Seekers
Chapter Five
Cobb led Ariadne to a small room further on. He quickly closed the door behind them as if worried that someone would follow them in.
"What is it Dom?" Ariadne asked concerned. In the past even when she could clearly see that he was troubled she'd had to go to great lengths to get him to talk about it, even when it meant he was putting all their lives at risk. She knew whatever it was had to be something very serious for him to come to talk to her.
"I think I may have set off Fisher's security devices," Cobb said slowly. He was uncharacteristically shameful and for a moment Ariadne felt like she was a school principle who had just called a naughty kid into her office.
"What do you mean?"
"You remember the inception mission when we were in the second level of Fisher's dream?"
Ariadne nodded blushing slightly. How could she forget? Whilst Cobb was out to find Fisher tricking him to break into his own subconscious she had been waiting with Arthur who explained what Cobb was doing. She knew that a lot of people viewed Arthur as a robot, bland with no personality to speak of but she knew better than that. She knew that he could be quite cheeky when he wanted to be. His eyes had a way of lighting up in a mischievous way.
"I believe that in opening up Fisher's subconscious I gave him access to my own allowing the security to infiltrate not only my mind but everyone else in that dream level".
"And what do you think these security devices are capable of? Ariadne was trying to remain calm but Cobb's nervous behaviour was not making it easy. She knew that she had to be as composed as possible and approach this the same way she would an exam. If she was anything other than objective and rational she could ruin everything.
"I fear that these devices may be able to slowly attack our subconscious when we dream. They could do anything corrode our memories, alter our perception, make us question what is real and what is not-"
"How can you know about this?" Ariadne asked fighting to keep her voice calm. "This doesn't make any sense".
"I've seen it before" Cobb spoke slowly slumping against the wall. "It's like a virus in a computer once we come in contact with the infected software our systems are corrupted. Fisher's subconscious was armed with these viruses. We just don't know what these viruses have been designed for they might want to just eradicate the information we learned about Fisher or they might be programmed to destroy our minds completely".
"What happened with your friend?" Ariadne asked softly unsure of how well Cobb was going to respond to a question.
"It was a long time ago" Cobb said regaining some of his businessman like composure. "When I was first learning this business I was training alongside other new extractors. There was one guy Mason who was very talented at a very early age kind of like yourself Ariadne".
Cobb paused for a moment to offer Ariadne a small smile a rare moment of acknowledgement. Before she had a chance to smile back Cobb's face had fallen back into a frown. "The first couple of jobs we went out on were simple tasks, the rest of us struggled but Mason excelled. He was so confident in what he was doing that I think we all misjudged his ability. He was sent on a far too complicated mission and was too cocky about it. He alerted the dreamer to his presence but this time there weren't multiple layers of dream for him to hide amongst. The subconscious began to attack to him we thought he would be lost but luckily we weren't under for that long. We thought everything was fine until a week later".
Cobb took a long breath pausing to think before continued. Ariadne watched him intently a cold feeling of dread slowly sinking in.
"The seekers took a while to activate but slowly we could all see that he was loosing his mind. He was constantly unsure of whether he was dreaming or not. It's what prompted Mal to come up with the idea of talismans. He claimed to remember things that had never actually happened. They were simple things as first slight variation of events, moments in history then he slowly became convinced that Mal was trying to kill him and that he had to kill her before she got the chance".
"Mal?"
"She trained with me yes," Cobb said. "One night when she was over at my place and Mason turned up at the door armed with a gun insisting that he had to kill Mal before she could take over his mind. The virus hadn't taken her form and shape in his mind and he believed that she wanted to sabotage him. He was hysterical I'd never seen anything like it. He was sobbing and screaming- the complete opposite of the man I knew. I managed to wrestle the gun from him but I couldn't restrain him. In the struggle he drew out a knife and wounded himself.
Mal called an ambulance. He was shouting about waking up from a dream the medics thought he was insane and he was eventually committed to a mental institution. A week later our old point man received a call from Mason's doctor. The doctor had run a few scans and was confused by the results. Mason's brain patterns were so irregular that he shouldn't have been able to function. In layman's terms the doctor said it looked like an external source was slowly breaking down his brain cells. A virus he had never seen before much less heard of. It was if someone had inserted a cancerous cell into his body, a month later he was dead".
"Our point man conducted masses of research into Mason's target and discovered that the company he was working for were developing these viruses which they were planning to sell off. It was a threat to our whole industry. We were fortunate that the technology used to develop these devices was so expensive and rare that they were near unattainable. Unfortunately the Fishers have more money than they know what to do with. I believe they purchased these devices and I exposed us to them".
"We've done a lot of investigating but so far tests have been inconclusive. I believe that they've improved the technology so that the devices are harder to track".
"Then how do we know they're the same devices? How do we know that they're there at all?" Ariadne's voice was hoarse.
"Ariadne" Cobb sighed before placing a hand on her shoulder comforting her as if he were her father. "Arthur is starting to show the same symptoms as Mason had".