iBoy

by Kevin Brooks

  http://io9.com/5228906/top-10-greatest-mentally-ill-superheroes

  Gram was just coming out of the bathroom when I got back home.

  “I thought you were going to see Lucy?” she said to me.

  “Yeah, I was . . . I am. I’m just . . . I forgot something.”

  She looked at me, waiting for me to tell her what I’d forgotten.

  “My phone,” I said. “I left it in my room.”

  “Right,” she said. “What’s that on your hands?”

  “What?”

  “You’ve got red paint on your hands.”

  I looked at my hands, quickly trying to think of an explanation. “Oh, yeah . . . there was some graffiti on Lucy’s door. You know . . . really nasty stuff. I tried to clean it off.”

  Gram sighed, shaking her head. “Why can’t they just leave her alone? I mean, God knows she’s been through enough already.”

  I shrugged. “It’s what they do, Gram.”

  “I know,” she said, sighing again. “It’s just . . . well, you know . . .”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked at me. “Is Lucy OK with you going to see her?”

  “Yeah, I think so . . . I mean, she said it was all right. And she seemed to get something out of me being there . . .” I shrugged. “I’m not sure what.”

  Gram smiled. “She likes you, she always has. Do you remember that time when she asked you to marry her?”

  “Marry her?”

  Gram nodded. “It was ages ago, you must have been about six or seven . . . the two of you were sitting on the floor in the front room, playing with some Legos or something, and she just turned to you and said, ‘Will you marry me when I’m older?’”

  “Really? What did I say?”

  Gram thought about it for a moment, then smiled again. “I don’t think you said anything. I think you just started crying.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, that sounds like me. I always was pretty slick with the ladies.”

  While Gram went back to her writing, I went into my room to pretend to look for my phone. I was still feeling drained, and I took the opportunity to sit down on the edge of my bed for a few moments to recharge myself before I went back up to Lucy’s.

  As I was sitting there, going over in my mind what had happened with O’Neil and the others, trying to work out if I’d made things better or worse, I sensed Lucy logging on to her Facebook page, and a few minutes later there was a message from her in my inbox.

  iBoy, it said, was that you just now?

  I messaged back: was that who just now?

  i know it WAS you, she replied. who ARE you?

  i’m whoever you want me to be.

  I logged off.

  My mind was too buzzy for resting now. I got up off the bed, got my jacket, and went back up to the thirtieth floor.

  Slag, bitch, whore . . . I knew that they were only words, and that words — so they say — can never hurt you, but as I stood outside Lucy’s flat, gazing at those ugly words painted crudely on the wall and the door, I knew that they did hurt.

  I held out my hand, palm first, toward the wall . . . and then I closed my eyes and concentrated. After a moment or two, I began to feel an energy between the wall and my hand . . . a tangible resistance, like a magnetic field. And when I opened my eyes and started moving my hand over the painted words, gently pushing the resistance into the paint, the graffiti began to flake off.

  It didn’t take long, and when I’d finished, and all traces of the graffiti were gone, I used the same scouring energy to clean the remnants of paint off my hands, and then I knocked on Lucy’s door.

  Her mum was out — she worked at the local Tesco’s — and Ben had gone out, too, so Lucy was on her own. Which I didn’t think was a good idea, especially after she’d just had a visit from half a dozen Crows. But as far as Lucy was concerned, I didn’t know anything about that, so I just kept my mouth shut and made a mental note to have a quiet — and possibly threatening — word with Ben the next time I saw him.

  “You’ll never guess what just happened, Tom,” Lucy said as we sat down together on the settee in the front room.

  “You won the lottery?” I said.

  “No, no . . . this was just now, about half an hour ago . . .” She shook her head. “God, it was so weird. I can still hardly believe it.”

  She started telling me all about O’Neil and the others then — how she’d been really scared when she’d realized they were outside, and they’d started calling out through the mail slot . . . and then she’d heard another voice outside, followed by the sounds of struggling — shouts and yells, running feet — and she’d peeked through the mail slot and seen this really weird-looking kid with multicolored skin squaring up to O’Neil . . .

  “. . . I mean, his skin was really shimmering, Tom. Honestly. It was like he was covered in neon tattoos or something, and the tattoos were moving . . . but they weren’t tattoos . . .”

  It was incredibly strange, listening to her telling me the story. Partly because I had to pretend that it was all new to me, so I had to keep going — What? No . . . really? — and partly because Lucy seemed so energized now, so full of life, just like the old Lucy, and I didn’t know how that made me feel. On the one hand, obviously, it made me feel great. I mean, Lucy seemed to be getting back to her old self again — what could possibly be wrong with that? But on the other hand . . . well, there wasn’t anything wrong with it. Nothing at all. But I suppose, if I’m totally honest, I felt just a tiny bit jealous. She was so excited, so thrilled, so curious about this mysterious stranger who’d come galloping to her rescue . . . and I wanted her to know that it was me. I wanted her to be excited about me, not about iBoy. And I know that sounds pathetic — and selfish and childish and whatever else you want to call it — but, like I said, I’m just trying to be honest here. And that’s how I felt.

  “Tom?” I heard her say. “Are you listening?”

  “Sorry,” I said, looking at her. “I was just —”

  “Do you think it’s him?”

  “Who?”

  She sighed. “The Facebook guy, the one I just told you about. Do you think it’s the same person?”

  “The same as who?”

  “The other one,” she said impatiently. “The one who tried to throw O’Neil out the window.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, pretending to suddenly get it. “So you think this Facebook guy might be the hero guy, is that it?”

  “Yeah. What do you think?”

  I shrugged. “Well, I don’t know . . . I mean, this guy you saw in the corridor, the one with the weird skin . . . are you sure he was real?”

  “Of course he was real. What else could he be?” She shook her head angrily. “What are you trying to say, Tom? You think I made him up?”

  “No . . . no, I didn’t mean that, I just meant . . . maybe you were tired or something, you know . . .”

  She glared at me. “I know what I saw, Tom. I mean, if you don’t believe me —”

  “I believe you —”

  “You can ask Ben if you want. He was there, too. He saw him, he’ll tell you. If you don’t believe me —”

  “OK, OK,” I said, holding my hands up. “I said I believed you, didn’t I? I believe you, Luce.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, honestly . . . I was just . . .”

  “What? You were just what?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know . . . I was just being stupid. Sorry.”

  She looked at me, shaking her head. “You’re such an idiot sometimes.”

  “I know . . . sorry.”

  She carried on glaring at me for a second or two, but she’d never been able to stay angry with me for very long, and after a while her eyes slowly softened and her face relaxed into a smile. “Yeah, well,” she said. “You don’t have to apologize to me for being stupid. I’m used to it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  As we sat there grinning at each other, I co
uldn’t help noticing that she didn’t look quite so withdrawn as before. She was wearing black jeans and a white T-shirt, no socks, no makeup, and her hair was freshly washed. She looked really good. She looked . . . I don’t know. She just looked good.

  “What?” she said, self-consciously flicking 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 shows, 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 elevator 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.”

  “What does he actually do?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “God . . . I mean, what does he actually do?”

  “Well,” the priest says slowly . . . “it’s not really a question of what God does —”

  “It is for me.”

  Kevin Brooks

  Dawn (2009)

  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 something 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.

  Not a problem.

  I hacked into the council’s database, searched through a load of security stuff relating to all the towers in Crow Town, and found the four-digit code. I keyed it in — 4514 — and opened the door. It led through into a little room filled with all kinds of stuff — cabinets and shelves, pipes and cables, heating controls. A metal ladder was fixed to the far wall, leading up to a padlocked hatchway. I climbed the ladder, iUnlocked the padlock, then pushed open the hatchway and stepped out onto the roof.

  The rain had stopped now, but as I closed the hatchway behind me and walked over to the edge of the roof, I could feel the cold night air breezing through my hair. I was thirty floors up, high above the ground, and I could see for miles and miles all around. Lights were glowing everywhere — lights of houses and flats, streetlights, traffic lights, streams of headlights — and away in the distance I could see the bright lights of central London — office blocks, luxury tower blocks, streets and streets full of shops and theaters and traffic . . .

  I’d seen it all before, of course. I saw it every day, every time I looked out the window. But the view from up here — outside, on the roof — somehow felt different. It felt wider, clearer, bigger . . . more real.

  I sat down, cross-legged, on the very edge of the roof.

  In the darkness below, Crow Town was getting ready for the night. Groups of kids were hanging around — on street corners, in the shadows of the towers, at the side of the road — and others were cruising the estate in cars or on bikes. Faint sounds drifted up into the night — shouting, dogs barking, cars, music — but up here, high above the rest of the world, everything was quiet.