Everything That Is Real (Comes Around)

Part Fourteen

            Ariadne blinked and took in her surroundings. The city was bright and lit up by a clear blue sky like it was the middle of the day. Projections were moving around her and she held her breath for a moment, waiting to see if they would react right away. There was no movement and no one looked at her and she breathed a sigh of relief. Down the street she could see Cobb making his way toward her. He gestured to the left and made his way down the alley. She knew where he was going and she followed quickly though not so much as to drawn attention to herself. Eames and Arthur were already there when she joined Cobb. They all seemed a little uneasy.

            “All right, let's do this,” Cobb said and Ariadne took a deep breath and released it. “Eames, you need to go meet her as Dave. She won't go anywhere without you. We'll stay close behind because as soon as you meet with her the projections are going to attack. We'll have a car off to the side that you can duck into. From there it's just a matter of feeding her paranoia until she agrees that the panic room is the best bet.”

            “They'll be looking for me,” Arthur said. “If things get too heavy I'll draw them away.”

            “You'll lead them on a merry chase?” Eames asked grinning.

            “Something like that,” he replied not taking the bait.

            “The longer we stay, the higher the chance that Susana will realize she's dreaming,” Cobb said. No one said a word as Eames stood in front a mirror and before her eyes he changed into Dave. It still amazed her whenever he forged into a different person. It was an eerie sight. They moved through the maze and found Susana standing on the corner looking impatient. They were within earshot and Arthur and Cobb already had their guns in hand. No one knew the maze better than her, that was what Cobb had said when he told her she was coming under, and if they were all distracted by the projections then she had to guide them.

            “There you are,” Susana hissed. “I've been waiting out here forever. I know you had to run off and take care of some personal business but I'm not paying you to do your own thing.”

            “I'm sorry,” Eames said with Dave's voice and things suddenly got tense. “What are your plans for the day?”

            “They're catching on a lot faster than I thought they would,” Cobb muttered.

            “I'll draw their attention and you get the car ready. This is going to get ugly fast,” Arthur said and he moved into the shadows. Ariadne watched him for a moment before she looked back. These projections felt so different from any other she had seen before.

            “Cobb, I'm not sure these are going to react the way we think they are,” she whispered as they all seemed to be looking in the direction of Arthur.

            “I agree. There's something very wrong here. The sooner we get into that van, the better I'll feel,” Cobb said. “I think you should drive.”

            “Are you insane?” Ariadne asked and she really thought he had completely lost his mind.

            “No, I'm serious. Something isn't right and I want to be able to fight. I need you to drive.” He handed her the keys and she felt a little sick to her stomach. Nevertheless she took the keys and they moved toward the car as Eames talked to Susana. That was when the first gunshot fired and everything went chaotic. Eames covered Susana as she screamed and from the side Arthur was firing as he cleared a path for them. Cobb opened the door to the van and Eames eased Susana into it as the gunfire erupted. Arthur moved through the masses that were trying to attack him before it all seemed to slow down for her. There was an armed projection moving at his back with a gun raised. If Arthur went down the entire dream would collapse and the job would be over. Ariadne was about to scream that he had to turn around when he turned just in side to see it. His eyes widened before the projection shot him in the shoulder instead of the head. He reeled back in pain before he shot the projection back. Cobb pulled him into the car and Ariadne started to race through the streets.

            “What the hell was that? Who were those people? Who are these people?” Susana asked in a panic as Cobb moved over to look at Arthur who was wincing in pain.

            “Friends of mine from the old days,” Eames said. “Someone must be trying to hurt you.” Eames tried to plant the first seed of doubt to feed her paranoia.

            “No, that can't be true, it can't be. No one would dare come after me, not after what I did to the last person who did,” she said and her voice was dark. Cobb looked up and moved next to her.

            “Ma'am, I only know what Dave has told me but you need to tell me everything. Maybe someone working for this other person is gunning for revenge,” he said and it was so hard for Ariadne to focus on driving when she could hear Arthur in pain. There was nothing they could do though, he could not wake up, or everything would be in vain. He was going to suffer and that made her heart ache.

            “Pull over, I'm going to drive,” Eames said and she nodded. They switched as Eames took the wheel and they began to move through the maze. He seemed to know that she could not focus.

            “Who is she? She doesn't look like someone from the old days,” Susana said and her voice was cold.

            “She does our research,” Cobb said lying flawlessly. “She's the best at what she does but we weren't able to find out anything about this man you're talking about.” Ariadne hardly had the focus to go along with the lie as she moved over to Arthur.

            “I don't understand,” he hissed. “They had a clear shot, why did they shoot my shoulder?” She did not have an answer for him so she took off her scarf.

            “This is going to hurt,” she muttered before she tied it around the wound. From the way he hissed and clenched his jaw, she knew it hurt much more than he was letting on. Susana went on to explain how the last person who had tried to attack her ended up very much dead after a long interrogation. A realization sank into Cobb's eyes as he looked back at Arthur. She was describing torture and how she enjoyed every second of it. Her subconscious was not only trained but twisted so that its first reaction was not just to kill but to make the kill as painful as possible.

            “It looks like we've lost them for now,” Susana muttered. “I'll find out who they are and make them pay. No one goes after Susana Mitchell and gets away with it.” Another shot rang out and Eames swerved to keep from going off the road. The motion slammed Ariadne against the side of the van and she winced when she reached back and felt blood. Eames drove into a dark section of the city to one of the first hiding spots Ariadne had built into the dream. They rushed out of the car and Eames took Susana to the back room so he could try and get her to reveal more about what she had done in the past. Cobb eased Arthur, who was trying so hard to stand tall, out of the car.

            “So now we know her projections want to torture us. Great,” Arthur deadpanned.

            “Are you going to be all right?” Cobb asked and Arthur kept his face blank.

            “We need to finish the job,” was all he said and Ariadne knew that he was not going to admit anything. Cobb seemed to know it as well because he left to join Eames and Susana, hoping to add some fuel to the fire. Ariadne wanted to say something that would help, she wanted to comfort him in some way, she wanted to ease the obvious pain he was in, but nothing came to mind. Even an 'I'm sorry' felt hollow. So instead Ariadne reached forward and squeezed his hand. Arthur opened his eyes and looked down at their hands; nothing in his expression changed. “If they get a hold of you I want you to kill yourself without a second thought.”

            “What are you talking about? You're going to need all the help you can get in here,” she said and Arthur shook his head.

            “If you won't pull the trigger, I will. I will not stand by and let this sick woman's psyche torture you or anyone else,” he said. Ariadne wanted to disagree and fight him on the matter but one look at him and she knew he was deadly serious. He would sooner put a bullet in her or anyone's head and leave himself to rot. It was like any of the other jobs they’d taken, in which Arthur would sit by and let himself get torn to pieces while he used his last bullet to get everyone else out. So she nodded and that seemed to satisfy him as far as an answer went. “Go see if they need help.” Ariadne stood and walked toward the back room where Eames stood next to Susana while Cobb continued to try to convince her she was in danger.

            “No one can hurt me, they wouldn't dare,” she insisted and Ariadne knew they were going to need more time to convince her that she needed to go to her panic room. She glanced over her shoulder and watched as Arthur seemed to withdraw inside himself to deal with the pain. There were still twenty two hours left of the dream and he was going to be in agony the entire time. And the more Susana ranted about the horrible things she had done to people in the past, the tighter the knot in Ariadne's stomach formed. This woman was going to torture them in this dream and if she ever found them in the real world she would do the same. It was enough that she thought about pulling the trigger now but when Cobb looked over his shoulder at her she knew that they needed her. And that knowledge was enough to keep her finger off of the trigger. For now.

***

            This was not the first time Arthur had been shot. The number of times this had happened during dream jobs were so many that he had since lost count. In reality, however, there were only four times that a real bullet had passed through his flesh. Considering how long he had been doing this job, most people were amazed at how he seemed to walk away with almost no wounds. There were a few times when the group had been taken by surprise and things had gone bad. The pain did not linger because there was always someone there willing to put him out of his misery. In a dream it was a bullet between the eyes as soon as possible. It was cruel to let someone suffer in a dream when waking them up was so easy. Most of the time they had just woken him up. In the real world his connections in the criminal world brought him plenty of doctors and painkillers so strong that he would spend days staring into space. That was the crucial part of all of his interactions with guns: there was always something to ease the pain.

            This time was different. He was the dreamer, they only had one shot at this, and there was nothing anyone could do to ease his pain. So Arthur rested his head against the wall and tried to focus on the cool metal on his back, on their next move. The shot was clean and the bullet had gone right through. The bleeding was the thing that they were having trouble controlling. A shot at such a short range had blasted a hole in his flesh. They found some bandages lying around but even then he knew that the wound was still bleeding. The projections enacting Susana's taste for torture was not something they had expected. Projections could mirror a person to an extent. Cobb had projected Mal and she had become something else. She had been twisted, had become something Cobb could not control, something deadly. If Cobb could twist one projection like that then what was to stop a person from doing it to the entirety of their mind? These projections moved like a unit but he had a feeling they could easily break away and work alone. They were organized in a way that he had never seen before. They were in trouble because not only were they being hunted by projections but they had the intension of making the death as painful as possible.

            “We're getting nowhere fast,” Cobb said as he walked over with Ariadne and closed the door behind them. “She is convinced that they must be after us since no one would cross her.”

            “Maybe those bragging rights will come in handy,” Arthur said and he hated the looks that they gave him. “And I'm fine, I'll be fine.”

            “What do you mean?” Ariadne asked thankfully not pursuing the issue farther.

            “No one is perfect at covering their tracks and it's the reason we're here in the first place. I can almost guarantee that on top of the information that Fischer wants, there is information out there about other things that could incriminate her,” he said while Cobb and Ariadne exchanged glances. “If nothing else it will give Eames and I time to disappear.” No one added anything because they knew it was true. Dave had gotten a good luck at both of them and Susana would use her power to track them down. If what she said was true they would have to cease to exist rather than just disappear. Eames emerged from the room, still in the guise of the bodyguard, not long after.

            “I'm starting to convince her that she needs to go somewhere safe. How long before the projections close in?” A gun shot fired and broke one of the windows, sending shards of glass to the ground. “I guess that answers that question.”

            “Time to move,” Cobb said and he raced over to the van to get things ready. Ariadne knelt in front of Arthur and offered a hand.

            “May I have this dance?” Her joke made Arthur roll his eyes but he took her hand and let her help him to his feet. The world spun a bit and he had to blink back spots. He was losing blood a lot faster than he had thought. “Are you okay?”

            “Yes,” he lied and steadied himself. Arthur walked toward the van but stopped to shoot a projection that was taking aim at them from the broken window. More shots rang out as Eames pulled Susana into the van and Ariadne climbed into the passenger seat. When they were all loaded into the car Cobb stepped on the gas, rushing the van forward and turning onto the road so fast that for a moment Arthur swore they were riding on two wheels and not four. . They were on their way to the next location and there were only four total. Arthur was not sure what would happen if they could not convince this woman to take them to the safe room soon. More gunfire made Cobb swerve a little as he tried to make his way through traffic while more projections chased them.

            “Are they still following us?” Susana asked as she covered her ears with her hands.

            “It’s because they want to hurt you,” Eames said using the guard’s voice. There were times when Arthur found it hard to remember that Eames was in there at all. “We need to get somewhere safe until we can figure out what to do next.”

            “What about you? Doesn't your little posse have somewhere we can hide out?” she asked.

            “Several places in fact,” Arthur said as he looked over the edge of the window as cars gained on them. “But things are getting complicated.”

            “Like I give a shit what happens to you,” Susana spit out. Arthur had expected nothing less. The gun fire was closer now and he could hear it hit the car. They were trying blow out the tires.

            “Move to the side,” he ordered and for half a second the facade of Dave faltered.

            “What are you doing?” Eames asked. Arthur did not respond when he opened one side of the two way back door to the van. The movements of Cobb's driving made it hard to keep steady but he held up two pistols and fired. Another round of shots came at him and he ducked behind the closed door before he calmed his nerves and focused. Arthur moved into view again and fired two shots, watching as the tires of their pursuers exploded and caused them to run off the road. The van jerked and Arthur fell back. He nearly bit a hole through his tongue as he tried to hide the pain. Eames slammed the door shut but did not say a word. Ariadne turned in the passenger seat and looked at him. She was worried but he did not say anything; he just adjusted the bandages on his shoulders and reminded himself that when this was over the pain would be gone. They moved to the next location and Susana seemed much more rattled now. When they got to the second warehouse Cobb wasted no time before he jumped out of the car, opened the doors, and knelt in front of the shaking Susana.

            “Ms. Mitchell, we are here to protect you but we can't do that if we can't regroup. Do you have somewhere we can go, somewhere secret, somewhere safe?” he asked and there was a level of desperation in his voice that Arthur knew was not an act. The word 'secret' though was the thing that needed to be said. Somewhere safe where she would keep all of her secrets, that was the idea that they were trying to trick her mind with. Susana stared at him until they all heard the sound of more gunfire.

            “All right, all right. I have a panic room in my apartment,” she confessed.

            “We need to go there. Please, Susana, please let us go there,” Eames said playing the part of the worried bodyguard with no problems. The projections moved in closer and Cobb insisted that Ariadne drive again. Arthur knew that nothing short of an army was coming after them. Eames tried to help when he could but he had to make sure his focus was on Susana. Dave was willing to die for her and he had to keep up that guise. When the apartment building finally came into focus Arthur counted no less than six cars following them. They needed to get to the second maze and get some space between them and their pursuers. He raised both of his guns to fight off the projections with his wounded shoulder screaming at him, blood running down his arm. They managed to close and block the door.

            “That won't hold them long. We need to move,” Cobb said as they rushed through the lobby of the building. The sound of a single gunshot froze Arthur in place and he turned around slowly.