A month and a half later

Gotham City

Gotham

"It's only a matter of time." Said Doctor Slade nervously.

"You've been saying that for over a month, Doctor." Said Josephine, looking through the foot thick pane of bullet proof glass at the harshly lit cell and the lone occupent inside.

"I'm very close-"

"Two agents have requested no be reassigned, finding themselves unwilling to take any more verbal abuse from the subject, who has so far exhibited no desire to cooperate in anyway. You are not close."

"He never sleeps."

Josephine didn't respond to the doctor's statement, she kept staring at the man in the corner, his head slumped on his chest, his body uncomfortably restrained.

"He's heavily sedated right now. Elephant tranquilizers." Said the man, "But he doesn't seem to sleep naturally. He's also endowed with an extraordinary tolerance for pain. We'd use sleep depravation but he's an insomniac. He's immune to most drugs, truth serums included. And he can regenerate any part of his body, so he has no fear of becoming deformed or disabled. That takes away the psychological edge, he won't rattle."

"Don't be ridiculous, little boy."

The speaker was a man near the age of a hundred, if not past it, with a full head of hair white as paper. He wore a suit and stood with the aid of a cane, but other than that displayed no sign of being physically frail. He spoke with a German accent.

"There's nothing worse than physical pain, despite all romantics say, everyman has a breaking point, though some don't live to reach it. But yours will, you have no excuse."

"Excuse me, but on the second week we took a blow torch to his tongue!"

"Oh, really? How crude."

"I… Excuse me, who are you?"

"Doctor Christian Szell is the man who is going to take over from here." Said Josephine, "You're reassigned. Now get out of my sight."

A guard approached Slade from the side. Slade took the hint, and walked away of his own accord.

"Some of what he said is right, you know." Said Szell, "I'll do my best, certainly better than him, but I'm not a miracle worker. I will need time before I deliver results."

"You do what you need," said Josephine as she pressed hr forehead to the glass, "But above all else, I need him to suffer."

London

"Look, Emma, we've discussed this." Said Bond, speaking into his cellphone as he sat in the back of his car.

"I realize that that, I didn't exactly get this job in a lottery, you know…… We'll set up the new plants in Norway, as we should have at the start if Josephine wasn't such a little girl, and we'll get the rest of the funds…… The States will just have to move in on Syria it sooner, is all, which we've always head the leverage over Congress to accomplish…… No… Look, Benjamin will take care of the CIA, and SHIELD will have no option but to follow their lead. Alright?... No, Logan isn't a problem…We're still going ahead with Phoenix, as planned. Understood? Goodbye."

Bond switched off his phone and tossed aside, leaned his head back and rubbed his eyes.

"Michael, did you manage to get through to my secretary?"

"No, sir, she's not answering her cell." Said Michael, Bond's chauffer and bodyguard, "She's in her building, though. The doorman said so."

"I just remembered, your wife called."

"And what did she want?"

"She said it was your anniversary. She said she made reservation at Monique's."

"Christ, I'd forgotten about that. This isn't what I need right now. Oh fuck! Bloody women." He mumbled, "Always something going on with them."

"We'll be there shortly, sir."

Harmony Kendall stood facing the bathroom mirror, looking at the nothingness that looked back, a sight that never ceased to amaze her in the years since she passed.

She looked down at her hand, to make sure the weight wasn't just a thing of her unstable mind. But sure as her lack of reflection, there it was, black as onyx, seven hundred grams of cold steel, eight bullets in the magazine, one in the chamber, point-thirty-two.

She thumbed back the safety pin as she heard her apartment door open.

"I'm going to kill you."

Gotham City

The fire behind his eyes subsided, the sand in his mind slipped away like an hourglass and the two long, twisting shadows of his imagining grew solid and defined into the form of his legs. He began to regain sensation, feelings cold, damp concrete bellow his cheek. He took a tiny whiff, the best he could muster, the air carried a cacophony of scents, blood and excrement, antiseptic and rubbing alcohol, and the lingering fragrance of expensive perfume.

"Come on. Wake up Mister Priest."

He could see several sets of legs standing nearby, most in steel toed boots, those belonged to his jailers and torturers, but there was one in simple dress shoes.

Priest found himself pulled off the ground and held up, allowed a better view of the man.

"Strap him to the chair." Said Szell, the men placed Priest down on a barber's chair that was in the center of the room, restraining him further with iron straps that forced his head back.

"What bullshit is this?"

"Mister Priest, do you know who I am?"

"I suppose you're the concierge?"

"Look at me face. Are you certain you don't know who I am?"

"Yes….No…. Yes, I've seen you before… " said Priest, recognition and realization dawning on him, realizing why he was in the chair, "You were the dentist from Auschwitz. Der Weibe Engel, isn't that what they called you?"

"Precisely." Said Szell with a satisfied smile, turning a knob to recline the chair backward.

Priest lunged forward, his fangs bulging. The restraints held in place, making his attempted attack look quite foolish.

"I'm not sure what that was supposed to accomplish. In your condition, the only one you can harm is yourself."

"I'll kill you." Hissed Priest.

"Mossad, KGB, SIS… They've all tried, how could a thug like you prevail?" said Szell as he slipped on a pair of rubber gloves, then speaking to one of the guards standing by,

"Open his mouth."

Szell watched as the guard did as Szell ordered, then asked,

"Where are they?"

"Go to hell." Said Priest as best as he could with his mouth forced open.

"If you've heard about me, you know what kind of things I do. Where are the remaining members of your unit? Where is the opposition's secret base?"

"I'll rip your heart out of your chest."

"Christ, your breath stinks like a Russian." Said Szelll as he picked up a pair of pliers.

"Where are they?" he asked as he held the pliers open an inch away from Priest's fang.

"Safe. Now do your worst, Szell."

"You've taken poor care of your teeth." Said Szell as he tightened the pliers, "As a vampire, you should be ashamed."

With a few twists and jerks, prolonged to further Priest's screams of agony, Szell ripped Priest's fang out of his gums, as he thrashed on the chair, dropped them into a small container at his side.

"Now do you want to talk?"

"Go to hell…"

"I've exposed your nerves." Said Szell as he picked up a tiny scalpel, "The next thing you feel is me slicing a fraction of a millimeter off the tip, and then I'll do it many time more. Regardless of all your past exploits, it will hurt like nothing you've ever known. Tell me what I want and you won't. Where is the opposition hiding?"

London

"Harmony."

Bond closed the door behind him. He looked around the fairly plush apartment as he loosened his tie.

"Harmony, get out here, silly girl. You know I don't like to wait." Said Bond as he took off his jacket and tossed aside.

They were all alike, thought Harmony. Angel, Mason, Bond; They all saw her the same; a means to an end, a dog to fetch their slippers or do tricks or get on all fours for their pleasure.

Angel didn't trust her, he had used her as a pawn in the war he wanted to wage. Mason did precisely the same, he relied on her, but didn't trust her, he trusted Mernae. He deceived her, made her think she was part of something grand, part of a good cause, when all she really was was the punch line to a sadistic joke, he made a whore out of her, driven with a smile into his enemy's bed, on the pretense of making the world a better place.

But none was worse than Bond, that heartless degenerate. Night after night of cold frenzy, she'd come to look deep into him, and she realized that deep within, he had nothing. As soulless a specimen as she'd ever seen, and she'd seen plenty. He didn't care about her, or his wife, or any woman, they were all his playthings, to be used and discarded the moment they got old.

But it had to end, and she was the one to stop it. She would no longer serve Mason or Bond, she was going to get away from that world of venomous men. She was going to walk out of the bathroom, head straight for him as he waited for her in bed or in the living room, waiting for her to get on her knees and placate him like it was all she wanted out of life. She was going to make sure he realized what was about to happen, that the legend of Sir Commander James Bond, greatest spy the world has ever seen, who has survived the entirety of the cold war with dozens of bounties on his head, was going to meet his end at the hands of a woman.

And then as he realized he had finally lost, she would pull the trigger, send him to meet his maker, and let everything else be damned.

Harmony tightened her hand around the gun's handle, and then bolted out the door. She raised her weapon, tears of pent up frustration welling up in her tears.

"James!" she cried, her finger trembling on the trigger, every ounce of her screaming for murder. But then she saw something that was truly bizarre.

Bond lay on the floor on his side, choking, his shirt unbuttoned and one shoe off. His eyes shot open in abject terror.

Bond looked up at her in pain, clutching his chest with his hand, in a silent, humiliated plea for rescue.

"James?"

Next Chapter As a lifetime of adrenaline, drinking, fornicating and every other vice you care to think of catch up with the world's greatest spy, the opposition and the League find themselves unexpectedly at war. No more cloaks, no more daggers skullduggeries. Simple, all-out war.

R&R.