Kingdom: The Complete Series

by Steven William Hannah

  Mark bites his knuckle, listening for the sound of a helicopter: but he hears nothing but his own heartbeat and the slow measured breaths of the King.

  “So you think you've made Glasgow a better place?” he asks the King.

  “It's not that simple – there will always be corruption, and there will always be crime and depravity and drugs and people hurting one another. I just control it, and keep it to the minimum where possible. So yes, I'd say I have. I've manipulated the populace into creating a better world for themselves.”

  “You control people by force and blackmail.”

  “Sometimes, people don't know what's good for them, Mark.”

  “And you do?”

  The two men regard one another, and eventually the King nods and says,

  “Yes. I believe I do. So do you,” he adds, “or you wouldn't have undertaken your project.”

  “My people were free to choose – those who did good through it, did so out of their own free will. It had weight, it had meaning.”

  “Shall we compare numbers and see who's had more success?”

  “You force people to live in fear.”

  “Necessary evil,” the King waves his point away. “The end result is the same: crime, poverty, unemployment, all are at the lowest they have ever been. I've only been in power ten years, Mark. Imagine what I can do in another thirty. Imagine what we could do?”

  Mark almost stops breathing.

  “We?”

  “I know you, Mark – I used to be you. You tried to change the world and the world spat in your face.”

  “You spat in my face!”

  “And what would you do if I tried that now? There's nothing I could do to stop you, not really. I heard that you can jump a tower block,” the King laughs. “That you shrugged off rounds from a helicopter's cannon. Maybe you can't be killed at all, Mark.”

  “Maybe,” says Mark, though he shivers at the memory of the Trespasser's foam weapon expanding into his throat.

  “And what – I bet you want to jump around punching criminals, right? Wear a cape and give yourself a goofy name?”

  “We both know that doesn't quite work in real life.”

  “Exactly. But you can't deny that you're different. You have powers. Let's say super powers,” he grins, “because I just love that I get to say that in real life.”

  “Ok.” Mark leaves it at that.

  “You want to do good, you want to help people – well here's how. You can't be bullied or coerced anymore. You're invincible, unstoppable – you get to stand up anywhere you want, and say whatever you want. You, Mark, might be the closest thing to a god that ever walked this bloody Earth. You can stand up and tell the world about the Kingdom, we can stop keeping it a secret. We can take humanity into a new age, one where a true god, a benevolent dictator with the people's best interests at hearts, makes the laws. And who could possibly stand against you?”

  “That's what you want from me?”

  “That's what I'd do if I were in your position. But since I can't possibly be in your position,” the King leans in close, “I want you to be in mine.”

  Mark remains silent, waiting for him to continue.

  “I want you to become the King, Mark.”

  Mark leans back. “What.”

  “Hear me out: I have plans, Mark. People up there,” he points upwards, “think they're in control. They think that the Kingdom project is just a little experiment, that once it's over they can take the data and apply it elsewhere to keep themselves rich. Politicians, policemen, gangsters, businessmen... They don't know the real plan. The Kingdom is more than a project now, it's a reality – and it is ready for the next logical step.”

  “Which is?”

  “I can't tell you until I have your trust and cooperation, Mark. I've already met you halfway – I need to know that I can trust you completely, and that you'll trust me.”

  “How...” Mark laughs and squeezes the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “How can you say that you've met me halfway?”

  “Do you know where you are? Listen to the sounds: photocopiers, computers, printers...”

  “An office?”

  “Mark, this is the administrative centre of the Kingdom project. It's a level above Top Secret. You could take every sheaf of paper in this place and incriminate men and women who own islands. You could crash the stock market with the names on those documents – but I trusted you, I took a risk on you, and I gambled that you would do the right thing. I knew that we were similar from the beginning.”

  Mark stands up out of the seat, and the King's face breaks into an expectant smile as he joins him. The King steps forward, uncomfortably close to him now, and lifts his hands as though he is giving a speech.

  “We can do great things together. We can take humanity to the stars, Mark, and beyond. Humanity has so much potential, and the wank-stains in charge are pissing it into the wind for their own power and wealth. War, economic buggery, inequality and lies. Imagine what we can do with you at the helm.”

  Mark's mind keeps coming back to Jamie and Chloe – they didn't have much, he thinks, but they had each other. Neither of them wanted to change the world. They just wanted to be left alone to live their lives together, and this man extended them the chance to do that. He gave them the easy route.

  Easy - with a price.

  It is then that Mark realises he has actually been considering it – that he has let the King worm his way into his brain, using his own desires and dreams against him. Of course he wants to help people, of course he fears for humanity's future; so just sign here, he thinks, sell your soul, and you can have everything that you want.

  At a price.

  Because then you're the King, and you're trading a little bit of human suffering for the easy route. And a little black piece of that evil would seep into you, and it would nestle beside your heart and it would stay there till the day you died. He would know, for as long as he lived, that he had sold himself out to a man who kills those who get in his way; that he had become that man, perhaps.

  The Trespasser is coming, thinks Mark, maybe with help. The King said that there is enough evidence in this place to bring down the entire Kingdom project, or whatever this sorry mess is called.

  Mark makes his decision.

  “I'm sorry, Mr. King,” he says, and watches the hope slide off of the King's face. “I just can't. I never want to stand above other people. That's not who I am.”

  The act that Mark hadn't even noticed him put on leaves the King's face. Once again, he is a flesh golem shaped like a man in a suit, devoid of humanity or emotion.

  “I'll be taking my mother and leaving now,” saysMark, ready for the expected resistance. He is braced for men with assault rifles, for triggered explosives or a hostage situation.

  He's not prepared for what the King says.

  “Ok.”

  He motions to the door. His voice is as flat and sterile as the bunker they stand in. There is no inflection in his speech.

  “I understand, Mark. I had hoped that you would be able to see things from my point of view. I am sure that in time... Well.”

  He leaves it at that, giving Mark an emotionless, robotic smile.

  Mark finds himself more afraid now than he was when he first entered this place. Searching for traps with his aching eyes, he steps through the door as it hisses open, trying to gauge the strength in his muscles. He hasn't had a drink for too long, his head has started to get fuzzy and his entire body is overcome with a faint sensation of tingling cold.

  “Open the door,” Mark tells the four men standing by the wall, and the King enters behind him.

  The men look to the King for assurance, and he nods: one of them steps forward and unlocks the door hiding his mother.

  “Mark?” the King asks him as the door begins to hiss open.

  He turns, reluctant to face the King again, aware of how close he is to getting out.

  “Yes?”

  He finall
y looks at the King, into those black eyes, and sees a bottomless pit where a man should be.

  “I'm sorry it didn't work out,” he says, as though the line is rehearsed. “I really am.”

  Mark nods, and then shows the King his back as the door creaks open. He tried to wrench it open, to test the strength in his sober arms: the door gives a pathetic creak.

  His mother is waiting, safe and unharmed, inside. She looks at him in horror.

  “Tell me you didn't agree to anything son,” she pleads.

  “I didn't, mum,” he steps into the room and kneels down, ready to pick her up with the strength left in his arms. “Let's get you out -”

  The door slams shut behind him, sealing itself closed with a hiss.

  Mark turns as the hissing stops, setting his mother down on the seat again.

  “Oh no,” she whispers. “Mark, what is he doing? What happened to your body, why are you covered in bruises? Did they hurt you?”

  Mark, saying nothing, puts his hands on the metal door and grunts with effort, trying with all his strength to dislodge it. It barely budges, and when he puffs his cheeks and tries again he feels a trickle of blood running down his lip.

  He hears the King's voice on the other side of the door.

  “We talked earlier, Mark,” shouts the King, “about you being almost invulnerable. Bullets, bombs; they just bounce right off you. But we have eyes everywhere – we know that a Trespasser unit took you down with some kind of suffocating foam weaponry. We put two and two together, and figured that your great big weakness is a need to breathe. Just like the rest of us. Not so super. Just a man. ”

  The letter box flaps open with a metallic clank. A hazy, shimmering gas begins to flood the room, hissing like a cobra, and Mark steps back, cursing.

  “Mum, get in the corner,” he orders her.

  “Son, your nose -”

  “I know! Get in the corner and hold your breath.”

  He throws himself at the nearest wall, punching it as hard as he can. The pain shoots up his arm and the concrete trembles, but it's completely solid. Swearing, he tries to other wall, his cheeks puffed up with air.

  The brickwork trembles and crumbles, revealing solid concrete behind it.

  He looks down at the ground: there won't be anything beneath them either, and the door takes up the entirety of the other wall.

  That leaves one direction.

  “Not thinking in enough dimensions,” he murmurs. Mark looks up. “Mum, watch your head,” he shouts, and she nods, a hand over her nose and mouth.

  He crouches down low, summons his strength, and throws himself fist-first at the ceiling. It shudders and cracks, motes of dust and concrete falling onto his head.

  The lack of oxygen is aching in his chest – his body wants to breathe. The urge to inhale is like an itch in his mind. Blood tickles his lips, tempting them to open and suck in a lungful of poison. He purses his lips shut, fighting the urge.

  Mark leaps upwards again, and this time chunks of masonry come down with him, none bigger than his hand. He has left a fist-sized hole in the ceiling.

  “Mark,” his mother shouts from behind her hand. Her eyes are drooping. “I can't hold my breath...”

  Mark's lets out all the oxygen in his body through his nose, and a torrent of blood accompanies it. His head is pounding in agony, his vision is swimming, the gas haze filling the room.

  “Come here,” he whispers to his mother, no air for any more words.

  Pawing through the poison mist, she clings onto him and he carries her like a sleeping child.

  Mark kneels down, his shoulders facing upwards, forming a battering-ram as he gathers the last of his energy in his legs.

  It comes from somewhere deep within him – where the fire is. Whatever hit him, whatever the fire did to him, it's doing it now: burning itself out to save him. No doubt it'll punish him for this later, but he doesn't care.

  Deep within his core the fire burns brighter for that moment, and he feels the power building in his muscles and in his bones. His body screams at him to breathe, blood flowing like a river down his chin, pouring from behind his screwed-shut eyelids.

  He wants to collapse.

  He wants to lie down and go to sleep.

  Instead, cradling his mother in his arms and shielding her with his body, he roars and leaps.

  “Five hundred metres,” the Trespasser shouts, beginning to slow the helicopter. He flicks various switches, preparing it for landing.

  “Where exactly is it?” asks Jamie, peering out of the rain-streaked wind-shield.

  “Dead ahead,” says Trespasser One.

  “All I see are derelict industrial buildings,” says Chloe, searching with her eyes as she appears beside Jamie. “He could be anywhere.”

  “Three hundred metres and closing,” says the Trespasser, “we're practically here.”

  “So where is he?” asks Jamie, more to himself than anybody else.

  “Two hundred.”

  “Just pick the nearest one and search it,” Chloe says. “He's not exactly quiet.”

  “He might be if the King – well,” Jamie trails off, letting the unsaid speak for itself.

  “One hundred.”

  “He's tough,” says Chloe, “he'll be fine.”

  That's when an explosion of concrete and dirt erupts skywards like a volcano, bursting through the tin roof of an old factory, and amongst the cloud:

  Mark, bare chested and holding a small, skinny figure in his arms. He curves through the air like a bird, and for a brief moment, he stops; gravity gives him a seconds pause.

  Then he's falling again, holding his mother close as he plummets towards the concrete.

  “Found him,” Chloe whispers.

  “I'm landing to pick him up.”

  “He got his mother, by the look of it,” says Jamie, “I'll open the doors.”

  Jamie scurries back through to the body and cracks the door open, heaving it aside and letting the storm in. He remembers his dislike of heights too late and cries out, clutching onto the rails at the side of the door as he steps back.

  Mark lands with a dull thud that Jamie feels more than sees. A spider-web crack appears in the concrete beneath him. His legs buckle as he hits the ground and his mother's limp form falls away from him. That's when Jamie begins to panic.

  “I think they're hurt,” he shouts.

  “Nearly there,” the Trespasser shouts back.

  As they descend between the skeletons of old industrial Glasgow, the mother and son become more than just silhouettes on the ground.

  Jamie sees the pool of red in the rainwater around Mark's knees.

  Mark hears the helicopter, but his eyes are focused on his mother lying on the soaking wet ground. There are figures coming his way across the parking lot, but it's her that he's speaking to,

  “Mum? Mum, wake up, come on.”

  He shakes her shoulders and she coughs and splutters, opening one eye in the freezing rain to see her son above her.

  “Mark?”

  “Mum come on, you have to get up. I can get us out of here.”

  “Were we flying? Can you fly?”

  “I don't know. Not quite,” he smiles, and she smiles back. Then he hears his name roared across the parking lot.

  He turns, still protecting his mother with his own body.

  But it isn't his friends that are shouting on him. It's the King, and four of his men with their rifles, emerging into the rain.

  “Son your nose; your eyes; everything's bleeding.,” his mother begins.

  “Finally sober,” whispers Mark, and stands up. He holds out his hand, trying to tell the King to stop.

  “Guys,” shouts Jamie. “We're not alone.”

  Figures, men in suits and all armed bar one, appear from the interior of the old factory, pouring from a single open door.

  One of them, a well groomed man in a blue suit, grabs an assault rifle from another and raises it, stopping to aim through the obscuring ra
instorm.

  Jamie is crying out before he can stop himself, and his words are lost forever in the howling rain and the buzz of rotor blades as the helicopter comes in to land, too late.

  He turns.

  “Give me the rope, where's the rope?”

  Chloe tosses it to him, and he grabs it and throws it out of the helicopter. They're too high still to climb down, but he throws it anyway as he watches from the door, rain stinging his cold hands.

  Mark stands, stumbling, clutching his head, holding his hand out in a stop gesture. His mother is curled on the ground behind him.

  The blue suited man raises the assault rifle and fires, and for Jamie, everything slows to a halt.

  Down the sights of the gun, Mark and the King share one last look, filled with what could have been. Mark sees real regret in those black holes in the King's head: but regret for the power that he almost controlled; for what he has lost.

  Mark is ready for the gunshot: he knows that he hasn't enough strength left to stop a bullet.

  But the shots never come.

  He opens his eyes.

  Another figure appears in the rain, a shadow-man that appears to have emerged from the rainstorm like an elemental force. The man-shape grabs an assault rifle from the nearest suit and clubs him to the ground with the butt. He turns, gunning down another man before they realise what is happening. Pink mist explodes from the second suit's chest and he falls back, splashing into a puddle.

  Only one other man and the King remain armed, and as they try to shoot the figure it disappears again, blending into the rainstorm, only to reappear behind them.

  The rain-elemental presses the assault rifle to the back of the other man's head and pulls the trigger, throwing him to the ground with a red flap where his face was.

  Behind Mark, the helicopter still hasn't landed, and he can't bring himself to tear his eyes away from the brutal rain-dance in front of him.

  One unarmed man and the King remain. The unarmed man goes down when the rain elemental melts into the ground and emerges behind him, clubbing him with the rifle as though it were a hammer, knocking him to the ground where he stops moving.