A/N: Always overwhelmed, and pleased with your comments, love, and follows for Tessitura. Please don't forget to comment/review this chapter, and I thank you very much for your support. For more updates, please visit my blog (link on profile).

VI

Paper Trails

Q stared at the open toilet seat, his knees numb from kneeling, and one of his sleeves over his mouth. He took a deep breath, cursing, before looking up to the ceiling. Another deep breath. It was just a simple nap on his desk - the inevitable kind - from working around the clock, and with that came this mess. Q thought he had put it behind his mind, for he felt in control of himself for the past two months. Maybe, in the dreams he could not remember, it stayed there to haunt him. Today that was not the case, and it had returned like it never left. He sat on the floor for a moment, absorbed in the quiet, with a hand reaching for his glasses which laid beside him.

He couldn't seem to run away from it.

A soft buzz came from his pocket. It was his phone. Putting his glasses back on, Q took out the device and glossed over the screen as a small white box animated. Another one, the second for today, and exactly six hours apart and two different cities. Coordinates, two thumbnails of the location, and the police database it came from mapped before him - showing him everything he needed to know. When he narrowed down his findings to Volkov earlier, he had set up a program that infiltrated worldwide police databases to alert him of any crime that may be related to the assassin. He thought of everything - from weapons, to bullets, to style of death as factors that he should be alerted for. The MI6 database might be vague on what contributed to his end, but the records of his crimes were extensively detailed. There was no doubt that the MI6 had a maddening obsession with the man, which - at the thought of three dead Double-Os because of him - was more than understandable.

Standing slowly, the quartermaster dragged himself towards the sink and began rinsing his mouth as well as his hands. He gave the toilet a brief glance before flushing it, and started to wash his hands again but now with some speed. With another deep breath, he felt in control again. When he opened the locked door he was caught by surprise, "Good God, Patel!"

Kiran Patel, who jumped slightly at his reaction, tensed at his shoulders. He was an intelligence analyst who worked under Q, and one of the curated handful that worked within the Q-Branch. He looked at the quartermaster through his rimless glasses, "Sir."

Q fidgeted slightly, clearing his throat as he stood by the doorway of the toilet. His eyes wandered for a moment, speaking in broken words, "Are you... I suppose... The loo... Yes, of course."

Patel shook his head. "I was looking for you, sir. It's a rather urgent matter. We received a call from HM Treasury. They couldn't seem to contact your workshop, and so they called Q-Branch main."

He relaxed, the embarrassment now gone from his movements. There was a matter more important than his own, and the call itself was enough put him into place, "Treasury? What do they want?"

Q watched as Patel held out and operated his tablet with his peach-brown fingers, bringing up a PDF document detailing certain purchases that he had not seen before. These were invoices - invoices that came from flight bookings: Prague to Rome, and Rome to London. All in the same day. "Treasury called about the forms you didn't send along with these transactions, which they said were made about 40 hours ago."

"I haven't issued a plane ticket since-" Q stopped himself, closing his mouth and thought of better words. He had a suspicion, and he was going to confirm it. His eyes looked towards Patel's tablet, tapping a light finger on the surface, "No, investigate this transaction. Find out who, where, and the manner of doing so. Along with that, bring out any related CCTV footage you can find on the day of these flights and send them to me. I'll take care of Treasury."

Patel, aware of his orders, nodded and began walking towards the door leading to the Q-Branch section of the bunker. Q pressed the bridge of his nose over his frames, drawing a low breath as another problem fell on him. Bond was a case all by himself, and Q was only counting the minutes till Tanner or M would ring his desk and ask about the car. Then, there was Whyte. He didn't really know what to make of that woman, and his immediate thought of her prickled the spot on his cheek which she had kissed. But of course, the thought of Whyte was not without thinking of every moment she lied to him. The quartermaster hastily massaged his cheeks, aware that his face was red, before tugging uneasily at his collar to contain himself. He was reminded of Patel's leaving figure, and something occurred to him.

"Wait, Patel."

The analyst was about a metre away from the door before pausing, and turned in response to hearing his name, "Yes, sir?"

"You worked with Q - my predecessor - for quite a while, yes?" Q asked, moving up one side of his glasses. Now was the best of times to ask the question, for the coming hours and the days were making him pressed for time. He had two loose canons to chase. "After the everything was completely digitalised and stored into the server, what happened to those physical copies?"

Patel reflected for a moment, his tablet held at his side, "Yes, it was Johnson and I. We dealt with the archives, but it was more of her work to do. We were to burn the files instead of sending it back, and we did burn it. But the late M... I don't know if I should talk about this."

Q pressed his lips, he had to be firmer, "Any sensitive information, running through my servers or physically intact, are under my responsibility. That includes what the late M has ordered."

"Alright..." the analyst hesitated slightly, but nodded to himself eventually, "There was a select few she kept intact, she wanted them digitalised as well but they weren't to be uploaded on the MI6 server. She kept them, actually, and told us to hand in the physical versions to Tanner. With the work that we do, this was understood to not be questioned. On the report, we were to say that everything had burned."

It all made so much sense now, for Q had combed through every layer of the database and found nothing. Whatever it was that M decided to keep for herself, somewhere in those files were what he needed.

"Do you happen to remember what kind of information were in that select few?"

"I thought you'd be a little bit more punctual."

Eve Moneypenny smiled even when she said these words, her hands on each side of her hip under her open blue coat, and her heeled ankle boots clicking against the hard floor of the workshop. He was late, and they both knew that. It was his doing after all, this small meeting, one that he had arranged because he needed her help. Q only gave her an apologetic expression, closing the door behind him as he walked past her and toward his prototypes.

"My apologies, I was a bit... Interrupted. I received a call from Treasury, but nothing too bothersome." he muttered hastily, sorting the mess through his glances as he looked for something he couldn't find. Moneypenny was watchful, her clicking footsteps followed his own. "The place we are going to... What is it?"

Moneypenny looked around room, "I can't say. Not here. Too many ears. But I assure you, it's not dangerous."

Q briefly raised both of his brows at her last words, taking her assurance with little confidence as Whyte came into his mind again. Not too long after, he found what he was looking for - the SIG-Sauer P226, a gun he has been working on for agents inside and outside the Double-O program. He loaded the gun and offered it to the her, "You may say that, but I highly suggest you arm yourself. Between the two of us, you are more qualified to handle this weapon."

She gave him a doubtful glance before taking the SIG-Sauer from his grasp, "Alright, I'll take it - with the full assumption that you have written me, someone who is not a field agent anymore, a clearance to operate this gun."

"And you shall continue assuming so..." Q trailed as he moved to the corner by the bunker's door, reaching for his checkered black and blue blazer that hung on a makeshift hook, "...for the next few hours that we are out. Now, shall we?"

Moneypenny followed him with her eyes, fingers busy twirling the SIG-Sauer against her palm, her face rather amused. As they headed out of the door, Q wondered if it was because of something on his face or something from what he had said.

The security posted on the boat did not think much of their exit, and escorted them back to the main docks with little said apart from protocol. This was nothing beyond unusual, at least not in the plain eye, for Moneypenny and himself have travelled from place to place across London because of work-related obligations - at least the ones that required his physical presence. After she retired from field work and became a part of M's closer command, it brought them closer as colleagues as his work now stretched beyond what the previous Q used to do. Apart from weaponry and technology, he actively watched every form of virtual communication for M with Moneypenny working somewhere in the middle.

Q sat quietly as she drove the car over the bridge, his head turned towards the window as he observed the river at night. Being in constant commute, he never really had the leisure to see London the way it is at night. They were always just passageways - point A, point B.

"So," Moneypenny interrupted the silence, her dark eyes still on the road, "Do you not have something to tell me, Q?"

"And what is that?" he gave her a glance, his index finger holding his glasses in place as the car encountered a bump on the road.

She smiled as if he mocked her and amused her at the same time, and then checked her rearview mirror before speaking again, "Certain things. For example, why you asked me to keep quiet about certain things when Whyte woke up - subjects like Bond's theory about Oberhauser, the mere fact that Bond called asking about Oberhauser who is a dead man, and the amount of tracking you've tagged on Volkov's activities so you can watch him."

"Take it as a precaution." Q explained flatly, brushing his wavy hair away from his eyes, "Frankly, I don't know what to make of her. Do you remember that dead artist I showed you? Iosif Antonov? As I thought, she knew who he was. I wager she knows more than what she's letting on. Maybe not too much, but more than what we know."

"Do you suppose there's a connection with Volkov and Oberhauser? You did tell me that the Quantum agent that attacked you talked of Rome, and Bond was in Rome when he called me about Oberhauser." she asked, turning her head towards him for a moment as she turned the wheel to the approaching kerb and into a dark alley. "If not connected directly, it should be tied to an extent. I know for sure Bond suspects that Mr. White..."

"Precisely why I wanted to keep things from Whyte. Volkov seems interested in her, and she knows a shred of him. It's better to make it seem like we don't know so much. But we know, for a fact, that Oberhauser is dead, which makes this all a bother to solve..." he grumbled, as an image of Whyte and her snarky expressions drew itself in his mind, "This whole thing would be much easier, if we can grasp Bond properly. He 'killed' Volkov after all. But even with the Smart Blood, he's finding new ways to not to talk to us. The burner phone he gave you is a dead end now - deep into the water with the DB10."

"Did you expect anything less?"

Q rolled his eyes as the car stopped somewhere in the long dark road, "I may have held onto some optimism."

They got out of the car at the same time, with him being more curious about the surroundings than the place they stood in front of. It was as dark as he saw it from the car, but being outside immersed himself within it. There was little light coming from end to end, mostly coming from the city itself. They were somewhere in East London, and as Q expected when he finally looked to where Moneypenny went, he was standing in front of a rather ordinary warehouse with no doubt containing very extraordinary things.

"He was right." Q said quietly, reminded of what Patel had told him, "They really got a bloody warehouse in East London."

Moneypenny stood by a booth-like window by the door, which only showed itself when she rolled up the inconspicuous door that resembled the wall. She looked over her shoulder as she pulled out a keycard from her pocket, hearing the words he said, "You knew about thdis place?"

"I may have had some conversations, but apparently even they don't know what's going on. All they knew is that they were files that the late M wanted to keep, badly. The sort that are not uploaded in my servers." he shrugged, walking till he stood behind her and looked around again. A newfound instinct, he supposed. "But don't you think this is rather a place too obvious to store important things?"

"That's why it's under a civilian's name. The ghost kind, one that only exists in papers and does not link back to MI6 - which explains the minimal security." Moneypenny explained as the lights in the booth turned green, and the doors unlocked open, "Besides, with all the warehouses in this neighbourhood, they'll all just think we're a lot of deranged artists trying to matter."

"How very comforting."

The interior was smaller than it looked and clinically lit, with a short and narrow hallway leading to a small area with a fully-equipped office desk sitting in-between two closed keycard-operated doors. Q supposed it was a makeshift front desk, as this warehouse took more of an appearance of an isolated storage vault. If these were secrets all the Ms of MI6 would bury to their grave, the security measures made sense. Moneypenny walked ahead of him as he followed, his eyes looking up the at the walls counting every CCTV camera that moved its eye to track their movement. These were different models than the ones from the office and the bunker, but he was not foreign to them. He had ordered the same ones to guard his servers.

"Why do you know of this place, Moneypenny?" Q whispered to her, but despite his lowered voice, it echoed softly much to his displeasure.

"I suppose comes with the job." Moneypenny answered, waving a hand slightly as they walked short hallway, "Every person who becomes M knows of this place, but using it is entirely up to their liking. Despite my position, M had some confidence I could keep this a secret and told me of the place. After Volkov and the Oberhauser situation, I thought to take you here after M had told us about Bond killing Volkov. It might not be on your servers, but I am sure we'll finding something here."

"Do you think-"

She stopped abruptly and held her hand up to silence him. Q knew where his place was and stood still, understanding her gesture perfectly as he watched the SIG-Sauer surface from her coat pocket. They proceeded slowly, with Moneypenny leading the way as she slowly peered out of the narrow hallway and into the space where the makeshift front desk stood. She signalled Q to a halt, spinning on her heels as she pointed the SIG-Sauer left and right towards the hidden corners hiding behind the hallway. When she was assured that it was only them in this part of the room, she raised her hand at Q again, confirming that it was clear. But despite the silence, Moneypenny had her guard on steady with sharp eyes that could pierce the walls that surrounded them.

"Something's not right." she whispered to him, her eyes darted at the hallway with Q standing behind her. She gripped on the gun tightly with both hands, preparing for anything, "There should be someone here."

Q's eyes fell to the computer on the desk as he looked around, and an idea occurred to him, "I think we may have an answer to that."

He circled the table, mindful of his footsteps, before slipping into the empty seat and tapping twice on the keyboard's spacebar. The computer came to life shortly, with the MI6 logo stamped in the middle of the screen with no windows nor textboxes. Q raised a quizzical brow, typing a series of keys that opened a series of black boxes riddled with things only he could understand, "Huh, so this is where this went."

Moneypenny glanced over her shoulder, "Something wrong?"

"No, everything is perfect." Q shook his head, the windows reflecting against his glasses as his eyes scrolled back and fort the screen. "This... This security system is mine. I designed this."

"You did?"

"A year ago when I applied for this position, they required us to design a security system that is to be attached to the CV. I designed mine with Artificial Intelligence in mind, for human integrity can only go so far. The idea of this system is to be taught, the more attacks it knows, the better it will be in detecting and tightening security measures. Self-capable." he pressed a button on the keyboard and waited, a finger tapped idly against the keys as he watched his own program attempt to defeat him. When he found his chance, he began typing again, "Fortunately for us, I did place some measures of my own just in case they decided to steal my idea without hiring me - do these two doors need the both keycards to open the both doors?"

"You need both for the door on the right. That's where the storage is. Left is a break room of sorts for stationed agents, and only requires one keycard. Storage needs both the authorised ID of the staff and the stationed agent swiped at the same time." Moneypenny answered him, eyeing the CCTV at the corner which was directed towards the table behind her where Q sat with focus, "Hurry, Q. I don't like this."

"We're in." Q announced just as promptly, pressing the 'Enter' key as the door on the right side of the room clicked to unlock at his bidding. After he had penetrated the system, a grid-like footage surfaced into the monitor as he took control, "Now pulling up all bloody the CCTVs in this place to see what is going on - and we have company. There's someone in there Moneypenny, a few shelves down by the door and he's armed with a gun. We have an agent down 3 o' clock from the entrance, but I reckon if he's dead."

She took a deep breath, glancing at him then at the door, "I'm going in."

He felt his fists clench briefly, but forced them to rest on the keyboard to maintain composure, "Alright. I'll see what I can salvage from this computer, and why it's not integrated into the main."

Moneypenny nodded as she pressed her shoulder against the doorframe of the right door, the SIG-Sauer tight in her grasp as she slowly pushed on the knob so it made little to no sound. Q tried his best to focus on his part of the duties, but his heart pounded harder than ever. He just narrowly escaped death less than 24 hours ago, and now once again, he has found himself in a similar situation that he may or may not escape from. But his desire for answers filled him and he could not find himself going back, if this place had the answers, he had to know. There are secrets within the agency that wished to stay hidden, but knowing them might be their best shot. He just has to assure himself that this Quantum agent or whoever this armed person was, is someone who would be very easily defeated.

As soon as she entered the storage, gunfire was exchanged almost immediately. Q slid down his seat at the sound, partly from instinct and partly with fear. He cleared his throat as he sat back up again, pulling on his shirt as he motioned himself to focus. From the slightly ajar door, he heard Moneypenny's voice followed by the sound of collapsing metal shelves. He kept the CCTV watching them lingering at the corner of the screen, but refused to look at it completely. A few clicks and keys later, he began searching through every part of the computer. None resembled or were the digitised files that Patel talked about that the late M had kept, but there was a diligent collection of CCTV footages, file inventory of everything in the storage, and security logs pertaining to visits to this facility. Q felt his eyes widen.

Oct.6.2015-08:00-Eve Moneypenny

Oct.6.2015-08:01-Garreth Mallory

Nov.2.2015-21:45-Rachel Whyte

Nov.3.2015-14:31-Bill Tanner

Nov.10.2015-15:22-Rachel Whyte

Another round of gunfire ensued in the storage, but Q had his eyes planted on the last day Whyte walked in this place. The 10th was yesterday, a few hours before the opera and the mess that was now at the present. Q felt himself frown, grabbing onto the mouse as he clicked and scrolled into these two logs to investigate. What was Whyte doing here? She knew about this place as well?

Nov.2.2015

REASON: CLASSIFIED. Authorised by O.M (see letter). Granted access by A. Coulson.

Nov.10.2015

REASON: CLASSIFIED. Authorised by O.M (see letter). Granted access by P. Gilder.

He closed the windows and opened the PDF file attached to the folder under Whyte's name and logs, revealing the digital letter mentioned in the logs. It was an official MI6 letter signed with the late M's signature, accompanied by words granting full authorisation for Whyte to have the power to access every part of the storage. Instead of answers, Q became more curious and also confused. Why would the late M grant her such access to a place with such confidential and crucial information? He thought about it for a moment before hovering his hand over the mouse, only to find a thread of his sweater hooked on the edge of a glossy-looking sheet of paper tucked underneath the keyboard.

Curious, Q moved the keyboard to the side and looked at the paper more closely. It was a flyer from the Saatchi Gallery with a black-and-white picture of a young boy, his camouflaged by myriad of vibrantly-coloured paint tracing curves that covered him like a mask. The piece was enlarged across the whole flyer, and a band of black laid over the picture decorated with clean white text that wrote:

'In His Eyes, Through My Eyes': A Synthesis of Two Mediums
a travelling exhibit featuring the works of the late Iosif Antonov
Curated by Vera Antonov
November 8-15, 2015

Q held the flyer higher up to the light, confirming to himself that his eyes and his mind were not melding reality with his investigations with Moneypenny. But there was no mistake, Antonov... Antonov... Two Antonovs, and this Vera could be his sister or some relative. It might be slim, but he wondered if she had some answers that he could hold on to. Slipping the flyer into his pocket, Q heard one more gunshot fire after the brief silence from seconds ago. He heard Moneypenny gasp outloud from the doorway, and he took one more look at the screen before dragging his feet to the storage. Q hesitated for a moment as he wrapped his cold fingers around the doorknob, knowing he was well under qualified to do anything as taxing as field agent work. But he focused his thoughts on the Moneypenny who was just behind the door, and her efforts to help him come this far. Q swallowed harder.

"It's clear, Q!" he heard Moneypenny sigh in her own relief, and a gun dropping to the ground was sound, "But Coulson... He... He's..."

He opened the door with the courage he did not have before, and found Moneypenny on the ground leaning on one of the shelves. Her shoes and ankles were covered in the blood from the two men that lay dead at her feet, with one of them being that A. Coulson - the agent from the logs. He felt his hand twitch at the sight before him, but quickly hid this reaction as he dug into his pockets. He walked over slowly to Moneypenny's side, examining the bodies as he went. The other man, the intruder who killed Coulson, was not an unfamiliar face. In fact, he was also an MI6 agent.

"Are you going to be alright?" Q muttered lowly, bending slightly to help her back to her feet. Moneypenny struggled slightly, but thanked him as soon as they stood together properly. They looked at the bodies again.

"I will be." she breathed, still shaken as she rubbed her neck uneasily with stained hands, "But the intruder... He's one of us. He's an agent, I knew him I... We... We trained together and he killed Coulson..."

"I-I gathered as much." he stammered in agreement, but he wondered how long the dead agent had been a mole, "I suppose he's with Quantum as well. Whatever is in here... Whyte knows about it, and our late M gave her some jurisdiction."

"What? Why would M...?"

Q shook his head, pressing his fingers just at the bridge of this nose, "The logs are too vague, but there's an inventory in the computer that has a record of the files in this place. The network drive is not one I'm familiar with, but I'm more than certain it is not leeching off of my servers. I'll have to get someone we can trust - maybe Patel - to find the colo and see what else this server is hiding."

"While he works on that, I shall see what I can find here." Moneypenny nodded as she straightened herself, the events that had just occurred started to fade away from her face, "I'll... I'll take you back to the bunker, and I'll take care of this. I know we should be doing this together, but you have to try and find Bond and get him talking. He has an answer, maybe clearer than this mess. This is bigger than all of us, and I think this is the best I could do for Coulson."

It was the call.

Q bit on his lip as he watched his phone screen come to life through rhythmic vibrations, his hands sweating as he meticulously cleaned the SIG-Sauer that Moneypenny used earlier piece by piece. M's name flashed aggressively on the screen, and he felt his chest pound to the point that it could pierce him. The Tokyo meeting was most likely over, and Tanner has finally had the luxury to read all the emails about the DB10. It was a call that he had to answer, and as he placed the equipment down, Q picked up his phone from the table and clenched his jaws together as he greeted M on the phone with all the composure he could muster.

"Yes, sir." he immediately said as he pressed the button, textbook in greeting.

"Please tell me 007 is in London." M was blunt as always, but even when Q thought he had prepared himself for his question, he did not feel ready at all.

"Oh, yes." Q quickly responded, hoping that it was fast enough that M wouldn't notice any form of hesitation. The man was a veteran when it came to spotting cheap lies. He tracked Bond almost immediately after Moneypenny took him back to the bunker, and he was nowhere near Rome. "Um... I'll... I'll just take a look now, sir."

"Because if he isn't, you're in deep shit. You have precisely 10 seconds."

Q laughed nervously, more for himself and less for show. He had to calm down.

With one shoulder holding the phone for support, he headed towards the room he dedicated to Smart Blood tracking with one of his tablets in hand. It was a small room tucked somewhere between Q-Branch and his workshop, where an array of large screens tracking all active Double-Os as they moved about their missions. He lowered his gaze briefly and tapped a series of commands on the small screen, and watched the large screens do their work across a giant digital map. The map narrowed itself to a region of Europe, but nowhere in the place Q saw him before. He felt his blood run colder as it slowly narrowed Bond's location, which is becoming further and further away from comfort:

Altaussee, Austria
Agent: 007

"I have him, sir." Q persevered to keep his voice steady, the tablet shaking in his hand as a larger lie escaped his lips. All for the sake of a word, Bond's word. A favour he could not refuse. "He appears to be in Chelsea."

"Well, I want eyes on him when I get back. Understood?"

He felt his heart pound again, digging himself deeper into his own grave, "I completely understand... Sir."

When M hung up on his end of the line, Q took a long and lasting breath. From the exhaustion of those simple minutes, it felt more like a hard gasp. What in the world is 007 thinking? Not even all the Smart Blood running in that man's veins will let Q know what truly is on his mind, and this consistent betrayals he has been doing to M has been taking its toll on him the longer this goes on. He brushed his fingers across the hair over his eyes, taking another deep breath to keep away the nauseating feeling that stirred him.

As he was about to leave, his tablet beeped twice a row in notification. When Q looked up the screen, a new dot formed kilometres apart from Bond's:

Altaussee, Austria
Agent: 009

Before he could react accordingly, his phone rang again, but it was not M. He glanced at his phone, then at the screen, and then back to his phone again. It was a blocked number. Whoever it may be, he had to answer it. Q received the call by pressing the button on the screen, placing the phone over his ear with his eyes glazed on Rachel Whyte's Double-O number.

"Why hello, Q."