WELCOME

Small jobs were rarely, if ever, as simple as they were made out to be. Arguably – and Julian definitely would argue it – they were never small, either. Could any job really be considered small? There were those that were easier than others, it was true, but Julian was generally of the opinion that most were relatively tricky in one way or another, and generally medium sized if they weren't big. And this one, well, it wasn't the sort of thing he usually took on at all. Julian liked challenge and difficulties and layers. And the job he was on right at that moment in time was simplicity itself; one layer, one secret to extract from one man, and one hour of real time in which to do so. The brunette honestly wasn't sure it got any easier than that. And if it'd been up to him, and he'd been offered the job, he'd have turned it down. But Louise had taken it – for reasons he suspected she had chosen not to divulge – and then managed to rope him into it on top of everything else. Not her team, just Louise and Flynn, because if they were bloody good separately, they were efficiency itself when they got together on a professional level.It wasn't as though Julian had had anything better to do, anyway, and he enjoyed the change of pace that came with working with others. Oh, he still didn't share his toys well – and he still couldn't take an order worth a damn – but Louise had been working with him long enough by now to know how to handle him. And if he was being honest with himself, he enjoyed the fact that she was meticulous in her work; enjoyed the fact that she was just as assiduous as he was. It made working with her an absolute pleasure – not that he'd ever admit as much. Typically, that meant that their little job had been planned down to perfection. Being an 'easy' job, it hadn't taken long; a weeks worth of combined research and planning had been more than ample, and privately Julian was of the opinion that the entire job could have moved more quickly than that, had it been the Flynn show and not the Louise and Flynn show. It was one of the many and varied reasons he didn't normally work with others, in fact; he didn't like compromising on the way he operated. Thankfully, though, he got along well with Louise for the most part, and then tended to think alike when it came to how things should be done, anyway.It was well past the time for planning by then, anyhow. They'd found it ludicrously easy to slip a sleeping drug into their mark's coffee as he made the usual train journey into work, and from thereon in everything should be golden. The dream scape was a particularly clever design on Flynn's part; intricately realistic to the point that his obsession became obvious if one were to look too closely into it – although, of course, he'd argue that there was nothing wrong with being precise, it just made him better than most. The scene itself wasn't a particularly remarkable one, anyhow. There'd certainly been no challenge for the brunette in recreating a house party setting. From their research, they'd discovered that the mark had described to his therapist – in vivid detail – a recurring dream. Naturally, it seemed like the most obvious setting to pick; it had certainly been more than easily recreated, and meant that their subject was going to be at ease within what he would obviously view as a dream. Entering the party as guests was an easy task, as well, since he had mentioned in his sessions with his therapist that many of the people at the party were people he had never met before.It was almost too easy.As he opened his eyes in the dream world, finding himself in the process of getting out of a car, Julian couldn't help the small surge of distaste at the pair of jeans clinging to his slender legs. Real they might not have been, but they still felt that way – and he was distinctly unhappy in them. Not that he was going to let that hinder them in any way, which was why he was quickly out of the car and at the passenger door, which he held open for Louise politely, before smiling. “You look simply ravishing,” he commented dryly, a hint of a tease in his voice as he briefly waggled his eyebrows at her. He was certain she wouldn't much like the clothes she was wearing, after all.

Money was money, and in the end, that was all Louise cared about. Sure, the job was simplistic, and was definitely not on the high-paying end of things, but it was still money, and without anything else to do, it was better than nothing. Louise liked having jobs to complete, no matter how simple. She just liked working, plain and simple. Ad no matter how easy the job appeared to be, Louise had still put quite a bit of research and effort into preparing the job. She never did anything half-way, everything was always perfect. She crossed her 't's and dotted her 'i's. It was part of her having to control the world around her. The job was too simple to get her whole team involved in though. There wasn't enough complexity to involve that many people. That many people would have led to a higher likelihood of mess-ups. But, Louise wasn't likely to attempt a job on her own, so she had roped Flynn into tagging along and helping her out on the job, and for that, she was definitely grateful.

She would admit, the man who had hired her seemed a little more odd than some of her other employers. He had been much more direct with her, no small talk at all and he refused to negotiate pricing. It had been weird, but it had sounded so simple, so easy for her to complete she couldn't resist. Louise rarely said no to a job, unless it was overtly dangerous or the person just wouldn't pay her enough. She accepted simple jobs, such as this one, and complicated ones alike, though. Whatever it took to pay the bills, because in the end, this was how she earned her living. She also wasn't well-known enough to turn her nose up at the simpler jobs, even if they were less entertaining on her end. While Louise enjoyed the challenge of multiple layer jobs and working through more advance problems, as well the higher pay that accompanied those jobs, she had to take these lower jobs as well. If nothing else came of it, at least she was getting her name out there more.

Plus, she enjoyed working with Flynn. She had come to trust him, to know that he wouldn't mess up on a job. The biggest benefit though was that he strove for perfection in the same way she did. She found she got on with him excellently, which was lucky for her because he wouldn't work with her if they didn't work similarly, she knew for sure. Louise was fully aware that Flynn tended to fly solo more often than not, and he never listened to orders from her. But, she had also learned that he didn't exactly need orders. Louise was fine not be in charge when working with Flynn because they worked best as equals. They both knew what needed to be done and they did it. No messing around, no screwing up. Just efficiency. Simple efficiency.

Louise slowly awoke in the dream and quickly pieced together her whereabouts, something that she had quickly learned to do in dreams. She sat in a car, about to enter the house party of the man they were extracting from. The set-up for the dream was surprisingly easy and the man should feel completely at ease in his recurring dream. Louise was feeling a little weary about how easy this all seemed, but maybe it was because she and Flynn were just well-prepared and completely ready to rock this job. Her door opened and she stepped out, her high heels hitting the ground, revealing her slender legs out of the car. Yes, parties were never her favorite for dreams mostly because her outfits tended to be a little more on the non-professional scale. Her skirt a little too short for her liking, and her neckline and a little too low. "Thank you," she smiled at him, though it was obvious in her tone that she was not pleased with her clothing. She took his arm, before speaking to him again. "Let's just do this quickly. Get the information, get out," she whispered to him, not wanting any of the projections to over hear. She didn't like the feeling that was growing in her belly, telling her something was off.

As focussed as he might have been on the task in hand, Julian's attention still wavered slightly as those legs that went on for miles carried Louise out of the car and she looped her arm through his. Far be it from Julian to miss an opportunity to appreciate an attractive woman, even under business circumstances. He snapped back to attention as she whispered to him, however, focussing once again on the situation at hand. So far, as someone that certainly didn't work on gut instinct, Julian was feeling fine about the entire gig. Easy it might have been, challenging it certainly wasn't, but at least things were going smoothly so far. Mind you, invading someone's dream was simplicity itself – it was everything else they were going to have to worry about. “I was intending to drag it all out, actually,” he whispered back dryly, but then shot her a playful grin anyway as he lead the way into the party itself. The house was packed, just as they'd expected it to be. Mostly filled with their mark's subconscious, although Julian had made a few important additions of his own for the subject to take lead from. The layout of the house was a simple one, all told, and not much different from any other house in the neighbourhood, which Julian had actually been already familiar with. As they entered, it was into a widened square space, which narrowed down into a hallway. To the right, there was only one doorway, which lead directly into the living room, and then there was the staircase leading elsewhere into the home. To the left, the first doorway they would come to would lead into the kitchen, while the second would take them into a small toilet, and the third, a study. The house wasn't a particularly large one, all told, but large enough that it should have been quite easy to mingle with their subject's subconscious without being noticed.Shrugging off a leather jacket once they'd stepped over the threshold – presumably with no going back now – Julian waited a moment for Louise to take off her own coat, before leading the way into the kitchen, where everybody had piled their coats on top of a large dog bed to the right of the door. It wasn't a logical place for the coats to go, of course, but it made sense to the recurring dream, apparently, and Julian wasn't about to argue with that. Especially not over an item of clothing he actually didn't even like. Dumping their jackets on top of everybody else's, the brunette pulled his partner to one side momentarily as everybody began to slowly exit. The room was still abuzz with noise despite this, and it was something that the pair had anticipated since it was just yet another feature of the dream. So far, their mark's subconscious was behaving exactly as it ought to.That didn't last as they moved further into the kitchen, however, obviously an anomaly in what was otherwise a guaranteed thing. Everyone should have left, so what the hell where these two people doing still standing there? Julian didn't need to be a good study of people to tell that their subject was already a little wary of them, and there was an almost imperceptible ripple that went throughout the population of the house, causing the brunette to glance at Louise to see if she'd noticed it. Whether she had or not, however, was not something Julian was ever given a chance to find out, as their mark spoke up. “Who're you?”Plastering a believable smile on his face, Julian closed the gap between them and offered a hand, “Mike, Mike Tarrant? We went t'school together. Y'remember, right?” he drawled, American accent flawless thanks to the dynamics of the dream. Glancing back at Louise once their subject had shook his hand congenially enough, Julian beckoned her forward. “'N this is Amy,” he continued, by way of introduction, wrapping a light arm around Louise's waist as she came over. The surprise that registered on Julian's face as the subject claimed to know her was completely real. That certainly wasn't part of the plan.

((Lemme know if you want anything changed.))

While Louise was the type of person to mostly rely on the facts of a situation, she couldn't completely disregard her gut feeling, especially in dream space where logic wasn't necessarily the ending statement. Something just didn't feel right to her, almost as if they had already screwed up when they were just beginning. Louise really didn't like the feeling and just wanted to get out of this dream. Get the idea and get out, as quickly as possible because she felt something was going to go wrong, and she'd rather not be labeled as the person who screwed up the easy job. She rolled her eyes at Flynn's obviously sarcastic statement, but a smile was on her lips, trying to remind herself to just relax because she knew she had this job down. Louise and Flynn could do this job because it had to be as easy as it seemed, the research had shown so after all, right?

Louise followed Flynn's lead, taking off her coat, and following him to the kitchen, taking time to notice parts of the layout. She had seen the layout, yes, but for Louise it was different when she was actually in the dream and she made mental notes of where things were as well as the decorations throughout the house. Flynn had done a nice job, she must admit, with the architecture. It seemed that they should be able to mingle easily, get the information they needed, and then get out of here without causing any disturbance to the subject. He would never even know. She threw her coat on the pile with Flynn's and moved to the side, allowing the mass to exit. So far, everything seemed to be going well, but, having lost her optimism at a younger age, Louise had to believe that whatever could go wrong, would go wrong.

And that seemed to be starting as a slight ripple went through the projections in the dream. Their mark was beginning to become aware that someone was messing inside his mind, and Louise knew that soon the projections would become hostile. This was the tough part. Now, they were on thin ice and really needed to be careful about they did because they smallest misstep could mean breaking that ice, alerting the mark and ultimately failure. One of the few things Louise didn't deal well with, failure never sat well with her. It just wasn't an option, they needed to succeed at this job. From the glance Flynn had shot at her, Louise gathered that he had noticed the disturbance as well, which meant they were both now fully aware of just how careful they were required to be with the job.

Louise heard the mark speaking, and was aware of his wariness. She stepped forward, one of her signature smiles on her face as she was introduced to the mark. She had started to put her hand out to shake his, be polite when he said he remembered her. She instantly brought her hand back, thinking quickly to cover her tracks. Oh boy, were they in trouble now. "You do look familiar. Right! How could I forget? We met at the business conference in Texas," she stated confidently, hoping the idea would work for him, she had no other plan. But the man stood there just looking, staring at the two. Louise knew something serious was up and lightly nudged Flynn in the side with her elbow, hoping he would get the hint, though she was confident he had already picked up on how odd this whole situation was.

Suddenly, Julian was enjoying himself. Things weren't going to plan, which annoyed him on the one hand, but excited him on the other. Louise had promised him an essentially boring job, and he'd only really agreed to it because she was somebody he trusted; not quite a friend, because Julian Flynn didn't have friends, but close enough to that mark. He was doing her a favour, really. But now, now he was suddenly interested in what was going on. The ripple of unease had peaked his curiosity, of course, but marks were all different; it hadn't been a guaranteed thing that it meant anything was actually wrong. After all, they were foreign to the dream, it was natural that they might be a little bit mistrusted to begin with. But this? Well, judging by the way the man was looking at them, he didn't believe them for a second. Damn. That was one of the biggest problems with dream sharing becoming more and more widely known. In a lot of ways, governments had done themselves a disservice by banning it, because the minute they had, it had become publicised, and now almost literally everyone knew about it. Overnight, people's use of the H100 compound had trebled. Those were the kinds of figures Julian loved, although it wasn't something that surprised him in the least. He'd long been of the opinion that the government, particularly the American one, were essentially idiots; they didn't know their head from their arse as far as dream sharing went. The mass chaos that had followed the ban was proof enough of that.Being a bad loser meant that Julian had no intention whatsoever of ditching this gig, even if things got really messy. He wasn't afraid of the consequences of his actions, as long as he wasn't going to get Louise hurt. Whether that made him more or less truth worthy as a partner didn't really matter. Louise knew there were people that would dub him reckless as far as the dream world went, to which Julian would always argue that he always got results and that was what counted. The kinds of people that didn't like his methods, anyway, were the kinds of people that began most sentences with “what if”. If there was anything the brunette didn't have time for, it was discussing consequences to his actions that had never actually occurred. Just because they might have, didn't mean he needed to take them into account; he might get run over by a bus crossing the road, but that wasn't going to stop him doing it. Running his tongue over his lower lip as Louise improvised and it didn't take, Julian quickly calculated their options. The nice thing about being a couple of steps ahead of the game was that he'd pretty much already worked out every possible outcome of this little exchange, as well as what he deemed the most suitable course of action. Which, right at that moment in time, involved making sure they didn't get killed before they could get the information they needed. It shouldn't even be that difficult. Julian was pretty certain he already knew how it was physically manifested, after all. Sadly, the projections stirring in the house weren't going to make it easy. The subject seemed to at least believe that he was Mark, however, which was good news as far as Julian was concerned. He'd already figured that the only way they were getting out of the house without getting mauled by projections first was if they won their subject over. “D'you remember that time we locked Paul Smith in the head teacher's car 'n then pushed it in the school lake?” he drawled, confident that the mark would take the switch in conversation as one of those things that just happened in dreams. This recurring dream, particularly, seemed to be a prime spot for that. And the incident Julian was currently talking about was something he'd gleaned from the therapist's files. God, sometimes he loved the fact that Washington was yet another nanny state. Practically everyone had a therapist, it would seem. “'N we got caught halfway down 'n Riley nearly pissed his pants when the coach grabbed hold of him and yanked him back?” he started chuckling, relaxing as the mark started to relax too, laughing with him. Knowing there was a gun tucked down the back of his shirt was probably the only reason that Julian didn't freak out too much as a second ripple of unease went through the house. He was pretty certain that the projections were making their back towards the kitchen, although at this point, he didn't really want to give them away by turning around. “You don't have a drink,” he drawled suddenly, turning his attention back to Louise, a drink suddenly appearing in his own hand as he brought it out from behind his back. Fucking with the dream at this point couldn't get them in that much more trouble, he figured. Lightly propelling her further into the room – they could go out the back door if they were lucky and the mark didn't get too freaked out – he grinned at their subject and then quirked an eyebrow, “How about a drink for the beautiful lady, huh?”

((Sorry it took so long! Feel free to take it in any direction.))

The only positive to the current situation was that at least the job had become interesting. Louise really just wanted to know what the hell was going on. Why their mark seemed to be very cautious of the two invaders. It could, of course, be a simple case of the man had heard enough of shared dreaming in the media to be weary of dreams in general. But, it could be something more. Something that hadn't shown up in the history. Louise wanted answers because she really liked organization in their jobs, control. She didn't like not knowing something, but it was something she had to deal with. Something had gone wrong in the research, something hadn't shown up and she couldn't change that fact now, she just had to accept it. Accept and move past it, make this extraction work despite the curve ball that had been thrown. She had absolutely no other option. Well, failure was what would happen if she didn't come up with a new plan, or just improvise as she went. But failure wasn't really an option, not for her and Flynn, anyway.

This just meant they needed to work more quickly. Once they got the information, it didn't matter if the projections became hostile, if they were killed. They would have the information, the job would be complete and the two wouldn't be said to have failed a job that seemed one of the simplest handed out nowadays. Louise was a bit nervous as her lies weren't taking. Usually subjects just accepted things said to them in dreams, they assumed it was their subconscious after all, but this man was so weary he just wasn't accepting the words she was speaking. Luckily, Flynn just kept using stories to try to convince the man they belonged. Flynn at least had real stories to build on, Louise was just making stuff up, stuff that even in real life people generally accepted with a shrug. She didn't understand why he wouldn't accept any of it. It made no sense to Louise. No, again, she couldn't get caught up in this. Just do her job. Louise let out a small laugh at Flynn's recounting of a story, feeling it a good reaction, but also finding some humor in the story.

A second ripple. Louise was more worried now. The projections would start becoming hostile very soon. Their window for the operation was closing and they needed to get the information because soon it would be too late. Soon they wouldn't be able to get the information and they would fail. Not possible. Louise needed to stop lying and talking with the subject and move on to actually extracting information because she wouldn't get anything from him, and getting information from the projections was definitely out of the picture, they would be too hostile soon to give information, it wasn't a viable option. She smiled as Flynn spoke about her getting a drink. "I'll take that drink in a moment. If you'll excuse me, I need to use the lady's room," she smiled at him, turning to the mark though for a moment before heading out of the kitchen. She needed to get to the safe, to open it and get the information she needed. After that, anything could happen and it would be fine.

She slipped out of the kitchen, and very inconspicuously made her way to the study where she knew a safe sat. She just didn't want to alert any of the projections on her way there. Of course, the study was a dangerous place to be. There was only one entrance/exit, and if many projections converged on her location, she likely wouldn't make it out. But, she just needed to crack the safe and get the information. She knew the numbers their mark liked to use a lot, it was now just a task of figuring out which of the some ten sets possible he used. She entered the small room and shut the door behind her, hoping that would give her a bit extra time to complete her job. She spotted the safe, it was in a fairly evident spot, and crouched in front of it. She tried the first set she had thought he might use. No luck. After typing in another two, it was obvious she was getting frustrated. Time was of the essence. "Damnit," she muttered under her breath as another option again failed.