Kingdom: The Complete Series (4 page)

She steps forward and
presses herself against him, and he puts an arm around her whilst his other
keeps the gun aimed down the hall.

"You shouldn't
have come here," she says, her voice shaking. "You should have just
left Glasgow, twenty-four hours is enough to get far away -"

He cuts her off with a
long, cold stare from his bloodshot eyes.

"We leave together
or not at all," he says.

“
I
don't want it to end here."

"I'm sorry I got
you into this – it went a lot smoother in my head."

She says nothing, but
presses her forehead against his neck.

“
Just
get us out of it," she whispers, "and we'll call it even.”

Mark's eyes open. His
vision is blurred like a rain smeared camera lens. The coppery tastes of bile
and blood catch in his throat as he draws breath, and the most familiar feeling
in his life hits him: hangover. His pulse pounds in his head and he can sense
every cell in his body groaning at him.

Somewhere nearby, a
neat-cut voice says:

“
We've
got target four – bullets don't do much to him but he's out cold – left a
crater from a three floor drop. Definitely the guy we're after, but his nose
was bleeding, so send a chopper and a Trespasser unit to collect him, medical
too.”

Shapes begin to swim
into focus: tall black shadows surround him like coffin bearers staring into
his grave.

One of them has a hand
to his ear, and he drops it and tells the other shades:

“
They're
sending a Trespasser unit, about one minute out.”

“
Sir,
he's waking up -” one of them shouts, alarm ringing in his voice.

Immediately the clatter
of carbon fibre weaponry fills Mark's ears, and his groggy, drunken mind
catches up. He remembers the thugs in his flat, preparing his execution; he
remembers the fire taking his body and his mind and moulding it into something
stronger; he remembers the strength flowing through his bones, the thud of
bullets crashing into his skin to little effect.

His eyes slam open and
he sees six tall, heavily armoured men in black combat gear pointing assault
rifles at his aching skull.

“
Okay,
put him under - ” one of them begins to bark an order.

Then Mark has risen,
leapt to his feet and grabbed his attacker by the shoulders. He hadn't realised
until now that he is standing in a crater, the men staring down at him like
students at an autopsy.

Alarmed shouting fills
the air.

Looking into the
fearful eyes of a trained soldier, Mark turns and throws him under-arm at his
comrades. Sporadic fire breaks out and Mark feels the agonising punch of
bullets driving him backwards. Dropping to one knee, he raises his hands to
fend off the stinging insect bites of the firing squad's rounds. One step at a
time, wincing and gritting his teeth through the pain, he stands and begins to
walk forward – then he is running, charging at the remaining soldiers. One of
them breaks and throws himself to the side before Mark hits them.

He crashes into the
other three, throwing a wild hay-maker that sends a man spinning into a wall as
though he were weightless.

A soldier closes with
him, and he feels a sharp pain in his gut: Mark doubles over and sees a knife
straining to pierce his skin. Disgusted, he grabs the man by the arm, crushing
it with his iron grip. Swinging him like a battle axe, Mark turns and clubs the
last soldier to the ground with the screaming form of his own squad mate.

Leaving a gurgling,
groaning mess of limbs and men scattered in the cobblestone alleyway, Mark
clutches his chest and gasps for air, shocked at the violence he is inflicting.
He wants to apologise, and a choked 'sorry' catches in his throat as one of the
men on the ground produces a pistol and shoots him twice in the head.

Mark cries out in anger
and frustration and clamps a hand to his throbbing skull as he leans down tears
the pistol out of the man's hand. He throws it at a wall hard enough that it
smashes into pieces.

"I don't," he
wheezes as he lifts the man one-handed by the collar of his armour. "I
don't want to fight. Tell your superiors. Tell them I just want to take down
the King. While I can."

The deafening approach
of a helicopter drowns out the pounding of his own blood in his ears; he claps
his hands to his temples in pain, dropping the man to the ground. Like a
hovering bird of prey, it drifts into view above the alley.

Sleek metal and a
jagged, angular body hang beneath a tornado-work of blades. From each of the
great predator's wings hang missiles and hive-like pods of tiny rockets,
flanked by machine guns the size of children.

Mark stumbles
backwards, wiping blood from his nose, and raises his arm to shield his face
from the buffeting, screaming wind. He whips his head around, looking for an
escape: to his back is the alleyway's end, a sheer brick wall belonging to some
towering corporate stronghold.

A booming voice cuts
through the howling drone of the helicopter's blades, addressing him:

“
Get
on your knees and put your hands on your head.”

Mark looks up in
absolute horror, begging with his eyes, hoping that they can hear him somehow.

“
The
King,” he shouts. “I need to stop him before... my mother, they – listen -”

“
You
have three seconds to comply.”

He hangs his head,
mustering the courage that he knows is still in him somewhere. All that he
wants is to sit down, to have a drink – he hasn't had a moment to think
straight yet. He's been threatened, shot, shot again: but they haven't been
able to stop him yet.

Mark looks up at the
helicopter and shakes his head – then he turns and runs, carried by a strength
in his legs that he never knew he possessed. The end of the alleyway races
towards him.

The helicopter opens
fire.

Cobblestones explode
into ash and dust. Sundering blows strike him in the back and propel him
forward even as the pain turns his vision white. Bowled off his feet by the
force, he scrambles with his hands like an animal for purchase on the cobbles.
In desperation, he gathers what strength remains in his body and bends his
knees and jumps as though he were leaping off the edge of the world.

Hissing like a cobra, a
missile detonates behind him. Borne upwards by the explosion and the sheer
strength in his muscles, Mark begins to fly.

He is soaring upwards,
eyes wide and disbelieving. His arms reach out for the sky.

For a split second, he
is a child once more, flying with a cape billowing out behind him.

Then his ascent slows,
and the sheer brick wall of the building drops away to reveal a long rooftop
coated in gravel with dull grey air-conditioning units spread along its length.
His momentum carries him over the lip of the roof and he flails his arms,
rolling and tumbling onto the scratching gravel.

He picks himself up,
wiping away the river of blood dripping from his nose and onto the rooftop, and
begins to look around for an escape.

The helicopter rises
above the rooftop like a determined predator, and its guns bark as they spit
fire and lead at Mark's crouched form. Heavy calibre rounds tear into him and
bowl him over; he tumbles like a rag-doll in a whirlwind. He rolls with the
blows, clutching at his skin where the bullets hit.

The attack stops as
though a plug had been pulled.

With red rimmed eyes
and a blood-drenched grimace, Mark struggles to his feet on heavy legs. His
entire body sways as he feels the alcohol's graceful touch leave him, his teeth
itching and his throat aching. The fading sunlight burns in his eyes and he
feels himself swallowing blood.

A single figure, clad
in black combat armour and a face mask, drops from a door in the helicopter's
side and rolls as it hits the rooftop. Mark turns to run for the edge of the
rooftop – he doesn't even know if he'll survive another fall, but anything is
better than facing the swaggering shadow drifting towards him over the gravel.

Something hard hits him
in the back of his legs and he stumbles and falls. As he gets up, he finds
himself face to face with the soldier.

This one is different; even
in his half-dead state he can see that. Mark does not find himself looking into
the fear-filled eyes of a soldier out of his depth. This man's eyes are cold
and clear – the eyes of a professional killer.

Mark raises his hands
to defend himself, trying to strike the soldier in fear – but to no avail. A
surge of electricity from a tazer surges through his body and he spits blood
and froth from between clenched teeth. His legs go numb – he feels himself
falling, powerless to react.

He hits the ground and
regains the use of his muscles with a spasm. Mark rolls to get away, scrabbling
at the rooftop.

“
Please,”
he begs the advancing shade, kicking himself away over the gravel. There is no
mercy in the soldier's eyes. “The King is going to come for my mother, I need
to use this power before it's gone, please listen to me.”

Helpless, he kicks out
at his attacker from the ground. Now he is standing over Mark with a stubby,
wide-barrelled grenade launcher of some kind pointed at his face.

“
You
have to let me find the King,” groans Mark, “we're on the same side here,
please
listen to me -
”

With a harsh cough, the
firearm spits a ball of red gunk at Mark's face, and he tries to scream as the
putty expands like insulating foam, jamming his eyes shut and clogging his
nostrils. His open mouth is suddenly filled with expanding clay that tastes
like surgical rubber. His scream dies in his throat as his hands pull at the
plastic to no effect. It hardens and traps his clawing fingers within it, until
his only thought is to breathe -

Breathe.

He fights it, feeling
the fire ignite inside him, but it is too late.

His vision fades to
black.

The helicopter hovers
above the soldier, who stands over Mark's limp form like a proud hunter. It
raises a finger to its helmet:

“
This
is Trespasser One. Target Four is down, send immediate retrieval squad and
hurry up that medical team; this one was bleeding too. I'll need to neutralise
the foam before lasting damage occurs."

"Good work,
Trespasser One. Are we clear to move Zulu to another location?"

"Yeah, we're all
good here," says the Trespasser, motioning a thumbs up to the attack
helicopter's pilot, who pulls the beast away from the building and off to
wherever else he may be needed, leaving them in silence with only the faint
whisper of the misty rain.

“
One
more thing, Command,” says the Trespasser, looking down at his target as the
pride in his eyes turns to concern. “I've seen men beg for their lives – I've
seen men lie to get out of a bullet to the skull. I know when it's genuine, and
this guy? He's terrified for his mother. Maybe we should look into this King
character, that's three times today that I've heard his name in this kind of
context."

"Negative,
Trespasser One. You are going far beyond your clearance levels."

The Trespasser takes a
small vial of a thick, red syrup from a pouch on his belt and kneels over the
plastic-bubble face of his target. He empties the vial onto the foaming plastic
and it begins to hiss and steam away, melting onto the gravel like roofing tar.

"The guy just
sounds like a criminal, Command," he says, “and that's our area of
expertise right there. I could depose a crime lord with one hand, I don't mind
staying behind after the operation is done to -"

"I said negative,
Trespasser,"
comes the response, and Command's calm
and level voice is tinged with unusual anger.
"Cease this line of
inquiry and await the transport vessel."

Trespasser One looks
down at Mark's unconscious form as the red gunk froths away, clearing his
airways and leaving his face red and bruised. The tattered janitor takes his
first, struggling breath. Placing a hand under Mark's stubbled neck, the
Trespasser counts his pulse with his eyes closed, tensed in case his target
wakes up.

He brings his hand up
to his communication module, a tiny USB piece plugged into a socket on his
helmet, and his fingers grip it for a second.

Trespasser One almost
pulls it out, but before he can the roar of the transport chopper cuts through
the mess of thoughts plaguing his brain. Sighing, he depresses his comms button
and replies,

"Roger that,
Command. Preparing for evac."

He looks at the
unconscious janitor, then up at the approaching helicopter, and waves it in as
the rain whips itself into a frenzy beneath the churning wind of the blades.