Preparation
Myths like The Odyssey build suspense by having gods and mortals alike engage in intricate preparation for the explosive denouement to come.
Bond sits down after a while, near to the girl, with his back against the wall. The whole scenario has played out in his mind a hundred times in a hundred different ways, but the point is always the same. Carlisle will torture him, then kill him, then kill the girl.
Unless Q.
He finds it supremely ironic that his fate now lies in the hands of a slight boy-man with unkempt hair. Of course, the whole of MI6 will be on alert, but the Quartermaster is the one who really matters now. With effort, he puts the thought out of his mind. He can't do Q's thinking for him, so there's little purpose to be served by conjecture.
The next thought that enters his mind is no less painful. It's the image of his daughter's plain face with its haunting eyes. He clings to the picture, wishing that he could see her one more time. If this is the end, he wishes—he's not a man to wish for what cannot be—but he wishes for one more day. One more time to tell her the things he hasn't been able to say. He realizes, perhaps for the first time, that some things are better than silence, more important than restraint, more precious than his dignity.
He jerks forward and opens his eyes. Something is tickling his hand.
"Don't freak out," says Kara, tracing the lines on his palm with her finger. "Look, see! We're going to be fine. You're going to live a long life. I just wanted to make sure we get out of here alive." She pushes his hand closed and sits back, smiling.
Bond throws his head back and laughs. She might not be his daughter, but she's got his courage.
Sophia knows something has changed. She can hear it in the Quartermaster's voice, even while he laughs with studied nonchalance and tries to seem as engaged in the conversation as she is. She grips the phone tightly, wanting to ask him what he's found, but she's too afraid that what he says will make her world come crashing down. She goes quiet, breathing heavily.
"Don't—don't worry," says the voice of the man at the other end.
Don't worry? She laughs, a laugh that is kissing cousin to hysteria.
"I mean it," he says, with more authority. "I'm going to bring your father and your sister home, and you're not going to panic."
"That's right," Sophia echoes, drawing strength from his assurance.
"Good," says Q, both to her and to his computer screen, where he sees dots and arrows that show him the location of each of the people now converging on a single point, people he has summoned with a few clicks of a button. He imagines this is how it must have felt to form a posse in the Old West of American legend.
He wouldn't have liked to be a cowboy.