Title: Living the Dream
Author: Saydria Wolfe
Fandom: Inception
Characters: Arthur, Eames, John Sheppard
Prompt: Sword
Word Count: 772
Warning: No beta
Note: In my head Eames’s sword is the Sword of Gryffindor directly from the movie. I wanted it to come up but it didn’t make sense in the story for it to do so =/
Summary: It should be noted that John Sheppard is a bastard that would do anything for Atlantis. Honestly.
It says something about the extraction that Eames dreaming himself a motherfucking sword and cutting off a projection’s head is the best damn part so far. Okay, no. Correction: That Eames cuts off the projection’s head and it stays down is the best part of this so far.
“What the fuck?!?” Arthur cries again, because it bares repeating, gives himself an AK and going full auto on these assholes. He thought of using a flamethrower but that could come to bite them in the ass too easily and he is not going to make this situation worse.
He’s never seen projections like these.
They look like Marilyn Manson done in shades of silver, blue, and white with bonus face tattoos for funsies. They swarm like fucking bees or maybe sharks? And if you shoot one and it doesn’t immediately die it zaps life or something from the one beside it and they both keep coming.
Beheading seems to work though, so there’s that.
“He’s supposed to be a scientist!” Arthur protests on the reload. “A civilian scientist!”
Simple extraction, they said. Just get the address for a drop, they said. Then Eames heard the codename for the drop was ‘Atlantis’ and of course they were in, dammit. His fucking nerd, honestly.
“Even I couldn’t dream this big, darling.” Eames huffs, dodging a fucking palm-mouth and decapitating his dance partner on the backswing.
That brings Arthur up short. “What? You think these things are real?”
The last of this hunting party falls and Eames leans back against the house’s nice white siding to catch his breath. “Somewhere, yeah. Nothing else makes much sense, does it? These are very complicated projections to just be made up. Could your government have made something like this?”
Arthur wants to deny it adamantly but, well, his government did come up with PASIV. And Somnacin. So, “Maybe?
“I don’t see the use in it, though.” Not that that is necessarily a factor. There are no doubt factions in the military-industrial complex so senseless that they would put lasers on sharks if it gave them half an advantage.
Or, you know, if it looked cool.
None of that is actually important right now. “Did you at least get it?”
Eames shoots him a rebuking look. “You don’t think I’d trigger the mark’s advanced security for nothing, do you? Of course I bloody got it! Hell if I know that it means, though.”
Eames holds out a well marked interoffice envelope and Arthur snatches it out of his hand, ready to memorize anything–
But. That.
“What? Are they like, hieroglyphs?” There are eight symbols on the page but they are nothing like any alphabet Arthur’s ever seen. Nothing like anything he’s ever even heard of.
“Not hieroglyphs. Petroglyphs, maybe. Or star constellations? That third one looks like the Big Dipper, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Arthur just sighs as a horrifyingly familiar snarl sounds behind them and checks his watch. They have half an hour left on the clock and they can’t even shoot each other out of it because they used Yusuf’s mix for the extra time. “Hunker down or run?” He asks his partner.
“Run,” Eames declares immediately and without hesitation. “Run like the world is on fire.”
With a nod, Arthur leads them across the happy little suburban lane, over a hedgerow, and into a two-storey with the United States flag flying out front. In the basement, down a hidden staircase and through a reinforced steel safe door there’s a tunnel. The tunnel runs for a mile underground to a small pier with a speed boat tied to the moorings.
Normally Arthur scoffs at Eames’ insistence for non-sensical bolt holes randomly distributed around every map build.
Now he realizes Eames should -and probably will- insist on them more often.
They are on the boat and it’s started when they get buzzed by a plane from above. A weird-ass fighter jet is pink, of all fucking colors, that sounds like a mosquito on steroids.
Arthur and Eames both watch almost helplessly as the thing banks, goes weightless for a moment, and turns right around to meet them head on. A beam of white light shoots down from the belly, scanning the water toward them. The beam hits the bow of the boat and moments later a man appears, dressed in BDUs and combat boots.
Their mark.
Their fucking mark, complete with that inky mess on his head and stupid nose that makes him look like some crazy-ass bird. The probably not-really-a-scientist rocks back on his heels casual as shit. He shrugs off their wordless disbelief and informs them, “You’re hired.”
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