Chapter Three

Eggsy, Roxy and Merlin stood together in the Kingsman morgue, all staring down at Gawain's corpse.

He looked so peaceful in death, and barely scathed except for a very neat bullet wound on his chest. As if it had been surgically created instead of shot at from an incalculable distance.

But this – this was a very, very precise gunshot wound, to the heart no less. This murder had been planned.

Eggsy tried to speak around the lump in his throat but found it difficult to get the words out.

"I didn't think he was on a mission." He finally said.

"He...he wasn't." Merlin said, sounding vaguely dazed. Roxy and Eggsy looked at him. "According to his wife, he was in bed. In his pajamas."

Eggsy went suddenly cold as he thought about Gawain's real life. His family, his wife that was now left alone just like his mother had been.

"Was she given a favour?" He asked with a dry mouth.

Merlin nodded. "Percival is doing it now."

"But, if this was done out of hours, out of uniform, it might not be about Kingsman." Roxy pointed out, sounding troubled.

"It might not be," Merlin conceded honestly, "but then equally, it might be. And that means that the killer knows when they're vulnerable."

They fell silent as fear rippled around the room. It was a strange thing for a group of Kingsman agents to be scared.

Eggsy's eyes fell to Gawain again and he forced himself to look anywhere else.

"What do we do now?" He asked, by way of a distraction.

"Well, first and foremost, we drink a toast to Gawain when Percival returns. And then..." His voice darkened, catching their attention. "It's a new mission, gentleman, gentlewoman. We find whomever killed him, and we kill them."

…

Tristan exited the plane and followed his wife out of the airport, eyes cautiously trained on the two little tykes running around in front of them whilst simultaneously wondering when was the last time he'd gotten off a plane without an assassination to foil.

The thought made him smile until he snagged the wheels of his suitcase behind himself and grumbled. There were certainly perks to the Kingsman way of travelling.

It took them a few hours to navigate Spanish roads and when they finally pulled up to the family resort they had booked themselves into months previously the kids were howling with boredom.

Tristan's wife sighed as she rounded the car for the hand luggage.

Tristan merely laughed and kissed her.

She accusingly asked him what he was so happy about, he'd told her he was just glad to be on holiday, which was partially true, but then how could he tell her the whole truth?

How could he tell her that the last few months had been hellish and world-ending? That he'd been sent to eradicate a drug ring in Mexico trying to deal to the UK when he'd received a message through his glasses that James had been ripped in half. He'd wanted to get back for the new candidates but had been wrapped up in trying to locate all the dignitaries going missing around the world and then all in about five minutes, Harry gets shot in the head, some internet maniac is trying to create apocalypse on Earth and then the plucky new Galahad/Lancelot sort the sitch and every Kingsman now has to mourn all their loves ones, all the dead and put together the broken pieces of the world.

So yeah, crying kids weren't exactly going to upset him.

He opened the boot for the luggage when he felt his phone going off in his pocket. He quickly answered the phone call from Merlin, hoping nothing bad had occurred, but the techie's voice was distorted and then the call cut off.

Tristan put it down to his phone not yet acclimatising to the foreign network but if Galahad, that is, Harry, had always been brave, Lancelot, that is, James, had always been loyal, Percival had always been logical and Gawain had always been trustworthy, then it was Tristan who was always the most cautious. He'd booked this place on recommendation that it was well defended against intruders. He wasn't going to leave anything to chance. Especially not with his family near. He would quickly check in, feign needing the bathroom and then check his glasses when he got to the hotel room. Just to be on the safe side.

They got to the hotel lobby, dumping paperwork on the desk and just about to check in when the large, glass window behind them shattered, a bullet whistled through and embedded itself deeply into Tristan's chest. He collapsed just as his wife began to scream.

…

When Percival stepped out of the Kingsman shuttle, buttoning up the jacket of his black suit, he was surprised to find Merlin waiting for him.

"Merlin," he greeted. "Walk with me, what's happened?"

Merlin followed Percival through the myriad of corridors, Percival could feel the agitation cascading from him.

"I can't get a hold of Tristan." Merlin told him hurriedly.

Percival halted and turned to Merlin. Having always been the coolest and most collected of them, he attempted to interject a level of calm into the otherwise tense air.

"I'm sure he's fine." Percival assured him. "Has he checked in?"

Merlin shook his head. "That's why I'm worried, he's never not checked in before. You know what Tristan's like."

Percival nodded and his forehead creased, the first signs of worry in his features. "Well, I recommended the hotel his family were headed to, do you think you could tap into their security feeds?"

Merlin paused for a moment and then nodded. "It might take a while, because it's a different network, but I'm sure I can."

"Okay, I'll join you."

On the way to Merlin's computer room, Percival brought up Galahad on his feed and instructed him to keep trying Tristan, noting the boy's concerned expression, and then stood behind Merlin's chair as he began entering details of the hotel into a coded search engine Percival had never seen before.

"Hold on..." Merlin said quietly to himself.

"What?" Asked Percival, leaning in and gripping the back of Merlin's leather chair.

Merlin clicked out of they very complex hacking software, opened a new tab and went immediately to the BBC news page.

Confused, Percival was about to tell him that maybe now wasn't the time to check the rugby scores, until Merlin clicked on one of the headlines and Percival's jibe got stuck in his throat.

MYSTERIOUS SHOOTING AT THE BELLEVUE HOTEL, SPAIN. ONE DEAD.

"Shit." Percival said quietly.

Merlin leant in and adjusted his glasses, reading the article out loud:

"'Breaking news: this morning at the Bellevue hotel, Majorca, an unknown gunman shot through an open window, accidentally killing one holiday maker."

Merlin sent a look to Percival who stared grimly back.

…

Percival, Merlin, Lancelot and Galahad sat at varying seats in the dining room, all feeling strangely alone.

The air hanging around them was thick with morbidity; empty shot glasses in front of each of them.

"So both Gawain and Tristan were killed in the same fashion, gunshot wound to the heart." Merlin said, voice oddly flat. "It's deadly and efficient."

"Someone is picking us off." Roxy said numbly, staring at the varnished wood of the table. "One by one."

"Someone is picking us off one by one -" Percival interjected "- when we're the most vulnerable. Meaning they have inside knowledge."

Eggsy suddenly looked weary.

"What?" Asked Merlin.

"Well, Arthur." Eggsy explained. "He was workin' for them, he was a traitor."

"It's not any of us." Percival assured him, staring into the distance. "We all have alibis. You were with Roxy when Gawain was shot, I was with Gawain's family and you two were with Merlin when Tristan was shot."

Eggsy nodded and shut his mouth.

"One thing is certain, though." The acting-Arthur voiced. "That the four of us are about as far from safe as we could possibly ever be."

"What do we do?" Asked Roxy.

"Stay hidden," Merlin said, sighing. "Here. It's the safest place on Earth, while we try and figure out what to do."

Eggsy frowned. "Hidin'? That don't sound like us."

"It may be the only way we can survive." Percival pointed out.

Eggsy looked at the man who was acting as their leader, the man who had yet to defect or fail them in anyway, the man more concerned for his agents safety than using them as cannon fodder, and he respected his authority.

…

"Hey, mum." Eggsy said brightly when his mother picked the phone up.

"Hey sweetheart." His mother greeted. Despite the fact Eggsy knew that the killer was after him and not them, he still found himself relieved that she'd picked up. She sounded happy and he could hear the telly on in the background. Normal. Safe.

"Listen, mum, I..It's work, they're sendin' me away for a few days."

"Oh," she said, surprise in her voice. "What have they got to send tailors away for?"

He faltered, having not expected that. He racked his brains for anything to say. "Um...they've just introduced this new kind of fabric..." He pulled a face.

"Oh no, don't tell me." She laughed. "You weirdos and your weird fabrics, will I see you tonight?"

"No, the plane leaves in a couple hours. Sorry I didn't tell you earlier, mum. They just sprung it on me like this."

"Well that ain't fair of them."

"Yeah, I know." He attempted to sound exasperated. "Yeah, I'm really annoyed but...I'll see you in a few days, okay? Just, keep yourself safe, and Daisy. And give her my love."

"Will do, baby. Try and have fun, okay?"

"Yeah, I love you."

"Love you, too."

He hung up quickly, feeling surprisingly guilty. He wished he were a tailor off to some shit new fabric convention, but instead he was stuck inside the Kingsman mansion waiting for someone to come kill him.

He took to one of the many bedrooms in the mansion. A four poster affair with a chandelier that looked like it was made in the 1900s.

He rolled his eyes before stripping quickly and clambering under the covers.

Now that he was alone, in bed, he began to feel the fear he'd been trying to keep at bay creep up on him.

There was someone out there trying to kill him, and Roxy, and Merlin. Gawain and Tristan were far more experienced agents than him and they were picked off as if they were children.

He thought about Gawain, and about the wife he'd left behind. He thought about Tristan and how his two little ones had watched him die.

He thought about Harry, and hugged his pillow tighter.

He'd thought what he was thinking about a million times in the last few months but in that moment he couldn't help thinking that it was the time he meant it the most.

"I wish you were here."

…

The next day, Eggsy woke up, dressed in his pinstriped bespoke suit, combed his hair, slid his glasses in place on his nose and joined his fellows in the dining room only to be informed that they'd be cut off from most external communications.

"You're taking the piss." Was all Eggsy said.

Merlin shook his head. "If anyone has access to this place, aside from people in the know, then it becomes automatically vulnerable. The killer didn't kill anyone here so there is a fair chance they don't even know the whereabouts of the mansion."

Eggsy and Roxy shared a dithering look.

"So what's our next move?" Percival asked.

"Information," Merlin informed them before sliding a leather-bound file across the table in Roxy and Eggsy's general direction. Eggsy flipped the cover open and peered in to a picture of a...well...of a tramp.

"What?" Roxy asked, confused. "Who is this?" But Eggsy figured he already knew.

"Eyes on underground London," he said, as if it should have been obvious. Roxy gave him a confused look. "Well, tramps in London can get anywhere they want," Eggsy tried to explain, "good at gettin' info and that."

He stopped himself before explaining that that had been one of the many methods his step-father had employed whenever he was laying low from the police after a particularly messy drugs bust.

"Try and scrounge any information you can to see if anyone high in power has been acting mysteriously, anyone talking of any grudges, that sort of thing."

"Galahad and Lancelot; I'm giving this one to you." Percival said. "I want you to stick together, safety in numbers."

Eggsy glanced at Roxy. She looked weary but nodded nonetheless.

When they left the dining room, Roxy attempted to walk straight for the shuttle until Eggsy stopped her.

"Hey, where are you goin'?" He asked.

"The mission." She said, frowning.

Eggsy arched an eyebrow, giving her waistcoat suit the once over.

"What?" She prompted defensively.

"We can't go in suits." He said. "No one's gonna talk to us if we look like fuckin' tailors." He said.

"Fine." She muttered.

Later that evening, the pair of them, clad in everyday clothes but still with their glasses so Merlin could monitor their feeds, stepped out into the cool evening.

The street lights were just beginning to come on and Eggsy knew they didn't have much of day light left.

Roxy was busy studying the folder across from him but Eggsy wearily eyed the top of every building he could see. He wasn't sure particularly what he was worried about, snipers, he supposed. But it was dark and they were vulnerable and he didn't like it one bit.

"When did the secret service get not so secret?" He grumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets against the cold. He heard Roxy snort.

The pair ended up in a badly lit, underground train station that looked as if it had been abandoned long ago. Roxy frowned and pointed over the entrance.

"Why do they have security cameras over an abandoned station?"

Eggsy shrugged, too cold to really care. "I dunno, kids? Banksy or whatever. I'm fuckin' freezin'."

"It's not going to be much warmer inside." Roxy muttered as they walked in.

The only source of light came from a series of out of date, flickering bulbs hanging bare from the ceiling, covering the dusty, disused station with an eerie glow. In short, creepy as fuck.

"Well," Eggsy began, stepping out and glancing into the cavernous tunnel, enjoying the way his words echoed. "Looks like no one's home."

"Yeah, no shit, Sherlock." Roxy muttered, pulling her phone out and using the light to get a better look at the file. "He should be here."

"One of us go check down the track," Eggsy suggested, "one of us stay here and hold the fort?"

She paused for a moment, and Eggsy knew she didn't like the same thing he didn't like: splitting up. But if they were going to get the job done then they had to get the job done.

"Yeah," she said, "I'll go, you stay here."

He was about to offer to go in her place but she was already off, headed down the abandoned track and after about a minute, Eggsy couldn't see her anymore.

Eggsy sighed to himself and collapsed against the disused ticket office, wondering precisely when his whole world had gone to shit. Whatever he'd pictured as his future the day Harry had offered him the job, it wasn't freezing his ass off in a spooky train station, looking for a tramp to stop an assassin from blowing his heart out.

He grinned to himself when he thought about it like that, all so farcical that there was no way any of it could be true.

His grin dropped when he heard a creaking noise in the distance. He stood immediately, training his ears for the noise again but nothing came. He craned his neck and looked out over the track again, expecting to see the misty form of Roxy coming into vision but nothing was there.

"Rox?" He called out, and, after a moment of listening to his own voice rebounding off of the walls, there was no reply.

He heard rustling and, rightly scared, reached around and pulled his gun from the waist band of his jeans. He swivelled around to the source of the noise, gun held aloft, ready to pop off whoever was stood there.

And then Harry stepped out from behind the ticket office and stood in front of him.

He was dressed, head to toe, in black. Almost instantly non-recognisable because he wasn't wearing his glasses, and an emotionless, almost bored expression on his face. His hazel eyes, always so bright, seemed dulled somehow and he had a jagged, although old-looking, scar running the expanse of the left side of his face.

Eggsy absorbed all of this information in a few seconds, too stunned to think of anything else.

He merely stood for the longest moment, brain momentarily shutting down as it tried to process the impossible in front of him.

Then he lowered his gun.

"Harry..." He said quietly.

Harry blinked once and cocked his head to the side, staring blankly at him for the longest moment until he held up his own gun and shot Eggsy in the chest.

And then everything seemed to go in slow motion for the young agent. The first thing he felt was the pain of being ripped through by a speeding piece of metal and it dulled everything else around him. His reaction time slowed, his vision slowed, his thought process slowed.

Then something moved in his periphery and he blinked, noticing the blurry figure he knew to be Harry disappearing away.

Brain addled, he reached a hand out to him, desperate to stop him leaving and was genuinely surprised to see his own blood staining his fingers.

And then he frowned as he remembered that, yes, that was right, he'd just been shot. And it stung.

The more he thought about his pain, the more prominent it became until he buckled under the intensity of it, knees hitting the ground hard.

He heard a distorted, female voice calling something and then he blinked, once.

"Harry." He repeated, confused, before darkness clouded his vision.

…

Roxy felt like shit as she looked through the window. She was aware of Merlin and Percival on either side of her, also intently staring inside and she felt like they shouldn't have been there, that she shouldn't have been there because she didn't deserve to be.

She took another glance through the window to Eggsy's hospital bed. Very much out cold, the young man was attached to a ventilator, gaudy bandage wound around his bare chest.

Roxy let out a distressed noise, knowing that she'd put him there, and attempted to turn away but instead turned straight into Merlin.

"Lancelot, Eggsy is going to be fine." Merlin assured her, putting his hands comfortingly on her shoulders.

She fought hard against the tears threatening to spill down her cheeks.

"But it's my fault he got hurt at all." She said, voice thick. "I left him alone, I shouldn't have done that. You know I shouldn't have done that!"

"What you did, was save his life." Merlin pointed out seriously. "If you were together, you would both be dead. You saved him, Roxy, he's alive because of you."

Roxy nodded, still feeling the misery in her gut but she could accept that Merlin was right. She'd gotten to him in time, he had pulled through, he was okay. They lived to fight another day.

"How on Earth did they know we were there?" She asked. "We were in the middle of nowhere, we were literally underground. Eggsy couldn't of seen who attacked him..."

"I truly hope he did." Merlin said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out Eggsy's tortoiseshell glasses.

"You have his feed?" Percival asked suddenly.

"I haven't looked at it yet." Merlin told them. "Eggsy's reaction time might have been short, but I hope to Christ he got a glimpse of the sick fuck that did this to him."

With that, the three left Eggsy to recover and headed for Merlin's computer room. Merlin sat in front of his computer and Roxy pulled up a seat by his desk, Percival remained standing.

As Merlin logged in, he inclined his head towards Roxy. "Did Eggsy give any indication of what happened to him before he passed out?" Merlin asked. "You said he was conscious for a few moments when you got to him."

Roxy nodded. "He was pretty out of it but I thought he said..." She fell silent, sighing when Merlin prompted her to continue.

"I thought he said ' Harry'." She admitted quietly, wringing her hands together.

Merlin went quiet as he looked back at his screen before finally muttering: "Well, kid thought he was going to die. Probably his last thought."

The mood in the air sufficiently dampened, Merlin scrolled through Eggsy's feed until the train station came into view.

They watched Roxy disappearing down the track and then the image shifted suddenly, as if Eggsy had sat down very quickly.

The three of them continued to watch in anticipation for the next few minutes. And then Merlin took a sharp intake of breath.

…

The door to Eggsy's hospital room was pushed gently open and Harry stepped inside, making sure to shut the door quietly behind him so he went completely undetected. He'd already taken care of the security cameras they seemed to have everywhere.

He took a moment at the door to try and truly understand what it was he was doing there. He contemplated, only for a moment, taking one of the pillows from the bed and suffocating him with it. That would be quick, easy, painless. And it would make his life a lot easier, as well.

But he wouldn't do that.

He turned from the door and approached the bed, looking down at the unconscious young man snuggled inside. His face was partially obscured by the ventilator tube in his mouth and his eyes were closed but Harry remembered the way those big, hopeful eyes had stared at him in the train station.

Confusion etched across his features, he realised that there was something close to familiarity in his face. He would almost go as far as to say that he recognised him.

Not to mention the fact that he seemed to recognise him. The young man, Galahad, that was his code name, had said a name.

Harry.

It wasn't a name he'd ever heard before, but it seemed to resonate within him. Leading him to the conclusion that, perhaps, it had been his own.

Harry took a step back, leant against the wall and sighed. It had been sloppy, intentionally missing his heart like he did.

But for some reason, stood in that train station and staring at his face, he couldn't bring himself to kill him.

He walked closer to the bed, trying to ascertain exactly what had stopped him doing his job.

With hesitation, he reached a hand out, letting it ghost over the young man's cheek for a moment, so very nearly touching him until the young man's breath hitched and he shifted slightly, as if somehow knowing how close he was.

Harry froze, no sound in the sterile air except for the level beeping of Eggsy's heart monitor. Then, as quickly as Harry was there; he was gone.