Kingsman: The Golden Circle

by Tim Waggoner

  Eggsy stood next to Harry and they continued blasting away at Poppy’s army. Eggsy fired another missile, destroying a candy cart and knocking a half-dozen guards to the ground. Harry ejected the top of the umbrella, and it flew forward, a thin cable trailing behind it. It slammed into a guard and sent him flying through the air to crash into the cinema’s marquee. As the man fell to the ground, Harry retracted the umbrella top, and it returned to the handle and reattached itself.

  Eggsy held his briefcase out before him, and panels swung out from the top and bottom, forming a bulletproof shield. An AR display activated on the inside of the shield, and Eggsy started moving forward, Harry walking behind him now. Eggsy held the shield one-handed while firing his Kingsman pistol with his free hand. Harry aimed the handle of his umbrella at a submachine gun dropped by a dead guard. The handle shot outward, trailing a cable just as the umbrella top had. The handle hooked the weapon, and Harry retracted it. The gun flew toward him and he snatched it out of the air and began firing.

  A pair of giant scissors hung over the entrance to Poppy’s Salon, an oversized decoration like the one on top of the donut shop. But the scissors were made from metal, and their points looked extremely sharp. Harry decided to see for himself. A pair of guards stood beneath the scissors, and Harry fired, freeing the giant decoration from its wall mounting. The scissors descended rapidly and impaled the guards. Theory proven.

  A guard approached and Eggsy slammed the shield into him. The man staggered backward, and Eggsy dropped the shield, performed a flip, and shot the man while he was in mid-air. The next attack came from a humanoid robot styled to look like some kind of doll. She lifted a grenade launcher and fired three times: whump, whump, whump! The grenades landed nearby, but before they could detonate, Harry aimed his umbrella at them. A bolo shot from the tip flew toward the grenades, and wrapped around them. Harry raised his watch and pressed a button. A tiny but extremely powerful electromagnet flew toward the bolo and attached itself. Harry twisted a control on his watch face, and the magnet soared toward the robot, taking the bolo and the grenades with it. The robot exploded, and Harry lifted the umbrella over his and Eggsy’s heads to protect them from falling chunks of metal and electronics.

  The main street was suddenly quiet, littered with bodies from the insane massacre. Eggsy and Harry retrieved their briefcases, exchanged the weapons they’d just fired for fresh ones, and looked at each other.

  “Shall we?” Harry said.

  Eggsy smiled. “Let’s.”

  They started running down the street, weaving between the bodies of Poppy’s fallen army.

  * * *

  Poppy and Charlie were sitting in a diner booth, Poppy obsessively searching the Internet for any news about the president signing the agreement, Charlie listening to her bitch about not finding any. Four guards stood next to the dogs’ kennels, looking bored. Charlie knew exactly how they felt. He was getting tired of being Poppy’s errand boy. He hoped that when this was all over, he could convince her to make him one of her sales reps. After all, someone needed to fill Grigor’s recently vacated position. Why not him? At this point, he’d accept a job anywhere doing just about anything, as long as it was away from her. Far away. He’d grown quite weary of her domineering personality, her homicidal whims, and her garish—and more than a little childish—Poppyland. And those so-called jokes of hers! He never wanted to be forced to endure any more of those groaners. As far as he was concerned, Poppy was only a means to an end, and that end was money. The rest of his family had died on V-Day, and while he didn’t especially miss them, he desperately missed their fortune, none of which he had been able to inherit since the world believed him to be dead too. So she was his ticket back to the good life, and although he appreciated the robotic prosthesis and speech synthesizer she’d given him, he looked forward to not having to answer her bellowed summons a dozen times a day and perform whatever demeaning task she demanded of him. He looked forward to being free.

  Poppy closed the laptop in frustration.

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “I know the agreement was delivered. My lawyer called me as soon as he dropped it off at the White House. He even took video of secret service agents accepting it to confirm receipt. But that was hours ago! And not a peep from the president in the time since. I mean, how long does it take to sign your goddamned name?”

  Charlie considered whether or not to broach a delicate subject: the notion that perhaps the president had never intended to sign, and that he’d lied to Poppy in order to stall for time. Maybe to see if the stockpiles of antidote could be found, maybe to send special ops teams out into the world to search for her. Frankly, who knew why that man did anything? It was no wonder Valentine had never tried to recruit the tosser to his cause. But Poppy had a major thing about lying. Witness what she’d ordered him to do to Angel. And while Charlie wouldn’t be the one lying to her, he would be the only one within reach, and he doubted she had any qualms about killing the messenger. No, he decided. Best to keep quiet and let her sort out the situation on her own. It would be safer that way—for him, at least.

  “I really don’t want to make a pest of myself,” Poppy said, “but maybe I should try calling.” She opened the laptop again, but before she could start typing, the sound of gunfire came from outside.

  “Shit!” she said. “We’re under attack!”

  She whistled for the dogs, but nothing happened.

  One of the guards checked the monitor screens on top of the kennels.

  “They’re still charging, Madam Poppy,” he said.

  She scowled. “How much longer?”

  “Five minutes for Bennie. Two for Jet.”

  “And you?” Poppy said, irritated. “Are your batteries flat? Get out there, now!”

  The guards ran out of the diner, and Poppy grabbed a walkie and shouted into it.

  “Code five! Code five!”

  * * *

  Elton was practicing piano in the auditorium under the supervision of two burly guards in usher uniforms. He hated Poppy, but he had to admit the woman knew her pianos. This Steinway was one of the finest he’d ever played.

  Poppy’s voice burst from the guards’ walkies.

  “Code five! Code five!”

  “The compound’s under attack,” one of the guards said. “Stay here.”

  “Like… a rescue attempt?” Elton said hopefully. He started playing “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” but as he sang, he replaced “Saturday” with “Wednesday.”

  The first guard frowned. “Isn’t it supposed to be Saturday?”

  “Yeah,” Elton said. “But it’s Wednesday.”

  He stood and executed a perfect roundhouse kick, taking out the guard. The second man started to raise his gun, but another kick put him down. Elton grinned. All those years playing with one leg up on the piano had definitely paid off!

  * * *

  On the seat next to Poppy was the red briefcase containing the security code device. She grabbed the case and thrust it across the table toward Charlie.

  “Get this somewhere safe!”

  Charlie understood. If whoever was attacking—Navy SEALs, SAS, Spetsnaz, or some other special forces group—captured the briefcase and learned the location of the caches, Poppy’s leverage would be gone, and her plan would fail. He couldn’t very well let that happen, could he? His bank account would never forgive him.

  Charlie took the case and slid out of the booth.

  * * *

  Eggsy and Harry burst into the diner. Harry had noticed that it was the only building from which none of Poppy’s soldiers had emerged to attack. Ergo, that was where she was hiding, for she would never allow her guards to leave her side during an assault on her compound.

  Poppy was sitting at a booth, and she quickly rose to her feet when they entered. Eggsy was glad to see Charlie there as well. Two for the price of one, he thought. Eggsy and Harry leveled their submachine guns at Poppy and Charlie.

  Charlie mad
e for the fire exit, the door closest to him. Eggsy fired a burst of ammo at him, but he managed to deflect the bullets with his robot arm before escaping. Eggsy took off in pursuit. He wasn’t worried about Harry. He knew his mentor could take care of himself. Besides, how much of a threat could Poppy be all by herself?

  * * *

  “Tell us where to find the antidote!” Harry demanded.

  A soft beep sounded from somewhere in the diner, and Poppy smiled. She whistled, and Harry heard a scuttling on the diner’s tiled floor. He turned to see a robotic dog racing toward him. He didn’t waste time questioning the creature’s existence. During his career as a Kingsman, he’d learned to trust his eyes—now eye, singular—and what he saw was a threat, pure and simple, and he responded. He fired at the dog, but the rounds pinged harmlessly off its metal hide.

  Shit.

  He dropped the useless weapon, turned and ran like hell for the diner’s entrance, the dog almost nipping at his heels. As he burst out into the open air, he knew there was no way he could hope to outrun the beast. Even if it’d been a flesh-and-blood canine, it would’ve still brought him down before he made it halfway across the street, and while the thing might’ve had the shape of a dog, it was in truth a machine. He could no more hope to outpace it than he could a car. But if he could slow it down, even a little, he might have a fighting chance. He still carried the briefcase Merlin had given him, and while a few tricks remained inside, he knew he couldn’t get to them before the robot dog tore him apart. But that didn’t mean the briefcase itself couldn’t be of assistance.

  He stopped, spun around, and gave the briefcase’s handle a twist. The case detached from the handle and flew toward the oncoming dog. It landed directly in front of the beast and exploded with a loud whumpf! It wasn’t a huge blast. The self-destruct function wasn’t designed to be a weapon itself, but rather to destroy the briefcase’s contents to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.

  Harry threw the useless handle aside and started running again. Directly across the street from the diner was a bowling alley, and he headed for it. It might not be his first choice for refuge—a fully stocked armory would’ve been lovely—but needs must.

  He shoved open the metal-and-glass door to the bowling alley and dashed inside. Then he turned and threw all his weight against the door just as the dog slammed into it. He’d hoped to close it, but the creature was too strong. It pressed its head to the door’s outer surface, and Harry heard a deep murmuring sound. He understood what was happening: the dog’s system was increasing the power output to its limbs, turning the creature into a pair of pneumatic battering rams. The increasing pressure sent cracks spiderwebbing through the glass, and the door’s metal frame began to bend. Harry knew he had only seconds before the animal broke in, so he abandoned the door and ran further into the building. An instant later, he heard glass shatter and then the thudding footfalls of the beast as it came after him.

  He turned to face the oncoming creature, opened his umbrella, and fired. The rounds proved no more effective against the hound than those from the submachine gun. The dog leaped forward, snarling with its synthesized voice, and began to shred the umbrella with its teeth and claws.

  Harry dropped the umbrella and ran onto one of the lanes, hoping its waxed surface might prove difficult for the dog to negotiate. He was right. As the dog stepped onto the wooden lane, its metal paws had trouble finding traction, causing it to slip and slide. Unfortunately, the soles of Harry’s Oxfords weren’t much better. He felt as if he’d stepped onto the icy surface of a frozen lake and could barely keep his footing. When he heard a series of whirrs and clicks, he turned his head toward the dog and saw its metallic claws had lengthened, sharpened, and now curved downward, appearing more feline than canine. This adjustment allowed the dog to maneuver the waxed lane with ease, and it came rushing toward Harry, jaws open wide to reveal razor-sharp metallic teeth.

  Harry ran toward the pins at the end of the alley. He managed to grab one and spin around just as the dog attacked. He jammed the pin into the creature’s mouth, hoping to perhaps cause its mechanical jaws to seize up. Harry ran up the alley again as the dog shook its head back and forth, trying to dislodge the pin. There was a loud hum as it increased power to its jaws and the pin snapped apart, falling to the lane in two pieces. The dog whirled in Harry’s direction and came bounding toward him. It slowed as it approached, its teeth retracted and small buzzsaws replaced them. They began to spin as the creature stepped toward him, and Harry could only stand and watch as death approached.

  * * *

  Charlie ran out into the street outside the diner, and Eggsy followed. He still carried both the submachine and his briefcase, but as fast as he was running, he couldn’t use either. For that matter, he really didn’t want to. He’d rather wrap his bare hands around Charlie’s throat and squeeze until the bastard’s eyes bulged, his face turned purple, and he stopped breathing. But, however satisfying that would’ve been, Eggsy knew there was no time for revenge. He wasn’t certain what was in the red briefcase Charlie carried, but he could make a fair enough guess. There was only one thing right now that Poppy would want protected above all else: the location of the antidote caches. He needed that information. The world did. But most importantly to Eggsy right then, Tilde needed it.

  He stopped running, dropped the briefcase, and raised the submachine gun.

  Maybe it was the sound of the briefcase hitting the ground that alerted Charlie, maybe Poppy had implanted some kind of heightened sensory equipment in him, or maybe it was nothing more or less than pure human instinct. Whatever the reason, Charlie spun around, raised his robotic arm, and with a fwoosh, his hand shot forth like a missile, a metal cable playing out behind it as it went.

  You gotta be shitting me, Eggsy thought.

  The hand rocketed across the distance between them, fastened around one of Eggsy’s legs and yanked him off his feet. Eggsy slammed into the ground hard, causing him to lose his grip on the gun. He made a grab for it, but Charlie retracted his hand a fraction and pulled Eggsy toward him until the gun was out of reach.

  Just then Harry burst out of the diner and ran into the street a couple hundred feet from Eggsy and Charlie. A—was that a robot dog?—a whatever it was bounded after him. Harry used his briefcase’s self-destruct function to slow the dog down, and then he ran like hell for the bowling alley.

  As the dog forced its way into the alley after Harry, Eggsy decided he needed to revise his estimate of Poppy’s threat level.

  “Looks like Jet’s got himself a new chew toy,” Charlie said.

  He put his briefcase on the ground and walked toward Eggsy, slowly and deliberately. His hand loosened its grip on Eggsy’s leg and retracted. The cable slid rapidly into the wrist aperture and the hand reattached with a snick.

  “You’re like a fucking cockroach, Eggy, you know that? No matter how many times I think I’ve killed you, you pop right back up again, ready for more punishment. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, though. Your kind live like roaches and you certainly breed like them.”

  As Charlie drew closer, Eggsy reached over and pushed a button on the side of his watch. Charlie’s eyes followed the movement, but when nothing happened, he grinned.

  “Out of order? Looks like Merlin’s starting to slip in his old age.”

  Eggsy’s face darkened. “Don’t you ever say his name.”

  Charlie had come within five feet of Eggsy, and he stopped now, just out of arm’s reach.

  “I heard him over the guard’s walkie-talkie. Merlin, I mean. Although I suppose I should say the late Merlin, shouldn’t I? Too bad he was blown to bits. Although come to think of it, it’ll save on funeral costs, considering there isn’t all that much left of him to bury.” Charlie gave Eggsy a mocking grin. “So I guess there’s a bright side after all.”

  White-hot rage erupted inside Eggsy, and he charged at Charlie. But just as Eggsy reached the fucker, Charlie’s robot arm flashed toward him. He gr
abbed hold of Eggsy’s collar, lifted him up as if he weighed no more than a rag doll, and slammed him to the ground. Once, twice… He lifted Eggsy again and hurled him toward the diner wall.

  Eggsy hit the temple wall harder than he expected, and although he’d gotten used to rough landings during his brief career as a secret agent, this was something special. White light exploded behind his eyes, and he felt several ribs give way. His awareness cut out for a couple of seconds, and when it returned, he was lying face-down in the dirt in front of the combination of modern and ancient architecture that was Poppy’s diner. There wasn’t a part of him that didn’t hurt like blazes, and when he tried to stand, his body refused to cooperate. It had taken enough abuse for the time being, thank you, and it intended to lie motionless until at least some of the pain subsided. A day, maybe two. Three would be grand, but it didn’t want to be pushy.

  So Eggsy lay there, aching all the way down to the cellular level, as Charlie walked toward him.

  “Poppy calls my new toy ARMageddon,” Charlie said. “At first I thought it was just another of her crap jokes, but the name’s actually starting to grow on me.”

  One of Poppy’s guards had attacked Eggsy and Harry armed with a gun in one hand and a bowling ball in the other. The man was dead, and the ball lay on the ground, only a couple feet from Charlie. He detoured toward it, picked it up with his robotic hand, and continued toward Eggsy.

  “You’ve been a tremendous pain in the ass, Eggy,” Charlie said. “I can’t tell you how much I’m going to enjoy this.”

  His robot hand began to spin rapidly, and the bowling ball became a whirling weapon of destruction. Charlie stopped when he reached Eggsy. He paused as he gazed down at him, as if savoring the moment, and then he raised the spinning ball over his head.

  Charlie’s smile was cold as Arctic wind.