The Cooling Ashes
Chapter 1
Adam West sat down on one of the seats gestured towards by Scotty, Emma Stewart taking the seat to his left, fiddling nervously with her straight and dirty brown hair, the lightness of the shade hidden by the grime and soot which had accumulated over their terrible time in Venice.
The two of them had been sent to Venice to deal with a sabotaging problem. Extremists were sabotaging accidents which were intended to fatally harm as many people taking part in the riots as possible, wanting to make everybody believe that the Italian government was to blame, giving everybody a greater chance of having greater measures taken towards halting the sinking of the once-beautiful city of Venice. While Adam and Emma had been dealing what that problem, MI5 had been dealing with The Secrecy, taking them out for good. Or, at least, that was what Adam and Emma had hoped. They’d been hoping that MI5 would destroy The Secrecy, pick them up from Italy, then take them back to England so that they could all figure out what was next for Adam and Emma given that they didn’t have homes to return to. As it had turned out, however, something had gone wrong, resulting in Linda, Scotty and Becca turning up, ushering them onto the jet, Linda only saying that they’d been raided and that they needed to go. It seemed urgent, so Adam could only guess that some damage had been done, at least.
The five of them were in the area of the jet which neither Adam nor Emma had seen before and, as they’d been previously theorising, it was much more luxurious than the back of the aircraft which they’d been residing in for every journey. The seats were covered with so much soft fabric that it almost felt as if they weren’t even sitting down in the first place but floating, instead. There was a small TV screen, a food trolley which had been secured against a wall, snacks and drinks filling every gap of it. There was direct access to the cockpit, even that passage with the soft, pearly-white carpet which made up the floor of the area. It was magnificent and it seemed drastically out of place for a jet which had been taking agents to and from life-threatening danger over and over again. Adam didn’t know why he and Emma were in there, though, only guessing that Linda didn’t fancy sitting in the steel room which she’d been forcing them and, presumably, other agents to rest within for however long. Either that, or maybe she wanted to keep an eye on him and Emma.
“So, what’s going on, exactly?” Emma asked, her turquoise eyes fixated on Linda with a deep interest clearly visible within them. Adam could tell that she was worried that the plan had fallen-through completely, but he knew that Linda, Scotty and Becca would only view the question as one filled with concern as to the wellbeing of the organisation. Well, Linda and Scotty, at least. Becca knew better than anybody else- well, aside from Duffy- that Adam and Emma despised The Secrecy. She probably viewed the inquiry as Emma wishing to know more about what had possibly helped her and Adam.
Linda glanced at Scotty, something which Adam mistook as nerves until Scotty began explaining and Adam realised that Linda simply didn’t want to give the briefing.
“We were raided this morning,” Scotty began, the jet jolting as it rose into the air, confusing Adam for a moment as he didn’t know of where they could have possibly been going, but he snapped his attention back to Scotty, intrigued as to how the raid had gone. “MI5 have attacked us- they probably don’t like that we kidnapped you two and forced you to work for us,” he stated almost sternly, sounding annoyed and slightly scared, his hypothesis completely correct. “They attacked us, probably trying to kill us all because of that, but we managed to get away while the guards were fighting them off.”
“How bad’s the damage?” Adam asked quickly.
Scotty gave Adam a slightly nervous look. “Well, they didn’t exactly bomb the place,” he said, pausing for a moment. “They snuck in through the entrance on the lowest floor, then-”
“There are more floors?” Emma interrupted, surprised. Her eyes widened slightly as she processed the information, neither she nor Adam having ever seen or heard of a second floor during the entire time which they’d spent with The Secrecy.
“Yes, there are two in total,” Scotty explained. “The one which we’re on usually and the one below us where the majority of the guards are. That’s where the majority of them live and train, so we’re suspicious as to how MI5 found that entrance as it’s hidden extremely well.” Scotty glanced at Linda, almost as if he was silently asking permission to add a detail, though he did so anyway. “We’re wondering if it was someone on the inside who tipped them off, probably a guard, but we don’t know how they’d have made those communications.”
Adam and Emma went quiet for a moment. “I don’t know,” Adam simply said after a moment, fearing every word which was going to come out of his mouth, scared that he was going to give away the fact that it was him and Emma who’d been feeding as much information as possible to MI5.
Scotty shrugged a little and looked at the ground, almost as if he was taking a moment to mourn the situation while Linda stared between Adam and Emma, making the two of them feel extremely uncomfortable.
“Anyway,” Scotty continued, shaking his head slightly before looking up at Adam and Emma. “They raided the headquarters, but as they’d entered from the lowest floor and as the guards were keeping them busy, we had enough time to organise an escape for everybody whom we’ll definitely need, and we managed to get to you without anyone being able to follow us.”
Adam wondered silently how they’d known that he and Emma had finished the mission, though guessed that they’d seen the news about what the extremists had done and how, in the end, the riots had been successful, having resulted in the government signing an agreement to ensure the safety of Venice when it came to the rising water levels. Either way, however, it was slightly troubling to think about how they’d managed to find the field which they’d been resting in. The fact that neither Adam nor Emma had informed The Secrecy that they’d finished the mission could have very easily been put down to the fact that they’d lost the provided phones when their bags had been stolen and subsequently destroyed, so Adam wasn’t worried as to whether or not The Secrecy found that suspicious, but somehow finding them? Adam simply hoped that they’d been flying around the outskirts of the city in search of them as they couldn’t have been picked up from the middle of Venice. He and Emma had to have been, logically, on the outskirts of the city, making the idea of The Secrecy simply flying around the edge of the city in search of them entirely plausible. Adam hoped that it was the case.
“Anyway, where are we going?” Emma asked after a moment, possibly trying to distract from any questions as to what had happened in Venice which had resulted in no phone call, or as to what they’d planned to do after having finished the mission. Adam certainly didn’t want a correlation drawn between the fact that he and Emma had been lounging around in a field, doing nothing, and the fact that, at the same time, a raid from MI5 had been going on. If Linda, Scotty or even Becca made that connection, they’d probably be dealt with on the spot and, as Adam saw it, that would be game-over.
“Canada,” Linda said simply, her voice cold like where they’d probably be going as Adam didn’t expect that they’d be hiding in the middle of Ontario or Vancouver.
“Why Canada?” Emma questioned, Adam able to tell that she was slightly worried. Canada, being literally on the other side of the world from Britain, was quite far from MI5. Without MI5, they’d be on their own.
“We’ve been working on setting up a second branch to save from sending agents across the Atlantic whenever something comes up around the two Americas,” Linda explained, sounding almost bored. She seemed as if she wanted to get the explanation over with as quickly as possible, then sit back and watch a film on the TV. “The branch hasn’t been completed yet, but it’s extremely well-hidden and has the necessary defences to keep us protected while we figure out what to do.”
Adam and Emma were quiet. A second branch? Had MI5 arrived made contact with them at the wrong time, there could have been the chance of The Secrecy becoming too powerful to deal with. Well, there was still the chance as Linda, Scotty and Becca were alive. Those three were, as Adam saw it, the three most important people within the organisation. The leader, the one who’d deal with each debriefing and, probably, gathering the missions, and the head nurse. With only Linda, Scotty and Becca, there was the chance of the organisation being rebuilt solely within Canada, Adam and Emma the only two agents, probably being split up and sent all over the world until they’d end up dead!
“So, we’re hiding in Canada, then?” Adam asked. “Only hiding?”
Scotty gave a nod. “We can’t risk doing anything, really,” he explained. “All agents who are in the field right now will be collected and brought to the Canadian branch, and everybody else who are important are coming in a separate jet.”
“Everybody who are important?” Emma questioned, wanting confirmation about who exactly Scotty was referring to.
“Most of the guards are staying at the British branch,” Linda interjected before Scotty could answer. “They’re dealing with MI5, and they’ll be dealing with them if they decide to retreat and return later on, so it’s everybody else who are coming in the separate jet.”
“The guards are keeping us safe, really,” Becca said, quiet. Adam and Emma both turned to look at her, surprised, neither of them having heard a word from her yet.
“Exactly,” Scotty confirmed. “They’re the ones who managed to keep MI5 from following us to Venice to pick you two up, and they’ll be warning us if they catch sight of MI5 heading to Canada, too.”
They all went quiet for a moment before Becca chimed in, her voice louder now.
“I’d better get to fixing you two up,” she said, having noticed the blood which had soaked through the right calf of Adam’s jeans. After an encounter with the extremists, he’d been shot in the calf. Emma had managed to pull the bullet out of his leg with her pinkie finger, but she hadn’t been able to do anything to heal the wound properly. It hadn’t been paining Adam too much, making him hope that the wound hadn’t become infected, though after having had to swim through a disgustingly dirty river, after having gotten into a car crash, after having had to run through a burning building and after having had to fight the extremists, he knew that, likely, it had been placed at risk of infection many, many times.
“At the headquarters,” Linda interjected before Becca could move to grab the first-aid kit which was mounted on the wall by the door leading to the back of the jet. “We’ll x-ray them, too. Might have trackers in them.”
“Trackers?” Adam questioned, slightly annoyed as he wanted to get his bullet wound healed as soon as possible. “Why- how- would we have trackers inside of us?”
“They found us somehow,” Linda said, seeming annoyed, and for good reason, Adam supposed. “You might have been tailed and injected with a tracking system at any point.”
“Then, wouldn’t it be a good idea to do it here?” Emma asked, sneering slightly, happy that she was coming across as smarter than Linda. “To save them from finding the new place?”
“Do you see any way to be x-rayed around here, you brat?” Linda spat, her temper clearly rising hastily.
Emma went quiet, almost sinking into her seat a little. She leaned towards Adam very slightly, making him wonder if she almost wanted to cower behind him.
“I’ll see when we’ll get there,” Scotty said after a moment, tapping his knees with his palms as he stood before walking towards the cockpit, leaving Adam and Emma to sit in front of the leader of the organisation which they’d hoped would have been destroyed without them having to contribute much more than what they’d already done.
The Cooling Ashes
Chapter 2
The jet descended after an eight-hour-long flight though, due to the time zone difference, it was still roughly two in the afternoon in Canada. Everybody had slept except for the four guards who had been on the jet without either Adam nor Emma noticing, the four of them having rotated shifts. For a while before he’d managed to fall asleep, Adam wondered if the precaution was being taken because neither he nor Emma were trusted to refrain from strangling Linda in her sleep, but he realised that, likely, Linda didn’t completely trust anyone. She probably even had a hard time sleeping with armed guards nearby, fearing that they’d shoot her in her sleep.
Out of the window which resided behind Linda, Scotty and Becca, Adam couldn’t anything other than pure white. They were in a blizzard, probably in the very north of Canada. How had the pilot managed to navigate through it?
The jet continued rolling through the snow with some resistance- making Adam wonder just how deep the snow was- before it came to a halt and the sound of the ramp opening became apparent.
“Out,” Linda said with a monotone voice, standing up and leading the way towards the ramp, Scotty and Becca following directly behind her with Adam and Emma following them, a guard tailing them, possibly making sure that they weren’t going to try anything.
The wind was especially chilly and a fair amount of snow was breaking into the back of the jet through the tiny gap between the ramp and the body of the aircraft. Any indents within the snow such as footprints would definitely be covered. Maybe that was why such a cold place had been selected as the location for the headquarters of the second branch.
The ramp lowered completely, they all stepped out, then followed Linda as she headed towards a cliff face which wasn’t too far away, maybe only a few metres from the tip of the left wing of the jet.
The area around them was surrounded by trees which were almost just tall, bare sticks protruding from the ground as the climate wasn’t ideal for any form of plant-life. Other than the trees which could barely be made out through the storm and the cliff face which they were heading towards, there wasn’t anything to see except for a vast amount of snow.
A giant rumble began to shake the area and, after looking around frantically, scared, Adam and Emma saw that a portion of the cliff which wrapped around and in front of the jet was being lowered into the ground, leaving an opening for a hangar.
“This place is much cooler than the headquarters in Britain,” Adam muttered to Emma, then realised that she couldn’t hear him over the mixture of the screaming wind and the deafening grumble of the cliff face moving.
Linda felt around the rock which she’d stopped in front of, doing something which neither Adam nor Emma could make out, before she pushed on the cliff face and a portion of it began to descend into the ground. A door.
They all walked in once the door had lowered completely and, once they were inside, Linda swiped a card on a device against the wall which made the door close behind them, locking itself, allowing for the temperature to almost immediately increase to a pleasant, not too hot, not too cold temperature. The snow which had followed them into the headquarters immediately began melting by the door.
They were quiet for a moment, allowing themselves to warm up, as the rumble returned, the cliff face returning to its original position, probably. The deep vibrations continued for a few moments before they finally quieted and left the area completely silent.
“Come on,” Linda said, sounding indifferent to everything which was going on around them as if she was used to the procedure. She led them down the opening hall and around a few hallways which Adam couldn’t track and couldn’t be bothered to track after a few moments of trying. He guessed that, given that the headquarters was built inside of a cliff, they’d made sure to utilise as much of the space as possible, to spread the headquarters out as much as possible, meaning that any invaders would be able to get lost, supplying enough for people like Linda to escape.
After a few minutes of walking around in what felt like random directions, they came to a door which, after walking through it, revealed a meeting room. There were a lot of people there already, people including the slightly short and incredibly muscly man who’d kidnapped both Adam and Emma what must have been three months before. The man who’d started the entire, dangerous and frightening journey. There was also a giant collection of agents or, at least, Adam assumed that they were agents. The majority of them looked young and fit, and none of them were dressed in uniforms, so Adam guessed that they were other agents.
Linda and Scotty moved to sit down in designated spots while the guards who’d entered with the group ushered Adam and Emma towards the other agents, wanting them all to sit together. Becca, however, remained standing by the door, not wanting to trek across the room to a seat.
Once Adam and Emma were seated, they both scooted slightly closer to each other, not feeling very comfortable with the other agents. They could both feel that the other agents were staring at them, probably having heard about the fact that they were only sixteen and very successful. Adam could tell that some agents were impressed while others were much snarkier, probably thinking of their survival as pure luck. Either way, neither Adam nor Emma felt very comfortable around them.
“Right, so,” Scotty began, speaking for Linda as he almost always seemed to. “The situation.”
Everyone in the room turned their attention to Scotty.
“Everybody here will be following a very, very strict schedule, and there won’t be any missions taking place until everything’s died down,” he began. “Given that MI5 shouldn’t have been able to find us, we can only believe that they were tipped off by someone who’s most likely within this room.”
Every stared at Scotty, the collection of expressions showing nothing as they had nothing to worry about, at least most likely, but Adam and Emma felt extremely stressed just from sitting there, trying to make sure that their expressions were matching everybody else’s, not wanting to look suspicious. If anything were to slip out about the fact that they’d been the ones to cause the scenario…
“If anyone here is caught somewhere where they’re not supposed to be, they’ll be punished. Harshly,” he said, sounding cruel for the first time in what had been ages, his slightly high-pitched voice only making the threat more ominous as the tone didn’t fit the pitch. It also didn’t help that he looked much older than he really was, appearing much sterner. “You’re all to stick to your schedules no matter what unless you have a very, very good reason,” he concluded. “You all have living areas which you share with someone else, and you’re to stay there when you’re not supposed to be anywhere else. Understood?”
Everyone mumbled that they understood.
The Cooling Ashes
Chapter 3
The briefing didn’t take long. Scotty explained that everyone was going to be accompanied by a guard. Each guard would have a partner at their side at all times. There wouldn’t be a situation where anybody would be left alone resulting in, hopefully, a slimmer chance of the saboteur being able to do anything else. It was something which neither Adam nor Emma minded very much given that they were always together, regardless, but they kept quiet about that. Adam, at least, was slightly scared of Scotty or Linda deciding to split them up as they’d become close friends, thinking that they’d help the other no matter what and, therefore, if one of them turned out to be the saboteur, there’d be two instead of one, but no such change was made.
Directly after the briefing, Adam and Emma were taken to a room which only housed a machine and a computer. The machine was to x-ray them and, after the two of them had been evaluated, it was revealed that there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary inside of their bodies, proving that they didn’t have trackers implanted within them, something which seemed to put Linda’s mind at ease as, for obvious reasons, she’d been present the entire time, watching the procedure eagerly, having left as soon as it had been revealed that Adam and Emma weren’t being tracked.
Adam and Emma were being led by Becca and two guards who’d been living within the headquarters for a while, heading towards what would become Becca’s new office. Apparently, it wasn’t too far from the array of living quarters, making it easy for any visits if they would be needed. Adam and Emma were going to be evaluated by Becca and then immediately taken to what would essentially be their joint prison cell for however long it would take for MI5 to do something or for them to come up with a stupid plan which they’d have to risk following in hopes of making some sort of progress towards dealing with The Secrecy.
They entered the office without the guards, the two of them standing outside as the other guards had done in the British branch, making Adam wonder if there were going to be other similarities like that. If he and Emma were going to be following a routine which continued their training, would the guards stay outside of the gym and the shooting range, or would they be accompanying them two of them just in case?
“Adam, I want to check your leg,” Becca said immediately, dropping into a chair. “Sorry, but there isn’t a privacy curtain.”
“Don’t mind, honestly,” Adam mumbled, thinking that the situation as a whole was much worse than the absence of a small amount of privacy.
Becca grabbed a first-aid kit, organised everything which she needed, then rolled up the right trouser leg, wincing slightly when she saw the wound though, after a moment of looking at it, she seemed slightly impressed. “Did you get the bullet out by yourself?” She asked, looking up at Adam, then over towards Emma, her eyebrows raised.
“I did it,” Emma recalled, grimacing slightly. Adam hadn’t had the best time. The pain had been unbearable, but he could tell that it hadn’t exactly been pleasant for Emma, either. She’d had to push her pinkie finger into the wound until she could hook the two pieces of the bullet and pull them out. Just thinking about how she’d felt, causing more pain which only amplified Adam’s shouts and cries of agony must have been extremely difficult. Adam knew that, had he had to the same for Emma, he wouldn’t have been able to do so without forcing himself to ignore the pain which he would have been causing.
“You did it without infecting it,” Becca stated, clearly very surprised. She lathered the wound with rubbing alcohol, making Adam yelp as he hadn’t been expecting the very sudden jab and subsequent burning-like stinging.
“So,” Emma began after a moment, her eyes watching Becca as she tried to clean the wound as best as possible, scrubbing the wound to dispel the dried blood which had almost built a wall around the hole. “How bad’s the damage in Britain?”
“Not allowed to say,” Becca replied after a moment, her voice deeper and much more monotone. She focused entirely on Adam’s wound, then looked between them after a moment of silence, her green eyes possibly trying to figure something out. “I know that you want to know what you’re up against, but I’m really not allowed to say.”
“What we’re up against?” Adam repeated, his eyebrows furrowed slightly as he processed what she’d said. “Who say’s we’re fighting MI5?”
Becca shrugged, a few strands of her blonde hair which had fallen from the permanent bun on her head bouncing slightly. “It’s inevitable, probably,” she guessed, pulling out a gauze bandage, wrapping it around Adam’s calf. “They’ll either find us here or you’ll be sent to kill them for what they’ve done.”
Adam and Emma looked at each other, the two of them slightly intimidated by the idea which Becca was presenting.
“How can you be sure?” Emma questioned, her voice slightly high-pitched. “There are plenty of other agents who would be much better suited for storming in and-”
“I can’t be sure,” Becca interrupted. She paused for a moment after having finished securing the gauze bandage in place, staring at it before she pulled Adam’s trouser leg back down. “I’m not saying that anything will or won’t happen. But, that’s why you want to know, right?” She turned to look at Emma, the expression on her face slightly twisted as if she was trying to figure something out. Then, after a moment, she stood up slowly, still staring at Emma. “Is there anything else wrong with you, Adam?”
“I- uh,” Adam stammered, bewildered by what was going on around him. He stared at the bun on the back of Becca’s head, then glanced at Emma. “I don’t think so, no. Nothing major, at least.”
Becca let out a small sigh. “Anything wrong with you, Emma?”
“No!” Emma let out quickly, then stabilised her voice. “Nothing.”
Becca went quiet for a moment, then grabbed Adam’s arm and pulled him closer to her and Emma. “Listen, I’m not allowed to tell anybody anything about what happened. So, drop it. Please,” she paused. “Though, if I were to tell you something, it would have to be during a longer visit,” she quickly added in a whisper, then winked lightly. Adam had no idea what to think, so he simply pulled away, stood up straight, then started to sidle towards the door.
“We should go and see what our living area looks like,” he said, tapping Emma on the shoulder.
Emma stood and joined Adam by the door, flashing a quick smile to Becca before turning, pulling the door open and stepping out, Adam right behind her.
The Cooling Ashes
Chapter 4
The guards led Adam and Emma away from Becca’s office straight away, clearly not wanting to waste any time. They were taken down a long hallway which had many, decently spaced-out doors, each of them clearly reinforced by steel at the very least, numbers engraved on the fronts of them. Upon seeing the doors, Adam felt slightly worried that the rooms were going to be much more reminiscent of prison cells than he’d initially been expecting though, once they’d stopped outside of one of the doors, number seven, and one of the two guards had unlocked it and pushed it open, Adam realised that they were going to be living in an area which could have easily been considered as paradise compared to the usual idea of a prison cell.
Just from standing by the door, Adam and Emma could see two king’s-sized beds, a ginormous television mounted on the wall opposite the two beds, a giant, deep, black couch which curved to create almost a bowl shape, probably with enough space to fit at least seven people on it, and a large array of other things which Adam couldn’t even begin to process.
“You stay in here until someone comes to collect you,” one of the two guards said before she lightly pushed on their backs, moving them inside of the room before the door was closed behind them and subsequently locked.
Adam and Emma stared at the room for a few moments before they began to explore together.
A few paces to the right of the entrance was a door to an en suite bathroom which, after checking, was fairly similar to the one which they’d been using in Britain. There was a bath, a shower, a toilet, a sink, an abundance of towels and a laundry basket for their dirty clothes.
Stepping back into the main room, the two of them began walking around, taking everything in.
In-between the two beds, pushed against the wall, was a decent-sized wardrobe which contained a flurry of unisex clothing, probably enough to give them both new and clean clothes for ten days straight, maybe a little more.
On the other side of the bed which was the furthest from the door was what seemed to be an entertainment area. There were plenty of instruments, something which Adam was confused about until he realised that they were there for entertainment purposes, including everything from an electric piano to a saxophone mounted on the wall.
“Can you play anything?” Adam asked Emma, both of them looking over the various instruments.
“I had guitar lessons when I was younger,” Emma stated after a moment, then shrugged. “Don’t think I remember how to play, though.”
Beside the music area was a giant bookshelf which fit snuggly into the corner, stretching almost all of the way to the bed which was the furthest from the door and almost reaching the piano which was centred against the wall opposite the entrance. Just looking slightly closer revealed that there must have been at least a few-hundred books stationed neatly on the five shelves.
Adam and Emma turned around, staring at the whole room, the door looking so far away, showing them just how big the area was.
“Why do we have all of this, do you think?” Emma questioned, moving to sit on the closest bed which, Adam guessed, she was claiming as her own by doing so.
“Probably to keep us quiet,” he replied, sure of it even though he wasn’t presenting the idea as the definite truth. “I don’t think they’d be supplying us with so much to do if they didn’t want us to be engrossed with it all.”
Emma nodded lightly. “If everyone’s occupied with this stuff,” she held her hands out slightly, motioning her right hand towards the instruments and her left hand towards the giant bookshelf, “then they can focus on dealing with MI5 more than making sure that we don’t do anything which we’re not supposed to.”
“Or,” Adam began, an idea popping into his head suddenly. “It’s so they can focus more on making sure that we don’t do anything suspicious.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they need to find out who tipped off MI5, right?” Adam stated before elaborating. “This is probably to keep the majority of people quiet. Whoever’s trying to take them down from the inside won’t be enticed by all of this. They’ll be searching for ways to contact MI5, and with everyone else busy, there can be an entire team of people watching the suspicious people.”
Emma thought about it for a moment, then let out a small sigh. Adam could tell that she was finding the idea slightly distressing as, obviously, they were the ones who The Secrecy was after. By Adam’s logic, they couldn’t step out of line even the slightest or they’d be caught or, at the very least, suspected as the double agents. If they weren’t enticed by something in the room, then they’d be seen as suspicious. For The Secrecy to know anything about who would be suspicious, too, they’d need to have surveillance, meaning cameras and microphones which were probably scattered around the place. The two of them were going have to be extremely careful.
“You know, given that there aren’t any missions going on, all of the guards can focus on watching cameras, right?” Emma posed after a moment of silence, something which caught Adam’s breath slightly. Were they being watched? While they were talking, was someone listening in? Were they basically going to be treated like high-threat prisoners, under constant watch, dealt with if they’d do anything suspicious, this going on until the ruckus would die down? If so, they’d be having to appease The Secrecy for months, probably. Adam doubted that Linda would just forget about everything and start sending them all off on missions again without knowing that MI5 weren’t going to find them, either by destroying MI5 or by hearing nothing for however long.
“You know,” Adam began. “Whoever’s at fault needs to be really careful.”