Men of Action
"All men of action are dreamers"
James Huneker
"We must be ready for any defenses she might mount against us." Isis was saying. The Team was gathered around Ariadne. The Architect was sleeping soundly on the large bed she normally shared with Arthur. The Point Man smoothed back his wife's hair and adjusted her covers.
He gently exposed her wrist, so Cobb was able to attach the PASIV.
"The compound we will be using is a very powerful sedative because of the different levels. The risk of Limbo is very real. If any of you are in danger, we must withdraw." Isis looked around at each of them. Her face serious.
"We can try again, but the sooner we do this the better. If there are any of you who don't want to go down into the dream, say so now." The Pleasant Lady added.
The Team only looked at her. Isis nodded.
"Remember that her subconscious can take the form of anything. Not just projections of people. Sybil will take control of the dream form Ariadne, but her projections will still be a very real threat." The Team all nodded at her. "Let's go then." She attached her own wrist to the device as Yori and Saito stood watch.
"Sweet Dreams." Saito told them.
Down into Ariadne's dream they fell. Awakening in the forest with a white house.
"Take control of the dream, Sybil." Cobb told the Control.
"I'm trying." Sybil said. Her brow wrinkling. "She's very strong." The ground shook. "Out of the trees, buildings arose. The small house was reduced to rubble and sky scrapers sprang free from the earth.
"I have it now." Sybil whispered.
"Be ready to give control of the dream over to Cobb." Arthur told her.
"I know what to do, Arthur." She said. Her face sweating. They walked to the building where the house had been.
It was a hospital. The same one Arthur was taken after he had been shot. Isis had forged herself as a nurse, hiding the Point Man in the paradox of the hospital. Away from his wife. For the moment.
Sybil, Cobb and Eames found Ariadne in the waiting room. She looked very confused.
"Cobb?" She said looking us and seeing them. "What happened?"
"Arthur was shot." The Extractor lied easily. "Don't you remember?" Slow horrific realization washed over the Architect's face.
"Where's Alexander?" She cried.
"It's alright, Percy is looking after him." Sybil said comforting her. "Do you want to see him?" As if the Architect had called for her son, the child appeared. The same age he had been when his father lay so near death. Nothing more then a projection, but the Architect was soon holding him. Crying. Cobb and Eames nodded. The first phase of the plane was working.
"Cobb." Eames said pulling the Extractor aside. "I don't think we can trust Isis."
"You picked a hell of a time to bring this up, Eames." Cobb said looking at Ariadne and Sybil. "Why not?"
"Things she told us about Circe." Eames said shaking his head. "Circe said she was taken into the dream, then left. Not at all what that woman told us."
"Eames, Circe was a lair and a master manipulator." Cobb told the Forger. "If there is anyone we couldn't trust it was her."
"You forget how she saved all of us from Hecate." Eames told the Extractor.
"We don't have time for this right now, we have to continue on with the mission." Cobb advised. They looked over at Sybil who had left Ariadne's side.
"We have to take her deeper." Sybil said coming to meet them.
"So soon?" Cobb asked. As an answer, Sybil pointed to the shadows of the waiting room. A little boy in blue space man pajamas, was quietly playing with his toys.
"Find Arthur and Isis, bring them here." Cobb told the Forger. Eames nodded and vanished in the stair well paradox.
"What's that?" Sybil asked peering at something in the hallways. Cobb looked in the same direction. Something was coming towards them. Water.
"Arthur said her 'other' children downed in a flood." Cobb breathed out a worried sigh. The water must be her projections."
"Cobb..." Sybil whispered. He voice uneasy.
Arthur and Isis arrived as Cobb and Sybil were putting Ariadne under again. Her projection of Alexander faded as did the little boy in the blue space man pajamas.
"What's with all the water?" Eames asked.
"We think it's her projections." Sybil cried. "I can raise the building higher but after I go under, you'll be on your own, Cobb." As she did this, a feeling like being in an elevator came over them. The water spilled out as Sybil made the building raise higher.
"First part of the plan is going alright, but we don't have much time." Cobb told them. Arthur picked his wife's sleeping body up and laid her carefully on a nearby stretcher.
"Keep us out of the water, Mr. Cobb." Isis reminded him gently. The Extractor nodded as the Team arranged themselves on vacant stretchers, Sybil dreamed, and prepared to venture into the second layer.
"How do we do this?" Cobb started to ask but and earthquake like force shook the dream.
Sybil had given control of the dream to the Extractor. Cobb stood there stunned for a moment. The realization that he was now the dreamer was exhilarating.
"The more you raise the building, the faster the water will come." Sybil warned him. Cobb nodded as the Team finished hooking themselves up to the PASIV.
"I'll play the music when it's time." Cobb reminded them before sending them below.
Sybil took control of Ariadne's dream yet again as the Team awoke to the same forest and white house. The ground gave a horrible lurch as Sybil fought the Architect over who would do the dreaming.
"This is getting harder." Sybil breathed as Eames helped her to steady herself. The ground stopped shaking and a massive stone maze rose around them.
The White House, at it's center, quickly began to rot. It's white paint decaying and roof caving in. The house's windows burst under the stress of it's rapid metamorphosis. It's wooden floors and siding warped and shrank under the pressure.
"Let's go." Arthur said walking up the the now dilapidated house.
Inside, was a wreck of a home. It's interior no longer spoke of a cozy home for a family. It was now just as weather worn as it's outside. It's furniture tossed and ripped. Exposed. Toys belonging to the little boy were abandoned and left to rot on the floor. The house was a long dead. Not even ghosts were willing to inhabit it.
Their footsteps creaked noisily over the broken floor. They heard crying. Arthur saw her first. Ariadne was crouched on the floor. Huddled, with her arms wrapped around her knees. She has pressed herself in a corner, in a wreck that was once the kitchen.
He wanted to go to her. Wanted to hold her, comfort her. But this mission was to important. He stepped aside as Eames and Isis approached the Architect.
"Hello, My Dear." Isis said kneeling down to the Architect. Ariadne looked up. Her eyes wide, tears down her face. Arthur felt Sybil grab hold of his arm and pulled him back further into the shadows.
"Isis." Ariadne breathed. "You have to help me." The Architect sobbed as the Pleasant Lady held her to her warm motherly body.
"What is it?" Isis asked her.
"I can't find my children." Ariadne cried.
"Alexander and Audrey?" Eames asked crouching down next to the Architect.
Ariadne looked confused.
"No... I mean...yes. But... I was with..." She looked around the house with wide eyes. "What happened to Tomas and Ava?" She asked finally. Eames nodded.
"They were never real." Eames said. "You left your real children to be with those projections."
"Don't you remember?" Isis asked. "Now you can't go back."
"No." Ariadne said shaking her head. "No, I would never do that."
"You did." Eames accused gently. "Now your real children and Arthur are alone. There alone because you left them."
"Your wrong!" Ariadne snapped at him. Isis and Eames kept telling that she left the children, Ariadne was crying. Suddenly the ground shook.
Sybil gasped.
"I can't hold it." She breathed out. "I can't hold onto the dream much longer." Arthur noticed it first. Water.
Rushing over the broken floorboards.
Ariadne's projections had found them.
Eames looked into the shadows of the house where Sybil and Arthur were hiding. With a simple signal from the Point Man, the Forger chloroformed the Architect.
"This is happening to fast." Arthur said picking Ariadne off the floor as water rushed in.
"Right, but I think it's working." Eames said. "Sybil, get the doors, they'll float, we have to stay above the water." The Control and Forger gathered doors from the rooms. They floated easily on the rising water. Isis lashed them together with torn fabric from the battered white curtains. The ground shook again.
"That wasn't me." Sybil said. Arthur and Eames looked around nervously as they put the Architect on the makeshift raft.
"Cobb." Arthur said.
Back on the first level, Cobb was deep in his own problems. The Water was rising frighteningly fast. The maze he designed was to trap someone in, not allow someone out.
Water... Water was a projection he could not fight. He could not outrun it, shoot it, or stop it.
'Why did Ariadne have to be so damn good?' He wondered as he ran an air mattress under each stretchers. Normally, such a thing was used for patient comfort only but an oxygen tank inflated them enough to make the stretchers all float. Cobb found himself swimming around each of his Teammates, tethering them all together and keeping them afloat.
The Extractor was starting to appreciate how difficult Arthur's job had been on the Fischer inception.
Back on the second level the house shifted off it's foundation and started to move with the flood waters. Sybil screamed as the house groaned and shuttered as it was freed.
Like something Dorothy would have seen on her way to OZ, the view out the windows shifted and changed as the house drifted wildly with the water.
"Climb on you two." Eames shouted at Sybil and Arthur. The Point Man and Control climbed vicariously on the unstable raft as the house shook. Isis fished out the PASIV from the water as she and Eames worked to keep the reaming Team afloat. Arthur and Sybil made quick work of attaching the device to themselves and Ariadne.
"We don't have much time." Isis called as the house collided with one of the walls of the maze.
"Were ready!" Arthur called as he laid down next to his wife.
It was in the Large Country Home Sybil and Arthur found themselves. Sybil quickly forged herself as the little girl in the blue ballet costume. Arthur was looking at her in shock.
"One of Circe's tricks?" He whispered as she took his hand.
"Yes." Sybil/Audrey hissed back. "It's a good one."
"That's Audrey?" He whispered. "Like you saw her?" He asked. Sybil nodded. They watched as Ariadne came rushing into the house.
"Arthur?" She called out. The Architect's eyes caught the two of them then. She rushed into Arthur's arms. As much as he wanted to, he couldn't allow himself to give her comfort. This was to important. Ariadne pulled away from him. She looked for a long time at the child.
"Who?... Are you... Audrey?" She asked. Sybil/Audrey looked up at her and nodded.
"Who are you?" the little girl asked.
Arthur's heart broke at seeing his daughter and his wife. Even if it was really just Sybil in disguise. They looked so much alike. His Daughter's face almost a mirror image of her mothers. To see the look on Ariadne's face, it was almost more then he could bear.
"You... You don't' know who I am?" Ariadne breathed. Her face starting to well up with tears. "I'm your Mommy." The Architect made to hug the little girl but Sybil/Audrey moved away.
"My Mommy is sleeping." The child said. She let go of Arthur's hand and wandered down a dark hall. Ariadne cast as worried look at Arthur before following her.
On the first level, in the dark halls of the hospital, Cobb tried heroically to maneuver the team down flooded halls. He almost laughed when he heard it.
Music.
"Thank God." He said taking the MP3 player out of Eames, pocket and placing the head phones over the forger's ears.
Over the noise of the house creaking and moving with the water Eames and Isis heard it. Lazy drawn out horns. A french singer, her voice very far away.
"Music." Eames said nodding at Isis. "It's almost time."
Ariadne followed the little girl into the downstairs guest room. She opened the door to reveal a clean white hospital room.
"My Mommy is sleeping." Sybil/Audrey said pointing to the figure in bed. Arthur watched, his heart hurting as his wife peered cautiously at the woman in the bed.
The figure there was horrifically thin. Her face waxen and she looked very close to death.
"She chose to leave us." Arthur said. Ariadne looked back up at her husband. "My wife chose to be in the dream."
"No!" Ariadne screamed. She rushed to the Point Man who was finally able to take her in her arms. "Arthur, please!" She cried. "I would never leave you." Sybil had changed back into herself as the sound of the wake up music pulled them out.
They all awoke on the second level as the house was crashing into the walls of the maze. Arthur and Sybil tried to keep from falling off the door raft. The Team suddenly felt it.
The kick.
Cobb had allowed the makeshift stretcher raft to float off a penrose stair well that went to nowhere.
Paradox.