The ringer goes off and an automated voice responds unhappily that the caller is breaking the law by calling this number and it is being monitored. Q inputs his ID code and holds his breath. He jumps when the line clicks over. "Report." says a gruff voice and Q lets out a shuddering breath and bites down a thankful curse before spouting out his identification number. There is the sound of something, rustling, an edge of something familiar rises in him but is jarring and incongruent in some way that he can't identify.
"Quartermaster?" The voice asks in a hush of subdued pain, and oh, he'd be a happy man if he didn't immediately know that sound by heart. "007?" He requests and affirmation is given in coded form. "What are you doing in the emergency contact station?" Is the next thing Q asks. "No one picked up, I awoke in MI6 with a gunshot wound, so I came in person." There is so much wrong in that sentence and Q measures his breath to get through it. He doesn't ask the obvious, he already knows by the chain of events that MI6 must be empty too. "What the bloody hell is going on here Q?" Bond asks and Q wishes he had the answers to provide him.
Now that he knows he isn't completely alone he has the strength to push himself to stand, to take in his surrounding and the options provided to him. The gate is too firm, he'd never get through it, so he has to find another way then. He reports to 007, unnecessarily but needed, his own "waking" moment in the train. "You're locked in the tube? How quaint." 007 bites out and Q scowls at the door to the maintenance office, locked. If it had been 007 here he'd have kicked at the gate till it broke off the hinge or something equally heroic and masculine. Q preferred to open doors from miles away via protocol and commands. He kicks the door and bites down the yelp at the impact shudders up his shin. "Q?" It almost sounds worried, Q grits his teeth and kicks again.
This time the door gives on the top hinge and breathing steady he shoulders it open enough to slip through. "Had to open a door." Q responds and flicks on the light. There is a computer terminal and a ring of keys. Sitting down and booting on the system he settles for a bit, while freedom was the ultimate goal, he needed to know what he would be dealing with out there. It is a simple system, outdated and slow to boot, he listens to 007's breathing in the interim, and this is at least a little closer to their usual mission norm. "Where is the wound?" he asks slipping from the helped to the helper.
"Shoulder, the bleeding has stopped but it appeared fresh. I've bandaged it." Clinical report, detached as usual which also means the bandaging is probably sub-par and in need of further work if not a surgeon. "You didn't see anyone at all?" Q asks, finally able to get the system on the net, shutting down all but necessary processes in the action. "You already know I didn't." 007 snaps and Q can hear more sounds of shuffling over the line. "I'm coming to get you." Bond affirms. "Oh no, you are going to stay there." Q snaps, attacking the backdoor to the CCTV system he'd used in uni to get himself into all sorts of trouble. "Hell if I am, for the intel I have you are the only other operative of MI6 alive in London, and it is my responsibility as acting agent to make sure you stay that way." Which, it isn't really in bond's job description to protect anyone, he isn't a guard he's a spy and a trained killer, but things get consolidated down.
Q could order him to stay put, as acting superior and theoretically only remaining one he has the pull. The order gets caught in his throat as he shifts slowly through grainy video footage. All normal, lights shifting on streets with nothing but parked cars. Stations closed up and the movement the cameras pick up is in the flicker of flags in the wind, the refuse of modern society blowing down streets, chip bags like leaves. "Stay where you are, I've got to hang up now." 007 commands and Q merely makes a sound of affirmation, he can't bring himself to stand anyway.
The cameras pick up everything, his eyes and he throws the net out, uses the beat down system to pull in cameras from abroad. Train to France, Germany, the embassy in America eventually and there is no one. There is nothing in the world for him to see, no people teeming and lying. Violence, love, there is nothing but cameras and protocols left behind to protect them. He makes call upon call and the silence is deafening. He sits there searching desperate for inumerous minutes for when the silence is broken he nearly takes off his own hand with a metal shelf.
The sounds of destruction are ones usually playing accompaniment to any of 007's missions. Slipping back through the gap in the door he notes a motorcycle upended on the station platform. Flash and unnecessary are the first words to come to mind, when he could have just unlocked the gate with the keys hanging up on the wall in the room he'd just vacated. 007 is fixing his coat's set, but the look he gives Q is one of unusual emotion. Q can only imagine the open gaping look of absolute relief on his own face is pretty humiliating to witness.
There might have been a hypothetical mentioned once over drinks with Eve, that if James Bond was the last person left alongside you, would you do him, and while Q had exclaimed of course, this wasn't how he had wanted any such events to transpire. "While I appreciate the heroics, could you tone them down till we get your wound treated properly?" Q snaps levelly when he's caught his breath and forced a modicum of self control back into the situation. "You would criticize your own rescuer." 007 drawls.