Chapter Text
The situation was fucked up from the start.
First, of all, Arthur hadn’t even been sure he wanted to take the job. His preliminary research on the client had already identified James Karrigan, the bank manager’s name, as an alias and his previous identity as that of a mercenary. Arthur accepted the fact that he was a criminal with a pretty high body count himself, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have standards, at least as far as his own safety went and he wasn’t sure he wanted to trust this guy enough to even accept his money.
So he was admittedly a bit jumpy when he went in to the bank. He felt perfectly justified, however, in assuming that the dozen men with guns who popped up a moment later were after him.
Fuck Han Solo, Arthur shot first. There were twelve men and Arthur got three of them and winged a fourth before he had to dodge for cover.
He got himself up into the ceiling before anyone rounded the corner, and thank god for ceiling panels. He figured he had a pretty good chance of being able to pick them off from here, too. And police presence he could hear approaching was a good sign, too. Nothing like a bunch of policemen milling around to help mess up an assassination job.
It took a certain amount of expertise to wander around in the ceiling without falling through, but one thing the dream industry gave a person was a lot of really weird experience.
He was feeling pretty good with himself until he heard the demands.
Apparently they weren’t after him, at all, it was a fucking stupid bank robbery.
If he had known that to begin with he would have been a good little hostage. They seemed like a pretty professional group and a good bank robbery happened fast and was over fast. Now that he’d shot them up and the police barricade was up, they could be stuck in here for days.
He hoped there was a really good negotiator on staff at the police department because Arthur really didn’t want to be up in the ceiling for days and he rather thought he’d lost his chance to be a good little hostage.
At least the bank robbers were professional enough to have a back-up plan when their own job went south. Arthur watched through one of the vent screens.
The injured guy was tending his own wound. Two of the robbers herded their hostages into a group in the center of the main floor where they could be monitored easily. One of them went to create barricades at the front door while another created a barricade across the hallway that Arthur himself had gone down. One stripped the weapons from their dead and took the bodies to an empty office.
The final two, one of whom was definitely the leader, went to the bank manager’s office. Arthur wished them luck with that. He was surprised that Karrigan hadn’t already emerged to defend his bank himself. His previous mercenary identity had had quite the reputation before he had disappeared.
Arthur was more surprised, however, when the man who was dragged out of the manager’s office was decidedly not Karrigan.
It was a lanky kid, and okay he was maybe thirty years old and therefore not a kid, but if anyone deserved to be called a kid, this was it. He was lanky and awkward looking and sniffed like he had a drippy nose. Arthur was guessing drugs.
And sure enough, “Whoa, are you guys real? Like, really-real? Cause I think I underpaid my dealer. This stuff is awe-some.”
Arthur wanted to wince and he was pretty sure the head of the bank robbers really was wincing even though Arthur couldn’t see his face from this angle.
“You’re the bank manager?” His voice was decidedly dubious.
“Yeah.” The-bank-manager-who-was-not-Kerrigan said rather dolefully. “My daddy says I need to learn how to work.”
The robbers were definitely wincing. So too were the hostages.
Actually, Arthur realized, a couple of the hostages who worked at the bank were looking studiously blank. It wasn’t the blank of someone who was embarrassed either, it was the blank of someone who didn’t quite know what was going on but was going to go with the flow anyway. In the dream business, you saw that look a lot.
He re-assessed the guy claiming to be the bank manager. He was dressed like a bank manager should be, but the tailoring was off. It wasn’t badly tailored, that would have been normal enough, alas. The tailoring was excellent, in fact, but it was working for a different purpose than it should have been. Most bank managers or businessmen of any type dressed to make themselves look fitter and more trim. This guy’s suit was cut to hide muscles and weapons. It was a special kind of tailoring that took a special kind of tailor.
“Okay, Mr. Karrigan. We’re robbing this bank and you’re going to help us into the safe, you got that?” The main robber spoke in a professional manner. He seemed like the kind of guy
“Sure, man. Call me Kerry.” Kerry swayed a bit more. Then he leaned towards the robber despite the fact that the guy already had a grip on his arm and was holding a gun pointed at his gut and stage whispered. “I can’t feel my feet.” He giggled.
The robber looked almost physically pained and after a moment, holstered his gun again. Clearly Kerry was not going to understand much less fear a physical threat. “Okay, Kerry. What is the code to the vault?”
“The vault?”
“Yes, the vault. Tell me the code.” He sounded stern but calm. Arthur was impressed, by both of them really. Whoever Kerry really was, he had managed to get the gun pointed away from him and Arthur would bet a great deal that there wasn’t a bit of drugs in his system. And whoever the bank robber was, he was dealing calmly and capably with a whole lot of set-backs. He wondered what Kerry planned to do about the vault code.
“Oh, the vault code.” Kerry said with sudden understanding. “It’s my girlfriend’s birthday. You’re not supposed to make it a family member’s birthday, but Tiffany isn’t family. She’s my girlfriend.” He nodded happily, apparently quite pleased with himself.
“That’s very smart of you,” the robber said and somehow managed to sound serious. “What is Tiffany’s birthday?”
“It’s, uh, it’s, she was mad at me cause I didn’t remember it, so I made it the vault code, I told her because she was just that important to me. She’s important to me. Really. I don’t care about Rachel at all. You know?”
“When was she mad at you?” There were definitely some gritted teeth in there.
“I told you, it was her birthday!”
Arthur thought was going to choke trying not to laugh at this farce. He wondered how long Kerry could keep this up. Whoever he was outside of the role he was playing now, the robber believed the role and a drug addled rich man’s son wasn’t going to be any help at all. He couldn’t be threatened or bribed until he at least managed to come down from the high but that could take a while and would have uncertain results anyway. The longer they stayed in the bank without using whatever their escape route was, the worse their chances of having the escape route still be open.
Eventually they’d have to make a decision on what to do next. Arthur settled in to watch how this whole thing played out.
Which was when his cell phone went off. He managed to refuse the call after a single ring but now they knew where he was and they were shooting at the ceiling at wild and he was crawling as fast as he could cause he really didn’t want to fall through the ceiling.
The police were hearing shots fired and were storming the place so there were more shots and Arthur wasn’t sure was actually happy that at least none of the robbers were shooting at the hostages since instead they were shooting at him, or at least trying to.
At least the whole situation was chaotic enough and he’d had the forethought to memorize the bank’s blueprints before ever going to the meeting so he was able to sneak out in the confusion. He was impressed again with not-actually-Kerrigan since somehow he managed to sneak out, too.
He joined the crowd on the far side of the police tape before checking his cell phone again.
There was a voicemail from Eames and a text message. The text message was a picture of not-actually-Kerry looking more like a grad student than anything.
The voicemail said:
“If you’re wondering why no one showed up for your meet and greet, it looks like the client had a really bad night last night. Someone cut his head off last night, so I don’t think this job is going to go through, but I’m sending you a picture of the target just in case you run into him. Cheers.”
Yeah, Arthur thought. Normally, he would want to kill Eames for this, because surely this was all his fault, but this time he was just as glad to be able to wipe his hands of the whole mess. He hadn’t wanted to work for Kerrigan and now that he had seen not-Kerry confound armed bank robbers with nothing but a dazed look, Arthur didn’t want to deal with his subconscious defenses either.
It was fucked up from the start.