Kingdom Gone

ANSWERS

"Get up, kid."

I open my eyes to see Jakkar standing above me. I recoil in response, getting to my feet and assuming a fighting stance. "Get the fuck away from me!"

Jakkar sighs, looking at me with visible annoyance. "I saved your life boy, don't make me regret it."

I finally notice the hum of the HoloJet engines and realize we're in the air. "So you know how to fly now?"

"There's a lot of things you don't know about me, Jason. Hell, I didn't know much about myself or what's going on until recently. This little adventure answered decades old questions for me." Jakkar leans against the nuke, arms crossed. "And I know you want answers too."

My mind is fried. But I'm tired and frustrated, and this asshole saved me from the Q monster and everything I know is thrown out the window at this point, so I gave up and sat on the floor of the hold, and listened to Jakkar's story.

* * *

Nathan planned the hit, but It didn't go down how it was supposed to.

I infiltrated the ranks onf the fighting force that pushed past the Tenth Kingdom borders. As we entered the city, I killed our driver, and along with five of my 'terrorist' buddies, detached from our unit and intercepted the truck transporting the nuke. We took out the crew and unloaded the device. But there was a problem.

The device had a special ignition panel attached to the bomb, that could only be accessed by a DNA key. If the proper key wasn't used, then the bomb was basically just a giant piece of metal. Harmless. My men looked to me for direction, and after thinking through our options, I said we should evacuate. But at that moment, a gunshot fired down the street, a single bullet from a high caliber rifle taking down two of my men.

The shots rained down, getting closer and closer, as if the assailant was on foot. When it was down to just two of my men and I, a man leaped over the hood of a car parked along the street, and tossed a grenade at our feet. I dove behind the armored truck, both my men getting caught in the blast. As I was getting my bearings, I circled around the back, trying to flank the guy, but he was quick. He was already in the back of the truck, hand pressed agaisnt the panel. The lights on the nuke went from orange to blue, and the timer ticked down. The man turned and saw me, running towards me gun raised.

We fought, the guy clearly trained. But I pulled a knife and slashed open his chest. He fled, trailing blood down an alley. I was going to follow but a live nuked was ten feet away, so I ran west, towards the outer villages where I blended in and escaped the kingdom.

I never forgot that night. And the man that actually destroyed the tenth kingdom.

The man in the coat, with a hat that covered his face.

* * *

The coat. The hat. It couldn't be.

"You didn't set off the nuke?"

Jakkar shakes his head. "No. We were attacked, weren't you listening?"

"But. . . I just don't-"

"Apparently," Jakkar cuts in, "We weren't the only ones after that nuke. And I didn't learn until nearly a year later who planned the second hit."

"Who?"

Jakka sighs. "My girlfriend, Miranda Galdinn."

At this point, I didn't know what to believe.

"It wasn't until after the explosion that I realized how stupid I was, thinking the nuke would avenge my parents death. So I went after the true bad guys: the people who ran the lab experiments. I tracked them down, but Miranda found out and I confessed." He sighs. "I loved her so much. I thought being honest would help, but I realized she wasn't who I thought either. She threatened to turn Nathan and I in, and escaped with our newborn child, our son. I called Nathan as I followed her out of the kingdom by subway, Holotrams weren't installed yet. He said to not let her go, the damage to his career, blah blah. So I tracked her down to a small city in the Third Kingdom. I cornered her, told her to listen, told her I was sorry. She stopped in the middle of the street, at the time I didn't notice she wasnt carrying our son. And thats where she told me everything. That her parents led the experiments that killed mine, thats why she developed the nuke. But shes the one who ordered the second hit. She wanted the nuke to detonate because she believed that was why her parents developed the technology in the first place, mixed with some neo religious bullshit. The man in the coat was her accomplice."