Usual disclaimer for the Land of Litigation, no rights to any characters portrayed, yada, yada.
Things didn't move very quickly over the years following the discovery of the clones, they managed to get all the Bartowski clones and most of the Graham clones relocated to good families in "safe" countries, so they could hopefully get settled into "normal" lives and grow. Now that the money that Graham had left had dried up, nearly all of the older Graham clones had succumbed to their ailments because their medical care wasn't being funded any more, and the Bartowski children were growing up and developing. They had wiped out all of Graham's cloning facilities and any and all evidence about the cloning program fairly early in the piece, but what was left of BGRU was buried deep, too deep for even them to root out quickly, and they were finding disturbing evidence that (like cockroaches) they were gathering and growing in the shadows.
Molly had finished college and had a job in public relations in a nice company, not too demanding but it was fulfilling for her. Clara had followed her mother into medicine, she didn't have the brilliance required to follow her into her field (neurology research), but she had her father's hands and she was rather better than him because she had a good dose of her mother's intelligence and spirit. She was nearly finished medical school and she didn't appear to need a nudge from the family to get her a slot in a good hospital, she looked like she had that on her own merits. Charlie also followed his mother, into micro-biology, he had everything he needed to make it on his own, and he chose that field because he knew via the family business that bio-terrorism was pretty much the biggest worry in the current and future threat environment, so he wanted to be able to do something about it, while no formal discussions had occurred as yet, it was a given to everyone (including him) that he would be part of Quantum Concepts when he finished his degrees (and probably doctorates). Charlie's step-sisters (Susie and Wendy) looked like they were heading for similar careers to Molly, by Bartowski standards that was disappointing, but that was probably what they'd be happy with and were capable of, so no-one begrudged them a life that suited them. Charlie's half-brothers and half-sisters were all heading into scientific and/or engineering fields, and it was also a given that they'd be in QC as soon as they finished their studies.
In QC, the old school was winding down, but were still quite active, Stefan, Mary, Casey and Emma were semi-retired (they were certainly old enough to retire, but thanks to the BI they were healthy and sharp enough to be quite effective and they weren't ready to sit on the porch and talk about their grandchildren yet, they still had a lot to do and no-one was going to stop them), which meant that they only put in about 30-50 hours a week instead of 2-3 times that, like they used to. Chuck, Sarah, Ellie, Carina, Jeff, Alex, Zondra, Josie and Heather were running QC and doing the majority of the work at that stage, they were all in their forties (except Jeff, who was in his fifties now), but like the "old folk", the BI gave them the boost they needed to shoulder the load as if they were half their age.
Quantum Concepts was still focused on mainly doing government contracts, chasing BGRU and overseeing the Bartowski clones' well-being and development (they were also keeping an eye on the Graham clones to see how they came out). One thing the clones seemed to have answered was the nature versus nurture argument (in the instance of clones at least), as the personality and tendencies of the Bartowski clones tended to match that of their originals/templates (down to the boys generally being nerdier and the girls generally being more active, but both sides showing elements of the other). The Graham clones also seemed to generally follow in their "father"s footsteps, which was a worry that they had hoped would be negated by raising them in "good" families. Another worry was the fact that BGRU obviously had hooks into a lot of areas of the various governments because a quite a number of the Graham clones had already been located and snatched by BGRU (presumably to use them to run BGRU when they were old enough, but whether that was to be as figureheads or actually run the organisation wouldn't be answerable until they were old enough to actually take the reins).
The clones' tendencies were an expected and worrying development (though why they thought it would work out the way they hoped, no-one knew, as things had so rarely done so before), as it showed that the war was far from over, and the new generation(s) would have to deal with it when the original family were out of the picture. They had also lost their principal support in the government when the General/Auntie Diane retired, like the other "old school" members of the clan, she and Roan had the boost of the BI which meant that they were still sharp and capable, but without her position (and with the President who she'd had the ear of out of office now), she couldn't get them the support she could when she had that power. She did still have lots of connections who understood what CI (now QC) had done for the world, and could call on favours, which she did so (partly by brokering QC services for the various government bodies). Once she and Roan had retired, they moved to LA to be near Josie and the clan, so she was on hand whenever she was needed.
Given what was happening with the Graham clones, Chuck and Sarah changed their plans for the upbringing of the Bartowski clones. Obviously the government organisations were still hopelessly compromised by BGRU, therefore the Bartowski clones wouldn't be safe while there were official records that could be used to locate them. Because of that, Chuck and Sarah made the necessary arrangements and met with all of the families hosting the Bartowski clones to get them to agree to relocate and assume new identities. They managed to get everyone to agree without too much trouble, and shifted them far enough to make them almost impossible to find (changing countries where it could be done without affecting the families too much), they also located them close to the QC centres so that a) support was close by if needed, and b) work was easier for the families, as nearly everyone was employed by QC when they were relocated (all the Bartowski host families had been thoroughly screened before Chuck or Sarah would accept them, and they were rather more careful investigating them than they were with the other potential QC employees). So, while the plan had been to leave the Bartowski clones to grow up in as normal as possible an environment until they finished their education and then attempt to bring them into the fold by recruiting them, in the space of less than six months they were all under the QC umbrella with their host families, and off the various governments' radars.
Given that QC was essentially formed to fight the on-going war against BGRU, everyone who was part of QC (no matter what their role) was included in the on-going physical and defence training, and it wasn't too difficult to have that overflow to the kids, so they were given similar training to their original templates (Yvonne, Zack, Jaqui and Piotr) from a relatively early age, it wasn't so much to ready them for the war, it was mostly so they could defend themselves if they needed to. (It had already been seen that what they had gotten from the kids made them pre-disposed to go that way, anyway, so there was no difficulty getting them to enthusiastically join in, it would have actually been harder to keep them away.)
With the BGRU developments, they ended up having to move quicker than they'd planned to staff up Quantum Concepts (once everyone was very carefully screened and investigated, of course, they had learned their lesson with "Bella", and letting a viper like that into their midst was NOT going to happen again). They were acquiring research and development people for the various scientific and technology fields they were taking QC in, but were also acquiring more hackers, analysts and operatives in the cyber-intelligence and intelligence fields. Luckily, with the reputation that Carmichael Industries and the Clan Carmichael had, most of the people they were interested in jumped at the chance of joining the best of the best (and Quantum Concepts was already making a name for itself, no less revered than Carmichael Industries). Their biggest operation was in LA, based in Laputa, but they were also staffing up the other centres around the world, too. They had acquired a few hundred people of the best in their fields around the world to bring up QC's capabilities by the time that Charlie finished his studies and joined the family business.
Of course, with the extra free time that Stefan had nowadays, he was back to inventing things all the time (most of which were too effective/dangerous to allow the rest of the world to see, let alone give access to, of course). One of his "minor" developments was an upgrade of the hideaway gun, he looked at the weapon he'd created for the kids originally and decided that he could do better, so he added another pair of tube magazines (in a diamond pattern) to give the pistol a maximum capacity of 29 (made up o rd tube mags + 4 staging chambers + 1 in the chamber) for about a third increase in weight and a bit over 1cm increase in height, which meant that it still worked quite well as a hideaway pistol and had about twice the capacity. Another development was to reduce the size of the mobile node tablet to a phablet (much like the phablet that was part of the original mobile node), so the system was now down to the AR glasses, virtual touch screen/trackball watch/bracelet, and a phablet that slipped into a pocket easily.
One big development Stefan and Chuck worked on together was a significant Electric Vehicle upgrade on the "special" Odysseys which had become the mainstay of their transport years ago, they maintained (and extended) the sleek appearance and high end performance of the Odysseys with all electric "motor in wheel" technology and fully remote/autonomous control capabilities, adding a further upgrade to the composite armour capabilities (it could handle 40mm barrages and bigger rockets now) and more armaments (including a concealed double gun roof turret). These stylish seven seaters looked quite at home pulling up with the other limos at major events, but they could out-fight any traditional military LAVs and outrun anything on the ground (and they'd added the ability to jack up the suspension on the fly to give them off road capabilities, too). The also came up with an electric bike using similar technology that Chuck and some of the others adopted, they had one gun fore and aft and the fairing could deflect up to 25mm rounds, so as long as you were heading at whoever was shooting at you, you had some protection if you tucked in behind the fairing (the Nighthawk was overdue for retirement and the new E-Bikes were a major step up). They did still have the old Odysseys in the garages for use when required, they (and the few other traditional cars that had been hung onto like Sarah's beloved Shooting Brake) had been converted/re-engineered to run on hydrogen to meet EPA requirements and also because hydrogen filling stations and charging stations were getting more common than fossil fuel filling stations nowadays, but the electric vehicles were the way things were the direction of the future, so it only made sense to base any developments on that technology.
Due to the resistance to change aircraft fuel situations around the world, the SonicStars and most of the other aircraft were still using traditionally fueled engines (bio-fueled at times, but essentially the same as they were twenty years before). QC was involved in research for alternative fuel aircraft engine options, and that was looking as though it could end up being a worthwhile revenue winner not too far down the track, but for now they had to stay with the fuel options that they could get wherever they went, and that meant traditional fuels. They did implement upgrades to full remote/autonomous piloting technology to all of their aircraft, so the SonicStars or other aircraft could be sent wherever necessary without requiring pilots to be aboard (even though those of them who were certified to fly the various aircraft were officially logging quite a few hours, to the extent that some of them were looking like full time pilots on the basis of the hours logged).
While they weren't getting much mileage on the BGRU issues (only managing to take out one or two locations and half a dozen notable people each year generally, because they'd buried themselves so deep), they still had their regular work for the government agencies, plus the new fields that QC was moving into, and the effort involved in keep an eye on the whole family (including the new additions), so they were kept pretty busy. They would always be in demand for government work, as no-one else in the world could come close to their performance in locating and extracting information out of electronic systems, so if it was enemy nations, rogue intelligence organisations or operations, criminal organisations or operations, or plots within their own government organisations, they were the people to go to to get the information or solution. When it came to physical operations, though, they generally only got involved when it was BGRU or some other villain from their pasts, when it wasn't directly related to them, they let the client (well the government agency who engaged them) do their own dirty work.
As long as they were still delivering for the government organisations, they had the support they needed to work outside the normal legal restrictions, which was why they kept taking the government jobs. Dealing with BGRU and the rest of the nefarious types that were always after them, much of what they had to do was borderline to blatantly illegal, so they couldn't afford to give up any of the goodwill that they had acquired, with any major government. Another thing that was obvious was that the primary team wouldn't have any chance to retire in the next twenty to thirty years, within twenty years, all of the Bartowski clones should be at the point where they were ready to join Quantum Concepts and contribute, and Charlie and all of the original kids would be on board and building their own reputations by then, but until the originals had been up to speed and recognised for at least fifteen to twenty years, the heads of the intelligence and military organisations that QC dealt with would not accept them as the leaders of the company, so Chuck, Sarah, Ellie and Carina (probably) would have to stay on as the titular heads of QC until the kids had enough experience and recognition under their belts to take over in their own right. Of course, fifteen to twenty years after that the clones would be ready to start stepping up, and if the next generation started their families within the next ten years, then their kids should be up to speed in time for when the clones started winding down. It was tiring, trying to plan how things had to come together to keep the family business up to speed enough to support the coming generations.
A/N: I'm thinking that this may be the logical point to wind up Bad Pennies, the names that we really love to hate to been largely dealt with, but there's plenty of strife waiting for Clan Carmichael down the track, with BGRU refusing to go away and the fact that they have around a hundred new Langston Grahams simmering away to come to the fore about the same period that the Bartowski clones should be up to speed. Chuck and Sarah's kids are a few years away from starting to join the family business (IE: Quantum Concepts and the spy world), but thanks to the BI, Chuck and the rest of the "young" team will still be up to handling everything for at least another twenty to thirty years, and even the "old" crowd will probably still be up to contributing their knowledge and experience to help resolve the issues that arise for the family.
So, unless anyone can present a good argument that shows a better reason for keeping Bad Pennies going than I have thought of as yet, I think Pennies is ready to have a nap. If there's any interest, I do have a few ideas about picking it up with another story at least ten to fifteen years down the track (with all the original characters still involved, but getting ready to hand the reins over to the new generation).
Thanks guys.