The body was sequestered somewhere with a blue-lit glow and a regular stream of a chemical smooth as butter to keep him under. Wires, probably. Eames was asleep, but he had dark suspicions about where they put the wires when he was under. It was exploratory and investigative, which meant the company either hadn't a brass farthing about where they were sending him or they did but they didn't want him to know. It wasn't as if he had a choice. So the body was under sedation and the body wasn't what appeared in the landscape. The cipher was moderately taller and narrower. It wasn't the blonde, but it was just as practiced. You couldn't be a bombshell everyday, darling. Not dreaming, anyway.
Wherever here was, it smelled of petrichor and not nearly enough else. It was too green to be local. Europe, probably. Somewhere isolated: Scotland, Ireland, probably not Wales. Somebody dreamed of isolation, tiresome but a test and oh, Eames did like to flex a little bit.
The cipher was a shimmer and then he composed himself. He, Eames for the duration, was middling. He wore gray and heather and the dull gleam of green and the kind of heavy overcoat that suggested walking holidays and places that wuthered. He was lean and he had a narrow face that looked as if it might be interesting if it tried, but it didn't plan on attempting it. The hair was dark and smoothed back. It mussed, which was polish rather than substance, but Eames liked both in liberal application.
Eames loped over the distance between where he had come to exist and the little stone cottage that sat closeted by the lake. He gave it very little time at all before he was thrown out but he was unhurried and very unworried.