HAZARD ✃ Spectre, Quartermaster

i.

"PLEASE tell me that what you're doing is legal." My voice comes out barely above a whisper, just shy of a hiss; my eyes sweep the darkened office, partly for the purpose of busying my mind. Q continues tapping away on the keyboard, relatively unperturbed by the panic in my voice and the circumstances we are currently in: intruders in an office devoid of people and very likely breaking more than one law.

"I'm putting you in as Heidi Roe. Remember that name, if not for your own good, but for the fact that I am taking great pains for your sake," Q tells me, finishing the agent/employee entry form. The guilt that has been lapping at my sanity for the past three and a half hours finally breaks past my conscience's ability to comfort me, flooding my body with a heat wave of nervousness.

"Why are we doing this? You do know that by anyone else's standards, this is crazy, don't you? What if I get caught?" I ask, my voice surprisingly steady, but hopelessly contrary in cue to my hands viciously wringing each other. Q stops what he's doing, rises to his feet, and looks at me like I've just proclaimed my love for all things ungodly right to his face.

"Amelia," he begins, the pinch at the bridge of his nose audible in his weary voice, "Unless you don't recall, you've been unable to keep a job since you graduated Harvard. A woman who received her education at one of the most prestigious schools in America surely should be able to keep up a ruse. And if you weren't aware, you very much should have been snatched up for good by now!"

"Are you now referring to my seemingly perpetual state of single-dom? Or my inability to hold a job?"

"In your case, both," He sighs, "Sometimes I still can't believe it. It must be a skill at this point, or perhaps a rare form of disability."

"Can't believe what? That I'm still--"

"Unemployed, yes. Here's your card. Keep it on your person at all times. You never know when you'll need it."

I slide it from his hands, but he takes it back and pins it onto my blouse for me. After a moment of hesitation and a vaguely annoyed tut, Q also takes the liberty of straightening my collar.

"Tell me something," I say, making eye contact in the semi-darkness. His eyes glitter faintly in the absence of light, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end; it's a feeling I get when he looks at me. No other gaze is quite so...incisive.

"Anything," He replies, running his long fingers through his slightly curly brown hair.

"Why do I call you 'Q' despite knowing your full legal name?"

Q laughs, "I don't know. I suppose I conditioned you to do so."

"Oh, yes, because I'm the dog."

His expression becomes serious. "You know very well that to disclose my name would be to put my entire identity at risk. Perhaps you do it because you care."

I study him for a few moments, my eyes slightly narrowed as I turn his suggestion over in my mind. Q, abrupt as he is, takes my silence as satisfaction with his answer and begins gathering his things: computer in the padded briefcase, wool jacket, scarf around the neck with a flourish...and of course, out of nervous habit, he pushes in his chair and brushes off the workspace before turning and offering his arm to me. When I take it, he guides us towards the elevators. As the minutes tick by, Q's mood dips from eerie calm to jittery nervousness and eventually drags me down six flights of stairs, and a half mile to his car. He's gotten into one of his funks, the type where it's best to hold one's tongue or lose it. This seems to happen most often with me, however, though I've known him far too long to fear him.

"Not a word out of you, Amelia Grayson-Fox. Not a word."

"You're such the traditional man, wanting his women silent," I mumble. He turns sharply to me, his eyes blazing. I dislike it very much when he takes his focus entirely away from the road.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing." Q stares at me a while longer; a second too much, it seems, because headlights illuminate the whole car, as well as my expression of complete and total terror.

"Fucking get out of the wrong lane!" I screech, latching on to the steering wheel with both hands and yanking it sharply to the left in an attempt to jerk the car back into the outbound lane. He's silent the rest of the way to his apartment, and drops me off at my own complex, contrary to my belief that we were heading to his flat across town.

"It's for your own good. Get some rest, Amelia. Your day starts at 5."

He leaves me there, standing in the recently-begun rain. Hopefully, tomorrow with him will be better than today, albeit he just (illegally) landed me a job in the medical department of MI6. At least I'll be putting my Doctorate in Medicine to good use...god knows for how long.

   ***chapters will be longer.***