I opened my eyes for a moment, remembering my complete lack of feeling as I'd watched Ellman's chest explode ... and I wondered now if I still felt (or didn't feel) the same. About Ellman, O'Neil, the others ... dead or alive ...
Did I care about them?
Did I feel any remorse, any guilt, any shame?
The answer, whether I liked it or not, was no.
And I didn't like it.
I didn't like what it made me.
I closed my eyes again, looking for the presence of Lucy ... and I knew she'd be there. I could always see Lucy in my mind — her sunset eyes, her lips, her smile, her drowning tears — but my mind wasn't reality. My mind wasn't the truth. And the truth was that I just couldn't see how I could ever be with Lucy again. Why on earth would she ever want to be with me? I'd almost got her raped and killed. I'd put her through the very same hell that she'd already been through once. I'd failed to protect her. I'd lied to her, tricked her, betrayed her... and all for what? For revenge? To make me feel better? To make me feel like a hero? Shit...
I wasn't a hero.
I was never a hero.
I was nothing.
No good to anyone.
I was a freak.
A mutant.
A murderer.
I was losing my mind ...
And, even worse, my heart had grown cold.
I'd lost myself.
No matter what I did, I could never be Tom Harvey again. Even if I told everyone everything — Gram, the police, Mr Kirby — I could never rid myself of iBoy. He was with me for ever now. He was me, and I was him. And eventually — inevitably — the rest of the world would find out about us ... and when that happened, our life really would become a freak show.
And I wasn't sure I could live with that.
And despite everything that my rational mind kept telling me, I just couldn't stop thinking about the unthinkable possibility — no matter how unlikely it was — that Ellman hadn't been lying... that he really was my father. And every time I thought about that, I remembered what I'd said to him in the warehouse: If you were my father, I'd kill myself.
I opened my eyes again and gazed down over the edge of the roof. Thirty floors up ... it was a long way down. And as I looked down through the darkness, I began to picture myself down there on the day that it happened, all those weeks ago ... walking home from school, feeling pretty much the same as I always felt... kind of OK, but not great... alone, but not lonely ... thinking about Lucy, wondering what she wanted to see me about ... then hearing a shout from above and looking up and seeing the iPhone hurtling down through the bright blue sky towards me ...
And now, as I gazed down from the roof, remembering the past, something strange happened. My perspective suddenly changed, and instead of picturing myself as me, looking up at the iPhone, I was picturing myself as the iPhone, tumbling down through the sky towards the other me, the me that was down there ... only the sky wasn't blue now, it was black. It was night-time. And it wasn't all those weeks ago ... it was now.
Right now.
And I was falling ... down, down, down ... down through the silent darkness ... hurtling down into oblivion ...
And I could see something on the ground down below. A light.
There was a light down there.
Just outside the entrance to the tower, thirty floors below, someone was riding a bike across the square. And as I leaned further forward and peered over the edge of the roof, I could see the front light of the bike moving slowly over the ground, directly beneath me ... and then, all at once, I was seeing myself falling again, only this time I wasn't the iPhone, I was myself ... I was Tom Harvey, I was iBoy ... I was both of us ... and we were falling from the roof, dropping like a stone ... down, down, down ... heading straight for the light of the unknown cyclist... and we knew that we were going to land on him, or her ... we were going to land head first on them, and our iSkull was going to crack open their skull, and their brain was going to be lacerated by broken iSkull fragments and pieces of us ...
And as I leaned even further forward, almost toppling off the edge now, I heard myself laughing. At least, I assumed it was me, because I was the only one there ... and it sounded vaguely like me ... and I could feel my throat moving, my vocal cords vibrating ...
Yes, it was definitely me.
I was laughing ...
I didn't know why.
And, for some reason, that made me feel incredibly sad, and all at once I wasn't laughing any more, I was crying ... sobbing uncontrollably ... the tears streaming out of me like the tears of a frightened child.
I didn't want to die ...
But I didn't want to live ...
I just didn't know ...
"Tom ...?"
The voice came from behind me.
I waited a moment, trying to steady myself, wiping the tears from my eyes, and then I slowly turned round and looked up ... and there she was, gazing down at me with a worried frown.
"Hey, Luce," I said.
"Are you all right?" she asked softly. "You don't look so great."
I sniffed, wiped my eyes again, and smiled at her. "I'm fine ... I was just, you know ... just thinking about stuff..."
"Yeah, I know," she said, sitting down next to me. "It's all been a bit much, hasn't it?"
"Yeah, you could say that."
"I just did."
I looked at her.
She smiled at me. "You've got snot all over your face ... come here." She pulled a tissue from her pocket, licked it, and started cleaning all the snot and tears from my face. I winced a little as she wiped around the knife cut on my forehead. "Sorry," she said, shaking her head. "God, you're a mess."
"You don't look too great yourself," I said, glancing at the cuts and bruises on her face.
"Thanks a lot."
"You're welcome."
"There," she said, giving my face a final wipe, "that's better."
"Thanks."
She nodded, putting the tissue away, and for a few seconds she was quiet. Then, without looking at me, and with her voice perfectly calm, she said, "You weren't thinking of jumping off the roof, were you?"
"What?"
"Because if you were ..." She looked at me, her eyes suddenly bright with anger. "Listen to me, Tom Harvey. I know you've been through a lot recently ... I mean, we both have. And I know you're probably feeling really confused right now about all this iBoy stuff, all the shit you've got in your head and all the shit you've had to deal with ..." She paused then, moving her face to within an inch of mine, and her voice became slow and deliberate. "But if I ever catch you even thinking about killing yourself ... well, believe me, I'll make sure it's the last thing you ever do."
We stared at each other for a while then, and as Lucy's eyes drilled into mine with an intensity that was almost physically painful, I honestly didn't know if I had intended to jump or not. I didn't know if I could have jumped or not.
I just didn't know ...
All I knew — and all that mattered — was that I hadn't jumped, and that Lucy was here, sitting beside me.
I looked at her, smiling. "The last thing I ever do?"
She shook her head. "It's not a joke, Tom ... I'm serious."
"I know ... but you're kind of implying that if you ever catch me thinking of killing myself, you'll kill me, which sort of defeats the object, doesn't it?"
She couldn't help grinning. "Yeah, all right, Mr Super Brain ... so I got my words mixed up a bit —"