Kingdom: The Complete Series

by Steven William Hannah

  “His vitals are increasing – consider giving him a tranquilliser.”

  “That could kill him -” another voice protests, and in his mind Mark assigns this man the appearance of a meek, bald man with large glasses.

  A third voice cuts in, and this one is familiar: Mark remembers this voice talking as he lost consciousness on the rooftop, plastic foam expanding to fill his throat.

  “I watched this man take a twenty millimetre cannon round to the sternum and get up again. It's not going to kill him.”

  “His heartbeat is increasing, watch the charts,” says the stern teacher.

  “Hold on, I've nearly got the scan up...” says the timid assistant.

  The voices stop, and Mark tries to calm himself. He is bound tight by some cold metal encasing his arms at the elbow, wrist and shoulder. Around his neck is a tightly fastened steel collar, keeping him bolted to the trembling floor of the helicopter. As the vehicle shifts in flight, he feels his stomach lurch with a grey sickness that spreads from his chest throughout his body.

  “Is that the scan?” the soldier asks. “Is this in real time?”

  Only now does Mark realise just how thirsty he is. It's a dry scratching in his throat, a deep seated urge to quench some burning fire in his chest. He wonders if he can break the bonds holding him, but his arms have lost their unexplainable strength: his limbs feel like limp lengths of wet cardboard.

  “Are you seeing what I am, doctor?” asks the shy voice.

  “I've never seen cells behave like this before. In all my years...” the all-knowing commanding voice now carries a wavering uncertainty.

  “That's going to be happening a lot, doctor,” says the soldier. “Can you save him?”

  There's a long silence again, and finally she says:

  “Shit, maybe?”

  “Maybe?”

  “Something is metabolising his own body, breaking it down into alcohol: don't even get me started on how, this should be impossible without creating lethal doses of radiation.”

  “Alcohol?” the soldier asks her in disbelief.

  “Yes, Trespasser, alcohol. His body is destroying itself: digesting itself, in essence. And I have absolutely no idea how or why.”

  “Can we stop it?”

  “Maybe not, but we can certainly try to stall it. Klein,” she orders the assistant, “give the subject an intravenous injection of alcohol.”

  “Ma'am, that's utterly ridiculous -” he is cut off by her thundering orders.

  “Were we even remotely aware of what was going on here I would take the time to do this properly Klein, however I am doing what I can from the back of a bloody helicopter, to a man who is defying the laws of nature before my eyes. I would quite like this man to survive so that I can find out what the hell is happening, now give him the alcohol before I do it myself. If we can give his body the alcohol it's trying to create then maybe we can slow the process.”

  “Can I do anything to help?” asks the soldier.

  “Keep an eye on his heart rate and tell me if it changes significantly.”

  Mark feels a dull ache blossom in his lower forearm, as though somebody were trying to bite through his skin. He fights the urge to squirm and move away.

  “His heart rate just sky-rocketed,” says the soldier.

  “I can't break the skin,” the assistant whines.

  “Well if a helicopter's guns couldn't do it, your needle won't be able to,” says the soldier. “Can't you just pour it into his mouth?”

  “You've already neutralised him once with suffocation,” the older doctor tells them, “so I don't want to risk him drowning.”

  Mark feels a tickling sensation in his nostril and tries not to screw his face up – he tastes metallic blood on his lips and fights the rising bile in his stomach.

  “His vitals are off the chart, doc.”

  “Then pour it in, we're going to lose him either way,” he can hear the female doctor tearing a packet open, flustered.

  “Wait, stop. I think he's awake -” the soldier begins.

  Mark doesn't hear the rest – his throat is suddenly burning with the pure alcohol being poured down it. He should be choking and spluttering, but his body welcomes the warming fire. Before he can control himself he is quenching that incredible thirst, gulping it down. Where it should be extinguishing the heat in his belly, it seems only to stoke the flames until his entire body is tingling.

  He has felt this strength before: just after the fire hit him.

  He feels strong. Powerful.

  Mark opens his eyes and sees the soldier running downhill towards the cargo-helicopter's cockpit. His entire body is shackled beneath heavy metal bands and two white-coated doctors are kneeling over him, frozen in the moment.

  “Get us close to the ground,” the soldier's shout is so desperate that they hear it over the rotors.

  Mark grunts and lifts his arms, tearing the steel bands as though they were paper. The doctors reel back and scramble to their feet as he grasps the metal around his neck and rips it out of the floor. They run for the aid of the soldier as Mark's legs shatter their bonds and kick away the last shackles around his ankles until he is rolling free on the floor.

  Getting to his feet, Mark wipes the dried blood from his nose. His desperate thirst directs his eyes to the pile of clear fluid pouches beside his make-shift prison bed, and he lifts one of them above his open mouth and bursts it with his hands like a ripe fruit. Surgical alcohol pours down his throat and he drinks it like water as the strong scent of spirits burns his nostrils.

  Every drop makes him feel stronger, faster. He opens his eyes and finds his vision wavering as though he were caught in a heat wave, objects blurring in and out of focus as he extends a hand to keep himself steady.

  “Don't move,” the soldier is pointing a grenade launcher at him from the far end of the helicopter's loading bay.

  Mark frowns at his captor, standing with the two doctors cowering behind him. In the pit of his stomach he can feel the helicopter losing altitude.

  “What's wrong with me?” asks Mark. When they don't give him an answer he shouts it louder. “What's wrong with me?”

  “You're dying. Your body is trying to digest itself and metabolise alcohol,” the female doctor peers over the soldiers weapon. “You need to keep ingesting alcoholic fluid until we can find a permanent way of fixing it.”

  As she speaks, Mark feels the alcohol swimming in his brain. His fingers feel fuzzy, his eyesight begins to kaleidoscope with colours and shapes. He cannot distinguish between the helicopter moving and his own drunken stumbling.

  “If you let us take you in,” says the soldier, “we can help you. You'll die, otherwise. We're not the bad guys.”

  “I'm not the one pointing a grenade launcher,” he slurs, smiling at his own joke.

  The soldier doesn't move to begin with, but after a moment of thought he lets the weapon drop until it is pointing at the floor.

  “Ok,” he says. “We had to assume that you were dangerous – we found you in a room full of injured men who had shot at you without effect – you took out an elite strike team with your fists. You've scared a lot of people.”

  Mark, swaying back and forward, is not listening: he is looking out one of the numerous windows in the cargo bay. Outside he can still see the landmarks of his own city: the Hydro, the crane down at Finnieston, the tower at the Science Centre.

  He's still within reach of the King.

  “I can't let you take me in just yet,” he says, his eyes distracted by the scene outside the windows. Suddenly, the grenade launcher is back up.

  “You're dying, you need our help.”

  “Dying,” he points out. “Not dead. I have something to take care of first.”

  “The King?” asks the soldier.

  Mark nods, still staring out the window.

  “Yes. Where are we right now?”

  “Doesn't matter,” the soldier says, shrugging. “Talk to me. Why do you need to reach th
e King? Who is he?”

  “As if you don't know,” says Mark, and steps back as if bracing himself for a sprinting race.

  “I don't,” the soldier repeats. “Tell me and I might be able to help you.”

  “Follow me,” Mark smiles, “and you'll find out. Hold onto something, by the way.”

  The soldier wastes no time with disbelief: he drops his weapon and grabs a red safety harness from the back of the cargo bay. He fastens it around his waist, and as Mark begins to run the soldier puts an arm around each of the doctors.

  Mark hits the side of the helicopter at a sprint, his elbows up to protect his face, and his stomach flips as he tears through the tough metal and finds himself flailing through frozen thin air, clouds the colour of dish-water spinning above him.

  Screaming, Mark flips through the air like a broken bird as the city rushes up to meet him.

  The helicopter's interior is buffeted by a howling wind from the torn wound in the vessel's side.

  Trespasser One shouts into his earpiece as he fastens safety belts around both of the doctors.

  “Command, we have lost Target Four. I'm preparing to pursue.”

  “I told you not to inquire about the King, Trespasser One,” the voice of Command barks in his ear and he flinches. “You have disobeyed a direct order.”

  “You think he'll survive that?” the female doctor shouts over the engine's roar.

  “I've seen him survive worse,” says the Trespasser, ignoring Command's shouting.

  “If you catch up with him,” says the doctor, “then make sure that he drinks something with alcohol in it, he's living on borrowed time.”

  The soldier finally unfastens himself and begins to struggle uphill towards Mark's make-shift escape hatch. As he does, the voice in his ear begins to speak over the rush of air.

  “Trespasser One, break pursuit and stay on that helicopter, we're bringing you back to base.”

  “Negative, Command,” the soldier shouts as he clamps one hand around the jagged edge of the hole, pulling himself towards it. “I will not break pursuit, this man is a primary objective. I can still convince him to come in alive and willing -”

  “Negative. Trespasser One, your orders are cancelled: Target Four is to be eliminated, a task assigned to Fourth Squad. You are to return to base. Take these orders under pain of termination yourself.”

  “Eliminated? He was a primary objective, now you want to kill him? Just because he's going after a criminal who has him by the balls? Is that what it is? When I became a Trespasser, taking out guys like this King character was exactly our kind of mission. We used to take down warlords; now you're protecting one?”

  “I'm not hearing a 'roger', Trespasser.”

  “And you're not going to,” he shouts, looking out of the torn hole in the metalwork at the city speeding past below him. Gritting his teeth, he tears the communications unit out of his black armoured helmet and wrenches himself out of the helicopter.

  The wind tosses him around like a paper bag until he narrows his body and speeds towards the ground like a missile. With the wind pulling at his armour and his mask's visor misting with the altitude, he reaches back over his shoulders and pulls a set of twin cords.

  A canopy of tough black fabric explodes from the back of his armour, and he tenses his arms at a right angle and pulls his knees up. The parachute cords in his hand buck with the wind, pulling him away from his target; then he gets a grip on it, and his cheeks puff with the effort of keeping the rectangular canopy taut.

  The city drifts up to meet him as the cold air bites at him through his armour. Trespasser One's predatory eyes scan the cityscape below, an endless miasma of silver roads and grimy tower blocks, sparkling glass and the blurry mess of the river running through it. He picks out the single dust-cloud coming from a fresh crater and grunts as he pulls the cords that way, gliding over the rain-smeared twilight city towards his target.

  Episode 5

  The Throne Room

  "Jamie, stop.”

  Chloe's pale hand grips his wrist, adding her own trembling to the shaking pistol in his hand. Down the barrel and along the hallway sits the King on his staircase-throne, flanked by his suited guards. The King rests his chin on his fist whilst blood leaks through the torn knee of his trousers and onto the floor.

  The King gestures to her, his voice flat with boredom.

  “I'm with her on this one.”

  Jamie spits through his teeth and prods the pistol forward with each word.

  “Stop speaking,” he turns to Chloe, his jaw clenched, “I said I'd get us out of this. I can.”

  “Your brain,” she whispers, “you'll die.”

  “We don't know that for sure.”

  “We saw it on the news – he's not lying this time.”

  “I don't see any other option.”

  Jamie narrows his eyes down the sight, his vision tunnelling around the figure of the King. Chloe's hand is trying to pull the gun downwards, throwing his aim off.

  The King waves his hands as though opening a business pitch.

  “If you shoot me, Jamie -”

  “I will,” says Jamie.

  The King's eye twitches at the interruption.

  “If you shoot me, Jamie,” he repeats, “then my men will gun you down along with your little insurance policy. Nobody wins. Lose-lose.”

  He feels Chloe flinch against him. Jamie says nothing: there is no sound except for the plastic clatter of the cheap pistol in his jittering hand.

  “Unless,” the King lifts a single finger, “you use your little ability, in which case me and my men are in trouble – but what use is a weapon that you can't use, Jamie? You may as well pull the plug on your own life support machine.”

  “You're willing to risk your life on an assumption?”

  “An assumption backed by evidence, Jamie, is not an assumption. Consider this: if you use your power and it turns out that I'm right, and you die, then what is going to happen to your defenceless little maiden? I was telling her earlier that blondes are quite popular with the buyers.”

  Jamie takes his eyes from the King and looks down to see the fear and anger in her eyes: Chloe is staring the King down aside him, fixing him with the quiet, outraged stare that she gives Jamie when they fight.

  She stops pulling the gun down, and Jamie steadies his aim. His eyes burn as he stares his master down, and the pistol stops trembling.

  “Then make me an offer, King.”

  “My offer...” the King chews his tongue while he thinks, before clapping his hands and spreading them out. “Ok: for your consideration, my offer. We get you to a doctor and find out how to stop your, uh,” the King motions to wipe his nose, “then we figure out a way to turn your power into profit. I'm still not sure what it is that you're doing, but it either involves time or speed. Both of them are useful to a thief. Or an assassin. Perhaps a spy? You'd be unstoppable.”

  “I want to retire,” his voice is steady. “I'm done with all this.”

  “You can't retire. Those bastards in black with the helicopters, they're hunting you down. I can hide you; I can make you disappear. Give me a year of your life, Jamie,” says the King. “Just one year, and I can make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. Then, after that year, I give you a new identity; Chloe too. I give you both one way tickets to somewhere sunny and you both go and find a new life together. Just one year, Jamie. That's all I ask. In one day you've almost managed to turn the tables on me of all people. Think what we could do together, with three hundred and sixty five days.”

  The silence begins to buzz with the distant sound of helicopter blades and gunfire. He turns to Chloe, the fight gone from his eyes.

  “I'm sorry.”

  “Don't apologise,” she says.

  “All I ever wanted was a normal life for you – to give you a home and a new start somewhere that nobody knew us. Instead I gave you this.”

  The clash of helicopter blades gets louder, accompanied by the rain-on-t
in rattle of gunfire and the hissing streak of missiles. The King looks up in confusion. Chloe's hand squeezes his, the pistol grasped between them.

  “Jamie, it was either this or the streets. We chose the King – we made the decision together.”

  “It was only ever meant to be short term -”

  “I just want us to be happy, Jamie. I don't want us to die here.”

  “Then we won't -” Jamie flinches as an earthquake shakes the building, dislodging dust from the ceiling and sending tremors up his shins.

  “What the hell is going on out there?” shouts the King. He looks up at one of his men. “I thought they'd rounded up all the targets except Jamie. Carl, get on the horn and demand an answer, I want to know why I was lied to, and why the fighting is so close to my offices. He gave me his word that this wouldn't happen.”

  Outside, somebody is shouting. The King motions for the men to pick him up – it has gone strangely quiet, as though a ceasefire has been called. For Jamie, the only sound in the world is Chloe whispering into his ear.

  “I've never seen you as miserable as you were working for the King. Don't put yourself through that again. Do what you have to.”

  The King shouts over their whispered nothings:

  “There's some commotion outside, Jamie,” the King is held between the two men now, wincing as his wounded knee swings back and forth. “Come with us and we can sort this out in my office. Come on, it's time to go.”

  Jamie hasn't broken eye contact with Chloe, nor has the gun dropped.

  “You sure about this?” he asks Chloe. A single droplet of blood leaks from his nose and falls to the floor.

  She nods, and presses herself against him.

  Jamie pauses. He can make out the words being shouted outside. There are sirens, orders being yelled over the top of the chaos – but one voice sticks out, as though it were stronger and clearer by its own virtue. The words resolve themselves out of the mess: