Hello there, some things to know and tell about this story, it was written for the Swan Queen Big Bang: Bangin' All Summer. As such there's some really awesome art over on Archive of Our Own for this story by the wonderful Lucy_Riot. Seriously, it's awesome, go look and be in awe. It's under the same title as the story. Past that, well, this is a spy AU, so there's a bit of violence in here as well as major character death. If those aren't your things then this isn't the story for you. If it is, enjoy everyone.

Regina strode through the atrium like she owned it, heels clicking out a rhythm on the marble below her. She crossed the logo of the Central Intelligence Agency like she did every day. She repressed a sneer like she did every day. They were all idiots. She walked through security, nodding at the guards, sweeping her eyes quickly over the guns at their side. SIG-Sauer P228s, not very high powered, but enough to get the job done, surely. Well, enough to get the job done if the job was anyone but her. But that was neither here nor there. Her orders were clear.

She cleared security easily and walked to the bank of elevators. She hit the up button and waited around. A couple of her coworkers sent her cordial good mornings, but other than that no one spoke to her. That was how she liked it. That was how it was safe.

The elevator came and she took it to the third floor. She walked to her little cubicle in the corner of the large room and sat down. There was already a pile of files sitting on her key board. She resisted the urge to sigh. This was not what she was trained for.

Regina pulled the files towards her and opened them up. A slew of domestic information covered the page. She hated the domestic files the most. Inane things mostly, the residents of this heinous country were entirely too stupid to plan something of note. Yet, she as a low level CIA analyst had to go through everything just to make sure. And if information sometimes got lost about a possible threat…well no one was ever the wiser.

She read everything quickly. Nothing stuck out at her. Just the normal chatter that amounted to nothing. She typed up her report quickly enough, put the files in her outbox, and sent the report to her superior. She stood up and stretched and walked over to the water cooler, grabbing a cup and filling it, leaning against the wall, drinking absently as she listened to conversations around her. Someone was having an affair. Another girl thought that the information she was sorting through was the end of the world waiting to happen. Some man was whispering to his superior about a group planning an attack on a general in one of the South American countries. Regina filed that tidbit away for later. There were certain people who would want to know their cover could possibly be blown.

She finished her cup of water and went back to her desk. The files she'd sorted through were already gone replaced by a new stack. She really despised this job with a burning passion. She would give anything to go back and time to fix the mistake that had landed her here. One little mistake and she had ended up in this hellhole. There was a reason that people like her didn't trust a single soul, but the girl…well she was on the brink of death and she seemed safe enough. She wasn't heartless, she had tried to save her. She was an innocent in all of this. Yet it had cost her almost everything.

She grabbed another file and set to reading once more. A few files later the floor's supervisor yelled for attention. It took several long moments but everyone fell silent and rolled out of their cubicles to see what the ruckus was about. Regina stood and leaned lightly against her cubicle's flimsy walls.

The man cleared his throat. "Thank you. So, as most of you that have worked here for a while know, the government loves to increase efficiency. Starting today a group will be interviewing you all about your job practices and watching you work in order to make suggestions about how we can work that much better."

Everyone on the floor groaned loudly.

"Now I know this isn't out favorite thing, but just be polite and cooperative and they'll be out of here in no time. We're already quite the efficient group so I can't imagine that they'll have much to say about any of us. The group should start after lunch sometime, I just wanted to give you a heads up." The man nodded and stepped back.

Everyone on the floor erupted, talking to their neighbors loudly. Regina sunk down into her seat again. Something about this didn't sit well with her. Her instincts were almost always right when it came to potentially dangerous situations for her. She would just have to extra careful around this group of efficiency consultants. Her cover was sound, after all it had gotten her into one of the most secure buildings in the world, albeit in a very low level job with low level clearance, but it was enough. She played this right and she would be fine.

Regina sat with a particularly dense file in front of her when another, much more feminine voice called for their attention. Regina stood, throwing the remains of her lunch away. Her mouth went slightly dry at the sight of a blonde woman with piercing green eyes standing exactly where the floor supervisor had stood a few hours before. The corners of Regina's mouth turned up. Well, the government surely had predictable hiring practices.

"Hi guys, I'm Emma White. I'm the efficiency consultant that will be around for the next few weeks. I'm looking forward to working with all of you in the future. I hope we'll get along just great. Also, these are two assistants Scarlet," A woman with a bright red streak through her dark brown hair waved. "and Mary Margret." A demure woman in a matronly looking sweater and dress smiled at them. "They'll be helping conduct all the interviews, but if you believe that there are any problems, though I don't see anything going wrong, always feel free to come directly to me. So, just continue on with your day. When we need to see you we'll come and get you and don't be surprised to find us hovering around. Thank you very much." Emma smiled.

Everyone went back to work slowly, watching the group of new comers warily.

Emma took a deep breath. It smelled exactly as she remembered it did in Langley though it had been years since she had been back here. The burning sun of the Middle East and the biting cold of a Russian winter were more familiar to her now than her own home country's mild climate. But this was the life she had gladly signed up for years ago. Moving around came with the territory.

They needed an unknown face for this assignment, someone who didn't come and go from Langley but once in a blue moon. Emma was one of the few that fit that criteria and she was the best out of all of them. Not that she wasn't happy to not be holed up a tiny little shack in the middle of the Russian tundra in hopes of coming across the supposedly vital information that her country needed, but it was a tad disorienting. Being surrounded by almost everyone speaking English sounded wrong. But she was adaptable, she had to be. It wouldn't phase her for long.

Her team trailed behind her. She didn't know how she felt about this whole working in a team thing either. People in her profession were lone wolfs. All three of them had given the other two a thorough once over and then another one just to be sure when they had met up a few days ago. They had deemed each other acceptable for the time being, but Emma knew she had gotten more than a few glares from behind her back from the red streaked one. Probably thought she should be in charge. Emma fought to not to roll her eyes at that. Of course she thought she should be alpha bitch. If this mission wasn't so big she would have asked to work alone. But there were all of the employees of Langley to go through, so this arrangement would have to do.

Emma pressed the up button and waited as her two companions swept in behind her. It was after lunch. She found that people got sloppier in the afternoon when fatigue started to hit. If they were going to catch whoever was on the inside they would need every little thing on their side. To get into Langley without tripping an alarm they had to be good. Emma thought of the list of others that she knew that could pull it off, and there were only a handful. She'd already gone through all of the pictures of the employees and they weren't anywhere, though. This was an unknown quantity. Which either meant they were new to the game, or they were so damn good that no one even knew they were in the game period. This was going to be a fucking long mission.

The elevator doors opened and she stepped through. The floor spread out before her, crowded with cubicles. A slight frown tugged at her face. There were a lot of places to hide within a warren like this. Not that there weren't cameras everywhere, but Emma liked to have an eye on everyone and everything. It had kept her alive more than a few times. She could deal with this. Most of these people couldn't kill anyone with a gun at point blank range. It would be fine. For now. As long as she picked out the enemy before they picked her out.

She walked up to the floor supervisor and chatted a few minutes. Twitchy man, very nervous, but friendly. His accent wasn't affected, but natural. He read at face value to be exactly as he appeared, a middle management flunky of the CIA. She'd do a more thorough reading later.

When she called for the entire floor's attention a few minutes later she surveyed the faces. The words that were coming out of her mouth were well rehearsed, so much that they flowed off her tongue without thought. It left her free to scan the faces in front of her.

Breath left her as she locked eyes with a brown haired, brown eyed woman of obvious Latina descent. God, talk about her type. It had been quite a while since she'd had a bed warmer for a night. But that was beside the point. Her eyes wandered on.

Everyone here looked like low level analysts. Then again, whoever was here had to blend in in order to stay here unobserved. This floor had been selected first for the fact that it would be one of the easiest to fit in on and had the most information flowing through it. It may not be top secret information, but if they were good enough that wouldn't matter. Once they had access to the CIA they could access whatever they needed with relative ease.

With her speech over she started to pace the rows of cubicles, looking for anything particularly odd. Which was hard considering everyone seemed to be acting weird. She sighed. Why had the government made her cover an efficiency consultant? It was the least covert thing she could think of. These people weren't going to trust her easily, not when she had the power to have them fired. Sometimes government didn't make sense at all.

She found herself drifting past the brunette's cubicle. The woman was already hard at work with a stack of files in front of her, reading intently. Her heart skipped a beat at the reading glasses perched on her nose. They were absolutely adorable. Emma glanced over at the other two agents. They were pacing just as she was, distracted. Perhaps she would take this interview personally when the time came. And maybe she would make it the first interview she did. The faster she cleared the woman the faster she wouldn't feel guilty about the skipping her heart did every time she saw an attractive woman. As many women as she had seen and still the woman sitting the cubicle had to rate in the top ten. Perhaps when she was clear she could get the woman to go out with her for a night. Then she could get her out of her head and have a clear head to finish the job and get her out of the country again and onto something a little more exciting.

Yes, that sounded like a good idea. Then again, good idea for her was relative. It certainly wasn't going to get her killed, but that was probably about it. Emma smiled and kept walking.