Kingdom: The Complete Series (64 page)

He makes the decision
then, and his mind is completely settled.

With nothing left to
hold him down, with no doubt or fear, Mark's shackles finally break and
shatter, and he becomes little more than a streak of light.

“
Mother
of god -”

“
What!?”
shouts the squad, leaning forward.

“
He's
practically disappeared. Mach ten – fifteen – twenty – twenty five -”

“
Fuck
sake,” whispers Gary. “How long has he been holding his breath?”

Jamie punches his leg,
silencing him.

“
Shut
up, he can do it.”

“
Mach
thirty,”
says Command.
“Thirty five.”

“
He's
done it.”

“
Forty.
He's passed escape velocity. He's done it.”

The Trespasser looks up
at the squad.

“
Did
you hear that? He's done it. That's it. It's over.”

Jamie doesn't smile. He
looks at the radio as though it were Mark himself.

“
Why
aren't you slowing down?” he whispers. “Why haven't you let go yet?”

Mark's eyes glaze over,
and his grip on the King finally slackens enough that the King kicks himself
free and drifts away into the distance. He tries to swing at Mark, but the
distance between them increases with every second.

In space, the King
tries to move himself, to rotate his body, and finds it impossible. With the
last of his energy, Mark watches him: he watches his face, watches him realise
what is happening.

The King starts to
scream, scrambling and reaching for Mark, unaware that it is too late. Mark's
willpower peters out like a car running on empty, and he begins to slow down.
There is no sensation of speed up here.

Mark comes to a stop
eighty miles above the surface of the earth, up where the stars are almost
infinite, and blazing in every direction. The moon is a mirror floating far
away, and the King; the King is a distant shape now, flailing and screaming in
silence, drifting ever away.

Mark uses the last of
his will to urge himself back towards the Earth. After a few seconds of
pushing, Mark is done.

The spark fades from
his eyes, and his body begins to shut down. Only the furnace burning in his
heart, the fire that gave him his power, continues.

Like a mother calling
her son home to her embrace, Earth's gravity pulls him down, faster and faster.
From up here, from space, there are mountain ranges like spines running the
length of the Earth. Mark takes in the shining oceans, the crystal ice caps
atop the globe, and the swathes of lights, burning like torches, that mark
every city on the dark side of his home.

His home.

His planet.

His responsibility.

He hasn't any breath
left – he hasn't any fight left; any will left.

Mark feels Earth
pulling him home, and like falling asleep in the embrace of a lover, he closes
his eyes and lets himself fall towards the blue pearl.

“
He's
coming back,”
says Command. Trespasser One grins at
the squad, but his smile disappears as Command continues.
“Don't get your
hopes up. He's not coming in much faster than you'd expect for any object.”

“
You
mean he's not flying home?” whispers the Trespasser.

“
No.”

He nods, coming to
terms with the news. “Ok. Ok, do we know where he's going to land?”

“
We'll
be able to begin working it out soon, orbital forces are going to buffet his
body a hell of a lot on the way down. Not to mention the heat of re-entry.”

“
Mark
has been burned before,” he says. “Besides, he's wearing Trespasser armour, it
has an ablative layer for plasma-burns doesn't it?”

“
Uh,
yeah actually.”

“
Exactly,
so he has a chance. Send us an aircraft right now, I want to be airborne within
a minute and heading to wherever Mark is coming down.”

“
Roger
that, Trespasser One. Standby.”

“
One
more thing.”

“
Yes?”

“
Do
you have something tracking the King?”

“
A
couple of satellites, yeah.”

“
Good.
Make sure he hits the target intended for him.”

“
What
target is that?”

“
The
god damned sun.”

“
I'll
keep you posted, Trespasser One. Aircraft is en route for pick-up.”

A burning mass of fire
roars through the upper atmosphere, tumbling and twisting as it falls. Pieces
break off – armour, cape, boots, burning away like tiny meteors and hissing to
nothing. As the air friction burns everything else to a cinder, there remains
nothing but a naked man, his skin burning and sizzling, blistering with the
heat, as he plummets towards the Earth.

The Agency helicopter
roars over the Scottish landscape.

“
He's
landing in Scotland?” asks Jamie. “How the hell did he manage that?”

Donald shrugs. “He went
straight up, he came straight back down. Relative speed would ensure he's
coming in at roughly the same place.”

“
I
wouldn't call the outskirts of Dundee the same place.”

“
Still
impressive if he meant it.”

Trespasser One raises
his hand for silence.

“
There's
a fair chance he'll cause a lot of destruction upon impact. If we can stop it,
we will. Be ready to act at a second's notice.”

“
Speaking
of which,” says Chloe, and points out the helicopter's side door. The sky above
Dundee flashes like thunder, and a roaring ball of fire shoots through.

“
Oh
god,
that's
Mark?” says Stacy. “He's never surviving that.”

“
It's
ok, Stace,” says Jamie. “You remember the Destroyer?”

“
Of
course.”

Jamie points to the
crates of whiskey loaded in the back of the helicopter.

“
We've
got this.”

Mark wakes up in a
crater, his skin sizzling and hissing as it knits itself back together. His first
thought is
aliens.
Strange figures in space suits are dousing him with
chemicals.

As his eyes recover and
heal themselves, he realises that the murky shapes assaulting him are nothing
more than men in thermal suits, dousing him with – he sniffs – whiskey by the
hose-load.

He tries to move, and
his skin scabs and tears.

“
Sir?”
shouts one of the men. “He's moving, I think he's alive!”

Mark lets his eyes roll
into the back of his head.

When he next opens
them, Mark's eyes are sharper – for one, they have eyelids around them.
Everything is much brighter.

“
He's
waking up,” says a familiar voice, and as the blur recedes, Mark sees the mousy
face of Stacy leaning over him. Jamie and Chloe stand at her side, smiling, and
Trespasser One's scarred face breaks into a rare grin as Mark struggles into
consciousness.

Donald has a hand on
his wrist aside his bed, and Cathy and Gary are staring down at him. In the
middle of them is his mother, giving him the relieved yet worried look that
only a mother can.

Mark smiles, and goes
back to sleep in the pleasant drunken buzz that his IV drip is administering.

Epilogue

One
Month Later

Stacy looks down at the
clouds below her, wrapped in a billowing blue and gold cloak, her feet on
Mark's boots, her arms around his neck. The sunrise coats the clouds
amber-pink, and everything smells like Mark's aftershave and her shampoo; they
only got showered and ready ten minutes ago.

“
Any
reason you're parading me around up here for the satellites to see?” she asks,
giving him a coy smile.

“
I
dunno,” he shrugs. “I've got a long day ahead and it's nice to have something
to think of.”

“
Long
day?” she asks.

“
I'm
visiting Donald; him and Gary want my advice starting a charity for people
affected by the entire Kingdom thing. Then I'm off to have lunch with Jamie and
Chloe, which you're welcome to join for. Then Tony is helping Cathy train for a
marathon or something, so I told him I'd drop by for a catch up. Then I have
some
actual
work to do.”

“
Actual
work?” she laughs. “Did somebody's cat get stuck up a tree?”

“
Nah.
Helping with the reconstruction of course. If my pager goes I'll need to leap
into action, too. It's not as cool as my idea, but -”

“
You're
idea?”

“
Yeah,
shining a massive picture of my face onto the moon whenever they need me. Which
would be awesome.”

“
Which
is impossible,” she adds, laughing. “But I'm sure Earth's other superheroes
will understand, we're all busy these days. Except me.”

“
You're
starting university, what's not busy about that?”

“
'Cos
I'll completely wipe the floor with the course. It's a formality. They won't
let me build rockets without a degree so I need to start
somewhere.”

“
Build
them anyway. Now, I brought you up here so that I -”

“
I
know,” she says, and leans up, kissing him. “Now let me down, I'm getting
horrible vertigo.”

He laughs, and holds
her tighter as he drifts back down to Earth.

As they pass under the
clouds, they see Glasgow coming to life below them. Everywhere they look there
are cranes and construction crews scrambling across the city, rebuilding it,
installing infrastructure.

Mark sets her down near
the university, and squeezes her hands as he steps away.

“
I'll
see you tonight?”

“
I'll
call you when I'm heading home,” he says.

They give each other a
beaming smile, and Mark focuses his mind and ascends into the sky. A few
bystanders gawk, but he's gotten used to it.

Mark soars through the
clouds, taking in the beauty of the country below him, breathing in the chilled
air. He slows himself in the north, way up into the mountains, and descends
through the clouds until he finds what he is looking for. Following the banks
of a loch brings him to a small cluster of houses, and he descends in silence,
bringing his feet to the ground as though afraid to wake anybody so early in
the morning.

He doesn't knock any of
the doors: one of them opens without him having to say a thing.

“
Well,
if it isn't my old nemesis,
Protector.”

“
Do
I need to call you cock-stopper? Is that what this is?”

Jamie bursts out
laughing. “
Clock
-stopper would have worked, come on.”

“
I
still prefer Headshot.”

The two embrace, and
Mark gives Chloe a wave as he wipes his feet on the mat and comes into the
house.

“
Hey,”
she says, “Jamie was saying how with a name like Protector you should consider
like, condom sponsorship, you're perfect for it, you could make a bomb.”

“
Oh
ha-ha,” says Mark, closing the door behind him. “And let's not use the b-word.”

“
It's
been a month!”

“
It
was a
nuke.”

“
Actually
I think you'll find it was a
neutron -”

“
Oh
shut up,” laughs Mark, and sits down.

Outside, the wind
blows. The sun continues to rise, as it always has and always will for as long
as it matters; and the world turns, recovering from its wounds.

“
What
did you want to see me about anyway?” asks Mark as Jamie pours him a whiskey.

“
Have
you been watching the news?”

“
Every
day. I'm even on it, sometimes.”

“
You
seen these new superheroes cropping up all over the world?”

“
Yeah,
none of them have powers though. Do they?”

“
A
couple have suspicious talents,” says Chloe. “I've been reading up on them.”

“
But
our power comes from the fire – the Protector died, there's no more power
left.”

“
You'd
think so. Unless there's a way for it to spread that we're unaware of.”

“
So
what are you suggesting? That we stop these people, or something?”

“
On
the contrary,” says Jamie, grinning. “I think they're going to need help
realising their full potential.”

Mark looks at him with
a curious grin. “Are you suggesting that we -”

“
Mentor
them? Oh, perhaps.”

“
I've
been a superhero for like a month, Jamie,” he laughs. “I'm not an expert.”

“
You're
the longest existing superhero in the world, Mark,” says Jamie. “By virtue of
being the only bloody one. Besides, if there are
heroes
coming out the
woodwork, there might be -”

“
Villains,”
sighs Mark. “So what do you want to do, just find them and recruit them or
what?”

“
Well,
it was actually Chloe's idea,” says Jamie, and points to her.

“
Yeah,”
she says. “Like – you remember the Gardens, your pet project before all this?”

“
Of
course.”

“
Well,
why don't we start something like that to bring these people together. People
with talents and powers, you know? Get them all in the one place, where we can
help shape them into people who can make a difference.”

“
That
would mean rebuilding the Gardens. Where?”

“
I
know a place with a lot of real estate potential right now. Lots of
construction and money flowing into it.”

Mark laughs. “Glasgow?
Again.”

“
Why
not?”

“
Why
not indeed,” says Mark. “Ok. I'll think about it. You think we should get the
others involved?”

“
Of
course,” says Jamie. “Get the old band back together. Except this time it's for
a good cause, rather than like, stopping a psychopath or killing an alien or
something.”

“
Which,”
says Chloe, “is what you always wanted to do in the first place, right? Work
towards a good cause?”

“
Yeah,”
says Mark. “Yeah I did.”

“
And
imagine what you could do with your power now?”

“
Imagine
what I could do,” says Mark, almost to himself, and smiles.

“
I'm
sure I've heard that somewhere before,” says Jamie, and gives him a wink.
“Sounds like, say, the slogan of a project for training potential superheroes.”

The trio smile at each
other, and Mark downs his whiskey.

“
Where
do we start?”

The
End