179Title: ALL OF HIM
Chapter 20 Don't do this
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, the voice of the Labourmart and the MuTT-operating lessons, the voice that had shouted out my name just before our world fell apart. A voice without any trace of the suffocating artificial caringness that I had come to hate.
Zech's voice.
"How do you feel?" I ask, trying hard to keep trepidation out of my voice.
He starts to answer, then frowns suddenly. As his thought processes consolidate, 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 following that shocked cry.
A flash of panic, followed by
.
concern, with the words "Are you alright?"; and then
.
disbelief appears abruptly, along with
.
a tinge of disgust, and finally
.
horror.
.
.
"I… died?" The second word is an unmelodious, whimpering cry of pure shock.
I shake my head vigorously. "You almost did, but…"
I want to add more words of comfort and denial, but I just can't go on. My throat has turned as rigid as the bedframe that I am gripping to keep from melting into a muscleless puddle.
"Why do I remember… where is this?... Why am I…" The pupils dilate in his already widely staring eyes. A spasm runs through him, turning him rigid.
I recognise the symptoms of psychological trauma and I know why that is happening: he's remembering the Zombing. The weight of the memory pummels him into silence. Every shadow in his eyes condemns me as I watch him relive the torment of that harshly-lit chamber, but there is nothing I can do except to 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?" His expression is shot through with incredulity and hurt.
I can't speak, or move, or even breathe. It feels like I'm in that dream again...
.
...like I've just stabbed him in the heart.
.
I Zombed him.
How do I explain to him what I've done? My mind runs away from the colossal task, choosing instead to dwell on the details of the scene. He's collapsed back onto the bed, as if I really did stab him and he's bleeding out his life right there. I can't look at his face anymore, so I stare at his shoulders and chest, at the scattering of small white marks and lines across the pale skin, and the one long scar that starts under one nipple and goes round his ribcage to disappear in his armpits. I could ask for a refund from Zombcon for those blemishes – they'd promised me physical perfection with their nanobots. Or maybe those are the signs of his past life. The one I almost robbed him of.
But I've made good, haven't I? I've given him back himself. So why do I feel so bad right now? Why do I still feel so guilty and fearful?
My turmoil erupts at last in a tangled torrent of words that run on into each other. "You were dying! I didn't know wha telsetodo. I thoughtitw astheon lywayt osaveyo uIfonlyIknewho wyoufeltI woul dneverhav edoneitIa msoverytrulys orryIwasato tallybrai nlessidiot" 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 have materialised.
He hates me now.
I wish I could freeze time and go over what I've done and correct whatever I did wrong the way I would correct a faulty program. I wish these horrible feelings would stop. I wish I could make sense of what's happening between us right now.
I wish I could just not exist anymore.
Eventually, he speaks, still covering his eyes with his forearm. "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. Or maybe he heard my last suicidal thought in some ghostly leftover effect of the Zombing. As it is, there seems to be nothing I can say in response to those words. Another agonising silence sinks down on us.
"Are you going to kill me?" I blurt out eventually. 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."
I wonder how he'd have killed me. With a swift brutal snap of my neck, or a long, drawn-out strangulation? If I were him, I'd certainly find the satisfaction that can be drawn from the latter an appealing prospect. Furthermore, I don't think I deserve the mercy of the former.
But perhaps he doesn't have the stomach for either one of those very personal approaches. Suffocation, then: a pillow over my face while he holds me down, or simply a hand placed over my nose and mouth as he presses down on my chest with his body. Or even brute force – I'm certain if he wanted to he would have no problem beating my head against the wall or floor into an unrecognisable mess of bone chips and pureed brains.
Whatever he would have chosen, I would have put up no resistance because it would be what I deserve. And one thing is clear in any case: all the options for homicide that my imagination has come up with share one stark similarity. They are all full of fiercely burning hate.
"You must hate me." I loathe my voice, so querulously thin, turning my remorse into a peevish complaint.
My blood pressure is rising, allegra informs me, along with an offer to deploy the endocrine nanobots. I brush her aside. 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 now that we are no longer linked in the Zomb-Master connection, and if I want to get through to him, I have to do that too. I have to communicate with him as Allegra. As a person.
"Say something," I whisper. "Don't be like this."
He doesn't look at me, he doesn't answer me, he gives me no reaction at all. His breathing is unsteady, indicating stress, but apart from that, he may as well be in another room for all the interaction I'm getting from him.
At length, I realise that he is still mostly naked. To offer him clothes seems a completely inadequate and incongruous gesture of reconciliation, but I do that anyway because I have no other ideas whether good or bad.
"Y-your... sh-shirt..." I hold out the item like a placating offering... or a shield.
My offer is ignored. I don't know what I had been expecting. Did I think that he would accept his clothes and wrap me in a forgiving hug in exchange? If I had damaged his MuTT I could offer simple recompense: an exchange of commodities of equal value to compensate for the loss he'd suffered on my account. But it wasn't his MuTT that I had damaged. I've damaged his person, and more than that, his trust in people. In me.
"Please..." I whisper to that closed-off wall of his impassiveness, "don't hate me."
In the absence of any response from him, I supply him with countering words inside my own head. They are keen-edged with the sharpness of truth and heavy with the weight of logic: How can I not hate you? I trusted you. We had an agreement. I even liked you. And then you just turned on me. You betrayed my trust. You used me. You tried to take everything that I had. How can I not hate the disgusting person that you are?
In reality, there is only dead silence. My ears begin to ache with the effort of trying to hear even the smallest whisper from him, and then they begin to ring from the burden of all those imagined sounds that never came to be. I pinch myself, as if the physical pain could distract me from the tension of waiting for him to say something, anything, or at least do something other than lie there like the deactivated Zomb that he was not so long ago.
The silence thickens to a suffocating degree. I resort to repeating softly and continously, "Don't hate me", if only to fill the void that stretches between us.
"Hush."
He's uncovered his face. I stop my chanting and look at him with unashamed and undisguised hope, even though I know the odds are stacked against me.
"Honestly, Allegra…" he sighs, "I don't know how I feel about you right now." He sits up and looks at me directly at last.
He hasn't said that he hates me.
A feeble spark of hope struggles in the darkness that is enveloping my heart.
He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and wobbles momentarily before regaining his balance with a grimace. His flexes his limbs experimentally. His movements are slow and uncoordinated, like someone who has just come out of sedation; as if he's still trying to get used to his own body. He fumbles around, finds his shirt and slips it over his head, but it gets snagged somehow in the crook of one elbow. I don't know what else to do, so I help to get it unsnagged. And then I gingerly hand him his jeans. Between my hesitant help and his awkward movements, he gets himself dressed.
Another silence elapses while he looks into the distance, squinting as if he can't focus properly. I can't bear the thought of that silence getting any longer. And neither can I bear any more of the tension of not knowing how he feels.
So I break the silence. "After what I did, I'd understand if..." I swallow hard. "If you hate me."
I don't know how many times I've repeated this sentiment. It's almost like I'm trying to talk him into hating me. And if repeating something enough times makes it come true, then I've undoubtedly doomed myself.