A Closed Circle
Chapter 8
The Baseless Fabric of Visions
He woke to the dull sounds of sleet on steel.
Warehouse.
But this time he could see. There was a light at his side, showing him his surroundings.
This chair was wooden, not metal. But his wrists were still tied down.
And he was gagged. But loosely. Working cheek and tongue muscles he spit out the rough-tasting cloth.
His mouth was dry. His body was sore.
No shirt. Pants … he felt something there, but he also felt cold air on the bare skin of his left thigh and his right knee. Torn up, most likely.
The specific pains eluded him as he tried to overcome the fog of sedatives, but he could tell he'd been injured.
Collin was once more in front of him. Tube and needle dangling from his fingers. There had been … shit … two levels? … the first level and two separate secondary levels? Complex. Still … no way this was another. A third or fourth dream. (Depending on how you looked at that top level … it did change slightly.) He couldn't believe Collin took him that deep – a second level was more than most people felt comfortable attempting, and he played it out twice – and kept it that steady. Without sedation. It had to be without sedation. Because he wasn't in limbo. He was back in the real world.
He had to be back in reality.
But he felt more off kilter than he usually did after leaving a shared-dreaming environment. What he just came out of was less like the traditional nesting doll, each level being another world inside the self, and more like … a tangled thread. He wasn't sure if the worlds went up and down or sideways. He'd heard no sounds and seen no one who wasn't either Collin or one of his own projections.
How did he wander around levels with only one dreamer? He didn't hear music as a trigger or anything visual, and Collin hadn't been wearing a watch …
What drugs had he been given? Not the usual. It couldn't be the usual. Crap. He'd need a blood test when he caught up with the others.
Discreetly as possible, Arthur scanned the area around him. Looking – and listening – for any evidence that she was somewhere with him. Somewhere in that metal building being hurt. Being extracted.
Being killed.
Dammit!
He tested the bindings around his chest and wrists and ankles discreetly. A pointless effort. Collin knew he would check. And Collin was good enough to make sure there was no give. No opportunity for escape.
No mistakes. Not anymore. Collin had tasted failure before, and he seemed determined not to experience that particular flavor of foot in mouth and fist in face ever again. But then he had fucked up with her … botched the extraction. More her defenses than his incompetence, sure, but he wouldn't see it that way.
Arthur could see it in the set of his old acquaintance's jaw. This had become something far more dangerous than it was a week ago.
This had become personal for Collin.
Well then. Fine. All the more fun. Arthur gave a narrow smile. Because it was never not personal for him.
Deceived her.
Betrayed her.
Attacked her.
It was personal for him since the beginning.
"So," Collin returned Arthur's smile, "here we are. I found nothing in my search. Not that I expected to. In the end, despite your insistence over your intelligence, you're always just a hired gun. Muscle. You don't plan. You don't design. You do the job.
"You don't know what I want to know. Hell, you don't even know where that bitch Ariadne is. And she does have what I want."
Arthur didn't miss the strong sibilants on 'does' and 'want'. 'Want' shouldn't even have a sibilant, but somehow Collin managed to make his 't' into a drawn out hiss. A sort of vocal leer. An insult. And a threat.
He was the sort of person who took threats seriously. Especially when threats came from people who had already acted against him. But he knew what to look for now. He would escape. And Collin wouldn't take him a second time.
But it was satisfying to learn the extraction against him had failed. Arthur was an old hand at extraction. One of the projects earlier users, and longest too. Even when compared to those in the legal side of the business.
Mal was hardly the first or last dreamer to commit suicide. You get used to doing it in the dream as an escape, and it is easy to do when you're awake … as an escape.
The longer you delve into the subconscious, the harder it is to recognize reality. The totems helped, but Arthur was never entirely certain of their infallibility. She, for example, might be able to trap him in a dream by creating a space that made his totem react as she willed it. He wouldn't put it past her. She was a natural, and she embraced the sleeping world more completely than any other person he'd ever encountered.
Even more than Mal.
Which was worrying. As it was the most captivated – and often the most brilliant – who ended up dead.
Collin was still blathering on about his incompetence as a person in general and as an extractor and soldier in particular. Arthur didn't remember him being so much of a talker, but it seemed he could run his mouth at length if given the right subject or audience.
The bastard's ego didn't seem the least bit cowed by his stay behind bars.
Arthur wondered briefly if Collin was still being backed by some shady federal money. Not working completely on the other side of the law, but in that dusky gray area. The way he talked … the way he acted … bold. Brazen. Like Eames in a way.
Like an act.
So if Collin's puppet strings were still being twitched by some form of the military or government … why was he doing this?
Arthur snapped back into focus. Hearing her name. Spoken from the bastard's throat. A throat he decided that would look better slit and bleeding.
He was laughing.
Arthur's fingers ached with the tension in his muscles. With the desire to wrap them around that stupidly thick neck and squeeze the laughter from him. Breath from him. Life from him.
"We always did like the same kinda women, didn't we Arthur? 'Sept I was always the one who got 'em in the end. You were always too much of a fuckin' gentleman. Never realized when a woman wanted you to do her instead of gazing at her with some sort of emotional bullshit."
What an ass.
He found it increasingly hard to believe she'd spent a minute with him … that she slept with him seemed completely outside of the realm of possibility.
But she admitted it. Inside her mind and out. And Collin wasn't lying. There was more than one time that Arthur'd had an interesting girl snatched out from under him, practically, by the chatty asshole.
Eventually he'd had enough of listening to his failures as a man, and – more to the point – her successes as the woman in Collin's bed.
Arthur would make sure that this conversation... the ten minutes he had to sit through that crap …. would be repaid by Collin's death. No other way to exorcize the demon that was Collin describing what it was like to sleep with her in such disturbingly accurate detail – where "accurate" meant aimed at pushing each and every one of Arthur's buttons.
She'd shown no signs of being the type of woman who enjoyed being abused during sex. But Collin was going to great lengths, and using a significant number of adjectives to convince him otherwise.
So it was time to shut him down.
No weapons.
Restrained.
He had nothing but strength – limited by a fire and by a beating – and momentum – held back by starting restrained and by starting tired – and intelligence – hampered by extreme exhaustion and by extreme hunger. But he would use those to his fullest advantage. And he would win.
Because bastards like Collin didn't deserve the air they breathed.
And because he couldn't stand the thought of him even looking at her again.
One chance. He'd only have one chance.
Stupid bastard. Tying his ankles, but letting his feet get perfectly adequate purchase on the ground. It would be awkward, sure, but it might also be a little fun.
Collin took a step forward, gesturing with his hands to punctuate some part of the vile story he was using to try and throw him off his guard.
Arthur smiled. Like he was that stupid.
Collin hesitated as he made a second step. Catching the smile. Beginning to process the possibilities it held. But too late.
Arthur lurched forward, in what might have been superhuman effort, and balanced all his weight, and the weight of the chair, on his toes. Swung around. Caught Collin in the shin and upper thigh with the chair legs.
Swung back around as Collin's balance faltered.
Head to the solar plexus.
Again with the chair legs.
Collin fell.
Swung back. Stepped forward. Precariously. Forward again.
Landed with his knees in the bastard's neck.
The pop and snap of broken vertebrate was more than enough to make the pain of falling on his knees, fingers, and forehead worth it.
Dead.
Dead.
Well … that was rather anticlimactic. Probably he should have done something else. Extracted him, not killed him … but the bastard was practically asking to be killed. Arthur had been happy to oblige. He rolled the chair back into a sitting position, thighs burning like hell.
Right then. Time to escape.
Two hours later Arthur was driving down the road, trying to get his bearings. Trying to find his way back into London from the random warehouse he'd been stashed in.
He was driving Collin's car. Wearing Collin's clothes.
Barefoot though. Couldn't find his own shoes, and Collin's were too small.
He was – to use a too tame word – agitated. After he'd gotten loose of the chair (by breaking the chair), Arthur had searched the entire warehouse for her.
She wasn't there.
When he left and found himself in an area full of warehouses, he searched those too.
She wasn't there.
She wasn't anywhere.
So she had to be at her home. She had to be. That was the only option.
He'd call her mobile if he had one (Collin didn't have one he could snitch), but there was no guarantee her mobile even survived the fire. His, left in his room as he fled the fire, was probably melted. Even if he could find a pay phone, it wasn't like he had change to make the call.
Collin hadn't been carrying cash, either.
London wasn't Arthur's place. Most of his business happened in some part of Asia or, on occasion, Eastern Europe or the Middle East. Places with big-money business interests, untidy wars, and fewer laws regulating shared dreaming equipment and drugs.
None of that put him in London. He'd been only once before he came with her. He thought he'd had the geography of the place down … but apparently he'd thought wrong. Especially when starting out from who the hell knows where.
Arthur managed to keep to traffic laws. He was carrying no ID, and he'd stolen the car from Collin. Whom he murdered. Being noticed by the cops would be bothersome. An inefficient use of his time.
When he arrived at her apartment – through a miracle or act of magic, as he still had no clue where he was – the place was surrounded by firetrucks and cop cars.
No sign of her, but he couldn't be entirely sure. He parked the car and walked to the nearest and most junior-looking officer.
Hoping the man would be too interested in the disaster to notice his bare feet. Which stung like hell from the cold.
"God," he breathed, not having to work at infusing his tone with shock and fear. "God, no ..." he grabbed the man's shoulder. "A woman. Was … was there a woman inside? My … my girlfriend … not – not answering my calls … thought something was wrong, but this ..."
Arthur continued to babble at the cop until he finally found an opening to reply.
"No. Sir please calm down. There was no one inside. Do you know where she could be? We need to inf-"
"Shit … Calli. Calli's!" and he took off at a dead run for the car. Started it. Drove away.
All before the cop processed what was happening.
He allowed himself a ghost of a smile, despite his worry, and unlocked the man's phone.
Pick pocketing a cop was probably not the safest thing he'd ever done (though hardly the most dangerous either … not by a long shot), but his options were limited. And he was desperate.
With a brief moment's thought, Arthur retrieved Eames' number from somewhere in his mind and dialed.
Ringing.
Ringing.
Ringing.
Ringing.
Ringing.
Beep.
No voice mail message.
"Damn," he whispered. It was Eames' number. He was sure of it. But then Eames wouldn't recognize the number he was calling from. Not answering was understandable.
He dialed again.
It rang again.
Beeped again.
"It's me." And he ended the call.
Less than a minute later, the cop's phone made bird chirping sounds. What the ….?
He answered.
"Eames we have a..."
"I have her, mate, don't worry."
Arthur let out a huge gust of a sigh, which sounded more like a sob than a sigh.
"Ah … shit … damn ..." it was all he could say. He was almost trembling as his muscles gave way their tension to relief.
"I'll give you our address -" Eames was saying in his ear. He almost missed it in his near giddy happiness.
"No good," Arthur interrupted, turning a corner that looked suspiciously like every corner in the damn area. "I have no idea where in the hell I am. Car has no gps. Stupid city," he muttered the last two words with more than a hint of anger. He turned up a small hill, then around another corner.
"No … no wait. There's the Thames." It was a glittering stretch of black some miles in front of him. More importantly it was a fantastic way to orient himself.
"Going to have to better than that, Arthur. The Thames is a bloody big river." There was silence for a moment. "Mmm, can you see the bridge?"
"Which bridge?" he asked. He did it to piss Eames off. But there was more than one bridge, after all.
"The bridge, Arthur, the bridge. No need to be a prick, darling. The Towers. The largest bloody bridge anywhere near you."
"Yeah," he replied. "I can see that," Arthur made a loop around a block, and pointed the car in its direction.
"Alright. Okay. Meet you there."
And he hung up. He hung up without telling him how she was.
Probably Eames did it to piss him off as payback. He would have said something if she was injured or harmed in any way.
Probably.
Author's Note: I'm honestly not entirely sure about the state of public phones in London. I know they're this side of extinct in the US (though they're very present in Thailand, where I live now). If this assessment isn't true: sorry! Also, deal with it. :D
Second Shakespeare title in a row. This one is less well known than the "sleep perchance to dream" of Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquy (and my chapter 7 title). The "baseless fabric of this vision" is from The Tempest (a play I've liked and hated for a decade now, since I first read it in high school) and refers to the fading of an illusion Prospero created for entertainment. The most famous portion of this speech is: "We are such stuff as dreams are made on."
I had a lot of reasons for this title, and it's one I've been waiting to use! Dreams as entertainment, but entertainment not always being joyful for all. Dreams, worlds based on top of the self, but of another's vision as well. I could babble on, but whatever. I just wanted to point this out, because I've been waiting to use it for SOOO long! (like a week or something... ;D)