Zam the Hybrid

25. Epilogue

Zam was in a state of deep contemplation. From the outside, it probably looked like some sort of odd meditation ritual but on the inside, Zam's head was anything but calm. Brilliant thought after genius idea zoomed around, clashing into each other, bouncing off the restricted walls of his skull, all fighting for his attention. It was a liberating experience to really just sit down and think. It helped Zam to focus his ideas and that enabled him to hold on to the best of the bunch.

His eyes shot open as today's masterstroke hit him. He leapt off the highly uncomfortable bed and grabbed the pen that lay hidden amongst the bed sheets. Uncapping it with his teeth, the pen became like a lethal weapon under his command. He scribbled mercilessly on the walls, running calculations far too complicated for anyone but himself to even bother comprehending. After a while, the entire wall was covered in ink.

He looked at the final sketch and double checked the maths that had led to it. "Would it work?" Zam muttered to himself. "Could carbon fibre be woven in such a way so that it could replace muscle fibre? And how could that be integrated with the circuits?"

Before he could come to a conclusion, there was a harsh knock on the door. "Stand back prisoner! We're coming in!" Zam quickly dived back onto his bed and hid the pen. Technically, he was only supposed to write on the walls when he was being supervised. How they thought he was going to escape using only a pen he had no idea but he really did not want to give the guards an excuse to treat him even worse than usual.

The door opened, but instead of the usual big-headed prick that checked up on him, a familiar face stepped through the door. "Zam."

"Detective," Zam grinned, pushing himself back off the bed with great difficulty to see his old friend. "It's been a while."

"Too long," Emily smiled. He could tell that she wanted to say more but the guard was watching the pair closely and Zam had a feeling that if she was too friendly with him, they really would never see each other again. Her smile quickly faded when her eyes found the stump that used to be his right arm.

"It's not that bad," he shrugged, noticing how she couldn't take her eyes off his amputation. "I'd already lost a few fingers on that hand. The rest of the arm was a little bit useless at that point."

"So, they didn't get you to a hospital in time?" she asked.

"Nobody could've saved it no matter how quickly I got there," Zam shrugged. "Every bone was smashed to smithereens. It was unsalvageable. They fixed up my ribs as best they could but more than half of them were cracked so..." he gestured to his right ribcage, showing how the bones did not align properly. Realising how queasy she looked all of a sudden, Zam thought it best to put his prison shirt on, to cover up his disfigurement.

"I'm sorry," she finally managed to say.

"Not to worry Emily," Zam said, "I don't plan on remaining a one-armed man forever. The one upside to living in this shithole is you have a lot of time to think. I'll have the solution soon, just you wait and see."

"I hope so," Emily frowned. "Anyways, there's someone here to see you and I need to talk to you as well, so if you'd like to step this way and Gareth will escort you."

Gareth stepped towards him, wearing an idiotic grin and holding out a pair of handcuffs. "So, which hand do you want?"

"You know, that joke has already gotten old," Zam sighed as he stuck out his left hand which was quickly attached to Gareth's right. As he was led through the prison, Zam wondered what the point of this precaution was. Did they really think that the one-armed cripple could successfully overpower two strong, trained members of the police force and then subsequently escape? It was a thought that had crossed his mind when he first entered but he'd realised immediately that that was not his escape route. Unfortunately, he was yet to think of an alternative.