Kingdom: The Complete Series (45 page)

“
Then
I'll be forced to stop you, I'm sure.”

“
And
how do you think that'll work out for you?”

“
I
think I'll end up in the infirmary. You're One, I'm Two, it's that way for a
reason. No shame in admitting it.”

Trespasser One looks
around at the murder scene, then back at Two.

“
You
know I'm not coming back in with you, man. If the King is still out there, I'm
going after him.”

Two looks at the
ground. “I was afraid you'd say that.”

Trespasser One lowers
his voice. “Are you gonna try and stop me?”

Two shakes his head. “I
need to know what to tell Command though.”

“
Tell
him you did try to stop me. Tell him I'm going off on my own, that the Agency
can consider this my resignation, and that if I get a good lead I'll phone in.
Tell him not to come after me, and tell him that I'm doing this alone – I'll
need to gather my squad without him knowing.”

“
Your
squad? What, the civilians?”

“
They've
seen combat, they aren't civvies any more.”

“
You're
going to try and find the King with them as your only backup?”

“
Oh,
I've got Command's number if it gets too heavy. At least this way we know
there'll be no leaks, right? I effectively no longer exist. No records, no leaks.
The Agency won't even know I exist anymore.”

“
I,
uh, I guess so.”

“
Good.
Sorry about this, by the way.”

“
About
wh -”

Trespasser One unclips
his tazer and fires it into Two's thorax, where his armour separates. As Two
falls back, Trespasser One follows him to the ground, knocking him out with a
snapping punch to the forehead. His eyes roll back.

“
Nothing
personal, mate,” he whispers, and leaves.

Trespasser One picks up
his jacket and hat on the way out, shivering as the cold air bites at him
again. He lifts an old mobile phone out of his coat pocket and calls an old
number.

“
Hello?”
he mumbles as it answers. “Yeah, it's me. One. You remember that favour you owe
me? Mhm. Information. People in safe houses. Yes I know it'll take some time,
just give me what you can, when you can.”

His voice trails off as
he shuffles into the night.

Episode
1

House
Call

Two
Days Later

Mark sits on the edge
of a black leather sofa in shorts and a vest, drinking tap water out a bottle
with the label torn off. Placing it down, he pushes his hair away from his
face, scratches the beard growing across his face like thick fur, and stands
up.

“
Stacy?”
he shouts, and his booming voice carries throughout the flat, drowning out the
sound of traffic outside.

When she pokes her
mousy face through the door, Mark notes the streaks of motor oil finger-prints
on her cheeks.

“
What?”

“
Two
things,” he smiles. “First off, clean your face -”

“
I'm
not finished yet.”

“
Second:
could you hang around just in case, you know, the nose thing happens again?”

“
Oh
Mark, not again,” she groans, and throws the door open as she enters the living
room. She's wearing a set of blue overalls stained with oil and grease,
smelling like a motorway. Her brown hair is tied back tight, pulling her
eyebrows up to make her look constantly surprised. “We talked about this. I
thought you were going to pack it in.”

“
Nope,”
he shrugs, and nods to the massive barbell on the floor, enough plates on
either side to wheel a train.

“
Do
you have any drink nearby?”

“
No
-”

“
Well
go and
get some,
you nearly died last time -”

“
That
was last time,” he tries to reassure her with a smile. “I'm stronger now.”

“
Ok
hold on,” she sighs, rubs her eyes with her wrists, and goes to her room. A
second later she returns with half a bottle of red wine, and shakes it. “Ok,
now
you can try it.”

“
Thank
you,” he laughs, and stands over the weights.

Bending his knees, Mark
grips the bar in both hands and takes the strain with his arms. The muscles
bulge from his wiry frame, and he grits his teeth and lets out a tense breath.

“
Ok,”
he grunts.

Mark straightens his
body, pulling himself tight and lifting the weight with every muscle in his
body. Tendons go taught, and his face reddens as he begins to shake. To anybody
else, it would be an incredible, Herculean feat of strength – but Stacy has
seen Mark punch through steel, and she folds her arms and watches him struggle
with a weight that
should
be trivial.

His back won't
straighten. The plates bend the bar as he tries to rise again, and his legs and
arms begin to tremble.

“
Mark,
put it down,” she says, shaking her head. “You've hit the wall, mate.”

He shakes his head, a
tiny movement she almost doesn't pick up.

“
Mark
-” she protests again, and his eyes burn a hole through her. She stops, seeing
the determination in his face. “Mark, you're going to hurt yourself.”

She sees the first
trickle of blood from his nose, the same colour as his trembling face, sees the
spittle frothing from his lips, and does what she has to.

Closing her eyes, Stacy
reaches out with her mind and feels the only mechanical part of the bar – the
keys keeping the weights on. She feels herself thinking in spirals as she
twists them off, and then -

The weights drop off
the ends of the bar with a clatter, and Mark's legs straighten so fast that he
crashes through the couch and embeds himself in the wall. Stacy flinches back,
opening her eyes once silence falls. She finds Mark, who is sitting breathless
in the wall, surrounded by bare brick whilst broken plaster falls over him like
snow.

“
Sorry,”
she says. “You really were about to do yourself in, but.”

Sitting on his throne
of brick and dust, Mark wipes his nose and puts one hand on his temple,
grimacing.

“
My
head, sweet jesus -”

“
Catch,”
she laughs, and throws him the bottle of wine. Mark snatches it out of the air
and, with a tired look, unscrews the top and raises it to his lips.

“
Thanks,”
he mutters, tipping the bottleneck towards her in a toast.

“
Welcome,”
she says, and comes up to sit on the couch near him, crossing her legs like a
monk and clasping her hands together. “Seriously but man, have you had
anything
to drink today?”

“
This
is my first,” he says, reluctantly meeting her eyes.

“
Mark,”
she sighs. “You're going to kill yourself at this rate.”

“
If
I can't do it sober, I can't really do it. What's the point?”

She narrows her eyes.
“You speak more sense when you're pished.”

“
I
don't want to be a bloody alcoholic.”

“
You
aren't!”
she laughs. “You have to drink, or you'll die. Using your
strength burns up power, and hey, man, I know it sucks. But superman gets his
power from the sun, right? Well, your sun comes in a bottle and smells like
whiskey.”

“
It
is
whiskey.”

“
Well
start drinking beer then. Or wine, wine is nice.”

“
This
from a girl who drinks fluorescent blue shit at the weekends.”

She rolls her eyes and
cranes her neck, looking at the damage to the couch.

She smiles to herself.
“I could probably fix this.”

“
Really?”

“
Yeah,
I'm getting right good at this stuff.”

“
Well,
you can't fix it if I'm still in the wall.”

“
Yeah
about that: are you going to sit in the wall all night or do you need a hand
out?”

“
Give
me a hand out, I think I've broke my back.”

“
See?”
she says as she stands up and offers him a hand. “Wouldn't have happened if you
were drunk. You're bloody invincible when you're drunk.”

“
If
I was drunk I would probably have fallen into the wall
anyway.”

She pulls him up and he
stumbles forward with her, clasping her shoulder for balance. The two rest
their hands on each other for a moment, and she gives him a concerned frown.

“
You
ok?”

“
Yeah.”
He shrugs, and lets go of her. “Why?”

“
Well,
like,” she follows him as he heads for his room, leaning on the door-frame,
“the whole getting sober thing, I'd normally be right behind you. But you're
risking your life doing it – you know you can tell me if something's up?”

“
Nothing's
up, Stace,” he turns and smiles, and then opens the door to his room.

Before he can close it,
there's a hollow knocking sound throughout the flat, as though somebody is
chapping a door made of glass.

“
Is
that -” begins Stacy.

“
Window?”
Mark frowns and pushes past her, back into the living room.

He pulls the only
window up, opening it enough to lean out and look around in confusion.

“
I
swear I heard something hit this – maybe a bird or -”

“
Down
here, mate.”

Mark looks down to
where a man's voice is coming from, and looks right into the eyes of an old
friend.

“
Trespasser?”

Trespasser One is
hanging from a stone ledge in a loose overcoat, his black combat armour
catching the low light from the flat. In the late evening murk of Glasgow's
city centre, he's little more than a silhouette rippling in the wind.

“
Good
to see you too Mark,” he smiles, his teeth bright white in the darkness. “Fancy
giving me a hand up?”

“
What
the hell are you doing?”

“
I'll
tell you when I'm not dangling by my fingertips,” says the Trespasser, and
pulls himself up with one hand – with the other, he reaches for Mark.

Shrugging, Mark grabs
him. With a grunt, he starts to pull him up. As Mark lifts him closer to the
warm light spilling from the window, the Trespasser's features are lit up and
Mark sees the scarred half of his face.

With a hiss of strained
breath, Mark pulls him through and the two tumble into the living room.

“
Tony,”
shouts Stacy, clapping her hands. “Why are you here -” her face flattens. “Oh
god, why
are
you here? Who's dead?”

“
Four
people -”

“
What?”

“
Oh,
sorry, nobody you know,” laughs the Trespasser, brushing himself off and
getting to his feet. He cracks his neck and massages his aching arms. “Nobody,
this is a social call if anything. Four people are dead though.”

Mark ruffles his own
hair. “And what's wrong with the front door?”

The Trespasser takes
off his coat and drops it on the couch, taking a seat on the arm of the sofa as
the two civilians eye him. He gets his breath back and the humour leaves his
face.

“
Front
door is being watched,” he says. “Had to come in the back door.”

Stacy frowns. “Tony,
you are the only guy who thinks flats have a back door. And it's Agency troops
watching our doors, why do you have to sneak past them?”

Mark waves her away.
“Stace, shush. Trespasser, what's up?”

He gets his breath and
looks them in the eye.

“
You
guys need to come with me.”

Mark glances at Stacy.
“Are we in danger?”

“
Maybe.”

“
Why?
What's happened?”

The Trespasser lowers
his head and stares at them both. “Someone is killing people with powers.”

“
But
aren't we the only people with powers?”

“
The
Destroyer split when you killed it, right? Six fires, six powered people. We've
got four bodies, that leaves two – and the evidence says that it's someone with
powers
doing
the killing.”

“
Shit.
So what, are the Agency taking us somewhere safe?”

“
The
Agency are pretending it's not happening. That's why I quit and came to get you
myself.”

Stacy puts her hand to
her mouth. “You
quit?”

“
You
never really quit the Agency,” laughs the Trespasser, “but yeah. Command is
afraid that if the Agency tries to protect you, we'll give the game away; in
case – well, you know.”

“
In
case what?” asks Stacy.

“
In
case it's the King.”

Silence falls, and Mark
flops back onto the sofa, groaning. “The King.”

“
Last
time people got powers, he tried to control you.”

“
I
know,” sighs Mark. “I was there.”

“
Maybe
this time he managed to do it. Maybe he's killing those who won't join him.”

“
Ah
hell,” whispers Stacy. She sits down and puts a hand on Mark's shoulder.

Mark runs his fingers
over his eyes. “I really, really hoped that he'd died when the Destroyer – well
-”

“
I
know”, says Trespasser One. “Maybe he did, but we can't be too careful. You
know how much he'd like to see you dead. The Agency has had his moles in it
before without us realising – he'd be able to get your whereabouts, if he had
the means.”

“
Not
just me,” says Mark. “What about Jamie?”

“
I've
already got him. He's actually in the field right now, chasing up a lead. Just
you guys left, everybody else is at a safehouse. What do you say?”

Stacy folds her arms,
looking worried. “Do we have time to pack?”

“
Not
really.”

“
You
said the front door was being watched?”

He nods.

Mark scratches his
bearded chin. “And we don't want them knowing that we're leaving? So how do we
-”

“
The
window.”

Stacy steps back. “Oh
no, come on -”

Trespasser One shrugs.
“You've both done much worse than climb out a window.”

“
We're
six storeys up,” says Mark.

“
Two
months ago, you leapt out a helicopter and punched an alien made of hatred,
son.”