Kingdom: The Complete Series Read online

  Kingdom

  by Steven William Hannah

  Series One

  A burning object tears through the vacuum of space, a single point of light hurtling amongst the stars in silence. It begins to split like bacteria, until there are two, then four, then eight tiny suns, all falling towards a blue marble that hangs alone in the void.

  Something stirs in the swarm of flames – a mind, expanding. It reaches out with unseen arms and feels the planet, brimming with life and warmth: millions – billions – of minds spread like a thin film across the surface.

  It sees people, some shining brighter than others. Clusters of them light up like matches struck in the dark.

  They are glowing with intent; with the capacity to build, to protect, to create, to nurture. The fire veers towards these people, these chosen few, extending its will through the void towards the planet. It picks out the brightest among them all, and accelerates towards the planet Earth.

  Episode 1

  The Burning Sky

  “Ah Jamie, come in. Sit down.”

  The words greet Jamie as he arrives home, and he freezes to the spot. Behind him, the door closes with a soft click that echoes through his flat, leaving it as silent as a waiting room. Before him stand two men in exquisite business suits and long black coats, like funeral directors.

  He considers running.

  “Don't just stand there Jamie,” the first man urges him, motioning to the dark leather couch in the corner of the room. “Take a seat.”

  His voice is bursting with forced cheer, his reddened face plastered with a grin full of clenched teeth. Beside the couch stands the second man with a golf club resting on the toe of his polished shoe like a cane. With all the grace of a stage dancer, the second man twirls the club over-hand and rests it on his shoulder. This man holds Jamie's gaze,, and he does not grin.

  When Jamie's eyes fall upon the third figure, his stomach drops into his bladder. Chloe's frail hands are clasped in her lap, her eyes fixed on the ground. She fidgets like a nervous candidate before an audition, her lips pursed.

  “Chloe,” Jamie says, his voice calm despite the fire in his chest. “Did they hurt -”

  “Talk to me, Jamie,” he is cut off by the grinning man in the long coat, sliding into his line of sight with his hands outstretched. “Not her. Me.”

  Jamie forces himself to take a breath.

  “The King sent you?” he asks, though he already knows the answer.

  The suited man nods, wringing his sweaty hands. He steps forward and Jamie takes a step backwards, flinching.

  “To discuss the terms of your employment.”

  “There's nothing to discuss,” says Jamie, trying to stop himself from trembling. “I handed in my notice, I've met my quota for the month.”

  “Yes, well that's the problem right there,” the grinning undertaker laughs smooths his thinning hair back like a nervous salesman. “The King doesn't have anybody to take your place as of yet, and with the skills that you've brought to our operation – well, you're going to be difficult to replace.”

  “Car thieves aren't hard to come by,” he says, his eyes flicking to the nervous young woman on the couch; she refuses to meet his gaze.

  “Thieves with your particular talents are.” The undertaker's voice is layered with forced flattery. “You're irreplaceable, I'm afraid.”

  “So what? That's it? I can't quit?”

  The undertaker speaks to him as though he is a child.

  “Oh you can quit Jamie; but the King needs a stop-gap whilst he finds, or trains, a replacement. We need double your quota, to tide us over.”

  “Double? You want another four cars?”

  The man with the golf club over his shoulder finally opens his mouth.

  “By tomorrow.”

  “I –” Jamie is lost for words. “Why tomorrow? That's impossible -”

  “Not for a man with your talent Jamie,” says the undertaker, winking.

  Jamie looks past the undertaker at Chloe, who is trembling just like him. He wants nothing more than to reach out and reassure her.

  “Look, I can do it – but I need more time.”

  “Are you –“ the undertaker begins, laughing and pointing at him, “are you making a demands of the King?”

  “Four cars in one night is impossible -” he starts.

  The second man casually swings the golf club into a small pyramid of china teacups. They are filled with wax and wicks to make candles – a hobby Chloe picked up years ago, filling their flat with her home-made decorations.

  Now, pieces of china and shattered wax litter the floor. Chloe gasps and flinches.

  “Nothing is impossible if the King asks it, Jamie,” the undertaker lectures him, the grin falling off of his face like dead skin.

  Jamie lowers his voice. “I'll get your cars for you. Just, give me the time I need. Two days, even -”

  Another crash rings out as the second man swings the golf club into a wooden book shelf, shattering three glass jars filled with fairy lights. The glass showers the floor.

  Chloe flinches again, and Jamie bites his lip.

  The undertaker puts a sweaty palm on his chest. Jamie stares over his shoulder at the golf-enthusiast in the corner.“

  You aren't listening Jamie. We don't want to keep breaking things.”

  “Speak for yourself,” the second man barks out a dark laugh: his pallid skin is flushed with joy.

  “Ok,” Jamie agrees with a harsh sigh, looking down at the undertaker. “Twenty four hours, four cars. The usual value? The usual garage?”

  “Of course,” says the undertaker, digging around in his oversized pockets to produce a small business card. “Then, you come to the office on this card. We'll only be there for twenty-four hours, so no funny business and don't be late.”

  Jamie takes the card and reads the address: he knows the place.

  “Will I get my pension when I arrive then? The whole severance package?”

  The undertaker nods, false kindness brimming in his red eyes.

  “You'll get all the money that you were promised, we'll take care of your affairs and give you a new identity; you'll be allowed to leave the city.” He rhymes off the deal like a tour guide. “We'll let you take away your...” he winks, “insurance policy, too.”

  Jamie's stomach lurches again. He had forgotten about the insurance policy, promised so long ago that it had decayed into a long-faded regret. The undertaker pulls a crumpled, yellow piece of paper from his huge coat pocket, and puts on a pair of reading glasses.

  “When the King took you off the streets, you were told that we needed assurance from you in the event of -” he adjusts his glasses and squints, “- capture, interrogation, so on and so forth. You had no money to your name and the only thing of real value to you was...” the undertaker trails off and looks around at the couch, where Chloe is looking back, horror plastered across her delicate face. Curled blonde hair frames her red face – mascara runs from the edges of her blue eyes, down porcelain-smooth cheeks.

  “Jamie?” she whispers, hurt and afraid. The man reads through the crumpled contract in his hands like a town-crier.

  “The terms are clear: you gave us your partner as your insurance. If you break the terms of your contract, we take her as compensation,” the undertaker smiles in pleasant surprise. “Well, Jamie,” he removes his glasses and looks at his watch, “it looks like you've got twenty-four hours.”

  “Chloe -” Jamie begins, but she can't look at him.

  “Twenty three hours, fifty nine minutes.” The undertaker stuffs his hands in his pockets. “We'll take Chloe to the office with us while you work, you can pick her up when you've finished.”<
br />
  He turns around and winks at Chloe.

  The second man steps forward as Jamie's mind races, considering his options. There's the knife duct-taped under his bed, a baseball bat in the kitchen...

  “Get to work, son,” says the second man, swaggering forward with the golf club.

  “We'll take care of the lady for you,” says the undertaker.

  Jamie looks at Chloe one last time, his heart aching from the look of complete defeat that she is giving him, and he forgets about their company for a moment to tell her:

  “I'll fix this, Chlo. Don't wo -”

  The undertaker sighs. “Twenty three hours, fifty-eight minutes.”

  Jamie turns and opens the door and runs out into the stairwell at a sprint. As he thunders down the stairs he checks the stolen watch on his wrist and notes the time.

  Five thirty in the evening.

  Twenty three hours, fifty-eight minutes, and counting.

  Jamie bursts onto the city streets and sprints into the fresh evening air, his mind racing.

  He needs more time.

  Mark lies like a prisoner on the floor of his own dilapidated bedroom.

  A sudden, loud banging echoes throughout his flat; he jumps in fright, nearly dropping the phone in his hand. Cringing, he holds his breath and presses the phone against his ear. With his other hand he holds the sloshing bottle of stinking spirits.

  “Mark, are you there?”

  His mother's voice, fraught with worry, crackles with static through the phone. Mark winces and pulls his head away from the grimy receiver.

  “Aye mum, I can barely hear you – you're breaking up,” he says, focusing on pronouncing his words to avoid slurring.

  He hears men calling his name like teasing children, asking to be let in.

  “Mark, what's that racket? Is that your neighbours again?”

  “Aye mum, it's my noisy neighbours,” he lies.

  “You should complain to your landlord.”

  “I'll uh...” He tries to sound irate. “I'll have to have a word with them -”

  He's cut off by the same banging – more severe this time. The door at the other end of his flat shakes with such force that he feels it like a bass drum in his chest.

  Sitting on the hard wooden floor of his bedroom, Mark curls in the corner where the house phone meets the wall. Asides the phone, the only furniture is a single electric lamp in a dusty corner and a worn old mattress lying bare on the floor, a thin blanket draped over it.

  “That's some racket they're making,” his mother's reedy voice comes through the phone. “Anyway, I'll let you get away. Everything still ok at work, aye? Paying you well -”

  “Yeah mum, work's great,” he tries to keep the shaking out of his voice – to help, he takes a swig of the cheap vodka in his hand. It tastes like budget cough medicine. “I'm getting paid very well, so the project's still going ahead.”

  His wide and fearful eyes dart around the room like those of a frightened animal. In his mind he mutters a silent plea to the door to hold the monsters out for just long enough to let his mother remain ignorant.

  “Ok son, goodnight then, love and kisses!”

  “Love and kisses, mum,” he whispers back, and hangs up the phone. He stares at the handset for a few seconds before ripping the socket from the wall and sighing. Leaning his head back against the hard plaster, he screws his eyes shut as the vibrations run through the walls.

  Mark waits, downing as much of the unlabelled bottle as his burning throat can manage.

  The door shudders on its hinges once more: the blows are more patient this time, rhythmic banging like a judge's gavel. Muffled through the wood, the voices of his unwelcome visitors come from all around him.

  “We know you're in there Mark. We'll wait here until morning if you want. You have to leave the flat at some point.”

  Staring at the wall in defeat, Mark folds his arms across his chest and waits. He closes his eyes and tries to take himself elsewhere, away from this mess. There he sits, rocking back and forth, focusing on his breathing like his mother taught him to.

  The tension stays no matter how hard he inhales, like wire pulled tight across his muscles.

  Sighing in frustration, he leans across and pulls a small red journal from a gap in the floor boards. It's the only thing with any colour in the room.

  As though handling a fragile antique, he unbinds the journal and takes the tiny pencil from its hiding place inside the spine. He flicks through the pages to get to the present day, skipping over the written shame of the past few years. No matter how fast he turns the pages, his eyes catch the underlined phrases at the bottom of every page: bad decision, wrong turn, start again, back to square one -

  Ferocious, pounding blows strike the door again, and he spasms and drops the pencil in fear. It nearly rolls into a crack between the floor boards, and he lunges and catches it at the last minute. He tries to calm himself, settling back against the wall and putting the pencil to the paper.

  'The wolves are at the door,' he writes in his spiked cursive. 'I have brought this upon myself. If only I had the strength to stand up to these people. This will likely be my last entry. Had I another chance, I doubt I'd change a thing. I'm sorry, mum.'

  The men at the door have fallen eerily silent. Like a child hiding under the covers, he allows himself a moment of hope. He drinks from the bottle, spilling paint-thinning vodka down his lips.

  Closing the journal and binding it shut, he makes his peace and slides it back down beneath the floorboards.

  “Maaaark...”

  The mocking call seems to come from the walls all around him, teasing him.

  Like a brewing storm, the creaking and groaning of wood grows louder as though the house is slowly tearing itself apart. Mark shuffles into the corner, trying to make himself as small as he can in the vain hope that he might fall through the floorboards along with his journal.

  The creaking turns into cracking as the wooden door begins to splinter, until with a sharp thunder-clap the wooden door crashes open and the drum-beat of heavy footsteps fills his hollow dwelling.

  Mark falls silent as the voices fill his home, chiding him and seeking him out.

  “Where are you, Mark?”

  The voices grow closer, until the thin door to his room bursts open and the snarling men arrive. The lamp's weak glow casts their shadows across the room; they tower over Mark as more of them prowl into the room, grinning.

  Huddled in the corner, Mark finds himself surrounded by wolves in the skin of men. The leader of the pack wields a crowbar, the same one that granted him access to what little space Mark has.

  He drops the bottle in terror and it clinks over the floor, spilling what little was left over his legs.

  The leader teases him, walking forward until he stands at Mark's quivering feet.

  “Not answering your door any more, Mark?”

  “This place stinks,” says one of the wolves, screwing his nose up.

  They all wear long black jackets with old stained jeans and steel toe-capped boots – most of them sport bruises or cuts on their faces: cauliflower ears and squint noses, some with deep scars running up the side of their cheeks.

  On the floor, Mark lies like a condemned man. He is thin and frail: his janitor's overalls hang off his skeleton like the striped pyjamas of a starved convict.

  “Just do it,” he whispers, and the men break out in rehearsed laughter.

  The leader of the pack wags the crowbar at him.

  “That not how the King works, Mark. You've broken the rules.” “Now, assaulting the King's men? That comes with a harsh sentence.”

  He leaves the threat hanging. Mark twists his hands together in his foetal pose and stares at the floor, an animal in a trap.

  “I come here,” the man says in faux-official tones, “as a Judge in the name of the King. You have violated the laws of the Kingdom, and are hereby party to a trial by a jury.” The leader of the pack turns and waves his crowbar
at the men behind him, who stand with clasped hands like onlookers at a funeral. “These men shall serve as your jury. Should you be found guilty, you will face the unbridled force of the King's law.”

  Mark looks up at them from his grave on the floor. Perhaps it's the drink hitting him, but he finds the courage to speak.

  “Everybody knows these trials are a farce,” he says.

  The leader of the pack pretends not to hear him.

  “You stand accused of assaulting the King's men and as a result, jeopardising the safety of the Kingdom. How do you plead?”

  Mark seems to have reached the end of his hope, and has now turned to his defiance. With liquid bravery flooding his veins, he props himself up against the wall and looks his judge and his jury in the eyes. The same words that he wrote in his journal race through his mind.

  If only I had the strength to stand up to these people.

  “How do I plead?” asks Mark, his voice a dry rasp. “If glassing a couple of thugs who were dealing to bloody children is a crime, then yeah,” he sneers. “I guess I'm guilty.”

  “Mark, you're a smart guy. You understand the way the King works. This 'dealing to children' is a necessary part of a complex system. The weak sink to the bottom and the cream rises to the top. The King wants you to know that he is sorely disappointed in you; he considers you a great waste of potential. There was a place for you in his utopia.”

  “Utopia? Really?” Mark laughs. “Look at this flat. Do I look like I live in a fucking utopia?”

  “Mark,” the judge smiles as though he expected this, “you live like this because you blew all your money on endeavours that were against the King's wishes, and therefore doomed to failure. Your skills could have been put to use elsewhere – you forced yourself into poverty.”

  “The King forced me into poverty.”

  “No Mark: you chose to persevere with your project despite the King's clear indications to stop. This was your decision.”

  “My project worked until the King decided to intervene.”

  “You could have been somebody, Mark,” the judge sighs. “Instead: you struggle by as a cleaner in a school that you hate. You could move home to your dear mother's house, of course, but your pride keeps you here. It's that same pride, Mark, that makes you think you know better than the King how to operate this city.”