Enigma Mortis | A 007 fanfiction

Prologue: Breached

If anyone had been awake at precisely 2:56 a.m. that lonely Saturday morning, they might have noticed that something was wrong.

Then again, if anyone had been awake, they'd have heard the tremendous crash of the door to the flat down the hall and would perhaps have even thought to contact the police. But there was no one within the vicinity that night. They'd made sure of it long before they went after their target, the scrawny, dark-haired man who had just been thrown against his door, causing the whole thing to shatter and send him falling back into the hall, stunned and weapon-less. 

Even through his half-conscious state and with blood seeping from his hairline, Q could tell that these men were more than any average intruders. Each was heavily armed, wearing protective body armor, and had somehow managed to crack even his best security measures. They'd come in silently while he'd been working, managed to not even wake the cats, and grab him before he knew they were there. In the struggle, his laptop had been smashed and many, many bullets were lost into various pieces of furniture. They knew exactly what they were doing and what they were after, and he had the feeling that, whatever it was, he wasn't going to like its results. But he hadn't had time to run and now he couldn't even stand up, and every nerve in his body felt on fire.

At least he'd had time to throw the safety alert switch before his house became a living warzone.

Before Q could recover enough from the surprise attack, he heard the distinct sound of a gun being loaded near his head. A glock by the way the cartridge was loaded. "Get up," a voice snapped. A hand grabbed a fistful of his shirt and drug him up. He cursed in terror, his feet swinging limply in the air. His glasses sat so askew that he could see nothing out of them. The intruders' faces were nothing more than blurs to him and would be useless for identification later. Assuming he lived long enough to identify them. The man holding him leaned in as though to be sure of something, presumably that they had tossed the right man around like an over-used ragdoll. Q grimaced and frantically felt his pockets for anything he could use as a weapon. But he wasn't like Bond. He didn't carry a pistol around with him everywhere. He hated firing them even more.

To his luck, his fingers brushed against his lone creation, an ink pen. He almost smiled to himself. Embedded within the ball of the pen was a dagger. He'd intended to give it to Moneypenny for her birthday before the double-oh program had been shut down. Now, he carried it everywhere with him. Just in case.

As he started to take it from his pocket, however, he felt the grip on his shirt loosen and his brief moment of relief quickly vanished as the man elected to grab him by the throat and shove him up against the wall instead. He choked as the pressure increased, wheezing, desperately trying to inhale. "Drop it," his captor spat icily. When Q didn't react immediately, the man tightened his grip. The hacker brought his hands up to try weakly to pry the vice-grip away. Already he could see the darkness overtaking the outer edges of his vision. "I said drop it!"

Q obeyed, his heart sinking as he heard the click of the pen hitting the ground, along with any hope he had of escaping. It was getting harder to breathe now and it looked like the man had no intention of letting him go any time soon. "Please..." he wheezed, eyes widening as he realized he couldn't feel his hands anymore. "I...don't...I don't..." He blinked, struggling to stay awake. "Know...a-any...thing."

A laugh echoed from a second figure. Q tried to twist his head to see where it had come from but couldn't. He flicked his gaze to behind the man holding him, making out a dark blur that he assumed was another person. "You're lying," came a voice. Definitely female from what Q could tell. It took all of two words for him to know that this woman was cocky, arrogant, and, as much as he feared to say it, almost if not smarter than him. "You work for MI6. Their Quartermaster." She took a step toward him and he squinted, trying to see more than just her blond hair. "Surely you don't take us for fools, Quinten Miller?"