Chapter Six
Harry entered Valentine's office as blasé as if he were bringing news about the weather rather than world war three having just broken out and destroying half of the electronics laboratory.
"Yes?" She said, not bothering to look up from her computer as she heard him approach.
"They've escaped. The Kingsman."
She dismissed it with a wave of her hand. "Oh, no matter. I instructed you to end them more for show than anything else, we'll get to them in good time."
Harry nodded. "We weren't expecting them to find us." He said.
Valentine finally looked up to him. "I was." She informed him. "You and them are cut from the same cloth. I figured if any of them could track as well as you can then we'd be expecting a visitor any day now." Her eyes narrowed. "One thing I wasn't expecting, however, was for Agent Galahad to still be alive."
If Harry hesitated at all, it didn't show on his face.
"I'm sorry." He said emotionlessly. "I must have made a mistake."
She stood from behind her desk, nodding understandingly in agreement as she approached him. He expected the cold press of gun metal to his temple before it happened.
"I suggest you take care not to make another one." She said calmly, almost sweetly, as she ground the gun painfully into the remaining bone of his skull. "Unless you want another hole in your head. It would provide nice symmetry, though."
Then the gun was gone.
"Finish the job." Was all she said before walking back to her desk and resuming the work on her computer as if the little meeting hadn't taken place at all.
As Harry walked to his destination in the base, passing the engineers trying to fix the destroyed lighting system in the laboratory, he decided that he wasn't offended that Valentine had threatened him.
She was just upset that the Scottish Kingsman had killed her friend, that bodyguard.
He reached the loading bay he had been heading for, walking inside and pulling one of the password protected boxes down, he thumbed in the number and watched as the top unsealed itself, he pulled out a handful of close-range explosives but was far too pre-occupied with his own thoughts to pay them much mind.
He considered suggesting to Valentine that she give herself an inhibitor chip, that way she would no longer care about her bodyguard and her work would be more efficient.
He placed the explosives into a black bag and slung it over his shoulder as he left the room, finger slowly trailing along the scar on his neck.
The bespectacled young man's face flitted across his mind, and that pleading look in his eye that he'd given him when he begged him to come with him.
It gave him enough odd stirrings even now, he imagined the emotional struggle he'd be in if he actually cared.
He mused that this inhibitor chip really did make life a lot simpler.
…
All returned to the safety of the Kingsman mansion, Eggsy took to one of the many bathrooms and stripped from his suit, hissing in pain at the blossoming bruise across his breast bone from where he'd been hit with that bullet.
He had a few other bruises scattered around, and now that his heart was no longer thumping manically because he thought the jet had been blown from the sky, he began to feel the pain in his bones.
He took a quick shower, allowing the spray to unknot the tense muscles of his back as he tried to convince himself that he wasn't dead.
That was as far as he could think right now. He wasn't dead. He'd survived, they'd all survived. He couldn't think any deeper than that, because if he did, then he'd have to think about everything he'd learnt and everything that had happened and if he thought about any of that, he really would die, and he wasn't in a position to do that just now.
He dried and changed before he met the rest of them, all in varying states of heightened anxiety, now with a new mission on the cards.
It was almost depressing that they were all locked inside the Kingsman mansion, trying to figure out a way to kill Valentine – again – but Eggsy was fairly sure that a knife to the back wasn't going to cut it this time.
She was more cunning than Richmond, more was at stake this time.
It was obvious that they were all employing Eggsy's tactic and actively avoiding the elephant in the room – namely Harry.
Percival suddenly rose, even he looked weary.
"You should all get some sleep." He said, sounding drained. "It was a tough day."
Eggsy was the second to stand. He cleared his throat and they all turned to him.
It didn't look like his eyes had the strength to show any emotion other than complete and utter dejection.
"I'm sorry." He apologised. "I put your lives in danger today, I promise it wont happen again."
He left immediately, clearly distressed.
Once she was certain that he was out of earshot, Roxy leant across the table to Merlin.
"Be honest with me," she said, eyes pleading on behalf of her friend. "Is there any way to get him back?"
"I don't know." Merlin sighed. "But I think the biggest hurdle and the one that Eggsy is struggling with the most, is that it seems like Harry doesn't want to come back."
"But he doesn't know what he wants." Roxy pointed out. "He's being controlled. We're his friends, we have to try, right?"
"We will." Percival said suddenly from across the room. "I want to help Harry as much as Eggsy does, but I think Eggsy may need time to figure out what it is he really wants."
"He doesn't know what he wants." Roxy echoed dismally. "He's being controlled."
"And by forces much stronger than technology." Merlin chipped in unhelpfully.
Roxy sighed as she stood. "I'm going to bed."
…
The minute Eggsy had changed out of his suit, he left the Kingsman mansion and he went home.
Not to his new house with his mum and his sister, he'd never endanger them in that way, but also because he wanted to be really home. He went back to his old council estate. The one he'd grown up on, the one he'd lived in when he'd quit marine training. The one he figured would be his lot for the rest of his life.
He'd spent so many years wishing to never see the place again but now that everything had gone to shit it was all he wanted to see.
He supposed what it came down to was being able to pretend that none of this had ever happened. That Harry Hart hadn't beaten up a bunch of thugs in front of him, offered him a one way ticket to stardom and stolen his heart in the process. A world in which the world wasn't on the brink of chaos, his life and his friends lives weren't in danger from the one thing he knew he'd let kill him before he killed it.
He picked up a disused lump of metal he was fairly sure was from a car body frame work before he walked towards a garage that hadn't been used for about ten years. Kids used to always go inside and play with the left over tools or graffiti the place so when Eggsy was about fifteen, the council had padlocked the protective gate. But it was no matter, every time they did he'd just find something heavy enough to break the padlock.
He grinned to himself as he smashed the metal down onto the weakest part of the lock, watching as it fell to the floor, before he lifted the gate, revealing the musty door that led into the garage.
The glass on the door was so dirty from years of grime that Eggsy couldn't even see through it properly. He opened the door and walked inside, finding himself smiling at the dark room within. Now this, this was memories.
He used to spend a lot of time in this room when he was young, it was where he used to hide from Dean when he went on one of his rampages, or where he'd hide from the other kids when they laughed at him for getting A's and B's at school.
In a nutshell, this was the place he used to go to vent all of his emotions. Everything he'd felt, every tear he'd cried was in this room somewhere.
He walked inside, enjoying being enveloped by the welcoming darkness. He felt for a wall and sat down, leaning against it.
He looked around himself for a moment before, for the first time since all this had kicked off, he allowed himself to be overwhelmed by it all and he cried.
Harry stood outside, staring at the grime-covered window, the bag of close-range explosives over his shoulder.
He knew it was a little brutal, but then he also knew that he'd never be able to kill this Galahad if he had to look him in the eye again so this had to be the way.
He made quick work of setting and arming the explosives outside of the door, he wanted to be gone as quickly as possible so he didn't have time to change his mind again.
He turned his back, seeing the sun just dip below the horizon as he went to leave but then paused when he heard the unmistakable sound of sobbing drifting through the grime -smeared door.
Eggsy was...Eggsy was crying.
Entranced by the sound, and as if he were working on autopilot, Harry found himself gently opening the door and stepping inside.
The ajar door cast some light into the room but Eggsy obviously hadn't noticed. He was leaning against a wall, curled into a ball and crying earnestly into his lap, hands grasping at the back of his head as his frame shook.
Harry felt something unmistakably close to compassion, to sadness even and that confused him because he was fairly certain he wasn't supposed to be feeling at all.
He wondered what precisely it was about this man that meant so much to him. All he'd done was scupper Harry's plans but he couldn't bring himself to hurt him, he didn't even like seeing him hurting.
So distracted was he by his thought process, and by staring at the distressed boy in front of him, that he only remembered the armed explosives when it was too late.
He turned his head, letting out a shocked 'oh' just as they detonated.
Cracks appeared in the wall almost immediately and then the roof was caving in, the rubble landing on Harry, the impact ripping his clothes and tearing his skin and forcing him to the ground under the weight. Then nothing.
Eggsy coughed and spluttered, blinded by the dust and deafened by the blast, trying to expel the dust from his lungs as he attempted to stand on wobbly legs, he felt something sharp at his side and knew he'd been hit by some of the debris but he didn't have time to worry about it now.
He flapped his hand in front of him, clearing a path in the dusty air as his ears rang and his vision slowly returned to him. The world lurched in front of him and then he was on his side, vomiting onto the dust-covered floor.
He turned his head, leaning on the ground and trying to get any oxygenated air before cracking an eye open.
His eyes widened when he noticed an arm protruding out from under a pile of what had previously been ceiling. If he weren't Kingsman, he might have wondered how the fuck another person had been in there without his noticing but instead, he ignored the pain and fatigue and forced himself to his knees, scrambling to the immobile limb.
Eggsy rubbed his eyes, wincing at the sting, as he tried to get a better look at what he was dealing with. He immediately reached for the arm, half-registering a black and red coat of arms tattoo on the inner forearm.
Eggsy frowned for a moment, trying desperately to remember where he'd seen such a distinctive marking before but then he saw Harry grinning before his eyes as he ran his fingers through his hair, exposing his bare arm to him and Eggsy's heart actually stopped for a moment.
He jerked back to life and began desperately pulling the rubble away, brick by brick, with renewed strength he didn't realise he'd had.
Shit, shit, shit...He thought to himself as tears spilled uncontrollably down his face. Shit I can't be too late, I can't be too late.
Luckily for both of them, the roof had only partially collapsed. Had Eggsy been on the wrong side of the room, he'd be dead right now.
Eggsy gasped, still finding it hard to breath, as he pulled Harry from the wreckage. He could already see blood and let out a wail.
"Come on, wake up, please wake up..." Eggsy said desperately as he shook Harry roughly, desperate for any signs of life but Harry gave him none.
Lip quivering, tears still falling thick and fast, Eggsy pulled his, miraculously unharmed, phone from his pocket with shaking fingers and dialled Merlin whilst simultaneously pressing two fingers to the scar on Harry's neck in search of a pulse.
He felt Harry's lifeblood throb beneath his fingers and let out a long, shaky sigh of relieve.
"Oh, fuck...you're gonna be okay..." He promised breathlessly before Merlin picked up.
…
Eggsy leant against the wall in the corridor, peering in through the observation window as Merlin leant over Harry's body, adjusting the computers on his side.
Eggsy crossed his arms loosely as he stared, feeling oddly numb. He supposed he had just nearly died after all, but with nothing but a sore throat and a minor graze at his side, he was the lucky one.
Harry hadn't been so lucky. He had cuts and scrapes littering the expanse of his skin where the rubble had torn it.
Merlin had stitched what needed stitching and applied an ointment he had explained would reduce the risk of further scaring.
Eggsy turned his head and watched as Roxy turned into the corridor, rushing to him and throwing her arms around him.
"Oh, Eggsy, thank god. Percival told me about the collapse, and when you said to meet you in the medical bay I thought something awful must have happened."
"It did." Eggsy muttered against her neck.
Roxy pulled away and gave him a questioning look. Eggsy beckoned with his head to the observation window. She turned and gasped, having not expected to see Harry lying on the bed inside.
Unconscious and stripped to his underwear, body littered with bandages and stitches.
"Jesus Christ..." She said, turning to Eggsy. "What the fuck happened?"
But before Eggsy could explain fully, Merlin exited the door to the medical bay next to the observation window and joined them.
"Hello, Lancelot." He greeted rather grimly. "Eggsy, I've decided to take advantage of his unconsciousness. I'll probably perform an MRI and a few brain X-rays, just to see what we're dealing with. Then I'll be able to do all I can to remove the inhibitor chip. The amnesia can only be left to time."
An unidentifiable emotion flitted across Eggsy's eyes but the moment it was there then it was gone again.
"Is he okay?" Roxy asked quietly, still staring at Harry through the window.
"He'll be fine, physically. He was lucky Eggsy got to him in time."
"What was he even doing there?" She asked, before her eyes sparked. "Oh, God. Do you think he was coming to kill you?"
"I think he blew up the buildin' to kill me." Eggsy told her honestly.
"What?" Roxy asked incredulously.
"There were remnants of minor explosives at the crash site." Merlin admitted gently.
Eggsy was worried that such a thing would cause the young Lancelot to turn on Harry, to presume he was a monster and could never be saved, but instead of saying anything of that ilk, she merely looked confused.
"But why would he stay in the area if he planned to blow it up?"
"How should I know? Maybe he got trapped, whatever, but he's safe now, that's all that matters."
Roxy opened her mouth to respond, to scream at Eggsy that his blind adoration for the man who was trying to kill him would indeed get him killed, but a look from Merlin silenced her.
"I'm just glad you're okay." She told Eggsy.
He nodded in response, but his eyes were still trained on the brainwashed, former-agent within the room.
She had to wonder just how 'okay' he really was.
…
It was a hard feat to sneak away from a building of secret spies, and to be fair, Eggsy wasn't even certain that he'd done it successfully, but he didn't care who knew he was in there, it wasn't anyone else's business.
He pushed the door open gently and stepped inside the medical room. The unconscious Harry was lying in the same hospital bed he'd put Eggsy in not too long ago. It was like a strange, morbid symmetry.
Now that he'd had time to relax and figure out he was still alive, Eggsy had time to think about everything that was happening.
He'd thought once that if they got Harry back, alive and healthy, then they could get him back properly, but now that the man of his dreams was lying right in front of him, Eggsy found that he was scared.
He wasn't scared of Harry hurting him, they were past that now. But he was scared that maybe it wouldn't work, maybe something would happen to rip him away from him again. Eggsy didn't think he could handle anything else emotionally scarring happening in his life.
There was a scorned woman on a rampage trying to kill them and then possibly set off world war three, two of their agents lay dead and they were all trapped away in a mansion from their loved ones but this, this was real dangerous territory.
Valentine had taken everything from him, and then Valentine had come back and taken everything from him again. Now there was a small, flickering hope that he could mend his heart but it was teetering on a knife's edge and he didn't know if he'd be able to cope if he failed. If Eggsy failed him again.
Eggsy sighed loudly as he crossed the room to him, suddenly tired of all this. He looked down over Harry's unconscious form, mind taken back to the morning he'd woken beside him and watched him sleeping, then Harry had opened his eyes and smiled at him. He wished he were back in that time, that Harry, his Harry, the real Harry, was going to wake up, smile at him and fix everything.
Without control, Eggsy reached a shaking hand out, letting it hover over Harry's beating heart.
"Please come back to me." He whispered.
…
Merlin invited them all into the dining room and the moment they entered, Eggsy noticed the grim expression on his face and was instantly worried.
He sat immediately, Roxy followed and then a few moments later Percival joined, sitting at the head of the table.
Eggsy knew that Percival didn't particularly enjoy running things, and that when they were no longer target practice, he'd offer someone else the job but Eggsy reminded himself to tell Percival how much of an honest pleasure it had been to have him as a leader. He was logical, concise and decisive but with just enough emotion so it didn't make him cold. Eggsy honestly couldn't think of anyone who deserved to carry the torch Percival had created.
"Is there any news on Harry?" Percival asked the moment he'd sat down.
"I've induced a coma and locked the medical bay." Merlin said. "I know it sounds a little barbaric, but we don't know how far his loyalty to Valentine stretches."
"Not that far, I'll bet." Roxy muttered. "He's disappeared for days and she hasn't sent anyone after him."
"Well we did kinda kill half her staff." Eggsy pointed out.
"I mean-" Percival interrupted. "How is he? Is he okay? He looked pretty battered when I went to see him."
"Oh." Merlin said, looking surprised and then guilty. "He's going to be fine. At this point, I don't think there's anything he can't survive."
As Merlin began to project the brain X-rays he'd taken from Harry from his clipboard, Eggsy retreated into his own mind and considered that it was so very Harry to survive. He was tough, like a bulldozer, and he always came back from anything. It bizarrely cheered Eggsy, that a quality so intrinsicly linked with the man he cared for was still alive within him, it gave him hope that he could be saved.
"It's bad news, I'm afraid." Merlin said, gesturing to the X-ray. There was a clear view of Harry's skull and the metal plating on the left side of his skull merging seamlessly with the intact bone in his right. Then, just below the join of his jaw bone was a small, rectangular foreign body, standing out in stark contrast to the rest of him.
"Is that the chip?" Eggsy asked.
Merlin nodded. "You see how it's positioned below the cerebral cortex? It's able to send signals direct to his brain that subdue the evolved, human part that you and I have. He's only able to operate on basic instinct. He eats when he's hungry, he kills when he's told to because he has no care for human life. To be absolutely frank, this is bloody amazing technology. Imagine the wars you could have with this kind of thing in each infantryman. Like sending a bunch of Lions and Gorillas up against each other."
Eggsy rolled his eyes, of course Merlin would fawn over the advanced technology.
"You said there was bad news." Eggsy prompted, hoping sincerely that he meant it would take days to remove the chip or it would require invasive surgery. Some obstacle that they could overcome.
"I can't take it out." He admitted, looking suddenly knackered.
"What?" Eggsy asked, voice hard.
Merlin rubbed his head, taking the liberty of sitting down as he spoke as if tired from a physical weight.
"I can't hack past the self-destructive element of the chip." He explained, giving Eggsy immediate mental images of the asshole professor and his mystical exploding head. "If I try and remove it surgically without the proper coding, as in the make-up of the technology, the reverse, then it will explode."
It felt like all the oxygen had left the room and Eggsy couldn't breathe, he worried for a moment he was going to begin hyperventilating. After everything, this couldn't just be it. That they were incapable and there was nothing they could do. He couldn't believe it.
"Hear me out." Roxy said suddenly. They all turned to her but she fixed Eggsy with a sympathetic gaze. "Eggsy, I'm so sorry," she said, looking like she meant it before turning and addressing all of them. "But...there is always another option. One we don't want to think about, but one we many have to."
"What option?" Percival asked, looking genuinely confused.
"The option of killing him." Roxy said uneasily.
Eggsy closed his eyes slowly.
"I've thought about this too." Merlin said.
Eggsy's eyes shot open, rage contorting his features. "What the fuck, Merlin. What the fuck?" He looked around at them all. "No! Just, no. It's not gonna happen. I can't believe you would even say somethin' like that, I can't believe you would even think somethin' like that."
"It may be the best option for Harry." Merlin said patiently.
"How in the fuck is it the best option for Harry to kill him?" Eggsy exploded. "You and him were friends."
"If I were to end Harry's life, I'd be doing it because I love him." Merlin replied immediately, voice hard. His eyes suddenly wavered as if he'd suddenly become aware of what he'd just said, but he remained silent.
Eggsy swallowed and fell silent.
"Kingsman has to protect people from threats." Percival interjected blankly. "Now Harry is the threat. He's not Harry Hart anymore.
"But Valentine said that his amnesia is wanin'." Eggsy pressed, leaning forward on the desk as if desperate to physically get his point across. "Things will come back to him. I really believe, deep down, he's beginnin' to remember me."
"Even if he does remember you," Roxy began gently, giving Eggsy's forearm a comforting squeeze. "There's still the matter of the inhibitor chip. Harry will never feel properly. He'll never function like a normal human being."
"What about before, then?" Eggsy said testily, ripping his arm back. "Oh, come on. When Harry shot me, the bullet should've hit my heart, like it did Gawain, like Tristan, but it didn't. We all know he'd never make a mistake like that. Close range, he was stood right in front of me, he couldn't have missed. He chose not to kill me!"
"That's fucking ridiculous!" Roxy shouted. "I'm sorry but did you miss him trying to blow you up five fucking minutes ago?"
"Don't be naive, Eggsy." Percival said.
Eggsy was shocked into silence momentarily but quickly shook his head and stood.
"Fuck the inhibitor chip!" He said hotly. "I'll fix Harry myself! You know why? Because he never gave up on me, he saw something in me that no one else did. Sounds familiar, don't it?"
With that, he turned and left, banging the door loudly on his way out.