A/N: 007 isn't mine and I make no money from this.

The 007 in this prologue is Pierce Brosnan's 007, but he goes by a different name as James Bond (who will be introduced later) is Daniel Craig's.


"Goldeneye, please!" Q begged, his eyes watering behind grubby glasses as he struggled through the small, overheated passages in an effort to reach the main frame. "I know you're still in there."

"Designation not found. You have two more attempts before automatic lock down." The soft male voice replied smoothly.

"Shit. Please." He breathed, crawling as quickly as he could. There had to be some part of Goldeneye left, but he'd need to access the consoles inside the central control room to find her.

Behind him, a loud explosion rang out, the tremors shaking even the underground system he was scrambling through. Cursing his own stupidity, Q hurried on.

The current situation was dire; the AIs were ruthless in their domination and mankind was outmatched. He had no idea what the exact numbers were as no one was keeping count anymore but several months earlier, the AI had wiped out more than 67% of humanity. This was a war they could not win.

At last, he reached a grate and kicked it out, toppling through inelegantly. He was not the kind of person that normally did such missions; he wasn't a 00, a field agent or even a bog-standard soldier. He was the Quartermaster of Europe, someone who had been under constant protection since his promotion last year, after Boothroyd had been killed. It showed the state of the world with painful clarity that a twenty year old man had been put in charge of so much when he had knowledge but little experience in leading the vast department. Still, one year on and though things were far worse, Q had had a baptism of fire, emerging as a leader and the one hope they had of stopping the slaughter… which meant he was on his hands and knees in passages made of heated metal, his clothing burnt and frayed, his skin damaged. The situation felt impossible.

However, he was the only chance that mankind had for speaking to the AI that processed everything. Once known as Goldeneye, the AI had kept track of humanity through the cameras and microphones that had once littered every inch of their civilisation, reporting suspicious behaviours to authorities in a largely successful bid to prevent crime before it had even happened. She had been able to process data at an incredible rate, far more effective than any human and so law enforcers had her input the relevant information directly into their personal data comms. For more than half a century, Goldeneye functioned as the main component in keeping peace in Europe.

However, she was old technology, even when she'd been put to use fifty years earlier. Nearly two centuries early, people had made great advancements in technology, their lives improving in leaps and bounds as artificial intelligence had been developed. They had allowed all manner of robots to do the difficult jobs for them, the dangerous, unpleasant or monotonous tasks, but before long riots broke out that the police had been unable to fully subdue on their own. The richer were getting richer, the poor were falling further into poverty and those in the middle were desperately clinging to the edge; trying to pull themselves up, to gain that extra bit of money and gain that extra bit of class in the eyes of the world. Some had managed to a certain extent, buying the latest tech and smugly showing off, while trying to keep their books balanced, but more and more lost their grip and tumbled to the depths of destitution, the rich organisations taking all they owned to make up for debts they couldn't repay. Crowds of the desperate with tempers frayed and nerves raw viewed the rich elite eating well, with a roof over their heads and several more to spare, with Nano tech running through their bodies to keep them healthy; the discontent had grown.

The riots blossomed into a full revolution and even the AI had been unable to quell the rage. But the Europeans had banded together, casting their money and intelligence into one pot and the resulting government had had the power to develop GOLDENEYE.

GOLDENEYE had been an AI unlike any other. It had had a physical body, a small, olive-skinned female which had allowed it to interact with people in a way other AI had not yet managed; it was able to see to its own updates, for both hardware and software. But the GOLDENEYE doll was only one part of a three part system. It had also had a main frame, housed underground in a large complex that was safe from even military grade explosions, this received all the data and transmitted it to the relevant people or systems. The final part was a weapon in space, the tech had been highly advanced for the time; holding a geosynchronous orbit most of the time, it was an a every present glint in the sky, but it was faster than any vessel that had been built until then, capable of moving into position with great speed. It could drop through layers of atmosphere to deploy weapons without damaging the main station that they were housed in. It had been designed to land and restock when necessary.

However, the technology at the time had been no match for the sheer tenacity of the people. Battles had been fought, many had died but GOLDENEYE was shut down and the governments agreed to focus less on AI and more on improving the lives of everyone.

One hundred and thirty years later, GOLDENEYE had been discovered again; while the doll was missing and the space station inaccessible, the main frame had been accessed. Updating the dated equipment had taken more than a dozen years, and it had taken just over another five to access the AI and update the software. Several years later, with GOLDENEYE linked up to all cameras and microphones, with free reign through the irreplaceable internet, the European government had started up their surveillance, using GOLDENEYE to keep track of people.

"Shit." He swore again as he stood in the circular room, stacks of old, now irrelevant memory banks built into the structure.

Goldeneye had been here once, though Q only had dulled memories of crawling into this space a dozen years earlier. The AI had been kind, interested in him. She had spoken of her other parts, the doll and the space station and the young boy had listened with rapt attention. An awful lot had happened over those two days that he'd gotten stuck here, but best of all was that he'd received a designation off her: friend. That designation had thrilled him, more than the claims of MI6 that he was a hero for saving the AI from an unknown threat that he had been unable, at the age of nine, to back-hack and find their location. MI6 had wanted to talk to him about what he had done and Goldeneye's gift to him, but the AI herself had been happy to discuss topics that had interested the boy and talk about them seriously with him, without sounding like she was patronising him.

Thinking about it years later, Q acknowledged that she had probably never encountered a child before and even a genius like Q as a child had allowed his emotions to colour his actions. For all her predictive programmes and the plethora of data she could access; theory, observing behaviour on surveillance and actually encountering it for yourself were all very different scenarios and neither two could fully inform you of the other.

She had probably learnt a fair bit from him, but in return she had shown him her world. Even now, he had several access ports on his head; two on his neck, at the top of his spine and one on his left temple. The world they had allowed him into was nothing like this one; something that couldn't be understood with his regular senses, as there was nothing to see with his eyes, nor anything to smell, hear, touch or taste. And yet, it was another world, where data was input and received and when he was connected, it made sense. He had returned numerous times in later years, but he hadn't had to crawl in like this; she had always welcomed him in through the front doors.

It made Q wonder if a fair portion of their current problem came from communications issues; Goldeneye was the only AI who had ever had a true understanding of the outside world in a real, tangible sense. Other AIs knew it existed in theory, but as most humans understood that the internet existed, they couldn't imagine it as a fully realised world of its own. The regular AIs didn't understand the difference between the destruction of the parts of the world they didn't like and humans deleting sites and data from computers; between killing humans and the deletion of AIs that were considered troublesome or no longer needed.

There had been a catalyst in this latest war, a tipping point that Q held a large portion of the blame for upsetting. He'd never told those in charge of his guilt, instead choosing to hold his tongue but it coloured his actions now; his lack of consideration for his own safety, his reluctance to eat the rations provided or take blankets for sleeping. 004 had played him like a well-tuned instrument and Q hadn't realised what was happening in time to undo the damage he had inflicted.

Burying his painful flare of guilt that always made him tremble, Q approached terminal and extracted the wires that he needed to link up.

"Please let this work." He whispered, cables clenched in burnt hand; the skin had mostly blistered except for one spot where the skin had gone white. The pain was distant in his mind, the desperate drive to fix the mess he had caused overriding any other thoughts.

With only a vague understanding of what he needed to do and no true plan on how to accomplish it, Q lay down on the ground and inserted the wires. The last physical sensation he noted was of his body relaxing into a sleep-like state, the hand that had been holding the wires dropping down beside his head.

Cyberspace was nothing like the real world; the mass of colour that was everywhere, lines and lines and lines of it, spreading out beyond Q's comprehension. He loved it. Latching onto #DC143C, Q allowed himself to move along; not that he considered how he was moving. The young man had learnt as a child that trying to move body parts when he was merely an organic presence in a digital world led to panic attacks; decidedly unpleasant when you had no body there to calm down. Instead, he had eventually accepted that he was nothing more than a thought here and adapted to a different way of seeing the world.

For now, he kept to the #DC143C line as he needed to troubleshoot Goldeneye into restarting. 9EYES was a programme that Q had allowed 004 set up in her mainframe, having fallen for the story that 004 had spun him and believed that this change would aid MI6. But 9EYES had suppressed Goldeneye and taken over, making use of the vast network and her open access to follow a separate agenda to the one Q had expected.

#FFD700 was running parallel to him now, but the usually beautiful line was broken up by #8A2BE2, the change a jarring difference but, Q supposed, at least it hadn't disappeared altogether. Goldeneye had been pushed down, but she was still there.

Focussing his attention, Q tried to repair parts of the line as he went by pulling small sections of the gold. The effort was greater than expected and he found himself away from the line, though he was unsure if he had lost consciousness for a moment and drifted or if he had glitched out of position. It was unnerving and he would avoid thinking too deeply about it, even later but for now the young man simply continued along the crimson thread to his destination.

Upon arrival, Q instantly noticed that the codes protecting his old friend had been changed, the new ones knitted together more tightly. Considering the change more closely, he realised his own access was still granted; had 9EYES not realised that he was human? Perhaps Goldeneye hadn't shared the fact of her gift with other systems. As good as he was on the outside, this would have been impossible; Q quickly had to acknowledge the level of skill behind this programme.

9EYES was invasive and while its blue-violet colouring should have been a beautiful shade, Q was horrified to see the extent of its corruption. Distress blanked his mind out again, but when he came back to himself, he had only moved closer to the largest portion of gold. It didn't matter, he decided, he'd have to do something. Still, he didn't dare announce his queries, afraid that he would be noticed as an intruder and either ejected from the system or receive a virus in retaliation; he'd experience both in his time and neither were pleasant.

Concentrating further into Goldeneye's now dormant centre than he had ever gone, Q carefully began to nudge the system; he wanted to wake up as much of her as he could. Blanking out again, Q soon found himself deeper inside than he had expected, #8A2BE2 barely a glimmer from his position. Slightly more confident, Q pushed his own energy out with the desperate hope that Goldeneye would respond… but when he woke up again, he was in his own, twitching body in a heap on the floor.

The desire to call out to Goldeneye was quelled as he noticed that the main frame had more lights on than before; he'd made something of a difference, but what exactly he had done was hard to say. Forcing himself to his hands and knees, the quartermaster found the strength to crawl back towards the passages he had come from.

He was weak though, curling up against the grate and shutting his eyes. Something had happened, but it hadn't been anything exciting enough to give him the needed burst of adrenaline. Instead, he felt a vague hope in his chest as he allowed himself a moment to rest.

He was so thirsty now, his tongue sticking to the top of his mouth uncomfortably and the back of his throat in a similar state. He really did need to move, if only to get some water. He managed to struggle along to the open area in the venting, but he sighed miserably as he looked up at where he needed to go.

He stood no chance of getting up there. Dropping back to his knees and toppling over onto his side, Q shut his eyes and felt himself passing out.


"Q? Come on, kiddo. Eyes open. There we are."

A warm hand coaxed Q into opening his eyes as the rim of a water flask pressed against his bottom lip. "007?" He murmured, before raising his hands to try and take a drink.

"I'll hold it, Q. Ready?" Peter Branston gave a reassuring smile before tipping the flask. The feel of cool water against his throat made the young man whimper with relief. "Slowly…"

"Where… How did you get in here?" He asked in confusion, wrapping his arms around his torso as he noticed the trembles that wouldn't stop.

"Some young woman let me in. Told me how to get here and headed off again." The agent scrubbed a hand through his dark hair, before giving the other a smile. "Don't know if she was working for or against the AI, what with being here in the first place but then willing to help me out…"

"Can we go?" Q interrupted, desperately wanting to see sunlight and feel a cool breeze.

"Of course. Can you stand?"

"I feel sick and tired." Q stated bluntly, not really wanting to admit it but knowing that 007 needed all the facts. "However, I feel better how I've had some water and I very much want to leave."

Peter nodded, knotting his hands into a foothold and crouching down. "Let's go then."

Their journey back was slow, Q unable to regain the energy he had spent in cyberspace, but Peter was patient for once, not complaining about their pace. Outside and in the open, Q dropped to the ground again and shut his eyes.

"I just need a minute." He explained, a trickle of shame working its way in; 007 had known him for years, since Q had gained his technopathic abilities and his grandfather, Boothroyd, had decided it was safest to keep him close. He had just turned nine at the time, but he despised the idea that 007 still saw him as a child. He'd been mature intellectually for a long time, but he had rather wanted to prove that he had grown physically too.

"On my back. That way I can keep my gun out and we can keep moving. There is a vehicle waiting not too far from here." Peter crouched, ignoring Q's glare. "You might get along well enough with the AI, but we are at war with them and I don't want to be killed for your pride."

It was a harsh statement, but it was enough to get him moving. Peter was right, they were at war and catching his breath in what was essentially the back garden of the enemy's HQ was beyond stupid.

The quartermaster decided to put what had happened and the plans for the immediate future into coherent language before arriving back at their own HQ, but the young man dozed off again almost instantly and completely missed the walk to the horses, waking only long enough to scramble onto the back of one before sliding back into sleep as Peter mounted behind him and set the creature off.

The steady beat of the hooves was familiar enough to feel safe, horse travel a common mode of transportation when they were avoiding technology. In the back of his mind, he wondered about the girl who had helped them out, but if he had any revelations, they were lost when he woke up later on.


MI6 had changed a lot in the past two centuries, now no longer limiting itself to the UK, but as the head of the Military Intelligence Network for all of Europe. Q wasn't entirely sure how MI6 had come out in the lead for all the Intelligence Agencies in Europe, but he'd always struggled to stay awake in history class, but his grandfather had always joked that they had won that battle because everyone else wanted to keep MI6's Quartermaster happy, as he'd been the best. As a teenager, he'd always joked back that his grandfather shouldn't admit to his age, just to show off his ego, before jumping back to avoid the lazy swat the man would give. Now, nestled deep under London with tunnels they had dug themselves leading to countryside, MI6 was well battered, but still functioning with a leader who inspired an odd sort of confidence in those she spoke to.

"Tell me you have a plan, Quartermaster." M commanded as she dropped heavily into her desk chair, her elegance long since gone after she had been injured during The Fall.

"I won't say it's not as bad as we initially thought, but it's not as hopeless. Goldeneye is still there, she's just been corrupted and suppressed by 9EYES. With a bit more effort, I might be able to get her up and running again." He stated softly as he stood straight, trying not to show the exhaustion that lingered still.

M stared intently at him for a moment, her sharp eyes seeming to spot every secret he held. "From what 007 tells me, just accessing cyberspace left you unconscious for several hours. Forty minutes to get in, closer to an hour to get back out so that's nearly three and a half hours you were unaccounted for."

He hesitated, wanting to tell her about his suspicions; that he had been able to repair the Goldeneye Doll and she'd aided 007 in reaching him. He wanted to explain his relief that Goldeneye wasn't gone entirely. He rather wanted to confess that he had been the one to give 004 access to the Goldeneye main frame, allowing him to upload 9EYES, that 004's silver tongue had convinced him that it was unfair that Perseus Holmes (as he had once been called) was the only one able to truly communicate with the AI. 004 had claimed that the AI had no compassion for anyone but the boy who had once saved them, that it had no regard for privacy and that people's lives were falling apart because of it. He'd then raised the idea that it was corrupt, that although Perseus had protected Goldeneye in his childhood, another attempt had clearly been made and had this time been successful as there was evidence of corruption in the higher ranks; making comments about M's husband and his ease at getting anything he wanted. Perseus had changed his mind once they had been before the main frame, refusing to give 004 access, but it had been too late; Tiago had knocked him out and uploaded 9EYES.

What had followed was now known as The Fall; it was a nicer term than massacre and it hinted at an ability to stand back up. Personally, Q thought it referred to the old saying 'Pride comes before the fall', which was so apt that it was almost painful to consider. Mankind that been smug in how well it was doing, having figured out a working balance of AI and human labour, ensuring people had jobs and that life was well aided by machines.

"I'm not sure what else we can do until one of the agents find Ti- 004." His name wasn't used anymore; M was unable to have him officially struck off as an agent until they could update the records, which were all on computer. Paper files had gone out of fashion centuries earlier, as their computers were now paper-thin, hard-wearing and flexible enough to be folded up and stuffed into a pocket. Her frustration at their situation and at Tiago Rodriguez became evident when she refused to acknowledge the man as any kind of person, a number to be spat instead of a name, and he would lose that when (not if, she was more optimistic than Q) they got back into the database. Plus Rodriguez's ego was so big that it would set his teeth on edge to know his name wasn't considered important information.

She conceded his point with a tilt of her head before moving on. "How about communication? Have you any way to break through their jam? You're not an agent and I dislike losing all contact with you."

"Yes, actually." He smiled and pushed his glasses up. "Radio."

"Radio?" She raised her brow slightly. "But that uses the same digi-"

But Q was already shaking his head when he interrupted. "Not digital. This is going back nearly half a millennium but people used to use radio waves to transmit their messages rather than cyberspace."

"And it works as well?"

"We'll only be able to transmit audio, but I've been building some Radio Communication Sets and we've been able to make them work across HQ." He dropped his gaze for a moment, fingers sliding to the button-hole that no longer had a button to pair with; no one was exactly going out shopping these days. "We need to test it further. I'm fairly certain it will work, but I don't want to risk a failure when it's needed. I've only had access to a few schematics and I didn't want to risk hunting through cyberspace long enough to be noticed and have them realise what I'm trying."

"How far out do you want to go to try it out?"

"Not just distance, but for over and underground contact and to look into what might block the signal. I'm hoping that because it's so old that they won't have anything up. The AI are designed to be efficient in all things and to devote time and resources to the upkeep of something so obsolete would be wasteful."

"Alright, you have my approval for these tests, but I want you to take a 00 every time you go off site." She looked down at her computer, fully disconnected to the internet but not useless. "Who will be going to test these things?"

"Myself at some point. I want to be here for some attempts and off site for others. Steve Blunt and Abbie Chambers would be best in the effort too, they've been helping me so have a pretty solid understanding of what's going on with everything and what can be fiddled with if there is a problem when I'm not stood beside them."

"You take 007." Q had no objections to this; Peter got tetchy if anyone else was assigned to his guard, likely because the man had helped raise him. "Edward has been itching to get out so he can go with Blunt and Chambers can have Léo."

"Thank you." He bit his tongue on any complaints though. While Abbie would have no problems with 009, the reason for 001's restlessness was that he'd fucked Steve and was trying to get away from the issues they had apparently refused to discuss. He left them to it though, knowing that while other department heads might have made a point to get this resolved in their current climate; Q rather suspected that as a twenty year old genius who had only gone as far as two mutual and rather unspectacular hand jobs in an empty storeroom when he'd still been in education, before he' been officially employed… well, they weren't going see him as an authority figure on this particular issue.

A loud knock on the door frame jolted him out of his thoughts. Manon was standing at the door, her usually calm expression badly frayed. "Sorry, ma'am but… 0013 just got back with her report. Q, Hinx found 006."

"What happened?" He asked softly.

"Andy's dead." She whispered, her features cracking. Everyone here was close as everyone lived here. Home no longer translated to a house, but a small room with a single bed and whatever they had managed to bring with them before the lockdown began. "He found that Tia- I mean that 004 was part of a larger organisation, but that was all. He never got the chance to make a full report. Briony is getting patched up now, but she'll be fine."

"I… right. Good. Thank you, Manon." She slipped back into the corridor, her light steps difficult to hear through the mild shock that was settling over him. Andy Renton had been a retired agent that had come back after The Fall; he'd been around MI6 for longer than Q had been alive.

"Get a move on with this radio, Quartermaster. It's bad enough that we are battling the AI, we don't need another organised body in the mix. And go see R, if you're going to make this attempt at fixing things any time soon, you're going to need more rations. I need you to stand up against strong winds." She informed him without a hint of a smile on her lips, though it could been seen in her eyes. Q nodded and stumbled out.


A month later saw Q carefully blowing the dust away as he carved a new name into the wall of the fallen; Scarlett Papava – 005. Those with a call sign were remember by both name and sign, others with the department. Above her was Cedric Mason – 0011; Avellina Melis – 0012; Olof Karlsson – Rations; Bodil Larsen – Q Branch; Andrew Renton – 006… They'd lost a fair few in a month with only a little to show for it.

Max Denbigh, a high-up official when MI5 had still been around, was neck deep in whatever was going on with this organisation, a follower with visions of how great the world could be once the population had been culled and the AI coaxed into submission. Apparently they were confident that 9EYES could be controlled and forced to do what they wanted him to.

The final piece of information had been gathered by 007, hours earlier. He'd transmitted the information via radio… Their foe was called SPECTRE and they had various holes that they'd taken cover in. Peter had given them a bunch of name and locations before…

Q raised his hand and once more began to carve; Peter Branston – 007.

A tear trickled down his cheek as he stepped back and scanned the wall, gaze drifting almost automatically to Lancelot Boothroyd – Q.

It was his twenty-first birthday in a week and instead of celebrating, Q could no longer imagine what life would be in a week. Shutting his eyes, he finally let himself drop to the ground and shuffle to press his back against the wall. The man who used to walk him to cubs, who had collected him from education centres and attended the progress meetings; the man who had made dense, sickly birthday cakes and insisted on teaching Q how to dance…

The idea that he was gone made Q feel more isolated and vulnerable than he could have ever expected. But being an adult didn't seem to lessen the pain, just as it hadn't when his grandfather had died a year earlier. Now, he didn't have anyone left to come and wrap an arm around his shoulders.

He didn't have an agent he fully trusted at his back either. It would have to be 001 who went with him when he returned to Goldeneye's main frame. No, it wasn't that Q didn't trust 001 but he didn't have the same bond with him. The attempt would need to be soon though.

R (who in recent years was no longer a part of Q Branch but was now Rations-master, the head of a new, vital department) had explained that the supplies were getting dangerously low. In a meeting this morning, she had raised her concerns and M had taken her seriously. Peter had been killed in the night, his information relayed to all who needed to know in the morning and M had made a drastic decision. While Q and 001 tried to revive Goldeneye, they would send a large portion of their remaining forces to taken down SPECTRE. Even if Goldeneye couldn't be revived, hopefully they would halt 9EYES for long enough to stop SPECTRE from being quite so omniscient.

It was a desperate move and when he went back, they would head out… however, the young man had begged for a few moments to say goodbye to the man who had been a father to him for so many years; M, in a rare act of sentiment, had agreed.

Nonetheless, Q pulled himself up and dried his eyes. This had to work.

It had to.


A/N: This whole thing came about from me imagining Raoul Silva singing Shiny from Moana...