iBoy

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?

I turned off my iSkin.

Ellman said, 'You can turn it on and off, just like that?'

'Yeah.'

'Fuck ...' He looked at me. 'So how does it work?'

'I don't know ...'

I could hear O'Neil crashing around in my room now, emptying drawers, throwing stuff around ...

I said to Ellman, 'He's not going to find anything.'

'No? What about the Taser?'

I sighed. 'There's no Taser.'

'And the phone stuff, the computer stuff ... whatever it is you've been using to track and hack and all that shit?'

I tapped my head. 'It's all in here.'

He shook his head. 'I don't get it.'

I looked at him. 'If I tell you everything, absolutely everything, will you let me check on my gran? I just want to make sure that she's OK, you know? Make her comfort­able.'

Ellman thought about it for a moment, then nodded. 'OK.'

So I started telling him everything. How the iPhone that Davey Carr had thrown from Lucy's window had cracked open my skull and left bits of itself inside my brain, and how those bits had somehow become part of me, giving me all the powers of an iPhone and more ... but as I told Ellman all this, I wasn't looking at him or thinking of him ... I was just staring at the floor, thinking of Lucy. I was telling my story for her. I still couldn't physically look at her, but I was looking at her in my heart.

When I'd finished explaining everything, I finally looked up at Ellman. His icy-blue eyes were fixed on mine, his face emotionless.

'That's it?' he said.

'Yeah. I mean, I know you probably don't believe it, but —'

'Show me.'

'What?'

'Show me what you can do.'

'What about my gran? Can I go and check on her now?'

'No.'

'But you said —'

'I was lying.' He smiled. 'Now, show me what you can do, or I'll go and get your gran and rip her fucking head off.'

I stared at him for a moment, hating him, despising him, wanting to hurt him more than anything else in the world, but I knew he wasn't bluffing. I knew he had it in him to kill Gram without even thinking about it. So I just nodded at him, and I watched as he felt his phone vibrate.

'Answer it,' I said.

He took his BlackBerry out of his pocket and opened the text I'd just sent him.

It read: your dead.

He looked at me, grinning, 'I'm impressed.'

'I sent you some pictures too,' I said.

He opened up the photographs. One of them showed him hitting Gram with the phone, another one was of Hashim and Lucy ... others showed O'Neil and the guy called Tweet.

Ellman studied them all for a while, then looked at me. 'And this is all in your head, yeah?'

I nodded.

He said, 'You got WiFi?'

'I've got everything.'

'So you could be calling anyone right now?'

'I could be, but I'm not.'

'Good. Because you know what'll happen if I hear a siren, or if anyone comes anywhere near this flat, don't you?'

I nodded, 'I'm not going to call anyone.'

He leaned towards me. 'It won't only be your bitch who gets it —'

'She's not my bitch,' I said coldly.

'She'll just be the first,' he continued, ignoring me. 'Any trouble from you, anything at all, and I'm going to do the bitch first, then her family, then your old woman, and I'm going to make you watch me doing it ... and then I'll fucking do you.' He smiled. 'All right?'

'Yeah.'

'OK, good.' He lit a cigarette. 'Now what about all this electric stuff I've heard about? Yoyo says you zapped him or something. Is that right?'

'Yeah.'

'Show me how you do it.'

I looked at him. 'Who do you want me to zap? I can do it to you, if you want.'

He grinned at me. 'Come here, Tweet.'

Tweet came over and stood in front of me. He was huge — big, strong, solid — and as he stood there staring down impassively at me, there was no trace of fear in his eyes. He wasn't frightened of pain.

Ellman said to me, 'Can you do it without putting him in hospital?'

I nodded, looking up at Tweet. 'I can hurt him as much or as little as you want.'

Ellman smiled. 'Do it.'

I hesitated for a moment, considering my options. I knew that I could take out Ellman and Tweet with a big burst of power, but that still left Hashim and O'Neil. O'Neil was still searching my room — I could hear him crashing around — so it was possible I could get to him before he realized that anything was wrong.

But Hashim ...?

I glanced over and saw him watching me. His hand was so tightly taped to the gun, and the gun so tightly taped to Lucy's head, that even if I could have zapped him from here — and he was right over the other side of the room, so I was pretty sure that I couldn't — it only needed the slightest twitch of his finger for the pistol to go off. And I guessed that being electrocuted would more than likely make his finger twitch.

I glanced at Lucy.

Unbelievably, she winked at me.

God, it made me feel so good.

'What are you fucking waiting for?' Ellman said.

I looked at him, looked up at Tweet, then reached out and touched Tweet's knee. Like I said, he was a