With an elated sigh, Bond turned and saw that Madeleine had knocked Dr. Payne senseless. She stood a few feet away, holding the gun and the knife that once belonged to Hinx.

With the doctor beaten and bruised, Madeleine rushed into Bond's arms. After a brief embrace, she gave him the gun but kept the knife. "Mathilde? They took her." Her eyes searched his for solace.

Bond nodded, at a loss for words. He paced over to Dr. Payne and dragged her toward the bunker door. Halfway there, she found her feet and also the barrel of the gun to her ribs. Finally, Bond said, "Lead us to her, now." His tone was sharp, like he could breathe fire.

Inside the main corridor, she pointed to the left at the first intersection they came to. "She's in a room on the right. That way."

With Madeleine on his heels, they moved down the passage and came to a door with a window. Bond peered inside, and sure enough, his daughter was sitting at a child's table with a glass of water, less than half-full, within arm's reach. She held a tablet and appeared to be entertained by a game.

"Open the door," Bond said.

Dr. Payne obeyed, and they entered, followed by Madeleine.

To the right was a counter with doors above and beneath, and a taller cabinet with a lock. On the countertop sat a computer monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse. A cable ran to a nearby microscope with a light shining on a Petri dish. The flat screen played a video of what looked like clear blobs with tiny particles moving around them.

Bond froze, holding back Dr. Payne from getting any closer to his daughter. His brow furrowed as he watched his little girl play with the tablet.

Madeleine went around them to get to Mathilde, but Bond blocked her path with his gun arm. "Stay back," he said. "Something's not right."

Dr. Payne sniggered.

"What did you do?' Bond jerked her around to face him. "Tell me."

Her face turned from amused to disturbed. "She asked for something to drink, so I gave her some water."

A notification appeared on the computer screen. With the distraction, Madeleine ducked under his arm to get to Mathilde, and he tried to stop her, but she slipped past him. "No!" he said.

"It's okay." She kneeled next to her daughter and embraced her, careful to hold the knife away from her.

Bond's breath seized; his gaze locked on the two of them.

After a long moment, Madeleine stiffened and groaned. She rose and turned toward Bond; her face a mask of pain and confusion. She stared at him, and a tear ran down her cheek. Behind her, Mathilde appeared concerned, but uncertain about what was wrong with her mother.

"What have you done?" Bond shook Dr. Payne, who now seemed to lack the same sense of pleasure she had before when torturing them outside the bunker. Her eyes filled with what must have been dread. Probably not because of what she had done, but because she feared for her own life.

Madeleine gazed at Dr. Payne, stumbling toward her, the knifed clutched in her hand, her back blocking Mathilde's view. Bond watched breathlessly, knowing he was seeing the last moments of Madeleine's life as the nano poison penetrated her skin and raced through her body. A single touch. He knew Dr. Payne had given his daughter poisoned water, safe for her to drink, but deadly for Madeleine. Targeted specifically for her DNA.

Madeleine took two more clumsy steps and with a sudden gasp drove the blade into Dr. Payne's stomach, twisting it as she wrapped her other arm around the woman and pulled her close. Both women shuddered, both dying in front of him and his daughter. One deserved her fate, the other bringing with it a deep loss for those in the room who would continue to live.

As they both collapsed, Bond dropped to a knee next to Madeleine, boils forming on her cheeks. "I told you to stay back."

Mathilde cried out, standing next to the table, drawing Bond's saddened gaze as they stared at each other with the same ice-blue eyes.

"Nothing could have kept me from Mathilde." Madeleine quaked in his arms, her eyes glazing over. "You know that." He didn't care if the poison had any effect on him. His only concern was her.

"I do." His voice came out pained and hollow. With the nano poison having no noticeable effect on him, he knew Safin had engineered it, like the garden pool, to kill only her. He could only stare at her, aching so deep within, as she took her last breath and grew forever still.

Tears swelled and ran down his cheeks as he held her, sobbing, hurting, dying on the inside. His body trembled. He had risked it all for her. Loving her. Giving himself to her, only to lose her like the other people he had cared about in his life. He felt as if all were lost, until he glanced up to see Mathilde, her cheeks wet with tears too.

"What's wrong with mum?" she asked, her eyes learning more and facing more than any five-year-old should ever have to experience.

"She's gone." Bond scooped her up in his arms and turned for the door but glimpsed the notification on the screen again. His blood turned to ice as he realized it was an incoming video call.

He crept over to the computer and used the mouse to click on the blinking icon. A man's face appeared on the screen.

"Cuckoo, James," Ernst Stavro Blofeld said with a satisfied grin. That was an inside joke for Blofeld, pertaining to a certain bird that climbs into another bird's nest and pushes all the other hatchlings out. "Dr. Payne sounded the alarm when the fight broke out, and since I couldn't reach her by video, I called the lab computer."

Bond stared, dumbfounded at what he was seeing. Blofeld really was alive.

"Don't blame Safin for this. He was only my pawn. It was all me again, James. Just like I killed our father—really my father—you were the adopted Cuckoo bird, the one who tried to push me out of the way. You and your little baby-blue eyes, just like your daughter."

"You'll pay for this."

"Will I?" Blofeld grimaced, mocking him, as if he were afraid of Bond's threat. "I had that other M killed, that fair lady. And don't forget your beloved Vesper. Drowned in that elevator, unable to get out as the building sank in the water. Gasping for air as you watched her die." He frowned, his tone amusing. "So sad. And now your dear Madeleine. I will never grow tired of ripping the ones you love from your life. Maybe one day I'll take your sweet little girl from you, too."

"I'm coming for you."

"I wouldn't have it any other way. But you better hurry."

After the words left Blofeld's mouth, an alarm sounded and a feminine voice announced, "Self-destruct sequence initiated. Five-minute-countdown begins now."

"Goodbye, James," Blofeld said as the computer screen went dark.

Bond wasted no time. He rushed out the door, frantically tracing each corridor until he found a service elevator that led down. He held Mathilde close as the steel box dropped one floor at a time. The countdown dipped below a minute when the doors finally opened to a ground level exit. With thirty seconds left, they burst into brilliant sunlight onto a pier where Hinx's speedboat floated, tied to a piling.

He lowered her into a seat and strapped her in, then started the engine. They hadn't gotten far when the mountaintop shook, and a fireball explosion blew the bunker doors off at the top of the high precipice and flung them out over the ocean. They smashed into the water with a monstrous splash and sank to the bottom. The earth crumbled behind them as Bond steered them away at full throttle, never looking back, his face and his heart hard like granite and his mind set on revenge. It was something he knew that could never bring back the woman he loved, but he would rain it down on Blofeld without mercy and with all the ruthlessness it took to make it happen.