Kingdom: The Complete Series

by Steven William Hannah

  He doesn't fly.

  The two men grimace at the loud crash and the blaring of car alarms far below them. Jamie grabs the Trespasser's arm and stops time for them both.

  “Jesus,” he whispers. “Let's get him home before the King's men turn up, eh?”

  “Agreed.”

  The squad stand around a cleared space in the bunker, fluorescent lights stinging their eyes, holding steaming cups of coffee. Everyone fights smirks as Jamie and Chloe help Mark into his Trespasser Armour, now spray-painted a regal shade of blue with gold lining his shoulders, arms and chest.

  He turns to the squad and rotates his arms, spreading them to look at himself. His armour catches the light, the colour of the summer night's sky. Where the plates separate it shows the woven fabric below; there are hints of gold and yellow, beaming like sunlight through the cracks. Chloe and Jamie nod to each other, and then unfurl the fabric bunched up at his shoulder blades.

  A dark blue cape unfurls, vast and billowing, catching what little breeze there is. It falls to the back of Mark's calves, where even his Trespasser boots have been painted dark blue to match.

  “Who the hell did this?” he asks, impressed.

  Donald and Stacy nudge each other. “You're welcome.”

  “Woah,” whispers Gary. “Turn really quickly, I want to see the cape swoosh.”

  Mark obliges, grasping one edge of his cape with his hand and turning, pulling it out and upwards. It sweeps out at his back, glittering in the dim light.

  “Shame,” says the Trespasser. “It's probably going to get the shit torn out of it.”

  “Yeah, well,” sighs Stacy. “We can always make him a new one.”

  “He should probably shave,” says Cathy. “Not very heroic having a hobo-beard.”

  “She's got a point,” says Chloe as she brushes dust off his cape and stands back to admire her work.

  “Before any of that,” says Jamie. “Let's see it in action.”

  “What,” laughs Mark, “you want me to punch someone?”

  “No – give it a go. Try and fly.”

  “In here?”

  “Just like; float or something, I don't know.”

  “I...” he hesitates, and finds himself looking around at the squad. They're looking at him with something in their eyes, a little ray of hope that he hadn't noticed before. In the blacks of their eyes he can see himself, a tall, shining figure in glistening armour, a cape the colour of midnight billowing around him. “Ok, give me a second.”

  He shakes the tension out of his muscles, stretching like an athlete, and takes a deep breath. Closing his eyes, he clenches his knuckles and focuses.

  The squad watch as he starts to shake – but nothing happens.

  He lets out a tense breath and opens his eyes, looking around embarrassed.

  “Give me a sec,” he whispers, more to himself, and tries again.

  He closes his eyes, and focuses. It's different this time; the energy is coming from deep within him, from his heart, not his mind. There is a hoard of tiny quantum-whatever nano-somethings inside him, he remembers, that give him his powers: and they work on intent.

  Lost in his own thoughts, he wills himself upwards; he's aware that his body is trembling with the effort as the laws of physics are bent and broken inside him, but he focuses himself on his will alone. He barely hears people shouting his name.

  Then Jamie's voice cuts through them all.

  “Mark!”

  Mark opens his eyes, and looks at them in surprise.

  “What? What is it?”

  They seem awfully short to him.

  Mark looks down, and finds himself floating two feet off the ground.

  “Well shit -” he manages, then the pain in his head catches up to him.

  His nose sputters blood, and he crashes to the ground, falling to his knees and holding his head, cringing in pain. Jamie and Chloe catch him, helping him up as he wipes the blood away. The squad are silent, unwilling to voice any doubt.

  “Get this man a beer,” Jamie tells them. “Go on. Bring him a few, in fact.”

  Stacy and Gary nod and scuttle off.

  Trespasser One steps forward. “Well that proves it. You want to take a break, Mark?”

  “A break?” he laughs, waving them all away. “I've got three days to learn this. Get me those beers, I'm trying it again.”

  Episode 9

  Atlantic

  The River Clyde laps and splashes against its barriers, the only sound above the whistling night wind. Lit only by the swollen moon, the riverside rustles as dark figures move through it, emerging from the hedges and trees.

  Trespasser One, his half-burnt face hidden behind his mask, is the first out onto the exposed riverside. He carries a stubby black shotgun, and keeps it ready as he scans around. Finding nothing, he motions to the hedges, and a group of similarly dressed people – definitely not soldiers – emerge. The first has the same armour with a long coat draped over it, and keeps a revolver in his hand as the Trespasser helps him over the side.

  “You're sure the boat is there?” asks Jamie as he leaps onto the railings.

  The Trespasser pushes him over.

  Jamie stifles a scream as he falls, and rather than hitting the water he finds himself wrapped in a soft embrace of fabric and foam, which he clambers out of. Seconds later, there's a much heavier thump, and Mark struggles his way out of the same foamy blocks. His cape trails behind him as Jamie helps him out, and the rest of the squad follow shortly after.

  Looking around, Jamie sees the small boat that they are on, a cross between a speedboat and a dinghy – a darker version of whatever the coastguard use. It's not quite black – rather, it's the same colour as night, a murky blue-grey that's indistinguishable from the inky water.

  The Trespasser is the last one to drop into the crates of foam, and rolls out without issue. He checks the squad over in the darkness, counting them as he walks to the back of the boat. Once there, he turns to Mark and claps his shoulder.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Then let's go.”

  He guns the motor, and the water behind them froths and splutters as they accelerate down the Clyde, heading towards Helensburgh and open water.

  Towards the ocean.

  Hours later, the boat comes to a stop far from any land. Even in the pitch black of the open water, Mark can barely make out the sparkling lights of the coast in the distance. Above them, the moon glows through a thick layer of clouds. When he tries to find the horizon, Mark can't tell where the ocean ends and the grubby sky begins.

  “God, this is hellish,” he mutters.

  Nobody replies.

  Stacy and Cathy are asleep under the same blanket at the back of the boat, whilst Donald and Gary sit on a bench together, deep in whispered conversation.

  Mark pats Jamie's leg, and his friend wakes up with a start.

  “We're here, I think,” says Mark.

  “Ugh, thanks for waking me,” Jamie groans. “Where are we? Is this limbo, or what?”

  “This,” says Trespasser as he swaggers towards them, “is our launch pad. We've got less than twenty four hours until the Agency drops a neutron bomb on Glasgow, and Mark has yet to break the sound barrier let alone hit escape velocity. If we're going to kill the King, he needs practice. Out here, we've got privacy and an open sky.”

  “Can I just point out,” says Jamie, “that if Mark falls unconscious or anything up there then he drops into the bloody ocean; he'll drown.”

  “That's why he'll be wearing this,” says the Trespasser, grabbing a bright orange life jacket and tossing it towards Mark. “It inflates upon contact with the water. You've got a lot of spare drink, too?”

  Mark nods, holding up two silver flasks.

  “Good,” says Trespasser. “Then let's get started. Remember: don't jump from the boat, you'll bloody well sink it.”

  “I know, I know,” says Mark. “I need to get used to taking off anyway, it's the
hardest part.”

  “Wait a minute,” comes a muffled voice from the far end of the boat.

  They look over and in the dim half-light, Stacy untangles herself from the mass of quilts whilst Cathy still sleeps. Shivering in her combat armour, she staggers to the front of the boat as it rocks with the waves.

  “We're out of Glasgow, right?”

  “Nah,” sighs Jamie, “this is the train station, Stace.”

  “Oh shut up. What I'm saying is: Tony got us out of Glasgow for this so nobody would hear Mark go supersonic – if he can; what's stopping us from getting everyone else out in a boat too? Then we could just let the Agency nuke the King -”

  “Neutron bomb,” the Trespasser corrects her. “Big difference.”

  “Whatever. We could let them neutron bomb the King then. If we get all the people out, what's the issue? You said a neutron blast wouldn't destroy many buildings right?”

  “Right.”

  “So why don't we get all the people out?”

  “Because we only have one boat that I got it as a favour from a very old friend. I can't swing a bloody freighter, Stace – which, by the way, is what we'd need. There are thousands of people still in the city centre.”

  Gary speaks up from the back of the boat. “I'm wondering why we're going back at all.”

  “Because thousands die if we don't, son,” says Donald sitting beside him.

  “Yeah but if we die trying to take down the King then what the hell are people going to do? Just nuke every city he moves to?”

  “Neutron -”

  “Aye, Tony, we know, we know.”

  “Gary's right, in a way,” says Mark, taking a sip from his flask. “If we fail, the world is going to have to find another way to deal with the King – and we don't know if there is any other way.”

  “If they can't find a way,” says the Trespasser, “then that's it. It's over, and he's won. He'll enforce whatever law he wants upon the world based solely on his power, and seven billion people will just have to suck it up and try and get on with it.”

  “Exactly,” says Mark. “So I'll be back in a while guys; I'm gonna go try and break the sound barrier.”

  Jamie gives him a playful punch on his armoured chest.

  “Be careful, man.”

  Mark pulls down his face mask and loosens up his muscles.

  “I'll be fine.”

  His cape catches the wind blowing from the ocean, and in the cold spray he begins to lift, slowly at first, off the ground, focusing in silence. The squad watch him lift and disappear into the air like a balloon, drifting ever upward.

  “He's not going that fast is he?” asks Stacy, peering into the night.

  “No,” says Jamie.

  Mark keeps his eyes closed as he ascends, the wind buffeting him as he climbs higher. Mist and rain begin to dampen his skin, and it feels as though the sky around him is weighing him down, trying to drag him back to earth. His focus comes and goes, and for entire minutes at a time he is lost in the sensation of struggling upward against gravity.

  It feels to him as though his entire body is a hot air balloon; when he focuses with a clear mind, he fills with fire and shoots upwards. Yet if he tries too hard and strains his mind, he loses focus and begins to fill with lead.

  Holding his drunken thoughts with clarity is like trying to hold water in his hands. For every second he manages to see through the mist and train his mind on flight, another thought barges in and demands attention. Fear pulls his thoughts off in one direction, keeping him distracted.

  Taking a breath and grounding himself in the present moment, Mark opens his eyes. It makes no difference; everything is darkness.

  He's drifting, floating in a bottomless abyss, unable to tell what way he's facing, where land is, where home is.

  Fear swells like a cyst in his gut, and with shaking hands he takes a silver flask from his belt and raises it to his lips, welcoming the familiar burn of the whiskey. The fire in him blazes as though he is drinking oil.

  A minute later, he passes through the clouds.

  There's silence in the boat asides from Cathy's snoring, and the gentle splash of the waves against the hull. Jamie leans back against the side and looks up; he can't see Mark anywhere.

  “What are we going to do after all this, Tony?” he asks.

  The Trespasser, sitting on the boat's edge with his shotgun on his lap, lifts his mask to show his scarred face. Stacy stirs, looking up at him.

  “You mean after the King is gone?” asks the Trespasser.

  “Yeah. When everything goes back to normal.”

  Stacy laughs. “I don't know if anything is ever going back to normal.”

  “As close as it'll get then. I mean, after the King; then what?”

  Trespasser One leans back, sighing. “That's if we beat the King. A lot depends on that drunken idiot in the sky right now.”

  “At least he's our drunken idiot,” says Stacy. “We were bloody lucky that the fire came to people like us – and not more people like the King.”

  “It would always have picked people like us. The Protector gave us our powers based on our intentions when it arrived on earth,” says Jamie. “I was desperate for time when it hit me – I needed time to save Chloe.”

  Trespasser One strokes his chin. “Then I wonder if the Destroyer chose people for their intentions too – no wonder the King got powers.”

  Stacy shrugs. “There'll always be a job for us, I guess.”

  “Speak for yourself,” says Trespasser One. “I don't have any powers.”

  “Yeah, but this is your job anyway. You were fighting bad guys before this, and after this is over, there'll still be wars to fight. Us lot? We're going to left standing about doing nothing.”

  “I don't know about that,” says Jamie. “There's a lot you could do with your power, Stace. You can manipulate machinery, god, you could do anything.”

  “That's the problem with having a power,” says Stacy. “If I don't use it, then what's the point? It's like my life has already been laid out for me now.”

  “I don't like to plan too far ahead,” says Jamie. “But the only reason I even went after the King in the first place – where this all started – was because I wanted a better life for Chloe and me. That's what I intend to do when this is all done. Just go somewhere quiet and enjoy life. Maybe travel a bit.”

  “You could all do anything,” says the Trespasser. “Anything at all.”

  “I said that to Mark not so long ago,” says Stacy.

  “Said what?”

  “Imagine what we could do; if we only stopped getting in our own way.”

  “That's beautiful; in the 'I don't get it' kinda way.”

  “I just mean -” she starts, and stops, frustrated. “I dunno. Like; aren't you ever afraid of what you could do with your power? Imagine what Mark could do if he wasn't ashamed of the whole alcohol thing. He could be like the King but, like, good.”

  “He already is.”

  “Yeah but he could change so much more if he just stopped being afraid of what he's capable of. We all could. I mean; the King isn't, and look what he's done. Mark doesn't have to be afraid of people, he could be the kind of leader we just don't get these days. ”

  Jamie looks up at the sky, still unable to see Mark.

  “Maybe you're onto something there, Stace.”

  Mark is climbing, accelerating as he leaves more and more behind. His fear drops away as he passes through the clouds, and where there was once a knotting anxiety in his muscles there is now strength, growing by the second.

  His eyes are open as the clouds fall away behind him, clear air streaming from the corners of his shoulder as the cape billows out behind him. The moon is full tonight, casting silver light over everything. Whistling wind buffets him this way and that, pulling him to one side.

  Mark steadies himself; the more he focuses, the faster he goes. The moonlight blows away the doubt, and he soars.

  Up here, with nothing
to get in the way, he can see every star in the sky above him; he can see the arm of the Milky Way as he climbs higher, going faster still.

  His mind falters momentarily as he takes in the stars: where the Protector and the Destroyer came from, where his power came from – and in less than twenty-four hours he's going to try and send the King back there.

  The King.

  His fear creeps back, and he slows. The clouds look like an ocean of their own from this high up, and even Mark can feel the cold creeping through his armour. Wind and frost sting at his skin like tiny needles, trying to tear his cape off.

  The King.

  He can see his face in the stars. It all seems so impossible now, so far away.

  Mark closes his eyes and slows, his arms by his side and his hands clenched into fists with effort. He tries to bring his mind back, to let the fear drop away like weights, but it wraps itself around him like strangling vines that choke his power.

  He slows and stutters to a stop like a broken engine.

  “No,” he whispers, “no, no, shit -”

  His nose sputters blood, and he begins to fall away from the stars.

  Clawing at the sky, Mark falls.

  The flaw in his training plan becomes apparent as he accelerates towards the ground, panic blinding his focus. Going this fast, he'll go so far down into the waiting ocean that he might not make it back up again.

  Fear fills his head as the clouds race up to greet him. Flight won't come to him, he's flailing and clawing at the air trying to stop but he's only falling faster.

  The clouds streak past him, soaking him, and the glistening ocean beckons him home far below.

  Mark stares down at his death – worse still, he stares at his own failure.

  Too drunk to save the world.

  “Hey, is that Mark?”

  Stacy points to a plummeting shape in the darkness, visible only by the sparkling gold of his cape.

  “He's in free-fall,” says Jamie. “Start the boat! He's going into the water -”

  “He has a life-jacket,” says the Trespasser.