Kingdom: The Complete Series

by Steven William Hannah

  “How long do we have before it arrives?”

  “An hour,” whispers Mark. “Maybe two.”

  Mark stares into space and sits down on the ground, pulling his knees up like a child.

  “Mark, get up,” says Jamie, extending a hand.

  Mark shakes his head. “We can't fight this. You didn't see what I saw.”

  “Mark's right,” says Donald. “We don't stand a chance against this thing. It's pure power – the kind of power that we all have, but magnified.”

  “Can we just give it this one?” the Trespasser points at the man-shape. “Is that what it wants?”

  “It's too late for that,” says Mark, his face as white as chalk. “We're soldiers now. It won't stop until it's wiped us out, and made every corrupt and hateful human into a soldier for itself.”

  “What if,” says Cathy, whispering now, rocking on her heels, “we gave ourselves up to it? Would it leave everybody else alone?”

  Donald shakes his head. “It will absorb what it can, and destroy what is left. There's nothing we can do.”

  “We can fight,” says the booming, bass voice of the alien. “That is your only option.”

  “This isn't our war,” sneers the Trespasser, turning on it like an angered animal. “We never asked to be involved in this – so you can just piss off back into space and tell your Destroyer to chase you somewhere else.”

  “The Destroyer knows that I am here now,” its voice is a trembling roar in his nervous gut. “It knows that there are potential soldiers. Either it absorbs or kills every being on this planet, or we defeat it. There is no middle ground. There is nothing to negotiate. We must prepare for the battle.”

  The Trespasser is left speechless, out of things to say. He lifts a hand to his ear, presses in his comms button, and says:

  “Command? You getting all of this?”

  Command's voice is sombre and flat. “Heard the whole thing, son.”

  “What are my orders?”

  There is a long silence, and the street is devoid of noise save for the nervous trembling of the squad.

  “Orders are to stay put. Our sensors aren't picking anything up, we can't be sure this thing's story is true.”

  The alien chimes in, as though it can hear his comms.

  “Invisibility is not beyond the Destroyer. You will not see it until it is here.”

  “It says -”

  “I heard it.”

  “Orders?”

  “You're the one on the ground, Trespasser. What would you do?”

  “I'd evacuate the city and alert the entire world to this: they need to know. We need all the help we can get.”

  “You intend to fight this thing, if it exists?”

  “I see no other choice, sir.”

  He can almost hear the gears grinding in Command's head, considering the situation.

  “Ok, son. We'll begin the evacuation and send help.”

  “Don't just send help, Command,” says the Trespasser, looking around at his frightened, shaken squad. “Send everything.”

  Jamie extends his hand again, and Mark finally takes it. Jamie pulls him to his feet, and without saying a word, embraces him.

  “We can't win this,” whispers Mark. “Jamie, we don't have a chance.”

  Jamie grabs him by the shoulders. “We didn't stand a chance against the King either, some would have said.”

  “The King's human, Jamie. This thing is – it's just power and hatred. How do you fight that?”

  “I'm sure the alien will tell us,” says Jamie, and only now does Mark realise that time has frozen around them. Everything else is grey – including the alien. Jamie lowers his head and his voice, looking straight through Mark's eyes and into his mind. “We have to try. There's no alternative.”

  Mark nods, swallowing the fear blocking his throat.

  “Now chin up Mark, put your brave face on. You're the squad's rock. If you're crumbling then they will too.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. So get your shit together. You ready?”

  Mark nods his head, taking a breath as though he is about to plunge underwater. “I'm ready.”

  Time snaps back into flow, and the Trespasser takes his finger from his ear and turns to the alien.

  “Ok,” he says, shaking the nervousness from his bones. “How long do we have, and what do we have to do to beat this thing?”

  The man-shape rotates without moving its legs, and raises its arm to motion them in closer.

  “We have an hour and twenty two minutes, roughly. As for how we defeat it: gather round, and I will tell you.”

  Episode 10

  Betrayal

  Gregor strains his ears, listening: a door creaks open somewhere in the facility, and footsteps echo through the damp concrete, a faint pitter-patter like raindrops. As they pass he closes his eyes, counting three – no, four people.

  They are whispering among themselves, though he can't hear what they're saying. The tone of their voices betrays a conspiracy; or a rebellion.

  Silence settles in again, and he lays his head back on the pillow, concentrating on the other sounds. Above him, through the protective dirt layers of their bunker, he can hear jet aircraft streaking through the sky, and heavily armoured vehicles rocking the earth with their tracks.

  Gregor tries to connect the dots as he listens:

  Twenty men and women left the bunker to capture the people hit by the second arrival – to capture those with powers. Four have returned, and now the military has taken the city as though war has been declared.

  Something has gone terribly wrong.

  Wincing at his broken ribs, Gregor reaches under his pillow. His hand closes around the cold metal grip of his silenced pistol. He holds it in front of his eyes, checks the load in the magazine, and flicks the safety off.

  Sliding his hands under the thin, rough blanket that is draped over him, he rests his head back; to all the world, he looks like an injured man sleeping through his pain in a rickety hospital bed. The pistol waits under the covers, like a shark.

  Focusing his mind, he lets the sounds haunting the facility filter into his ears. There is shouting, somewhere. The argument is escalating – he hears something smash and tenses up. Everything in his bones urges him to get out of bed and go to the King's aid: but with his broken body, he is of no use.

  The shouting stops – for a moment, he wonders if the King has talked them down. Then there is one long burst of angered monologue, followed by a strangled cough.

  Then silence.

  Gregor opens his eyes, feeling a warm tear well at the edge. Footsteps click-clack like hooves through the stone corridors – four sets of them. Hidden beneath the blanket, he readies his pistol.

  The door to the medical room creaks open and a stout, heavy woman with an under-bite like a bulldog and a bright red face comes in, holding a pump-action shotgun at the ready. Three men in long black identical coats follow behind her, clearing and securing the room.

  “He's alone,” says one of the men, a grey-haired veteran that Gregor knows well. He puts his hands in his pockets, and the bulldog-lady rests the shotgun over her shoulder.

  Like student-doctors, they gather around his bed.

  Gregor watches them, his finger tense against the trigger under the covers.

  “You look terrible, son,” says the bulldog, her voice like a crow with a forty-a-day habit.

  “I've felt better,” Gregor rasps. “What happened?”

  “It all went to hell,” says the grey-haired man, sadness clouding his boyish features. “Some glowing alien bullshit killed the others.” He takes his hands from his pocket and opens them as though he is miming a firework going off. “Flash. Dead.”

  “You retreated?”

  “No need for us to die Gregor,” the bulldog rasps. “The arrival was a bust. No new powered people. Nothing.”

  “So?” asks Gregor, wheezing through his crushed lungs. “You had orders.”

  “Wh
ich became null and void. Can you hear that racket out there?”

  “Military,” says Gregor, nodding.

  “Glasgow is a lost cause, man,” says the grey one. The other two begin to open cabinets and stuff medicine and bottles into bags. “Whatever is about to happen, it's bad enough that they've started moving civilians out of the city centre. They're using the subway tunnels and everything. It's all gone to shit.”

  “What Paul is trying to say,” she says, “is that it's over. We're leaving the city. We wanted to ask you to join us.”

  “Leave the city?” asks Gregor, sneering. “Have you lost your minds? This is our Kingdom -”

  “Aye, aye,” Paul sighs. “The Kingdom and all that.” He gives Gregor a sympathetic smile. “That's over, Gregor. It's not happening.”

  “And the King?” asks Gregor. “What did he think of this idea?”

  The bulldog waves his question away.

  “It doesn't matter – all you need to know is that we're leaving. We could make a lot of money, us five. We've got the skills and the connections -”

  “What did he think?” asks Gregor, sterner this time.

  “Greg, man,” Paul puts a hand on his shoulder. “That guy stood on your broken ribs because you made an honest mistake. What do you care what happened to him?”

  Gregor can feel himself shaking, his lips twisting in anger and grief.

  “What did you do to him?”

  “What he would have done to you – or us,” says the bulldog, shrugging. “He's past it, Gregor.”

  Gregor shouts, shaking. “What did you do to him?”

  The men packing the medicine bags stop and turn around.

  “Here Paul, maybe we should leave him.”

  “Shut up and keep packing,” he replies without turning around.

  “Gregor you can't still believe in all this Kingdom shite, surely,” says the bulldog, stepping in closer and cocking her head. “It was a great idea to start with, but after the investors got shafted... we don't have anything left. We're just criminals now. It was never going to work after those superhero pricks got involved.”

  Gregor lowers his head and closes his eyes, fighting back angry tears.

  “What,” he whispers, “did you do to the King?”

  “I put a knife between his ribs,” says Paul, his hands still in his pockets.

  “Traitor,” says Gregor, his voice a low growl. Between heavy breaths he looks around the room at the four betrayers. “You never believed in the Kingdom. You never had faith.”

  “Did any of us?” asks the bulldog.

  “Yes,” Gregor snarls. “I did.”

  They all see the blankets shift, forming around the outline of a hidden pistol.

  Too late, they realise what Gregor has done.

  The first round burns a hole in the thin white sheet and passes through the bulldog's flabby neck. With a splutter she drops the shotgun and clutches her throat, falling to the floor.

  Gregor turns the pistol with his gaze, aiming it blind. The second round misses Paul, who is still fighting to get his hands out of his pockets as the third and fourth round punch through his grey suit. He crumples like a paper bag.

  One of the younger men drops his medicine bag and it smashes on the ground. He reaches into his suit, grabbing a cheap old pistol. Two rounds rip the side out of his thigh, and an arterial spray of blood coats the ground as his femoral artery bursts open. His eyes roll back in his head as his blood pressure flat-lines, leaving only his unarmed friend.

  The last one raises his hands in surrender and falls back on to the ground, clutching his medicine bag. Gregor keeps the shape beneath the blanket pointed at him as he eases himself out of the bed, groaning with the pain.

  Whimpering on the ground, the last survivor watches him pause at the bed's edge for a full minute before finally mustering the strength to stand on his own. Gregor sways back and forth, his hand out for balance, the pistol hanging from his fingers as though he is asleep on his feet.

  He steadies himself and looks up, his burning gaze falling upon the shivering figure on the floor.

  With a snarl, Gregor begins to shuffle towards him.

  “Gregor, please man,” the survivor whispers, his voice caught behind the fear in his throat.

  “Don't speak.” says Gregor, taking shallow breaths to save himself the pain in his lungs. “Nothing you can say will make this better.”

  “Take the medicine,” the man holds out the bag. “Take it all, I don't care.”

  “I'll be taking it anyway.”

  “The money then. I've got money -”

  “Do you know how many people,” says Gregor, sighing with weariness, “try to buy their lives back from me? I've killed dozens of people, son. If you could buy your way out of it, I wouldn't need money in the first place.”

  The man says nothing. His shoulders sag as he realises what is happening.

  “I'm sorry,” he offers.

  “This was only ever about money to you people. None of you ever believed that we could make a better world.”

  “A better world?” the man asks, incredulous. “Gregor we're like the fucking mafia, since when were we trying to make a better world? We hurt people, we kill people, we extort people, and we control people. We don't help anybody.”

  “There was a time,” Gregor raises a hand for silence, “when we did. Before you joined; before you, with your filth and your greed, joined. Rotten souls, men and women without principles or morals. The King made Glasgow a better place, son. Before you.”

  Gregor raises the pistol, pointing it at the man's heart. The young man flinches back, trying to put the medicine bag between him and the waiting bullet.

  “The King never made money off of this city. He put it all back into making sure it ran correctly. A benevolent dictator, an all powerful ruler making the right decisions for the good of the people. Not the easy decisions, but the right ones. A perfect system. In time, a perfect world. A world without crime – without corruption – except for that which the King – the Kings – allowed.”

  “Gregor man,” the man whispers. “You've lost it.”

  “No, I'm as sane as can be,” he smiles. “You – and people like you – are what the Kingdom was designed to wipe out. People are inherently scum, son. They are wicked creatures bent only on satisfying their own base needs. They need to be controlled – through whatever means necessary; and when they can't be controlled...” Gregor reaches in and, as though taking a dangerous weapon from a naïve child, lifts the medicine bag from the shivering man. “When they can't be controlled? You have to kill them. For the greater good, son. For the Kingdom.”

  Gregor empties the rest of the pistol's magazine into the man, who cries out and jerks like a puppet on a string as each round punches through his skin. Gregor pulls the trigger until it clicks, then drops it.

  He takes the bag, walks through the door and, clutching his ribs, heads for the King's office.

  “My King,” he gasps, and drops to his knees beside the bloodied figure.

  The King is propped up against the concrete wall with a knife jammed through his blue suit jacket, up to the hilt in his ribs. His legs are splayed out on the floor, showing his socks and some pale, wiry-haired skin. At his sides, his hands lay palm up, open and empty. A pool of blood has stained the seat of his trousers.

  He can barely lift his head, so Gregor lifts it for him and checks for a pulse in his neck. It's shallow, but it's there.

  “I'm so sorry,” whispers Gregor as he opens the suit jacket to get a look at the knife. The shirt around it is torn and stained a sick, dark purple. “I should have been here. I could have stopped this.”

  With a wheezing cough, the King awakens. Gregor grabs his shoulders as the King's eyes open, his entire body racked by the spluttering.

  “You're awake,” says Gregor, grinning. He turns around and rummages in the bag, searching for the pain killers. He finds a morphine injector and pats the King's leg. “Sorry about
this.”

  He jams it into his thigh and the King lurches forward, wheezing something through his gritted teeth.

  “It should start to feel better soon. There should be some bandages in here, I'm going to need to take the knife out -”

  The King springs to life, and grabs Gregor's hand. Shocked, Gregor stops and stares into the King's half-shut eyes, his pupils like black holes.

  “Leave it,” the King wheezes.

  “Your right,” says Gregor, pausing. “It might be the only thing stopping internal bleeding. I need to get you to a hospital.”

  The King shakes his head, grimacing. “I'm the most wanted man in the world,” he sighs, his grip tightening on Gregor's hand. “No hospitals. Glasgow's lost anyway. The Kingdom is lost.”

  He lets go and leans back against the wall.

  “I can't just leave it, sir. You'll die – I have to do something...”

  Gregor trails off as he sees the truth in the King's eyes.

  “It's ok, Gregor,” he says. “It's ok son.”

  Gregor feels the tears welling up and chokes them back down.

  “Please, let me try -”

  “Leave it,” the King puts a hand on his arm, and the anger leaves his face as the morphine hits him. “It's ok. I deserve this.”

  “No, don't say that – you don't deserve any of this. This is my fault, I failed you, I failed -”

  “My fault,” the King cuts him off. “All my fault. I let Mark into the administration facility. I thought I could control him. I was wrong. That's when this all fell apart.”

  “I can't just let you die,” Gregor whispers. “I don't know what I'll do. I mean, what's a Kingdom without its King?”

  The King squeezes his arm.

  “My only regret,” the King wheezes, “is that I don't have more to give you. I'd name you as my heir, Gregor; but heir to what? A pile of ashes? I've ruined everything.” The King's eyes begin to close, as though he is going to sleep. “I've so much still to do. I'm not finished yet.”

  Gregor is still clutching his heart at the word 'heir'.