iBoy by Kevin Brooks
And when I opened my eyes again, I knew straightaway 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 toward 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 pants 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, on either side of Lucy, both of them too shocked to move. But I knew that their shock wouldn’t last forever, 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 toward 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 toward 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.
. . . 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 sneakers . . .
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 good-bye to Lucy before we’re both taken away for questioning.
To love is not to look at one another: It is to look, together, in the same direction.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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 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 d
“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 unit of a private hospital in West London. That same night, although still in “extremely critical” condition, and despite the police guard outside his door, he’d somehow managed to escape from the hospital and disappear without a 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, Dr. Kirby — I could never rid myself of iBoy. He was with me forever 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 toward me . . .
And now, as I gazed down from the roof, remembering the past, something strange happened. My perspective suddenly changed, and instead of picturing myself as me, looking up at the iPhone, I was picturing myself as the iPhone, tumbling down through the sky toward the other me, the me that was down there . . . only the sky wasn’t blue now, it was black. It was nighttime. And it wasn’t all those weeks ago . . . it was now.
Right now.
And I was falling . . . down, down, down . . . down through the silent darkness . . . hurtling down into oblivion . . .
And I could see something on the ground down below.
A light.
There was a light down there.
Just outside the entrance to the tower, thirty floors below, someone was riding a bike across the square. And as I leaned farther forward and peered over the edge of the roof, I could see the front light of the bike moving slowly over the ground, directly beneath me . . . and then, all at once, I was seeing myself falling again, only this time I wasn’t the iPhone, I was myself . . . I was Tom Harvey, I was iBoy . . . I was both of us . . . and we were falling from the roof, dropping like a stone . . . down, down, down . . . heading straight for the light of the unknown cyclist . . . and we knew that we were going to land on him, or her . . . we were going to land headfirst on them, and our iSkull was going to crack open their skull, and their brain was going to be lacerated by broken iSkull fragments and pieces of us . . .
And as I leaned even farther forward, almost toppling off the edge now, I heard myself laughing. At least, I assumed it was me, beca
Yes, it was definitely me.
I was laughing . . .
I didn’t know why.
And, for some reason, that made me feel incredibly sad, and all at once I wasn’t laughing anymore, I was crying . . . sobbing uncontrollably . . . the tears streaming out of me like the tears of a frightened child.
I didn’t want to die . . .
But I didn’t want to live . . .
I just didn’t know . . .
“Tom . . . ?”
The voice came from behind me.
I waited a moment, trying to steady myself, wiping the tears from my eyes, and then I slowly turned round and looked up . . . and there she was, gazing down at me with a worried frown.
“Hey, Luce,” I said.
“Are you all right?” she asked softly. “You don’t look so great.”
I sniffed, wiped my eyes again, and smiled at her. “I’m fine . . . I was just, you know . . . just thinking about stuff . . .”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, sitting down next to me. “It’s all been a bit much, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“I just did.”
I looked at her.
She smiled at me. “You’ve got snot all over your face . . . come here.” She pulled a tissue from her pocket, licked it, and started cleaning all the snot and tears from my face. I winced a little as she wiped around the knife cut on my forehead. “Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “God, you’re a mess.”
“You don’t look too great yourself,” I said, glancing at the cuts and bruises on her face.