“It's not chronic diabetes, mum,” he groans, “I'll be fine.”
“Then good luck,” she gives him a warm hug, only coming up to his chest. “Do your best, and stay safe, ok?”
“I will. Love you mum.”
She fixes his overalls, flattening some creases as though it was his first day of school. “Love you too, son.”
Meanwhile, Chloe and Jamie share a shy kiss.
“I don't want you to go,” she mumbles as they part.
“I know,” he says. “Me neither, but this is important.”
She nods. “Don't die.”
“I'll try,” he laughs.
“Don't go bringing down any criminal warlords, either,” she says. “I'm not there to watch your back this time.”
He kisses her forehead, squeezing her hips as he does. “I'll see you tomorrow. Wish me luck.”
“Good luck,” she whispers, giving him a last peck before leaving him on the landing pad.
Chloe meets Mark's mother halfway back to the elevator and they link arms like old friends. She gives Jamie one last look over her shoulders, leaving him with an image of those big bright eyes before she steps into the elevator, vanishing from view.
“Your girlfriend looks like an actress,” says Gary as they all head for the ramp. “I can't place which one, but she does.”
“I'll take that as a compliment, Gary.”
“At least you've got somebody here with you,” says Donald as they climb into the helicopter and head for their seats. “I haven't spoken to a single person asides you lot since this all started.”
“Yeah, I've got fans waiting on my next remix,” says Gary. “I do like, one every month with the top forty from the charts. It's been two months: nothing. There goes my career.”
“Gary, making seven quid a month off a few thousand video-views isn't a career.”
“And how much money does playing the cello net you, Donald?”
“I played a gig for charity and made over a hundred pounds once. Besides, I'm a doctor, not a cellist.”
Gary scowls. “It's not even a real instrument, it sounds like a biscuit or something.”
“Cello's are beautiful instruments,” says Donald, sighing. “At least I can play an instrument as opposed to – well, what is your first instrument, Gary? A laptop?”
“Get with the times, Don.”
“Get seated,” says the Trespasser as they fasten their harnesses. The ramp begins to close over, sealing them in the red-tinged darkness with one another. “I want to know that you all understand the mission and the orders.”
The helicopter's engines rumble awake, shaking them to their bones.
“Hands up first team,” the Trespasser shouts. Mark and Cathy raise their hands. “Second team?” Jamie and Stacy raise theirs. “Third?” Gary and Donald lift their hands. “Good. You'll be dropped at various places in your pairs where your team leader will meet you in plain clothes. They will drive you back to the safe houses around Glasgow where you will get ready, go over the plans, and wait. Follow your team leaders' orders: those men and women are Trespassers like me, so show some respect.”
The helicopter lifts into the air, and Jamie takes a deep breath to dispel his nerves and the tightness in his chest. The clammy air of the helicopter's interior is making him itch.
“Your orders are to follow their orders. You will hang back unless ordered otherwise. You will not intervene in any interaction between the Trespassers and those hit by the fire, unless ordered otherwise. You are there only as a precaution, do you understand?”
They all nod.
“Do you understand?” he presses, shouting now.
They chant in chorus. “Yes, Trespasser One.”
“Should you need to defend yourself or others to prevent loss of life, you will do so with the efficiency and speed that I expect of any squad under my command. Don't hesitate: if you're going to use your powers to neutralise a threat, do it. I've chosen the teams so that one person per couple is capable of taking down a hostile. You'll also be wearing the armbands: if you become a threat, your squad leaders are authorised to neutralise you. Don't become a threat.”
He looks them up and down, nodding to himself.
“I know this sounds frightening, but you'll be fine. Remember your training, watch your mates' backs, and maintain contact when the fire starts falling. We'll pull through this just fine. Maybe in a few days, the facility will be a little more crowded.” He looks straight at Mark and Jamie. “Then we can start focusing on more important things.” He looks at his watch. “Seven hours and forty five minutes. Then we meet our new, super-powered friends.”
The Trespasser says nothing more, leaving them to their thoughts in the crashing noise-haze, not one of them looking up from the floor. The tension in the cargo-bay – the fear and the anxiety – is so intense that it almost drowns out the boom of the chopper's blades.
Sitting on the stairs of the Gardens, staring into space with his mind elsewhere, Gregor feels the phone buzz in his pocket. He checks his watch before answering it:
Six hours till arrival.
He brings the phone to his ear. “Yes?”
The voice of the King comes through the other end. “It is time, Gregor.”
“As you wish, sir,” he says. “Are the firemen in place?”
“Your men confirmed that they were ready ten minutes ago.”
“And the prison?”
“Waiting on my command, then we take control.”
“Perfect,” says Gregor, and stands up, stretching and cracking the stiffness out of his bones.
The Gardens have fallen silent, as if they know what he is planning. The addicts and the whores are asleep, he thinks to himself. Burning this place to the ground is doing the city a service. Doing it with them still in it – that's a civic duty, he has decided; and Gregor is a man who takes duty very seriously.
He unzips his coat and produces an empty plastic bottle filled with a viscous liquid the colour of cheap cola. Descending the stairs as though he owns the place, he lifts a set of matches out of his other pocket and slides them open.
Standing at the base of the Gardens, where the building's namesake lies in a tangled but beautiful heap of blooming colour, he upends the bottle of petrol and shakes it over the plants. They wilt and shy away from him, hanging their blue and green heads as though ashamed, awaiting their execution.
Gregor enjoys a faint smile as the smell of the flowers fades to nothing, overpowered by the industrial reek of the fuel. He strikes a match, grins like a contented child on Christmas morning, and tosses the tiny ball of flame into the flowers.
With a rush of heat and wind the garden bursts into flame, the beautiful colours fading to brown, then black, then ashen grey as the blazing orange-red overtakes them.
Gregor throws the rest of the matches onto the fire and climbs the stairs as it begins to spread to the shrubs and small trees at the centre. It reaches outwards with flickering fingers, touching the wooden banisters and cracking the concrete. Black smoke forms a pillar rising up the middle of the stairs. Gregor climbs higher still, until he can longer feel the searing heat from below.
He sits again, shivering with anticipation. Beneath his coat he grips the detonator for the array of explosives placed throughout the building. In his other hand, hidden inside his pocket, he holds his silenced pistol.
Breathing in the fumes like a drug, he savours the heady smell of the petrol as it blazes away. In that moment, Gregor is as much an addict as the needle-marked waifs asleep in the rooms above him.
He sits, enjoying the peace as the world burns below him.
Like a gargoyle perched above the ruinous gates, Gregor waits in solitude, completely at home in hell.
Night falls across Glasgow, whilst Mark watches from the window of the safe-house.
“Did they deliberately put us high up, do you think?” asks Mark.
Behind him, sitting on a cheap bed in her black overalls, face-mask per
ched above her head like a welder, Cathy shrugs. “Probably so we get a good view of where the fire lands.”
Walking in from the kitchen, a middle-aged woman in Trespasser overalls nods as she chews on an energy bar.
“Yeah,” she says. “Vantage point, this is.”
Mark places her accent in London, but he can't be sure. She has hair shorter than Mark's, shaved in close at the sides, thick and brown on top: she's pretty despite the scar running from her ear to her collar, through her neck. She would be prettier still if her eyes weren't always burning with a fierce coldness and shadowed with dark rings.
“Choppers will be in the air ten minutes before arrival to facilitate the mission, so be ready to move.”
“I don't need one,” says Mark. “I can probably get there faster...” he trails off, seeing the look in the female Trespasser's eye.
He looks away, out of the window, unable to shake the feeling that she is staring into the back of his head. Putting his mask on barely helps but he does it anyway, securing the helmet over his skull with the straps.
A chirping sound makes them all jump – asides the ice-woman, who strolls across to the bed, leans over her assault rifle and four extra magazines, and picks up her Trespasser helmet. A red light is blinking inside it.
She slides it over her head with practised ease.
“This is Trespasser Three.”
Mark looks out the window, across the city that he has given so much for. A blanket of orange and yellow lights are spread out before him, with the soft purple of the night sky unbroken by clouds: they'll have a clear night.
Then he notices the pillar of smoke, like a black smudge on the city, maybe a mile or two away.
He turns around.
Trespasser Three is already looking right at him.
“He's right here,” she says into her comms. “Why?”
Mark looks out the window again.
The city centre. Something is burning in the city centre.
His heart starts to beat faster. Scanning his eyes across the buildings, he picks out the landmarks.
The spire of the cathedral; the towering lights of the cinema; the huge building where a whiskey company has its offices.
“The Gardens,” he mutters, and his heart almost stops.
“Mark,” Trespasser Three says, her voice firm. “Step away from the window right now.”
He turns around and sees that she has picked up the assault rifle and is pointing it at his chest.
Cathy has vanished, nowhere to be seen.
Mark turns back to the window, tensing his legs.
“Mark,” she shouts. “Mark, it's got to be a trap. They know you'll come. Trespasser One wants to talk to you, activate your comms.”
“They're right,” he says. “But they won't catch me in a trap again. Tell him I have to go: some things are sacred.”
Mark leaps through the window, through the wall, leaving a cloud of dust, glass and debris in his wake as he launches into the night air.
He follows the sirens, leaping from rooftop to rooftop till he crashes into the road amongst the flashing lights of fire engines and emergency vehicles, all bathed in the dark orange glow of the burning building.
Mark almost falls to his knees at the sight, oblivious to the frightened and confused fire-fighters who have turned around to see what just fell from the sky.
The Gardens: his life's work, his pet project: the task that brought him to this city and left him lying on a floor drowning in cheap vodka. What he crucified himself for.
It's all burning to ash now.
The windows glow from the hellfire within, most of them already blown out by the heat. Smoke pours from every crack in the structure, the fire crackling and snapping like gnashing teeth.
“Uh, sir?” a fireman hazards, his face obscured beneath a bright yellow helmet. “Sir, are you -”
“It's all burning,” he wails, and runs for the door.
“Woah, stop him -” somebody shouts. Two burly fire-fighters tackle Mark to no effect. He grabs them by their collars and slings them aside like ill-behaved dogs.
Mark leaps up the stairs to the door, and grabs the handle. The heat is intense, but it cascades off of him like rain. He is yet to break a sweat.
“Back-blast, get down.” shouts a fire-fighter.
Paying him no heed, Mark opens the door.
The fire roars out, blistering dry air bombarding his skin. His overalls burst into flame and he plants his legs against the onslaught, standing his ground as the flames bathe him.
With his armour burning and his skin finally beginning to prickle in the heat, Mark takes a gulp of air and forges ahead into the fire.
A group of four firemen, standing apart from the rest of the engines as they prepare the hoses and open water hydrants beneath the pavement, nod to one another as Mark disappears into the flames.
One of them produces a cheap mobile phone from his uniform, rips his gloves off, and sends a text to Gregor:
He's coming.
Mark, his face hidden behind a mask that is beginning to blacken with the smoke, rushes through the flames towards the heart of the blaze. Towers of dancing flames crowd in around him, beckoning him inwards into their fiery embrace.
Gritting his teeth as the heat begins to eat at his skin, he pauses. He can feel his strength failing as the fire within him battles against the fire outwith. Mark leans on his knees, unscrewing the cap from his flask and lifting his mask to swig at his whiskey.
It burns just like everything else, and he wipes his lips and pulls his mask back down.
“Help,” he hears somebody shout over the thundering crash of the fire.
Something snaps like thunder, as though the building itself has cracked its spine. He charges through the fire and flame, and hits the staircase. Mark can barely see; the smoke chokes his lungs, and he holds a forearm over the vents at the bottom of his mask as he ascends the staircase.
He may as well be struggling through pitch-darkness, but Mark knows these Gardens like his own skin, and he could walk them with his eyes closed.
Reaching the first landing, he sees the screaming figure.
A drunken figure: a man lying on his back in a heavy coat, the fire barely masking the scent of urine from his soaked trousers. He doesn't look so old, but the grime and the smoke make it hard to tell either way.
“It's ok,” says Mark, stumbling through the fire. “I'm here, I've got you. You're safe.”
Mark leans down and helps the figure up, grabbing his slim frame through his bulky jacket: he can hear more people screaming above him.
“Are there more people?” he asks the drunkard.
The drunk points upwards. He nods and coughs, trying to shield his face from the blaze.
“Above us?” asks Mark. “Then we have to go up – there's a hatch on the roof, I can get you all out through it.”
They both stop as they realise that there are other voices now, and from below. The voices are those of powerful men, negotiating their way through the blaze.
“They must have sent them in after me,” says Mark, trying not to choke on the dry air and the fumes. “I can send you out with them,” he tells the drunk, who is leaning on his shoulders, “and save the others. Tell them I'll be fine – tell them to get out of here. I'm not a normal human, I can survive this.”
“How does it feel?” the drunk asks him, digging around in his coat.
“What did you say?” asks Mark, leaning in to hear better through his mask.
The drunk leans in, his voice losing its thick slurring accent. The refined tones of an educated man whisper in his ear as the blaze overtakes them.
“How does it feel to watch everything you built burn, Mark? This is what you did to the King.”
He produces a yellow canister from his coat and grabs Marks mask, grinning.
“Consider this justice.”
The figure lunges forward and jams the canister under Mark's mask, where it discharges a cloud
of foul smelling fumes into his nostrils. He chokes and splutters, pushing the figure away with such fear and such force that he slams against a wall and slumps to the ground.
Mark tears his helmet off, struggling to breathe, pawing at his mask. The smell of the petrol and the reek of burning wood vanish.
He can't smell anything at all.
He collapses to his knees on the landing, trying to get his fingers down his throat and make himself sick. The smoke wraps itself around his face, blocking his nose and his mouth, filling his lungs with poison and fumes and heat.
He can't breathe. The panic is filling him now, suffocating him. Mark scrabbles at the only thing that he thinks can save him: the silver flask at his belt; but his hands won't work. His grip is gone, and as his brain struggles to cope without oxygen his vision begins to blur and fade.
Mark tries to scream, and nothing comes out.
Four firemen ascend the staircase, the last thing he sees. As he falls to the boiling concrete, he tries to reach out to them for help. They look down at him, and then reach down, picking up his helmet and mask.
Stepping over his body, they get the fake-drunk and lift him between two of their shoulders, slapping him awake.
“We need the detonator,” one of them says. “The King wants him buried.”
“It's in Gregor's coat pocket.”
“Is he alive?”
“Gregor? He's got a pulse, yeah.”
“Then let's get out of here.”
The firemen leave Mark as the smoke and the darkness close in on him.
Unable to move, Mark feels himself slipping away, his mind shutting down, memories playing out in his imagination: regrets, missed opportunities, friends, lovers -
To his own surprise, he sees Stacy.
Something fights against the darkness. Inside him, faint and dying, flickers the last flames of a fire. His lungs have stopped breathing and his cells have started to die without oxygen. Yet still, his body burns off the alcohol left in his blood to repair him, to keep him alive when nothing else will.
Then the building is struck by a series of explosive blows in its foundations, and Mark is helpless to watch as chunks of masonry fall, bringing the staircases down with them. The entire building folds in on Mark like a bad dream, a thousand demons descending upon his vulnerable form.
Kingdom: The Complete Series Page 25
