Hi y'all. As I said in the last chapter, I'm gonna try to speed up my update schedule. So here's one in two weeks instead of a whole month lol.

Also, just to clarify, the Committee is only erasing memories of Finn and Holley. And it's a last resort. They bribe who they can, but if people have really direct knowledge of the spies, they gotta get rid of that.

Because of the climactic showdown between the tow truck, Axlerod, and McQueen, hardly any papers mentioned the battleship that blew up in the River Thames.

Eyewitnesses, many on the Tower Bridge, claimed the ship started the fight by launching rockets at two cars on the docks. But the largest explosion reached a height of at least 500 feet, visible from miles away. All nearby landmarks went on alert, either evacuated or locked down, only to be informed hours later that it was not a terror attack — rather, the explosion had been caused by a British government operative.

Windows, lamps, any glass within a one-kilometer radius had shattered. Riverside buildings flooded. The docks, used by tour boats and the occasional fisher, were now a large crater cordoned off with a floating wall and police tape.

The unhappiest vehicles in town were the ones that found ship parts in their homes, penetrating the ceilings or littering their front doors. Debris had even been recovered from a construction site. Several trees looked like crime scenes.

Dave closed the police report, staring blankly at his desktop. In the weeks since this investigation began, his files had become an disorganized, overwhelming mess of pixels. PDFs, photos, voice memos, screenshots piled up on top of each other, and most didn't even have names anymore — irritating, but not so unbearable that he would spend five hours wrangling them back into order. After all this madness was over with, they would all go into the trash folder anyway….

"Now, I haven't seen you seethe like that," Vivian said between sips of tea, "since Shiftwell implied you were recently divorced. Care to explain?"

Dave let out a long sigh. Rain had begun to fall, so he and Vivian had taken refuge in a cozy café. Aromas filled the air — coffee, tea, pastries. Pop music played softly from a small Bluetooth speaker on the counter. Vehicles chatted and chuckled every few seconds.

"Everything about this is… wrong." Dave gestured out the window. Across the street was a boarded-up building. Water damage. Records showed it had been a card shop. And while he despised those trite, useless holiday cards that would only gather dust in a year's time, he pitied the person who had lost their business. "This plot hurt more than just celebrity race cars. It threatened more than the Queen of England. It had a real impact on real cars."

"Are you saying the Queen isn't real—"

"I'm saying, this is being sensationalized right and left. The news likes name-dropping all the racers and billionaires, but notice what they haven't focused on? People who live here. All the ones just… caught in the crossfire. The ones we have to interview, whose livelihoods were negatively impacted. And C.H.R.O.M.E. doesn't care that much about helping the civilians — our main focus is keeping them quiet."

"That is how we help them, isn't it? If they don't complain about spies, the Lemon syndicate won't try to recruit them. They can't be forced to give up information."

"Odds are, the Lemons wouldn't hunt them down at all. The ones that aren't in hiding are too busy cleaning up their own loose ends, and the legal drama with the oil platforms… In any case, C.H.R.O.M.E. wants to cover themselves and McMissile. They don't actually want to fix their mess. It's not about how many people were hurt."

"Well, no one was really hurt. Sure, loss of property and such, but it's not like any civilians died." Vivian looked at her notes again, then snickered. "Hey, since when did you care about noble causes like social justice? What happened to 'we're all specks of dust waiting to die?'"

"I still stand by that. I'm just irritated with people using their meaningless time on this planet to perpetuate even more meaningless things. And covering up the very real damage that we caused, just to make ourselves look better to the CIA, PSIA, MSS, Mossad, ASIS — what's the point in that? Nothing changes. We'll stay in diplomatic relations, but under the hood we all hate each other. And even if we fire every agent associated with the WGP, what's to stop them from taking their incompetence somewhere else?"

(Of course, firing them wasn't the only option — just killing them had come up more than once. But then they'd have to deal with the agents' families asking questions. Not to mention hiding the bodies — for the jet in particular, this would be an issue.)

Vivian hummed thoughtfully. "They may not be fired — not all of them. McMissile screwed up in major ways, but he may still have some use… even if it's not in the field. I mean, he must be doing something right. For one, I'd like to know how he got out of this explosion alive with Zundapp."

Dave chuckled. "I haven't been able to figure that out, either. Perhaps we can ask him."

"Did you contact his handler?"

"Yes. They haven't responded yet."

And he had a sneaking suspicion that he wouldn't get any further information. The Committee would eventually need a statement from McMissile — the investigation jeopardized his future employment, after all. But even though all of C.H.R.O.M.E. was in a stir over it, McMissile's handler would do their darndest to keep their best agent. They had given him time to get his story straight, distancing him from the hottest gossip.

In a way, it was nice to see that C.H.R.O.M.E. didn't view all their agents as expendable weapons — but the longer they dragged this out, the more hours of sleep Dave and the other Committee members lost. And no matter how much Dave viewed his job as a joke, he resented the higher-ups for treating it like one.

Speaking of, Vivian's radio buzzed. She hesitated, as if she hadn't been expecting a call, but picked up. "Hello? Oh, hello. I'm in the city right now. Davey's with me."

"Stop calling me that," Dave said. "It undermines my credibility." (And it definitely wasn't because an ex-girlfriend loved calling him that, before she decided, "Davey, you're boring and kind of a downer, you don't have any hobbies or other friends and I feel like you need me more than I need you" and left him for a hybrid. Definitely not.)

Vivian grinned, but only for a moment. Then her jaw dropped; the caller must have said something important. "What? Really? How long ago? Oh… Yes, I see. We're just about done here, I think we can stop by… Understood. Thanks for the tip." She hung up, her forks trembling a little.

"What was that about? Another interview?"

Vivian nodded solemnly. "And you won't believe who it is."

Long, long ago, when Dave was just starting out at C.H.R.O.M.E., he had taken a history course that involved a field trip— by boat— along the length of the River Thames.

Serenaded by a monotone guide, the group had seen many espionage-relevant sites: the U.S. embassy, the MI6 headquarters, the MI5 headquarters (not nearly as glamorous as the M16's), the Houses of Parliament. And there would have been more, had Dave not fallen off the boat. Even with the help of a speedboat Samaritan, it took about ten cold, wet, profanity-laden minutes to fish Dave out. So the trip detoured to St. Thomas' Hospital— which, by some act of divine foresight, was located right across the river from Big Bentley.

Their next potential witness was a patient at St. Thomas'. Dave was curious to see if the hospital had changed since then— he had a strong suspicion that it hadn't. Sure, the Shard was going up, and the Olympics would be clogging up the headlines by next summer, and the Gherkin… certainly existed. But the majority of standing structures felt centuries old, and London's tourism clung to traditions and history. Nothing could change too much.

Rain poured without regard for vehicular life. So Dave and Vivian rode the Tube. It seemed that ten thousand vehicles, maybe all of London, had the same idea. Everyone was bumper-to-bumper, not unlike the trains in Tokyo. As soon as that crowded, claustrophobic petri dish stopped in the station, Dave and Vivian made a mad dash for the exit ramp.

"What are we supposed to say when we meet him?" Vivian asked, fumbling with her umbrella. It burst open, flinging raindrops from their earlier trip to the station.

"Just follow standard procedure. Who, what, when, where, why. It's no different from any of the other interviews."

"Well, it should be. He's a legend!"

"What, are you a fan?"

"No! It's just— What we learn here could change the case."

"Not really. He wasn't around our agents very often, so he won't be giving us any 'gotchas' for them. But speaking to him will give us a few more charges for the Lemons and the Professor." He paused, then added, "And we may get some dirt on the American agency, for the next time we collaborate with them."

The station was less than half a kilometer from the hospital, but the cold and damp made the short trip feel like an eternity. (And why were there so many vehicles around, with rain like this?) Finally, they arrived in the lobby of St. Thomas'.

Vivian lingered by the door, shaking her umbrella dry. Meanwhile, Dave approached the front desk. "I'm visiting a friend. Bruce Carrero?"

The receptionist keyed it in. "Room 335."

Dave already knew what room it was, but gave a quick thank-you before driving toward the lift. Vivian caught up with him, tossing the umbrella in her storage bin.

"Must have been a lot of effort," Dave noted, "getting the bloke to London. They didn't bring him here just to talk to us, did they?"

Vivian shrugged, pulling out her notepad and pen. "I'd guess C.H.R.O.M.E. wants the MI6 to keep an eye on him, too, at least until the Lemons go to trial. Plus, finder's keepers. It's best if we take the burden off the CIA's fenders."

Two minutes later, they were in front of Room 335. Dave listened for a few seconds. Machines beeping, but no voices. No engines. Good. They'd get the interviewee alone. He nodded to Vivian, then entered.

He immediately saw Bruce Carrero, also known as Agent Rod Redline. The muscle car was on a four-post lift, in nothing but primer, suspended over a stained gray sheet on the floor. Parts and machines surrounded him. And he was staring right into Dave's tiny, shadowy soul.

Yikes. Follow standard procedure. "A Volkswagen Karmann Ghia has no radiator," Dave said.

Agent Redline chuckled, but there wasn't much amusement behind it. "That's because it's air-cooled. Why that code phrase, anyway? Anybody with a Karmann Ghia cousin could tell you that."

"Precisely, Agent Redline. We're investigating the World Grand Prix for C.H.R.O.M.E., and we need you to answer some questions."

Redline looked around the room as if for an escape. Then he sighed. "Well, I've got nowhere better to be. What took you guys so long?"

"Bureaucracy, I'm afraid."

(After the mix-up with Sir Mater had been discovered, C.H.R.O.M.E. had contacted the Americans to determine who their real agent was. The Americans, believing Redline to be dead, disclosed his identity with minimal hesitation. Not a day later, some very flustered environmental activists in Tokyo discovered his somehow-not-dead-yet body. C.H.R.O.M.E. treated him in their own medical facilities; this was the first public hospital he had been in, and only because the agency had a wing where they trained their own doctors to treat spies.)

(But they couldn't just tell Redline that, because then they'd look incompetent, and he'd disdain them more than he already did.)

Dave parked on the side of the lift closest to the door. This position made him slightly more intimidating — which he felt he needed, since Redline's presence unnerved him a little. Vivian went to the other side, out of Redline's direct line of sight but close enough to monitor his microexpressions.

"We know you were on the oil platform for a few weeks," Dave began. "Were you alone out there?"

"Yes. You know, criminals they may be, but they had quite a rigorous recruitment process. My partner was dismissed by dumb luck."

"So how were you caught?"

"I was waiting for McMissile in the bathroom and two of the main Lemons — Grem and Acer — saw me. Roughed me up a little. But the camera did most of the—"

"Why did they attack you?"

"I took my disguise off so McMissile would recognize me. Except they recognized me, too."

"Why didn't you just wait until Agent McMissile was there?"

"I thought about that, but it was a risk I had to take. I figured, if I were in that Lemon disguise, he'd attack me before I had the chance to explain myself."

Dave's first thought was: Why would McMissile shoot some random Lemon in the bathroom? But then he remembered what the Lemons had done, and why McMissile was even in Tokyo. He was Agent Leland Turbo's backup. Turbo had been murdered; the Lemons had presented the coupe's crushed corpse to Professor Zundapp. McMissile had seen it when he arrived — Redline must have seen it as well.

Normally, McMissile would have been given time to process his comrade's death, or at least put through some trauma evaluation. But not this time. C.H.R.O.M.E. was anxious to chase the new lead, so they let McMissile fly to Tokyo, and contacted the Americans for any information — that's why Redline was waiting in the men's loo that night.

Death wasn't dwelt on in the agency. It was a fact of the profession, almost routine. In fact, Agent Turbo's demise was one of the few misfortunes that McMissile wasn't being blamed for. But had he blamed himself? Was grief for a friend enough to explain his flashy, reckless, desperate moves during the mission?

"Of course, I got beat up anyway," Redline continued, "so I guess it didn't really matter. They took me to this warehouse. And what does the Professor do? He starts monologuing! They gave me some Allinol, and then started up the camera."

He paused, staring into the middle distance. "I had been trying to learn what the heck it really was. But I didn't realize what they would use it for. How… How much pain it could induce. They put it at the highest setting — they really wanted to kill me. I was prepared for it, too. I had really great last words."

"How did you survive?" Dave asked. However it happened, it was sure to be a riveting tale of courage and strength —

Redline scoffed. "No idea. But it takes more than a little electromagnetic pulse to make the Redline flatline."

Dave didn't find the pun funny, but Vivian snickered. He gave her a look. She hid her face behind her notepad, still grinning. Dave rolled his eyes and turned back to Redline. "Why didn't they kill you immediately?" He already had a few theories.

"They wanted to know who I gave the photo to. From the news, I'm assuming you got it. So that tow truck probably survived. I would never have given it up unless—"

"I have a couple questions about the photo… Why was it just the engine?"

"Yeah, not my best work, but I'm proud of it. I had to kill people to get that one."

"That's very — For that photo?"

For the first time in the conversation, Redline looked embarrassed. "Yes. It's the only time I could get close to the boss, since I was 'new.'"

"Why didn't you just send a message with his name?"

"Would you have believed me?"

Dave would have. Alas, Dave didn't monitor incoming transmissions, and he couldn't speak for the agents assigned to it. Even other spies didn't believe Sir Mater at first. So maybe Redline's warning would have gone unheeded anyway. "In any case, we're grateful that you pulled through. Your statement will help us bring the Lemons to justice."

"A lot of them didn't know about the Allinol plot. That was only for the senior members — the ones closest to the Professor, and to the Lemonhead families. There's hundreds that just maintain the rigs, wouldn't support terrorism. You gotta make sure you get the right ones."

"Can you provide names for 'the right ones,' Agent Redline?"

"Sure. And my codename's Torque. Does C.H.R.O.M.E. not do codenames?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"That's a miserable existence."

"Preaching to the choir," Vivian muttered.

"I believe that's all the questions we have for you today, Agent Torque," Dave said. Vivian clicked her pen and started for the door. Dave began to turn. "Should anything else come up, we'll track you down."

"I've got a question for you."

Not this again. "Go on."

"McMissile. I'd like to meet him properly. And I've seen some crazy things on the news… and I want the whole story."

It wasn't exactly a question, but certainly a request. Dave sighed. "You're not the only one."

When Dave checked his inbox again, a new message popped up from McMissile's handler. It was a final denial; the agent's physical location was classified behind "medical security," and therefore beyond the Committee's authority. However, McMissile could be made available for — you've got to be kidding me — a video call.

Fortunately, Dave had prepared for this outcome. He switched tabs and fired off a private message on the C.H.R.O.M.E. gossip forum.

D4V3 - UrgentTransmission would your friend happen to know what safehouse McMissile was sent to?

Yeah so Rod's alive. I don't know exactly how, but other fics have gone into that so read those ;) He's just too fun to let die, and a reveal that he had survived would have been, like, such a James Bond plot twist. Oh, and the townspeople… I didn't want to go into as much detail as last chapter, but I should write a story where Finn realizes how screwed he is as he's blowing up that ship. Like, he couldn't really avoid it, but it definitely shouldn't have gotten that far.

Also, I wrote like most of the chapter in one day, so if there's any errors please lmk. I don't have a lot of experience with London… or hospitals… or train stations