Кевин Брукс - iBoy

"What?" she said, self-consciously flicking at her hair. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," I said, looking away. "Where is Ben, anyway? You said he went out?"

"Yeah, I asked him not to, but he said it was urgent."

"Urgent?"

She shrugged. "He got a text from someone just before he went out. Maybe he had to meet them ... I don't know." She reached down and scratched her bare foot. "Anyway ... you should have seen this guy, Tom. It was amazing . I mean, when he had O'Neil at the window, I really thought..."

As she carried on telling me how amazing iBoy was, I tracked down Ben's mobile — he was in a ground-floor flat in Baldwin House — and I opened up his texts. There was one from someone who identified himself only as "T" which just said here now . Ben had answered cant sorry. T had written back NOW! OR UDED, and Ben, unsurprisingly, had replied ok 5 mins.

I traced T's mobile — he was in the same location as Ben — but I couldn't find out anything else about him. It was a brand-new phone — pay as you go, unregis­tered — so my iBrain couldn't tell me much about it, but my normal brain told me that T was probably Troy O'Neil.

I stayed at Lucy's until about nine o'clock, when her mum came back, by which time Lucy had finally stopped going on about iBoy and we'd spent a really nice hour or so just talking to each other about not very much at all — TV programmes, school gossip, music ... just good old ordinary stuff.

As Lucy was seeing me out, I said to her, "If anyone starts bothering you again, just give me a call, OK? I mean, I know I'm not as superheroic as your oh-so- wonderful Mr iBoy —"

"Shut up," Lucy smiled, punching me lightly on the arm.

I looked at her. "I mean it, Luce. Any trouble, or even if you're just on your own or anything — call me."

She nodded, still smiling. "Thanks, Tom." And then, without a word, she reached up and gently caressed the scar on my head. "It tingles," she said quietly.

"I'm Electro-Man," I told her. "Honestly, I'm truly shocking."

"Yeah," she said, grinning. "You wish."

Ben wasn't expecting to see me standing in the corridor when the lift doors opened, but I was expecting to see him.

"Tom ..." he said, unpleasantly surprised. "What are you —?"

"A word," I said, taking his arm and leading him out of the lift.

He started to pull away from me. "I don't really have time —"

"Yeah, you do," I told him, tightening my grip on his arm. I led him down the corridor, past his flat, and through the door into the stairwell. "Sit down," I told him.

"What is this?"

"Sit down."

He did as he was told, sitting down hesitantly on the steps, and I sat down next to him.

"What's the matter with you?" I asked him.

"What? Nothing—"

"When I talked to you yesterday, you made out like you were all eaten up with guilt about Lucy. Do you remember? You said you couldn't help thinking that it was all your fault."

"Yeah ... so?"

"So how come today, twenty-four hours later, you leave her on her own in the flat after she's just been scared shitless by the bastards who raped her?"

"No," he said firmly, shaking his head. "No, she was OK—"

"You left her on her own , for Christ's sake."

"Yeah, I know, but they weren't coming back —"

"How do you know?"

"Well, I mean ... I didn't think they were —"

"It doesn't matter anyway," I interrupted. "That's not the point. You left Lucy on her own." I glared at him. "Don't you get it?"

He lowered his eyes, staring sulkily at the ground.

"God, Ben," I sighed. "You're so full of shit. You really are."

He shrugged.

I sat there looking at him for a few moments, trying to feel something good about him, but I just couldn't find anything. After a while, I said quietly, "What did Troy want?"

His head jerked up and he stared at me. "What?"

"Troy O'Neil. What did he want with you?"

"How do you know I was at Troy's?"

"Lucky guess. What did he want?"

"Nothing ..."

"What did he want?" I repeated.

Ben just shook his head again.

"Your mum's home," I reminded him. "Do you want me to go and tell her how you stole that iPhone?"

"No," he said quietly.

"So tell me what Troy wanted."

He sighed. "It's nothing to do with you."

I started to get up, as if I was going to see his mum.

"No," he said quickly, grabbing my arm. "I didn't mean it like that ... I just meant..."

"What?" I said, removing his hand from my arm and sitting down again. "You just meant what?"

"It wasn't about you. Troy, I mean ... he didn't want to see me about you . It was about this guy ..."

"What guy?"

Ben frowned. "Shit ... I don't know. It was when Yo and the rest of them were outside the flat earlier on. This guy ... shit. I don't know what he was. He had this really weird stuff on his face ... like lights or something, but not lights. Some kind of camouflage ... a mask ... I don't know. He just appeared out of nowhere and started smacking everyone around. Christ, it was unbelievable. And he had one of those Taser guns ... you know? Those electric things, like the cops use. He was zapping the fuck out of everyone."

"Yeah?"

"He even tried to throw Yo out the window. He prob­ably would have if Yo hadn't chopped him one."

"Really?"

"Yeah ... Yo knows karate. He chopped this guy in the neck, and the guy let him go."

"You saw that?"

"Yeah, I saw everything. That's why Troy wanted to see me. He wanted to know all about this guy, you know ... I mean, he tried to kill Troy's brother."

"So you told Troy everything you saw?"

"Yeah."

"Anything else?"

"Like what?"

"Did you tell him anything else?"

"No..."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, yeah ..."

"You don't sound very sure."

Ben looked at me. "I didn't tell him anything else, all right? I don't know anything else."

I stared at him. "You'd better not be lying to me."

He shrugged.

I said, "So what do you think Troy's going to do about this guy with the Taser?"

Ben shrugged again. "Find him, I suppose."

"Then what?"

"Kill him, probably."

After I'd let Ben go back to his flat, I found myself — some­what surprisingly — heading up the stairs instead of going back down. I didn't consciously know what I was doing — I mean, I hadn't planned it or anything — but I knew that the stairs led up to the roof, so I suppose there must have been some thing inside me that knew what I was doing.

Two flights up from the thirtieth floor, I came to a padlocked iron gate. It was a full-length gate, reaching from the floor to the ceiling, and it was secured with a thick metal chain and a huge brass padlock. I took hold of the padlock in my hand, closed my eyes, and let the energy flow through my arm, into my hand ... and after a moment or two, I felt things moving inside the lock. I heard soft clicks, the sound of metal on metal ... and suddenly the padlock sprung open.

I unwound the metal chain and went through the gate, closing and locking it behind me, and now I was faced with a steel-reinforced door marked NO UNAUTHOR­IZED ACCESS . It was locked, of course, but not with a padlock this time — there was a keypad on the wall. I'd need to know the security code to get in.