tabi_essentially | Glitch

OK, so everything but the very first section of this was written under the influence of like two glasses of wine. Call this an experiment in writing, I've never written while tipsy before. I actually sort of wanted to see what would come out, if I could get "unhinged" enough to write Arthur for this part. Please feel free to correct this, as I edited it also under the influence. I will absolutely make corrections later and I am very fearful that I'm going to read this tomorrow after work and facepalm because I just don't even know what this is. There should be a law against WWI. (Writing While Intoxicated. Not World War One. Well, that too.)

Also, I very much apologize about the wait. I was out of town a little longer than I expected to be.

And no, I really don't know what they're going to do next. O_O

Warning: For implied torture and phobic stuff.

** ** ** **

There were thousands of ways in which Arthur had been woken up in his life, and he could probably catalogue them all. Among his least favorites, being slapped in the face made a pretty good showing, but it wasn't the worst, by far.

Hollis stood over his table, smug and impassive. His hand was still raised as if he intended to bring it down on him again.

It was intended to humiliate and demoralize. Hollis didn't realized that Arthur had long since gotten past such trivialities. It just made Hollis look petty. And the bandage across Hollis's nose looked really stupid. It was hard to feel humiliated after what he'd done to Hollis.

Arthur wanted to rub his eyes tiredly, or scratch his nose, or even crack his knuckles, but he was still strapped down at four points. And he didn't want to give Hollis the satisfaction of knowing that he was uncomfortable. "So, what next?" he asked.

"What's next is you giving us what's in your head."

Arthur attempted to shrug. "You can have it," he said. "But I need to see my team released."

"Again with the terms," Hollis sneered. "You have nothing to bargain with."

Arthur stared at the ceiling and said nothing.

"We get our extractors to get it from you. And believe me, they are the best."

Arthur snorted at that; he couldn't help himself.

"You think they're not? Still hero-worshipping Cobb? Then let me detail the situation to you. Cobb wasn't able to extract the virus that you gave to your partner. Under threats involving things very, very dear to him, he was not able to do it. His methods are outdated and everyone knows his tricks."

Arthur specifically did not react to that. He knew that Hollis was talking about Cobb's kids again, and he also knew that Cobb would stop at nothing to keep them safe – and Eames would probably not try to hide the virus from him anyway. So the two of them must have had some other kind of plan that he just wasn't in on yet.

"So, you bring your extractors in to do all of this hard work, for something that I'm willing to give you?"

"First of all, it won't be hard work," Hollis said. "But mostly, you and your team are too much of a liability. You can't bargain for their freedom because their disappearance is a necessity, and so is yours. But we'll probably keep you on, to work for us. Inception is not a great feat for us anymore."

Arthur turned his head, finally looking Hollis in the eyes.

Hollis leaned close to his ear. "Everyone has a breaking point," he said. "Yours might not be physical, but I know I'll find it."

"Things get messy when they get personal," Arthur said. It wasn't a plea and he made sure that it didn't sound like one. Nonetheless, Hollis ignored him.

A young man came into the large, open room and stood behind Hollis. He was in his mid twenties, tidy, with dark hair and determined eyes. He wore white scrubs, as if this were some kind of medical procedure. He carried one of the sleek, new model PASIV devices and sat down on a chair next to Arthur's bed.

"You're the extractor?" Arthur asked.

The young man didn't answer and didn't bother to look at him. Instead he just rolled up his sleeve.

Arthur turned his eyes back to Hollis. "Look," he said. "I'm giving you the chance to do this easily. I'm offering you what you want. You can have the Glitch. I have no use for it. I'll hand it right over to you, but you have to let my team go. They don't give a shit about you or what you do."

"You know that's not true," Hollis said.

"Cobb's out of the business and Eames doesn't even live in the country. Leave us alone, we'll leave you alone."

Hollis didn't answer him, either. He just slipped the cannula of the new PASIV into his vein and taped it across.

"No?" Arthur said. "All right." He turned back to the extractor. "Hey."

Finally, the guy looked at him. His face showed annoyance and impatience.

"Sorry for what's about to happen," Arthur said.

He had a second to see the look of concern—fleeting, but there—cross the extractor's face, and then Hollis pressed the button.

** ** ** **

He saw the extractor come into his dream and take out a few projections of the human sort. The extractor was clumsy, his mind like an oven mitt trying to open a safe. He wasn't going to get far.

Arthur actually didn't know how it was going to manifest, he only knew that it would. He wasn't even the conscious sentinel to to the Glitch anymore. It was a part of him, at least for now. With his team threatened, his subconscious could not control its reaction to intrusion.

So he stood by, in his swamp, and waited.

The extractor made his way through the icy mud, looking put out, pissed off, bothered. Finally he spotted Arthur. His eyes widened for a moment, and then he frowned in annoyance. Clearly he had worked enough to see all kinds of crazy self-images. However, Arthur wasn't doing his on purpose.

"I'm getting in whether you want me to or not," he said. "You can't scare me like that."

"I'm not trying to," Arthur said. "And I already said I was sorry. Someone once told me that you only get one apology. I did warn you."

"Whatever," the extractor said.

The first thing that happened was the noise. The squealing, scuttling of little metal legs. Then came the scent of burnt wires. Arthur couldn't immediately see the projections, because they were behind him. But it sounded like a lot.

The extractor's eyes went wide this time, and stayed that way. He whispered "What the fuck," and stumbled backwards, just barely staying upright.

Arthur stood in place, unmoving, arms at his sides. The stampeded from behind him, the little sipderbots. They didn't even heed him as an obstacle, and didn't go around him, instead choosing to climb up his legs, up his back, over his head, down his chest, down his arms. Their sharp little legs barely even bothered him anymore. But there were thousands, and for a second, as they made their way toward the extractor, they covered him entirely.

The screamed in high-pitched whines like feedback as they converged on the extractor. The extractor's answering scream was more organic. They covered him completely as they had done to Arthur, and he fell under their weight and the horror of them. They didn't spare him as they had spared their host. Arthur saw their little, shining mouth parts, thousands upon thousands of them, plugging into the skin of the extractor's bare neck, arms, and face. They crawled inside of his clothes, making his shirt bulge and ripple.

Maybe they went under his skin; Arthur didn't know, because by that time he had to look away.

** ** ** **

Arthur didn't even try to leap out of the bed. He'd been under for only minutes and hadn't even begun to forget the circumstances of reality. He just looked to his side.

A tech or something had ripped the cannula out of his arm, but then had seemingly forgotten all about him. Everyone's focus was on the extractor, who lay twitching and drooling on the floor. He looked like he was choking. It was no wonder, because the Glitch had probably paralyzed him in the dream.

Someone called for a crash cart. Arthur looked up to the windows of the observatory, saw their terrified, frantic faces as they watched the young extractor struggle to live.

He didn't feel righteous or happy or smug, as he would probably be accused of feeling. He wasn't sadistic enough to enjoy something like this. The only things he felt were regret and frustration. Why couldn't these people just see it his way? It would save everyone so much time and grief.

And yes, Hollis was right; Arthur was eventually going to have to come after him again. But he wouldn't have had to if they hadn't come for him first, and then come after his team. He hated that they couldn't just see reason.

The whole thing was a huge fucking mess.

The extractor was taken out on a stretcher with doctors hovering over him. Arthur didn't know if he was alive, or if he was, if he would remain alive.

The only one left in the room with him was Hollis. His jaw was clamped shut hard, his eyes gleaming. Malice seemed to come from him in waves.

"I tried to tell you..." Arthur began.

Something in Hollis's eyes stopped him. "We're going to try again," Hollis said. "I can keep doing this."

"You can keep wasting your people? You and I are very different."

"And every time you pull this kind of shit," Hollis said, "I'm going to hurt you worse."

Arthur shut his eyes tight and turned his head away. He didn't doubt what Hollis was telling him. This guy wanted an excuse to hurt him, and he knew it was coming. This was supposed to be a dream-tech clinic, but it was really a prison. It was just a high-tech prison that had access to all sorts of fun things like chemicals, shock "therapy" equipment, hallucinogens, and other clinical forms of what basically amounted to torture.

Everyone did have a breaking point, and Arthur wasn't sure what his was. He also knew that he couldn't stop the Glitch from protecting itself even if he tried to force it. Knowing that giving it up would do nothing to save Eames and Cobb, his subconscious would not call his guards off.

Still. It was so wasteful.

He knew it wasn't out of mercy that they put him under before running a few thousand volts through him; it was just to scramble his brain and make his security lax.

It might indeed have scrambled his brain, but it did nothing to bring what they wanted closer to the surface. Instead, as three extractors approached this time, he held out both hands defensively and was as surprised as anyone when bolts of lightning seared out of him and struck them down.

Oh holy shit, shit, I'm a Sith, Arthur thought, and laughed hysterically as the dream started to collapse.

He woke up still laughing hysterically, and, much to his chagrin, he couldn't stop. He just couldn't stop fucking laughing, even as one of the extractors seizured to death on the floor beside him and the other two remained unresponsive. He wanted to stop laughing. He wished he could. Everything hurt, his muscles burned, his bones felt hot, like there was steam rising from them. But they had scrambled his fucking signals and everything translated into this wild hysteria.

He couldn't stop when Hollis backhanded him until his mouth was bloody. He couldn't stop as they removed the extractors from the room, the evidence of his out of control dream rampage. He couldn't stop when most of the observers left him, alone and burning on the table.

He did stop some time later, when Cobb finally came into the room, practically dragging Eames along with him. Eames, who was streaked in blood and looking almost as shitty as Arthur felt.

Only then was he able to stop laughing and breathe.

** ** ** **

Cobb was hitting a point where fury was about to override reason. His years on the run had hardened him to all kinds of situations, though he had still occasionally lost his cool – he'd be the first to admit that. He wasn't the most even-tempered person on the job, and surely not the most stable. That had always been Arthur. The years at home, just teaching and being a father, had made him feel peaceful. Not always happy--he still grieved--but for years he had been so much less likely to lose his shit.

Cobb was about to lose his shit.

His condition for helping SomniCore was that he would be allowed to see Arthur. He had somehow gotten only mildly infected with their badly written (and re-written by Arthur) dream-glitch – not entirely. Probably due to the fact that Eames had a concussion and they dream had been too short. They wanted him to completely the job, though, and he knew he would. This was possibly a career-ruining move. All of SomniCore's attempts to extract from Arthur had been unsuccessful. He didn't know the details or how Arthur had done it, but he did know, from overhearing a few techs talking, that there had been at least two fatalities.

This was an entirely new development in dreamshare.

The stakes had gone up. They needed him. And they hadn't hurt him so far. They had threatened him, but in desperation. He was going to see Arthur anyway, because they now wanted him to extract the data – and it was high risk, because from what he understood, Arthur couldn't control his deadly projections.

So Cobb, now putting his life on the line for them, had raised his price: Eames got medical care, and came with him when he went to extract from Arthur.

They'd cleaned Eames up and stitched his head. He had refused pain killers (wise choice, Cobb thought,) and Cobb still had to help him along as they were led into the large, open room where they were keeping Arthur. Eames was trying to help as much as he could, but he wasn't light, and when he stumbled, Cobb had to struggle to catch him.

So now at least the three of them would be in the same room, and Cobb felt fairly sure that they would be able to come up with something. They'd done for him what they hadn't done for the other two: they'd met his price.

But now the price was about to rise exponentially with every one of Arthur's cries of distress. Cobb wasn't any sort of father to Arthur – at most, he'd felt a bit like a distant older brother, and that was largely due to Mal's fondness for Arthur. And he'd never felt the need to look out for him, because that was something Arthur had always done for himself. But this was just a matter of reacting to sadism.

He hadn't expected to find Arthur in an observation room, restrained and in hysterics. Neither had Eames, who tensed next to him, at once at attention. Cobb felt how close Eames was to doing something rash. He closed his hand around Eames's arm in a clear signal. Not yet.

Eames was a professional, not a sap, and he got it.

Hollis stood by, impassive and pale, as Eames went to Arthur's bed. Cobb took a long look at Hollis. He'd actually seen this man, ages ago, during his SomniCore days. Maybe Hollis hadn't been at the helm back then, or maybe he had and no one knew it. But Cobb remembered every face he'd seen, every name. Details stayed with him. Carl Hollis. He knew this guy. He just had to go back in his mind and remember what else he knew about him.

Arthur stopped making whatever sound it was that passed for laughter when he saw Eames.

"I tried to tell these lousy ginks that putting their mitts on me was gonna get them ended." He laughed again, hoarse and hysterical. "Think they listened?"

Eames put his hands on Arthur's face and thumbed away the wetness on his cheeks, sweat or tears or both. He held Arthur with his eyes, searching him out. Cobb watched, fascinated, and keenly feeling the old, buried pang of his own loss. And Arthur actually allowed this touch, which he might not have if he had all his marbles.

"They obviously didn't," Eames said.

"Eames, you look like shit, someone did a number on you?"

"I'll be all right."

"That's enough," Hollis said, making his presence known to Arthur. "Break it up over here. We're not finished. I don't have what I want."

"You won't fucking let me give it to you!" Arthur said, his voice raw and desperate. "You stupid asshole! This would have been soup if you did it my way, but no, you get me jingle-brained and I clam, you end up with dust, your trouble boys are iced and it's because of you, you shithead punk!" He strained against the restraints and thrashed violently.

Cobb held one hand up to Hollis, stilling him with a gesture that said 'I'll handle it.' Hollis must have remembered him from his SomniCore days, too, because he actually stopped.

Cobb came to the other side of the bed, but didn't touch Arthur. He didn't have that privilege and didn't need it.

"I'm gonna kill him, Cobb," Arthur said.

Cobb didn't answer. Hollis didn't say anything either, seeming secure in his safety from Arthur's wrath. For a moment the only sound in the room was Arthur's frantic breathing, and the quiet slide of Eames's hand through his hair.

Then Arthur said, "Are they sending you under with me?"

Cobb nodded. "Will you let me?"

Arthur swallowed hard and looked away, staring hard at the ceiling. "I'll try. I'll try."

Hollis approached with the PASIV. Arthur stared him down, gritting his teeth. "Don't touch me. Cobb does it. Or Eames. But you don't get to touch me."

"You're hardly in any position to..." he began.

"You keep telling me what I'm in a position to do. I'm gonna shut your trap, motherfucker. You're gonna dance for me. Wait."

Something in Arthur's eyes—something Cobb recognized himself—stopped Hollis's approach. His hesitation was obvious and would soon become a deadly point of contention when he realized that he'd gotten caught being intimidated by someone who couldn't move. Cobb felt the danger hanging over all of them and he didn't know how to defuse it. Arthur could not be talked down when he was like this.

"Hang on," Eames said to Hollis. "Please let me do it. There's no way I could swindle you with your own PASIV. You know how they work just as I do. Just let me hook them up; it will go easier for everyone."

Hollis stood, considering. He could not afford to bow to Arthur's threat.

"Please," Eames said. "He's had enough."

Thankfully, Arthur kept his mouth shut this time, choosing instead to look up at Eames, his eyes burning with some kind of unhinged devotion that Cobb had never seen in him before.

But which he had seen in Mal towards the end. He had to take a breath and steady himself.

But Mal was trying to die. Arthur's just in shock. Different.

Hollis handed the PASIV over to Eames nonchalantly, as if it wasn't in fact a concession, but a mercy.

"Thank you," Eames said. He unstrapped Arthur's arm quietly and stroked the bruised skin of his wrist, looking for a usable vein. Eventually he had to turn his hand palm down and use the back of his hand. He did this with practiced ease, his fingers steady in spite of what must be shaky vision. Blood dripped from the stitches in his head and landed on Arthur's arm.

"Hey," Arthur said softly to him. "What's the grift?"

Do you have a plan? Cobb understood, in the language of that man that Eames called Arthur That Was. The boy who emerged when he wasn't paying attention. He hoped that Hollis didn't remember Arthur's oldest peculiarities. But Hollis probably did.

"Haven't got any, darling," Eames said. "Go to sleep, let Cobb in, give them what they want."

"I've been trying to," Arthur said.

Eames patted the back of his hand, above the cannula. "Try harder, pet."

Arthur looked at him for a second before nodding firmly. Then he looked to Cobb. His eyes remained focused on him.

"Cobb," Hollis said. "Extract this from him. Don't fail. You know what happens if you fail us."

"Right," Cobb said, bitterly. My kids. The perfect bait. Then he looked back to Arthur. "Ready?"

"Yeah," Arthur said. He looked again to Hollis. "I'm still gonna kill you."

Eames pressed the button before Arthur could say anything else.

Cobb opened his eyes to a network of glowing blue wires. In the center of them stood Arthur, his hair neatly in place, his clothes straight and tidy, and his eyes glowing bright blue.

Fist-sized spiders, or what looked like spiders, scampered around his feet like familiar pets. Their eyes—pairs of them—glowed the same color as Arthur's. A decent handful of them eyed Cobb. One of them squealed at him.

"Jesus," Cobb said. "Arthur, it's me. Please."

"I know," Arthur said. He sounded calm, almost serene. "Don't worry."

"I don't even begin to know how to extract from you. You know that."

"You don't have to," Arthur said. "This is all up to you. I can't hurt you, Cobb. Never could. You or Mal, I just never could. You shouldn't even question that. If you want it, you can have it. Just make sure it's what you want. It's a disease. I have it under control, my version of it. But it can still ruin your whole career."

"You seem pretty lucid in here, Arthur. You know that this glitch of yours killed three people topside."

Arthur sighed, then sat down on the floor, which was made up of criss-crossed, bright blue lines. His disturbing sentinels crawled up his arms. One of them settled on his hair, slightly ruffling the strands. He rubbed tiredly at his glowing eyes. "I tried to warn them," he said. "I couldn't just let them have it. The second I did, they would have killed you and Eames. They're still going to. That's why I need a way out. Eames got one of my hands free but I didn't see any guns or anything in the room. I don't know if I could fight my way out. My body is really tired and my arm is still weak. I don't know how far I could get, and you saw Eames. He can't even see straight. We need a plan."

Cobb took up a similar position, sitting across from Arthur on the strange floor of his mind. "If I get the Glitch, they'll need me alive to extract it from me. At least for a little while. Then, yeah, they'll probably kill us all."

"They threatened your kids," Arthur said. "They know where they are?"

Cobb smiled at him. "They'll be fine."

"You said they were with their grandmother."

"They are. In Tokyo."

Slowly, Arthur smiled back. His smile was wan, lit strangely by his own eerie glow. "I see. Then Proctus Global knows you're missing."

"They'll never get here in time," Cobb said.

"Right. So." The little spiderbots nuzzled under Arthur's neatly pressed pants. One of them lazily climbed the inseam, its metal legs covered in fine protruding needles, clinging easily to the fabric. It stopped on his thigh to swivel around and look at Cobb, clicking its mouth-parts.

"That's... really frightening, Arthur."

"You get used to them. So look. Here's the room we're in, right?" He spread his hands, and between them appeared a schematic of what Arthur could see of the room. It appeared in the same lines of his network, looking like something between a three-dimensional blueprint, and electromagnetic brainwave patterns. It only covered the southern half of the room, what Arthur could see from his limited vantage point.

"Right," Cobb said. "Here's what's behind you." He filled in the rest of the room easily. "You're on a table in the center. There's a table behind you, medical equipment all over it. IV stand. There's an AED left on the floor, possibly having been used on one of the extractors. Also probably useless to you. There are windows behind you, too. I counted about ten people up above, observing. Unless any of them are actually armed guards, they're probably too far away to interfere. But even if Eames got one of your hands free, he'd be easy enough for anyone to subdue in his condition and probably not a safe bet. I could still get you free pretty quickly, and we could take out Hollis together if it really came down to that. Hollis isn't carrying. I wish he was, because they we could disarm him. He'll have guards who are armed, all around the building."

"If we could get him under with us," Arthur said, "I could kill him pretty easily."

"We could kill him without getting him under, Arthur. But the rest of SomniCore? I know you fought your way out once, but it's different this time."

"I'm only thirty two," Arthur said, sounding offended.

"I didn't mean it like that. Christ. You said it yourself. Your body is tired, your muscles are probably like rubber. You're in shock. Eames can hardly stand upright. We might have to talk our way out."

"You talk," Arthur said. "Let me keep doing the crazy, fucked up, out of control act."

"You know that's not an act," Cobb said. "You can't act, Arthur, you never could. Even Eames says you're shit at dissembling. His exact words. Your wires really are crossed. That's really what your body is going through. Can you trust yourself topside?"

"Just get me out of the restraints and we'll see."

"I'll get you out," Cobb said. "But I need the Glitch. Give it to me, and then I'll convince Hollis to go under with me. If it's true that we can remote dreamshare—and I'm not convinced—you can come into the dream and run interference."

Arthur laughed. His spiderbots scattered briefly, then recollected around him. "'Interference?' Cobb. Come on."

"Or whatever you're going to do," Cobb said. "Just give me the program so we can wake up. He's going to probably give us the kick in a few seconds, real-time."

"If you're sure," Arthur said.

"I want it. I'd like to see how your version works."

Arthur rolled his eyes. "You scare me, Cobb. You've scared me since we met. Jesus."

Cobb smiled. "I inspire you, too."

Arthur shook his head, though he smiled back. "Fine," he said, standing up. Spiderbots fell from his clothes, some clung to him, a few scurried back up. "I can't wait to see how this manifests in you."

"Me too," Cobb said. He wasn't lying. This thing was dangerous, this program. Arthur had defused it somewhat, had changed it to be outwardly deadly instead of inwardly destructive. But it could still ruin his career. However, he was also still the best in the business; that was one thing that had never changed over the years, throughout everything he had endured. The Glitch could ruin him. But it wouldn't. And he was burning to know what it felt like. He stood up, face to face with Arthur. "Come on."

Arthur turned his palms out, as if asking a favor from him instead of granting one.

Thousands of spiderbots emerged from some dark space behind him. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. The swarmed Arthur, covered him, so that he was nothing more than a tall, writhing mass of metal limbs, glowing eye-sets and clicking pincers. They moved as one over him, and towards Cobb.

Oh fuck oh fuck, please, no, Cobb thought nonsensically, thinking of every spider he had ever seen, great big juicy fuckers, James's scream when one had bitten him once, Philippa crying in his arms at night because one had been hanging on the ceiling above her bed, this was too much, he had seen nightmares but this was just disgusting and intrusive and

and

and he had to let it in. He couldn't refuse. He overrode his natural repulsion at the infestation, because that's exactly what it was, and he let them in.

They converged on him, all narrow limbs, thousands of legs, their metal bodies round and heavy, covered in bristling needle-hairs. They crawled all over his clothes, under his clothes, in his hair, in his mouth, under his skin, and it was too much, too much, god, spiders, this he could not abide...

And then there was a sound like the rushing of wind, flapping and fluttering, batting his face, his head. The beating of wings as the projections of the Glitch transformed into Cobb's own.

A thousand birds of prey leapt off of him as one. Their wings were made of wire, and their wide eyes, with pupils constricted in predation, glowed blue. The birds swooped and swung back up, like one beast, in unison.

Arthur ducked, covering his head with both hands to avoid being battered with their hard wings. Cobb's birdbots and Arthur's spiderbots scurried and flapped among the dreamscape.

Slowly, Arthur peered out from under his arms and looked at him. "Really Cobb? Birds?"

"They're birds of prey, asshole," Cobb said. "It's not like they're sparrows or doves."

"Huh," Arthur said, his laugh a derisive huff that sounded a lot more like himself than he had since Cobb had first seen him in his own apartment, falling to pieces.

"So," Cobb said. "You have the layout of the room. We wake up. I get you out of restraints. Then I take Hollis under. It'll be his choice. You make a show of looking after Eames but if you can both go under together, even for a few seconds, with remote dreamshare? You two come up with something in the time it takes me to incapacitate Hollis or incept him."

"Incept him? Arthur asked. "Cobb, you'll have seconds at the most."

"Seconds, and the Glitch. I wake him up, we walk out of there with him on a leash."

"Not gonna happen," Arthur said. "Even with the Glitch. Seconds, Cobb. Use your head."

"Excuse me," came another voice, from somewhere behind Arthur. A shadow lurked behind him, unmistakable in its silhouette, though lacking details.

Cobb didn't need the accent or the voice to know him; Arthur's immediate reaction all but shouted Eames as he spun around, searching.

"Sorry to interrupt," came Eames's voice. "But if you could hurry up and get yourselves topside? I was hoping for the chance too access either of you like this. I seem to have been kidnapped right out from under you, I'm afraid. They've got me in the blasted van again. Arthur, your right arm is still free, if that helps you. At least it was when they tranqed me. There's a man guarding you now. He's next to Hollis and he's carrying the tranq in his right hand. There's a gun in his side holster, left side. I know you're in pain, Arthur, I can tell, and I'm sorry. Be careful when you get up; try to go slowly so your leg muscles can get used to gravity again. Also, so you don't alarm the guards. Hold your hands up if you can, and try, do try, Arthur, to appear harmless. I know it's difficult. When you wake up, obviously our connection will be broken."

"Eames," Arthur said, looking around as if that would provide a clue as to where he was in reality.

"Yes, and don't give Hollis the virus, Cobb. He's counting on it so that he can track all of us should we escape. Perhaps Arthur could Glitch him to death, but I don't think you'll have the time or opportunity. Arthur, if you would hurry, darling."

Arthur didn't need anything more. Before Cobb could even ask him if he had altered his plan in any way, he had pulled his own gun. He spared Cobb a brief glance with his burning, blue eyes, and then he blew the back of his head out.

Spiders screamed, scattered, and burned to dust. The network of lights went dark.

** ** ** **

NEXT PART

I do love you guys, you might not even know how much you all mean to me. :D I'm always so happy to find out that people are enjoying this. This could very well be a kind of "I love you man" post and I realize I sound like a total dumbass right now but I do mean it. You guys are really the greatest. ^_^

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calysto-1395.livejournal.com

argh our timing is the worst I swear >-<
I have to go in like twenty minutes and what do I see in the internet ? A new chapter T^T
I'll read it this evening,at least something to look forward to :D

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Glitch - 8

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