Chapter Text
FEBRUARY
Eames walked along the overly-bright, sterile hallway. His fingers found the poker chip in his pocket, next to the forged passport with Arthur's picture, new social security number, date of birth, and the name "Arthur Bishop" printed on it. "Bishop" was Eames's original last name, and Arthur would just be galled to learn that he'd given him his old name. When he found the irritating son of a bitch. Because he would.
This excursion – well, it was just a formality really, just a way to turn every stone. There was no way Arthur was here.
It was two weeks since Eames had gotten the call that had cut off suddenly with a choking gasp. The number hadn't come up. The only number that was ever blocked on Eames's phone was that of the only man who knew how to thoroughly block his contact information. In all the years he had known Arthur, he'd never found a way around that block.
He'd tried to call, text, email any and all of Arthur's secure and not-so-secure contacts for the week after that. He'd called Cobb, asking if he'd heard from Arthur. 'He had a job out east,' Cobb had said. 'Why, did you need him?' Cobb had been with his kids for two years now, and had gone on to become a legitimate dream-therapist and professor. He'd lost his instinct for trouble except for where it concerned his children. Cobb's use to the world was of a different sort now – a more noble one, possibly. But of no help to Eames.
"This way, please," the orderly said, opening the door to the morgue. The orderly was professional, stone-faced, and showing no trace of sympathy yet. Eames had forged some missing person documents and come stateside, the last place he knew Arthur had been. He had access to just about every morgue, hospital or legal document he needed.
Eames kept tabs and did it very well, but was shit at it as compared to Arthur, as most people were. So he'd followed every John Doe lead he could find. The latest one (dark haired male, scarred, between the ages of 25 and 30 – he knew Arthur was 32 but easily passed as younger,) had led him to the county morgue in a Georgia town.
He stepped inside the room full of cold drawers and waited, quiet and tense. For a moment a feeling of unreality swept him. Eames had done his share of IDing the bodies of work associates. It always felt dream-like.
The orderly pulled out one of the drawers and Eames forced himself to step up, as professional hands unzipped the black bag.
Short dark curls framed a young face with a bow-shaped mouth so similar to the one that had occasionally panted across his shoulder that he had to stare a moment. Blood had been cleaned away from a deep slice on the blue-mottled skin of the forehead. They eyes were already sunken behind the lids.
He released the breath he was holding. Someone's son, brother, husband, lover. But not Arthur. He shook his head.
The orderly gave him a small smile and showed him out.
** ** ** **
JANUARY
Arthur had not lost his instinct for trouble, because Arthur had never gone totally legal. He had tried, briefly, to follow Cobb into the overworld of dreamsharing. But as meticulous and exacting as Arthur was, he had little use for other people's rules. He dreamed because he loved it, not because he needed money. Eames's line of work was more to his tastes lately.
The last job was a simple corporate extraction on a mark named Havrey, a museum curator. It had gone well until the actual dreaming part, when Arthur's sense for trouble had flared to life in a field of too-docile projections. The rest of the team he had sussed out far before taking the job and they were all legit as far as he was concerned. He'd gotten his friends in high places to look into them (which he rarely did anymore – so maybe he had sensed something even before the end.)
If he was being played, then his entire team was being played.
The projections of their mark had acted normally until the actual extraction and then they had become too docile, too predictable. Too still. Arthur was on the top level when he saw it: the flicker of the projections as one, as if they existed on a screen instead of as real, vital pieces of a human psyche. He felt cold. The dream felt dead. Arthur felt, for the first time, as if the dreamer had died while he was in the dream.
The projections all froze as one, like they were stuck. One of them started looping, lifting a tea-cup to its lips, putting it down, and doing it again and again. He heard a high-pitched, mechanical whine that split his head wide open more violently than any dream-death and he fumbled for his gun.
Arthur blew his brains out on the first level and woke up topside, fighting the urge to puke his guts up in the small hotel room they'd chosen for the extraction.
The guard, a guy he'd culled from military black ops, was dead at the door, his brains on the wall.
He suppressed the urge to be sick and got to work. The rest of his small team was still under, their bodies jerking and twitching as if trying to wake up. The PASIV was hooked to his team and the mark, as he had left everything. NOT as he had left everything, the mark himself was hooked up to a separate machine, one that Arthur didn't recognize. An actual, whirring machine, that had wires like the PASIV and something that looked like a hard drive.
Arthur slammed the button on the PASIV, setting it to zero and rousing the rest of the two-man, one-woman team. One of the men, an architect named Mr. Allen, came awake vomiting. Then he crumpled from the chair and went into a twitching seizure.
The mark, Havrey, did not wake.
"Get him out," Arthur ordered the other two, pointing to Allen. "We're not alone. I'll take care of the rest, just get yourselves out."
"What the fuck, what the fuck?" the extractor, Yuri, was shouting. He tried to make it to the door alone and stumbled on the body of their guard and then vomited on it. He started to hyperventilate.
"Help me, damn you!" the woman, a pretty redhead named Alice May cried as she tried to lift Allen on her own.
"Fuck," Arthur said. He had to get his team out, but he had to have that gadget they'd all been hooked up to so he could find out what the fuck it was, and he had to have all their backs as they exited, and most of all he had to know who was behind this shit. But Yuri was a coward who was running from his team and Allen was busy seizuring and Alice May was tiny and sick, her lips white as she tried to lift her fallen team-member herself.
Arthur slammed the PASIV shut, handed it to the girl, and in a surge of adrenaline threw Allen over both shoulders. Allen jerked and twisted and almost made him stumble down the stairs. He coughed and writhed, getting foamy drool down the front of Arthur's jacket that he wouldn't even care about later. He had to get back and get that fucking machine.
But the team came first.
He got them all to the garage of the hotel, shoved Allen onto a trembling and hysterical Yuri and told him, "Man up. Get out of here and get him help."
"What the fuck, what the fuck?" Yuri babbled, as if those were the only words left in his vocabulary.
"That's what I'm going to find out," Arthur said over his shoulder as he ran back toward the stairs. "Get out of here."
He couldn't leave without the device the mark had been hooked up to. It had done something to them, something he'd seen and felt and did not understand. He wondered if Havrey was in on this.
He made it to the third floor when he heard footsteps running down to meet him. This was no one he knew; his team was already escaping. This had to be whoever had set them up.
rthur wrenched open the door to the third-floor hallway of the hotel and threw himself through it, pulling it closed behind him. Someone shouted "In there!" and Arthur ran, shoving past two hotel guests making their way back to their room. The door behind him flew open and a group of men in flak jackets came after him.
Arthur ran towards a man carrying a tray of room service. He ripped the metal tray and a stainless steel fork from the man's hands, spilling plates and glass everywhere, and then dodged around the corner of the hallway. He pressed himself back against the wall and waited. He had his gun, but could not fire it among civilians.
The first man came around after him, and Arthur swung the metal tray into his face. It made a tremendous, reverberating "BWONG" sound that would almost be comical if he wasn't being hunted by a group of unknown assailants with unknown weapons.
The man fell, and Arthur began the count.
One down.
He dropped the metal tray—it would only slow him down—held onto the fork, and ran towards the next door.
** ** ** **
FEBRUARY
Sixteen days since Eames had heard Arthur gasp over the phone before the line went dead. Sixteen days, five states, two morgues, ten hospitals, three jails, fifty three forged documents. Eames had been a doctor, a special agent (that one wasn't too hard to do,) a psychologist, an American detective, a concerned brother.
He was a good tracker. He was no Arthur, but then no one was. He liked to think maybe he was second best and finding people. He was sure that Arthur was still alive, just because dying wasn't Arthur's style. Arthur was going to live long enough so that all of the injuries of his youth would be aches and pains of old age. Arthur was going to live long enough to tell stories to neighborhood kids about the Golden Days of dreamsharing. About going under with the legendary Cobbs, about getting chased through mad towns, dodging bullets, extracting from the mob, jumping out of windows, firing his Glock out of moving cars, and his torrid affair with the mysterious forger. Adventuring into old age was Arthur's style.
Not dying anonymously and never being found.
The next John Doe on his list was laid up in a hospital on the East coast. Another "dark-haired male, scars but no ID, badly injured, 25-30, lucid but with amnesia."
Eames liked that lead a lot, because it would be just like Arthur to feign amnesia in order to keep his identity private while unable to be released. He didn't like the sound of "badly injured" but it was better than dead. Lucid was good, too. And if Arthur had his shit together enough to play the amnesia card, even better.
Eames got intuitions, and they were rarely wrong. Mr. East Coast John Doe was giving him one such intuition.
He got on the plane to New York.
** ** ** **
JANUARY
Two, Arthur thought, as he stuck the fork into the shoulder of the man who had cornered him in the stairwell.
The man had grabbed him by the arm and twisted. Arthur had just used the momentum to turn and stab him, and this dickhead was lucky he hadn't gone for his throat or his eye. The reason he hadn't was because they weren't shooting at him. He did bash the guy's head into a wall, however, knocking him out. Then he kicked him a few stairs down, so it would seem like he'd gone down the stairs instead of back up to the room.
He still wanted that device. They would expect him to have gone down the stairs anyway.
He heard the door to the stairwell fly open one floor down, where he'd just left. He heard their footfalls descending the stairs, as he had planned. His breath burning in his lungs, he lunged up the stairs, taking three at a time. Fourth floor. Fifth. Sixth. The room had been in the seventh.
When he got to the door of the seventh floor, he unholstered his Glock, preparing for ambush. Tried to lick his dry lips and still his hands. Took a second to breathe. Then pushed the door open slowly.
The hallway was empty. The door to the room they had been in in stood open. Arthur made his silent way down the hall, gun clutched in both steady hands. He was alert and just as ready to hold his fire as to shoot.
Since the door was already open, he peered into the room instead of bursting through it with the element of surprise.
The room stank of vomit, blood and chemicals. He stepped over their dead guard. In the center of a circle of chairs was the PASIV device, which was still hooked to Havrey, who was inexplicably hooked up to the whirring machine that they—whoever they were--had fed into them.
There was no time to look at it now. There wasn't even time to call for backup – not that he knew anyone to call who could get to him in time. Cobb was out of the business, and on the other side of the country. Eames was on another continent. Later, he'd call for help, at least in finding out what the fuck this was.
For now, he just grabbed both devices. Havrey did not wake, and Arthur didn't have time to wait around to question him. He made for the fire escape.
He was in the alley below the hotel, just about having caught his breath, when they came around the corner and saw him.
Arthur turned and fled.
** ** ** **
FEBRUARY
"He didn't have any ID," the doctor informed Eames as they sat in a private room, the late afternoon sun streaming in through clinical looking blinds. Dr. Grisham was a young woman, small, dark-haired and with perpetual dark streaks under her eyes. She looked smart, sharp, kind, but not easily-fooled. Luckily, Eames's job was fooling the not-easily-fooled.
Today he was the husband of the missing person, because Arthur would hate that.
The window outside showed a field of winter-storm white, dotted with winter-dead trees. Eames was exhausted. He'd slept only a little on the plane before coming right down here.
"Some kids found him in an old train-yard. He looked at first like someone who'd been purposely left for dead, but the more I examined him the more I thought that wasn't the case. None of his injuries looked like they had intent to kill. The fact that he was dangerously hypothermic and unresponsive really did seem accidental. We thought at first that he was robbed and possibly left to die. Just not purposely left for dead. Whoever attacked him could have killed him, but didn't. We found traces of ketamine in his system, and further investigation revealed a puncture on his back. Like someone had hunted him on safari. Ketamine slows the system down enough to preserve it through hypothermia, so the fact that he was drugged with that specific chemical is probably what saved his life. We estimated he'd been there for about a day. He was in a coma for about three days, and then he didn't speak for a few days after he woke."
"What did he say?" Eames asked. "When he did start speaking." His own voice sounded dry and too quiet. He swallowed hard.
"Not much, and nothing about himself. He's very polite. Friendly, everyone likes him. But."
Eames gestured for her to go on.
"His injuries are not accidental. Some of them are defensive and not all of them are new. If this is your missing person, then he's involved in some very serious business. Mr. Bishop, I know a dangerous man when I see one. This could end up with the authorities and out of my power. We haven't handed him over because of the extent of his injuries. But without anything to go on, we might have to."
"He's not dangerous," Eames said. "At least not if it's Arthur. Look, you know how things are. People like us, we have to defend ourselves. Also he's military, you see. He's bound to have scars. He served, and it wasn't an easy tour."
She smiled at that, maybe a little bit fooled. It made sense. Everything Eames had forged for his identity was air-tight.
"We were about to hand him over today," she went on. "Not to the authorities, but to a special facility."
Something in Eames stirred then, some sense of foreboding. He wondered if his intuition had been wrong, that he had followed another bad lead and that Arthur was nowhere near this place. "What sort of speciality facility?"
"For sleep disorders," the doctor said.
Eames stood up, agitated. He fished around in his pocket for the forged passport. "Look. Just tell me if this is him before I keep wasting my time," he said, as he slapped it onto her desk.
She glanced at it, turned it towards her, and stared. Then she looked back up at Eames.
"Come with me, Mr. Bishop."
He followed her out of the office and to the elevator. As the doors slid open, a tall nurse with dark hair stepped out and said hello to Dr. Grisham.
"Hello, Emma," the doctor said. "How is Scout?"
"Sleeping," she said. Her eyes suggested something more meaningful than that. Whoever they were talking about was doing something other than natural sleep, that much Eames got.
Emma looked from Dr. Grisham to him, and finally, as he was getting into the elevator, she took a good long look. Her eyes lit up in a kind of revelation that meant nothing to him. She caught the elevator doors before they closed and leaned in.
"Oh my god," she said. "Are you here for Scout?"
Eames was about to say no, but Dr. Grisham gave them both a small smile.
"Scout?" Eames asked.
"You are!" Emma squealed. "Oh my god, you're here for Scout!" And she threw herself at him, twining her arms around his neck and kissing him on the cheek, the picture of unprofessionalism. "My god, finally! What are you, his - his brother? Oh, I don't even care! You're someone."
"All right," Dr. Grisham said. "Let's not get too excited yet. It could still be a mistake." Her eyes said that she knew it wasn't.
"I'm confused," Eames said. "Scout?"
Instead of answering, the nurse named Emma just grabbed him again and squeezed.
** ** ** **
JANUARY
Three, Arthur thought, as he bashed one over the head with a glass bottle from the trash can.
He threw the trash can in his wake as he sprinted into the street.
With both devices tucked under one arm, he ran into the traffic. Jumping up onto the hood of an oncoming car, he took a few deep strides, and then leapt off of it.
Four, he counted as one of his pursuers tried to follow him and instead crashed into the side of the car.
He rounded an intersection and thought for a moment that he had lost them. Then a black car came screaming up beside him and pulled to a stop. The door opened. He had a second to see the man in the passenger seat looking at him with focused intent, and then start to get out of the car, drawing something from the holster at his hip.
Arthur turned the other way and ran, away from the busy streets.
Now they were chasing him in cars instead of on foot, and it was not a small group. He heard a helicopter. Glanced up and didn't see it. What he did see, though, was a man in a flak jacket crouched on a rooftop. He saw him only fleetingly, but he knew what it looked like when someone was aiming something at him.
What the fuck is this, he thought frantically, because this wasn't some small-time rival group. This was something much bigger, something that recalled the days of running from Cobol.
He had to start using his weapon soon, and he couldn't do that on a crowded street. Arthur dodged down another alley, one that was thankfully not a dead-end. He glanced up to the rooftops and saw no one lurking there.
The alley led out to a parking lot, mostly deserted and not yet plowed. A ridiculous winter storm had hit the night before and the snow was thigh-high. New York was a mess. Arthur wondered about the rest of his team, wondered how far they had gotten without him. He hoped that they'd had sense enough to get Allen to a hospital. He would clean up the details of who they were and what they were doing later. They had all been hooked up to the machine he now carried under his arm, but Arthur had the distinct feeling that it was him they were after, and that the rest of his team just happened to be in the way. They were small-time. Arthur knew that he wasn't.
The high snow was going to slow him down, but he had to cross the parking lot and get over the chain-link fence. He had no jacket, hat, gloves or boots – they were all back in the hotel. All he had was his drool-and-vomit stained suit, a red die in his pocket, the PASIV and the mystery device, his cell phone, and the gun.
If they showed up again, he would start shooting whether they opened fire first or not. Now might be a good time to call for help, though. He dug the phone out of his inside pocket and flipped it open.
The next sound he heard was that of an air-pressure rifle being fired. A tuft of snow burst up into a small cloud next to his thigh. Arthur looked down at it and saw a glint of metal in the snow beside him. The air-pressure rifle sounded again, and another dart flew over his head.
He didn't have time to look for the trajectory; he knew the shooter was behind him. He hit the snow, tucked the cell phone away, and started crawling. The snow offered him a little cover, if he kept low like this, tunneling instead of trying to walk.
His breath came harsh and cold. Within ten seconds his fingers were numb and he was desperate to hold onto the mystery device. If he had to, he'd let go of the PASIV first. Whoever was chasing him already knew what it was. He needed to know what was in the machine he'd been hooked up to.
The sound of the air-pressure rifle came again and he heard another chunk of snow fly up, too close.
Arthur turned to look over his shoulder and unholstered the Glock with his free hand. The sun behind him blinded him but he returned fire anyway, to let them know that he was serious. Maybe it would buy him some time.
The shooting stopped, but he realized that it wasn't because he had returned fire. They were just waiting for a clear shot at him. They knew that he couldn't bury himself in the snow and wait all day; and besides, they were only going to close in on him if he didn't keep moving forward.
He made it to the fence on his hands and knees, but had left a clearing in his wake that would make following him a breeze. His arm burned from holding both devices. His hands were numb and raw. A few more minutes in the snow like this and they wouldn't have to shoot him full of ketamine to slow him down.
He threw both devices as far as they could go, without revealing the dark of his suit in the snow. The smaller one, the mysterious one, went over the fence. The PASIV fell back down beside him.
Fuck it. It pissed him off to let go of it after having come this far, but he would never make it over the fence with the PASIV in his hands.
He counted to three, and then launched himself onto the chain-link fence, that was the height of two of him. He made it to the top and was vaulting himself over it when the dart hit him in the shoulder.
Arthur dropped to the other side of the fence, plucked the dart out as quickly as he could, and grabbed the machine.
Ketamine. He could go about fifteen minutes before he fell, or so he had heard, anyway. Depending on the dose.
Up ahead something that looked like a train graveyard loomed in the late afternoon sun. It was littered with torn-up tracks and old, broken down cargo-trains. A field full of potential weapons. Arthur ran towards it.
They came over the fence behind him, confident in his impending incapacitation. Arthur turned and fired his gun.
Five. This one a kill-shot.
Six. To the thigh of the second man.
He thought there were four of them. Maybe five. They went blurry, doubled.
Arthur turned, swayed, stumbled, and then righted himself and kept running.
He ducked into an open train-car and held on to the seat-backs for balance. He had maybe ten minutes left before he fell. There was another open door at the other end of the car. Arthur put the machine down on one of the seats and pulled out his phone.
His hand shook as he turned it on. "Eames," he said into it, and then heard the phone begin its auto-dial.
Three of his pursuers came cautiously into the car and Arthur aimed the Glock. They stopped as one and ducked behind the seats. Arthur fired anyway, hitting one old, torn up leather seat. The second shot went wild as his vision blurred and the world tilted.
Eames answered with a "Yes?" that sounded foggy, like it was coming through a blanket.
Arthur was about to say his name, at least get that much out, when someone grabbed him from behind. He was instantly disarmed, spun around against a shattered window of the train car, and held by the throat. He struggled to hold on to the phone, but the man (whose face he could hardly see by now) plucked it out of his fingers.
Arthur jerked his knee up as hard as it would go into the man's crotch. The man released his throat and doubled over. Arthur kicked him in the chin and heard the sound of teeth breaking.
Seven.
He stumbled over the unconscious man, scrambling for his phone, the Glock, the device. He couldn't find any of them in his darkening vision, by the dim light that filtered in through dirty windows. He was empty-handed. His blood pressure plummeted, he could actually feel it, like a trap-door letting his blood out. His ears rang and hummed; the world faded around the edges.
The three men who had been crouching behind the seats converged on him. Arthur vaguely heard a crunch that he assumed was one of them stepping on his phone. He cast around for his gun, caught sight of it on the floor, and lurched for it. One of the men kicked it away.
He pulled himself to his hands and knees and then scrambled to his feet, but by now he knew he wasn't getting much farther. If he could find a way to take out the last three, he could call for help on one of their phones, at least. Or he could wait it out and hopefully not freeze to death until the sedative wore off. Either way, it didn't look too hopeful. He did wonder why they hadn't killed him yet, and instead of reassuring him, this made him worry more. If they wanted him alive, they probably wanted something from him – and people like this had creative ways of getting what they wanted.
He was at the farthest door of the train when one of them grabbed his arm and jerked him backwards. He lost his balance and heard a bright *pop*. With it came a dull blur of pain as his shoulder was dislocated.
He did see someone's face close to his, though, and he rammed his head forward, smashing the guy's nose with his forehead. He felt the other man's blood run down his face, as hot sparks of pain shot through his head.
He fell again, before he could get out the door. Face-down, he looked under the seats for something, anything he could use as a last-resort weapon. He saw something dark and sharp, and grabbed for it. His hands were trembling and felt too weak to wield anything, but this was a rusty railroad spike and at least it was something.
Arthur pulled himself toward the man he'd just head-butted, raised the spike and brought it down onto the man's calf. It didn't go all the way through, but it did enough. The man screamed, curled in agony, gripping his leg.
Eight.
The last two were keeping their distance from him, which gratified him in a totally useless way. He was completely unarmed, drugged to stupidity, and they were still afraid of him.
The device, the one he had fought so hard to hold onto, had fallen to the ground in the scuffle. Arthur reached for it, grabbed it by one of the wires trailing from it, and pulled it closer.
"He thinks he can still steal it," one of the men said. His voice sounded distant and slow.
Arthur let his eyes close.
"Careful, he's not out yet. Takes longer than that."
"I dosed him for estimated body weight but I thought he'd be bigger. He should be out already."
It was strange hearing them discuss him in such impassive terms while he was lying drugged on the floor of an abandoned train-car.
"He still took out, what, six of our guys? Just go slow."
Eight, Arthur thought, but who's counting?
"Fucker stabbed me!" shouted the guy on the floor. "God, fucker stabbed me! Fuck that, kill him."
"You know we can't yet."
'Yet.' The word stuck in his head. And then he heard the phrase that would have made his skin go cold, if he wasn't already numb.
"He needs to stay alive to spread it to the others."
'It,' he thought, being whatever they did to me. To the whole team. And it spreads through dreamsharing, probably.
Someone prodded him in the ribs with a boot, or maybe the butt of the tranq gun. Arthur didn't move.
"Get the Glitch machine, go real slow."
Glitch machine? Remember that.
He waited until he felt the man's fingers on his neck, checking for a pulse. He felt the man's breath on his face and then he surged up, rallying the last of his strength, and swung the metal machine. It bashed into the man's face, likely breaking his nose and some teeth.
Nine.
Arthur tried to turn over and scramble away, but the last man, the tenth, ignored his fallen comrades and grabbed Arthur by the ankle, dragging him back.
"You are one annoying son of a bitch," the last man said.
Arthur laughed a little. And that was all he had left in him.
** ** ** **
He woke up too hot, and trying to take his clothes off. There was no other thought aside from one of primal creature-hood: cool down to survive, protect his vulnerable parts, try to turn over.
Voices shouted and people touched, prodded, lifted, turned him. He fought to save himself from them, swung with his fists and kicked as hard as he could.
All throughout he had no sense of who he was or even why he was. One thought: Live.
But his assailants held him down, restrained him, pressed things to his face and body, and everything went black and smothering.
Some indeterminable time later, he opened his eyes again and looked at a white, tiled ceiling.
The air was pleasantly warm this time and he was very tired. He ached and throbbed with pain everywhere, but lacked the motivation to get up and do anything about it. He knew what the steady beeping sound meant. He'd been in hospitals before.
He just didn't know when, or why.
Voices floated down the hall. He knew what this meant, too: they were monitoring him and knew he was awake.
Good. Now he would get answers.
A woman's tired face loomed over his, studying him.
"Hello there," she said.
"Hi," he tried to answer, but nothing came out and his throat hurt. On top of that, it felt like someone had taped his lips shut.
"Don't try to talk yet, all right? We'll talk later." She squeezed his hand and prodded at his fingers with something sharp. "Can you feel that?"
He nodded. She moved to the edge of the bed and stuck his foot with something.
"And that?"
He nodded again.
"Good," she said. "You should be fine. You're very lucky."
That's good, he thought.
And waited for the burgeoning flood of understanding.
It didn't come.
** ** ** **
Four days later, as he watched the television and saw news about storms in New York – which he knew he was in – it still didn't come. He'd been here a week.
He knew most of the staff in passing. Dr. Grisham, the small, sharp lady with the dark, tired eyes. The tall, dark nurse Emma, short blond nurse Lizzie, and the mousie brown haired nurse Darlene. And they had no idea who he was.
"What would you like to be called?" Emma had asked him the day before, and he had inexplicably almost told her, 'Darling.' Instead he had just shrugged and asked her what sort of guy he looked like.
"You look like some kind of special agent, like Jason Bourne," she laughed. "Can you imagine? But, the name of the train they found you on was The Scout. We should just call you Scout."
The name 'Scout' had gone around the hospital staff, and soon it was how they referred to him. It was supposed to be against protocol to use names for someone with general amnesia like he had, but they had to call him something. So Scout it was.
The police came to talk to him. Psychiatrists came and went, in the first week. Specialists. The hospital deemed him still too fragile to move and honestly, he was glad for it. The police made him feel too cautious, like he had something to hide. The way they looked at him, at his injuries. The questions they asked about why he thought he'd been attacked. He answered honestly that he didn't know. They asked if he could remember any detail at all. If it was possible that he had enemies. If he remembered any specific enemies. He said no.
He felt deep down that he did. The hospital staff were all very pleasant to "Scout." He, on the other hand, had the feeling that he was someone dangerous. He looked at himself, when he was allowed into the bathroom alone. His body was scarred, and thin, but powerful. He was aware of his own strength. He felt as if he could hurt people if he had to.
So he played up the harmless image, to counteract what he thought was true. It helped. It kept people off his case.
And the truth was he was really terrified of himself. He must have done something very wrong, because no one was looking for him. No one had come to claim him.
** ** ** **
On the eighth day, Dr. Grisham came in to talk with him again when he was done eating (tomato soup and green beans. He'd discovered that he was a vegetarian, much to his surprise.) The TV was off and he was reading a book by Dean Koontz, who he wasn't sure he liked. None of it sounded familiar. He preferred reading over TV, though.
Dr. Grisham pulled up a chair next to his bed and he smiled at her, cheerful and harmless.
"How are you feeling today?" she asked.
"Good."
"Good. So, I've got clearance to ask you a few questions. The head-doctors from the clinic think you might be able to answer better if you didn't feel any pressure."
"Makes sense." He took a sip of orange juice with his good hand. The other one was still in a sling.
She reached into her pocket. "I have something of yours that I want you to look at."
"Okay." He was curious. She made it sound special.
Dr. Grisham held up a small red square that caught in the afternoon sunlight from his window.
Suddenly he was grabbing for it, immediately in a panic, almost vaulting himself out of the bed. He spilled the juice all over himself in his urgency to reach it. He didn't even know what it was yet, just that he needed it.
"Okay, okay Scout," Dr. Grisham said, opening her hand.
"That's not my name," he said, snatching the cube away from her. His breath came hard and fast as he clutched the red square.
Dr. Grisham looked alarmed and cautious. That look of apprehension was a dangerous thing for a man in his position and he couldn't afford the suspicion. He immediately regretted showing anything close to threatening behavior.
Instead of calming himself, he apologized profusely and pulled his knees up, trying to show more fear and confusion than aggression. He couldn't afford to scare them. Definitely couldn't afford to hurt anyone here. And absolutely had to make them think that he couldn't hurt them if he tried. He had no one else but them.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to," he said. "This is mine. It means I'm awake."
"That's all right," she said, her voice soothing as if she were talking to something wild that might attack. "It's yours. A red die that I believe is loaded. You said your name wasn't Scout. Did something come to you?"
He thought. Struggled to remember. Tried to force the words to come as he opened his palm and stared at the die. " I can't, I can't remember, I don't know, I'm sorry."
"It's okay," she said, taking a seat—slowly--on the edge of his bed. "Don't try to force it."
She was quiet as she took a towel from a nearby cart and started cleaning the spilled orange juice from his hospital gown.
"You said it meant that you were awake. Tell me. Do you think that you've had trouble distinguishing dreams from reality in the past?"
He looked at her, shocked into sudden clarity.
"I think I do," he whispered. "I don't know why that is." He rolled the die in his hand over and over. "If I can just look at it for a minute. I think I need you to turn away."
"It's interesting," she said, getting up and doing as he asked. "It always lands on three."
Her words struck fear into him, because somehow he knew that she wasn't supposed to know that. His throat went dry, his eyes felt too hot and this stranger, she knew his secret. He had no idea what it meant. He rolled the die onto the table next to his bed and watched it land on three. He knew it meant he was awake.
He just had no idea why.
** ** ** **
Days passed and he held onto the red die. The doctors clearly now thought him a mental patient with OCD and possibly delusions.
Night times were the worst. He had night terrors every time, but on the ninth day, he woke screaming, in pain, and gushing blood onto the tiles.
He had broken his nose careening into a wall and it took five people to get him back to his bed. He didn't let anyone near him until Dr. Grisham put the die in his hand (and now he knew it by weight, as if he'd never forgotten,) and he calmed immediately, and let them tape and bandage him up.
"REM sleep disorder," they diagnosed, and said it likely had something to do with his many other obvious disorders.
During the day he smiled at everyone because he knew that they liked it. He was as pleasant as he could be, he allowed all the poking and prodding with good humor. He read books and read aloud to Emma when she was on her breaks. He liked her.
He even helped them get him into the restraining jacket at night, so that he wouldn't wander around and re-dislocate his shoulder or do himself worse damage.
The restraints horrified him, if he was being honest with them. But he wasn't being honest with them, not at all.
On the tenth night, Emma came around at ten PM with the jacket, like she usually did, and sat on the edge of the bed.
"How are you, Scout?"
"Bored," he said.
"Well, you'll be out of here soon."
"Yeah?" he asked, trying not to make it a challenge. "You guys had enough of me? Sending me off?"
"No, not yet," she said, her smile regretful as she helped him slip his good arm into the sleeve. She must have known he hated it. "I just meant that someone'll be coming to look for you soon."
"You think so?"
"I do."
It was a trick to get his injured arm into the other sleeve, and more of a trick to fasten it. Because of the sling, both arms had to be fastened to one side of the bed, making it impossible for him to get comfortable.
Not that he slept anyway. He stayed awake as long as he could. Something blue and horrible pursued him in dreams. That's all he knew. Just that it was a blue thing, and his dreams had named it the Glitch.
And most nights he lay awake wondering about himself anyway, his mind unable to shut down.
Why hadn't anyone come for him? He suspected that he had no one. If he was the kind of man he thought he was, he probably was alone. Perhaps no one would ever come to tell him who he was (or what he had done,) and that void was more terrifying than the blue dreams, the Glitch.
"Who do you think will come for me?" he asked her, as she fastened the straps of the arms. "Get creative."
She wrinkled her nose and laughed. "Let's see. Hmm." She finished strapping his arms down and sat back a little, studying him. "I guess you must have a beautiful woman somewhere looking for you."
A beautiful man, his mind corrected, stunning him again into clarity. Holy shit. He liked men. He liked women, too, but he also liked men, and maybe even one in particular.
She must have seen the look on his face because she smiled, maybe a little ruefully. "Oh?" she asked. "Did I trigger a memory?"
He gave her his best smile, the one he knew slew them all. "No. Nothing like that. So, I've got some dame out looking for me? Does she look like you?"
She blushed, like he had meant for her to.
"What's my job?" he asked her. He knew she had to leave soon and go about the rest of her duties, but he hated the night, hated being left alone to struggle against sleep, and against the thing that pursued him into it.
"You do something fancy, that's for sure," she said. "Your clothes were really fine. I think you're Jason Bourne. Or! Actually, maybe you're an entertainer in Las Vegas." She nodded toward the die on the cart next to him. "You're a magician."
"I pull shit out of hats?"
"No, an illusionist. Like Criss Angel."
He barked out a loud laugh, trying to picture that. It amazed and frustrated him that he knew who Criss Angel was, but not his own name. "Okay, I'm a Las Vegas magician. That's cool, I guess."
"You probably don't live there though. You live in some mansion in the desert with horses. Or something."
"I don't think I have any horses."
"Cats?"
He thought about that one. "No," he answered honestly. "No cats. No dogs. No pets." He frowned, mystified at this. "I don't think I have …"
Anything. I don't think I have anything.
He thought the words, but couldn't say them.
She sensed the change in him. "Someone will come for you, Scout."
He battered down a wave of self-pity. He also knew he wasn't the type to sit and wallow. Get things done, was a phrase he associated with himself. But maybe he was just flattering himself.
She patted his good arm gently and got up to leave.
That night, the Glitch took the form of a wall of blue water, as great and inexorable as the hand of a god, bearing down on him. Blue, it was always blue.
He struggled so hard against the jacket that he tore it, and tore his shoulder free from the socket again.
After that, they tried sedatives. They worked for a few days, at least to keep him still during the night. They did nothing to quell the actual nightmares, which came on as strong and as hysteria-inducing as ever, although now he just couldn't move at all in the dreams.
And the dreams and excess sedatives in his blood left him so exhausted that he began to fall asleep during the daytime too, where the Glitch hunted him by sunlight. He wasn't getting better, he was getting worse.
He hadn't remembered anything. And no one was looking for him.
In February, at the end of two weeks, the hospital conceded defeat. His time was up, and he was deemed physically stable enough to be moved to a specialty center farther up north.
Emma was clearly fighting tears as she helped him into the restraint jacket on the final night.
"I guess this is the last time you're tying me up," he said, still smiling. He smiled through the whole thing every time. He smiled because he knew to his soul that he could kill everyone who was kind to him if he lost his mind enough. Could kill with his hands. He had no doubt. It was why he'd been left for dead. No one was looking for him and that was probably a blessing.
Until the day that someone realized he was still alive and they came after him again. And this time he'd never see them coming.
"Come on now, Scout," Emma said. "When you're better, you just come on back and I'll tie you up again, huh?"
"Yeah, something to look forward to," he said. "I doubt the people at the new place will be quite so good at it." This he meant. He'd won over the people who worked here. He wasn't so sure about the psychs and sleep specialists. Once they started digging around in his head, they would find things that he didn't want them to find. He was certain of this.
"I'll see you off tomorrow," she said.
He nodded, still smiling. "Hey, I really appreciate it, Emma. Tell everyone, okay? You guys were great to me. Seriously, when I find out that I'm a mystery Las Vegas billionaire, I'll take you all on a cruise."
She patted his arm like she always did when she was done strapping him. And in a moment of unprofessionalism that he really liked her for, she leaned in and kissed him good night.
** ** ** **
FEBRUARY
"He was found inside a train, did you know that, Mr. Bishop?" Emma asked. "Well the train had a name, and it was Scout. So we just called him Scout. I can't believe he's Arthur. I wouldn't even have guessed that."
Eames liked her, this lady in her mid-thirties who had grown fond of Arthur – or Scout, to her. He was happy to think that someone had comforted him, even if Arthur had probably fought comfort all the way like a bastard.
But he also wished that everyone would stop prattling to him and they could walk faster to the room.
"So what are you, his brother? You're not leaving with Scout until you're cleared, you know. I won't even let you. Even if the hospital was allowed to just discharge patients to strangers who said they knew them..."
"Next of kin," Dr. Grisham said, trying to end the conversation, for which Eames was grateful.
"Scout is British? How did he lose his accent? That's not unheard of, you know."
"We're not brothers, we're married, darling." He said it off-hand, only knowing that it would gall Arthur to no end to learn he'd set it up like this, such a perfect con. Him and Arthur, married. God, but he would scowl.
"Oh," was Emma's soft reply. "I didn't realize."
"It's all right," he said, sparing her a small smile. "It's not the first thought most people have. You're right not to assume." And he saw in her face that she'd built a story around Arthur – attractive, mysterious, obviously dangerous yet vulnerable Arthur. Of course she'd fallen for him. Arthur had been a possibility, one that he had just taken from her.
He also saw that she was still happy that someone had finally come for him. He liked her better for it.
"This way," Dr. Grisham said, leading him past the upstairs nurse's station and down another endless hall.
The Dr. pushed the door open first, and Eames fought the urge to shove her aside. When he finally was able to look into the room, he quelled his urge to go bursting in. Arthur was asleep.
The sight of him, battered and strapped to a hospital bed, briefly rooted him to the spot. He'd seen him in much rougher shape, but somehow the strip of tape across his nose and the accompanying black eyes made it worse.
Emma saw him staring. "He ran into the wall," she said. "Face-first, really banged himself up. Hut he was okay; just a fracture. That's why..." She waved her hand vaguely toward the room, as if indicating the jacket with the straps.
His focus narrowed to the IV line in Arthur's hand and then he was rushing into the room, thinking, darling, darling and maybe saying it, too.
Now he would wake Arthur, get him out of here, and allow him to quit with the charade of amnesia. The night-terrors he honestly did not understand but Arthur was a lucid dreamer, and once reunited with the PASIV he'd be fine. Eames was certain.
He liked Arthur, his occasional business partner and occasional shag. Liked him and was irritated by him in turns, but mostly enjoyed him these days. He'd seen him wrecked and bloody and torn, he'd seen him survive all kinds of mad situations and come out swinging. He'd seen him with bones broken and he'd even watched him struggle with his work in the past, with dreams. Arthur had seen him at his weakest, as well. It was what made them a safe team. Even if they only saw each other a few times a year, they'd been through it together; Arthur was his number one oppo. There was no one like him. Eames had prepared himself to find Arthur a mess, but he'd thought it couldn't be any worse than watching Arthur dodge bullets and even take one or two.
He had never seen him strapped to a hospital bed.
"Can I wake him?" he asked, forgoing the chair and sitting instead on the edge of the bed.
"Go ahead," Dr. Grisham said. "But I have to stand by, in case he reacts badly."
Eames just nodded and set about undoing the arms of the jacket. That thing wasn't staying on. Arthur wasn't waking up with it to see him staring down at him. Never in a million years. He moved Arthur's arms to a more natural position. Then he placed his palm against the side of Arthur's face.
Arthur looked frustrated in his sleep, as if he were concentrating on something. Eames used his thumb to smooth away the frown between his eyebrows. It was his perpetual scowl, but he didn't like it just then – it looked too worried. Arthur looked too young to be wearing it. His hair had grown out some, and curled at the ends like it did when he didn't bother styling it back for work. He dragged his fingers through the curls, the way he always did whether Arthur approved or not.
Darling. Arthur always sneered at the endearment when he was awake, or rolled his eyes like Eames was being a child. Eames always used it to get him to react in front of others, because he did it so hilariously. But looking at him with his seams torn like this, he said it and meant it. He touched Arthur's face the way he would never be allowed to in front of others, and he waited for him to wake up and swat his hand away like always. He waited for Arthur to say "quit it" or "god, Eames, fuck off, I'm tired."
Instead, Arthur turned groggily into the caress and when his eyes finally rolled open, it wasn't annoyance, arrogance, condescension or the usual hooded look of danger he saw there.
It was just a moment of blank confusion. Dread pooled in his stomach; Arthur always came awake easily, and completely aware.
"Arthur?" he tried.
The confusion turned to focus, and then plain, wide-eyed wonder, the likes of which Eames had never seen in him, not in all the years he'd known him.
Arthur practically launched himself upright and threw his good arm around Eames's neck, pressing his face against his shoulder, breathing in hitching gasps.
Eames awkwardly slung an arm around his back and pulled him close, soothing his back with his hand. They were supposed to be married, after all, a con that was meant to annoy Arthur when he finally found him. He had to make a good show of it. But he had never coddled Arthur like this before, outside of in jest. It felt wrong.
"You came for me," Arthur said against his neck.
"Of course," Eames said, playing along. Maybe Arthur was better at this than he was, or was playing some game with these people that Eames wasn't clued in on yet. "Of course I did, darling." And then, close to his ear, whispering so that no one else could hear: "Sorry it took so long to locate you. You are a bastard to find."
Arthur pulled away, and yes, that was definitely dampness that Eames felt on his shoulder. He was stunned to see that Arthur's eyes were wet and he was swiping at them with the back of his hand, the one that was still in a sling.
"Get me out of here," Arthur whispered so that none of the others could hear. "I'm pretty sure people are still after me but I don't know who they are or why they want me."
He didn't sound conspiratorial or as if he were even playing along with whatever undercover thing he had going on. He just sounded confused. "Arthur?" Eames whispered back. "What's going on?"
"Arthur," Arthur repeated, as if testing the name. "That's me." And then: "I know you. Fuck, I know I know you."
Eames sat, stunned and speechless, as Arthur pulled away and scrambled for something on the cart next to his bed. When he turned back around, he was holding the loaded die up to the light.
"What is this?" he asked. "Who are you, and what is this?"
With a shaking hand, Eames reached into his own pocket. He shielded them from the vision of the others with his back as he drew out the poker chip and held it up for Arthur to see. "Totem, Arthur," he whispered. "What the fuck."
Instead of answering, Arthur just folded the die into his hand, as if he would crush it, and pressed his face against Eames's shoulder again, his free hand practically clawing at his shirt in the back. He was trembling as if he would shatter to pieces, and that was not something he was faking for the benefit of the others in the doorway. The entire bed-frame shook with him.
Finally truly afraid, Eames put both arms around him and held him, like he was holding the pieces together. "Arthur," he whispered. "What's happened to you?"