Kingdom: The Complete Series

by Steven William Hannah

  “Jesus, Jamie, what -”

  “Calm down, Cathy, I didn't kill any of them,” he says, shrugging.

  “Her hand -”

  Jamie holds up a small silver revolver. “She was going for this.” He turns around. “Gary, let the forcefield down, for goodness sake.”

  Gary hesitates before letting his unscathed forcefield vanish like mist in a strong wind.

  “Bet you're glad you brought me, eh?” he asks, laughing nervously. “I'm so useful -”

  “Quiet, Gary,” he says, and squats beside the woman. “Now, sweetheart, look at me. You listening?”

  She nods, biting her lip and trying not to glance at her hand.

  Cathy and Gary watch Jamie cock the revolver, and their eyes widen as he rests it against her shoulder, barrel first.

  “Now, I'm going to ask you some questions, and you get one chance to give me an answer, ok? No second chances or games here. Answer me, and my friends and I walk out of here without another word. We'll call you an ambulance and everything,” he says, making sure to direct the last bit towards his inner breast pocket.

  She nods her understanding.

  “Ok, now tell me this: what are you doing in Glasgow?”

  “We were invited,” she whispers. “By him.”

  “Him?”

  “You know who I'm talking about.”

  Jamie leans closer, and Cathy and Gary give each other a wide eyed look of fear.

  “Say his name, then.”

  She leans forward, hissing it.

  “The King.”

  Episode 2

  Hangover

  Cathy is crouched beside an injured man, hand wrapped around a bullet wound on his forearm that is seeping blood into the couch he lies on. He scowls at her.

  “Keep pressure on it,” she says, her face poker straight.

  In the corner, Jamie holds a small silver revolver against a woman's shoulder; her mascara is starting to run with angry, pained weeping, and every breath that she takes is strained by her five broken fingers.

  “Tell me everything that you know about the King,” says Jamie. “Everything.”

  “I'll tell you anything,” she says in her broad Birmingham accent, “but not that, mate. Don't make me tell you that.”

  A single gunshot cracks the silence, and Cathy stifles a scream, clamping her hands to her ears as the screaming starts. Jamie has fired a single round through the woman's shoulder, and she writhes and screams as he leans over her, snarling.

  “Talk.”

  She can't talk through her clenched teeth – there's just screaming.

  “Jesus Jamie,” shouts Gary, “is that really necessary -”

  He turns with his eyes ablaze. “Gary if you can't handle this, go and stand in the hallway.”

  Gary says nothing, and Jamie turns back to the woman as her screams break into heavy breaths.

  “Ok,” he lowers his voice. “Now talk.”

  Tears are flowing freely now. “I – I can't, you don't know what he'll do.”

  Jamie rests the barrel against her kneecap, and raises an eyebrow.

  “Leave her alone,” growls one of the injured men, trying to get up on a shattered kneecap.

  Jamie flickers, and the man collapses with his cheekbone caved in, unconscious and drooling blood. Gary flinches; then Jamie is back, crouched over the woman, a lead pipe in one hand and the revolver back against her knee.

  “You're afraid of the King, I get it,” he says. “But he's not here. I am.”

  He cocks the revolver.

  Jamie jumps and nearly fires when he feels Cathy's hand on his shoulder. He looks up, angered and impatient.

  “Christ, Cathy, don't do that -”

  “Put the gun down, son,” she says, squeezing his shoulder.

  Jamie narrows his eyes. “What?”

  “Put it down. The girl's scared.”

  Jamie leans back in confusion as Cathy sits beside the injured woman, and takes her hand.

  “What did the King threaten you with?” she asks. “Kids? Family?”

  “Listen,” she whispers. “What I can tell you is where he'll be tonight, at midnight.”

  “Go on.”

  “Give me a map. We're helping him bring guns in.”

  “Guns?”

  “Yeah. My family knows a lot of arms dealers – it's why he came to us.”

  “Sounds like he's building an army.”

  “Maybe he is.”

  Jamie stares at her; she's fighting to keep the pain from her face.

  “Ok,” he says, finding a little respect for his enemy. He lifts his phone from his pocket and pulls up a map of Glasgow. “Point us there.”

  He checks his watch as she scrolls with her good hand through streets strung together like a dream catcher, oranges and reds and blues.

  “We've got two hours,” he says, taking the phone back as she marks the location. He checks it. “Right, I know the place, it's straight up from Charing Cross. We can walk it in about ninety minutes.” He turns to the woman again. “He's definitely going to be there? The King?”

  “Aye” she says. “And he'll be expecting me, too -”

  “Nice try; you're going to prison sugar.” Jamie lifts the phone to his ear. “Chloe, you there?”

  “As always.”

  “We've got a possible location for the King, it's on my map. Let the team know, get them to meet us there if possible. We'll need everyone for this. Are the police on their way to my current location?”

  “Police and ambulance, yeah.”

  “Ok, we'll wait till we hear sirens then leave, don't want this lot alerting the King.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Gary,” he turns to his team. “You and Cath, gather up all of the guns, phones, wallets, everything. Get a bag and take what's in their fridge too.”

  “What?” sneers the injured woman on the floor. “Are you lot living in a garage or something?”

  “Something like that, yeah,” says Jamie, smiling.

  They leave to the sound of distant sirens, huddled in their jackets as the cold settles in for the night. Street-lights flicker in the distance, and the stars sprawl out above them, getting comfortable for the night. Halfway down a street, Jamie ducks into a line of hedges and dumps the plastic bag, making a note on his phone's map.

  Someone will pick it up tomorrow.

  Leaving as emergency vehicles round the corner, the team disappear into the twilight mist like bad memories.

  Across town, Mark and Stacy enter the safe-house like tourists, eyes wide and taking in the sights. Trespasser One ushers them in, a bellboy in combat armour, and gives them a brief tour.

  The safe-house resembles a bunker, like a basement with rickety stairs leading up to a hatch above them. Moss and damp huddle like old friends in the corner, whilst buzzing florescent lights brighten the room like a cold winter sun.

  Chloe looks over from behind a bank of computer screens and speakers, headphones pressing her short blonde curls down. Standing up, she smiles and takes her headphones off, jogging across the room to them.

  She throws her arms around Mark, grinning.

  “You're here,” she says, and moves from Mark to Stacy, who returns the embrace. “How the hell have you two been?”

  “Surprisingly sober,” says Mark, laughing.

  She looks at the Trespasser, and back to them. Trespasser One is looking around with a raised eyebrow.

  “Where is everyone?” he asks.

  “I sent them down to Finnieston; the raid was a success. We've got news.”

  “What raid?” asks Mark. “What news?”

  Chloe looks around at the trio, taking a breath.

  “You were right,” she looks at the Trespasser. “The King is back, and he's going to an arms deal tonight. We intercepted the dealers, the team are heading there as we speak. It goes down at midnight.”

  “Shit.”

  Mark steps between them, confused.

  “The King? Y
ou're absolutely sure?”

  The Trespasser brushes past them, heading for one of the camp-beds. He kneels beside it and pulls a red toolbox out from beneath it. As he clicks it open and searches through it, he talks.

  “We knew this might happen. He doesn't know we're coming though – the advantage is ours.”

  Stacy grabs his hand out of reflex, and Mark squeezes it, swallowing hard.

  Finally, the Trespasser has assembled a modular assault rifle with a grenade launcher slung under the barrel. He stands up, checks the load, and slings it over his shoulder.

  “Right, Chloe, you got comms and everything up?”

  “Yeah, as always, just phone the number when you get there,” she says, returning to her post at the computers.

  “Ok, good, give me a map of the place if you can. You two,” he turns to Mark and Stacy, “I'll understand if you want to sit this out.”

  “Yeah,” says Stacy, “I'm a little rusty on the whole combat thing these days. Don't know how much use I'd be anyway.”

  “Mark?” he asks. “”We've got a bottle of whiskey here just in case, you want to down it and follow? We could use a heavy hitter.”

  Mark looks at Stacy, uncertainty in his eyes.

  “I, uh,” he murmurs, “I don't -”

  “Don't want to,” the Trespasser jumps in. “It's ok, I understand. I'll see you both when I get back. Chloe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Bring these two up to speed on what they've missed.”

  She nods, and the Trespasser pats them both on the shoulder as he passes by, running up the stairs and leaving with a slam of the hatch.

  Jamie is sitting in the overgrown hedges, his clothes catching the moisture in the damp air like towels and soaking him to the bone. Everything smells like damp woodland and forestry, despite the road ten feet away.

  He feels his inner coat pocket trembling, and curses: phone call. Answering it without taking it out of his pocket, he puts the earphone in under his hood, and lifts the coat pocket to his mouth.

  “Chloe,” he mutters. “What's up?”

  “I've got a conference call going on here, you should all be able to hear each other.”

  A bunch of voices clamour in confusion over one another, stopping and starting until Chloe blows a hiss of static through their earphones.

  “One at a time,” she scolds them, “and call your bloody names before speaking.”

  “Ok, listen,” says Jamie - another hiss of static stabs in his ear. “Chloe, damn it, what the -”

  “Call your name!”

  “Ok, ok.” he sighs. “This is Jamie, I'm at the location. Gary and Cath are hidden nearby. We're waiting on backup.”

  “Ten minutes till the deal,” says Chloe. “Help is inbound, hold your position.”

  Jamie rolls his eyes, trying to distance himself from the feeling that this is a military operation.

  Another voice comes through his earpiece, breaking through the garbled ambience of the quiet city; if one car passes, it echoes through their earpieces as it passes each team-member.

  This voice is familiar:

  “This is Trespasser One. I have Donald with me. I'm above the location, up on the overpass. I can provide cover, but if you'd rather I breach with you guys then -”

  “We'll be fine,” says Jamie. “Keep an eye out in case anybody tries to make an escape.”

  He looks out from his jungle-esque hideout, scanning his eyes over the shadowed road running above them, over a tunnel to his right.

  “Trespasser, I don't see you,” he says.

  “That's the point, son.”

  “Ah.”

  “Five minutes,” comes Chloe's voice.

  “This is Trespasser One: what's your plan, Jamie?”

  “Walk in,” he says, “and incapacitate anybody that tries to stop me.”

  “And if you find the King?”

  Jamie reaches into his coat pocket and thumbs the small, silver revolver, warm from his body heat, beating with a pulse of its own as he rotates the cylinder over and over.

  “Jamie?” he asks again, his voice crackling as a van passes by his position. Jamie sees the van's lights flicker overhead.

  “I'll bring him in; alive if possible.”

  “Good lad. I think that van was one of our marks, by the way.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Plates are fake.”

  Jamie knows better than to ask how the Trespasser can tell. He settles into his hideout, squatting amongst the brambles.

  “This is Jamie. Are we all ready to move in?”

  The replies come back like echoes.

  “It's Cathy, I'm, uh, ready -”

  “Donald. I'm here -”

  “Trespasser One, ready.”

  “Gary. Yep.”

  Jamie sees the same white van slow at the entrance into the car park, and turn. Its lights wash over the old building, a dilapidated old carpet warehouse or something equally miscellaneous. Boarded windows mark the front, with a car park sprawled in front like a huge doormat, marked only by the two burnt out cars left there by the Destroyer's attack.

  Nobody has bothered to clean the ash from the gravel, and it mixes with the rain to make a thick grime that the van leaves tire trails in.

  “This is Trespasser One,” comes the voice in Jamie's ear. “People getting out the van.”

  Jamie stays still, tense and ready to move if the K-word is said, but nothing comes through the ear piece save the silence of held breaths.

  “This is Jamie: Trespasser, any sight of the King?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Who is it, then?”

  “Four men, armed. They're moving towards the building.”

  Jamie hears the slam of the van's doors echo through the night. Trespasser One keeps them updated.

  “There's someone waiting for them at the door. Wearing a suit -”

  “Is it him?” blurts Jamie.

  “No.”

  “It's midnight, team,” says Chloe.

  “They're inside. Move in,” says the Trespasser. “Take down the van's tires on the way.”

  “Got it,” says Jamie, and speaks through the phone to his team. “You heard the man. Move in.”

  Mark sits on a bench behind Chloe as she types away at three different keyboards, a series of speakers hooked up to different phones plugged into other computers with monitors displaying maps, timetables, and other readings that may as well be hieroglyphs to him. Stacy sits across the other end of the room, watching from afar.

  “I don't like this,” says Mark, his hands clasped in front of his head.

  “They'll be fine,” says Chloe.

  Mark lets out a tense breath. “Chloe, you remember the first time we met?”

  “Yeah,” she says, distracted as she tip-taps away on a laptop. “Me and Jamie were about to be gunned down. Then you blasted through a wall in your pants and punched everyone.”

  “And you remember that I had Jamie by the collar ten minutes later, because he was going to shoot the King's body double?”

  Chloe stops typing, and turns around, looking at him over her shoulder.

  “What's your point?”

  “If the King is there, Jamie isn't going to bring him in alive.”

  Chloe stares at Mark, then over at Stacy, and gives a little shrug.

  “Good.”

  “Chloe -”

  “The King was going to sell me into sex slavery to pay our debt, Mark.” She silences him with a steady glare. “We locked him up once and he just walked out – then nearly killed you. Twice. Then nearly killed Jamie and Tony; then actually killed a lot of people, and is now planning some more insane bullshit. If Jamie had just shot him when he had the chance we wouldn't be here.”

  She turns around and goes back to her work. Standing up, Mark escapes the hot air around her and sits beside Stacy in the cool darkness.

  “What are you doing over here?” he asks.

  “I don't like sitti
ng next to all the tech,” she says. “I can feel it all. Feels weird, like someone tickling my brain.”

  Mark throws her a funny look. “I forget your power sometimes. You ok?”

  “Yeah. I'd feel better if we were there helping.”

  “You said -”

  “I know I said I'm useless in a fight, but...” she shrugs. “If they're taking the King down, it'd be nice to be there. I've never seen him in the flesh.”

  “Pray it stays that way.”

  She gives him a curious look. “Don't you wish you were there to put him in cuffs yourself? I mean, this guy did do some pretty dark shit to you.”

  He grunts. “I'm past it.”

  “Oh you've forgiven him? That's cute.”

  Mark scowls at her. “What?”

  “We both know that's bullshit, Mark. If you wanted to go punching criminals, you'd have to drink. That's why you're not out there.”

  “So much for having my back,” he says, leaning forward and looking away from her.

  “Hey, man, I've always got your back, you know that. I just don't think you've got your back.”

  He looks up at her. “The hell does that mean?”

  “It means don't be so hard on yourself. You use your powers to help people. If you were diabetic, I wouldn't think you were strong for not taking insulin, right?”

  Mark huffs, turning away again.

  “Especially,” she continues, “if insulin gave you superpowers. Nothing wrong with taking medicine for a condition – and in this case, your condition is that you're bloody superman.”

  “I'm not a superhero -”

  “Shut up Mark,” she sighs, and reaches over to squeeze his forearm. “You properly saved the world a few months back. You couldn't have done that sober.”

  She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a few nuts and bolts, and threads them together. As Mark watches, she cups them in her palm and lets them wind their way up and down over and over. It's hypnotic; Mark finds himself drifting away on his thoughts as the bolts roll around her palm like stones on glaciers, the nuts winding up and down the threads like little wheels.

  “Do you ever imagine what we could do,” she whispers, squeezing his arm again with her other hand, “if we weren't so afraid of ourselves?”