"There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other." –Douglas H. Everett
Cobb- Los Angeles, CA/ Chicago, IL
I knew by the tone of his voice that Arthur suspected me. He knew me too well. He probably knew that, as I was speaking to them, I was packing up my travel bag and briefcase. He probably told Ariadne. It was more likely that Ariadne was able to tell that I was on my way too. I mean, neither of them sounded surprised when I arrived in Chicago at the airport and asked for them to come pick me up before the rendezvous.
Arthur arrived in a modest silver Honda Civic and when they saw me, they pulled up to the curb and Ariadne moved dutifully to the back seat. As I got into the front seat, I turned to Arthur who looked at me a little balefully.
"What?" I asked, my face red. "I left James and Phillipa with Miles and told them that I'd be gone a week, tops."
"When we called, we didn't reach Sean Gilligan," Arthur said a little irritably. "We reached Nathan Gilligan, his nephew."
"Yes, I know," I said a little guiltily. "And?"
"We're meeting them in half an hour downtown." Ariadne piped up from the back seat. "Nathan that is, and their point man, Jason Reynolds." I nodded at this, completely unperturbed.
"Well you didn't think that I'd set up a call with the real Sean Gilligan for you, did you?" I asked, surprised. "That's ridiculous. I got the number of her cousin, her architect, and that's who I sent you to. There's no need for you to be talking to Sean." Arthur was visibly unhappy with this, but didn't protest. We were silent the rest of the way to the meeting spot, a neutral and reasonably private parking garage downtown.
Nathan and Jason were waiting for us in a dark blue Denali, and they got out of the car hesitantly only after Arthur, Ariadne, and I had.
"Arthur?" The smaller of the two men spoke up. It was probably Nathan, I could see the Gilligan family resemblance in his face- light blue eyes, thin lips and a small pointed nose. The other man beside him was probably Jason. He was younger, a strong, tall man with dark brown hair and eyes so dark that they looked black. He was definitely not family- his nose was more prominent and his build was muscular as opposed to Nathan's willowy stature.
"Nathan?" Arthur replied, I noticed how Arthur oh-so-subtly shifted his stance so he was standing in front of Ariadne, protecting her. I pretended not to notice.
"Yes sir. I am to understand that we are going to collaborate to find our missing team members?" Nathan asked.
"That's the plan," Arthur said stiffly.
"That's all good and well, but how do we find them?" Jason interjected from where he stood, hunched next to Nathan. Arthur seemed stuck on this point, as did Nathan.
"We could go back to that bakery where you last saw Darcy," Ariadne suggested. Jason nodded, a ghostly smile on his lips. "Someone might have seen something."
"That's a good idea," he complimented Ariadne. She smiled back at him and I saw Arthur's face contort furiously for a moment as he saw the flicker in Jason's eye. Then his face was smooth again, although he was clearly wrestling back the urge to punch Jason in the mouth.
"Can you give us directions?" I asked Nathan, seeing as Arthur was a bit preoccupied with his emotions. Nathan obliged before retreating to his Denali with Jason in tow.
"Get there as fast as you can, alright? The longer we're apart from them, only more can be happening to them." Nathan said. It seemed that he and I were the only ones left focusing on Dar and Eames anymore.
"Alright, I'll see you there," I responded, forcing Arthur into the passenger seat of the car before getting into the driver's seat.
"You need to get a hold of yourself, Arthur," I muttered.
"I don't trust that Jason kid, not at all," Arthur whispered right back. Once Ariadne had sidled into the backseat, we shot off towards the bakery, the entire car silent again.
The bakery was a chain-brand and it looked like every other Corner Bakery across the country with modern lighting and comfortable booths at the window. It was boring. Run of the mill. Yet at the same time, inauspicious. We pulled up only seconds after Nathan, and Arthur leapt out of the car as soon as we arrived, shepherding Ariadne up towards Nathan and away from Jason, who hung back with me.
"Dom Cobb." Jason said, looking at me, his expression unreadable. "You know, Darcy quite resents you for performing Inception. She was under the impression that you were going to leave that to her." I remembered our deal.
"And you promise, Mr. Dom, that you won't do Inception? Because I want to be special. I want to do Inception all by myself." Little Darcy said sternly. She was ten years old, two years into her training, and extremely adept at shared dreaming. Her father was standing in the background, watching me as I regarded the child with interest. I was only twenty-three, fresh out of college and I already thought of myself as a mature adult. But here I was making deals with a child.
"Sure thing, Dar. Inception is all yours." I said with a gentle ease. This seemed to please Sean and he nodded at me. Darcy smiled, standing up straighter.
"Good, Mr. Dom. You can do extraction, if you want." Darcy said generously.
"That's very nice of you, Dar, I'll do just that."
"We had a bit of an agreement, but it was a long time ago, at least eight years ago," I said, shrugging it off. Leave it to Dar to remember a tiny little conversation like that.
"Well it seems that it was important enough to her, Mr. Cobb." Jason said, pulling out a manila folder. "She's been researching you, and judging by the extent of her work, she was planning to perform Inception on you because of this agreement. She had this in the file." He handed me a sheet of purple construction paper. It was faded, but very familiar. I knew what it would say before I looked at it. In the messy scrawl of a ten-year-old, it read:
"Mr. Dom Cobbs will not perform Inception because he promised Dar Gilligan that he would not ever do it. If he ever does it, he will not do it right, and he will fail, and I will get him. Mr. Dom will sign this paper and then it will be a contract."
Underneath it was my signature, in green Crayola marker.
Darcy- Whereabouts Unknown
I don't falter in decisions and I don't crack under pressure. I'm a well-oiled machine, my father made sure of that. But when I woke up in that cell, everything I had once been crumbled. I was a weak, scared little girl who had no idea where she was.
I was in a small, damp cell made entirely of concrete, besides a metal door which was shut tight. There was only one florescent light bulb hanging from the ceiling, and its light didn't reach every corner of the damp cell. I realized that my wrists were bound behind my back and I was sitting in uncomfortably close proximity with the forger named Eames. In fact, he was kind of lying on top of me. He was heavy and both of my legs had fallen asleep, so I kicked a little weakly. He murmured something but didn't wake from his comatose state.
"Eames," I said. I found my voice coming out hoarse and raspy. I had no idea why. "Eames, wake up," I said a little louder.
"Whasamatter?" Eames sat upright, causing pins and needles to shoot through my legs. I gasped a little, simultaneously reprimanding myself in my head. Was I suddenly so weak that I had to voice every little discomfort I experienced?
"Eames, Eames, what happened?" I asked, shaking out my legs a little. It was hard to do because I could now see that I was bound at the knees and again at the ankles. Eames, who was only restrained at the wrists, watched me dully without answering. I kicked a little more violently, coming in contact with Eames' knee.
"Mother fu-"
"Focus Eames." I cut him off smoothly, trying to regain some of my old persona. "What happened?" He looked at me a little angrily, then squeezed his eyes shut, attempting to remember.
"We left the bakery," he began. I rolled my eyes in spite of my better judgment, but remained silent. "That man, wearing the sweatshirt with the hood, he followed us out. He sh- shot you. In the neck with something." Eames looked up at me, trying to see the gaping bullet hole. When he couldn't, he shifted so his bound hands were out in front of him.
Casually, he moved me from where I was slumped against the wall and with gentle fingers and keen eyes, he began to search my neck for some sort of mark. I instinctively leaned away at his touch, but his hands kept my neck firmly in place with a gentle hold.
"There's a little bite here. More like a needle entry spot or a dart rather than any sort of bullet." Eames said insightfully, brushing some of my hair off of the side of my neck that he was examining. I watched his expression carefully. It was well guarded.
"Do you think we're dreaming?" I asked him. He met my gaze, his grey eyes searching mine.
"Well why don't you tell me, love? Because I hear you're quite the expert." He was challenging me. He already knew that we weren't dreaming.
"We are not. Our abductor wouldn't have been able to tie us up like this in a dream- he wouldn't have the time." I said. Eames smiled a little.
"Very good, Darcy." Eames said. "So how's about we work on getting these ropes off, yeah?"
"Yeah," I agreed. I rolled onto my side and worked on shimmying my arms around me so they were out in front of me. Meanwhile, Eames was looking for something we could use to cut the ropes. I watched him scour every inch of our ten-by-ten cell but found nothing to cut the binding.
"What now?" He asked me angrily. I could tell he was frustrated, probably with me because our meeting got us into this mess.
"Here, give me yours," I instructed him. He flopped down next to me and put his hands on my lap. Slowly, painfully, I began to untie the knot in the rope that held him. He watched my hands in a sullen silence.
After a while (I had no sense of time in that place) the ropes were loose enough that he could pull them off his wrists, which were raw and red from the rope burn. He rubbed them slowly and gingerly for a moment, then stretched his arms to get the feeling back in them.
"Your turn, m'love." Eames said. He went to work on my wrists first, his big fingers handling the knot with delicate care. It took a little less time for him to undo the knot but when he did, we still had my legs to untie. He did my ankles and I did my knees in a matter of minutes. After that, we just sat there, looking around at our bleak surroundings.
"What now?" Eames asked me. I looked around, rubbing my sore wrists. And again, I was out of my comfort zone. I was never the prey, always the predator. I never had to defend myself because no one had ever thought to rebel against me before.
"I don't know, Eames." I said. My voice was fearful- that was a first. Eames seemed to sense it too, because he calmed down a little to compensate for me losing my nerve.
"Alright, it's alright Darcy, we'll figure something out." Eames assured me, putting one arm around my shoulders. Normally I wouldn't have liked to be in such close proximity with someone I barely knew, but his presence was comforting, protecting. His grip around me only tightened when the metal door swung open. That same man from the bakery walked in with the same hoodie, hood drawn over his head. His face was in shadow, and I couldn't quite see it, but I had a pretty good guess at who it was.
"Look at you two," he sneered. "It would appear that you've gotten out of your bindings and found your way into each other's arms." I expected Eames to retract his arm but his hold just got stronger and he shifted to a position where he was more in front of me. This seemed to surprise the creep too. He pulled out a familiar silver case from outside the cell, then a gun from the back of his pants. He cocked the gun and pointed it at my head, making Eames stiffen.
"Now, you both know what's in this case. You both know how this works. You," he flicked the gun a little at me. "You're going to be the dreamer. Mr. Eames, I expect you to remain docile in this dream. I don't want any of my subconscious to suddenly suspect Miss Gilligan, here." Eames nodded almost imperceptibly.
Eames didn't let go of me as the creep prepared the leads for us to enter the dream. He didn't let go as the creep slid the needles under the skin in our wrists. He didn't let go as we leaned back against a corner of the cell, even though I was practically in his lap. And so I slipped into the world of dreams feeling safe and warm, despite the dire situation.
A/N: So there's another chapter out! I'd like to thank you all for the overwhelmingly positive response to my last chapter, the reviews are great, and I can't even begin to tell you how much they help me get chapters out faster. Please review with comments, criticisms, suggestions- anything! Thanks for reading!