A/N: I use the fairly well established 10 to 1 pound to galleon ratio for my money conversions.
Chapter 7: Many Missions
Behind Q's vacant smile, he quickly processed what he knew so far about the situation they found themselves in:
The company was likely headed by someone magical, as the facility was using expansion charms and the administrative assistant was dosing visitors with potions.
The potion was meant to be something visitors wouldn't notice in a cup of Earl Grey.
The likeliest possibility for something like that would be Veritaserum or a derivative thereof, likely to ensure they were who they said they were.
Before Claire could take them back to see the Dr. Prescott, Q exclaimed cheerfully, "Look at the new app I found, baby!"
James rolled his eyes for show, then cast his eyes down to the tablet Q was flourishing under his nose. On it, Q had typed a message- "Act a bit vacant; tea dosed with truth potion."
"I do find your fascination with new apps to be a bit peculiar, darling," James said with a chuckle.
Q pouted. "But it has a currency converter and everything!" He wiped the screen message.
"That will be useful," James agreed, sipping his tea.
A bit too loudly, Q said, "Have I told you how much I love your blue, blue eyes?" Then he squeaked, and put a hand over his mouth, before batting his own eyelashes at his partner.
James chuckled again. "As I love your green, green eyes, love," he said, "even if this is not the place for this discussion."
They'd clearly been overheard, as Claire stepped from around her desk with a smile and said, "Dr. Prescott will see you now."
Q flashed her a big smile, James a slightly smaller one, and the pair got up to follow her through to Prescott's office.
The office itself was twice the size of its anteroom, and featured a wall of windows to the back that overlooked the ocean. James whistled. "Great view!"
"I'm glad you appreciate it," a tall, toned, and tanned white-haired gentleman of indeteriminate age rose from behind a mahogany desk. "I find it soothing." He held a hand out to James first. "I'm Martin Prescott."
James shook. "James MacMillan." He let go of Prescott's hand and gestured to Q. "My partner, Evan Scott."
"Pleasure to meet you," Q said, batting his eyes again. "You're yummy."
Prescott laughed, "Thank you." He waved a hand at the chairs in front of his desk. "Have a seat. I'm told you have a proposition for me?"
James cleared his throat as he sat down. "We're looking to expand our sales market with new clients in pharmaceuticals. We have a substantial base of medical professionals to which we can market, and we're targeting successful companies like this one with an eye toward expanding their sales, and copping a large commission for ourselves. We do the sales work, and you continue to provide the product." The speech was more blunt than he'd normally do, but with "truth potion" supposedly in his system, James didn't think prevarication would go over well.
"Then he can buy me more pretty things, like those cuff links you ordered," Q added.
"My man does love pretty things," James agreed. "I'd buy you whatever your heart desires, lovely thing."
Prescott smiled broadly. "Gentlemen, I think we can do business. Why don't we set up a meeting for tomorrow with our current research and sales heads? Our sales guy has been complaining that he doesn't have enough help."
"That would be splendid," James said, and looked over at Q. "What do you say, darling?"
"I think meetings are boring, but if you think we should I'll go," Q pouted prettily.
"More meetings means more pretty things, love," James said with a smile.
"Then we can go?"
"Yes!"
Prescott's smile widened, his whitened teeth showing. "I'll have Claire set us up for another 1 o'clock, if that works for you."
"Nothing going on besides spending a lot of time in the hotel room with this one," James nodded at his partner.
Prescott rose. "Then we'll see you tomorrow."
Q and James rose, too. "Tomorrow, then. We'll work up a proposal for your research and sales teams."
"I have no doubt," Prescott said, pressing their hands in firm shakes as he bowed them out of his office.
"Wow! That was quick. Darling, is it always that easy?" Q could be heard, loudly, as the pair wandered back down the hallway and out of the building to a waiting taxi.
Claire, who overheard, smiled.
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Q and James waited until they reached their suite in the Four Seasons before shedding their sales personas. Q peeled off his suit jacket and hung it neatly in the wardrobe, then quickly took care of the rest of his suit before changing into jeans and a plain blue tee and throwing himself onto one of the couches, legs over one arm rest.
"Hmmm," James observed. "Ready for a break, are you?" More slowly, James rid himself of his own jacket before moving Q's head off the couch seat so he could sit down. Q let him, then rested his own head on James' strong right thigh.
"I absolutely hate pretending to be something I'm not," Q said, voice muffled under the arm he'd thrown over his face.
"Does it help to know that he bought most of your vacant boy-toy act?" James asked, amused. "Or, that if opportunity knocked, I'd absolutely just let you be my boy-toy?"
One green eye peered up at him from under the arm. "Why can't you be my boy-toy?"
"Any time, Q darling, any time."
Q snorted, then stretched both arms over his head, his shirt riding up to bare firm, pale abs and belly. "Why don't we just move to the beach somewhere and be each other's boy-toys for the rest of our lives together?"
James caught one of Q's hands and kissed the palm. "We'd get bored. Eventually."
Q collapsed back down, but left his hand in James'. "Probably." He yawned. "Sit rep, 007?"
"To me, it appeared to be an ordinary factory, with a cheerful admin, and a charismatic CEO," James admitted. "But there are clearly undercurrents there."
"Hence your magical back-up," Q said. " They've made liberal use of expansion charms, and tried to dose us with what I suspect is a Veritaserum derivative. It can't be true Veritaserum, because that would make us truly vacant and unable to speak anything other than the truth to questions directed to us specifically. Neither Claire or Prescott expected that, clearly, so it's got to be something else, something that would force us to be honest about our motivations."
"What did you do with the tea?"
"Switched it with that in my briefcase thermos." Q settled more comfortably in James' lap. "I'll give it to Severus for analysis when he gets back from Mumbai. He'll be able to tell us more."
"So, definitely magical involvement then."
"Definitely. And Prescott is in on it, even if he's not magical himself. I actually suspect Claire. As an admin, she's well placed to add any glamours, potions, what have you, as necessary, and acts a bit of a watchdog in terms of who has access to the facility. I can't tell unless I cast the charm, and she'd know if I'd done that in a heartbeat," Q mused. "But it's a logical guess."
James nodded. "Any other intelligence we can gather, covertly?"
"I didn't see a server room anywhere, so we'd have to go in and try to find it. We could do that under cover, but I'd rather wait until after our meeting tomorrow, see if we can examine the space as we're led through this time."
"Fair enough."
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Alec quickly cast charms to see if the factory he was about to (hopefully) infiltrate had magical protection. The charms, taught to him by Severus, supposedly revealed the presence of wards, though not necessarily the type. That was a different charm that Alec could pull out if he needed to.
The light presence at the end of his wand revealed no wards at the boundaries of the property, so Alec disillusioned himself and tentatively moved forward, keeping to the shadows as he approached the double back door to the industrial building, which topped a set of metal movable stairs that could be shoved aside to make the back door a loading dock if needed. He cast again. No wards.
Alec picked the lock-no need to alert them to a magical presence, after all-and slipped inside, noting security cameras as he went, silently moving from shadow to shadow as he made his way down the corridors to the main office, following the map in his head. At each corridor intersection, he quietly cast the ward charm, and as he approached the office door, he finally got a hit.
It was warded.
Quietly, Alec cast the second charm to reveal the type of ward. His wand tip glowed blue, which indicated that the office itself was warded against magical interference.
Interesting. Alec thought for a moment, then, staying in the shadow of the corridor, disengaged the disillusionment charm and put his wand away. As a trained 00 operative, he didn't really need magic to break into an office. So, the non-magical way would work.
He slipped on Q's platinum magic-dampening braceless to tamp down his own magical signature, then picked the lock on the front door, making an absent note that electronic security appeared to be non-existent.
Not all companies could have a genius like Q getting around the magic-versus-electricity problem, he supposed, as the tumblers finally disengaged. Alec slipped inside the office and again noted the absence of cameras or electronic security. He paced the perimeter of the darkened space, holding his braceleted wrist out from himself, and caught a glimmer in the northwest corner of the office. He placed his gloved hand over the glimmer, and found a door.
Alec slid his hand over the door until he found the handle, and tried it. Locked. He pulled out his lock picks, set the bracelet against the door handle, and kept it there with his non-dominant hand to offset the glamour while he went to work with the other, mentally crossing his fingers that he could work the picks one-handed. It took him a few minutes, as opposed to a few seconds, but Alec finally heard the click he was looking for, and slipped inside of what appeared to be the server room.
The boundaries of the glamour apparently ended at the door, preserving the electronics inside. Alec pondered the tech for a second. Didn't James run into glamoured electronics? How did that work? He shrugged. Different locations, different degrees of knowledge, he supposed. And he'd leave that up to Q to figure out.
But his goal was in sight, so Alec pulled the memory stick out of his pocket, popped it into the USB port on the right side of the machine, watched its light go on, and timed thirty seconds on his watch. The light went out at 25 seconds, but Alec waited the full thirty before disengaging the stick, slipping back out the door to the main office, and taking another good look around before heading back to the main corridor, still keeping to the shadows as he went out the office door. He locked it behind himself, keeping his face down, and stepped back into the dark corridor to disillusion himself and head back out.
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Q's tablet beeped.
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Halfway around the world from Alec's Texan adventure, Severus sipped another cup of tea and reviewed the names Parvati had given him. None were recognizable to him, at any rate, but he supposed therein lay the genius of the plan. Unknown in the magical world, these first generation magicals could do some serious damage, if they were so inclined.
Severus emailed the list to Q. He still had to wait until sundown before he could infiltrate the factory.
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Q's tablet beeped again.
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"Are you certain they meant to give me 500 galleons for a little party, Ron?" Molly Weasley asked her youngest son.
"Yes, Mum; Harry transferred it to your vault while I was talking to him," Ron said, swallowing a bit of toast. He'd come by for breakfast and to update his mother before heading into the shop. It was Hermione's day to bring their troublemakers to pre-school before going to work herself.
"That's an awful lot of money for a small party," Molly worried.
"James said to tell you they left everything in your competent hands, and that you should be sure to let them know if you need more," Ron assured her. "I think they just wanted to ensure you weren't spending any of your own money on them, Mum. They've got more than enough."
"Well, they'll be getting back a detailed list of expenses and their leftover funds, at any rate," Molly said firmly. "But this does set us up for quite a nice gathering, I should think."
"They've left all the planning to you, but just be aware you'll need an alternate date or two, just in case."
Molly nodded. "If we have it here, then the rest can be managed on the spot if it's all prepared ahead of time."
Ron finished his tea. "Let me know what we can do to help, Mum. And use the money, won't you? Don't wear yourself out doing all the cooking or anything like that."
"Ronald, if I choose to cook for my children, I will," Molly said sternly, then sighed. "But I'll hire help. We'll get a tent for the backyard, with draperies in green and blue, for the color of their eyes. I'll need a guest list …" And Molly wandered off to her own backyard with her wand to start measuring.
Ron waved her off. "Have fun, Mum! I'm off to work!"
And he pulled out his phone.
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Q's tablet beeped.
CLONE COMPLETE.
NAMES ATTACHED.
MUM'S ON IT.
Q picked it up. "Looks like we've work to do."
"After dinner, darling."