Kingdom: The Complete Series (44 page)

Something comes from
the Destroyer, a sound: it is the noise that cancer would make if it could
speak – and it is laughing; a sickly, joyous laugh.

Mark turns to silence
it with a punch and the Destroyer hits Mark with another crackling beam of
light. Wincing, Mark dodges to one side and battles with the Destroyer,
punching and kicking as the red beast rises to its feet and extends its limbs,
growing in size till it towers above Mark, at least nine feet tall.

It wraps its arms
around Mark and squeezes him, crushing the air from him.

The Destroyer's
soldiers begin to arrive, screaming and whooping in victory. Mark's eyes are
wide with fear – he can't fight an army, not with the Destroyer holding him
down.

Then Mark looks up, and
sees the sky on fire.

Tiny points of light
are growing as they approach, like a legion of stars falling from the heavens.
Mark wonders for a second if the Protector has returned from death to help him.

But this is not the
work of the alien – the Protector is gone. These are the weapons of a
frightened humanity, blotting out the sky with their anger.

Mark sees the missiles
racing towards him, towards the city. The Destroyer and its minions, hundreds
of them surrounding him now, seem clueless to the imminent destruction.
Struggling, Mark fights against the Destroyer's grip. He looks into the hungry
eyes of twisted, rotten humans that have no soul left.

Lost people, he thinks,
devoured by the Destroyer – devoured by themselves.

With a desperate cry
that holds as much fear as it does determination, Mark breaks free and spreads
his arms wide. The Destroyer reaches for him again, but Mark is gone.

His legs tense and he
leaps into the sky, pushing himself higher with everything that he has left.

Missiles streak past
Mark as he leaves the world behind.

As the first booming
registers of the explosions reach his ears, Mark is high above the city, arms
outstretched, eyes closed.

He slows as he reaches
the dusty clouds, passing through them in a few seconds, before finally
stopping.

Mark hangs in the air
above the violence and death below him. Up here, above the fiery clouds, he
opens his eyes and finds that there is nothing but the full moon staring back at
him.

He smiles, and stays
there just a moment. Gravity doesn't claim him just yet.

Though it is a mental
struggle, a fight for every second, Mark hovers there. Not flying – but not
falling, either.

It's a start,
he
thinks.

Then his face twists
into a snarl once more, for one last battle, and he lets himself fall back
through the clouds into hell, fists outstretched as he races towards the fiery
crater of swirling flame and grit.

The final missile races
without a sound towards the wreckage below, and this missile is screaming.

The Destroyer picks
itself out of the crater, losing cohesion as it tries to stand. Pieces of it
break off as the tiny machines within it fall out of synchronisation and,
separated from their energy source, tumble away on the wind as nothing more
than dust.

What little energy it
has left is put into maintaining its grip on existence – all around lay the
smouldering bodies of what it once called its army. Before it can let out a
furious bass-scream of loss and anger, something falls from the stars and
punches it back down into the shadow.

When the dust clears
and the smoke blows away on the wind, it is Mark that is standing over it,
seeming to glow with a self-assured strength. His shorts are ripped and
blackened, his chest rising and falling with each deep breath. With broad
shoulders and a grime-covered face, his dark eyes stare down at what remains of
the Destroyer.

“
It's
over,” says Mark, his voice loud and firm. “You've lost.”

The Destroyer is a
fading relic of itself. Only a faint red outline lies in the rubble, looking up
at its executioner.

“
I
can make this quick,” he says, and leans down. “No more fighting.”

“
No,”
comes
a low whisper, so deep that Mark feels it like poison in his lungs, cold and
deadly.

Mark realises its intent
too late. The Destroyer lifts itself like a ghost and ascends, lifting itself
into the air where it is little more than a shimmering memory.

“
The
war,”
it trembles, fire lighting around itself,
“is not
over.”

With that, it shoots
into the air.

Mark leaps after it,
crying out, but it is too late. The Destroyer splits itself into six tiny,
blazing red fires, which shoot off into the darkest corners of Glasgow, finding
six last soldiers to fight for it.

He catches up with what
is left of the Destroyer as it splits, punching at thin air as it disappears.

With disappointment
spread across his face, Mark falters and falls back to the ground. He hits the
crater with a booming thud and lies there, breathless, as the fires begin to
die around him.

The heat seems to fade,
and above him, a wind begins to blow the worst of the ash away.

Mark lies in the
silence, and waits for the world to fix itself.

For the time being, he
is spent.

Trespasser One finds
him half an hour later as the squad sweep down through ground zero.

“
Found
him,” the Trespasser shouts. “Don, get over here.”

“
I'm
fine,” says Mark, sitting up in his crater. “I'm fine, just... tired.”

The Trespasser throws
his gun aside and drops into the crater, offering Mark a hand up. Taking it,
Mark lets the Trespasser heave, struggle, and pull him up into an open embrace.
“You bloody did it, son.”

“
I
didn't,” says Mark. “The missiles did the work. It's not over either.”

“
What?”
asks Jamie, appearing at the top of the crater.

Mark pushes himself
away from the group and leans on a piece of rubble, a hand on his head.

“
It's
dead – the Destroyer, I mean. It's gone – but it copied the Protector. Before
it died, it sent six last fires off into the city. We've got six more monsters
to put down.”

“
We
can let the Agency deal with that,” says the Trespasser. “Right now, we're
getting everybody out of here.”

“
Is
that it then?” asks Jamie. “Is it over?”

“
Yes
and no,” says Mark.

“
Yes,”
says the Trespasser. “Earth isn't under threat anymore. You did it, Mark.” He
pats the superman on the shoulder. “You won.”

“
This
doesn't feel like a win,” says Mark, staring up at the blazing backdrop of a
ruined Glasgow.

“
I'll
take it,” says Jamie. “Maybe we couldn't save most of Glasgow, but Mark – you
saved the world.”

“
No,”
says Mark, smiling despite himself as the rest of the squad appear around the
crater, looking down at him.
“We
saved the world
.
”

“
Still
not superheroes.”

“
Shut
up, Cathy.”

In a cold concrete room
below Glasgow's burning surface, a man called Gregor sits aside a dying King.
Dust fills the room, choking them, and the lights flicker back on after their
time in the darkness.

“
Electricity,”
whispers Gregor. “Maybe it's over?”

“
Maybe,”
slurs the King. His eyes are closed, and his head lolls to the side like a
tired child. Gregor has his cold, clammy hand in his.

“
Are
you sure you won't take anything else for the pain, sir?”

“
This
is my pain to feel,” he grunts, spluttering blood down his chin. Gregor wipes
it away with a handkerchief, like a doting mother.

“
You've
felt enough pain, sir.”

“
Gregor,
you promise,” the King says, his voice a thin rasp now. “You promise that when
I'm gone: you'll carry on my work.”

“
I
will,” he whispers, his eyes welling up. “I'll continue your work.”

“
Good
boy, Gregor,” his last breath shudders from his body, and with the last of his
strength he squeezes Gregor's hand. “I nearly did it. It nearly worked.” His
eyes open, and he looks into Gregor's eyes. “It nearly worked.”

Gregor almost says
goodbye.

But before he can say a
thing, two balls of flaming red energy smash through the roof. They hang there
in front of them, like murky pools of blood held in the air.

The men both tense up
and cry out in fear: the objects give off waves of poisonous desire and
sickening, bloody glee.

Then the fire changes
them both.

End
of Series 2

Series
3

Trespasser One feels
unusual wearing a coat.

He stalks down the dark
and quiet streets of Glasgow's west end, past angled houses with huge windows,
only half of them lit. Scaffolding hangs over the streets like ragged bones,
evidence of the reconstruction. Patches of the concrete and metal are still
melted away from the Destroyer's attack.

The Trespasser is
little more than a shadow in an overcoat and a winter hat, huffing into his
hands to keep them warm. Winter clings to him like a cold.

Then he passes a door
that has been torn off and replaced with a sheet of black bin bags. Blue and
white police tape gives a clear signal not to enter.

Bingo.

Trespasser One vanishes
off the street, leaving a thin cut in the barrier where he enters. In the
shadow of an abandoned close leading to a dingy stairwell, he discards the hat
and coat. Standing in his full armour, he flexes his joints and relaxes;
now
he's comfortable.

He takes a minute to
let his eyes adjust to the gloom, pulling his face mask from his belt and
putting it on. From his webbing he produces a small torch and flicks it on. The
beam lights up the motes of dust hanging like thoughts in the air, moving only
when he brushes past them to ascend the stairs.

A sharp buzzing in his
helmet throws him off guard, and he twitches and goes for his pistol before he
realises what it is:

Comms unit.

He presses it in. “This
is Trespasser One.”

The voice that comes
back is neither patient nor happy.

“
Where
the hell are you?”

“
Off
duty, Command.”

“
Trespasser's
don't go off duty. We can see where you are, explain yourself.”

“
I'm
not sure I follow.”

“
I
want to know what you think you're doing at a crime scene.”

“
I
think you know damn fine what I'm doing here.”

“
It's
been months, Trespasser One, let this go -”

Trespasser One rips out
the comms unit and crushes it under his boot heel. He ascends the staircase
without a sound and comes to a doorway.

Doorway; no door.

There are two gnarled
pieces of metal that were once hinges, and splinters and torn wood where a door
used to sit. Now there's just tape: police, do not enter, crime scene, so on,
so forth.

Trespasser One cuts
through it, but hesitates before he steps through.

The smell.

It's a smell he's
intimately familiar with, even through his mask. Despite his experience, he is
unsure of how to describe it. Tangy metal, maybe. Stuffy, heady like petrol,
but sharp on the tongue, like bile.

It's blood; death.

Somebody has died here,
violently.

As he walks through the
hallway into an unlit flat, the Trespasser draws his pistol – mostly for his
own comfort. It takes a lot to unnerve him, but the hairs on his neck are
standing up. Something's
wrong.

He listens to his
subconscious, following the little clues his eyes are missing. Scuffs on the
wall – a struggle, perhaps – leading past two doors and into the living room.

Trespasser One's torch
is the only light, and the beam shows him where the windows once were; they've
been blown out, but there's next to no glass on the carpet.

Blown out from the
inside then.

Stun grenade, thinks
the Trespasser. Or something else that he'd rather not consider.

There's little
furniture – the place feels like a TV set. Furnished, but not lived in. Tables
and chairs, but none of the marks that betray a life.

He knows better than to
try the light switch, no matter how frustrated he is by the darkness. He can't
see what he needs to; clues, markings -

He plays the light beam
over the room and stops dead.

Vines run along the
skirting board of one wall. Some of them are flowering. Along the other
skirting boards, little pieces of grass are poking through.

Now that he sees it,
it's everywhere. Moss on the ceiling. The branches of a dead tree creeping out
from a doorway like a skeletal hand. Dripping leaves from rotting flowers
hanging off book cases.

“
Plants?”
he whispers to himself.

Dirt seems to have been
thrown across the floor, evenly, like a blood spray. It comes from a corner
where two walls meet.

The Trespasser steps
closer, taking care not to disturb the dirt. Crouching down, he shines the beam
at the wall.

Despite his years of
experience, he finds himself unsettled.

There's a silhouette of
a man on the wall, a reverse-shadow surrounded by intense burn marks. It looks
like somebody showed this man the sun up close.

He rubs his gloved hand
on the burn marks and frowns.

What he thought were
burns are, in fact, dirt, sprayed against the wall hard enough to stick,
leaving a blank, white space in the shape of a person.

The Trespasser stands
up and steps back.

“
What
the hell happened here?” he mutters, and almost pulls out a camera.

Too late he hears the
soft tread of footsteps behind him. He spins and drops to one knee, pistol
drawn and coming up, safety off -

He sees himself.

Rather, he sees a
figure that looks just like him.

Another Trespasser with
its hands raised.

It shouts at him.
“Don't shoot. Stand down, Trespasser One.”

He'd know that voice
anywhere.

“
Trespasser
Two,” he sighs, and lowers his gun. “You nearly got two through the forehead
there, what the hell were you thinking?”

The large Trespasser in
front of him lowers his hands.

“
Command
wants to ask you the same thing. You're in an off limits area. You're
supposed
to be recuperating.”

The other Trespasser
has the kind of accent that Hollywood action heroes do – another American,
taking over the role of Trespasser Two after his predecessor was killed in
action.

“
Off
limits?” asks Trespasser One. “I thought we had all agreed there was no such
thing where Trespassers are concerned. Not after the Kingdom fiasco.”

“
Command
just wants to know what the hell you're up to. You're not communicating.”

Trespasser One holsters
his pistol and looks around.

“
What
am I up to? I could ask Command the same thing.”

“
Meaning?”

“
Meaning,
look at this crime scene and tell me what you see.”

Trespasser Two steps
past him and produces his own torch. He scans it over the details and hums to
himself, before turning to Trespasser One and coughing. His eyes looks
uncertain through his mask; distracted.

“
Murder
scene. Close range exposure to intense heat -”

“
Those
aren't burn marks on the wall, Two. That's dirt.”

“
Ok,
intense exposure to, uh...”

“
A
lawn mower? Come on. Something went weird here.”

Two looks at him side
ways out his mask. “Powers?”

“
That's
my thinking, and it gets worse.”

“
Oh?”

“
Take
your comms unit out and crush it.”

“
Uh
-”

“
Do
it. Trust me.”

Two shrugs, and does as
he is asked, crunching it into the carpet then picking it up and pocketing it.

“
Ok,
what?”

“
I've
been doing this all day. I've already visited three other crime scenes like
this one. In one of them, somebody spontaneously combusted – phwoof, burst in
flames, no reason. In another, there were the kind of plasma burns you get from
lightning.
All within single rooms. The third one was fairly straight
forward, but the fridge was full of dead animals and the victim's heart had
ended up three metres from their body.” Two says nothing – he isn't looking
Trespasser One in the eye. Trespasser One continues regardless. “This is number
four. My guess is the guy had some kind of power over nature, plants or
something. Then he was murdered. Something hit him hard enough to leave his
shadow on the wall. These are all unusual murders, indicative of powered
individuals, that haven't been brought to our attention.”

“
Well,”
mutters Two, “I'm sure Command has his reasons for keeping this from us.”

“
The
last time our superior kept something from us, it was a warlord ruling over the
entire city in secret – with the Agency turning a blind eye.”

“
The
King? But he's gone.”

Trespasser One laughs.
“You sure? They find a body yet?”

“
Almost
everyone in the city centre died when the Destroyer -”

“
No
body, no death. The King could still be out there. And what did he try to do
when the
first
wave of powered people hit?”

Two sighs. “He tried to
recruit them -”

“
He
tried to recruit them. Mark kills the Destroyer months back; it splits itself
into smaller pieces like the original fire did, right? Six pieces? How many
have we found and neutralised?”

“
None?”

“
None.
Yet I count four dead. That leaves two.”

“
Ok?”

“
So
what if this time the King
did
get to them? What if he's got two powered
people under his thumb already, and these four are the ones who refused his
offer?”

“
Trespasser
One,” number two lowers his voice, “man, I think you're obsessing a bit over
this King character. Even if he is alive, he has no power -”

“
Or,”
One stops him. “Maybe he has a shit load of it, and now he's burned through all
the powered people the Destroyer left. Maybe he's ready for something new, and
we've done absolutely nothing to prepare.”

Two walks away, takes
off his mask, and runs his fingers through his hair. He doesn't reply.

“
Trespasser
Two?” asks One, stepping forward. The look on Two's face is enough; he sees
what's happening. “Oh bloody hell. You knew?”

“
I'm
sorry, man, Command has his reasons -”

“
For
keeping this from me? They'd better be bloody good reasons -”

“
Ok,
ok, calm down,” says Two, raising his hands as Trespasser One approaches.
“Listen, you know yourself that you've got – y'know,
connections
to
powered people. Alright? If Command let you know that people with powers were
being killed, you'd push for action.”

“
You're
bloody right I would! Why wouldn't I?”

“
Because
if the King
does
have powered people on his side? If he is back? Then
man, he might have people in the Agency – and if he does, any action against
him will give away our hand. He'll get away. We can't risk that.”

“
So
I'm a liability now, is that it?”

“
Command
doesn't want you going off and giving the game away. If this
is
the King,
we need absolute secrecy at all but the highest levels. He had people in the
Agency the last time; you know all this, man.”

Trespasser One lets out
a breath and holds his head in his hand.

“
You
want me to stop investigating this?”

“
Command
does.”

“
How
do I know my friends – my squad, sorry – are safe.”

“
They're
in safe houses, two to a structure, watched over by us twenty-four-seven, you
know all this.”

“
Yeah,
but are they being protected against the kind of thing that has been killing
powered people?” Trespasser One points to the shadow on the wall. “Do we know
what we're dealing with?”

“
There's
no
we
here, Trespasser One.”

He stops. “What?”

“
I'm
sorry. Command isn't letting you on this operation. I could be terminated for
even telling you about it.”

Trespasser One
straightens up and lowers his voice. He steps in close to Two.

“
What
if I pursue this anyway?”