Kingdom: The Complete Series (30 page)

“
Yeah,”
she says. “Vantage point, this is.”

Mark places her accent
in London, but he can't be sure. She has hair shorter than Mark's, shaved in
close at the sides, thick and brown on top: she's pretty despite the scar
running from her ear to her collar, through her neck. She would be prettier
still if her eyes weren't always burning with a fierce coldness and shadowed
with dark rings.

“
Choppers
will be in the air ten minutes before arrival to facilitate the mission, so be
ready to move.”

“
I
don't need one,” says Mark. “I can probably get there faster...” he trails off,
seeing the look in the female Trespasser's eye.

He looks away, out of
the window, unable to shake the feeling that she is staring into the back of
his head. Putting his mask on barely helps but he does it anyway, securing the
helmet over his skull with the straps.

A chirping sound makes
them all jump – asides the ice-woman, who strolls across to the bed, leans over
her assault rifle and four extra magazines, and picks up her Trespasser helmet.
A red light is blinking inside it.

She slides it over her
head with practised ease.

“
This
is Trespasser Three.”

Mark looks out the
window, across the city that he has given so much for. A blanket of orange and
yellow lights are spread out before him, with the soft purple of the night sky
unbroken by clouds: they'll have a clear night.

Then he notices the
pillar of smoke, like a black smudge on the city, maybe a mile or two away.

He turns around.

Trespasser Three is
already looking right at him.

“
He's
right here,” she says into her comms. “Why?”

Mark looks out the
window again.

The city centre.
Something is burning in the city centre.

His heart starts to
beat faster. Scanning his eyes across the buildings, he picks out the
landmarks.

The spire of the
cathedral; the towering lights of the cinema; the huge building where a whiskey
company has its offices.

“
The
Gardens,” he mutters, and his heart almost stops.

“
Mark,”
Trespasser Three says, her voice firm. “Step away from the window right now.”

He turns around and
sees that she has picked up the assault rifle and is pointing it at his chest.

Cathy has vanished,
nowhere to be seen.

Mark turns back to the
window, tensing his legs.

“
Mark,”
she shouts. “Mark, it's got to be a trap. They know you'll come. Trespasser One
wants to talk to you, activate your comms.”

“
They're
right,” he says. “But they won't catch me in a trap again. Tell him I have to
go: some things are sacred.”

Mark leaps through the
window, through the wall, leaving a cloud of dust, glass and debris in his wake
as he launches into the night air.

He follows the sirens,
leaping from rooftop to rooftop till he crashes into the road amongst the
flashing lights of fire engines and emergency vehicles, all bathed in the dark
orange glow of the burning building.

Mark almost falls to
his knees at the sight, oblivious to the frightened and confused fire-fighters
who have turned around to see what just fell from the sky.

The Gardens: his life's
work, his pet project: the task that brought him to this city and left him
lying on a floor drowning in cheap vodka. What he crucified himself for.

It's all burning to ash
now.

The windows glow from
the hellfire within, most of them already blown out by the heat. Smoke pours
from every crack in the structure, the fire crackling and snapping like
gnashing teeth.

“
Uh,
sir?” a fireman hazards, his face obscured beneath a bright yellow helmet.
“Sir, are you -”

“
It's
all burning,” he wails, and runs for the door.

“
Woah,
stop him -” somebody shouts. Two burly fire-fighters tackle Mark to no effect.
He grabs them by their collars and slings them aside like ill-behaved dogs.

Mark leaps up the
stairs to the door, and grabs the handle. The heat is intense, but it cascades
off of him like rain. He is yet to break a sweat.

“
Back-blast,
get down.” shouts a fire-fighter.

Paying him no heed,
Mark opens the door.

The fire roars out,
blistering dry air bombarding his skin. His overalls burst into flame and he
plants his legs against the onslaught, standing his ground as the flames bathe
him.

With his armour burning
and his skin finally beginning to prickle in the heat, Mark takes a gulp of air
and forges ahead into the fire.

A group of four
firemen, standing apart from the rest of the engines as they prepare the hoses
and open water hydrants beneath the pavement, nod to one another as Mark
disappears into the flames.

One of them produces a
cheap mobile phone from his uniform, rips his gloves off, and sends a text to
Gregor:

He's coming.

Mark, his face hidden
behind a mask that is beginning to blacken with the smoke, rushes through the
flames towards the heart of the blaze. Towers of dancing flames crowd in around
him, beckoning him inwards into their fiery embrace.

Gritting his teeth as
the heat begins to eat at his skin, he pauses. He can feel his strength failing
as the fire within him battles against the fire outwith. Mark leans on his
knees, unscrewing the cap from his flask and lifting his mask to swig at his
whiskey.

It burns just like
everything else, and he wipes his lips and pulls his mask back down.

“
Help,”
he hears somebody shout over the thundering crash of the fire.

Something snaps like
thunder, as though the building itself has cracked its spine. He charges
through the fire and flame, and hits the staircase. Mark can barely see; the
smoke chokes his lungs, and he holds a forearm over the vents at the bottom of
his mask as he ascends the staircase.

He may as well be
struggling through pitch-darkness, but Mark knows these Gardens like his own
skin, and he could walk them with his eyes closed.

Reaching the first
landing, he sees the screaming figure.

A drunken figure: a man
lying on his back in a heavy coat, the fire barely masking the scent of urine
from his soaked trousers. He doesn't look so old, but the grime and the smoke
make it hard to tell either way.

“
It's
ok,” says Mark, stumbling through the fire. “I'm here, I've got you. You're
safe.”

Mark leans down and
helps the figure up, grabbing his slim frame through his bulky jacket: he can
hear more people screaming above him.

“
Are
there more people?” he asks the drunkard.

The drunk points
upwards. He nods and coughs, trying to shield his face from the blaze.

“
Above
us?” asks Mark. “Then we have to go up – there's a hatch on the roof, I can get
you all out through it.”

They both stop as they
realise that there are other voices now, and from below. The voices are those
of powerful men, negotiating their way through the blaze.

“
They
must have sent them in after me,” says Mark, trying not to choke on the dry air
and the fumes. “I can send you out with them,” he tells the drunk, who is
leaning on his shoulders, “and save the others. Tell them I'll be fine – tell
them to get out of here. I'm not a normal human, I can survive this.”

“
How
does it feel?” the drunk asks him, digging around in his coat.

“
What
did you say?” asks Mark, leaning in to hear better through his mask.

The drunk leans in, his
voice losing its thick slurring accent. The refined tones of an educated man
whisper in his ear as the blaze overtakes them.

“
How
does it feel to watch everything you built burn, Mark? This is what you did to
the King.”

He produces a yellow
canister from his coat and grabs Marks mask, grinning.

“
Consider
this justice.”

The figure lunges
forward and jams the canister under Mark's mask, where it discharges a cloud of
foul smelling fumes into his nostrils. He chokes and splutters, pushing the
figure away with such fear and such force that he slams against a wall and
slumps to the ground.

Mark tears his helmet
off, struggling to breathe, pawing at his mask. The smell of the petrol and the
reek of burning wood vanish.

He can't smell anything
at all.

He collapses to his
knees on the landing, trying to get his fingers down his throat and make
himself sick. The smoke wraps itself around his face, blocking his nose and his
mouth, filling his lungs with poison and fumes and heat.

He can't breathe. The
panic is filling him now, suffocating him. Mark scrabbles at the only thing
that he thinks can save him: the silver flask at his belt; but his hands won't
work. His grip is gone, and as his brain struggles to cope without oxygen his
vision begins to blur and fade.

Mark tries to scream,
and nothing comes out.

Four firemen ascend the
staircase, the last thing he sees. As he falls to the boiling concrete, he
tries to reach out to them for help. They look down at him, and then reach
down, picking up his helmet and mask.

Stepping over his body,
they get the fake-drunk and lift him between two of their shoulders, slapping
him awake.

“
We
need the detonator,” one of them says. “The King wants him buried.”

“
It's
in Gregor's coat pocket.”

“
Is
he alive?”

“
Gregor?
He's got a pulse, yeah.”

“
Then
let's get out of here.”

The firemen leave Mark
as the smoke and the darkness close in on him.

Unable to move, Mark
feels himself slipping away, his mind shutting down, memories playing out in
his imagination: regrets, missed opportunities, friends, lovers -

To his own surprise, he
sees Stacy.

Something fights
against the darkness. Inside him, faint and dying, flickers the last flames of
a fire. His lungs have stopped breathing and his cells have started to die
without oxygen. Yet still, his body burns off the alcohol left in his blood to
repair him, to keep him alive when nothing else will.

Then the building is
struck by a series of explosive blows in its foundations, and Mark is helpless
to watch as chunks of masonry fall, bringing the staircases down with them. The
entire building folds in on Mark like a bad dream, a thousand demons descending
upon his vulnerable form.

He falls as the
staircase below him is blown away, caught up in the avalanche. Mark is dragged
down into the boiling darkness, entombed in the rock and the concrete. He feels
himself burning, feels the ache in his lungs.

It takes everything he
has, but as the last light is blocked out by the falling building and the
debris, he closes his fingers around the top of his flask, knowing that if he
can just get it to his lips...

His grip falters and
his body goes limp.

The last thing he feels
is the trickle of blood from his nose, and then his eyes glaze over and the
darkness claims him.

There Mark lies, still
and silent, buried beneath the structure that he poured his own life into.

Trespasser One arrives
to find a smouldering heap of rubble being assaulted with fire hoses. He barges
through the crowd of fire-fighters, who protest until he pulls out his gun.

“
Hey,
you,” he shouts at an older fire-fighter in a white helmet, directing hoses
from the top of an engine. “You find anybody in there?”

The man in the white
helmet nods. “Yeah, we did. I saw some boys carry one man out.”

“
Wearing
overalls like mine? A mask?”

“
Nah,
he looked like a junkie or something. They've been in there for months. Didn't
look like you at all.”

“
Just
the one? Nobody else?”

He shakes his head.
“I'm sorry, we didn't expect to get anybody out of there as it was.”

The Trespasser
deflates, putting his pistol away and staring at the rubble-mound. Even at this
distance, he can feel the heat coming from it like a second sun.

“
Hey,”
Trespasser One waves to get his attention again. “How long until we can search
for survivors in the rubble?”