by Tim Waggoner
Charlie saw what was coming, and he let go of Eggsy and grabbed hold of the window pillar with his robotic hand to brace himself, his mechanical fingers digging into the metal. Lacking such technological enhancement, Eggsy opted for a simpler tactic: he ducked behind the driver’s seat, and hoped for the best.
The cab slammed into the post box with the sound of shrieking metal, and Eggsy, Charlie, and the newly deceased Pete were all thrown forward. The back of the driver’s seat cushioned Eggsy from the impact, but Charlie and Pete had no such protection—not that it would’ve made any difference to the latter at this point. Pete’s body flew forward and smashed through the windscreen in a shower of glass. Charlie followed, sailing through the now open space where the partition had been and taking out the remainder of the windscreen as he passed through. Unfortunately, his robotic hand’s grip on the window pillar had been too strong, and the arm remained behind while its owner made a hasty and not particularly dignified exit from the vehicle.
Hope the fucker lands on his head, Eggsy thought. He sat up, hoping to see that Charlie had joined Pete on his journey to the great beyond, but then he heard the sound of engines approaching, and instead he saw the three SUVs pull up, surrounding the taxi.
Shit.
He climbed into the front seat, grabbed hold of the steering wheel and hit the ignition. The vehicle had stalled out when it struck the post box, and he was relieved when the engine returned to life. He then flicked a switch on the dashboard. He hoped the sedan’s systems were still online, because if they weren’t, he was well and truly fucked. Nothing happened for several long seconds, but then he felt the vehicle shift subtly beneath him, and he knew the battered cab still had some life in it. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Everything Kingsman made, from cufflinks to customized weapons, was always top of the line. He threw the sedan into reverse and pulled away from the post box, and when he had enough clearance, he put the vehicle into drive and floored the accelerator. The switch he’d thrown had caused the cab’s hubcaps to blow off and the tires to widen, transforming them into racing slicks. He spun the vehicle on a dime, and executing a spectacular—if he did think so himself—drifting maneuver, he looped around the SUVs and sped away.
A quick glance in the rearview showed him Charlie, one-armed and disheveled but far from dead, rising to his feet. He touched the side of his neck, and his electronic voice boomed out at deafening volume.
“STOP FUCKING AROUND AND GET HIM!”
Air blew in through the opening where the windscreen had been, buffeting Eggsy. Good thing he had his eyeglasses on, otherwise he’d have had a hell of a time seeing. He checked the rearview and saw the SUVs were in pursuit and close on his tail. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, hatches on the roofs opened and Gatling guns began to emerge. The weapons rose up, locked into place, and an instant later three men stood up to operate them. The men were dressed in black and wore military-style VR goggles and head mics. No amateurs these.
Fuck me.
Eggsy touched his eyeglasses, activating the device’s comms system.
“Merlin, we have a code purple. My driver’s down.”
He wasn’t worried overmuch about the guns. Kingsman taxis were built to withstand gunfire, and even Gatling guns… His thoughts were interrupted by a message that came up on the cab’s dashboard monitor. ARMOR-PIERCING ROUNDS DETECTED.
Well, isn’t that just lovely?
“Permission to use anti-weapons?”
A transparent image of Merlin, Kingsman’s tech wizard and chief of ops, appeared on the inside of Eggsy’s glasses, the middle-aged Scotsman’s narrow face displaying a stern expression. He was bald, wore a pair of regular eyeglasses, and was dressed in his usual wool military sweater over a white shirt and black tie.
“Denied!” Merlin said. “Cannot be contained. Head south. I’m clearing the route.”
Right. The whole innocent bystanders thing.
Eggsy weaved through traffic and around parked cars. He was coming up fast on an intersection, and the light was red. He’d have to run it and hope—
The light turned green, as did the light at the next intersection, and the one after that. Eggsy grinned. Merlin was working his magic.
Eggsy roared through each intersection, weaving back and forth to make it more difficult for the SUVs’ weapons systems to get a lock on the cab. The Gatling guns roared as the gunmen started firing. Bright bursts of light issued from their muzzles, sending a hailstorm of bullets streaming toward the sedan. Most of the rounds zipped past harmlessly, but a number struck the cab, tearing through the vehicle’s reinforced metal as if it were papier-mâché. Eggsy executed a drifting turn around Hyde Park Corner, hoping to evade the rounds, but despite his efforts, a bullet struck one of the sedan’s rear tires. The tire blew, and Eggsy found himself fighting to retain control of the cab.
“Shit!”
A glance at the sideview mirror showed sparks shooting off the tire rim as it ground asphalt. No way in hell was he going to outrun the SUVs now, not with only three good tires. It was a matter of moments until the armor-piercing rounds shredded the cab—and him—into confetti, and without the ability to fight back, there was nothing he could do about it. But then he saw Hyde Park ahead of him, the gates shut, and beyond them darkness.
That’ll do.
“Merlin! Going into a dark zone!”
Eggsy smashed through the gates and entered the unlit park, the SUVs still close on his tail and firing at him.
“Dark mode confirmed,” Merlin said. “Permission to fire.”
“Thank fuck for that.” Eggsy flipped a switch on the dashboard, and a compartment slid open on the back of the taxi. A single missile whooooshed straight upward, the fire from its propulsion system illuminating the night. When the missile reached the zenith of its flight, it paused, almost as if it were temporarily frozen in space, before separating into three smaller missiles. Propulsion systems activated, targeting systems engaged; and each of the three mini-missiles screamed toward an SUV with uncanny precision. Neither the drivers nor the men manning the Gatling guns had time to react, and each of the vehicles disappeared in flame and thunder.
Eggsy grinned. Easy-peasy. But before he could congratulate himself on escaping certain death (which was, after all, a Kingsman specialty), Merlin appeared in front of his eyes once more.
“No time to relax; the police are behind you. You have thirty seconds before they reach your position. Go directly to rendezvous Swan.”
Of course the bloody police were coming. A car chase, gunfire, explosions… He wasn’t exactly keeping a low profile tonight. And it wasn’t as if he could simply explain what had happened. Strictly speaking, none of what Kingsman did was legal. That was part and parcel of the independent part of independent intelligence agency. So he needed to get out of here before London’s finest caught up with him. But, rendezvous Swan?
“You do realize I haven’t got a windscreen right now?” he said.
Merlin gave Eggsy a wry smile. “I seem to recall from your training that you were rather good at holding your breath.”
Eggsy had continued driving during their conversation, and now he approached The Serpentine. The curving body of water separated Hyde Park from Kensington Gardens, and it was a popular destination for Londoners and tourists alike. Of course, that’s not all it was, and since it seemed like he didn’t have much choice, Eggsy took several deep breaths and drove straight into the lake’s black water. Within seconds, the cab was fully submerged, and when a few moments later the police arrived, all they saw was the calm, undisturbed surface of the lake.
* * *
Eggsy steered the sedan through cold, dark water, the vehicle’s headlights doing their best to cut through the inky blackness. The windscreen might be history, but the cab’s underwater mode functioned just fine, and the vehicle glided easily across the lakebed. The ride would’ve been pleasant enough if he’d been dry and could take a sip of oxygen now and again. As it was, his lungs
were soon burning with the need for air, and when he saw the trapdoor open on the lakebed in a cloud of mud and silt, it came as a huge relief. He guided the cab through the opening and into a room that was scarcely larger than the vehicle itself. Overhead lights came on as the sedan settled onto the floor. The trapdoor shut, the airlock sealed, and water began to flow into the floor drains. But Eggsy couldn’t wait any longer. He swam through the open windscreen and up to the top of the room. Enough water had drained to create a pocket of air, and as soon as he broke the surface he began taking great gulps of the life-giving stuff. He trod water while the room continued to drain, and by the time he was standing on the floor next to the cab—absolutely drenched—his breathing had returned to normal.
Cut it a little close there, bruv, he thought.
Merlin appeared once more on Eggsy’s eyeglass lenses. He was seated in his office at Kingsman headquarters, and although his face showed little expression—the man preferred to maintain a strict veneer of professionalism when he was working—Eggsy could tell by the slight softening around his eyes that he was glad his young friend was all right.
“That wasn’t a revenge mission,” Merlin said. “Charlie could have just killed you immediately. No boasting, but I trained him well enough that even he wouldn’t make such a mess of it.”
Especially not with the help of that arm, Eggsy thought. “What did he want? And more to the point, how the fuck is he alive?”
“Good questions. We’ll have time to ponder them while we wait for the police to clear the park.”
Eggsy felt a flare of panic at the thought of any further delay. “No can do, mate. I’ve got a dinner tonight. If I miss it… let’s just say Charlie might as well have killed me.”
Merlin hesitated before speaking again. “Well… there is one other way out. Three o’clock.”
Eggsy turned in the direction Merlin indicated and saw a hatch set into the floor. A wave of relief washed over him, one even more powerful than he’d felt when he’d gotten his head above water again.
“You’re the guv’nor, Merlin.”
Merlin didn’t respond verbally, but his knowing smirk made Eggsy suspicious.
He frowned. “What’s so funny?”
When Merlin didn’t answer, Eggsy walked over to the hatch and opened it. He immediately recoiled at the stench that wafted forth, and he felt his gorge rise. Fighting to keep from vomiting, he leaned over and peered into the hatch. He saw a ladder that led down into London’s Victorian sewerage system, and beyond that he saw—and more to the point, smelled—a winding river of human shit.
“How important is that dinner?” Merlin said, sounding amused.
“Let me show you.”
Ignoring the ladder, Eggsy dropped down the hole and disappeared into the brown morass with a sludgy splash.
* * *
After Eggsy’s hasty—and more than a little disgusting—departure, the chamber was quiet for a time. The cab’s systems had powered down automatically once the vehicle was settled and secure, and now it sat, battered and waterlogged, but still essentially intact. A few days in Kingsman’s motor pool, a week, tops, and the agency’s mechanical engineers would have it ready for action again. But the cab wasn’t the only thing Eggsy had left behind in the chamber. Charlie’s robotic arm still clung to the window pillar, hanging lifelessly, fingers embedded in the vehicle’s metal with a death grip. Until, with a sudden motion, the fingers disengaged from the metal, and the arm dropped to the cab’s floor. It began crawling up the back seat, fingers moving with inhuman precision, as if the hand were some sort of mechanical insect. The arm crawled through the broken partition and flopped into the front seat. The elbow flexed, and the hand was lifted toward the dashboard control system. Despite the interior of the vehicle having been flooded with lake water, the system remained operational, and it took only a quick manipulation of the controls to activate it and bring it online. Once this was accomplished, a small compartment opened on the tip of the index finger and a USB drive emerged. The hand inserted the drive into a port on the dashboard, and within seconds, the arm’s internal computer had not only accessed the cab’s system, it had linked to Kingsman’s mainframe through that system.
If Eggsy had been present, he would’ve noticed a logo on the back of the robot hand: a circle wrought in gold metal. But he wasn’t there, and so the arm went about its work unimpeded.
Somewhere deep in the jungles of Cambodia
A beautiful redheaded woman in her fifties wearing pearls and a puppy-patterned apron over a vermilion dress stood at the counter of what appeared to be a 1950s-style American diner. The tiled floor was laid out in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern, the tables were chrome with a slight art deco feel to them, and the chairs were upholstered in sparkle-flecked ruby red. There was a long counter with stools in front of it, along with booths against the walls. Old-fashioned salt and pepper shakers and metal napkin dispensers sat atop the tables, and the entire place was brightly lit by fluorescent lights on the ceiling. The overall effect was kitschy while at the same time warmly nostalgic. At least, that’s what Poppy liked to think. She had to admit that without a crowd of customers—families with young children, teenagers on first dates, older couples who came here to remember what it was like to be young—the diner had an empty, almost depressing feeling. She supposed the sight of jungle foliage through the diner’s windows fought against the atmosphere she was trying to create. Maybe she could see about having some kind of holographic projection system installed in the windows to create the illusion of a 1950s small-town street outside. That might help. Then again, it might look too… what was the word she was searching for? Too staged. Ah, well. Money couldn’t buy everything. And that, really, was the entire point of her current project, wasn’t it?
The diner might be mostly empty, but Poppy wasn’t alone. Two men sat in front of her, one wearing a beige jacket and peach shirt, the other a light blue jacket and dark blue shirt. Both of them looked dangerous, as if they’d be just as happy slicing their grandmother’s throat as they would kissing her cheek. But Poppy wasn’t intimidated. After all, she could be rather dangerous herself when she wished. Charles and Angel might be of the same rough type—cold-eyed and cold-blooded—but Charles was clean-shaven while Angel sported a neatly trimmed black beard.
Angel was a new recruit, and he kept glancing around the diner, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Poppy couldn’t blame him, really. She supposed it was something of a shock to walk in here after trudging through the jungle. But if the man was having trouble dealing with this, she wondered what he thought about the rest of her compound. It wasn’t exactly a stereotypical jungle camp.
Laid out on the counter in front of Poppy were immaculately prepped ingredients: lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and pickle slices. Behind her was a huge industrial-sized meat mincer, which looked quite out of place in the diner, and—truth be told—that did bother her. But sometimes aesthetics had to give way to practicality. This really was the best place in the compound for the mincer. The tiled floor made it much easier to clean up after the device had been used.
“I never enjoyed drugs myself, but here I am, running the biggest drug cartel in the world,” Poppy said. “The only downside is living in the middle of nowhere. These ruins are actually undiscovered, and I made a few changes to make them more homey. I grew up in the fifties, and I loved TV shows like Andy Griffith and Happy Days. It reminds me of home. Nostalgia, y’know?”
As she addressed the two men, she did her best to sound both friendly and professional. In her experience, employees responded best to a boss who was firm and direct, but who also demonstrated she had a human side. To help create this effect, she strived for a Martha Stewart meets Margaret Thatcher vibe in both her manner and dress. An odd combination, perhaps, but one she thought suited her nicely.
Poppy went on. “But I digress. As I said, I have a global monopoly on the drug trade. And for that, I owe a debt to Richmond Valentin
e. Do you know how many drug barons around the world died on V-Day? People may have only gone nuts for a few minutes, but if you were in a room full of bodyguards with guns… Good night, sweetheart.”
Poppy had not been invited to attend Valentine’s apocalyptic shindig, a fact that privately galled her. Evidently drug lords hadn’t rated high on the insane entrepreneur’s personal social registry, no matter how wealthy they were. And Poppy was among the wealthiest on the planet, if not the wealthiest. But considering what had happened to those he had invited, she wasn’t too upset over being left out. She’d much rather be snubbed than have her head explode. And as for the sim cards Valentine had given away for free—cards that, once inserted into a cellphone or other device, broadcast a signal that turned everyone in the vicinity into a homicidal maniac—neither Poppy nor any of her guards had gotten one, so they’d been in the clear when the madness of V-Day struck. It seemed there were some advantages, however few they might be, to having one’s compound located deep in a secluded Cambodian jungle.
“I used to run the Golden Triangle,” she continued. “But so many of my rivals died that day—turning the Triangle into a Hexagon was easy!” A pause. “The important thing to understand is the hard work and ingenuity that went into turning that Hexagon into a Circle… Taking over the whole industry, worldwide. Not to toot my own horn! I just think it’s so important for new recruits to fully understand the history of the Golden Circle.”
Both Charles and Angel nodded enthusiastically. Poppy looked from Charles, to Angel, and then back to Charles.
“So the two of you are lifelong friends, huh?”
They nodded.
“And you… It’s Charles, right? You think your buddy here is worthy of joining us?”
