iBoy

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, Mr 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 Mr Kirby, and maybe proved to him and the police what I could do with my iBrain ... maybe then Mr 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 something — 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 MySpace ... 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 any more. 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 cord on her dressing gown. '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 towards 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 insulation tape, and his hand and the pistol were tightly fixed to Lucy's head with more insulation 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.'