iBoy

The iKnowledge was already there — If a lithium battery is overcharged, lithium metal will plate (adhere) to the anode, and oxygen will be generated at the cathode. This is highly flammable and a fire hazard — and the iNews was already there — A man has died after his mobile phone exploded, severing a major artery in his neck ... local reports said that this was the ninth recorded cell­phone explosion since 2002 — and I'd already scanned the warehouse and checked the location of all six mobile phones. Ellman's was still in the inside pocket of his suit jacket, Hashim's was in the back pocket of his jeans, O'Neil's was in the front pocket of his track pants, Tweet's was tucked into his belt, Gunner's was in his T-shirt pocket, and Marek's was in the front pocket of his jeans.

I opened my eyes.

Ellman was standing closer to Lucy now. Lucy was still on her knees, still staring at him, and O'Neil had got out of the chair and was standing nearby, his eyes alight with sick excitement. Smiling coldly, Ellman edged the knife towards the top of Lucy's nightgown. Lucy made a sudden lunge for the knife, but Ellman was ready, whipping his knife hand away from her and slapping her across the face with his other hand, all in one rapid movement. As Lucy cried out and fell back to her knees, I yelled across at her.

'Lucy! Don't look at me ... don't look. Don't do any thing, OK? Don't fight him. Don't move. Just wait ... trust me. Please, just trust —'

Hashim clubbed the butt of the pistol into my head, shutting me up. The impact dazed me for a moment, but I didn't seem to feel any pain, and when I looked over at Lucy again, I saw that she wasn't moving. She was just kneeling there, not looking at anything, as Ellman moved the knife towards her again.

I closed my eyes.

We were reaching out now — iBoy and me — we were reaching out into cyberspace, reaching out along the myriad pathways, from base station to base station ... from cell to cell... from mobile to mobile to mobile ... all around the world ... we were connecting ... connect­ing to a thousand phones, a million phones, a billion phones ... and somehow we were accessing them all, connecting to them all, instructing them all to ring the six numbers in this warehouse.

I opened my eyes.

Half a second had passed. Ellman's knife had pierced Lucy's nightgown, and now he was slowly pulling the knife upwards, slicing through the thin white cloth ... and Lucy was staying perfectly still.

I quickly closed my eyes again and went back inside myself, trying to ignore the pounding beat of my heart. We had all the phone calls ready now — a million ... a billion incoming calls — and we were holding them all back, keeping them waiting in their hordes, and at the same time we were focusing our electric power, concen­trating it, directing it, sending it through the radio waves inside the warehouse into the batteries of the six mobile phones. We were charging them, overcharging them, overloading them with every ounce of power we had ...

And when I opened my eyes again, I knew straight away that something was happening. In the yellowed light of the lantern, I could see that Ellman had sliced open the front of Lucy's nightgown, and O'Neil was looking on with eager eyes, and now Ellman was holding the knife to Lucy's neck, guiding her head towards him ... and then, suddenly, he froze. And behind him, I saw O'Neil looking puzzled for a moment, and then he glanced down at his pocket, and he put his hand on the outside of his pocket, and quickly jerked it away.

His phone was getting hot.

And so were the phones of all the others. They were all looking slightly agitated, frowning at the sudden heat in their pockets ... and now, I knew, I had to close my eyes for the last time and finish it. I had to close my eyes and rejoin iBoy, and together we had to give all the phones a final huge surge of power, and at the same time release all the waiting calls ... and then all we could do was hope.

Hope that the phones exploded.

And that when Hashim's went off, the explosion didn't take us with it.

We paused for a moment, making one more final adjustment, and then we opened our eyes and let it all go.

The four explosions went off almost simultaneously — BAM!BAM!BAM!BAM! — and an instant later, I felt something slamming into me. I thought for a moment that I had been hit by Hashim's explosion, but there was very little pain, and when I heard a groan of agony and I looked down at my feet and saw Hashim lying on the ground, with the back of his trousers blown away and half of his backside missing, I realized that the blast had simply blown him off his feet and he'd smashed into me on the way down.

He was a mess. There was blood everywhere. Bits of blackened flesh were scattered on the ground, and I could see the tip of a broken bone showing through the scorched and bloody crater in his backside.

But I didn't have time to dwell on it.

I quickly looked up and scanned the warehouse, making sure that Tweet and Gunner and Marek were out of action, and once I'd seen that they were all either seriously wounded or — in Gunner's case — possibly dead, I turned my attention to Ellman, O'Neil, and Lucy.

Lucy was still on her knees, gazing around at the carnage with a look of utter disbelief on her face, and Ellman and O'Neil were just standing there, either side of Lucy, both of them too shocked to move. But I knew that their shock wouldn't last for ever, especially Ellman's, so I had to act quickly.

'Lucy!' I called out sharply. 'LUCE!'

As she snapped out of her daze and looked over at me, I saw Ellman's eyes turn towards me too.

'Move, Lucy!' I yelled. 'Get away from him! NOW!'

Ellman rapidly came to his senses and turned back to Lucy, trying to grab her before she moved, but he wasn't quick enough. Lucy hadn't even bothered to get up off her knees, she'd just thrown herself to one side and rolled across the ground, and now she was scrambling to her feet and stumbling across the warehouse towards me.

'Get her!' Ellman barked at O'Neil.

O'Neil hesitated for a moment, and then he set off after her. And I suppose that was the moment when I could have called out to them, when I could have warned them off. I could have told O'Neil to stop running and stay where he was, and then I could have reminded them both of what I'd just done to the others, and asked them to think about why I'd not done it to them...and eventually they would have realized that the only reason I hadn't made their phones explode was that they'd been too close to Lucy at the time ...

That's what I could have done.

But I didn't.

I just closed my eyes for an instant, doing what I had to do, and then I opened my eyes again and watched as the front of O'Neil's track pants exploded — BAM! — and his legs kind of twisted and buckled as he ran, collapsing beneath him in a burst of blood, and he hit the ground hard, screaming and moaning and clutching at his groin just as Lucy stumbled to the ground at my feet — out of breath, sobbing hard, her knees all cut up and bloody. We looked at each other for a moment, smiling through our pain, and then I raised my eyes and stared over at Ellman. He hadn't moved. He was just standing there, gazing curiously at O'Neil... and I think he knew then that it was all over, that his time had come.

And he was right.

I waited for him to look at me, and when he did — slowly fixing me with those empty blue eyes — I met his gaze for a second or two ...

And then I watched, with no emotion at all, as his chest exploded.

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