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Of course, I was also beginning to understand that if you want to do something that you think — or even know — is wrong, there are all kinds of things you can do to convince yourself that it's not wrong, and pretending that there's actually no such thing as "wrong" in the first place is probably one of the easiest.

Anyway, to get to the point, I eventually realized that whichever way I chose to solve Gram's money problems — and with the growing capabilities inside my head, the possibilities were almost endless — but whichever way I picked, it inevitably meant taking money from some­where else, money that didn't belong to me. And however much I tried to convince myself that this was OK, I knew in my heart that it wasn't.

For example, I could easily hack into the accounts and databases of all Gram's various publishers, and it would have been no trouble at all to change the sales figures, to invent more sales for Gram's books, to create a load of money for Gram that wasn't actually there. Or, even more crudely, I could simply hack into some super- wealthy person's bank account, someone who wouldn't miss a measly few thousand quid — maybe Bill Gates, or Bono, or J. K. Rowling — and take some of their money.

In short, I had the ability to steal as much as I wanted from anyone I wanted to take it from. Which, at first, was pretty exciting. I mean, I could be a billionaire, a trillionaire, an infinitillionaire ... but I soon realized that it didn't really mean very much. I mean, what was I going to do with a trillion pounds? And, more to the point, how was I going to explain where it came from?

In the end, what I did ... well, first of all I set up an algorithmic program.

In mathematics, computing, linguistics and related subjects, an algorithm is a sequence of finite instructions, often used for calculation and data processing, in which a list of well-defined instructions for completing a task will, when given an initial state, proceed through a well-defined series of successive states, eventually terminating in an end-state.

And, basically, I programmed this algorithm to scan all the bank accounts in the world, rank them in terms of wealth, and remove £1 from each of the top 15,000. The total of £15,000 was then electronically (and totally anonymously) transferred to Gram's account as a single deposit. I couldn't work out how to explain this deposit — i.e. how to invent a legitimate depositor — but I decided to leave that for later. Meanwhile, I cancelled Gram's summons for non-payment of council tax and, using some of the £15,000, I paid off what she owed and cleared the outstanding rent.

Yes, it was wrong.

It was stealing.

It was fraud.

It was wrong.

But I didn't feel bad about it.

I slept for a while after that (morality and algorithms are really tiring), and when I woke up, Gram was back, and she'd got some food, and we had some toasted sand­wiches together.

While Gram went back to her writing, I spent some more time in my room, scanning the airwaves, listening out for any mobile calls that might tell me what the Crows were up to, but I didn't hear anything particularly interesting. It was all mostly — where are you? what you doing? you hear about Trick and Jace?

Trick was Carl Patrick, and Jace, I assumed, was Jayden Carroll. I found out from the hospital's computer records that Carroll had suffered three stab wounds to the stom­ach, none of them life threatening, and that he'd undergone surgery and was now expected to make a full recovery.

Carl Patrick had been arrested.

It was 19:15:59 when I left the flat and went up to the thirtieth floor to see Lucy. I don't remember how I was feeling or what I was thinking about at the time, but whatever it was, when the lift doors opened, and I saw a group of kids along the corridor outside Lucy's flat, my head and my heart suddenly emptied.

There were about six or seven of them. They were all hooded up in the usual Crow gear, but I recognized some of them: Eugene O'Neil, DeWayne Firman, Nathan Craig. One of the ones I didn't recognize had a can of spray paint in his hand and was spraying something on the wall, and DeWayne Firman was bending down and calling out something through Lucy's letter box. Eugene O'Neil was just standing there, obviously in charge, looking mean and bad and hard as hell... and when the lift doors opened, he looked down the corridor at me, and an ugly grin cracked his face.

As I shut the lift doors and hit the button for the twenty-ninth floor, I saw him shaking his head and smil­ing at me, mocking what he thought was my cowardice, my weakness.

But I didn't care. He wouldn't be smiling for long. As I got out at the twenty-ninth floor and headed back up the stairs, pulling up the hood of my jacket, my iSkin was already shimmering.

1011

"I could be a soldier/falling in love/I could be a soldier/ I could be happy"

Shame
"Come Closer to Me"

I'd never felt the kind of rage I felt as I pushed open the stairwell door and strode down the corridor towards O'Neil and the others. It was all-consuming, brutal, merciless ... it felt like a volcano inside me, a force of nature, straining to erupt. But at the same time, I felt weirdly calm and controlled.

I was in control of being out of control ...

As the stairwell door slammed shut behind me, all the Crows stopped what they were doing and turned in my direction. I was moving quickly, but not running — march­ing along the corridor towards them, my senses alert, my eyes taking in everything. I saw the shocked looks on their faces when they saw me — a shimmering, glowing, hooded figure — and I saw two of them immediately start to run, not even bothering to look back ... they just turned and sped down the corridor towards the lift.

I let them go.

I saw O'Neil and Firman and Craig shuffling back a few steps, keeping the kid with the spray can in front of them. And I saw him staring at me with wide-open eyes as I read the words he'd sprayed on the wall of Lucy's flat — bitch, whore — and then, before I knew what I was doing, I'd grabbed the aerosol out of his hand and was spraying it into his eyes. He screamed and tried to cover his eyes, but I kneed him in the balls and pushed him to the ground, and as his hands left his eyes to protect his groin, I emptied more red paint into his face.

The other three were making a move for me now, coming up behind me and trying to pull me away from the aerosol kid, but even as they reached out for me, before their hands so much as touched me, a jolt of energy surged through my body, and I heard a sharp crackling sound and shocked yells of pain as the three Crow kids were electrocuted. As I turned round to face them, I saw them staggering away from me, trying to shake the pain from their hands ... and I could see them all staring at me with abject fear in their eyes.

Behind me, I heard the aerosol kid getting to his feet. I raised my foot and kicked back at him, catching him square in the face, and then — just to make sure he didn't give me any more trouble — I quickly turned round and touched my finger to his paint-smeared head. The shock I gave him was hard enough to jerk his head back, and as he crawled away down the corridor, whimpering and moaning, I could see that I'd given him a fingertip-sized burn mark on his head.