Kingdom: The Complete Series

by Steven William Hannah

  Mark waves him away. “Oh save me the philosophy lesson, we're not in a bloody comic.”

  “You're right,” he admits. “We're not. Which is why trying to punch me away is going to get you nowhere.”

  Mark shrugs. “Worth a try.”

  “Well let me spare you the effort, Mark. I've tried to kill you, and failed. Now that we're on a more even footing, I'm sure you can understand the futility of trying to do the same to me.”

  “I don't have to kill you to beat you.”

  “What are you going to do then? What prison could possibly hold me?”

  Mark looks at him, then glances away, frowning.

  “You could,” says the King, “cover me in weights and throw me into the Marianas Trench. But I'd climb out eventually. You could bury me miles under the Earth. But I'd dig out eventually.”

  Looking up at him, Mark's face hardens.

  “Are you telling me that I have to kill you?”

  “That won't work either.”

  “It won't, eh?”

  “I've tried, Mark. Pushed my power to its limits. Insofar as I can tell, I can't be killed. Not by force, nor trauma, nor asphyxiation like your good self. It seems that no matter what you do, living in a world where I exist is just something you're going to have to get used to.”

  “What do I have to do,” sighs Mark, leaning against the rubble, “for you to just piss off and leave Glasgow alone?”

  “Not a deal I'm looking to make, I'm afraid. I want what's best for the people, Mark.”

  “You want a dictatorship -”

  “And what? You have a better idea? These people – those left here – are filth, Mark. You know as well as I do, people need to be made to bring out the best in themselves, lest they spend their lives scurrying about endlessly seeking -” he spits, “- wealth, and goods, and sex, and temporary escapes from their misery.”

  “If that's what they want,” says Mark, “then who are you to tell them otherwise?”

  “Who am I?” asks the King. “Who are you? Who are you to rob these people of a world without crime, without poverty and hunger?”

  “And who are you,” says Mark, still struggling to breathe, “to rob them of a world without fear?”

  The King laughs. “All this coming from a drunk man. What – were you in the pub when they shone the bat signal?”

  Mark says nothing, pursing his lips.

  “Oh -” says the King, stopping himself and laughing again. “Is that – is that just how you spend your evenings? Glasgow's saviour: a drunk. That's... wow, that's kind of poetic.”

  “I'm no the one claiming to be Glasgow's saviour.”

  “No – and if you were I'd laugh. A drunk. Is that what you were doing when my men came for you? When the fire came for you? You were drinking yourself into a hole weren't you?”

  Mark says nothing – he's still breathless.

  “I'll bet the fire just felt like another round of the shakes for you. Do you remember that feeling? I can practically still taste it, when that burning ball of hatred came for me.” The King lowers his voice and for a moment, he isn't gloating. He sounds genuine. “When it hit me, I was filled with such an intense thirst for violence – for power, for revenge. It almost consumed me, turned me feral like those mindless animals that tore the city apart. Do you remember that?”

  Mark frowns. “That never happened to me.”

  “No? Oh, of course,” he corrects himself, “you got the other alien, didn't you? The green one.”

  “The Protector.”

  “Aye, him. Do you remember how he died?”

  Mark says nothing.

  “He was defeated, Mark. Do you remember? Beaten by the Destroyer – the thing that gave you your powers was beaten by the thing that gave me mine. Do you think that means anything? Did you notice that five of you haven't been able to so much as bruise me yet?”

  Snarling, Mark leaps for him – but the King is ready.

  Mark's first punch misses, and the King grabs his arm, forcing it up and driving his elbow into his exposed ribs. The weight of the blow drives the air from Mark's lungs; spittle flies from his mouth. Before he can get away, the King swings him like a hammer, throwing him through three metal aisles before he comes crashing to a stop, still struggling for air.

  As he gets up, the King blinks into the air beside him, faster than Mark can track.

  “Don't get up, Mark. Don't make this harder than it has to be.”

  He tries to grunt a reply, a scathing insult of some sort, but the words and the air won't come. Nevertheless, he tries to sit up, and the King blurs into the air beside him, punch after punch raining on his aching ribs. Mark gets his hands up to protect himself, but the King just punches him elsewhere. Every time he moves his arms to protect himself, the King targets another exposed area.

  Mark screams, unable to escape or fight back. In his thrashing, desperate attempts to free himself of the King's assault, his foot finds purchase on the broken floor: he pushes with all his strength, rocketing away from the King's anger and skidding across the grimy floor.

  The King leaps after him and punches a small crater in the floor where Mark was a second ago, and looks up, expecting to see him – but Mark is gone. Laughing, the King takes a breath and puts his hands on his hips.

  “Hiding, now? Not very heroic, Mark -”

  Mark comes rocketing out of the darkness like a missile, straight into the King's chest, cutting him off mid-sentence. They tumble across the floor, until Mark ends up kneeling over the King, hands around his throat. The King stares into his eyes, his face trembling as Mark tries to choke the life from him.

  The King smiles back at him.

  “See?” whispers the King, placing his palms on the edge of Mark's head like a proud parent, even as Mark tightens his grip. “You can't kill me. There's nothing you can do to stop me. Nothing.”

  The King holds Mark's head in his hands, and with such speed that Mark barely manages to react, brings his hands around and forces his thumbs into Mark's eyes. Crying out, Mark bats his hands and away and clutches his eyes, rolling away, scrambling for cover.

  He opens his eyes as he stumbles to his feet, blinking twice to check that he's ok, and that's when the King zips in again, delivering a flurry of blows to him that knocks him off his feet.

  Mark lies on the ground, sobriety coming to him, blood trickling from his nose. He can barely breathe, every movement is agony.

  “You can no more stop me, Mark,” says the King, fixing his shirt cuffs, “than you can stop the Earth from spinning. You'll be the first casualty – then your friends. Decades from now, you'll only be remembered as a footnote: a man whose greatest achievement was failing to stand in the way of real progress.”

  The King stands over Mark, cracks his knuckles, and kneels down. Like a doctor, he rolls up his sleeves and rubs his palms together, placing them on either side of Mark's head. Struggling, trying to roll away, Mark is helpless.

  “Shh, shh,” whispers the King. “I'll make it quick, don't worry. It'll be quick -”

  Before he can snap Mark's neck, Mark grabs his hands by the wrists and yanks him down towards him, bringing his head up at the same time and driving his forehead into the King's nose. Reeling back, the King is open for a split second.

  Mark leaps to his feet, grabs the King by the throat, and jumps as hard as he can.

  Trespasser One opens his eyes, and looks around at his squad: they are silhouettes in the mist, framed against the light of the moon.

  “What -” he says, his voice a rasping whisper. “What happened?”

  “You had severe internal haemorrhaging,” says Donald, leaning back and getting his breath back. His nose is trickling blood, which Cathy cleans with a handkerchief for him. He bats her away. “The King punched you.”

  “That bastard has powers,” says Trespasser One. He sits up, looking around at a loss. “Where's my gun?”

  “Guns aren't any use,” says Jamie. “We need to get out of
here.”

  “Wait – where's the King?”

  “In there with -”

  The roof explodes across the parking lot, and two entangled figures rocket into the air, separating and vanishing into the darkness.

  “Oh no,” whispers Jamie.

  Stacy is at the wheel of a car, speeding through the empty streets with the wipers whipping back and forth.

  “Come on, come on,” she whispers, running another red light. Her knuckles are white, and she's shaking from both the cold and the adrenaline.

  “Stacy?” comes a voice from the phone sitting on her thigh.

  “Chloe?”

  “Yeah – listen, Jamie just reported in. They're ok”.

  She lets out a tense breath. “Oh thank god.”

  “They're heading home.”

  “What about Mark? Is he ok?”

  “Jamie said he leapt into the sky with the King, roughly north judging from his description. I'm listening to the police scanner for things falling from the sky; it sounds like he's landed next to the Possilpark train station.”

  “Ok, I'll head there and see if I can find him.”

  “No, Stacy, listen -”

  “He could be hurt, Chloe. He might need help.”

  “Stacy, the King was with him. There's a fifty-fifty chance you'll find the King instead of Mark: they're saying he has powers now, you won't stand a chance against him.”

  She digests this, and shrugs. “He won't know who I am.”

  “It's too risky, Stacy. Just come home, Mark's a tough lad, he'll be fine.”

  Stacy looks at the road ahead, her headlights cutting through the darkness, and then hangs up the phone. She drives north.

  Mark lies in a muddy crater, letting the rain cleanse him. His stomach is a twisted, knotted mess filled with bile and anxiety, and with every breath he can feel his ribs bend and crack like old rusted steel.

  Pale orange light finds his skin, a flickering street light fighting against the darkness for a moment before fizzling out with a pop. Groaning, Mark twists himself over and gets to his knees, hunched in the sodden mud with his nose dripping blood.

  He looks around and sees nothing but empty buildings, boarded windows hanging off like worn bandages. It's a place without life – like a tired old animal lying down and accepting its fate.

  Mark struggles to his feet, one hand on his aching chest as he stumbles towards the abandoned buildings. His feet slip on the mud, and the drink and the pain blur his vision; everything is an inky smear, as though the rain is rinsing the world away from him.

  When he stumbles onto the road, he's so out of it that Stacy almost runs him over.

  Stacy parks the car and throws herself out of it, turning the locks with her mind as she jogs towards Mark. The cold rain hits her, stinging her flushed cheeks. Mark is still standing in the middle of the road, looking at her with a mixture of confusion and annoyance.

  “Stacy?” he asks. His voice sounds like tearing metal.

  “Mark,” she crosses her arms, and walks towards him like a cautious animal, one deliberate step at a time. As she gets closer, the moonlight shows her the bruises and cuts covering Mark's face, swollen and battered. “Christ,” she whispers, “you look like hell.”

  “What are you doing out here?” he asks her. She stands a few pace away from him, uneasy about stepping in further.

  “I came to get you. Everyone made it out. Come on, we can head back to the safe house -”

  “I'm not going back,” he says, and walks away, towards the abandoned houses.

  “Mark?” she walks after him, her voice echoing through the hollow town. “Ok, let me get you a drink or something -”

  “No drink,” he shouts without turning.

  He stops at a fence, leaning on it with both hands like he's getting his breath back. Stacy catches him up, standing behind him and looking up at the shells of houses. The rain trickles from her soaked hair into her eyes, making her make-up run.

  “Look at this. These houses were abandoned,” says Mark, staring down at the ground. “There just wasn't any reason to stay for these people.”

  “Or maybe,” she whispers, the rain plastering her hair against her forehead, “it was because a massive alien nearly destroyed the world nearby.”

  Mark silences her with a look, and she shrugs. Glowering, Mark turns back to the empty houses.

  “He was right.”

  “The King?”

  Mark nods. “Glasgow is falling apart – there's nothing here anymore, and the people aren't going to fix it unless someone leads them.”

  “So lead them,” says Stacy.

  “They won't follow an alcoholic.”

  “You're not an alcoholic, I've told you.”

  “Even if people would follow my example,” he sighs. “There's no way to stop the King. He's stronger and faster than me, and he doesn't need to be drunk to do it. He won't let me help the city.”

  “There has to be something we can do to him. I mean, even you need to breathe, right?”

  “Apparently he doesn't. I had my hands around his neck and – nothing. Plus, we can't imprison him.”

  “So what – we have to kill him?”

  “Don't just say it like that, Stace.”

  “Why not? He's a psychopath – a dangerous criminal hell-bent on controlling everybody that he sees.”

  He turns to her. “Look, if killing him is the only way to stop him, fine. But I don't think we can. He's practically invincible.”

  “The others might have an idea of how to stop him. There's got to be something, right?”

  “I'm not going back to the safe-house, Stace.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I don't want to.”

  “You haven't even seen Jamie or any of them, don't you want to at least say hello?”

  “Hello would be followed by a discussion on how to stop the King. Plan A: get Mark really drunk and set him loose. I'm not a weapon, and that won't work.”

  “You mean,” says Stacy, “that you're not going back because you might have to drink again.”

  He bites his bottom lip. “All I can taste is that horrible whiskey after-taste. My breath is disgusting. My chest feels all burned and tight and stuff. I've got the shakes already. I like a drink Stacy, but not this much, christ. I just want to stop being drunk for a while, ok?”

  “But if it means stopping him...?”

  Mark ignores her and walks around the fence, pulling back the board on a broken window.

  “I'll need to lay low,” he says. “You head back if you want.”

  She throws her hands up. “Well I'm not leaving you on your own am I? God, fine, we'll sleep in -” she looks up at the house, “- the set of a horror movie, apparently.”

  Mark holds the board open like a doorman, managing a weak smile as she clambers into the gloom.

  Episode 4

  The Long Night

  There's silence in the safe-house, hanging over everyone like a headache and making them seem so much smaller.

  Trespasser One, stripped of his armour and sitting in his vest and shorts, perches on the edge of a camp bed, his half-burned face pale and gaunt. He looks around at his squad – all there bar Mark and Stacy – and sees them unwilling to meet his eyes. Their fight with the King is still fresh in their mind, their expressions stuck in the same fearful grimace.

  “We didn't get the guns, did we?” he asks. Nobody says anything; they know the answer. “Not that it matters. He doesn't need guns to be a threat.”

  “How are you feeling?” asks Cathy.

  Trespasser One glances over at Donald, and smiles. “I'm fine.” He turns to the rest of them. “We did a good job; we know things about the King now that are game-changers. We know what he wants.”

  “We've always known what he wants,” says Chloe, looking up from her perch on Jamie's knee. “Total control of every soul in this city.”

  “Well now it's within his reach,” says Trespasser One. “Any news on
Mark?”

  She shakes her head. “Nothing after that text from Stace saying they were fine.”

  “Definitely from her?”

  “Yeah, code word at the end was right.”

  Trespasser One puts his hand on his chin, then leans forward into his hands and steeples his fingers, letting a tense breath ripple between his palms. He gazes into the floor, talking to himself under his breath.

  Gary, still cradling his aching head in one hand, lifts his eyes.

  “What do we do, guys?”

  “Stop him,” says Jamie, breaking his silence. They look over at him, sitting like a king with Chloe draped over him, their foreheads touching. His clouded features are still shiny with sweat.

  Cathy responds. “I don't think it's going to be that simple, son. I mean, if Mark can't beat him -”

  “We think outside the box. Maybe Donald's power will affect him,” he shrugs. “Or mine. We haven't tried everything.”

  Donald shakes his head. “Even if we can hurt him somehow, where do we put him? What prison can hold him?”

  Jamie's words turn the air cold. “Who said anything about prison?”

  Trespasser One shrugs. “I'm inclined to agree. He's too dangerous to be allowed to live.”

  “I'm not killing again,” says Donald, shaking his head. “I'm a doctor for christ's sake.”

  “We aren't asking you to, Don,” says Jamie. “I'd have done it myself if the bastard wasn't bullet proof.”

  “I have an idea,” says the Trespasser. “The first time I ever met Mark, I had to take him down without killing him. He was shrugging off cannon rounds from a helicopter, so I shot him in the face with an expanding foam compound to stop him breathing. Knocked him out. That was Agency technology, but I could probably get my hands on it again.”

  Chloe looks up. “You think that would work on the King?”

  “Worth a try. He's human.”

  “Barely.”

  Jamie clears his throat. “Speaking of the Agency...”

  “What?”