A/N: Thank you very much for the response with the pilot chapter. Please enjoy the second chapter of Tessitura.

II

Friends in High Places

Prague, Czech Republic

"Well, this is a little inconvenient."

009 peered outside the opening elevator and entered the floor, scanning into the dim-lit, glass-encased emptiness as she pointed her pistol left and right in caution. Comfortable with the silence, she stepped out slowly while dragging what seemed to be a body of one of the building's security personnel. The City Tower was rich with life from the thriving businesses that occupied its first few floors, but as the heights escalated, so did the barren environments of unoccupied floors with overlooked potential. Hissing at the hassle of dragging a corpse, 009 shifted her arm and tossed the body towards a corner where it would not bother her; the dead man's limp position allowed the little light to form itself over the bloodied hole that centred itself on his head.

Dropping the black duffle bag she carried with her beside the corpse, 009 began to examine her vantage point. There was an advantage of being earlier than the time she should be, and as old habits go, examining her options was a part of her job that she liked to do. When she dragged out the compact sniper rifle case, it came along with a smaller black box. With interest, 009 set aside her weapon case as she opened the box which revealed an optical head-mounted display. Amused, she raised it up to have it reflected against the night lights, admiring the slick metal frame that held an augmented-reality system on the right arm of the eyewear. Picking up the USB wire which had her earpiece, 009 plugged it onto the eyewear's small computer body and booted the system as she wore it over her eyes.

"009? Can you hear me?" echoed the voice of the quartermaster responsible for the technology. He seemed to have been waiting.

"Maybe." she responded, as she knelt on the floor and opened the case of the sniper rifle, assembling it piece by piece, "I could also be pretending to hear you."

Q made a low sound that even the slightly static reception failed to hide, and 009 could almost feel him roll his eyes as she placed the remaining pieces of the gun onto its main frame. "How are you finding the eyewear? It's a prototype - augmented reality powered by small computer with more power than a smartphone. I heard you scope with your left eye, so I switched the placements. You should see the HUD at the corner - 'Head-Up Display', in case you were wondering."

"So you do know me, and yet you looked so surprised." 009 remarked, glancing slightly at the right corner of her vision and into the small screen attached onto the eyewear's computer. Her hands were steadying themselves against the glass in front of her, carefully placing glass cutter tool in the area she had measured out, "I see it. Time, location, picture of the man before I shoot him. I know what a HUD is, Q."

"I didn't know you, I only knew what you were doing. This mission was primarily managed by Tanner since the Q-Branch had to temporarily go dark when we moved the servers after Skyfall. He bought your ticket, and told me what you would be needing and I couldn't be bothered too much with the setup. As for the headwear, they were originally meant for Bond before he was grounded. Switching the computer to the right eye of the headpiece was a last minute detail Tanner mentioned the day before you came."

"I assume, that this time around, you've had the chance to really read my file?" she asked, making herself more comfortable on the floor, the sniper rifle gripped firmly by both of her fingers as she waited patiently. "How have your cats been doing?"

"I know what I need to know, Whyte."At the sound of her last name, the agent smirked. "My cats are hardly relevant in this convers-"

"Put me on, Q." entered M's deep voice. After a small period of shuffling noises, the line was at a steady and Gareth Mallory's voice was clear within her hearing, "Whyte, do you hear me?"

"Loud and clear." 009, revealed Whyte, responded. There was a grudging respect to be held with Mallory, for she met him only a couple of times in the past and she always had preferred the previous M. "Although I'd like to say that you assisting me in this mission is hardly necessary. This is a quick task."

"I beg to differ. From the records my predecessor left, you are quite a case to handle. I am just assuring myself that I won't be having any other loose canons to sweat over." M reasoned with his sound logic, cautious as they came, "No unnecessary casualties, I hope?"

Whyte glanced to the side where the corpse of the security personnel lay beside the wall, before turning back to the view she had been observing, "None."

"Q, give me a visual feed from the eyewear. I want to see what she's seeing."

"Visual feed initialising."

"I'm positioned right across the PwC as I am supposed to be. I should be getting a clear visual of the meeting in five." she informed them as she returned to a half-kneeling position, her elbow resting atop a raised left knee as her right one rested on the floor for stabilisation as she held out the rifle. "Although I wished this thing was a bolt-action, not a semi-auto."

"As you have been briefed by Tanner, your target is one of ours, but is a mole of the Quantum. We let him go this far in the hopes that he would lead us to them, that meeting at the PwC is just a cover. Intel confirms he's meeting with them to finally sell what he gathered. As soon as we identify the agents with him, we have to tie up the loose end." M briefed her with the things that Tanner had already told her not too long after she arrived from Moscow to London, and as he spoke, the mole agent surfaced in the light with two other men dressed in fine suits. Whyte scoffed lightly as she observed the faces of the men accompanying the mole, they really were Quantum agents.

"Has she ever told you all the other details don't matter much to me?" she whispered, aligning her aim to go through the circle that she had cut through the glass, her left eye slowly peering into the scope as she began to aim her shot, "The less I know, the better. Keeps things clean."

"Intel is protocol, 009." M interjected, matter-of-factly.

As the bullet flew to the opening of the glass and into the air, Whyte observed it carefully as it shattered the glass window near where the mole agent stood, before finding its target with the promise which was her aim. But as the mole agent collapsed and bled crimson spatter on his grey suit, Whyte stood frozen - taken aback by the events that just occurred. Squinting her eyes in suspicion, she peeked through her scope once more and calibrated its zoom, observing the mole's limp body and the amount of red that coloured his suit. Pulling away, Whyte cursed in a whisper as she slung the rifle across her shoulder, before lowering herself upon the floor as the sounds of gunshots emitted by the Quantum agents shattered the whole window of glass beside her. Being a level higher than the PwC floor she was targeting prevented the agents the advantage of a direct shot, but also gave her the disadvantage of shooting back with chance accuracy.

"009, why aren't you evacuating?" Q's voice suddenly chimed into the constructed silence, but Whyte was too occupied with reaching for her pistol to reply quickly and decently.

"Am I holding you in too much suspense?" she shouted at him through the gunfire, rolling her body towards brink between the floor and the shattered window, aiming her pistol towards the two Quantum agents who relentlessly fired. "I missed my shot."

"What do you mean? It was a hit." Q remarked, almost as matter-of-factly as M sounded. In the midst of exchanging bullets, Whyte managed to hit one of two into their death - enough to slow down the gunfire that came rapidly for her.

"No no... There is a small likelihood of someone else there with you." M agreed but again with the underlying suspicion. He entertained the possibility, and Q fell silent from the line, "Go back on the footage, Q. There. You see that? But it could be a blemish in the feed. But if you are correct, 009, bring me that sniper. "

"If there is anything to tell about that 'someone else', he timed things perfectly." Whyte said darkly, rising from her seated position before pressing a button, "And he's a floor belo-"

As she pressed the button, the doors conveniently opened, but not without its share of company. A towering figure - a Russian man who was twice her size - waited for her within the elevator with fists clenched. Aiming her pistol to shoot, the man merely absorbed the bullet with no crippling casualty and grabbed the pistol from her. Ducking as his heavy arm came across for a blow, Whyte slid to the other side with her mind rattling for a solution. The assault rifle that Q packed for her - the Heckler - was stowed in the bag beside the corpse of the security personnel and beyond her reach. The sniper rifle strapped to her back was not much of a better solution either. Slowly walking backwards, the MI6 agent slowly raised her hands up as she watched the man recover from his miss, noticing a distinctive silver ring on his finger.

"What are you planning?" She heard Q's mumble to himself, yet loud enough to be received through her earpiece. He, like everyone else in the Q-Branch including M, watched in anticipation for what occurs in the next few seconds.

"Hey." Whyte called out to the man in fluent Russian, as one of her hands slowly dug into the pockets of her coat. She kept her gaze steady towards him, knowing that the live feed is only limited to her line of sight, and kept her pocket at the blindspot of M and Q's watch. When she took out her hand from her pocket, she revealed a distinct silver ring around her middle finger which was similar to the one that the man had. Whyte opened her palm out wider to reflect the light onto her hand, revealing a small red octopus engraved onto the silver surface. "I am your friend."

"What is happening?" M's voice echoed, but the agent kept her focus as she stared the man into his eyes. The Russian, confused as he eyed the ring on her finger, frowned as he hesitated slightly from his intentions, "009, what the bloody hell is going on? What is he looking at?"

Sensing the opportunity that came with an allowance of only a few seconds, Whyte ran and slid across the floor to where the corpse of the security personnel laid - hastily opening the Heckler's box and rapidly fired towards the burly man without hesitation. It was too much of a narrow timeframe, that he came so close towards her before finally collapsing. When he fell down, Whyte stood over him with the rifle still aimed before firing another round of bullets onto his face till it was nearly unidentifiable. Agitated with how much time was consumed by this situation, Whyte slung the Heckler across her body before picking up her fallen pistol. Running into the open elevator, she pressed for the level lower - hoping that the other sniper was still beyond her reach.

"What the bloody hell just happened?" M yelled through the other line, audibly vexed at the excess she had just displayed. It was just one of those things she couldn't help - the drive to fuel the storm within.

"I killed him, sir." Whyte replied dryly, keeping her gaze steady towards the elevator doors as she returned the ring into her pocket. Walking over to the corner where the buttons were located, she leaned on the metal frame as she prepared the Heckler. There was a good chance that an ambush waited for her once the doors opened - that is, if the other sniper was still within the premises.

"We can see that, 009." Q returned with small delay, but with the same biting tone.

When the elevator doors opened, the whole floor was just as dark as the one she was in. Holding the rifle closer, she aimed left and right with a careful sweep as she padded her feet across the silence. From the left, Whyte observed a broken window perfectly parallel from the room in the PwC but the equipment was swept clean. No trace of weaponry or the person himself - there was nothing but a shattered glass window at the place where the killing bullet has surfaced from. Has he gone away that fast? She cradled the thought with an amount of doubt, it was too good to be true. Everything about this situation was too good to be true. The only hard evidence she had of a second shooter was this broken glass, no equipment and no man to confront - just a dead Russian man with more bullets to his face than he could have shot.

"There's no one here." she confirmed, looking around once more with the Heckler aimed into the darkness. But even when she said these words, Whyte was coloured with a sense of an undying suspicion. The calm was more of a disturbance than a sense of peace, and the Quantum agents - even the one she had shot dead - disappeared from the scene. There was nothing left except the man she had killed and the man she attempted to kill, the two things that made everything feel less like a delusion. "Wait."

From the distance, within the building parallel, a small movement was observed from the form of the mole agent. They were traces of movement, but enough to represent the life that still breathed within him. "He's still alive. He's moving. Q, I need to get there. Fast."

"What do you mean he's still alive?" the quartermaster inquired. As he went on, the MI6 agent slung her rifle back onto her back once more and assessed the space between the City Tower and the PwC building. It was an overwhelming distance. "My immediate solution for you is to jump, there is no time for a decent entrance if you want the minimum time to get there."

"You're not serious." Whyte responded with bewilderment held within her. Her eyes were darted towards the ground, which looked more like an abyss the more she thought of her impending death. "I am not Bond. I may be a Double-O, but I am a marksman - not a parkour wonder. I am not going to make that jump."

"Of course you will. Just run fast enough." As Q's words bled into her hearing, she could not help but scoff with resentment and admiration at his confidence. There was a fine line between misplaced optimism and extreme miscalculation, but on the other hand, she hoped he was genuine. M remained silent.

"You sound like an expert, why don't you come here and give it a shot?" Whyte retorted, while highly considering the option. She was not fond uncertainties, but this life of being what she is made a habit out of it. This was her only choice at the moment, and she was running out of time. She can't have this mole disappearing like almost everything else involved in this mission. "I'll even cheer for you."

Making up her mind, Whyte ran opposite of the broken glass window before turning her gaze towards the brightness of the distance. Tossing the sniper rifle onto the side, she placed her confidence on the Heckler and her pistol. She needed to be lighter in weight to keep her chances of surviving high, and if she ran fast enough, there was a momentum to gain. Sighing at the impulse guided by Q and the quiet confidence of M, she sprinted towards the broken window and into the open air. Placing her hopes at the wind that carried her, Whyte stayed afloat in momentum before finding herself at the brink of the broken PwC room. Shattered glass pierced itself through her sleeves, but the pain became tolerable when she realised she had made it - although barely. Through a force exerted from her shoulders, she pushed her body onto the stable surface with a moment of relief.

"Told you." Q said a few seconds later, but sounded more like he confirmed his own suspicions.

"Right." Whyte breathed for a moment, before turning her attention towards the gasping mole agent who held on the little life he had. As concluded, he was not hit by her headshot, rather, by a mischievous bullet that managed to hit his neck. Slowly rising from the ground, she began to feel the parts of her body that broke from the leap. A consequence, she supposed, from a poorly performed stunt. Towering over mole's body, Whyte pulled out her pistol as she kicked him with the tip of her shoe, "You better start talking."

The mole, coughing slightly from her aggression, turning a half-lidded eye towards her way before laughing shakily at the sight. Like his neck, his mouth also bled its share of blood, and as he laughed he revealed more of his bloodied smile. "S-So... So it was you. Heh, I ne-never would have-" the mole coughed as more blood began to pour across the glass-ridden floor, "-thought it was you all along."

"Get to the point." Whyte aimed her gun towards him, impatient for an answer, her grey eyes cold and calculating. She was getting nowhere in this conversation.

"They said... They said he would come for me, but it was you... It was you. You are..." the mole agent coughed before he could continue, and as he struggled to recover, he looked at her once more. But instead of immersing his gaze within her eyes, he turned his attention towards the little camera on the eyewear.

Struggling even with his own words, the mole curved his mouth to form the word, but his voice faltered to a point that even the MI6 could not pickup. Suddenly, in the midst of the tension, a gunshot fired life into the scene and a fresh bullet finally found itself on the mole agent's head. Whyte glared coldly over the corpse as she withdrew pistol after the shot, the mole's last words heard by no one but the evening wind that breezed into the room and cloaked by the shadows of the night.

"Assignment complete." Whyte announced, brushing away the glass fragments that were caught on her skin and her sleeves. She knew she was bleeding in more places than she could count, but that was a concern to dwell over later. As she headed towards the open door, she prepared the Heckler for the possibility of another attack from the Quantum. But as she walked down the empty hallways of the office building, there was not a soul found.

M gave no other commentary.

"There should be a fire exit just at the next corner of that hallway. Sending map information to your HUD." Q cleared the silence with the presence of his voice. The whole mission almost felt like a dream, but it was that quartermaster's voice that kept her held with the reality, "I'll take care of the CCTVs."

Whyte stepped out of the fire exit and into the evening sky, wearing her coat over the Heckler to not alarm anyone who happened to walk on by. Yet as much as she tried to appear normal, the blood that dripped from her sleeves continued to flow to her fingers despite her every attempt with patching it. Cursing with a voice only heard by anyone from a meter's radius, the MI6 agent rolled her eyes as she pulled a cigarette stick from her breast pocket and lit it with a slightly shaking and bloodied hand. After the first puff of toxic smoke, she turned her eyes towards the commotion of police presence surrounding both buildings; their eyes searched for an answer they could not find.

"Shit." was all she could whisper as her attention diverted, her eyes on her coat as she felt it become more drenched in blood. Frowning at the inconvenience, Whyte placed the cigarette on her lips as she hid her red hands within her coat while pacing faster than before. She did not want this blood to make a trail.

Whyte made her way towards a small roundabout that lead to a parking lot lined with with multiple vehicles. While on the plane to Prague, Q sent her a message containing an address to a garage near the airport where he imported a vehicle. Even though she admitted letting Bond go with the DB10, the quartermaster seemed to have been unable to dismiss the thought of sending her out without a vehicle. Slightly amused by the thought, Whyte stopped in front of a black Tesla Model S as the door lock popped into the surface when it sensed the key in the pocket with her cigarettes. 'It's a sedan, but it's faster than it looks.' she remembered reading from the e-mail, his modifications implied, followed by a whole paragraph about maintaining her word about Bond and the DB10 incident.

"Sorry, not sorry." Whyte sighed to herself, dropping the cigarette on the ground before stepping over it. A part of her thought about the litter, but mostly, her mind was filled by the unfortunate circumstance in which the Tesla would be soiled by her bloodied coat. Kindness had a price.

Settling herself onto the driver's seat, the MI6 agent took off the Heckler and tossed it onto the passenger seat, followed by a small ziplock containing a bloodied bullet that she recovered from the mole. After Q sent the building map highlighting the route to the fire exit, she turned turned off the eyewear before searching for the nearest first aid kit. It took a few, unrefined moments before she had successfully retrieved the bullet - but evidence was evidence. This was for her to take, not the police and not anyone. Along with the ziplock that held the bullet, she held the distinct silver ring with the glaring octopus insignia that she used to distract the Russian. Darting her eyes back and forth the two metal pieces, Whyte considered the connection as she thought of the Russian's ring back at the City Tower.

Was it really them?

"I don't like interruptions." she murmured to herself, lowering her gaze as she firmly wrapped her fingers around the item. Taking a deep breath, a small buzz rung from inside the car's cup holder. Whyte looked down to see her burner phone come to life, picking it up as it flashed the last name of the most notorious agent in the continent, "Bond."

"Rachel." Bond responded with the same dry intonation, his deep voice slightly coloured by innate impudence. "You gave the burner to Moneypenny?"

"I placed it on her table before I left for Prague." Whyte spoke with distraction, her eyes still wandering back and forth the bullet and the ring. She was occupied in her own thoughts. "And after I met with the quartermaster. He has two cats."

"And a mortgage." Bond added, before the distinct sound of roaring winds clouded their reception for a few moments. Whyte knew he was driving - probably through an open countryside - somewhere in this vast continent. But where exactly that was, she did not know.

"You sound concerned." she frowned as she closed her fingers around the ziplock and the ring once more, distracted by the new information concerning Q. What she knew of him were things she extracted by force, and a mortgage was not exactly something you'd find in his wallet.

"You sound jealous."

"Maybe I am." the female agent countered with a raised brow. Bond drew a low snort, sensing the naught in her tone. Whyte has never heard Bond laugh the slightest, and this was the closest she could get - and it wasn't even much to be amused of. "You will never tell me where you are, won't you?"

"Not a chance." Bond's immediate reply came confident. He was still driving, but the wind less audible than before.

"Don't worry." Whyte assured him, placing the ziplock on the passenger seat before resting her wrist onto the steering wheel. Her fingers began to play around the silver ring, fitting it to her middle finger with the octopus insignia glowing against her palm, "I'll find you."

A/N: Thank you for reading the second chapter of Tessitura! I am grateful for all the comments and support, and don't forget to leave comments/reviews for this chapter as well!