There was a terse radio silence between the pair of MI6 agents. Bond was trying to catch up to Silva on the train. "Excuse me," he muttered to an unmoving group of people right before the train screeched to a halt. He glimpsed the blond man as he shoved to get out and jumped out as well, in hot pursuit. People shouted and exclaimed angrily as they both pushed their way through. Silva was still farther ahead than Bond was comfortable with, and pushed and shoved people aside as he got into a more open area. When faced with escalators, Silva stood up on the metal divider and jumped, sliding uncontrollably down it. Bond did not hesitate before following. Silva landed ungracefully but Bond managed to hit the ground running, chasing after the man. He lost him after they went through a door into an open area, and Bond made his way through the white tiled corridor. He noticed a door in the wall ajar and went through it, gun at the ready, down a dimly lit passageway with a medal box on the wall. He glanced at it before deciding it controlled the lights. He flipped open the box and threw the switches, and the corridor (which headed down from where he was standing) was illuminated, with Silva's shadow on the far end-running for it. Bond then spotted him climbing a ladder straight up out of the tunnel, and shot at him. One, two, multiple times
"Ow!" Silva yelled, jerking his hand off of the ladder where it had almost been hit. He glanced down at Bond, a dark silhouetted figure in the center of the large underground room, which had probably once been a bustling place.
"I won't miss next time, Mr. Silva." Bond's smooth statement echoed ominously throughout.
"Not bad! Not bad, James, for a physical wreck." Silva looked maniacally happy.
"Why, thank you," he responded, striding closer with his gun drawn.
"You caught me. Now, here's your prize. The latest thing from my local toy store. It's called 'radio'." Silva pressed a button on the radio clipped to his uniform jacket and part of the ceiling blew out and in behind Bond. He was rocked by the explosion, catching himself before he fell and getting away, light from hit wires sparking. "Whoo!" The blond man looked on with strange glee.
Bond lowered his gun and looked at Silva. "I do hope that wasn't for me," he responded, both bravado and sarcasm in his tone.
"No, but that is," Silva replied, grinning in evil excitement. Bond spun to look behind him as a low, ominous rumble sounded from the place of the explosion. It grew until the source of the roar from the hole, still with sparking wires dangling down, revealed itself to be a train fast approaching a fall. Bond ran through one of the stone archways lining the underground chamber and kept running as the train fell, still running and headed for him, through the hole. Bond jumped down into the room as the train nearly missed him. The rest of it just kept coming and coming in his direction, and the spy flattened himself against the floor, gripping his gun. The train barreled through all of the columns in the chamber and just kept going, its momentum too much for the rock which was destroyed when the fast-moving metal ran through it full speed. The train just seemed to go on and on, though its front end eventually hit the solid stone of the wall and came to a shuddering halt. Bond pushed himself off of the ground and up, dust and rubble surrounding him. He knew that Silva had escaped and was on his way to M.
In the tribunal, M spoke as messages from MI6 continued to pop up on Tanner's laptop. He glanced at them but did not interrupt her. There was gunfire outside, as Silva and a few men approached and mindlessly shot the security guards, but it was not audible inside the courtroom. They walked right through the checkpoint and on towards M, who spoke on. "How safe do you feel?" she asked the board facing her.
Meanwhile Bond was running up the stairs from the Underground station as firefighters were running in. He was dusty but still clutching his gun. He looked around for a moment before running through all of the traffic, civilian and fire engines, to get to M at the tribunal before Silva did. He was too late. Silva burst into the room just as M finished reciting a few lines of Tennyson, and the post poetry silence was broken. He pointed his gun at her and Mallory leapt from his seat. Police took aim but Silva and his men took them out, causing screaming panic and a flood of people evacuating the room. Silva had his gun pointed at M again, and took careful aim right before Mallory flung himself in the line of fire instead, pushing M down right as he was hit with the bullet meant for her. He rolled on the floor in pain, clutching his arm.
Outside, Bond was sprinting towards the scene of chaos. Silva and his men were shooting everyone in sight that was trying to get out. Tanner got out from behind a table where he had been hiding and pulled a collapsed and dazed M off of it and down below to safety. Silva and his gang were still firing at everything that moved while Bond approached, walking down the hallway with his gun at the ready. He kicked open the door and immediately shot one of Silva's men. Then he started to shoot at Silva himself, who ducked and returned fire. Bond kicked the dead man's gun to Eve, who was one of the only who had been in attendance still alive, as she had ducked and hid when the shooting began and was now crouching on the ground. She propelled herself up and took aim at Silva, who shot another policeman while Bond was still firing at him. Silva and Bond both remained un-hit, and Bond had to duck to grab another gun when his ran out of ammunition about the same time Silva did. Tanner had hidden behind a doorframe, having gotten out from below the table, and was also firing. There was confusion, and it looked as if Silva was trying to escape. Bond looked at Tanner and made eye contact, and without words got him to stop firing. He glanced at the fire extinguishers in the room to reveal his plan before shooting the two closest to him, in an effort to add to the confusion. Bond confidently strode across the room, shooting almost blindly in Silva's general direction. He stood and returned fire as everyone else was hiding behind or underneath the tables. Eve still had her arm above one and was shooting as soon as Bond passed her. The foam of the fire extinguishers made it difficult to see, and Silva walked out. Eve noticed and pulled some other lucky survivors from underneath the tables, yelling at them to go.
Bond got out of the building just seconds too late, as Silva drove off in a police car. Tanner helped M into her unmarked car and it sped off without him, in the opposite direction of all the police vehicles descending on the scene. Little did he know, Bond was driving.
"007, what the hell are we doing?" M snapped, pulling on her seat belt as Bond glanced at her in the rearview mirror. "Are you kidnapping me?"
"That would be one way of looking at it," Bond answered.
M looked out of the window in a stubborn silence. She spoke up. "Too many people are dying because of me."
"If he wants you, he's gonna have to come and get you. We've been one step behind Silva from the start. It's time to get out in front and change the game." He sounded calm and confident- classic Bond.
"And I'm to be the bait?" she asked, wanting to find flaw in his plan. He glanced at her in the rearview mirror again, and she looked right back. He held his gaze for longer than was probably safe.. "Alright, just us. No one else."
Bond touched his ear to turn on his earpiece. "Q, I need help."
The young Quartermaster was at his laptop, looking at the big center screen. He never seemed to sit down. "I'm tracking the car, where are you going?" Q had much more emotion in his voice than usual. It was concern with an edge of anxiety, and it sounded higher than usual. He spoke a bit too quickly.
"I've got M. We're about to disappear," Bond said with a smirk in his voice.
"What?" Q responded, narrowing his eyes at the screen though 007 couldn't see him.
"I need you to lay a trail of breadcrumbs impossible to follow for anyone except Silva. Think you can do it?" His sentences and words were strung together as if there was no space behind them. It was more of a command than a request, and Bond knew the younger agent, though less experienced, would pick up on it, and most of all trust him.
Q glanced over his shoulder in a paranoid fashion, and then leant in, putting his weight on his palms which rested on the desk. The tone of his voice was more hushed and confidential. "I'm guessing this isn't strictly official."
"Not even remotely," replied the older agent nonchalantly. He actually smiled.
'"So much for my promising career in espionage," the Quartermaster said dryly, raising his Scrabble mug and taking a draught.
Bond and M were on their way, now in the pitch-black night, as Q tried to figure out the trail with Tanner's occasional commentary. He tapped along as the other man, sporting a bald spot, took a swig of beer to calm his nerves.
"It's a fine line. If the breadcrumb's too small, then he might miss it. Too big, and Silva will smell a rat," monologue-d the darker-haired man as a map of the UK on the center screen (the smaller four surrounding it off, as it was night, everyone else had gone home, and they were no longer needed) responded to his keystrokes.
"Yes, but you'd think even Silva will be able to spot that." Tanner said, looked rather concerned even after the beer.
"He's the only one who could," replied Q with a rather affectionate smirk.
Tanner turned at the sound of footsteps. "Sir," he said, looking like all of his nerves had just risen from his stomach into his throat.
Q spun, looking a bit like a deer in headlights. "Oh."
"What are you doing?" asked Mallory, sans his suit jacket plus a sling on the arm that had been hit. He looked quite intimidating for a man with a bullet wound.
"We're just….monitoring," Q stumbled a bit on "monitoring," coming out with a sound like "monitor…ing."
"Creating a false tracking signal for Silva to follow," countered Mallory with a knowing half smile.
"Well, sir, um…" Tanner started.
"Well, no…" Q said at the same time.
"Excellent thinking, get him isolated. Send him on the A9, it's a direct route, you can monitor his progress more accurately and confirm it with the traffic cameras." Both Q and Tanner looked thoroughly surprised with this statement.
"But, uh…what if the PM finds out?" asked Q, looking down a bit. It probably would have been a bit over-the-glasses scrutinizing look if they didn't sit so high on the bridge of his nose.
"Then we're all buggered. Carry on," Mallory muttered, nodded in respect, and left.
Q looked back to Tanner, gave the glance equivalent of a shrug, then turned back to the map, now focused on Scotland.
That had been Q's last involvement in Skyfall.
Skyfall was over, and MI6 had been rocked to hell. The new M was very different and being under his leadership was still something that so many agents had to get used to. Q was still scrambling to clean up the mess that Silva had made, and he'd been hard-pressed in the last few weeks to find something that worked, and quickly. The security of the agency had been compromised and getting it back up and running was no small task. He had to simultaneously rid the system of flaws from the bottom up and get all of the computers and information back up and running. The agency was crippled without its security, and agents out on field missions were stranded without their handlers. Q had good, intelligent operatives at his disposal, and he utilized all of their talents in rebuilding the technology side of the intelligence agency. Given the fact that they were still somewhat disorganized after the destruction of headquarters, putting it all back together was a mess. The Quartermaster managed somehow to get it all going at a pretty steady rate while he went over the agency's old security with a fine toothed comb, making note of every error he found. There were hardly any, but the ones that existed needed to be eliminated. He did much of the reworking of it himself, leaving the more structured and less boring work to his employees.
While Q division frequently worked through the night to keep MI6 secure, business went on as usual. He spent his days handling his assigned agent. Bond had accepted a mission immediately afterwards and had been sent on assignment to New Zealand in an attempt to track down and gather information from and about an assassin who was planning to target a member of Parliament. Between keeping him alive and trying to fix up MI6, the young man often went a few days at a time running only on Earl Grey (though no one knew if he spiked it or not) and adrenaline. He did go home to change and shower, as well as acquire a new supply of tea, though at odd times. He would often clock out at two in the morning and be back by quarter to four. Bond was back from New Zealand within three weeks, and entered the agency in the afternoon (after a change, shower and shave at his hotel room- he had no flat yet) for a debrief.
Though it seemed unlikely, Bond had managed to retain a couple of the gadgets that he had been given upon departure. Not Quartermaster specials, unfortunately, but from the stockroom. He still held some small measure of pride in returning them unscathed, though, and decided to stop by Q's office himself after debriefing.
What met him there was totally unexpected. Bond knocked only to find that there was no answer, but the door had been left a bit ajar. He glanced around before pushing the door open with the palm of his hand to absolute silence. He opened it all the way to find a surprising, yet amusing sight. The wavy-haired young man, still dressed for the day in a sharp navy cardigan had fallen asleep at his desk, his head on one arm which lay on the desk. He was breathing quietly and slowly, obviously out for the count. A few empty mugs of tea littered the office space, with one not six inches from the man's head. His computer was on and casting a pasty glow onto his pale skin. Bond knew better than to touch it, and briefly contemplated leaving his weapons before deciding to let sleeping dogs lie. He would get his moment of pride later. He quietly exited the room and closed the door completely, letting the lock click into place before walking off for his debrief.