Kingdom: The Complete Series (19 page)

“
Shall
we compare numbers and see who's had more success?”

“
You
force people to live in fear.”

“
Necessary
evil,” the King waves his point away. “The end result is the same: crime,
poverty, unemployment, all are at the lowest they have ever been. I've only
been in power ten years, Mark. Imagine what I can do in another thirty. Imagine
what
we
could do?”

Mark almost stops
breathing.

“
We?”

“
I
know you, Mark – I used to
be
you. You tried to change the world and the
world spat in your face.”

“
You
spat
in my face!”

“
And
what would you do if I tried that now? There's nothing I could do to stop you,
not really. I heard that you can jump a tower block,” the King laughs. “That
you shrugged off rounds from a helicopter's cannon. Maybe you can't be killed
at all, Mark.”

“
Maybe,”
says Mark, though he shivers at the memory of the Trespasser's foam weapon
expanding into his throat.

“
And
what – I bet you want to jump around punching criminals, right? Wear a cape and
give yourself a goofy name?”

“
We
both know that doesn't quite work in real life.”

“
Exactly.
But you can't deny that you're different. You have powers. Let's say
super
powers,”
he grins, “because I just love that I get to say that in real
life.”

“
Ok.”
Mark leaves it at that.

“
You
want to do good, you want to help people – well here's how. You can't be
bullied or coerced anymore. You're invincible, unstoppable – you get to stand
up anywhere you want, and say whatever you want. You, Mark, might be the
closest thing to a god that ever walked this bloody Earth. You can stand up and
tell the world about the Kingdom, we can stop keeping it a secret. We can take
humanity into a new age, one where a true god, a benevolent dictator with the
people's best interests at hearts, makes the laws. And who could possibly stand
against you?”

“
That's
what you want from me?”

“
That's
what I'd do if I were in your position. But since I can't possibly be in your
position,” the King leans in close, “I want you to be in mine.”

Mark remains silent,
waiting for him to continue.

“
I
want you to become the King, Mark.”

Mark leans back.
“What.”

“
Hear
me out: I have plans, Mark. People up there,” he points upwards, “think they're
in control. They think that the Kingdom project is just a little experiment,
that once it's over they can take the data and apply it elsewhere to keep
themselves rich. Politicians, policemen, gangsters, businessmen... They don't know
the real plan. The Kingdom is more than a project now, it's a reality – and it
is ready for the next logical step.”

“
Which
is?”

“
I
can't tell you until I have your trust and cooperation, Mark. I've already met
you halfway – I need to know that I can trust you completely, and that you'll
trust me.”

“
How...”
Mark laughs and squeezes the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “How can
you say that you've met me halfway?”

“
Do
you know where you are? Listen to the sounds: photocopiers, computers,
printers...”

“
An
office?”

“
Mark,
this is the administrative centre of the Kingdom project. It's a level above
Top Secret. You could take every sheaf of paper in this place and incriminate
men and women who own
islands.
You could crash the stock market with the
names on those documents – but I trusted you, I took a risk on you, and I
gambled that you would do the right thing. I knew that we were similar from the
beginning.”

Mark stands up out of
the seat, and the King's face breaks into an expectant smile as he joins him.
The King steps forward, uncomfortably close to him now, and lifts his hands as
though he is giving a speech.

“
We
can do great things together. We can take humanity to the stars, Mark, and
beyond. Humanity has so much potential, and the wank-stains in charge are
pissing it into the wind for their own power and wealth. War, economic buggery,
inequality and
lies.
Imagine what we can do with you at the helm.”

Mark's mind keeps
coming back to Jamie and Chloe – they didn't have much, he thinks, but they had
each other. Neither of them wanted to change the world. They just wanted to be
left alone to live their lives together, and this man extended them the chance
to do that. He gave them the easy route.

Easy - with a price.

It is then that Mark
realises he has actually been considering it – that he has let the King worm
his way into his brain, using his own desires and dreams against him. Of course
he wants to help people, of course he fears for humanity's future; so just sign
here, he thinks, sell your soul, and you can have everything that you want.

At a price.

Because then you're the
King, and you're trading a little bit of human suffering for the easy route.
And a little black piece of that evil would seep into you, and it would nestle
beside your heart and it would stay there till the day you died. He would know,
for as long as he lived, that he had sold himself out to a man who kills those
who get in his way; that he had become that man, perhaps.

The Trespasser is
coming, thinks Mark, maybe with help. The King said that there is enough
evidence in this place to bring down the entire Kingdom project, or whatever
this sorry mess is called.

Mark makes his
decision.

“
I'm
sorry, Mr. King,” he says, and watches the hope slide off of the King's face.
“I just can't. I never want to stand above other people. That's not who I am.”

The act that Mark
hadn't even noticed him put on leaves the King's face. Once again, he is a
flesh golem shaped like a man in a suit, devoid of humanity or emotion.

“
I'll
be taking my mother and leaving now,” saysMark, ready for the expected
resistance. He is braced for men with assault rifles, for triggered explosives
or a hostage situation.

He's not prepared for
what the King says.

“
Ok.”

He motions to the door.
His voice is as flat and sterile as the bunker they stand in. There is no
inflection in his speech.

“
I
understand, Mark. I had hoped that you would be able to see things from my
point of view. I am sure that in time... Well.”

He leaves it at that,
giving Mark an emotionless, robotic smile.

Mark finds himself more
afraid now than he was when he first entered this place. Searching for traps
with his aching eyes, he steps through the door as it hisses open, trying to
gauge the strength in his muscles. He hasn't had a drink for too long, his head
has started to get fuzzy and his entire body is overcome with a faint sensation
of tingling cold.

“
Open
the door,” Mark tells the four men standing by the wall, and the King enters
behind him.

The men look to the
King for assurance, and he nods: one of them steps forward and unlocks the door
hiding his mother.

“
Mark?”
the King asks him as the door begins to hiss open.

He turns, reluctant to
face the King again, aware of how close he is to getting out.

“
Yes?”

He finally looks at the
King, into those black eyes, and sees a bottomless pit where a man should be.

“
I'm
sorry it didn't work out,” he says, as though the line is rehearsed. “I really
am.”

Mark nods, and then
shows the King his back as the door creaks open. He tried to wrench it open, to
test the strength in his sober arms: the door gives a pathetic creak.

His mother is waiting,
safe and unharmed, inside. She looks at him in horror.

“
Tell
me you didn't agree to anything son,” she pleads.

“
I
didn't, mum,” he steps into the room and kneels down, ready to pick her up with
the strength left in his arms. “Let's get you out -”

The door slams shut
behind him, sealing itself closed with a hiss.

Mark turns as the
hissing stops, setting his mother down on the seat again.

“
Oh
no,” she whispers. “Mark, what is he doing? What happened to your body, why are
you covered in bruises? Did they hurt you?”

Mark, saying nothing,
puts his hands on the metal door and grunts with effort, trying with all his
strength to dislodge it. It barely budges, and when he puffs his cheeks and
tries again he feels a trickle of blood running down his lip.

He hears the King's
voice on the other side of the door.

“
We
talked earlier, Mark,” shouts the King, “about you being almost invulnerable.
Bullets, bombs; they just bounce right off you. But we have eyes everywhere –
we know that a Trespasser unit took you down with some kind of suffocating foam
weaponry. We put two and two together, and figured that your great big weakness
is a need to breathe. Just like the rest of us. Not so super. Just a man. ”

The letter box flaps
open with a metallic clank. A hazy, shimmering gas begins to flood the room,
hissing like a cobra, and Mark steps back, cursing.

“
Mum,
get in the corner,” he orders her.

“
Son,
your nose -”

“
I
know! Get in the corner and hold your breath.”

He throws himself at
the nearest wall, punching it as hard as he can. The pain shoots up his arm and
the concrete trembles, but it's completely solid. Swearing, he tries to other
wall, his cheeks puffed up with air.

The brickwork trembles
and crumbles, revealing solid concrete behind it.

He looks down at the
ground: there won't be anything beneath them either, and the door takes up the
entirety of the other wall.

That leaves one
direction.

“
Not
thinking in enough dimensions,” he murmurs. Mark looks up. “Mum, watch your
head,” he shouts, and she nods, a hand over her nose and mouth.

He crouches down low,
summons his strength, and throws himself fist-first at the ceiling. It shudders
and cracks, motes of dust and concrete falling onto his head.

The lack of oxygen is
aching in his chest – his body wants to breathe. The urge to inhale is like an
itch in his mind. Blood tickles his lips, tempting them to open and suck in a
lungful of poison. He purses his lips shut, fighting the urge.

Mark leaps upwards
again, and this time chunks of masonry come down with him, none bigger than his
hand. He has left a fist-sized hole in the ceiling.

“
Mark,”
his mother shouts from behind her hand. Her eyes are drooping. “I can't hold my
breath...”

Mark's lets out all the
oxygen in his body through his nose, and a torrent of blood accompanies it. His
head is pounding in agony, his vision is swimming, the gas haze filling the
room.

“
Come
here,” he whispers to his mother, no air for any more words.

Pawing through the
poison mist, she clings onto him and he carries her like a sleeping child.

Mark kneels down, his
shoulders facing upwards, forming a battering-ram as he gathers the last of his
energy in his legs.

It comes from somewhere
deep within him – where the fire is. Whatever hit him, whatever the fire did to
him, it's doing it now: burning itself out to save him. No doubt it'll punish
him for this later, but he doesn't care.

Deep within his core
the fire burns brighter for that moment, and he feels the power building in his
muscles and in his bones. His body screams at him to breathe, blood flowing
like a river down his chin, pouring from behind his screwed-shut eyelids.

He wants to collapse.

He wants to lie down
and go to sleep.

Instead, cradling his
mother in his arms and shielding her with his body, he roars and leaps.

“
Five
hundred metres,” the Trespasser shouts, beginning to slow the helicopter. He
flicks various switches, preparing it for landing.

“
Where
exactly is it?” asks Jamie, peering out of the rain-streaked wind-shield.

“
Dead
ahead,” says Trespasser One.

“
All
I see are derelict industrial buildings,” says Chloe, searching with her eyes
as she appears beside Jamie. “He could be anywhere.”