Chapter 14: Repaid with interest

"I messed everything up, Zech, but I'll make it right again."

It's taking forever for his memory to re-establish itself. To one side, the Zombcon programming lies in another data orb, one that doesn't glow. It hadn't been that easy to remove the programming and replace his memories, especially with Allegra raining dire warnings on me every few minutes along the lines of HIGH-RISK OPERATION. ZOMBCON INTERVENTION IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. It had also been exhausting to manhandle him onto the bed, but I'd managed. I didn't have a life support system for the interim period, but he has nanobots now, and it was fairly simple for me to marshal those into keeping him alive while we wait… and wait…

When he opens his eyes, I am fixed in his languid gaze. His eyes are like clear honey, alarmingly blank at first, but then the spark returns with a smile of recognition, open and sincere.

"Allegra!" The same honesty is in his voice. He's really pleased to see me.

I swallow the lump in my throat. That's his voice as I had known it, without any trace of the suffocating artificial caringness that I had come to hate.

"How do you feel?" I ask, trying hard to keep trepidation out of my voice.

He starts to answer, then frowns suddenly. As realisation breaks, he sits up with a jerk, his face a mask of shock. "The Mutt!..." If I hadn't been so nervous that my stomach was tying itself in knots, I would have been fascinated by the gamut of emotions that are displayed in succession across his features. "Are you alright?" is accompanied by concern, and then horror takes over and finally, disbelief. "I… died?"

"You almost did, but…" I can't go on. There is another lump in my throat, too large to swallow.

"Why do I remember… where is this?... Why am I…" The weight of the memory pummels him into silence. Every shadow in his eyes condemns me, as I watch him relive the torment of the Zombing chamber. I share his agony until he collapses with a shudder.

I cry out his name in alarm and reach out to him, but he flinches away from my hand.

"You Zombed me?" He is wide-eyed with incredulity and hurt, and I feel like I've just stabbed him in the heart.

My desperate excuses erupt in a tangled torrent of words. "You were dying! I didn't know " until I run out of breath. "Zech…I'm so sorry!" The last word is a wail of regret.

He doesn't say anything. He just puts one arm over his eyes. I back away from his brooding silence; physically retreating from something I am dreading with all my being. All my fears are coming to be… he hates me now.

Eventually, he speaks, eyes still covered. "I said once that I'd kill anyone who tried to Zomb me." His voice is dull and flat. I have no idea if he's threatening me or just informing me.

Another agonising silence sinks down on us. "Are you going to… kill me?" I feel no fear; I just can't bear the tension any longer.

He doesn't even look at me. "You'd be dead by now if I wanted to kill you."

"You must hate me." I loathe my voice, so querulously thin, turning my remorse into a peevish complaint. Allegra tells me my blood pressure is rising and offers to deploy the endocrine nanobots. I brush her aside.

He doesn't look at me, he doesn't answer me, he gives me no reaction at all. How I wish he has a FACE for me to force my way into, but he has obscured even his physical face from me. Communicating with words and eyes and faces is so hard. But that is the only way Zech can communicate, and if I want to get through to him, I have to do that too. Right now, I don't know what to say to him, and he won't say anything to me, so I have no choice to suffer more silence.

At length, he uncovers his face. "Honestly, Allegra… I don't know how I feel about you right now." He sits up and looks at me directly at last. "But I don't hate you."

"Y…you… don't?" A feeble spark of hope struggles in the darkness that has enveloped my heart.

"I can't. Even though I've been trying to hate you from the moment you suggested it just now."

Is he being sarcastic? I'm desperately trying to read his expression. The spark is bursting into flame, trying to engulf my embattled heart.

He swings his body so that he's sitting on the bed with his feet on the floor. "So what now?"

I can only echo his words uncomprehendingly.

"What are you going to do with me?"

Allegra offers me a list of options. I don't really want to look at them, but my own thought processes have knotted themselves into an immovable tangle. I snatch up the first option and offer it to him: "I could… send you back to the Burbs."

He laughs without humour. "You're going to put me less than ten kaym from Zombcon Headquarters?" He stands and takes two steps towards me. "Technically, I'm still your Zomb, you know. How do you think they'll take it when they see me wandering around the Burbs as I please?"

I retreat the same distance he has advanced. He continues to walk towards me, and I continue to step back. While that is happening, he goes on speaking. "Unless you dissolve the Promise at Zombcon. But if you do, they'll find out everything you've done, won't they?" With the last word, he is right in front of me, and I find that my back is against the wall. I have nowhere left to retreat to.

"You could… stay… here…" I falter, but manage to finish, "with me."

He puts his arms against the wall, trapping me between them. "As your Zomb?"

"No!"

He is slightly taken aback by my sharp reply, but he doesn't move his arms away. Instead, he leans in to stare at me. "As what then?"

"As my companion." I look down at the floor, unable to meet his eyes. "Stay with me… as my… friend."

Silence. But he's still staring at me; I can almost feel the pressure of his gaze even with my eyes averted.

I try to wriggle out from between his arms, but he grasps my wrists and holds them above my head, pinning me to the wall. "Aren't you afraid that I'll take revenge on you? Do something to you in your sleep? Sell you out to Central? Or simply kill you?" With every word, he moves a fraction closer, until we are standing shoulder to shoulder, forehead to forehead.

My heart is hammering and I feel like my lungs are being squeezed out of my throat, but somehow I find the breath to answer him. "It would be what I deserve for everything I've done to you."

"You…" he raises one hand, and I squeeze my eyes shut, steeling myself for the blow that is surely coming.

But all he does is to force my chin up to look at him. "You drive me crazy, Allegra." He still has me by one wrist, so I can't escape when he whispers into my ear, "And if I tell you I won't do any of that… would you believe me?"

"Yes." With that, I find the strength to break free of his grasp, only to find that my legs refuse to support me. I slide down the wall like a glob of jelly. He follows me down until he is straddling me; holding my wrists and gripping my hips with his knees, caging me under the curve of his body. Now I am well and truly trapped. I close my eyes, resigning myself to whatever is going to happen to me.

"What you did wasn't right, Allegra." His voice is as soft as a caress, sending tiny shivers up and down my spine. "But I can't say it was wrong either."

I thought I would cry, but I don't. I just whisper his name.

"I'm so confused right now," he says, killing whatever words I was trying to say.

I'm confused too. My brain and my heart have stopped talking to each other. I can't even hear Allegra anymore. There is only Zech, filling up my senses.

"But one thing I do know." His hand is on my cheek, wiping away tears that I don't realise I've shed. "I'm not ready to give up on you."

I open my eyes to his gentle smile. I want more than anything to enter the light offered by his words, but the last tiny scrap of dark doubt hangs on tenaciously to my heart.

"I guess that means I forgive you."

I don't know what to say, if I need to say anything at all. But when I put my arms around his neck and pull his lips down to mine, I finally begin to understand how it is that two people can neither one of them own the other, yet truly, completely, belong to each other.