iBoy (27 page)

Which was all pretty ridiculous, of course.

But I couldn’t help thinking that if only I could do that, if only I could go back in time . . . well, then I really
could
change things for Lucy. I really
could
make everything all right again.

But I knew that was never going to happen. This was the real world, not a movie. And in the real world, no matter how impossible things might be, they’re never quite impossible enough.

“What are you thinking about, Tom?” Lucy asked me.

“Nothing . . .” I shrugged. “You know, just stuff . . .”

She smiled. “There’s a lot of stuff to think about, isn’t there?”

“Yeah . . .”

“And it’s always . . . I don’t know. It’s like it’s never straightforward, is it? It’s never just
this
or
that
. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s always two sides to everything. You feel good about something, but you still feel bad. You like something about someone, but you don’t
want
to like it.” She looked thoughtfully at me. “Two sides, you see? Even the stuff we were talking about earlier, you know . . . Tobey Maguire’s cute, Kirsten Dunst’s sexy . . . I mean, that’s OK — kissing and stuff, people looking sexy . . . it’s just kind of
nice
. But then there’s the
other
side of it, the other side of sex — the bad side, the shit, the fucking
awful
things that people do . . .” She shook her head. “I just don’t
get
it, you know?”

“Yeah . . .”

She sighed again. “And it’s the same with people, too . . . you think you know them, you think you know exactly what they’re like . . .” She looked slowly at me. “But maybe you’re wrong . . . maybe you’ve always been wrong, and maybe this person who you
thought
you knew . . . well, maybe they’ve got another side to them. A side you’re not sure about.”

“Right . . .” I said tentatively.

Lucy looked at me for a long moment, her eyes never leaving mine, and then she smiled. “Or maybe I’m wrong about that, too?”

I smiled back at her. “Don’t ask me. I haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

“You never do, do you?”

“Never do what?”

She laughed, and I grinned at her, and then we just sat there in silence for a few moments, smiling at each other in the darkness . . . and I knew in my heart that this was how it was supposed to be. This was everything I could ever want, everything there
was
to want.

This was
it
.

After a while, Lucy looked at her watch and said, “I’d better get going, Tom. Mum’ll be back soon.”

“OK.”

We both got to our feet then, and as we stood there at the edge of the roof, looking out into the darkness, I remembered the last time I’d been up here — all on my own, with my hood up and my iSkin glowing . . . a softly glowing figure, sitting cross-legged on a cold stone roof, thirty floors up . . .

Like some kind of weird hooded Buddha . . .

A skinny, glow-in-the-dark iBuddha.

Or maybe an iGargoyle.

It was so much better now.

“Tom?” Lucy said.

I turned to her.

“Thanks,” she said quietly, looking at me. “This has been a really wonderful night. I’ll never forget it.” She moved closer to me, put her hands to my face, and kissed me softly on the lips.

God, it felt good.

So perfect, so
right
. . .

It felt so good, I nearly fell off the roof.

“OK?” she whispered.

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even smile. It was all I could do just to breathe. Lucy moved her hand to my head and gently stroked my scar with her fingertips.

“It feels warm,” she said quietly.

“Warm . . .” I muttered.

She smiled at me. “Come on, we’d better go . . . before you start drooling.”

She held my hand as we walked back across the roof to the hatchway. I helped her down the ladder, then we held hands again as we went out through the doors, down the stairs, and along the corridor to her flat.

“Thanks again, Tom,” she said. “That was really nice.”

“Thank
you
,” I said.

She smiled and kissed me on the cheek. “Are you coming round tomorrow?”

I nodded. “If it’s OK with you.”

“It’s perfectly OK with me.”

“Good.”

She smiled again and opened the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Yeah.”

I waited for her to close the door, and then I just stood there for a while, smiling the biggest, floatiest, stupidest smile in the world . . . and then, breathing in a breath of pure satisfaction, I turned round and started heading back to the roof to clear all the picnic stuff away.

Just before I got to the stairwell, I heard Lucy’s door opening.

“Tom?”

I turned round and saw her leaning out through the doorway.

“Be careful,” she said.

I smiled at her. “I’m always careful.”

She gave me a long, thoughtful look, almost frowning at me, then she smiled again, nodded her head, and went back into the flat.

My name is Legion; for we are many.

New Testament, Mark 5:9

After I’d cleared away the picnic stuff from the roof and lugged it all back to the flat — and after Gram had virtually
forced
me to tell her how it had all gone with Lucy — I went to my room and lay down in the dark and tried not to think about anything. I didn’t want to
think
at all — I just wanted to feel what I was feeling . . . and nothing else. I just wanted to lie there with Lucy.

The memory of her sunset eyes.

Her lips.

Her smile.

Her face.

Her kiss . . .

It was all I’d ever wanted. All I’d ever needed.

I knew that now.

Nothing else mattered. Revenge, punishment, retribution . . . none of it mattered. My iPowers, my abilities, my
knowing
. . . none of it was
me
. It was iBoy. And I wasn’t iBoy — I was Tom Harvey, a perfectly normal sixteen-year-old kid, with no major problems, no secrets, no terrors . . . no story to tell. Just a kid, that’s all. With hopes and dreams . . .

And a girl to think about . . .

iBoy could never dream.

He could never make a wish come true.

But Tom Harvey could.

iBoy
had
to go.

It was the only way I could get back to being Tom Harvey again, and being Tom Harvey was the only way I was ever going to be with Lucy. And that was my dream, and I needed it more than anything else.

Tomorrow, I decided.

I’d do it tomorrow.

First thing in the morning, I’d tell Gram everything — what had happened to me, what I could do, what I’d done, what I knew — and then, with her help, I’d tell everyone else who needed to know. The police, Dr. Kirby, Lucy . . .

It wasn’t going to be easy, of course. The police were going to want to interview me about all the stuff I’d done, the damage I’d caused, the people I’d hurt, and
how
I’d hurt them . . . and I was probably going to be arrested and charged . . . if, that is, they actually believed me. Which was by no means guaranteed. But once I’d explained everything to Dr. Kirby, and maybe
proved
to him and the police what I could do with my iBrain . . . maybe then Dr. Kirby could start working out how to get inside my head and get rid of whatever it was I needed to get rid of in order to get me back to normal again . . .

Maybe.

And Lucy . . . ?

God, what was
she
going to think? I mean, even if she did already have a sneaking suspicion that I might have some connection with iBoy — and, after tonight, I was pretty sure that she suspected
some
thing — how was she going to react when she found out that it really
was
me who’d done all those things? And, even worse, that it was me she’d been talking to on Facebook . . . me, pretending to be someone else. Lying to her. Betraying her trust.
Using
her . . .

She’d hate me.

Wouldn’t she?

She’d hate me, despise me, and I’d lose her . . .

I’d lose her by trying to be true.

But the only way I was ever going to be with her was
also
by trying to be true.

Lucy was right, I thought to myself then. There
are
always two sides to everything.

I spent the next few hours just lying on my bed, thinking as hard as I could, racking my (ordinary) brain, trying to work out how to be true without losing everything . . . and maybe if I’d had more time, I might just have come up with an answer.

But I didn’t.

I never got the chance.

It was 02:12:16 when the doorbell rang. I was still lying on the bed, still fully dressed, still chasing circles inside my head, and I’d been lying there in the silent darkness for such a long time by then that some kind of inertia had set in. My head was dead. My body was ten thousand miles away. I wasn’t really aware of myself anymore. But when the doorbell rang, I was instantly wide awake.

Something was wrong.

It had to be.

The doorbell only rings at two o’clock in the morning when something is wrong.

With my iBrain already scanning for nearby phones, I jumped off the bed and ran out into the hallway. Gram was just coming out of her room, and it was obvious from her sleep-scrunched face and her messed-up hair that the doorbell had woken her up.

“Tommy?” she said sleepily, tightening the belt on her bathrobe. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know . . .”

The bell rang again.

Gram looked at me, slightly worried now. “Who could it be at this time of night?”

“I don’t know.”

She started moving toward the door. “Well, I suppose we’d better see —”

“Hold on, Gram,” I said, moving ahead of her. “I’ll deal with it.”

“No, Tommy —” she started to say, but I was already at the door now. My iBrain had picked up the presence of four mobile phones in the corridor outside, all of them switched to silent.

“Who is it?” I called out.

There was a moment’s silence, a muffled whisper, and then I heard Lucy’s voice.

“Tom . . . ?”

She sounded desperate.

“Tom, don’t —
ummf
. . .”

I didn’t stop to think, I just grabbed the door handle, unlocked the door, and yanked it open . . . and there they all were: Lucy, Eugene O’Neil, Yusef Hashim, a big black guy I’d never seen before . . .

And Howard Ellman.

Lucy was barefoot, dressed only in a long white nightgown, so I guessed she’d just been dragged out of bed. Her face was streaked with tears, she had an ugly red cut just below her right eye, and her mouth was sealed with a strip of black tape. Yusef Hashim had a gun to her head. The gun, an automatic pistol, was taped to his hand and wrist with black duct tape, and his hand and the pistol were tightly fixed to Lucy’s head with more duct tape. Hand, pistol, Lucy’s head . . . all taped together, like some kind of nightmare repair job.

I stared at Lucy, unable to move.

She was petrified.

And so was I.

“Hello, Thomas,” Ellman said softly. “I hear you’ve been looking for me.”

I stared at him, unable to speak.

“Just so you understand,” he said, smiling calmly, “Hashim’s finger is taped over the trigger of the gun, OK? So if you try zapping him, or me, or anyone else . . . if you go anywhere near her, if you try calling the police . . . if you do
anything
that I don’t like, Hashim’s going to pull the trigger and your girlfriend’s brains are going to be splattered all over the place. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said quietly. “I understand.”

I saw his eyes glancing over my shoulder then, and as I turned to see what he was looking at, I saw Gram picking up the phone in the hallway.

“
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 gray 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 toward the front room.