[Author's Note: Sorry for where I leave this one — the next chapter will be up Friday! :-D Many thanks to Fukan, who has taken on the monumental task of translating Lucid into French, and as a bonus awesomeness corrected my abominable French in this chapter. I don't speak Brit, hacker, or French, so why I chose to put all three in one chapter is beyond me.]
The first man was obviously a bodyguard. He opened the door carefully, checking the corners of the room, his eyes sweeping Bond and Q, narrowing on Bond's firearm. Bond lowered his arms to his side nonconfrontationally, nodding in acknowledgement.
The bodyguard entered, taking up a position a few feet from Bond near the door.
"Clear," he said.
The next man to enter could be none other than Kryptos. He was tall and pale, with a shock of ginger hair and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. He looked slightly older than Q — in his late 30's, perhaps, but dressed like a teenager in jeans and a threadbare Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt. He slumped casually into the room, sending a wave in Bond's direction before sitting next to Q, placing his own laptop carefully on the coffee table.
Kryptos powered up his laptop before turning to Q.
"Hey, man," he said, a soft American drawl in his voice. "Sorry for...y'know, all the suits." He gestured vaguely in the direction of his bodyguard and Bond. "Can't be too careful these days."
"Ne t'en fais pas," Q said fluidly. "Do not worry about it." His lightly French-accented English was flawless.
"So you're Shadow," Kryptos said, looking Q up and down. His voice was still casual but his pale blue eyes were sharp and suspicious. "That was some killer code you dropped on Google back in the day. You must have been just a kid. How'd you run that?"
Q sat back, smirking a little. "My first zero-day exploit," he said with a very expressive Gallic shrug. "The key flaw was in the Windows font program. That let me unleash my worm, and the rest is, as they say, histoire." His smile widened. "I also put shadows in the Google doodle, but no one outside of Mountain View knew that was me, pour ce que j'en sais."
Kryptos seemed to relax a bit. "I knew, man. That was epic. Totally leet."
"Not quite as epic," — Q returned Kryptos's smile of admiration — "as your credit hack of Dexia Bank Belgium. You pwned NASDAQ complètement that day."
"True, true," Kryptos grinned. "They were scrambling, man."
To Bond they were barely speaking English, but whatever their exchange meant it seemed to satisfy Kryptos. He chuckled a bit before growing serious.
"Here's the deal, man," he said earnestly. "This is not my usual thing, y'know? This MI6 stuff is some real heavy shit. But, y'know, can't let an opportunity like this go by, right? I mean, if Google and Facebook are dropping $20k on a bug right now, this right here is my retirement, know what I mean? The game's changing. All these Ukranians flooding the market...you gotta cash out when you can, right?"
"Je comprends. I will admit that I was surprised to hear that you were involved."
"Same here, man, same here. To be honest, you went so dark I figured you got into the wrong system and got iced. It wouldn't be the first time."
Q nodded carefully. "Not so, but very close. I ran into some trouble with MI6. Had to go deep underground for quite some time. J'espère que...this might be my way back."
"Oh!" Kryptos's face lit up. "Yeah, man, that's awesome. Leverage, man, that's totally...that makes me feel better, you know? I mean, there's probably some bad guys out for this info. Spooks and shit, you know? I didn't want to deal with that, but you can't just sit on a golden egg. Gotta do something with it. And I feel like I know you, man. I can trust you with this stuff."
Bond could barely keep from rolling his eyes. This man was so clearly out of his depth — trying to sell information stolen from a national intelligence agency to someone he could trust?
Q smiled at Kryptos warmly, leaning into him, his voice growing confidential. "It will be in good hands, I assure you."
Kryptos nodded enthusiastically. "I mean...I'll admit, when Rata called me in on this hack, I took the commission just because it was some beautiful work. I mean, did you see his code? Freakin' revolutionary."
Rata. Kryptos pronounced it as rhyming with 'data,' but in his head Bond shifted the pronunciation to Spanish. Rat. Silva.
Bond could see a new tension in Q's body, but his voice managed to convey simple enthusiasm. "D'accord. The mutating malware in particular was...très beau."
"See. You get it. I wanted to get a closer look, but...man, when I realized the system was MI6, and then the place blew up? I don't want any part of that. I delivered my code to Rata and bailed."
Q leaned forward. "So then, how do I know that this data is...comment dit-on déjà...legitimate?"
Kryptos grinned. "I've got it all worked out, man. You're gonna love this. I've got a preview here. The rest of the data is on the hard drive. But check this out." He swiped his finger over the trackpad on his laptop.
Bond saw every muscle in Q's body tense. His hand twitched toward his Walther and the other bodyguard gave him an edgy look.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est...what is that timer?" Q said, his voice pitched slightly higher with tension.
"That's the genius part. See, I packed the CD drive with explosives, wired to the hard drive. The countdown started when I powered on, set for half an hour. It goes off unless I give you the killcode. Pretty cool, huh?"
Bond felt tension tighten his spine. Bloody fuck.
Q's voice was icy. "I do not think this is...how you say...cool, Kryptos. Are you trying to double-cross me?"
Kryptos had a wounded expression. "No, man, seriously — don't freak. Totally the opposite, you know? I mean, I couldn't just give you the data, right? Why would you let me walk out of here? This way it's all cool. See, we've got almost fifteen minutes left. No problem. You look over the preview, make sure it's all legit. Then you transfer half the funds, and I put in the first killcode and skedaddle. That puts another half hour on the clock. When I'm a little ways away I'll call you. You transfer the rest of the funds, I give you the second killcode, and then all the data's yours. Pretty cool, huh?"
Q regarded Kryptos in apparent disbelief for a moment, his eyes flashing bright green with ire. "No, Kryptos, it is not cool," Q snapped. "How do I know you'll give me the second killcode when I transfer the remaining funds? How do I know the code you give me won't activate the explosives and kill me? Why would I even touch that laptop until I know you wired it up justement?"
Kryptos seemed rattled by Q's reaction, running a hand through his shock of ginger hair. "Oh, man, don't be like that. We gotta have trust, right? And don't worry, my partner did the explosive stuff. Totally not my deal, but he knows what he's doing. Safe as houses, I promise you. Here, I'll get him, he'll explain it to you." He pulled out his mobile and started tapping.
"Partner," Q said. He couldn't seem to help flashing a quick look of alarm in Bond's direction, his eyes growing wide. "In our earlier communications you said nothing of...a partner."
"Oh, yeah, man. I mean...I told you, I gave my code to Rata and got out. But this guy was already working with Rata, on the inside. I mean, part of the hack was a hard-wired workaround, right? He hadta have someone do that for him. But then Rata got iced, I saw that part on the news, but he had a failsafe that sent the data along to this guy. A final 'fuck you' to MI6, you know? And he didn't know what to do with it, so he came to me. So you don't have to worry, this dude's a professional, okay? He wanted to leave the face-to-face stuff to me, but he'll tell you. Just chill, okay? He's coming up."
Q looked to Bond, his eyes wild now as they both belatedly made sense of Kryptos's ramblings. Already working with Rata, on the inside. Q started to push away from the desk, just as the door opened.
"Bugger," Bond distantly heard Q say in his own voice as MacMillan, the field agent briefly known as 003, appeared in the doorway.
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