I intended to wait until Monday to post the first chapter, but you know me- I hate leaving dangling prologues. So here's the first chapter, five years after the previous, wherein 106 has replaced the previous 007 (and M has also replaced the previous.)

-Cro

Chapter One

Today

"Bond," a voice said, interrupting her musings. "Are you listening?"

James Bond looked up into M's annoyed face and quirked a smile. "Always. Do go on."

M scowled. "Then perhaps you can explain how a simple reconnaissance mission managed to wipe out an entire Belgian suburb and three key witnesses?"

The boardroom was empty but for Agent 007 and M, though the conference included four iPads with four extremely angry faces facing the both of them. Five years had changed M and Bond utterly, but those faces will remain the same come hell itself.

Bond cracked her knuckles one by one, to the discomfort of the middle left face and the silent rage of the right. "Circumstances arose. I had to improvise."

"Boudrot was an asset!" shouted the right face, and M clicked his tongue in annoyance.

"Boudrot was taking money from the wrong people," Bond asserted coolly. "He was trying to play both sides. If you'll read the briefing, sir, you'll find he was responsible for what happened to 022 in Trieste."

"What happened in Trieste was unfortunate," said the left face.

"What happened in Trieste was a catastrophe," M corrected sharply. "Agent 022 was one of our best and her loss was a serious blow to this agency."

The left face colored, to Bond's pleasure, but persisted. "Be that as it may, Boudrot knew things. Things that could have helped us."

"And lots of things that could have brought us to our knees," Bond said. "An unreliable asset is worse than a reliable liability. Boudrot sold out Agent 022 and phone records show he always called the same Swiss number after every single MI6 meeting."

"That's not in our intelligence reports," said the center right face nervously.

Bond calmly sipped her coffee and M pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "It took some time, but I managed to de-encrypt his communications records using the data I stole from his cell phone. Q is currently hard at work tracing the Swiss number, but given his pattern, I judged it likely that Boudrot was selling MI6 information and I acted accordingly."

"Without consulting your agency?" M glared.

"Without making absolutely certain that he was a traitor?"

"Without a single civilian casualty," James Bond retorted. "I'd evacuated the neighborhood the night before without tipping off the mafia and I left the local PD enough evidence to put away the bosses for life. It's impossible to implicate MI6 now that Boudrot is dead, though I retrieved all of his financial records, which will lead us directly to whomever has been buying our agents' lives. I'd call that a productive Wednesday."

The faces on the screens fumed silently, though M covered a slight smile behind his coffee mug.

Bond let the silence hang for a moment before standing up and straightening her tie. "Now then. If that will be all?"

"Dismissed," M confirmed, and James Bond excused herself to let him convince the faces on the screens that last night's mission had been an unqualified success, that 007 had acted solely in the interest of MI6 and the Crown. That was his job.

Hers involved more legwork.

Bond walked quickly and opened her email before M could call her back into his office for further admonishment. Six cases awaited her review; in the elevator, she determined two were not worth her time and a third relied entirely on unreliable information and poor translations; M ought to have known better than to recommend her for that.

She scanned an APB from an Arab princess, formerly a young duchess, as her feet carried her almost automatically to the quartermaster's lair, six stories below the innocuous office building. Q was half-buried in the hood of a car, swearing quietly at whatever he was wrestling with and Bond cleared her throat.

Q's head popped up over the Jaguar's hood, cheerful, chubby and covered in oil.

"Bond!" Q said in a sweet Irish brogue. "Could you hand me that monkey wrench? I'm afraid to let go this bolt!"

James Bond put her jacket on a relatively uncluttered stool and rolled up her sleeves. "What are we looking at?" she asked as she handed Q the wrench.

"Damnedest bloody thing," Q grunted. The bolt refused to budge under his efforts. "Thought I'd give this old thing an once-over, you know? But the oil slicker exploded in my face and wouldn't stop! Can't figure out how to turn it... oh, thank you so much!"

Bond tweaked a valve on the other side of the engine and the bolt under Q's wrench gave way.

"The canister is pressurized." Bond wiped her hands on a relatively clean flannel and Q followed her to the computer hub.

"You're not kidding!"

Bond nodded toward a screen. "Any news for me, Q?"

The little blond man rubbed his face with the inside of his shirt, smearing black around his amicable cheeks. "Some. The number you recovered was a burner."

"Of course," Bond sighed.

"But! I traced each call to its rough coordinates in Germany!"

"Germany?"

"Berlin. It wasn't easy, but the calls were definitely sent to a Swiss burner in Berlin."

Bond braced herself on a desk. "Can we cross reference the locations and times with CCTV footage, at least?"

"Way ahead of you," Q grinned. He tapped the keys musically and the screens flooded with dozens of black and white videos of Berlin streets.

"Seems simple enough," Bond said. "How many faces can that possibly be? Ten thousand? A hundred?"

"3.5 million," Q said, undaunted. "Give or take."

"It couldn't possibly be simpler."

Q opened a tablet that cycled through faces faster than Bond's eyes could follow. "And of course, these are only the public places. But it's a start, at least. I'm cross-referencing the faces visible on the streets within ten minutes of each of the call times. The recipient will be one of them if they've been taking the calls away from their BoO."

"Likely." Bond nodded in approval. "Justinia never took any calls in her hideout. She said she didn't want to be traced to her apartment."

"Exactly! So even if terrorists don't all think the same way, it's as good a place as any to start."

"How many people are in the list?"

At that, Q puffed out his cheeks in exasperation. "So far? Close to six thousand."

Bond sighed and straightened. "How long until we have something reliable?"

"Give me another six hours," Q said. "Give or take."

Though he had been gone for three years, this so reminded Bond of the former quartermaster that she smiled fondly. "How long have you been at it?" she asked with concern.

Q shrugged. "Burnin' the midnight oil, I suppose. 009 needed some new toys for Seoul and M had me program a few new antiviruses for the system. Been here since last night."

"Good God, Q, when do you sleep?"

"Never on the firm's time, Miss."

Bond frowned. "Go home," she said sternly. "There's nothing needs doing that can't be done on a full night's sleep."

Q puffed out his chest. "If you'll forgive me, Miss, since the downsize there's quite a lot on my plate. The department plays a vital role."

"Right now, your department is just you," Bond answered. "And you're just a man. Men need sleep."

"But-"

"If M wants the work of three people done," Bond said impatiently, "he can hire two more people. Go home and rest. I'll deal with the firm."

Q chewed his lip anxiously and Bond wondered what about the quartermaster position at MI6 attracted people so devoted to work that they'd sacrifice any amount of sleep and health to satisfy the firm. Perhaps the promotion came with a steady supply of amphetamines, or perhaps those with a healthy work ethic are weeded out in the interview process. Qs, in Bond's experience, are uniformly manic, obsessive and devastatingly brilliant, if eccentric, and she'd be damned if the demands of the job robbed another lover of their fiancé, another mother of her son, another friend of their best friend.

"It's September," Bond said as sternly as she could manage. "The weather won't be this beautiful for very much longer. Have yourself a day off, and call that bloke who's been texting you since I got here. Let him buy you a beer."

The gentle sounds of a vibrating phone under a pile of loose papers turned Q's oil-smeared cheeks pink. "I suppose I could stand to have a walk."

"And a full night's sleep."

"And it has mostly been busywork since midnight…"

Bond sat herself in an ergonomic computer chair next to Q. "I'm between cases anyway. If any other busywork comes through, I'll handle it."

"Oh!" Q exclaimed. "That's right! I forgot you were engaged to the other-"

Bond's scowl effectively froze the words in Q's throat and he coughed. "That is…that you're familiar with the job."

"Quite so," Bond said slowly.

"Well…if you're sure?"

"Quite indeed."

Q grinned a wide, infectious grin and Bond felt the corners of her lips curl up. "Thank you, Bond! I owe you!"

"Hurry now," Bond chided. "Before something comes up and you get stuck here."

After Q's musical gait died away down the hall, Bond turned back to her emails, watching out the corner of her eye the faces of Berlin flash through the computer screens.