iBoy

a car park ... a car park for the employees who'd prob­ably once worked in the dilapidated warehouse on the far side of the wasteground.

'Follow them round the back,' Ellman told Gunner.

We followed the car in front as it rumbled across the wasteground, over to the warehouse, round the back ... and that's where we stopped.

I looked over at the other car, trying to catch a glimpse of Lucy, but it was too dark to see anything.

'Don't worry,' Ellman said to me. 'You'll see her in a minute.'

I looked at him. 'What are you going to do with her?'

'The same thing I did to your mother.'

'What?'

He smiled coldly. 'You should have seen the look on her face when I ran that bitch over.'

'But you said —'

'Yeah, I know. I said I was only joking about Georgie ... but I wasn't.' He grinned at me. 'Or maybe I was ... but I guess you'll never know now, will you?'

He moved so incredibly quickly then, hammering his head into mine with such stunning speed and power, that I didn't have time to feel confused. I didn't have time to feel anything. The only thing I was vaguely aware of was a sudden shuddering impact, a momentary flash of blind­ing pain ...

And then nothing.

10111

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.

Richard Dawkins

River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (1995)

The next thing I knew, I was opening my eyes and sta­ring across the interior of the warehouse at Lucy. My head was throbbing, my vision was blurred, my mouth was soured with the taste of blood ... and, after I'd struggled uselessly for a few moments, I realized that I could barely move. I was securely bound to an iron girder by tightly wound lengths of wire. My hands, my feet, even my neck ... everything was so firmly tied that the only thing I could move was my head.

But none of that mattered.

All that mattered was Lucy.

She was about twenty metres away from me, on the other side of the warehouse. She was on her knees, and Ellman was standing in front of her with a long silver knife in his hand. Her mouth was still taped up, but the gun had been removed from her head, and Hashim wasn't with her any more. Instead, he was standing right beside me. And now that he'd realized I was conscious again, he raised the pistol and levelled it at my head.

As Ellman sensed Hashim's movement and glanced over at me, the blade of his knife caught the pale yellow light of an electric lantern hanging from the wall, and just for a moment the reflected flash of light seemed to illuminate the whole warehouse. It was a fairly big place, with rust-ridden sheet-metal walls, a crumbling concrete floor, and dozens of frayed electric cables dangling from the ceiling. There wasn't much else to see: the blackened remains of old machinery, some cracked wooden crates, empty gas canisters, a couple of dilapidated chairs ...

'What do you think?' Ellman called out to me. 'Do you like it?'

I didn't answer him, I was too busy checking out where the others were. Hashim, as I said, was right beside me; O'Neil was behind Ellman and Lucy, leaning on a windowsill; Tweet was sitting in one of the old chairs, calmly smoking a joint; and the two drivers, Gunner and Marek, were standing over to my left by a pair of wooden doors.

Six of them.

One of me.

And I didn't even have any iPowers.

'What's the matter, kid?' Ellman said. 'You not talking to me any more?'

I looked up to see him crossing the warehouse towards me.

He grinned at me. 'How's your head? I haven't broken anything in there, have I? You know, smashed a few circuits or something?' He stopped a few metres away from me. 'Or can't you tell without a signal?' He reached into his pocket, brought out his BlackBerry, and studied the screen. 'Nope,' he said, shaking his head. 'Still no bars.' He looked at me, smiling. 'How about you? You got any?'

I said nothing.

He put his phone back in his pocket. 'I'm guessing,' he said, 'that without a signal, you're fucked.' He looked at me. 'Am I right?'

Again, I said nothing.

He carried on smiling at me. 'No signal. No WiFi. No phone, no power.' He nodded his head, miming the head­butt he'd given me. 'No force field either.' He glanced at Hashim. 'What d'you say, Hash?'

Hashim grinned. 'Yeah, I'd say he's completely fucked.'

Ellman stepped closer, staring into my eyes. 'Of course, you could be bluffing, couldn't you? You could be pretending to be powerless, lulling us all into a false sense of security, and then, when we least expect it — zap!' He clapped his hands together. 'You fry us all.' He grinned at me again. 'But the only problem with that is that you can't fry us all, can you? I mean, right now, you could probably blast me and Hash, but the others are too far away. So even if you did take out the two of us, there'd still be Tweet over there, and Gunner and Marek, and don't forget Yoyo ... you see what I'm saying? You blast me and Hash, you're still going to be tied to this girder, and Yoyo's still going to get to play with your girly.'

I looked over at Lucy. She was still kneeling there, her head bowed down, her eyes empty and still, shocked into nothing ...

I couldn't let anything happen to her.

Not again.

I had to do something.

'What do you reckon, Hash?' I heard Ellman say. 'You think he's bluffing?'

'Like you said, it don't make no odds,' Hashim said. 'They're both going to get fucked anyway.' He started laughing then, a curiously childish sound, which for some reason really irritated me. I ran my tongue round the inside of my mouth, turned my head, and spat a gob of blood into his face.

'Fuck!' he yelled, jerking away.

Ellman laughed as Hashim wiped the bloody spit from his face. I glanced over at Lucy again and saw that she hadn't moved. She was still just kneeling there, dead to the world.

'Luce!' I called out. 'Lucy!'

She raised her head and slowly looked over at me.

'It's going to be all right!' I called out to her. 'Don't worry, everything's going to be —

A crack of pain ripped into my face as Hashim hit me with the barrel of the gun. I tried not to cry out, but I couldn't help it. The pain was so raw, so ugly, it felt like my face had been torn apart. I turned my head towards Hashim, watching through tear-stung eyes as he raised the gun again, his eyes blazing with anger, and I braced myself for another blow ...

But then I heard Ellman's voice, 'That's enough.'

I saw Hashim hesitate, desperate to hurt me, but not quite desperate enough to disobey Ellman. Still glaring