Kingdom: The Complete Series

by Steven William Hannah

  They are atop a college building overlooking George's Square, the lights of the refugee camp flickering like candles below them. Elsewhere, rivers of headlights and trundling engines lead the way into Buchanan Bus Station, now home to soldiers and aid workers.

  “What do you think he's planning?” asks Stacy.

  Trespasser One turns. “Who?”

  “The King.”

  “Whatever he has planned, he was counting on Mark being out of the picture.” The Trespasser turns back to the city. “That didn't work out for him. He'll be licking his wounds. Worst case scenario, he tries to intervene during the next fifteen minutes; during the Arrival itself.”

  “I still can't see anything in the sky,” says Jamie, one hand on his brow as he scans the dark blue vista above them. “No clouds, either, so I don't know why.”

  Gary nudges him. “That rhymes.”

  “That's great, Gary.”

  Cathy folds her arms and shivers, her breath turning to vapour as she exhales, shaking. The October frost is sinking through their overalls, chilling the armoured plating and making every ounce of weight seem heavier.

  “This couldn't have happened in Spain or something, could it?” she asks through chattering teeth.

  Donald laughs, and the Trespasser turns around:

  “It wouldn't. I don't know why the first one arrived here, but this one has to be linked to it somehow: it keeps correcting to hit our city. Why Glasgow, I wonder, of all places?”

  Nobody answers; he is talking to himself.

  “Aren't you cold, Mark?” asks Gary, nodding at Mark in his shorts.

  “Don't seem to feel it,” Mark shrugs, and lifts his flask. “Drink probably helps.”

  Asides Mark, they are all wearing their armoured overalls, their face masks pulled atop their heads like welders, ready to be pulled down at a moment's notice.

  Gary leans in. “Here Tony, do you reckon -”

  He is cut off as the Trespasser raises a hand for silence, pressing one finger against his ear.

  “Yes, sir,” says Trespasser One after a pause. He turns to the squad. “It isn't splitting. We have two minutes. Helicopter is on the way.”

  “What do you mean not splitting?” asks Jamie. “Did the first one split?”

  “Last time; it was a single entity until about a minute before impact, then it fragmented – presumably to hit you guys.”

  “And it's not doing it?”

  “Not yet. We know the rough area it'll hit though.”

  “Wait -” begins Jamie, and then stops. The group follow his eyes, and silence falls over the rooftop.

  A single burning point of light is streaking through the sky, sparking like lightning as it soars over the Glasgow rooftops. It makes no sound on its silent journey towards the ground, trailing specks of fire and energy behind its missile-shaped body.

  First it is a speck in the distance, like a tiny sun falling from space. Then it grows as it approaches them, and before long it is above them, passing over their heads in the darkness of the frozen night.

  Everything is still; silent. It makes no sound – it seems, instead, to wrap itself in the darkness and devour all noise as it vanishes into the distance, disappearing below the city's silhouette.

  “I have visual, send the chopper,” says the Trespasser through his comms unit, and begins describing the trajectory and general location of the fire.

  “Should I go?” asks Mark, legs tensed.

  Busy talking, the Trespasser nods and pats him on the back.

  Mark takes a breath and leaps into the night sky, vanishing into the crystal darkness like a reflection.

  Jamie carefully leans out the helicopter, his mask pulled down over his face. He can see something:

  On the ground below, in the middle of the boulevard running up Sauchiehall Street, is a bright-lit shape that he can't make out.

  The street is empty and silent, as though it is frozen in time. The shops have been boarded up, lying empty for months.

  He focuses his eyes on the object below: it resembles a fountain, lit from beneath by a sickly green light. There are figures lying around it, unmoving – a half naked man, obviously Mark, stands in the middle of the road, looking up at the helicopter. He waves them in and the Trespasser nods to Jamie, who unlatches a rope and tosses it down.

  “Just like in training,” the Trespasser reminds them, pushing them to the rope in turn. Jamie is the second last to go down after a nervous, trembling Gary.

  The Trespasser follows them, meeting them on the ground.

  “Mark, what happened?” asks the Trespasser as they pick themselves up off the road. The helicopter disappears into the sky, leaving them in silence as it fades into the distance. The entire street is bathed in that same bile-tinged light, like a child's idea of radiation.

  The Trespasser looks around at the men and women in black coats lying on the ground, some of them clutching shotguns and pistols.

  Mark shakes his head and shrugs.

  “I think they were the King's people. They got here first.” He points at the swirling shape standing like a modern-art monument in the road. “This thing flashed and they just, like, fell down.”

  Donald leans down, checking pulses, and shakes his head.

  “They're dead.”

  All eyes turn to the shape in the road. The light coming from it diminishes, and the Trespasser brings his hand up in front of his face to see better.

  “Trespasser One,” Command's voice comes through his helmet. “What can you see? Report.”

  “It's, uh, something,” he hazards, looking closer. He steps in as the squad move around it in a semi-circle.

  Dropping his hand as the light fades away, he finally sees what is hiding within the green flames.

  The squad are quiet, staring as the shape unfolds like a puzzle.

  It looks like a blooming flower: starting like a bulb, with layers upon layers of thin, wing-like structures overlapped. They unfurl like delicate fabric, rippling in a non-existent breeze. Ten, then twenty, until a multitude of tendrils unfold like the stings of a jellyfish, forming a skirt of sorts around it as the appendages float to the ground, revealing the form underneath. On the inside, it is a bright, chemical green, like the light from a glow-stick.

  Beneath the myriad of - the Trespasser thinks of them as petals for some reason – there is some kind of head. It resembles deep-sea creatures that he is familiar with, the petals revealing a bony protrusion like a skull in the centre of the flower-creature, as though this were the seed - or the fruit - at its heart.

  It rises into the air, leaving them staring at the glowing creature, constructed from wavering, dancing organic fabrics. It billows on the wind like a ball-gown, catching a breeze that isn't there.

  “I think,” says the Trespasser, entrapped by its other-worldly beauty. “I think it's an alien, sir.”

  A low sound comes from the alien as it hovers like a man treading water, a groaning bass tone that reverberates in the Trespasser's guts. It lifts a single appendage as though it were caught on the wind, and begins to drift towards the squad.

  “Stay back,” says the Trespasser, feeling an unnatural fear coming over him. “We don't know what it is.”

  “I do,” says Mark, and steps forward.

  “Mark, damn it, get back -”

  “It's ok,” Jamie is beside the Trespasser. “You don't have the fire in you; you can't feel it, can you?”

  “Feel what?” the Trespasser turns.

  “It's singing. It's speaking, but not to us: to the fire in us. It doesn't want to hurt us: watch.”

  It settles onto the ground in front of Mark, who is staring up at it in a mixture of awe and confusion. The limb curves like a flat tongue, touching Mark's head.

  Mark closes his eyes and holds his hands out as though he is being crucified, and a green light blooms between his skull and the appendage.

  “What is it doing?” asks the Trespasser.

  “I think it wants
to show us something, but I can't be sure,” says Jamie. “I just know that it means well -”

  Jamie is cut off by Mark crying out in pain and staggering back, clutching his head. His nose is bleeding. Mark stumbles away and rolls over on the ground, his hands pressing his temples together, his teeth gnashing as he froths at the mouth.

  Donald is beside him in a second, holding him.

  “What's happening to him?” asks Jamie, running over.

  The Trespasser pulls the single-shot grenade launcher from his belt and points it at the creature.

  “Is he ok?” he asks Donald, finger on the trigger.

  Donald closes his eyes and lays a hand on Mark's forehead, soothing him as he jitters and seizes on the ground. Frowning in concentration, Donald lowers his head and tries to help Mark with his power. He stops and stands up, dropping Mark to the ground, and grabs his own head.

  “Don.” Cathy cries his name and goes to catch him, and the Trespasser stops her.

  “Don't touch him, Cathy.”

  Donald begins to shake as he falls to the ground, his eyes rolling back in his head. Mark is silent now, lying on the ground like a corpse. Jamie kneels over him, looking between his unmoving form and the Trespasser, who is watching in horror.

  “What's happening to them?” asks Stacy, her hands on her face in shock.

  Donald falls silent and goes limp, and Cathy puts a hand to her mouth and looks up at her squad leader. The Trespasser shakes his head.

  In front of them, the creature is beginning to shift and change, lights glowing from somewhere within it.

  “Are you sensing anything, Jamie?” he shouts.

  Jamie shakes his head. “Mark's breathing,” he offers, looking lost.

  Cathy kneels in and checks Donald.

  “So is Don,” she sighs. “He's just unconscious. I think he's dreaming.”

  Jamie looks closer at Mark. “Yeah, Mark's lips are moving – only faintly, but they're moving.”

  The Trespasser keeps the grenade launcher trained on the alien as it begins to glow brighter. The silk appendages come up again to cover it like a cocoon, and then it is once again a layered seedling hovering in the air, hidden as though it is shy.

  There's a flash of green light, and the figure bursts into cold flames. He watches it change, losing track of the burning flower-bulb as it contorts and shifts before his eyes.

  When it settles on another shape, it is that of a human: two legs, a torso, arms and a head. It still glows faintly green, as though somebody has cut a human-shaped light out of the air. It has no face or defining features – it is a gingerbread man, a cardboard cut-out, a silhouette of a human.

  “Who are you?” shouts the Trespasser, as though the alien is a common criminal. “What have you done to my men?”

  The figure doesn't look at him; it has taken the shape of a human without taking on any of the mannerisms of one.

  Its voice, when it speaks, is a low baritone that hurts the Trespasser's ears through his helmet. He can feel its voice in his teeth, shaking his eyeballs in his skull.

  “Where are the other six?” it asks.

  The Trespasser glances at Mark and Donald, still unconscious. “The other six what?”

  “Twelve seeds were sent to your planet. I count only six of my children. Where are the other six?”

  “Seeds?” The Trespasser points at the rest of his squad. “You mean the fire? The fire in these people?”

  “Yes.”

  Trespasser One takes a breath, trying to control the shaking in his legs. His training hasn't prepared him for this. He falls back on the truth, since it is all he knows.

  “They're dead,” he says. “They're gone. There's only these six left.”

  “Then we are at a disadvantage,” it says, stating plain fact.

  “Disadvantage? For what?”

  Mark sits bolt upright so suddenly Jamie falls back in fright. Mark is paler than usual, his eyes dark circles sunken into his head.

  “War,” he gasps. “It wants us to fight a war.”

  “What?” the Trespasser asks. “Mark, what are you talking about?”

  Mark stands upright, walking towards the alien as though he is going to pick a fight with it.

  “You have to leave,” he shouts at it. “You have to go now, and take that thing with you.” Mark points up towards the sky. “Lead it away from here.”

  “I can flee no longer,” the alien tells him, its voice shaking the concrete in the pavement. “This is where I make my stand.”

  “No,” says Mark, walking closer. He is shaking, trembling with anger, pointing an accusing finger at the human form. “No, we never asked for this. This is your war, not ours. That thing will destroy us, we don't stand a chance.”

  “I must try.”

  “Then try elsewhere,” shouts Mark. “We don't want this.”

  “I created you for this purpose,” it says, stating fact like a robot.

  “Created us?” whispers Jamie.

  “You never created us,” says Mark. “You altered us – changed us.”

  “I made you into warriors for this purpose. Your purpose is to aid me in fighting -”

  “There are seven billion people on the planet who don't want to fight this thing,” screams Mark, fear getting the better of him. “Who can't fight it.”

  “There is nothing I can do. This will be the battle ground,” says the alien. “You will aid me. Should you abandon the cause or fail, your planet will fall with me.”

  It then falls silent: that is all there is to it.

  Mark stumbles away, his nose still leaking blood. He grabs at his head and shuts his eyes, shaking his head.

  “No,” he whispers. “No, no, this can't be happening.”

  “Mark, what's wrong?” asks the Trespasser. “What are you talking about?”

  Donald wakes up, his eyes slamming open as though he just awoken from a bad dream.

  “I saw it,” he mutters, and Cathy kneels beside him.

  “Saw what, Don? What happened?”

  “It made us see,” he tells her, looking up like a frightened child into Cathy's eyes. “We have to warn everybody. We don't have long. It's coming.”

  “What's everyone freaking out about?” asks Gary, his voice trembling. “What's coming?”

  “The Destroyer,” says Donald, as though only just realising that he knows the answer.

  “Will somebody,” the Trespasser throws his arms up and shouts, “tell me what in the hell is going on?”

  “Promise you'll believe me,” says Mark, looking at the Trespasser as though everything is a bad dream. “Promise.”

  “I promise,” the Trespasser says, walking over to him. “Now calm down, Mark.” He puts a hand on his shoulder. “Tell me what's going on.” Trespasser One points over his shoulder at the unmoving human silhouette, still casting a green glow over everything. “What is he? What's he going to do?”

  “It's not a 'he',” says Mark, his teeth chattering as though is going through serious withdrawals. “It's a - them. A multitude. A myriad – an assembly, I don't know. They're just a collective. There's no name, but there's a feeling like safety, shelter, something like that. Protector; I think that's what it calls itself.”

  “And the Protector is a collective? A collective of - what?”

  Mark cringes, trying to find the words, motioning with his hands. “Like tiny - smaller than I can describe, like machines that -”

  Donald interrupts, and tells them: “They're a swarm of microscopic machines that exist in multiple states at once. Tiny quantum-state machines. They're completely self-sustaining, they draw their energy from -” even Donald has to think of the words. “I don't know how to describe it. Like a web that intersects the universe at every point in space, from every angle. It's like a constantly fluctuating field of potential – I don't know how else to describe it.”

  “They need us – they need conscious beings,” says Mark, taking over. “They're only tangible when they
're close to life forms – then they take a single form, based off whatever is close to them.”

  “Like a human form,” says the Trespasser turning and looking at the unmoving man cut out of the air. It still glows, watching them.

  Donald stands up with an arm around Cathy's shoulder. From behind his mask comes the first drops of blood from his nose.

  “They can alter people – biologically, chemically, physically, whatever: they latch onto conscious beings and change them, make them into warriors – like us.”

  “Why?” asks the Trespasser.

  “Because they're fighting a war,” whispers Mark. “A war that ended a long time ago – now these things are all that's left, weapons left to run on automatic. There used to just be one huge swarm, but they tried to latch onto a race that was divided. Aliens that look like - like what it was before it changed. It took on their division, and the swarm split.”

  The Trespasser helps Mark to his feet, and he speaks directly to the alien like an investigator piecing the puzzle together.

  “One of the swarms: they latched onto those with good intentions. Protectors, carers, builders, providers... the other one did the opposite. It latched onto destroyers: murderers, predators, the hateful and the spiteful. That became their reality. They used the beings to fight one another, altering them to make them more and more powerful – it's all they know. Protect, or Destroy”

  “This one was losing,” says Donald, joining Mark. “The planet was in ruins. So it split itself and sent twelve smaller swarms to the nearest inhabited planet: Earth. It sought out those with good intent and changed them, turning them into -”

  “Us,” says Mark. “That's what the fire was – the fire that hit Glasgow. It was parts of the swarm, finding potential soldiers. It was giving itself an army to fight this enemy. It ran out of soldiers to fight the war.”

  “And now,” says Donald, looking at the Trespasser. “It's brought the war here.”

  “What's coming?” asks the Trespasser, his voice small now.

  “It's similar: it doesn't have a name, just a feeling,” says Mark. “It's like everything bad about people rolled up into a storm cloud. It just wants to hate and kill and destroy. Destroyer. It feels like it should be called Destroyer – and it's coming. Soon.”