sorry; I believe in being pragmatic and having a chance at living," Arthur shoots back impatiently. "They'll get around to us at some point and we need to be ready for that."
"So do we teach them what we know or what?" Ariadne demands quietly, "Because I'm still the newbie here, and what I know would take maybe half an hour, tops."
"We say nothing until we're asked, and we stand united," Arthur tells them. "Got that?"
The other two murmur agreement.
It's only later in the quiet of the night that Eames calls Arthur closer to the grating; so close his warm breath tickles against his ear. "Darling, you and I know the truth. We're not getting out of this alive."
"We are if we play it smart," Arthur whispers, his mouth practically touching the grate as he shifts. "They'll need you, since you're the best forger out there, and they'll need Ari since she's in the top three architects now that Cobb's out. Depending on what the vors want and how fast they want it, you've got time."
