Chapter Five
"Guys!" Merlin called worriedly from the cockpit.
Percival, Lancelot and Galahad all stared at each other, concerned, before Percival stood and walked through the galley to the flight deck.
"Oh." They heard him say after a moment.
Eggsy and Roxy shared a look before they were on their feet and in the cockpit as well.
"Wha...oh." Eggsy said.
They were just beginning their descent onto the landing strip they had come to before, but instead of the bare, dark opening – it was brightly lit and a very large, mounted sub-machine gun was pointed directly at the nose of the plane.
"What do we do?" Roxy asked quietly.
"They're signally us, so I guess we land." Merlin said, voice even.
Fear shot through Eggsy's spine as Merlin touched down onto the landing strip, taxing down the line for a few moments, straight past the machine gun that didn't fire.
But the relief was short lived when around twenty or so British-uniformed soldiers, all at arms, gathered around the nose of plane.
"Well shit." Said Percival.
The four of them stepped out of the jet, walking one by one slowly down the steps, hands elevated in the air.
Eggsy was the first down and the minute his foot touched the ground, the nearest soldier approached him swiftly. But instead of shooting him, he grappled him.
Every instinct was telling Eggsy to throw this guy over his hip and knock him out but, following Percival's instructions, he allowed the soldier to search him and then hold his hands roughly behind his back and push him forward, towards the entrance of the base.
The same treatment was given to the other three until they were being frogmarched through the entrance and down one of the rock-walled corridors Eggsy remembered.
It suddenly occurred to Eggsy that maybe the plan was simply to chuck them all into the well-furnished prison cells he'd seen last time, which would royally scupper all the escape avenues they'd considered, but relief washed over him as they were walked past them and emerged into a large room.
Despite his lack of technical knowledge, even Eggsy could tell that they'd just entered a large, technological manufacturing laboratory.
It was clear from the conveyor belts and the robot arms. The technological and biometric machinery was all currently silent and immobile, making the room eerily quiet.
But the more Eggsy looked around the room as they were marched through it, the more he felt like he recognised it but he had no idea where from.
But then he noticed a woman staring down at them at the far end of the room, standing within a raised office with one glass wall and he remembered.
This was the same ballroom he'd killed Valentine in, there was even the same elevated platform in the middle on which he'd killed Gazelle.
The memory only served to make him feel oddly proud and he allowed himself a moment to wonder if he was a bad person.
The woman apparently descended from her office and walked out in front of them, giving the agents a clear view of her for the first time.
She was obviously in her sixties, but still strong and capable, wearing a tailored, black skirt-suit with her dark hair pinned back. Very professional. Obviously the boss.
She stopped in front of them, eyeing them sternly with her hands clasped behind her back. An infantry soldier with a S.A 80 Mark 2 Assault Rifle in his arms flanked her.
Eggsy nearly thanked the lord when Percival, brilliant Percival, broke the silence.
"Who are you?" He asked, betraying no sign that he held any fear or doubt.
But, seemingly unperturbed by the forthright leader, the unnamed woman merely stared him down with dark, penetrating eyes.
"I don't think you're in the position to be asking questions." She replied in an American accent.
"Actually, on the contrary." Percival continued conversationally, as if they were sharing a coffee rather than being restrained by an armed guard. "We've been kidnapped and we have nothing to lose. You want us all dead, obviously, that's why you had our colleagues gunned down in cold blood. We could be shot at any moment."
And then he did something Eggsy had never seen him do before. He smiled.
"If we're going to talk, I might request a more comfortable setting." He finished.
The woman stared levelly at him for a moment before inclining her head and giving the barest nod to the soldier restraining him.
The soldier stood back and released his captive, but apparently the rest of them weren't allowed the same privilege.
Percival merely straightened his suit jacket before taking a step forward.
The bodyguard behind her immediately levelled his assault rifle at him.
Roxy let out a quick breath and Eggsy attempted to break free but to no avail, Merlin stayed still.
Percival stared at the gunman for a moment before gently raising his hands to shoulder height, remaining otherwise motionless.
"Who are you?" The woman asked.
"My name is Percival." Percival answered easily, before using one elevated hand to gesture to the rest of them slowly in turn. "This is Merlin, Lancelot and Galahad."
Her eyes travelled over each of them as they were identified but seemed to waver slightly on Eggsy. He frowned, confused, hoping it was merely his imagination.
Her gaze then moved away from them and she fixed them all with a steely stare. "Kingsman." She identified.
"Might I ask your name?" Percival said.
"My name is Valerie Valentine." She revealed.
Roxy sent a subtle glance to Eggsy and even with her restricted eye movements, he could see she was just as troubled as he was.
Merlin stiffened next to him but didn't say a word.
"I believe one of your well-dressed agents killed my son."
Eggsy heard a huff come from beside him and turned a head to see Roxy, rather than looking scared, looking incredulous.
"So that's what this is about?" She said loudly. Merlin stared, shocked, across at her but she was undeterred. "Revenge? Your son was a monster."
Eggsy was aware that Roxy had the moral high ground, and was behind her in spirit, but he was also acutely aware of the assault rifle still levelled at Percival's head .
"My son was a hero." Valentine said calmly. "You know, I was the one that got him interested in all this -" She gestured around herself at the machinery. "-electronics and coding. The unappreciated art. It was always my forte." She sighed then, and suddenly looked much more human than she had previously. "I thought Richmond had the potential to save the world," she continued, before she glared. "And he did. You did not just condemn my son, you condemned the world. And once I'm done with you, who knows, perhaps I'll continue his work."
Eggsy decided she was fruitloops.
"Not to reawaken an old cliché..." Merlin finally spoke, sounding rather downtrodden. "But you wont get away with this. You know you wont. Because you're the bad guy, and you kill for no reason, you're destined to lose."
She smiled then, and Eggsy believed he preferred it when she was glaring. It was a toothy, sharky grin that strangely made him expect bad things to happen.
"I do have something he didn't have." She said, before reaching a hand out to her side and beckoning.
Then Eggsy understood the bad feeling in his gut. Everything slotted into place in his mind and he knew what was going to happen before it happened.
But his prior knowledge did nothing to stop his stomach dropping and his world collapsing when Harry walked over.
Now in the sterile light of the laboratory rather than the dingy light of the train station, Eggsy had the chance to get a proper look at him.
He was indeed dressed in all black but now he could see it clearly; he identified it as a light, Kevlar material. Again, he wasn't wearing the glasses that had become synonymous to him, which was instantly odd, and he had the same, jagged scar on the left side of his face.
Additionally, Eggsy noticed that he had a thigh holster strapped to his left thigh with an unidentifiable black pistol inside, which instantly explained why he did not notice him pulling a gun on him the last time they met.
Harry came to stand beside the bodyguard with the assault rifle, hands hanging by his side and staring at nothing in particular with a disinterested look on his face. He blinked.
"Harry." Merlin said quietly, voice dipping.
"What did you do to him?" Roxy asked angrily.
"I saved him," Valentine explained, looking at Harry and smiling, and then Eggsy cared as much about the guards as Roxy seemed to. He wanted to rip her away from him, to grab Harry and run no matter the consequences.
"When I found him, he was dancing with death, bleeding out onto the warm concrete." She approached Harry and Eggsy tensed, watching in disgust as she gestured around his eyes, next to his scar. He didn't move. "Your impressive Kingsman glasses absorbed most of the initial shock of the bullet, even at close range. This caused it to ricochet into the left side of the skull, destroying most of the bone plate there."
Eggsy felt hot tears form in the corners of his eyes as Harry's horrific final moments were described in vivid detail. He remembered how much it had hurt to have a bullet pierce his skin, he tried to imagine the amount of pain Harry must have gone through having it shatter his skull.
"We managed to replace the broken bone with metal plating," she continued, as if talking of fixing a car engine rather than a human being. "And I believe, considering we saved his eye, I don't think the scar is all that bad, do you?"
She sounded proud, she sounded smug. Congratulating herself on a job well done. Eggsy was going to vomit.
She ran a finger along the scar on his face and Harry didn't react. And that was probably the worst thing. Eggsy knew he didn't know Harry as well as Merlin or Percival, but he knew him intimately, and he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that, if given the choice to die on that pavement or live like this, he would have chosen to die. Keeping him alive seemed cruel and morbid.
"Why would you even do this?" Percival asked, sounding oddly distressed.
"I had access to my son's cameras." She explained. "I watched the agents little 'actions' in the church. He must have taken out seventy people in three minutes. It was spectacular, it was glorious. I knew then that he would be the perfect assassin, if I ever needed such a thing. But what can I say? I plan ahead. After my son was murdered, it turned out that he became very useful. Ten points to me."
"What have you done to him?" Merlin asked accusingly, narrowing his eyes. "I've known this man for over twenty years, he would never do this voluntarily. He's too strong."
Valentine turned Harry's head gently, exposing the scar on his neck that they'd earlier discovered on Eggsy's feed.
"This was my son's invention. I call it an inhibitor chip, loosely adapted from the same data in the sim cards."
"Mind control." Merlin simplified.
"I wouldn't say mind control," she cut in. "I can't command him to do anything. I have merely released him from his emotions, it makes him work on basic instinct alone. The perfect, ruthless, killing machine. He only follows me because he chooses, I think it's because I'm powerful." She pointed at them. "All of my wonderful soldiers have them, as well."
"So that's how you command loyalty, then?" Merlin asked icily.
"It's the only way to ensure true loyalty." She replied just as coldly, eyes travelling over Eggsy as she spoke.
Unfortunately for her, that seemed to spark Eggsy back into the land of the living and, staring at Harry, he finally spoke.
"He didn't recognise me." He said quietly.
"I'm sorry?" Valentine asked, looking at him.
"He didn't recognise me." Eggsy quickly clarified, voice tight as he looked at her. "What did you do to his memories?"
"That, I'm afraid, was not me." She admitted. "As far as I can tell, the close range of the bullet and the shock to that part of the brain has caused some temporary amnesia."
"But he knows things." Merlin pointed out confusedly. "From our agency, things he would have had to remember."
Valentine nodded. "Bits and pieces of his memory seem to return to him every now and then. When prompted."
Eggsy let out a short breath, feeling something deep inside of himself that he never thought he'd feel again. Hope. Small at first, an ember that would burn bright into a forest fire with enough coaxing.
If they could just get to Harry, if they could just get him home then they could get him back.
During this thought process, he failed to notice that Valentine was still talking and only managed to hear the last part of her sentence.
"...and then once the agent fulfils his usefulness, then I'll kill him. I'll kill my soldiers too if that's what it takes to cover my tracks. My son was always too loud, too brash. He lacked the art of subtly."
The soldiers didn't react to their death sentence, nor did Harry.
But Eggsy did.
He tried, desperately, to lunge at her but was held back by the superior strength of the towering soldier restraining him. "You can't do this!" He snarled at her.
"Why ever not?" She asked calmly.
"Because Harry isn't yours!" He shouted, still struggling against his restriction. "He's mine!"
"Enough!" Valentine shouted.
A deathly silence blanketed the room, Eggsy stopped struggling and stared, suddenly terrified of what he'd just caused.
Then, as calmly as before, Valentine turned to Harry.
"I'm bored of this now." She told him. "Kill them all."
Then she turned on her heel and walked away.
The thing about being a Kingsman agent was that you became desensitised to this sort of situation, and death threats weren't as mind numbingly terrifying as they would be to a civilian because you had the kind of expertise that gave you at least a fighting chance.
So when Harry's hand hovered over the pistol strapped to his left thigh, it wasn't that surprising to either Galahad, Lancelot or Merlin when Percival walked calmly towards him.
There was real sorrow in Percival's dark eyes and when he spoke, his voice was solemn.
"Harry, dearest friend, I'm sorry that this has happened to you. I know that you know everything about me, because we've walked the battlefield together, but that rather means I know everything about you. I know that you're right handed."
Successfully recognising Harry's tactical feint, Percival was anticipating it when Harry passed the pistol quickly from his left to his right and was able to intercept the weapon, wasting no time in pointing it directly at its owner.
Taking this as the cue to follow the orders Percival had given them before they'd exited the jet; Eggsy, Roxy and Merlin identically drove an elbow into the ribcage of their respective captors.
Eggsy heard his captors rib crack under his own bone and twisted, pistoning his leg out behind himself and connecting with a hip, sending him sprawling and successfully tugging his rifle from his hands by the time he had straightened.
Roxy's elbow landed in the soldiers stomach, effectively winding him and she quickly drove her hand upwards, palm whacking painfully against the underside of his chin, causing his brain to collide with the inside of his skull and he twirled and collapsed, unconscious, leaving Roxy able to simply bend down and pluck the rifle from him with a finesse that Eggsy envied.
The force of Merlin's elbow sent his captor hurtling back and before he was able to right himself, Merlin pulled his arm back, changing the angle and sending the elbow straight into his face. Eggsy could hear the obscene squelching of his nose breaking across the room.
The minute Merlin had a weapon in his hand, he span and shot Valentine's remaining bodyguard through the neck. Blood splattered from the hole and then he was on his knees, and then on his back. He gargled and then gargled no more.
The Kingsmen span as they heard footsteps on the varnished floor and watched as around fifteen of the armed soldiers from the landing strip charged through the only exit, blocking their way and aiming their guns. They were trapped.
Roxy eyed the door through the gaps in the soldiers, certain they could battle through and make a run for it. "We have to get back to the plane!" She shouted. "Or we're all dead."
Eggsy's head shot to Harry, still held at gunpoint by Percival, and sent him a pleading look.
"Please, come with us." Eggsy begged.
Harry apprehended him for a moment, cocking his head to one side in the way that Eggsy was used to. Eggsy could swear he saw a flicker of recognition cross those dull brown eyes before he simply turned and left the way Valentine had gone.
Eggsy charged for him, nearly dropping his assault rifle in the process but then he felt Merlin's strong arms around him, shoving him roughly in the direction of the door.
Growling, Eggsy turned and charged for the wall of soldiers, lifting his weapon and executing two head shots in around ten seconds.
The other soldiers, all inhibited as Harry was, weren't perturbed by such an abject display of ruthless violence and immediately opened fire.
Roxy ducked to the floor, grabbing a handful of Eggsy's suit and taking him down with him.
Eggsy landed heavily on the ground, groaning as he heard bullets screeching above him. A bullet collided with his breast and was deflected by his bulletproof suit jacket, but the suits weren't impact absorbent and the force of the hit sent him sprawling on his back.
He saw the heavy-duty lighting system on the ceiling and immediately pointed his rifle upwards and fired, no time to figure out if such a feat would work.
Sparks erupted from the damaged electrics, sending a shower of heat and pain down to them.
Roxy screeched and pulled the back of her suit jacket over her head, Merlin and Percival used the distraction to barrel through, shooting whoever got in their way as they cleared a path to the door.
Eggsy was up on his feet, one arm around Roxy's waist and pulling her to the door. They ducked and dived from the remaining soldier's bullets, some hitting them and some whizzing past, before they were out into the labyrinth of cell-corridors again.
"I hope you remember the way!" Roxy called out as they began to run, the remaining soldiers hot on their heels.
Merlin led the way in front and Percival wrapped a firm hand around Eggsy's wrist, giving him purchase to twist around and fire at the soldiers gaining on them while he ran.
Roxy suddenly stopped in the middle of the corridor, holding her ground while she shot two down, they collapsed at their feet and the approaching soldiers tripped over their dead comrades.
Roxy span and ran, catching up with the rest of them as they ran out into the, blissfully empty, landing strip.
"We don't have time!" Roxy shouted quickly, already hearing the heavy footfalls of the remaining soldiers on her feet.
The four of them raced up the stairs and piled into the jet, Merlin bolting into the flight deck and starting up the first engine.
Percival ran to the nearest window and watched in horror as the machine gun began to move and lock onto their position.
"Merlin..." He called out. "Hurry!"
"I'm going as fast as I can!" Merlin shouted angrily back, thumbing the button and shoving the lever down, starting engine two and lifting them awkwardly into the air.
Roxy and Eggsy were thrown from one side of the galley to the other as the jet tilted with the rushed take off, and then there was a crash, a blast of orange streaming past the windows and everything ricocheted and the lights went out.
Eggsy genuinely believed that they were going to die. He clung to Roxy where they'd collapsed against each other, he squeezed his eyes shut and he said goodbye to his mum and his sister, he wished them a good life, he told Harry all the things he should have told him before it was too late and he breathed slowly.
One by one, the cabin lights flickered back to life.
Eggsy cracked an eye open and saw Percival half-bent over one of the seats, Roxy clinging to him and staring, wide eyed, at him and then the jet dipped in the other direction, straightening out until they were level again.
"If anyone cares," Merlin called from the flight deck. "It didn't hit us."
Eggsy breathed heavily as he stood on shaky legs, not letting go of Roxy as he righted himself.
Percival looked out of the window again, watching as the mountain disappeared from sight behind them.