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Half a world away, in the mountains of America’s Pacific Northwest, James Bond was little more than a shadow in a long hallway. The passages cut through the compound like varicose veins, with a spot of refulgent yellow light exactly every five feet, creating a brilliant spotlight that Bond could only barely avoid. The outline briefly caught on the outskirts of the light was nothing but tense lines and grim urgency. In his ear, a male’s voice reminded him of his mission, but it was one that made Bond’s teeth bare themselves automatically.
“System on the west side disabled. He should be on the top floor.”
Bond only grunted in affirmation, and 002’s voice buzzed, unwanted, in his ear.
“Even with the tools given from his branch, I don’t like how easy this has been. Keep an eye out, 007. He’s just egotistical enough to treat this as a game.”
You don’t know a thing about him, Bond thought. It took every minute of his lifelong training to remain focused for this mission, and even still his mind could not keep out every trace of anger, concern, and confusion that lingered, beastlike, in his memories. Nor could it stop a traitorous follow up thought – I don’t know him, either.
MISSION BRIEFING
Date: ██-█-████
Agents: 00█ and 00█
OBJECTIVE: Locate rogue member ████████ ███████ (formerly known as Q), disable threats of ████████████, and secure location for retrieval of stolen MI6 technology. Terminate on sight.
A glowing red dot caught Bond’s peripheral vision halfway up the stairwell. He froze, automatically thinking of a sniper laser, but the light only blinked at him. Of course Q had cameras hidden all across the compound he’d holed himself up in. 002 was right in that regard; any security system that was obviously seen and disarmed was something Q allowed them to find. The real safety measures were much better hidden.
The light blinked again, and grew infinitesimally brighter. The wall opposite from Bond was suddenly painted with orange, crimson melting into the dull overhead lighting, and a message was sprayed across the wall for a total of five seconds.
PUT YOUR BACK INTO IT
The last time Q had said that to Bond, he hadn’t been on the top floor. Bond abruptly changed his direction, heading for the basement levels instead.
Two months earlier
“Have a drink with me,” Bond said, fresh from Sri Lanka and still humming with pleasant adrenaline. Half of Q’s face was radioactive green from the lines of code shining from behind his monitor. He was beautiful, and witty, and could program a wine bottle to kill a man in six ways beyond the obvious. Bond slept with people for much less.
Q looked him straight in the eye. The half of his face not backlit by the remains of cyber warfare was completely unreadable.
“No.”
Only Q’s head turned when Bond opened the door. The room they were in wasn’t small, but it was cramped with equipment in boxes, and cords slithering across the floor like brightly colored worms. The light remained unnaturally golden, and Bond was reminded of his family’s priest hole. Another door cut into the wall in front of Q, and Bond kept his eye on it, ready to tackle Q if he tried to run.
“There you are. I was starting to worry.” There was nothing for Q to be staring at on the wall he was facing, but he remained that way a little longer, his back presented calmly to Bond’s Walther. His clothes were no longer geek chic, but no less expensive; a blue dress shirt, pressed slacks, pointy toed shoes. It looked like Q had stepped out from a cocktail party.
“My, you’re terribly angry, aren’t you?” he murmured, taking in the steel of Bond’s expression. “I suppose I deserve that.”
“Q.” Bond worked his throat, and tried to drown out the roar of questions making its presence known in his mind again. Now was not the time. “You must know my orders.”
“Of course I do. I’m surprised they sent you, to be honest.”
Bond bared his teeth in a monster’s smile. “I volunteered.”
“Good, good. I was hoping for that.” Finally Q turned his entire body to face Bond. He tensed, but there was no weapon previously concealed in Q’s hands, no remote trigger or even a phone. “If they’d sent any other agent, I’d make sure this mission was a failure,” Q admitted.
“You could have,” Bond acknowledged. Q had proven time and time again that his age had nothing to do with his competency, nor his innovation. “We could have shown up and found absolutely zero trace of you. A pattern you could probably continue for dozens of retrieval missions.”
“You give yourself too little credit.”
“We’d still flush you out eventually.”
Q laughed; it was a little too unsteady for Bond’s nerves, but there was genuine amusement there. “Clearly I spoke too soon.” He shrugged, spread out his palms. “Maybe hide and seek was never in my plans. Oh relax,” Q sighed when Bond instinctively glanced around. “This isn’t a trap. Think about it. If I know why you’re here and let you find me anyway, then there’s only one logical explanation.”
One explanation, but Bond didn’t find it logical at all. “You want me to kill you.”
Instead of answering, Q changed the subject. “What has MI6 told you about me? That I’m working for that terrorist group in Belize? That one psychopath in Romania? Or just that I’ve pulled a Silva?”
“It was Bolivia, actually.”
Q sighed. “Those imbeciles.” The inflection of his voice gave no indication as to whether he meant his supposed allies or MI6. The disgraced quartermaster played with the navy fabric at his wrists; Bond waited, but Q still made no movement to pull out a weapon, a watch, or anything at all. He simply smoothed the silk of the shirt, plucked at it, and smoothed it again.
002 said something in Bond’s earpiece. He immediately reached into his ear and crushed the equipment between his thumb and forefinger.
When Q spoke again, it was quiet, but the cluttered little room caught his voice and kept it from becoming lost in the spaces. Bond didn’t need its help, anyway; whenever he couldn’t hear Q, it was due to Bond’s interference, never Q’s. Q made sure Bond could always reach him.
“I have no delusions about what this is, 007. There’s no name for me to clear; I destroyed an operation MI6 had for years in the planning. I stole files, funds, equipment. I spat in their faces and ran off. As far as they’re concerned, that makes me one of the bad guys, whether or not I’m actually working with one already on record. That means I only have three choices: become the rogue psychopath they paint me to be and take the world hostage, hide for the rest of my life and wait for the…” He smirked, more a deliberate piece of acting than anything else, “…inevitable day that you’d find me, or face my death calmly, and on my own terms. Paranoia may look well on you, Bond, but I find it a tiresome burden, and honestly, the world is really quite dull when you really look at it. I’m not interested.”
They stared at each other, killers in different forms, dressed to the nines and on the edge of something Bond couldn’t identify. When it became clear Q was content to merely stare at Bond, the agent prompted, “What are your terms, then?”
“I want you to be the one to do it, but only after I tell you the truth. Whether or not you believe me is of no consequence, but I’d like you to know.”
Something behind a box pinged. Q glanced at it, and Bond tightened his grip on the Walther enough to turn his tan hands a chalky white. The moment passed in an eyeblink, and Q was speaking again with urgent purpose.
“The operation MI6 was planning, you don’t know any of this, you didn’t need to know, but they were working with Scorpio in the Gaza Strip.”
One of the fringe parties Quantum used to use, Bond remembered. Q caught the recognition on his face, and nodded. “It’s quite common, isn’t it, working for queen and country with people who would on any other day be your enemies. I don’t have time to tell you all the details; I’m sure you’ll research obsessively into it when you return home, that’s just how you are. All you need to know is that, in order to maintain cover, a personal attack on MI6 was to be staged. Scorpio gains a reputation, is welcomed deeper into Quantum’s circle, and acts as a double agent for England. It wasn’t meant to be anything that would, in their eyes at least, be overly missed. Just the death of a special few people; a sacrificial lamb if you will, to use as a rallying cry.”
“Who was it?” Bond asked, because he was expected to. Immediately Q’s face darkened. The anger there was pure, a cold fury that left Bond with absolute knowledge that Q could, in fact, become the mastermind MI6 feared. Given the right motivation, Q could apparently do anything.
“My family,” he hissed. The hidden computer pinged again. “MI6 was willing to have my family killed, because wouldn’t that be so heartless of the attackers? Targeting loved ones of a prominent member. And wouldn’t it be so devious of them, finding out those loved ones, despite the degree of anonymity surrounding everyone above a level three clearance?”
Of all the answers Bond was anticipating, that was the last of them. His surprise was only shown in a slight climbing on his pale eyebrows, but Q didn’t notice.
“I’m not like you, Bond. There are very deliberate limits to my devotion to the motherland. So I hacked into the network MI6 spent the past five years setting up, and I destroyed it in under an hour. I revealed the scheme to those with the worst motivations, including names and faces of the top members. I stole the files relating to the operation, set a virus out to MI6’s database as a nice distraction, and fled. And I don’t regret a single bloody second of it.”
Q let out a breath, like he had just jogged to work, and all the questions previously plaguing Bond morphed into a single ticket loop of this doesn’t make sense.
“So, there it is. That felt good.” Q spread his arms to offer his chest. “You may shoot me now.”
Bond’s mouth moved before his brain did. “You want me to kill you, but you won’t even go out on a drink with me? I’m getting mixed signals.” Something about Q’s story was off, and Bond knew that if he was allowed enough time to keep Q talking, he’d figure out what it was.
Q’s arms fell, and with it so did his bitter anger. “I did want that drink with you,” he corrected. “Quite badly, in fact, but I was already planning all this at the time, and didn’t want you involved. Now no one can think to suspect you as complicent in all of this.”
A third ping and Q visibly shook himself. “Bond, I’ve been tracking 002, and he’s discovered by now that I’m not, in fact, on the cliché top floor of evildoers. Since we’re on limited time, can you please hurry up?”
“I don’t to kill you, Q.” He didn’t, he really didn’t.
Another shaky laugh from Q, and he hugged himself. He wasn’t dressed for a cocktail party, Bond realized, he was dressed for a funeral. “And I don’t want to die, 007, but those are our options.” When Bond didn’t move, Q narrowed his eyes, and reached into his pocket. “If you don’t do it, I will attack you, and force you to shoot in self defense.”
“Then I’ll just easily incapacitate you, tie you to a bed, and not let you go until you say something that makes some damn sense.”
“Then another 00 agent will kill me anyway, and I’ll be extremely cross,” Q returned, and for a moment they could almost pretend they were sniping at each other on a mission again. Something trivial to fill the time between gunshots. Q’s hand curled into a fist in his pocket, and Bond knew there was nothing in there. “I don’t think I can ask again, Bond. Please.”
It clicked, then, the ill fitting puzzle piece. When it did, Bond felt like his nerves had all been reconnected, and the revelation shook him enough to lower the gun by a millimeter.
“Q, you don’t have a family. You’re an orphan, same as me. It’s in your file.”
Q opened his mouth -
BANG
- and staggered forward from the force of the bullet 002 had just put in his back. Bond roared, and caught Q before he hit the concrete, cursing himself and the other agent. The door, he’d taken his eye off the bloody door…
“You were taking too long,” 002 said impassively. The smoke from his barrel curled before his mouth.
“You idiot! I was--”
“Bond.”
Blood was staining Q’s shirt a dark black. Red and blue made purple, color of royalty, England, employment, and Bond’s thoughts were fractured at the sight of Q’s rapidly paling face in the crook of his arm.
“You said they threatened your family, but you don’t have one,” he repeated. Q coughed, and Bond resisted the urge to shake him. “You wanted me to know the truth? Then tell me!”
“I did.” Q gritted his teeth, and wrestled with death for a few more seconds of life. In another world, Bond might have seen this display of will and be proud. In another world, he and Q might have fallen in love. “When they take orphans… like us… you know why, don’t you?”
“No personal attachments,” Bond rattled off. “Makes it easier to subscribe to the ideal, to England.”
“Yeah, but sometimes…it goes a little sideways.” Q was getting quieter now, unable to make the agent hear him. This time it was Bond who went beyond what was necessary, scooping Q up to his chest, pressing his ear close to hear every last word gasped out of Q’s bloody mouth.
“Sometimes,” Q whispered, “the orphan only upholds the ideal by proxy, because it’s connected to a certain person.” He continued, seemingly oblivious to the dawning comprehension on Bond’s face. “You were my first agent, you know. The very first I outfitted. The only one who kept getting his toys from me in person.”
...No. No, he couldn’t be serious.
“I’m--?”
Q’s smile was all scarlet teeth and unfulfilled promises. “I’m really… not such… a clever boy…” He drifted away as he spoke the last word, and Bond felt a wound inside him rip open all over again.