by Кевин Брукс
And I knew that I had to do something with it, because Ellman was leaning towards Lucy now, tearing the tape from her mouth, and I could see that she was crying ...
And I was too.
And crying wasn't going to help.
"Tom ...?" I heard Lucy sob.
Her voice was faint, weak with fear, and her face was pale and greyed with shock, but when our eyes met, I could see that she still had that hidden strength in her eyes ... and that, incredibly, she was trying to smile at me.
I smiled back.
And Ellman slapped her across the face.
"Don't fucking look at him," he told her, his voice quite calm. "Look at me. You hear me? You keep your fucking eyes on me."
She stared up at him, her eyes cold with hatred.
Ellman casually raised the knife in his hand, holding it close to her face. "You stay on your knees, you keep your eyes on me ... and I might not cut you. Understand?"
Lucy said nothing, just carried on staring at him, and I could tell by the look in her eyes that she had no intention of giving up without a fight. . . and that meant that I had to act now, right now, before she got herself killed. I had to look deep inside myself and use everything I had — my iSenses, my iKnowledge, my iPowers, my self. . . I had to focus it all, all at once, all in a timeless moment, on my one and only hope.
I closed my eyes.
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.
11001
...my mind is all in bits.
Goethe
Fragments again. Snapshots.
Disconnected moments.
... Lucy getting to her feet — her knees all scratched and bloodied, her face cut and bruised, her nightgown cut open ... both of us sobbing our eyes out...
... Lucy's fumbling hands, and her desperate silence, as she tries to untie me from the girder — pulling and twisting and tearing at the wire, cursing every now and then as the metal slices into her fingers ...
Shit.
Fuck it.
Bastard bloody thing ...
... Lucy and me, standing there in the pale yellow light, holding each other, hanging on to each other ... our bodies shaking, our tears pouring out, neither of us able or willing to talk ...
... and the carnage all around us. Bodies, blood, bits of flesh ... we can't think about it, can't look at it, can't care about it. Dead or alive, we can't afford to care about them.
We just have to go.
Get out of there. Leave them. Go...
... walking home in the early hours of the morning, both of us shivering with cold and shock, Lucy wearing my jacket over her mutilated nightgown ... hobbling awkwardly in my socks and trainers ...
Are you OK?
Yeah ... no.
Holding hands, holding each other, helping each other.
All right?
Yeah ...
We can't talk about it — what happened, what's going to happen, what I've done, what it means — it's all too much for now. Too complex, too confusing ... too many unanswerable questions.
We can't do it.
Not now ...
... Crow Lane, Compton House, flashing blue lights in the darkness ... the police are all over the place. I barely have time to say goodbye to Lucy before we're both taken away for questioning.
11010
To love is not to look at one another: it is to look, together, in the same direction.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Terre des Hommes (1939)
Questions. That's pretty much all there was over the next two days: questions from the police, questions from doctors, questions from Gram ... what happened? how did it happen? who? why? where? when?
What could I say?
I don't know ...
Can't remember ...
I'm not sure ...
It was never-ending. Question after question, hour after hour, day after day ... and it wasn't until the Thursday evening that I finally managed to get a bit of time on my own. I knew that I wouldn't have long — Gram had just nipped out to the shops, and the police were coming back later to talk to me again — so I didn't waste any time, I just grabbed my jacket, left the flat, and headed up to the roof.
And now, here I was again — sitting alone on the edge of the world, watching the sun go down. It was another mild night, the air clear and still, and the sky was layered with an evening redness that glowed with the promise of long hot summer days to come. But as I sat there on the roof, gazing out at the horizon, I couldn't imagine any days to come. Tomorrow, next Wednesday, next month, next year ... there was nothing there for me, nothing at all. There was nothing beyond the horizon.
Not for me.
My mind was still all in bits.
I closed my eyes and looked inside myself.
I could see a past, the last few days, yesterday ... I could see Gram sitting next to me on the settee in the front room, her greying hair shaved to her scalp around the stitched-up wound on her head, and I could hear myself telling her most of what Ellman had said about my mother, her daughter, and I could see the tears in Gram's eyes when I asked her if any of it was true.
"Georgie wasn't a bad girl," she'd told me, smiling sadly. "But she was always a bit wild, a bit rebellious ... not that I minded that, of course ... but when she was about seventeen she started taking things a bit too far, you know ... mixing with the wrong kind of people, getting into drugs ..." Gram shook her head at the memory. "She lost her way, Tommy. And you know what it's like when you lose your way around here ..."
"Did she know Ellman?"
Gram nodded. "He was the man, you know ... everyone wanted to know Howard Ellman. He had the drugs, the money, the cars, the girls ..." She sighed. "Georgie thought he was exciting. I tried telling her what he was really like, but she just wouldn't listen ..."
"Was she ...?" I asked hesitantly. "I mean, were they...?"
"Sleeping together?" She nodded again. "Georgie was out of her head most of the time — she didn't know what she was doing ..."
"Ellman called her a whore," I said quietly.
Gram looked at me, her eyes moist with tears. "Your mum made a lot of mistakes, Tommy. Like I said, she lost her way ... but in the end she found herself again. When she found out that she was pregnant, she pulled herself together, got off the drugs, got away from Ellman ... and that took a hell of a lot of guts, a lot of courage." Gram paused, putting her hand on my shoulder. "She was your mother, Tommy. If she was still alive now, she'd love you as much as I do, and you'd love her."
I could see us holding each other then, both of us crying our eyes out, and I could hear Gram saying sorry to me, over and over again, for not telling me the truth about Mum before, and I could hear her trying to explain that she hadn't kept the truth from me because she was ashamed of Mum or anything, but simply because she couldn't see what good it would have done for me to know all the ugly details of her life.
And I understood that.
Because, in exactly the same way, I couldn't see what good it would do for Gram to know all the ugly details of what Ellman had said about Mum. She didn't need to know that Ellman might have killed her, or that he might ... just might... be my father ...
She didn't need that pain.
So I kept it to myself.
Inside myself ...
I could see the present too. I could see two dead bodies lying in the mortuary: Gunner, with half of his chest blown away, and Eugene O'Neil. The blast from O'Neil's phone had severed his femoral artery and he'd bled to death on the warehouse floor.
I could see Hashim and Marek still in their hospital beds, both of them seriously injured and scarred for life, but at least they were probably both going to have a life.
Tweet's injuries were so severe that it would be a miracle if he survived.
And Howard Ellman ...?
I couldn't see him.
After undergoing emergency surgery to his chest, heart, and lungs, Ellman had been moved to the intensive care department of a private hospital in West London. That same night, although still in an "extremely critical" condition, and despite the police guard outside his door, he'd somehow managed to escape from the hospital and disappear without trace. The police had no idea how he'd got away, or where he was, and neither did I. But the prevailing medical opinion was that without expert care — and probably even with it — he'd be dead within the next twenty-four hours.
I opened my eyes for a moment, remembering my complete lack of feeling as I'd watched Ellman's chest explode ... and I wondered now if I still felt (or didn't feel) the same. About Ellman, O'Neil, the others ... dead or alive ...
Did I care about them?
Did I feel any remorse, any guilt, any shame?
The answer, whether I liked it or not, was
no.
And I didn't like it.
I didn't like what it made me.
I closed my eyes again, looking for the presence of Lucy ... and I knew she'd be there. I could always see Lucy in my mind — her sunset eyes, her lips, her smile, her drowning tears — but my mind wasn't reality. My mind wasn't the truth. And the truth was that I just couldn't see how I could ever be with Lucy again. Why on earth would she ever want to be with me? I'd almost got her raped and killed. I'd put her through the very same hell that she'd already been through once. I'd failed to protect her. I'd lied to her, tricked her, betrayed her... and all for what? For revenge? To make me feel better? To make me feel like a hero? Shit...
I wasn't a hero.
I was never a hero.
I was nothing.
No good to anyone.
I was a freak.
A mutant.
A murderer.
I was losing my mind ...
And, even worse, my heart had grown cold.
I'd lost myself.
No matter what I did, I could never be Tom Harvey again. Even if I told everyone everything — Gram, the police, Mr Kirby — I could never rid myself of iBoy. He was with me for ever now. He was me, and I was him. And eventually — inevitably — the rest of the world would find out about us ... and when that happened, our life really would become a freak show.
And I wasn't sure I could live with that.
And despite everything that my rational mind kept telling me, I just couldn't stop thinking about the unthinkable possibility — no matter how unlikely it was — that Ellman hadn't been lying... that he really was my father. And every time I thought about that, I remembered what I'd said to him in the warehouse: If you were my father, I'd kill myself.
I opened my eyes again and gazed down over the edge of the roof. Thirty floors up ... it was a long way down. And as I looked down through the darkness, I began to picture myself down there on the day that it happened, all those weeks ago ... walking home from school, feeling pretty much the same as I always felt... kind of OK, but not great... alone, but not lonely ... thinking about Lucy, wondering what she wanted to see me about ... then hearing a shout from above and looking up and seeing the iPhone hurtling down through the bright blue sky towards me ...