"Ariadne?" Miles waved a young looking girl over. She couldn't have been more the 19, and my instant thought was that she could be better than Dom. Her hair was brown, reaching to about mid back, and she was thin in figure, as opposed to my own curvy figure. "I'd like you to meet Dylan Nicole."

"Pleased to meet you." She smiled nervously.

"If you have a few minutes, Dylan would like to talk to you about a job offer."

"A work placement?"

"Not exactly..." I grinned.

XxX

"I have a test for you." I told Ariadne. I had taken her out of the campus and pulled a pad and pen out of my bag.

"You aren't going to tell me anything about this first?"

I scoffed.

"Before I tell you anything about the job, I need to know that you can do it. You have two minutes. Make me a maze that takes more than one minute to solve." I handed her the paper.

The first maze Ariadne drew was too easy. It took about ten seconds to solve.

"Try again." I handed the pad and paper back. The next maze wasn't any better. It took thirty seconds.

"You're going to have to do better than that."

She snatched the pad out of my hand and drew a huge spiral, before putting small lines at random intervals.

"Stop."

She smirked as she handed me the pad. I completed the maze in just over a minute.

"Alright."I crossed my arms. I led her to a small coffee shop and sat her at a table. But little did she know... "They say we only use a fraction of our brains true potential. But that's when we're awake. When we're asleep, our mind can do almost anything."

"Such as?"

"Well, imagine you're designing a building, you conciously create each aspect. But sometimes it feels like it's almost creating itself. If you know what I mean."

"Yeah, yeah. Like I'm...Discovering it."

"Genuine inspiration, right?" I pulled the marker back out of my pocket. "Now in a dream, our mind continuously does this. We create and perceive our world simultaneously." I drew two arrows in a cycle. "And our mind does this so well that we don't even know it's happening. That allows us to get right into the middle of that process."

"How?"

"By taking over the creating part. Now this is where we need you. You create the world of the dream and you bring the subject into it, and they fill it with thier subconcious."

"How could I ever aquire enough detail to make them think it's real?"

"Well, dreams...The feel real when we're in them, right? It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange."

Ariadne stared blankly at me. I rolled my eyes and tried to think like Sophie or Dom.

"Okay. So, you never remember the beginning of a dream right? You're always just kind of in the middle."

"I guess, yeah..."

"So how did you get here?"

"We just came from the uh...-" Ariadne cut herself off, blinking in surprise.

"Think about it Ariadne, how did you get here? In this place right now. Where are you right now?"

Ariadne began looking around and I sat back in my seat. Then she turned back to look at me and we leaned close.

"We're dreaming?"

"We're actually in the middle of a workshop right now, sleeping. This is your first lesson in shared dreaming. Be calm."

Everything began exploding around us, the table shook, the buildings blew up. The dream began collapsing. I grinned and covered my head as heard what I have long since dubbed the Kick song, since I didn't like repeating the french name over and over again.

"If it's just a dream than why are you-" She cut herself off as the wall directly behind them imploded and efectively 'killed' both of us.

Ariadne's eyes snapped open. Arthur came to my side helping to pull me out of the lawn chair. I was laying in.

"Because it's never just a dream is it? And a face full of glass hurts like hell. When you're in it, it feels real! Thanks for being calm by the way."

"It's why the military invented dream sharing. A training program where soldiers can shoot and stab and strangle eachother and then wake up." Arthur added.

"How did architects become involved?" Ariadne asked, once she caught her breath.

"Well," Dom handed us both a bottle of water as he answered. "Someone had to design the dreams, right?"

"Arthur, give us another five minutes?" I looked up at him and smiled. He handed me the IV.

"Five minutes? We were talking for like an hour, how-"

"When you sleep, your mind functions more quickly, therefore time seems to feel more slow.

"Five minutes in the real world equals an hour in the dream." Arthur stood by the machine.

"Why don't you see what you can get up to in five minutes." Dom suggested. Ariadne took a deep breath and nodded. Arthur then nodded at me. I closed my eyes and fell into the dream.

"So you've got the basic layout." I walked a few paces behind Ariadne as we walked down the cobblestone streets. "Bookstore, cafe. Almost everythig else is here too."

"Well, who are the people?"

"Projections of my self-concious."

"Yours?"

"Yep. You're the dreamer. You create the dream. I'm the subject, my mind fills the voids. You can literally talk to my subconcious, that's one of the ways we extract information."

"How else do you do it?"

"We create something secure; safe. A bank vault, maybe a jail. The mind fills it with information it's trying to protect."

"And then you break in and steal it?"

"Well... Yeah."

"I guess I thought the dream space would be all about the visual but it's more about the feel of it. My question is what happens when you start messing with the physics of it all?"

Ariadne paused, and her mind began working wonders. She looked wide eyed back at me and I smirked as the earth in front of them bent skyward, the tops of buildings connecting to the tops of buildings, boxing us in.

"It's something, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is." I agreed quietly. Then I smirked wider, remembering what happens when you change too much. We stepped up onto the road she'd just changed. All projections of my subconcious were now looking right at her.

"Why are they all looking at me?"

"Because my subconcious feels that someone else is creating this world. The more you change the quicker the projections catch onto deception."

"What?"

"They sense the foregin nature of the dreamer and they attack like white blood cells fighting an infection."

"What, they're gonna attack us?" Ariadne scoffed.

"Oh, no, no." I grinned. I shook my head. 'Just you.'

We approached a bridge that Ariadne made for herself.

"Oh, this is great, but if you keep changing things like this-" I cut myself off as she jogged up the stairs.

"Jeeze!" A projection bumped shoulders with Ariadne. "Mind telling your subconcious to take it easy?"

"It's my subconcious. I can't control it!"

Ariadne continued to ignore me as she pulled huge mirrors out of nowhere and created her own illusion. Then she shattered it, just like that.

"Impressive..." A distant memory flodded it's way into my brain, of Dom and Mal standing on this bridge while I took a picture of them with a goofy grin on my face. "I know this bridge. Ariadne, this is a real place!"

"Yeah, I cross it every day to get to the college!" She called back, not really listening.

"Never recreate places from memory. Always imagine someplace new!"

"Well you gotta draw from stuff you know, right?"

"Only use details a streetlamp, or a phone booth. Not an entire area!"

"Well why not?" Ariadne snapped. I rolled my eyes and looked down at my bracelet, satisfied to see the four colors switching from one glass bead to the next. The Totem has spoken. I'm dreaming.

"Because creating a dream from memory is the easiest way to loose your grasp on what's real and what is a dream."

"Is that what happened to Cobb?"

"Listen to me!" I grabbed her arm. A projection came and grabbed her away from me, taking three to hold me back. I saw Mal approaching rapidly and Ariadne was screaming for me to wake her up. As if I could.

"Damn it Mal!" I was a little stronger than my own subconcious, pulling on the six hands that were holding me down. "MAL NO!"

Mal stabbed Ariadne once, and it was over quickly. I rolled my eyes skyward and hopped that Arthur would explain to her.

I woke up soon after, and sat up from my chair.

"...Mal..."

This caused Dom to stand up and walk out of the room to think, calling as he went,

"She needs a Totem."

"WHAT?" Ariadne was still paniking. Arthur was tending to her awkwardly.

"A Totem- A small personal-"

I breathed a sigh.

"That's some subconcious you've got, Dylan! She's a real charmer."

I rolled my eyes and Arthur made a noise of realization.

"I see you've met Mal. Dyl, go take a breather."

I nodded, walking out of the warehouse, leaning on the rails. I groaned an put my hand over my eyes.

"Damn it, Mal."