This chapter has a lot of technical explanations about dreams, and it's quite similar to a part of the movie. Not the most exciting, but it needs to happen.
Anna knew it. He was a crook. A straight down, dirty, cheating, scrubby little crook. Just ... well, in her mind's fantasies, she had always put him down a drug-dealer, possibly a gun-runner. She had once entertained that he might have even been some kind of serial killer that went around marrying girls before cutting them up. That theory had to be dismissed, because, think about it - serial killers pushing people off parapets? Sorry, but no. Even the police said that it looked like a fit of anger thing.
Speaking of fits of anger, he had made her sign this hurriedly drafted contract which stated that she would abstain from harming him for the next seven days - he actually wanted a month, but she turned that down. Despite adamant protests on her part, however, he still declined to tell her give her the explanations she wanted. Instead, he had begun to explain to her the nature of his job, and her own. After grouching some time, Anna reluctantly acquiescenced to listening to it. And man, it was complicated. And weird.
"Okay, let's see if I got this," she said while they strolled down the park. Little flakes of snow showered gently from the pale sky above, adding to the growing clumps of snow around the dirt path. "You invade people's dreams, and steal their secrets?"
"Extract," Jack corrected her, as they turned at a bend, heading downwards towards walkway along the frozen lake. "I extract information from the subconscious. It just happens that most of the time it's corporate secrets."
"Hence, stealing."
"Whatever make you happy."
"So, you hook them to the 'dream-machine', then going into their head and mess around?"
"It's called 'PASIV'. And you're forgetting something," he said, as he picked off a wooden rod resting against one of the passing tree trunks wiping the snow off it before they resumed walking, him using it like a walking stick. Anna wasn't sure what it was for, or whether it was even his for the taking, but she was far too occupied with what he was saying. "After hooking them up, the subject falls asleep. The drug usually helps in that, but not there's no guarantee. Mind-infiltration won't work on a conscious mind, because the subconscious is the vulnerable part. Stable sleep is a pretty important component."
"Uh-huh. So, what I am supposed to do?" Her attention briefly went to watching two children standing on a bridge over the frozen lake, peering over at their glassy reflections below.
"I need you to build the worlds of the dream." That earned a blank look from her. He sighed, before trying another approach, "Okay, you know how to design a building, right?"
"I'm an architect, or will be, so, yeah."
"Okay, so when you build stuff, you can consciously design every detail of the building, but sometimes it feel like it's building itself."
Anna scrunched her face, flicking the snowflake that had landed on her nose off as she did. "Rarely happens to me, but yeah, I get it."
"That's what happens in dreams. Our brain automatically builds worlds and fills it up with people, things - some real, some not, some an amalgamation of both." They both headed up the bridge. Upon seeing them, the two children scampered away, glancing back once at them. Jack went on, "The line between creation and perception is so fine that most of time the dreamer can't even tell he's dreaming."
"Okay." Anna took a moment to process that, before asking, "But if the subject is the one who fills the dream with stuff, then wouldn't he or she like, I don't know, stop you from stealing the secrets or what-not?"
"The trick is to not let the subject be the dreamer, yet at the same time be convinced that he is in his own dream, but still not know that he's actually in a dream." He received a quizzical look from her. "I'm losing you, aren't I?"
"No, no. Gimme a sec." They stopped at the middle of the bridge, allowing Anna to rest her elbows against the rails while she brooded over the concepts. Turning back to Jack, she said, "Alright, so here's what I got. First, you get the subject to sleep, and plug him to a 'dream-machine'. Then, you also plug yourself to a 'dream-machine' and go into the dreamworld, but you don't go into the subject's dream. You pull the subject into yours. Somehow you do some magic gizmo inside there and steal the subject's secrets."
"Extract."
"Steal. But that still leaves one gap." She folded her arms, facing him. "Won't the subject be fully aware that he's in a dream, especially when it's someone else's dream?"
"Oh?" A sly grin crept up on Jack's face, and it made her suddenly very uneasy. It felt vaguely like one of her nightmares, where she would watch a twisted, gnarled version of Jack hacking her sister into assorted bloody pieces.
She cleared her throat, standing upright and staring back at him. She wasn't going to be scared of this guy, and if she was, he wasn't going have the benefit of knowing.
"Let me ask you something, Anna." He pulled his wooden staff towards him, his chin resting on a bend of the crook, his azure eyes gleaming. "Have you ever noticed that when you enter a dream, you always tend to land right in the middle of things - no beginnings, possibly no ends?"
She paused, before nodding haltingly. "So?"
"So," a mischievous look appeared on his countenance, "how did we get here?"
Anna was quick to answer, "Well, we came from the cathedral, and you made me sign the contract at some tea place, then..." she trailed off, and her eyes became as wide as saucers.
Jack's grin became wider.
The brunette whipped around, scanning her surroundings, heart pumping in her ears as she began taking it in all again. Or was that really her heart?
Suddenly, everything stilled. The snow pelting down stopped their fall, suspended in the air. The old man staggering down the aisle, his walking stick raised midway. The two children she had observed earlier stood still, pointing at a swallow above them frozen in flight. Except there shouldn't be swallows in winter.
Wait, did she just think 'winter'? But wasn't it...
"That's the allure of the dream. It occupies the subject's attention so much that even the ridiculous things get dismissed as normal," Jack commented, calmly stepping to her side, planting his staff in the snowy ground as he did. "Like snowing in the middle of summer in Paris. It's only on hindsight, after waking up, and thinking about it that we find it weird."
Anna's mouth fell open. Oh. Yeaaaah. Summer. Heh.
"I'm dreaming," the girl gasped, spinning around, still in disbelieving.
"We're dreaming," Jack corrected just as the frosted surface of lake cracked. The fracture spread across the entire expanse like a stretching vine shoot, growing and stretching till the shimmering face turned shattered into millions of pieces. Mysteriously, the ice shard began to rise, floating upwards as if only to blatantly defy the forces of gravity. Each piece danced and twirled, shooting towards the sky. Then Anna noticed that the snow littering the pavements of the walkway began imploding on themselves, slamming themselves into the frozen statuettes, the fragments of the destruction also suspending themselves on air.
Then she felt ground shifting below her. The wooden boards of the bridge began bursting into splinters one by one, advancing slowly towards her and her white-haired companion. While she felt her muscles tighten, she couldn't be afraid. Not for real - because how could she be afraid of something so weird?
The ground below her shattered, and she found herself suddenly tumbling down, down into the lake. Cold bite into her skins and bones, flooding her with pain and ice.
And then she woke up. She blinked, trying to chase the dots in her eyes. A shudder shook her as her fingers searched for icy wetness that should be on her face and hair, but she was dry.
"It felt cold, didn't it?"
She swung around, finding herself meeting the eyes of the smirking white-haired gentleman. He was leaning back on a comfortable recline chair, his hand folded across his chest as if he were merely relaxing in the sun. She noticed there was a strap of wires attached to his wrist, connecting him to the machinery the metallic suitcase - the dream machine, she had dubbed, though it was really called the Portable Automated Somnacin IntraVenous Device (PASIV). Glancing down at her own wrist, she realized that there was an IV tube connected to it.
Memories of the winter-fallen park ebbed away as ones of the real world began to replace it. After Jack had made her to the 'contract', he had taken her to the 'dream studio' - an abandoned old warehouse in the Parisian suburbs - and had begun explaining how PASIV sent a special drug called somnacin into the body that allowed those connected to share dreams. A little while after that, she must have gone under.
To answer his question, she remarked, "Really cold." She shivered involuntarily. "I don't get it. Why is it so..."
"Real?" Jack supplied instantly, still looking rather pleased at her confusion. "That's how it is. The cold shock. The impact of the water. Everything feels real in the dream."
"It was created for the military use," she heard another voice echoing off the uncovered granite walls of the studio. "They let the soldiers beat each other into bloody pulp, then they wake up. Pretty disturbing, if you ask me." Turning, she recognized that it was the stocky blonde guy that Jack had introduced her to when they had arrived. He was fiddling with the dream machine, keying some numbers into it. Jack had described him as his human resource manager, which weird because apparently he hated human or something. Chris - or was it Christopher? He said it began with 'K', so ... Kris? - had described himself as 'the guy who actually gets stuff done while Frost goes nuts'. She wondered why he had called Jack 'Frost', but she supposed that that would just join the ever-growing list of questions. She was beginning to wonder if she would get any answers, considering how tight-lipped her fugitive of a brother-in-law was about everything. He had promised explanations, especially things regarding Elsa, only after the job was done. His reason was that knowing might affect how well she would do the job, thus he had ignored her rueful badgering to the point that she felt like punching him all over again.
The point that Kris brought up, however, reminded her of something else. To Jack, she said, "Wait. So you were really from the army?"
"Not per se," Jack replied, while adjusting his wrist strap more securely.
Then it hit her. "You were the architect. You built the dreamworlds, didn't you?"
"I was trained to, but it never happened." Jack shrugged. "The program closed quite early on."
"So you went on full on criminal to put your wonderful mind-melding skills to use?"
"Hey!" That was from Chris. Kris. Whatever. He sounded indignant. "I'll have you know that dream-sharing has many nice, legitimate uses. It's just that this guy-" he pointed Jack "- got me into mess, and now my record's too black to do anything else."
The white-haired man scowled. "You're not the one with a price on your head."
Anna made a face at him. "You have a what on your what?"
"There are always two ends to an extraction, Anna," Jack answered expressionlessly, almost as if he had done it a dozen times. "The ones who pay, and the ones who get extracted. The latter's always unhappy. Put us on another five minutes." That last sentence was addressed to the blonde man, who nodded as he readjusted the central counter on PASIV.
"'Another'?" Anna was puzzled. "But we've been gone for hours."
"An hour in the dream world is around five minutes in the real world," Chris-Kris explained, while Jack leaned himself back into the chair. "In the dream, brains function's faster, so time seems slower."
"Why not you try building the dream world this time?" Jack's suggestion was directed at her.
She nodded hesitantly. "Alright, I guess." She sunk back into her own lawn chair, vaguely registering Chris-Kris jabbing the central button on the dream machine, before the world around her dissipated.
Jack had never seen anyone pick it up this quickly before. And that was saying a lot, because he had trained several other architects over the last five years. More than half had imagination the size of peas.
But here he was, standing in the middle of what seems to be a neo-baroque ballroom, the kind that you would find in a typical European place. Huge frescos of Roman gods soared on clouds the ceiling above, with golden-brass frames embossed around them, stretching down towards the marble pillars. A silver chandelier, made of over a thousand crystals, swung overhead, the flame of its candles reflecting off the mirrors that lined the hall. The hall seemed rather dark, with all the curtains drawn over the windows.
"Not bad," he told his brunette companion, as he rubbed his feet on the Turkish carpet below him was a Hemling - he recognized the hooked motif. Reaching out to touch it, he was surprised at how smooth and soft it felt - silk on cotton, he could tell instantly. She was really, really good. To the point that it was actually freaky. "You have lots of the details down."
"I know, right?" she whispered to him, her voice shaking with excitement. The hostility in her manner suddenly vanished, and she transformed back into the bubbly, fast-talking teenager his wife had introduced him to seven years ago.
Now he was starting to reminiscence like an old man. Huh.
He straightened himself back up, taking surveying their surroundings. It seemed that she had placed not just in a 17th century European palace, but had dragged them back the time period too. The other 'people' that shuffled around them were dressed in servants attire, dark green petticoats for the women and hoses for the men. He was dressed in what seemed to be a military attire, a white doublet complete with epaulettes on his shoulders, a blue sash top match. Anna was dressed in green ballgown, the only modern addition being the sleeveless top. Despite his unfamiliarity towards the environment, he could feel a vague, underlying connection to the 'people' around them.
"Look! Look!"
His gaze followed where her finger was pointing to. A row of servants came through door carrying several stacks of plates.
"Eight thousand salad plates," she muttered him behind a hand, as if sharing a secret, before stepping up to take off one of the stacks, much to annoyance of one of the servants, and handing it to Jack.
"O-kay," he said, slowly. The weight and the feel of the porcelain, the designs and motifs splattered - it felt real. Very real.
"Oh, check this out," she said, as she grabbed the plate from his hands, dropping back on a stack that another servant was carrying out. She cleared her throat, her face hardening in focus.
The curtains covering the window suddenly disappeared, and cheerful rays started pouring in, filling the halls was a bright glow. The chandelier and the candles had melted away, as if summoned elsewhere. He hadn't even told her how to manipulate the dream space, and here she was making changes already.
"C'mon, c'mon!" She was jumping up and down like a child eager to show a magic trick, grabbing his arm and dragging him off before he could finish gawking.
Everything went into a blur, because she was moving them so fast, but he could see enough to tell that construction was literally a breeze for her. The dining room that they ran pass look liked quite like the ones one would find in a Victorian palace. The corridor was lined with bronze bastes, glassware and suits of armor. If it wasn't for the fact that he felt completely out of place the opulent old castle, Jack would have found it very conceivable that he was indeed in the 17th century.
She finally gave them a break when she stopped on open window. Gesturing dramatically towards it - "Tada!"
Gazing out, his eyes were literally bulging out of their sockets when he saw the town below. Every house, every bridge, all the crooks and turns of the city were uneven and unique, littered and marked with flaws - flaws that only the most skilled artist would know how to add. It seemed so natural. So real.
"A maze." Her words startled him, causing him to turn to her. "That was the architect does, right? Build a maze."
"Right," he replied, almost regretfully pulling himself from the window ledge. "A maze to confuse the subconscious. To keep the subject from catching up with the dreamer."
"Hah," she was still smiling, her alight with delight, "so, who're the people?"
"Projections of my subconscious."
"Your subconscious?" She seemed puzzled. "But this is my dream."
"You construct the dream, but I populate it. Everyone here," he nodded at a servant passing behind them, "they're from me. I can literally talk to myself. That's one way one can extract information."
"Oh." She suddenly stiffened, shifting herself away from him, as if remembering something that she had forgotten, like anger. Or fear. Or the fact that she was only here because of a job. She tried to cover it up by turning back to the window, asking hurriedly, "Are there other ways?"
"Making a bank, or a safe, or even a jail - something secure, basically. The brain of the subject automatically fills it with things it wants to protect."
"And you break into it and steal it," she finished for him.
"Extract."
"Steal."
"You're never going to stop emphasizing the illegal part, are you?"
"Pretty much."
Touring the dream space becomes more sullen after that. Anna led him down more corridors, brushing pass the servants on the way through. More and more of the projections began eyeballing her sharply, almost angrily as they went further.
"Could you tell your subconscious that?" she hissed to him sullenly, still conscientiously keeping her distance. "It's creeping me out."
"I don't control them. It's called subconscious for a reason," he said, just as a maidservant bumped roughly into the brunette girl, hurrying away without so much as an apology. "They detect that someone changing the worlds, so they're looking for the foreign body."
"So what, they're going to attack us?" She snorted almost irritably.
"No, just-" he broke off when both of them entered an empty hallway. Anna didn't even give the empty walls a glance before painting began appearing on the walls, turning the room into a gallery in less than a second, even throwing in a tapestry or two.
"This is great, but you're changing it too fast," he warned. She didn't give any indication that she heard, shuttering quickly in front of him. "The more obvious you are, the more my subconsciousness notices."
Obviously, she didn't take it to heart, because the next moment when arrived at the foyer of the castle, what should have been a straight, descending staircase slowly warped itself into a spiral. One or two servants watching the scene gave Anna the evil eye, but she nonchalantly hopped onto the barrister of the stairway, sliding all the way down. Jack rolled his eyes. Well, if she wanted to learn the hard way, then she'd learn the hard way. He had thought of joining her on the barrister too, but then decided to go down the normal way instead.
After passing through the armory on the lower floor, they exited the castle and stepped into the courtyard. It was a large, empty square, with only a few guards patrolling the expanse.
"Wow. That's boring," Anna remarked after survey the area.
"You don't always have to do it over the top, you know?" He put in. "It's supposed to be realistic, not fantastic. "
"Realistic?" She made a scornful sound. "Where's the fun in that?"
Fun...that used to be the biggest aim in his life. Just have fun, and be happy. It was strange. North had taught him how to navigate dream world years ago to teach him the wonder of human imagination, to show him that there were no limits to creativity. He had used to dive into the dream space because he enjoyed it, he had fun doing it, but now...
"Fun's not part of the job description, Anna," he answered, his voice sounding a little more hollow than usual.
Anna simply shook her head, before gesturing for him step back into the castle.
"Grab that side and close it," she instructed him, nodding at the door next to him, while pulling on the one closer to herself. Bemused, he did as he was told till both of the doors were drawn shut. He then turned to her questioningly.
Anna sucked in a tight breath, staring intently at the two closed doors, then yanked them open.
The dreary, empty courtyard had vanished, replaced by a bridge connected the town that he had seen earlier to the castle. Throngs of projected townspeople travelled up and down the bridge, majority seemed to be moving towards the castle. Glancing over the sides of the bridge, he noticed that the castle was built by water, and she even put a couple of frigates and old-fashioned sloops in the harbor far away.
"Impressive," he murmured, as they strode through the crowd. While many appeared to be in cheerful mood, several were still eyeing Anna hostilely, which she still took in her stride. Of course, they didn't even spare him a glance. He wasn't the one messing with real-
His train of thought suddenly took an abrupt turn when a familiar sensation washed over him. The scent of salt in the air, with the sun splashing down and his own laughter mixed with that of another...
Alarmed, Jack asked her, "This is a real place, isn't it?"
"Yeah, the entrance to the Rosenberg Castle. Elsa and I went there when we were kids. When she still talked to me, that is," Anna replied with a tinge of sadness, before skipping off into the crowd.
Elsa knew this place. That made sense now. He hadn't been there himself. Not the real one, anyway.
Then it struck him. Elsa knew this place.
"Anna!" He had to chase after her, knocking into a couple of projection on the way there. "Anna, you first rule of dream-scaping - never recreate from memory."
"Why not? You wanted realistic, right? This is real," she protested, stopping by to examine a plant stall on the way midway to the town square. "Besides, isn't imagination just an extension of memory?"
"Okay, maybe a lamp post, or a postbox, but never a whole place," he retorted, following her as she went up to the maypole erected in the centre of the city.
"Why not?" She seemed ever persistent in arguing with him, it seemed.
He could barely hide his irritation. "Because that's the quickest way to lose sight of what is real and what isn't!"
She halted her steps, spinning on her heel and stomping right back up to him, till her eyes were staring back into his own. "Is that what happened to you?"
Denials that he had planned just dried up at the back of his throat. He couldn't tell her. Not here. Preferably not ever.
"Is that what made you kill my sister? Because you couldn't tell if she was real or not?"
Okay. That's it. "Get this straight, Anna. I did not kill my wife!"
He never really noticed when it started, but the townspeople, or rather his projections, began converging on them, their hollow eyes glued grimly on Anna. One of them - a guard, by the uniform - reached for the girl's shoulder.
"Hey, hands off!" Jack snapped, brushing the man's hand away.
Then it was as if he had broken the cord of restraint on his subconscious, because the very next moment, the townspeople were grabbing onto Anna's arms, holding her back.
"Jack, what's-hey!" One projection yanked on her bun, causing it tumble out into two braids.
"Let her go!" He stepped forward, ready to push them off, but other projections behind suddenly had their hands on him too, holding him away from the brunette. He struggled, but they were too strong. It was a protection mechanism the subconscious had for the consciousness. Like white blood cells attacking an infection, they would prevent his interference if necessary.
"Jack!" The anxiety in her voice had heightened considerably. He couldn't blame her - the projections had murder written all over them. She tried to wriggled out, but they held her fast. "Jack! Wake me up! Wake me up!"
"I can't!" He hollered back. He was starting to think perhaps this was indeed i'll conceived.
Then he saw her. A blue hood was drawn over her head, but there was no mistaking her almost regal posture apart from the multitudes of faces. The projections that had swarmed around them cleared a path for her as she strode briskly forward. Her eyes were glowing blue, her lips drawn in a harsh, straight line.
Jack could only curse and swear, because he knew that he couldn't stop her, and he couldn't stop Anna from seeing her.
The girl's eye widened in shock, almost ceasing her struggle against the projections. "Elsa?"
Elsa didn't respond. She simply marched forward toward her sister, who staring at her as if she had just seen a ghost. Not completely inaccurate, actually.
The blonde then raised an arm, drawing back a sleeve to reveal her hand. A bare hand glowing blue.
"Elsa! Wait! It's me, Anna!"
Elsa's expression didn't change, except maybe to harden.
"Elsa!" It was his turn to cry out. Her gaze only flickered briefly to him, before turning full onto the screaming girl. "Elsa! It's your sister! Please! Just let her-"
All Jack saw was a large crystal sword manifest in Elsa's hand before she plunged it into her sister's ribs.
The official name of his job was 'Point man', but Kristoff liked to think of himself as a fixer-upper. Not that he needed fixer-upping (his whole family thought he did, but whatever), but that he was the guy that fixed stuff up. Think of dream extraction as making a movie - the architect was like the scriptwriter and set designer, Jack was the director and actor, and he was the guy who hustled around to make sure every went according to plan. He didn't exactly like playing administrative officer, but Jack had a tendency to be a little too off-world to always keep track of important, albeit dull, things, like money and groceries. In both dream space and reality, he was the guy who tugged the PASIV suitcase around, replacing the tubes and needles when necessary, or charging it up before the next extraction. He was the one who followed protocol, while Jack was the one that almost always flipped his lid.
As wonderfully prepared as he was, Kristoff did have one flaw. He was terrible at human relationships, which is why he usually left Jack do the threatening and negotiating when they entered the subject's dream. In his opinion, people pretty much sucked, thus it's little surprise that his best friend was an animal. Perhaps that was the reason his white-haired colleague confided so little into him, because he didn't know how to relate to someone with that kind of background. So most of what he knew of Jack Frost was that he was an excellent extractor, and he had a crazy projection of a wife that popped in on the job at times.
The second piece of information came in handy in explaining why the newly recruited architect awoke with a sob and half-scream two whole minutes early, grasping onto the fabric over her stomach. It however did not provide him with any guidance I how he should comfort distressed young females.
"Why couldn't I wake up?" she demanded, wild-eyed, her voice quavering. "If it's just a dream, why couldn't I wake up?"
He wasn't sure if the question was directed to himself, or to Jack, or if it was rhetorical, but he just gave an answer anyway. "There was still two minutes on the timer." He pointed at the red numbers on the screen of the PASIV. "You can't wake up till it's over. Unless you die in the dream, of course."
The word 'die' made her turn blanch, and for a moment, Kristoff feared that she might throw up. But her focus shifted away from her vestiges of the pain towards his bleary-eyed co-worker in the opposite lawn chair. Her lips curled downwards.
"Why's Elsa in your subconscious?" she was practically spitting out the words. "What is my sister doing in your consciousness?"
"Wait." Kristoff blinked, then looked more closely at the glowering brunette, then at Jack. "Sister? You got the sister to be the architect?"
"Jack, what does Elsa have to do with dream-sharing?" The girl continued to pester, almost desperately. "What happened? Why was her hand glowing blue in the dream? You have to tell me."
The white-haired man barely acknowledge her, yanking out his tubes before rising from his chair and hurrying off, muttering, "Where's that totem..."
"Where's what?" Anna screeched, and since Kristoff was literally crouching next to her, the sound smashed quite painfully against his eardrums, making him winced. While he learnt over the years that Jack had issues, he wished that taking time to sort out those 'issues' didn't become equivalent to leaving him, the social retard, with the hard stuff. For example, near-hysterical twenty-something art student with a strange lock of white hair in her brown mop.
He didn't know exactly how to comfort the girl, or confront Jack, so he settled for trying to distract her. "He's getting his totem." Her gaze fell back on his, so he took it as a good sign. "A totem's like a reality-anchor. Something to prove that you're not dreaming."
"L-like what?" The stuttering was faint, but he caught it. She hadn't completely recovered from the trauma.
"Like this." He stuck a hand into one of his coat pocket, pulling out the incisor molar he kept on his person at all times.
"A half-decayed tooth?" She pulled away, covering her nose.
"Hey, it works," he defended his totem, slightly offended. "It's one of Sven's first teeth."
"Sven? Who's that? Your son or something?"
That threw him off. He had heard many speculations about what Sven was - someone even once postulated that Sven might even have been a rock - but never that.
"Sven isn't human," he told her pointedly, "and before you suggest it - yes, he's a living, breathing creature. And no, he's not my alter-ego."
"Alter-ego?"
"Blame Rider."
Anna didn't inquire further into what that statement meant. "So, how does it work?"
She reached towards it as if to examine it herself, but he pulled his palm away. "Uh, I can't let you touch it."
"Why not?"
"Only I know the weight and the feel of the totem. Only I know each curve, each split, each chip in it at the back of my hand - or rather, in the palm. That way, even if I'm in someone else's dream, I can just hold onto this," he tapped the tooth with his index finger, "and I'll know that it isn't real. It helps that very few people actually know what Sven is - that way, they can't recreate the tooth perfectly."
When 'near-hysterical twenty-something' went quiet, he became certain she wasn't quite listening anymore. She clambered off the recline chair, prepared to pursue the other man. "I'm need answers."
"Whoa, whoa, hold your horses, feisty-pants." Kristoff held her back by her arm. "Jack's crazy, but he has his reasons. Considering you're 'the sister', he's probably putting off explanation for your safety."
"My safety?" she repeated incredulously. "Christopher, it's just a dream!"
"It's Kristoff," he corrected with slight annoyance. "And there's nothing more dangerous than handling the mind."
"No kidding," she scoffed, as she pried his hands off her own. "Jack has one hell-hole of twisted, perverted mind." Pulling the needle from her wrist - Kristoff winced at how roughly she did that. Was it necessary to treat the wires that way? - she said, "I'm done here. Finished. Terminer."
"Wait? What?" His jaw slackened as she pushed herself off the chair, gathering her coat and her bag from the nearby table.
"I'm not working with a psycho, and honestly, I don't know why you do." She cast a dark look towards the office which Jack had disappeared into. "He's nuts, alright. My sister would never hurt me."
Turning on heel, she marched promptly out of the warehouse without another word.
Kristoff sighed as he watched her shut the door behind her. Humans.
Once this job was over, he was going to use all the money he had earned over the years to buy Sven and him a huge patch of land somewhere in the Alps, and stay away from confusing bipeds for the rest of his life.
For people whose eyes just glaze over at all the new words-
Inception Lingo Dictionary:
Extraction - Stealing secrets by infiltrating dreams
Extractor - The Main Information Thief/Burglar/Di Caprio
Subject/Mark - Target of the Extraction
Dreamer - Person who creates the world/environment in the dream; not necessarily the Architect
Architect - Person who designs the world/environment in the dream and all that happens in it (a.k.a. Anna's job)
Point Man - Not very sure actually, the Inception wiki doesn't say, but it's Kristoff's job. I'm just assuming it means the guy who carries the PASIV around. Don't worry about it.
Projections - 'People' that appear in the dream world usually created by the subconscious of the subject
PASIV - The 'dream machine' (I shall use this name often. It rhymes)
Totem - Kristoff explained it, but yeah - 'an object that acts an anchor to reality'
(Partial) Quoting inception - this idea has been possessing me.
The dreamworld that Anna constructed is actually based on Arendelle, and more specifically, the 'First Time in Forever' sequence. Except the dark turn at the end of it.
That said, Rosenberg Castle does exist (somewhere in Norway I think), but it looks nothing like the Arendelle Castle.
I'm killing myself trying to think of a good totem for Jack, because it's so hard! (The guy's favorite thing is a freakin' staff! It can be a totem, but it's not the best because of it's size.)
Do tell if you don't understand the dream explanations. I don't know if I did it as well as the film.
Next Chapter: Inception Team Assembles. (Hint: One of the members was mentioned here.)
Mailbox:
KAMIKAKES: Oh, yay! No probs.
NaomilovesJELSA: I like Kristanna very much, so I don't like Janna stories - no way I'll ever write one.
the fan man: I guess whether you understand this story will be decide how well I've written it, since you've never seen the film (warning, huge spoilers, because some parts of the story are very close.) . This story will is likely to still be an on-off thing, because I haven't developed it much (compared to the Odds of Five or even Once and Future) - like Jack's stupid totem. Grr...
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