iBoy

"No, Gram!" I shouted. "No ..."

Ellman pushed past me, shoving me into the wall, and strode over to where Gram was standing. Without a moment's thought, he snatched the phone from her hand, ripped out the cable, then cracked her across the head with the phone. She didn't make a sound, she just crumpled to the floor and lay still, her head streaming with blood.

"You fucking bastard," I spat, lunging at Ellman.

"Hash," he said quickly.

A muffled cry of pain stopped me in my tracks, and I turned round to see that Hashim had rammed Lucy's head against the wall and was digging the barrel of the gun into her head.

"I warned you," Ellman said to me. "You make another move, your bitch is dead."

As I turned to face him, breathing heavily, he just smiled at me.

I looked down at Gram. Her face was very pale, and she was breathing shallowly. Through gritted teeth, I said to Ellman, "She needs help."

He shrugged, "It's up to you — you can help her all you want ... as long as you don't mind having a girlfriend with no head."

I heard the flat door closing then, and I looked down the hallway to see Lucy being dragged into the front room by Hashim, with O'Neil and the black guy following them.

I gazed down at Gram again, then back at Ellman. "Can I at least get her into her room and make her comfortable?"

Ellman smiled, shaking his head. "You've only got yourself to blame, you know. If you'd left things alone, none of this would be happening."

I stared desperately at Gram. Her poor grey hair was matted with blood now, and she looked so small and weak ...

I'd never felt more helpless in my life.

"Get in there," Ellman told me, nodding his head towards the front room.

When I went into the front room, Hashim and Lucy were standing over by the window, and O'Neil and the black guy were just hanging around by the door.

Ellman told me to sit down.

I looked over at Lucy.

"I'm so sorry," I said to her.

She couldn't answer me.

"Don't worry —" I started to tell her.

"Sit down!" Ellman barked.

I sat down on the settee, and he sat in the armchair opposite me. He hadn't changed very much from the photograph I'd seen of him in his police record. He was about fifteen years older, of course, so his face wasn't quite so young-looking as before, but apart from that, he looked pretty much the same. The same shaved head, the same angular face, the same soulless eyes. His eyes — described in the police record as pale blue — were actually so pale that they were almost transparent, like the blue of a distant sky. He was dressed in an expensive black suit, an equally expensive black T-shirt, and shiny black crocodile-skin shoes.

My iBrain told me that in the inside pocket of his suit jacket he had a BlackBerry Bold 9700.

"All right," he said calmly, lighting a cigarette. "This is how it's going to go. I ask you a question, you give me an answer. If you don't give me an answer, or if you lie to me, the bitch gets it. OK?"

"Yeah."

"Good." He puffed on his cigarette. "All right, first question. You're the kid who calls himself iBoy, right?"

"How do you know —?"

"Just answer the fucking question."

I glanced over at Lucy. Her eyes were on me, but I couldn't tell what she was thinking. I looked back at Ellman.

"Yeah," I told him.

"You're iBoy, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"And it's you that's been going round Crow Town fucking things up?"

"Yeah."

"Stirring up all kinds of shit."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Why?"

"Yeah, why? I mean, what's in it for you?"

"Nothing."

He shook his head. "No one does anything for nothing."

"I'm just doing what I think is right," I told him.

He laughed. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

I nodded at O'Neil. "He raped Lucy. Him, Hashim, Adebajo ... the rest of them. They raped her, for Christ's sake. They fucking raped her."

Ellman shrugged. "And your point is?"

There was nothing in his eyes, nothing at all. No feeling, no sympathy, not a shred of humanity. This man was sick. There was no point in talking to him.

"Forget it," I sighed, looking away. "It doesn't matter ..."

"You want revenge, is that it? You want payback? Is that what this is all about?"

"Yeah, if you say so ..."

"Well, is it or not?"

I said nothing.

Ellman suddenly leaned forward and yelled into my face. "Fucking answer me ... NOW!"

"Yes," I said slowly, looking right at him. "Revenge ... that's what it's all about. Revenge, punishment, retribution. You're just as much to blame for what happened to Lucy as the ones who actually did it —"

"Yeah? And how d'you work that one out?"

"You tempt people to ruin and destroy —"

"What?" he said, frowning at me.

"You ruin people, you and your world ... you ruin lives." I shrugged. "So, yeah, I've been going round the estate stirring up all kinds of shit, because I knew that'd piss you off, and that eventually you'd come looking for me ... and I guess it worked. Because here you are."

Ellman smiled. "And now what? You're going to kill me?"

"If I have to."

He laughed, looking over at O'Neil and the others. "You hear that? He says he's going to kill me if he has to." They laughed along with him, and then he turned back to me. "OK," he said. "Next question. This iBoy thing ... what's that all about?"

I shrugged again. "Nothing, really ..."

"Nothing?"

"It's just a bit of fun, you know ... dressing up like a superhero, wearing a costume and a mask so no one knows who I am."

"Where is it?"

"Where's what?"

"The costume, the mask. Where are they?"

"Why?"

"That's not an answer, that's a question." He nodded over at Hashim. Hashim jabbed the pistol into Lucy's head again. She winced, but didn't make a sound.

"All right," I said to Ellman, holding my hands up. "All right, please don't hurt her any more."

"Where's the costume and the mask?" he repeated.

"There isn't any costume," I sighed.

"What?"

"No costume, no mask. Honestly ... it's just me."

Ellman stared at me for a moment, then he looked over at O'Neil. "Check his room, Yo. And all the other rooms too. See if you can find any of this iBoy shit — costume, mask, Taser, any kind of tech stuff."

O'Neil went out, and Ellman turned back to me. "So, it's just you, yeah?"

I nodded.

Ellman smiled. "You want to show me what you mean by that?"

I didn't have any choice now — I had to show him the truth. If I didn't, if I tried to hide what I was, what I could do ... well, I didn't even want to think about what Ellman would do to Lucy.

I just couldn't risk it.

"Look," I said to Ellman, and I turned on my iSkin. As I felt it starting to glow and shimmer, I watched his reaction. He didn't move or say anything for a while, he just sat there in mute disbelief, staring open-mouthed at the shifting colours and shapes of my skin. Without saying anything, I showed him my hands, and then I lifted up my shirt and showed him my chest, letting him see that my iSkin was everywhere.

"Shit, man," he whispered eventually. "How the fuck do you do that?"

"It's a long story," I said.

"You see this, Tweet?" he said to the black guy without taking his eyes off me.

"Fucking right."

"Shit," said Hashim. "He's a fucking freak, man."

I couldn't bear to look at Lucy. I hadn't looked at her since admitting to Ellman that I was iBoy. And now ... well, Hashim was right. I was a freak. And who in their right mind wants anything to do with a freak?