iBoy

really huge guy. So, just to make sure that he felt it, I gave him a zap that was somewhere between not-too- bad and pretty-bad. And he felt it, all right. He yelped — in a surprisingly high- pitched, almost girly, kind of way — and as his knee flashed blue and his leg jerked out from under him, he toppled over and crashed to the floor.

'Shit, man!' he hissed, clutching at his knee. 'Jesus!'

'Y'all right?' Ellman said to him.

'Yeah ...' he sighed, rubbing his whole leg. 'Fuck, that hurts.'

O'Neil came bursting into the front room then, alerted by the sound of Tweet falling over. 'What's going on?' he said, looking at Tweet. 'What's happening?'

'Nothing,' Ellman said. 'Everything's cool.' He looked over at O'Neil. 'You didn't find anything, did you?'

Still staring at Tweet, O'Neil shook his head. 'Not yet ... but I haven't checked the other rooms yet.'

'Don't bother,' Ellman told him. 'It's all sorted.'

'What do you mean?'

Ellman ignored him, turning back to me. 'Do you have to actually touch people to do that? I mean, can you do it from a distance?'

I hesitated for a moment, instinctively holding back.

Ellman said, 'Don't fucking think about it, just answer me.'

I sighed, realizing that there was no point in lying. If I told Ellman that I could zap from a distance, he'd want me to prove it. And I wouldn't be able to. And if I told him that I wasn't going to prove it, he'd hurt Lucy. So I had no choice but to tell him the truth.

'I can zap stuff from about a metre away,' I said. 'No more.'

He nodded, watching as Tweet got to his feet.

'OK?' he asked him.

Tweet glared at me. 'Yeah ... yeah, I'm all right.'

Ellman grinned at him. 'You don't look all right.'

'I'm fine,' Tweet growled.

Ellman turned to me. 'Yo said he tried to stab you, but you did something to his knife.'

I nodded, 'It's the electricity ... it gives me some kind of force field.'

'Yeah? So if Tweet wanted to smack you in the head for what you've just done to him, what'd happen?'

'He'd get hurt even more.'

Ellman smiled. 'You bulletproof too?'

'I don't know,' I shrugged. 'No one's tried to shoot me yet.'

Ellman looked at me for a moment or two, his eyes seeming to gaze right through me, and then O'Neil called out, 'She's waking up,' and we both looked over at him. He was leaning round the doorway, peering down the hallway.

'The old woman,' he said, turning back to Ellman. 'She's coming round.'

'Tie her up,' Ellman said. 'Get her out the way.'

As O'Neil nodded and headed off down the hallway, I had to force myself not to say anything, not to do anything ... not to give in to the murder in my heart.

I looked at Ellman. He was just sitting there now, smoking a cigarette, staring at nothing, his face a mask of concentration ...

I glanced over at Lucy. Blood from the cut on her face had dripped onto her nightgown, and her face was pale and frightened, but as she looked back at me in the silence, I could see a hidden strength in her eyes, some kind of faith ... a belief that, despite everything that had happened — and everything that was happening and could possibly happen — we'd both get out of this in the end.

She truly believed it.

I smiled at her, trying to show her that I shared her belief.

Even though I didn't.

'It's a shame,' Ellman said.

I looked at him. 'What?'

He sighed. 'You and me ... we could really have been something together. With your powers and my experience ... I mean, fuck Crow Town, we could have had anywhere we wanted. We could have made fucking millions ...' He looked disdainfully at me. 'But you could never do it, could you? You're too fucking weak. Too fucking righteous.' He shook his head. 'No, I couldn't work with that. It'd drive me mad.' He sighed. 'Like I said, it's a shame ... but business is business.' He smiled at me. 'That's all it is, you know ... all this ... the old woman, the bitch over there ... you ... it's all just business.'

I didn't even bother looking at him.

He sniffed. 'Yeah, well ... we'd best get on with it.' He stood up and called out, 'Yo? You finished in there?'

O'Neil called back from Gram's room, 'Yeah, just a minute ...'

'What you doing?'

'Nothing, just looking around ...'

'Leave it. We're going.'

'There's some nice stuff in here. Laptops, jewellery —'

'I said fucking leave it!' Ellman barked. Then he turned to Tweet. 'Call Gunner, make sure we're clear, then check the corridor.'

Tweet pulled a phone from his pocket, hit a button, and went out into the hallway. I listened in to the call and tracked it to another mobile in the square down below, somewhere near the entrance to the tower. Yeah?

We're coming out. Everything all right?

Yeah, it's quiet.

'Get up,' Ellman said to me.

I got up.

Tweet came back in. 'It's all clear.'

Ellman nodded. 'You go first. Hash, you follow him.' He turned to O'Neil, who was standing in the doorway. 'You follow Hash, OK?'

O'Neil nodded.

Ellman said to me, 'You follow Yo. Understand?'

'Yeah.'

'I'll be right behind you. Hash?'

'Yeah?' Hashim said.

'How's it going with that gun?'

'My fucking hand hurts.'

Ellman said to me, 'You hear that? His hand hurts. It's been taped to the gun for about an hour now, so his finger's probably getting a bit numb. It won't take much for him to pull the trigger. And it'll be your fault if he does. You got that?'

'Yeah, I've got it.'

'All right, let's go.'

10110

Here are comedy and tragedy... Here is melodrama ... Here are unvarnished emotions. Here also is a primitive democracy that cuts through all the conventional social and racial discriminations. The gang, in short, is