Кевин Брукс - iBoy

"What d'you want?" he said to me.

I smiled at him. "Can I come in?"

He frowned at me. "What the fucking hell are you?"

"Let me in, and I'll tell you."

He stared at me for a moment, and then — with a shake of his head and a suck of his teeth — he unbolted the metal grill, swung it open, and moved to one side to let me in. His right hand, I noticed, never left his pocket, and as I stepped through into the hallway, I wondered what kind of weapon he was holding. A gun or a knife? And I started wondering then if my electric force field was strong enough to protect me from a bullet... but I quickly realized that it was too late to start worrying about that.

As O'Neil pulled a pistol from his pocket, a figure moved out from behind the door and put a knife to my throat, and at the same time a door on my right opened and a fat Korean guy came out holding a rifle in his hands.

O'Neil grinned at me, waggling the pistol in my face. "You're not so fucking smart now, are you, eh?"

I stared at him.

The Korean guy — who was only about five feet tall, but seriously fat — was just standing there, pointing the rifle at my head, and whoever it was with the knife at my neck was making a weird kind of panting noise in his throat. I couldn't see him without turning my head, and I couldn't turn my head without the blade of the knife digging into my skin, but I guessed it was probably Jermaine Adebajo.

I kept my eyes on Troy O'Neil.

He moved closer, peering curiously into the shimmer­ing whirl of my face.

"What is all that?" he said. "I mean, how do you do it?"

"Do you want to see what else I can do?" I said quietly.

Before he could answer, I tensed myself — from within — and then, almost immediately, I released the tension and blasted out a surge of power. It came out from all over my body, a blinding white CRACK! that knocked O'Neil and Adebajo and the Korean guy off their feet and sent them all flying. O'Neil and Adebajo smashed back against the hallway walls and crumpled to the floor, and the fat Korean guy was blown back through the bedroom door.

I waited a while, just looking down at their smoulder­ing bodies, but none of them got up. The barrel of O'Neil's pistol had fused together at the end, and the blade of Adebajo's knife had buckled and melted.

I leaned down and checked O'Neil for a pulse.

He was still alive.

So was Adebajo.

I closed the front door, locked and bolted it, then went into the bedroom and checked the Korean. He looked a bit worse than the other two — blood coming out of his ears and his nose — but he was still breathing too. The rifle was still gripped in his badly burned hands.

I went over to the window and looked out to see what was happening with the burning Golf. Nothing was happening. There was no one around. The car was just burning away, thick black smoke drifting up into the night, and nobody gave a shit about it.

I went into the kitchen and found a roll of insulation tape in a cupboard under the sink, then I went back out into the hallway and got to work.

After I'd tied up Adebajo and the Korean guy and locked them in the bedroom, I dragged O'Neil into the front room, tied him to a chair, and then I just sat down and waited for him to wake up.

The room was filled with all kinds of drug stuff — bags of white powder, bags of brown powder, blocks of canna­bis, carrier bags full of grass and pills. There was clingfilm for wrapping, scales for measuring, spoons and knives and syringes and foil... piles of cash all over the place.

I wondered how much money they made here. And how come, if they had so much money, they didn't find somewhere nicer to live? I mean, even by Crow Town's standards, this place was a hovel. Dirty walls, dirty windows, greasy carpets, foul air ... the whole place stank.

O'Neil groaned.

I looked at him and saw that his eyes were beginning to open. I waited a few seconds, just enough time to let him recognize me, then I leaned forward and spoke to him.

"Howard Ellman," I said. "Where does he live?"

"Munh?"

"Howard Ellman," I repeated. "I want to know where he lives."

O'Neil just looked at me for a moment, not quite sure what was happening, and then — suddenly realizing that he was tied to the chair — he started struggling. Wriggling and writhing, cursing and spitting, trying to break free ...

I touched his knee, giving him a short sharp shock. He yelped, stopped struggling, and stared wide-eyed at me.

"Listen to me," I said to him. "Just tell me where Ellman is, and I'll let you go."

"What?"

"Ellman. I just want to know where he is."

O'Neil shook his head. "Never heard of him. Now you'd better fucking —"

I zapped him on the knee again, harder this time, and once he'd stopped screaming and shaking, I said to him, "I'm going to keep doing this until you tell me what I want to know, and each time it's going to get worse. Do you understand?"

He glared at me, trying to show me that he wasn't scared, but I could see the fear in his eyes. I reached out towards him again. He jerked away, rocking from side to side in the chair.

"Just tell me where he lives," I said.

He shook his head. "I don't know ... nobody knows."

"I don't believe you."

"I don't know ," he spat- "It's the fucking truth!"

I didn't want to believe him, but the way he said it — the passion in his voice, the fear in his eyes — I was pretty sure that he was telling me the truth.

"What about a phone number?" I said.

O'Neil shook his head. "He doesn't give it out."

"So how do you get in touch with him?"

"You don't... if he wants something, he gets in touch with you."

"How?"

"He'll send someone ... or maybe get someone to call. One of the kids, usually."

"What kids?"

He shrugged. "The kids, you know ... the little fuck­ers who want to be Crows." O'Neil looked at me, a bit more confident again now. "You'll never find him, you know. Not unless he wants you to. And then you'll wish you hadn't."

"Yeah?"

He grinned. "You've got no fucking idea what you're dealing with. When he finds out what you've done tonight —"

"How's he going to find out?"

O'Neil hesitated for a moment, then he just shook his head and shrugged again. I raised my arm and moved my hand towards his face, palm first. I let the energy flow into my skin, feeling it pulse and burn, and I could see my hand glowing with heat as I moved it ever closer to O'Neil's face. His skin was reddening now, his forehead dripping sweat, and he was starting to panic — straining backwards, arching his neck, trying to get away from the heat.

"No!" he screamed. "No! Please, don't... please ..."

I paused, my hand a few centimetres from his face. "How's Ellman going to find out I've been here?"

"He won't... I won't say nothing ," O'Neil spluttered. "I promise ... I won't tell him —"

"Yeah, you will. I want you to tell him."

I heard the siren then. Faint at first, but rapidly getting louder. I got up, went over to the window and looked out. Beyond the burning Golf, I could see the flashing blue lights of two police cars speeding down Crow Lane. I knew that no one in Crow Town would have called them, especially about something as trivial as a car on fire, so I guessed that they were on their way to somewhere else. But, just to be on the safe side, I tuned in to the police radio frequency and simultaneously hacked into the communications system at Southwark Borough Police Station to find out what was going on. And it took me less than a second to discover that I was wrong — they weren't going somewhere else, they were answering a call from a passing motorist about a burning car outside Baldwin House.