iBoy

I couldn't see anyone yet, but it wasn't hard to guess what kind of people the voices belonged to — I mean, they were hanging around Baldwin House at quarter to four in the morning ... they weren't going to be choir boys, were they?

I heard the car engine revving, a dog snarling, another shout of laughter, and then — as I turned off Crow Lane and into the square around Baldwin House — I saw them: half a dozen or so gang kids, all in hoods and caps, hang­ing around a VW Golf in front of the tower-block doors. A skinny Doberman and a Staff with a spiked collar were skulking around the car, neither of them on leads. A couple of the kids were quite young — twelve or thirteen — but most of them were about seventeen or eighteen.

I didn't recognize any of them.

The dogs noticed me first, and as they both started running at me, barking and snarling, the kids all stopped whatever it was they'd been doing and turned to see what was happening. They saw me walking towards them — my skin shimmering, my hooded face a pale glow of radiating light — and they watched, confused, as the two dogs suddenly sensed something about me that scared the shit out of them. They skidded to a halt about two metres away from me, their ears flat, their tails between their legs, and then they both sloped off, whim­pering quietly.

'What the fuck?' one of the kids said.

As I carried on walking towards them, a tall black guy with a knife scar on his cheek moved towards me, block­ing my way.

'Hey, fuck,' he said. 'What you —?'

I didn't stop walking. I just raised my arm, placed my hand on his chest, and blew him off his feet with a surge of electricity. As he lay on the ground — his hooded top smoking, his legs twitching — I stepped to the side and laid my hand on the bonnet of the Golf. The engine was still running. The kid in the driver's seat was staring open- mouthed at the tall black guy on the ground. I pressed my palm against the metal of the Golf's bonnet, twitched something in my hand — some kind of nerve or something — and shot a spark of electricity through the bonnet. Noth­ing happened. I tried it again, and this time the spark ignited. A burst of orange flashed under the bonnet, some­thing went WOOF! and suddenly the car was in flames.

As the kid in the car scrambled out, and the others quickly backed away, I left them to it and carried on into Baldwin House.

Troy O'Neil's flat was at the end of the corridor on the ground floor. Number Six. The front door — which was made of reinforced steel — was guarded by a full-length metal grill. I'm sure I could have got through both the door and the grill if I'd wanted to, but instead I just reached up and rang the bell. Light was showing through the edges of the door, so I guessed that O'Neil was in, and probably awake.

I waited.

Orange light from the blazing Golf was flickering through the corridor window, and I could already smell the faint stink of burning rubber in the air. From inside the flat, I heard a ringtone (2Pac's 'Hit 'Em Up'). Inside my head, I tuned in and listened to the call. It was from one of the kids outside, calling O'Neil.

Yeah? he answered.

You know that weird kid? The one done your brother? He's here, man. He just fucking —

Yeah, I know.

O'Neil ended the call.

I scanned the flat for other mobiles.

There were three of them, including O'Neil's.

I rang his number.

He answered, angrily. 'I just fucking told you —'

'Are you going to open your door, or what?' I said.

'Eh?'

'I'm not waiting all night.'

'Who's this?'

I saw an eye appear at the peep-hole in his door.

I waved at him.

'Is that you?' he said.

'Is what who?'

'What?'

I sighed. 'Just open the door, for Christ's sake.'

There was a pause then. I heard the phone's mouth­piece being covered, muffled voices, and then the metallic clack of locks being unbolted. After a few seconds, the inner door opened, and through the metal grill I saw Troy O'Neil standing in the doorway. He looked a lot like his brother — mixed race, tall, with dead-looking eyes — and I guessed he was in his early twenties. He had his phone in one hand, and the other hand was stuffed in his pocket.

'What d'you want?' he said to me.

I smiled at him. 'Can I come in?'

He frowned at me. 'What the fucking hell are you?'

'Let me in, and I'll tell you.'

He stared at me for a moment, and then — with a shake of his head and a suck of his teeth — he unbolted the metal grill, swung it open, and moved to one side to let me in. His right hand, I noticed, never left his pocket, and as I stepped through into the hallway, I wondered what kind of weapon he was holding. A gun or a knife? And I started wondering then if my electric force field was strong enough to protect me from a bullet... but I quickly realized that it was too late to start worrying about that.

As O'Neil pulled a pistol from his pocket, a figure moved out from behind the door and put a knife to my throat, and at the same time a door on my right opened and a fat Korean guy came out holding a rifle in his hands.

O'Neil grinned at me, waggling the pistol in my face. 'You're not so fucking smart now, are you, eh?'

I stared at him.

The Korean guy — who was only about five feet tall, but seriously fat — was just standing there, pointing the rifle at my head, and whoever it was with the knife at my neck was making a weird kind of panting noise in his throat. I couldn't see him without turning my head, and I couldn't turn my head without the blade of the knife digging into my skin, but I guessed it was probably Jermaine Adebajo.

I kept my eyes on Troy O'Neil.

He moved closer, peering curiously into the shimmer­ing whirl of my face.

'What is all that?' he said. 'I mean, how do you do it?'

'Do you want to see what else I can do?' I said quietly.

Before he could answer, I tensed myself — from within — and then, almost immediately, I released the tension and blasted out a surge of power. It came out from all over my body, a blinding white CRACK! that knocked O'Neil and Adebajo and the Korean guy off their feet and sent them all flying. O'Neil and Adebajo smashed back against the hallway walls and crumpled to the floor, and the fat Korean guy was blown back through the bedroom door.

I waited a while, just looking down at their smoulder­ing bodies, but none of them got up. The barrel of O'Neil's pistol had fused together at the end, and the blade of Adebajo's knife had buckled and melted.

I leaned down and checked O'Neil for a pulse.

He was still alive.

So was Adebajo.

I closed the front door, locked and bolted it, then went into the bedroom and checked the Korean. He looked a bit worse than the other two — blood coming out of his ears and his nose — but he was still breathing too. The rifle was still gripped in his badly burned hands.

I went over to the window and looked out to see what was happening with the burning Golf. Nothing was happening. There was no one around. The car was just burning away, thick black smoke drifting up into the night,