2
The next time Arthur woke up he was still chained to a chair, but now there was a bright light shining right in his face.
Someone sat behind that light. A man, Arthur thought as he blinked and tried to get his eyes to adjust. I'm screwed.
"Well, Mr. Pendragon," said a voice that was familiar in a very vague and hazy sort of way, "all that remains is for you to tell us who your employer is."
Something was off.
"What?" he asked. His voice came out as a croak, rough from disuse. His mouth was as dry as sawdust.
"Who is your employer, Mr. Pendragon? Tell us and we'll let you go."
"You're lying." Arthur closed his eyes. The light stung them too much, but it was nothing compared to the dread that was pooling in his stomach. He'd screwed up really bad, letting himself get caught by these freaks. Of all the dangerous people he'd extracted from, the camorra, the yakuza, the Russian mafiya, dozens of cutthroat business men, crooked cops, corrupt brokers, inside traders, rogue government agents and spies, out of all the people he could have been caught by, he'd gone and let himself fall into the hands of a human trafficking ring. "If I tell you anything, you're just going to pump me full of drugs and hand me off to one of your pervert friends."
"What?" the man's voice sounded genuinely surprised.
"I said you're an asshole," said Arthur, even though they both knew that wasn't what he'd said. At least not in so many words.
"You should know that we have our best hackers working to decode the information on your flashdrive," said the man.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why bother?" asked Arthur. "You already know what's on it. Or did you accidentally dissolve your own harddrives with those acid vials you keep balanced inside of them? Are you really that desperate to retrieve those copies?"
Silence. The man didn't have an answer. And the nagging feeling in the back of Arhur's mind began to rise to the forefront again.
Something's not right here. Something's off. Focus . . . It wasn't easy. His head was fuzzy, probably from the truth serum cocktails they'd been plying him with all week. The electro-torture hadn't helped either.
"We have your coworker, you know," said the man.
"No you don't. I've been working this job alone."
There was the rustling of paper, then the man started reading. "Arthur, I can't thank you enough for everything. You're doing a good thing, but I know you know that. And I know that it's not about the money for you, no matter what you claim. I just wanted you to know that I know that, because as much as you try to pretend you're not a good person, you are one, and I believe every good person needs to know that at least one other person knows who they are inside. Be careful, and please, don't take any more risks than you have to. You've more than done your part already. God bless. Your coworker, but more importantly, your friend, June."
June.
Something was very, very wrong. A coldness settled into his spine, like a cancer, nagging him, bothering him, making it impossible to concentrate on anything.
"This note led us right to her. We fingerprinted it. We found her that way. And now we've got her in the next room." The man sounded uneasy now. "We really don't want to hurt her. We're not complete barbarians after all –"
Arthur laughed derisively. "Why? What's the matter? She too old for your tastes?"
From the next room there was some noise. The thick walls muffled some of it, so Arthur couldn't hear what was being said, but the voices got through. One was very familiar.
June. So they do have her. For some reason that thought didn't bother Arthur as much as it should have, but he didn't know why. He liked June. She was a nice lady, the very best person he knew. The thought of her in the hands of these freaks should have upset him to no end. There was a reason that it didn't, but he couldn't remember what that reason was.
The door opened.
"Cobb," said a new voice, "you need to see this."
Behind the light Arthur saw the man's silhouette move. A moment later the door closed and he was alone again.
"Jesus Christ!"
The sight of the woman tied to the chair in front of him was enough to make Cobb sick, even though he knew she was only one of Arthur's projections. He'd brought her here after being given the right cues. That went according to plan. What they weren't counting on was that half of her face would be peeled off, revealing bone and raw muscle, or that there would be a large chunk missing from the back of her skull. Her brains were actually visible, and were scrambled and mixed with blood. There was more blood on her clothes, particularly on her skirt, which Cobb thought was dark red at first, then realized was actually supposed to be a light grey.
"What the hell is going on with this guy?"
The woman's eyes snapped up to lock on Cobb's. It was disturbing since one of them was missing its eyelids and was hanging halfway out of its socket. The other side of her face was beautiful, and only made its opposite side look even more sickening.
"You did this to me."
"What?" Cobb stared at her. "You mean . . . Arthur did this to you?"
"No, you pervert!" snarled Arthur's projection of June. "You did this to me! You and your sick employers!"
"What? No-"
"Child molesters! Pedophiles! Perverts! When Arthur brings your slave ring crumbling down around your ears I will buy a bottle of scotch and raise him a toast. Or at least I would if I wasn't already dead."
Cobb looked at Eames who looked just as bewildered.
"What do you mean?" asked Cobb.
"Don't you pretend you're innocent!" screamed June. "You did this to me! You and your bosses and your pervert friends! You tortured me and then put a bullet in my head and it was all for nothing. Arthur's finished the job. Even if you kill him, it won't matter now. Everything's already in motion. By tonight your world will have fallen apart."
"The people Arthur was extracting from . . . are involved in human trafficking?" asked Eames since Cobb didn't seem capable of speaking.
"Were involved," said June with a cocky smile that only covered the side of her face that still had lips. "Like I said, by tonight you'll all be in jail. And you know what they do to pedophiles in prisons, don't you? You and all your sick friends are going to get exactly what you deserve."
"Julius Marx was one of the people Arthur was investigating?" asked Cobb. He needed to hear this for sure, in as many words.
"Julius Marx is the fucking ring leader, you syncophantic tool," sneered June. "He's the one who ordered this done to me. Wouldn't do it himself because I'm too old for him, but he had plenty of thugs who were into real women as well as little girls."
"I think I'm going to be sick." Cobb turned away from the grotesque sight before him.
"Cobb," said Eames, "I think we've made a big mistake here. I think we're on the wrong side of this one."
Cobb nodded weakly. "You're right," he said, "but I don't know how to fix this."
Eames nodded at the door. "We could start by trying to have a talk with prince charming in there."
"Shit." Cobb wiped his suddenly sweaty hands on his pants legs. "He's in big trouble. Really big trouble."
"I'll say. If Marx is really involved in human trafficking then there's no way he's letting our little darling go alive."
"It's worse than that," realized Cobb remembering the comment that Arthur made earlier with new perspective.
"If I tell you anything, you're just going to pump me full of drugs and hand me off to one of your pervert friends."
That was the fate that Arthur was dreading. Cobb remembered the fear in the kid's eyes when he woke up and found someone unbuttoning his shirt and vest.
"We have to try to save him."
"But how?" asked Eames.
"We'll think of something. We'll have to talk to Mal too. Thankfully, these dreams will give us enough time." He opened the door. "Arthur," he said, "we need to – Holy Mother of –"
Arthur realized what was wrong almost as soon as the man, Cobb, had left. That was June's voice that he heard in the next room, but at the same time, it couldn't be June. Not really.
Because June had been dead for three months.
The logical conclusion was the obvious one. He was dreaming. These fuckers were trying to perform extraction on him. Him! They were hacking into his mind, trying to find out who knew what he knew, and how to stop the information from spreading.
They were too late.
The information had already been post marked. By now his employers, a very wealthy publishing firm that specialized in the ugliest truths, had received the evidence. Indisputable evidence that incriminated a number of major business tycoons. The only reason they were waiting to break the case was to give him an opportunity to escape the net that had been closing in on him for the past month. They were waiting for confirmation which they had never gotten, and probably would never get. At Arthur's instructions, they were to sit on their story for no more than five days. If he hadn't managed to contact them by that point, then he probably never would be able to. Now he was only sorry that he'd told them to wait so long. Who knew how many lives had been ruined during the five days he'd spent being doped with truth serums?
He thought that five days had passed, at least. It seemed like a lot longer, but then, he couldn't be sure anymore because he was dealing with extractors and dreams, where five minutes were an hour. He couldn't trust time anymore.
I should wake up. Or maybe I shouldn't. Arthur wasn't in the habit of lying to himself. It only made everything confusing in a world where he was never one hundred percent sure that he was awake anymore, even when he really was awake. He knew that the rest of his short life was going to be miserable, and that before the first day of it was up, he'd be wishing he was dead. This dream isn't so bad. They're not torturing me yet. I could rest here. Enjoy what might be my last few minutes of serenity . . . or I could say 'fuck you' to those second rate extractors, just to piss them off.
Arthur decided to go with option number two. He cast his gaze around, looking for an out. It was difficult to see because of the light shining right in his face, and he was bound to the chair too well. There was only one way out that he could think of, and it was about as crude and inelegant as anything he'd ever done to wake himself up from a dream, but he was pretty sure it would work.
So Arthur bit down on his tongue as hard as he could. Tears sprang to his eyes and blood began filling his mouth. Lots of it. He bit down harder as he felt the blood start to escape from his lips and trickle down his chin. It hurt worse than he'd expected it to, but it wasn't the worst he'd experienced, not by far.
"Holy Mother of –"
The extractors were back.
"Oh, you little fucker."
"What is he . . . is he biting off his own tongue? Jesus!" Cobb was holding something to Arthur's mouth, trying to wipe away the blood, but not doing much good. "Damn it, kid. We're trying to help you."
Arthur would have laughed derisively if he'd been able to. He closed his eyes and increased the pressure his teeth were putting on his tongue, and finally felt them click together as he bit all the way through it.
"Cobb, we can't have a very good conversation with him in this dream," the other extractor pointed out as Cobb continued trying to . . . well, Arthur wasn't sure what the man was trying to do. Bandage his tongue maybe?
"Shooting him in the head isn't exactly going to gain his trust, Eames," said Cobb angrily.
Arthur thought it was a little late to be trying to gain his trust at this stage in the game, and decided that these guys were probably the worst extractors ever. He laughed and choked on his own blood . . .
. . . and was suddenly back in the room he'd been in most of the weak, still tied to his chair, but hooked up to the dream machine along with the world's worst extractors. Whoever had sent these clowns to try to break into his subconscious must not have known that he was Arthur Pendragon.
A change had been made to the room. He noticed it immediately. A computer was against one of the walls, already booted up, some sort of deciphering program running. The stupid jerks actually were trying to break into the encrypted files on his flashdrive. From the looks of things, whoever it was had just stepped out, and only for a moment. A styrophome coffee cup sat on the computer desk, upright, but probably at least half empty. The dark liquid that it had held was pooled around it and dripping off the edge of the desk, onto a puddle on the floor.
Arthur sighed and struggled against his bonds. To his surprise, there was more slack in them than he remembered. He tugged against them again, then twisted. The needle in his arm stung as he twisted, but he ignored the pain. The ropes were definitely looser now. He had a chance to escape. Not much of one. The extractors were probably only seconds away from waking up, and whoever had been working on the computer would be back soon, but this was the biggest break he'd had since he'd been captured.
Arthur groaned as the ropes dug into his wrists and arms, and thrashed wildly for several seconds, before regaining control over himself. Escaping from ropes required precision and control. He concentrated on getting free, twisting and turning just right, and finally, one arm was loose. From there, getting out was much easier. He had himself untied in seconds, and stumbled toward the door.
The door opened before he reached it, and in stepped a tall, beautiful woman with a roll of paper towels in her hands and a gun in her holster. Surprise crossed her face as she saw Arthur making a break for freedom, and she dropped the paper towels and pulled out her gun. Before Arthur could take another step, she'd put a bullet in one of his kneecaps. Arthur screamed as pain exploded through his leg and went down hard.
"Sorry, boy," she said, "but a woman's got to do what a woman's got to do."
Arthur wanted to curse at her, but was far too distracted by the pain in his leg. The bullet had shattered his kneecap, he was pretty sure. Even if by some miracle he survived this nightmare, he would never walk again.
As he writhed the computer made a beeping sound. Not a beeping like an error was popping up. More of a successful chime, like getting a 1-up in a videogame.
"Would you look at that?" asked the woman. "My encryption program has finished decoding the files on your flashdrive. I think I'll take a look. Don't try going anywhere unless you want to get shot in the other leg too."
Arthur was in no shape to be moving any way except for crawling, and was in too much pain to even be doing that. He curled in on himself, trying to block it out, but the attempt was in vain. He started to wonder if maybe he should bite off his tongue again, this time for real. That way the pain would only last a few minutes, then he'd be gone for good this time.
"Oh my God." The woman sounded floored. Even in his haze of pain, Arthur could tell she'd been shocked. "Mon dieu, what is this?" The mouse clicked frantically as she opened the different files. "These documents . . . these pictures . . . they're all . . ."
"Mal, don't shoot him!" Cobb bolted out of his dream and looked around wildly, unhooking himself without even looking at what he was doing. "Oh, shit."
"Dom!" said Mal urgently. "Dom, these files. They're horrible. He's not the one whose mind we should be hacking into." She motioned at Arthur. "The files he stole from them, they're all –"
"I know," said Dom. "We figured it out down there." He hurried over to Arthur and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't touch me!" shouted Arthur, trying to roll away.
"Hey, hey, it's okay. It's okay, Arthur," said Cobb, like he was talking to a frightened child rather than the world's best extractor.
"Fuck you!" Arthur thrashed as Cobb pulled him upright.
"You're going to be okay, just calm down a second." Cobb moved so that he was in front of Arthur.
Arthur glared back at him hatefully and made his decision. "I'll see you in hell, you sick bastard," he spat and bit down on his tongue.
At least he tried to bite his tongue again, but Cobb's hand was suddenly in his mouth, keeping his jaw from closing.
"Don't! Arthur, you need to listen to me!"
"What the bloody hell is going on up here?" demanded Eames, waking from his dream. "You were supposed to tell your wife not to shoot the kid."
"I didn't make it in time," said Cobb. "Give me a hand with him, will you? He's trying to bite my fingers off!"
"Why are your fingers in his mouth?"
"So that he doesn't bite his tongue off and kill himself again!"
"You know, gagging him doesn't seem to be the greatest way to earn his trust. Neither does kneecapping him."
"What's going on?" asked Mal.
"If everyone will just stop shouting or trying to kill themselves, I'll explain!" said Cobb, raising his voice. He frowned at Arthur. "I'm going to let you go, but I want you to listen to us and not try to bite your tongue off again, okay? We have some time left on the clock, and I have the feeling we're going to need all of it to figure something out."
Arthur didn't try to bite his tongue off again when Cobb removed his hand, mainly because he was curious about what the man had just said. "What do you mean there's still time left on the clock?" he asked.
"I mean that we're still dreaming," Cobb told him.
Arthur shook his head. "I just woke up."
"That was a dream too," explained Cobb. "It was a dream within a dream. It's something we've been experimenting with in subconscious security exploration, because we figured it was only a matter of time before you guys started trying it out. You see, we're not real extractors."
"Then what do you call this?" demanded Arthur. He waved his hand around to indicate the dream world. "You're hacking into my mind."
"We were doing it as a favor for an old friend," explained Cobb. "We didn't know what he was involved in. And now we know why he told us not to bother trying to see what was on that flashdrive." He looked at his two associates. "We were supposed to find out who you were in contact with, and that was all. Of course, you know that finding one detail that isn't easy, and that you need to do quite a lot of digging to get to what you're looking for."
"So you tried to figure out who June was on the last level," said Arthur, figuring out what their plan had been. "You told me she was there and my subconscious created a projection of her. And she told you what I'd been investigating?"
Cobb nodded, looking sick.
Arthur grimaced. "When you saw her . . ."
A hand fell on his shoulder. "She wouldn't want you to remember her that way, kid."
Arthur bristled. "Don't call me a kid, jackass."
"You know, he's trying to be nice, you ankle-biting sod," said Eames, defensively.
"It's okay, Eames," said Cobb quickly then focused on Arthur again. "I am sorry about what happened to her, Arthur. But you're getting your revenge, aren't you? You already got the information to your contacts."
"I'll die for real before I tell you who they are."
"I'm not asking you to tell me who they are," said Cobb. "Not now that I know what you were doing, and what kind of person Julius Marx really is."
Arthur glared at him. "I still don't trust you."
"I don't blame you." Cobb moved back from him a few inches, giving him some space, but was close enough that he could have stopped Arthur from biting off his tongue again if he made the attempt. "Can you figure out what we've got this layer of the dream set up for?"
"I don't appreciate being quizzed like a middle school student," Arthur told him.
"Because you're a freshman in high school now," said Eames. "Our little boy's growing up so fast." He faked a sniffle.
"We were trying to get the information on the flashdrive, to see if there was any way we could use it against you in our quest to find out who your contacts were," said Cobb. "This layer of the dream is Mal's. She put the computer in and created the fake encryption program. When she told you that your codes had been broken, and you thought they weren't protected anymore your mind filled the computer with unencrypted versions of those files."
"I know," growled Arthur. "I already figured it out. The only thing I can't figure out is why we're sitting here talking."
"Because we want to help you," said Cobb.
"I don't want your help."
"Well I think you kind of need it, dear," said Eames. "You're in a bit of a pinch, in case you haven't noticed."
"Yet if Hope has flown away, in a night or in a day, in a vision, or in none, is it therefore the less gone?" quoted Arthur, gritting his teeth to get the words out clearly. "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."
"What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?"
"That even if I did trust you, which I don't, there's nothing you can do to help me," growled Arthur. "Three subconscious security contractors, who aren't all that smart, and an extractor who's been beaten, drugged, shocked and starved for a week versus America's biggest human trafficking ring. There are at least twenty guys with guns in this house. Your chances of busting me out and all of us escaping alive are less than three eights of a percent."
"And what are your chances of escaping alone?" asked Cobb.
"Less than one one-hundredth of a percent." Arthur closed his eyes, feeling exhausted. "I've been waiting to die all week. I'm ready for it."
The contractors were silent, probably looking at him with pity.
"What I meant," said Cobb after a moment, "is what are your chances of escaping alone if we gave you a little help?"
Arthur opened his eyes and looked at the older man suspiciously.
"Listen," Cobb told him, leaning forward again, his eyes as serious and sincere as any Arthur had ever seen before. "Right now, up there, we're in this room. It's on the second story of Marx's ocean villa. It's built on cliffs overlooking the sea. After exiting this room, if you turn right and run to the end of the hallway, you'll find a pair of French doors. If you go through them, there's a picture window that looks out right over the ocean. If you can get to it, you've got a straight shot at freedom."
Arthur's suspicions did not abate, but for the first time in a long time he felt hope. "The fall would act as a kick," he muttered, more to himself than them.
"What?"
"I said the fall would act as a kick," Arthur repeated. "So I'd know I wasn't still in a dream. You can never hit the ground in your dreams. Or in this case, the water."
"But what's a kick?" asked Eames.
"He means a swan dive," said Cobb. "That's what we call a fall that wakes you up from a dream," he explained to Arthur.
"Kick is one syllable shorter and therefore more efficient," Arthur told him.
"We'll keep that in mind."
"I still don't trust you," said Arthur.
Cobb sighed and bowed his head. "We've done nothing to earn your trust, so I don't blame you. But we are going to try to help you."
Now Arthur was really suspicious. "Why?"
Cobb pointed toward the computer. "That's why."
"That's already been accomplished," Arthur reminded him. "They're going down whether I escape or not."
"Then how about this," said Cobb, sounding angry, and moving closer so that he was almost in Arthur's face. "You're, what? Twenty?"
"Twenty-f-"
"You're a kid! You should be in college, worrying about term papers instead of being here, tied up, worrying about being pumped full of drugs and handed off to some perverts who will rape and kill you! You have your whole life ahead of you, and you may have given up, but I am not going to give up on you!" shouted Cobb. "Now tell me, do you know how to swim?"
Arthur stared at him for several seconds then nodded. "I know how."
"In the real world, are you suffering from any injury that would make it impossible for you to run down a hallway and jump through a window?"
"No. But I am tied to a chair, in case you've forgotten, and I doubt that the ropes are going to be any looser when I wake up than they've been all week."
"We'll get them to untie you," said Cobb. He looked at his friends. "We'll tell Marx that he got the wrong guy, that you're some random kid who was paid fifty bucks to carry an encrypted flashdrive from point A to point B. As long as we give him no reason to suspect that we know the truth, he'll have no reason not to believe us."
"It could work," said Eames after a moment's consideration.
"It will work," said Mal. "We will make it." She moved so that she was kneeling beside Arthur and put a hand on his arm. "Forgive me, child."
Arthur almost jerked his arm away, but something in her eyes stopped him. She was sincere. She really was sorry about shooting him. If his leg didn't still feel like it was being dissolved in acid, Arthur might have actually been inclined to forgive her. "We'll see," he muttered. "Maybe if I live long enough."
Mal smiled and brushed his hair out of his face in a very motherly way. "You will," she promised him.
"I'm not holding my breath."
"No, but you will be," said Eames cheerfully. "You're going to be in the water quite awhile, darling."
Next Chapter: Arthur escapes, but the nightmare's not over yet. But at least he gets a clean suit, even if he does get it bloody again almost immediately . . .
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