CHAPTER 61: CHAPTER 60: SHARED MIND, SHARED BODY.

There was no falling.

One moment Zza was kneeling in the clearing, her claws sunk into the dirt. The next, the world folded inside out.

Light rippled under her shell, warm and cold and heavy all at once. The forest blurred, the sky disappeared, and her breath felt like it was coming from somewhere outside her own lungs.

Then the light settled.

She was standing.

Not on soil.

Not on roots.

On something that moved and breathed, like a floor made of memory.

The world around her looked like a forest drawn from a dream. Leaves floated without wind. Branches curved where there were no trees. Paths led everywhere and nowhere. The sky glowed faintly gold, the color of ichor and early morning light.

Zza looked down. Her claws were still her claws. Her shell was still her shell. But she felt something else layered over her thoughts—another rhythm, another presence.

Buzz.

She turned.

He was there.

Not flickering.

Not fading.

Standing.

His body had shape again. His wings were whole. His eyes were his eyes. He looked tired, yes, but *him.* Not a projection. Not a shadow.

Him.

Zza’s chest tightened. She took one step and then another and then she was in his arms, her forehead pressed to his shoulder, her breath shuddering. He held her the same way he had the night the Queen fell—quiet, steady, like the world could collapse and he would still brace himself around her.

His voice came close to her ear.

"I thought I lost you."

"I wasn’t letting you go alone."

He let out a breath that shook.

The world around them pulsed, like the entire place was connected to their heartbeat.

He pulled back just enough to look at her face. "You shouldn’t be here. The network is still choosing what it wants me to be. If you anchor to me now, it might choose you too."

Zza cupped his jaw with her claws. Her voice stayed quiet, but there was steel in it.

"Then we’ll choose ourselves."

Buzz laughed once, breathless, close to breaking. "You make it sound easy."

"It’s easier than being apart."

He didn’t argue.

The ground trembled.

Buzz flinched, not from pain, but recognition. "She’s here."

Zza’s pulse jumped. "Who?"

"The Queen. Or what’s left of her. She’s not alive. She’s not dead either. She’s memory embedded in the network. A reflex that keeps trying to reform. I’ve been pushing her back. Every day. Every hour."

Zza’s claws curled. "You never said."

"You had enough to carry," he said simply.

The tremor came again. This time the leaves overhead fell all at once, spiraling in slow, eerie motion that didn’t match gravity. The sky darkened in patches. The forest shapes twisted, as if someone was rewriting them while staring through broken glass.

Buzz moved in front of Zza—not to shield her, but because the instinct had become automatic.

A shape formed ahead of them.

A silhouette shaped like the Queen.

Tall.

Winged.

Crowned.

But hollow, like a shell left behind when something molted out of it.

Gold seeped from cracks in its form.

Not ichor.

Memory.

Zza felt the temperature drop. Buzz’s muscles locked tense, preparing to fight.

Zza touched his arm. "Wait."

He shook his head. "Zza, she is not someone we can talk to. She is instinct wrapped in hunger. All she knows how to do is claim."

Zza stepped forward anyway.

The Queen’s shape didn’t move. It didn’t breathe. It stared without eyes.

Zza spoke softly, the way she spoke to Buzz when his shell shook after nightmares.

"You’re not here to rule. You’re here because something hurt you."

The Queen’s empty face turned toward her.

The world shivered.

Zza continued. "You lost your hive. You lost your purpose. You lost every voice that ever answered yours. I understand that. We all do. But you don’t have to take everything to keep from feeling alone."

For a moment—just one—

the Queen’s shape flickered.

Not into something kind.

Into something broken.

A blur of a larva clinging to older sisters.

A young queen pushing through tunnels alone.

A leader who didn’t know how to be anything but necessary.

Zza’s breath caught.

There was grief here.

Deep.

Old.

Raw.

Buzz’s voice was gentle. "She was made to be followed. When the hive broke, so did she."

The Queen’s expression did not change, but the air pulsed with something like pain.

Zza’s voice softened even more. "You don’t have to stay like this. Let the forest be new. Let it grow without you needing to hold it together."

The Queen stepped forward.

Not attacking.

Reaching.

Buzz tensed, ready to shield Zza with his whole body.

But the Queen didn’t touch her.

She touched Buzz.

Zza’s heart lurched.

Buzz went still. The Queen leaned her forehead against his, just barely, the same way Zza had done moments earlier. Light rippled out through the network in soft waves.

It wasn’t possession.

It wasn’t a claim.

It was mourning.

Zza watched Buzz’s jaw tremble.

"She never got to stop," he whispered. "Not once."

The Queen pulled away.

Her shape unravelled like threads of silk coming loose.

The forest brightened.

The tremors stopped.

The Queen was gone.

Not destroyed.

Not erased.

Released.

Silence followed.

A heavy, gentle silence.

Zza took Buzz’s hand. "We can leave now."

Buzz didn’t move.

Zza’s stomach tightened. "Buzz?"

He looked at her, eyes clearer than they had been since the fusion.

"I can leave," he said. "But if I do, the network collapses. The drones, the centipedes, the new forest growth—they lose the rhythm holding them alive. They go back to dying one by one."

Zza’s breath scraped her chest.

"So you stay. And I stay with you."

Buzz shook his head. "If you stay, the network will change you. You’ll lose yourself piece by piece. Slowly. Quietly. You won’t even notice it happening."

Zza didn’t break. She didn’t argue from emotion.

She asked the only question that mattered:

"How long do you have before the network stabilizes on its own?"

Buzz’s silence was the answer.

He didn’t know.

Days.

Months.

Years.

Zza stepped closer. She rested her forehead to his again.

The same vow as always.

"We figure it out. We stay ourselves. We stay us. One day longer than the network expects."

Buzz closed his eyes.

Zza breathed.

The forest pulsed—steady, warm, alive.

They weren’t free.

They weren’t safe.

But they were together.

And the network would learn to hold them, not consume them.

Or they would break it trying.

Either was a future.

Either was theirs.