Read Online Kingdom: The Complete Series by Steven William Hannah - Free Book Online Page A

him – this time it is a tiny car park, and the concrete shatters into a
spider web with him at its epicentre. His knees crack on impact as dirt and
stone fly up around him. Car alarms go off and he flinches.
    In the distance the
muffled noise of a helicopter changes tone from a calm chopping wind to an
angry, scraping whine. The hackles rise on his neck, the familiar feeling of
being hunted.
    Looking around, Mark
feels a surge of adrenaline kicking in: he's nearly at the address marked on
the card that he liberated from the King's thugs.
    He leaves the car park
into a street full of scattered, panicked people,  and begins walking down the
middle of the road. Onlookers put a hand to their mouths and point, as more
phones emerge to capture his every move.
    Mark stumbles onward,
his head still swimming with alcohol. Coherent thoughts form in his mind as
long as he is focusing on them – otherwise, words and images dissipate like
smoke in a breeze before he can grasp them. He is walking on auto-pilot,
trusting the burning strength in his muscles to get him there.
    Sirens bark behind him
and he turns, an annoyed expression flickering across his face, as a large
black van screeches to a halt. Dark-uniformed soldiers in face masks emerge,
forming a firing line in layers, expanding to fill the road like blooming,
black flower.
    More vans begin to herd
like lost cattle behind them and Mark sighs in frustration and turns back
towards his goal. Men are shouting at him as he moves, yet he swaggers away
from them without a care.
    A warning shot cracks
into the ground and the road at his feet coughs up a plume of dust. Flinching,
he turns and spreads his arms out as if demanding an explanation.
    “ Seriously?”
His red eyes pan around the ever-increasing line of soldiers aiming rifles at him.
“I'm trying to do your job.”
    A loud speaker crackles
and whines to life, so loud that Mark feels it vibrating in his lungs.
    “ Put
your hands on your head and get on your knees, or we will open fire.”
    Mark scowls and turns
away, regarding the clustered pedestrians. They huddle around dropped shopping
bags, clinging to one another in their winter coats. All eyes are on him.
    “ Can
you believe them?” Mark asks the audience as he motions his hands towards the
soldiers. “I'm going to take the King into custody for them and they're trying
to shoot me. I wonder if they're on his payroll too. You.” Mark points to a
mother clutching her child against her chest, her face gaunt with fear, “you
ever heard of the King?”
    She shakes her head.
    “ No?
Sure you're not just saying that because you're afraid?”
    Mark looks her in the
eye, his head bowed. She looks away, and he has his answer.
    “ I
wonder how many similar answers I'd get.”
    He turns back to the
firing line, now a street filled side to side with black-clad soldiers.
    “ If
you hadn't noticed, we are living under a dictatorship in this city. Nobody
will even talk about it out of fear. Well that changes today.” Mark runs his
hands through his hair, taking a deep breath and composing himself, trying to
think straight through the drunken haze. “Now I'm going to walk down this
street, into a building, and I'm going to drag a man out. He's a warlord, a
criminal; a tyrant. You're going to arrest him. Then I'll surrender.”
    The loud speaker whines
as it bursts into life again.
    “ Get
on your knees and put your hands on your head. You have three seconds.”
    “ Really?
You're going to stop me from deposing a tyrant?”
    He begins to walk
towards them, his arms out as though he were challenging them.
    “ Two.”
    “ Do
you know what bullets do to me? Nothing.”
    “ One.”
    “ Well
I guess that settles it,” he whispers to himself, and takes a deep breath. He
knows that it's going to hurt, and he can't help the slight shaking in his
knees.
    “ Fire ,”
comes the order.
    Mark tenses his body
and leaps forward.
    His skull crashes
against the buzzing of a hundred