overqualified
by
shannello
a/n: i've been in this fandom for over a decade and all of my attempts to write a decent zagr have failed embarrassingly, or died prematurely before their time and were deleted. gonna give it another shot.
themes: darkfic, future, dystopian (starts dark, stays dark, but gets a little lighter as the story progresses)
She opens her eyes to complete darkness.
There is a flurry of activity as the others begin to stir; bodies fidgeting under sheets and blankets, the joints in elbows and knees popping as her housemates rise from the floor. They prepare for their collective morning shift in silence. There is a single cough, coming from the southern corner of the room, but other than that none of them speak.
Gaz shares this flat with twenty people. Men, women, children, the old, the dumb—she doesn't know most of their names or what most of them look like. They are a cough in darkness, the shuffling of feet across dusty floors.
She peels herself from the mat beneath her, idly noticing her sticky skin. The boarding house lacks ventilation and becomes unbearable during the summer—and it's humid, Gaz muses, running a hand through her matted, greasy hair. What I wouldn't give for a shower...
The thought makes her ache for simpler times before the Invasion. Bathing is a now monthly occasion, monitored by Irken soldiers in hazmat suits. Water is a regulated material, a Class A substance, sharing its designation with red meat, poultry, pork, and beans.
Little water and no protein has weakened the remaining human population. They subsist on carbs, Irken energy bars and candy, and drink only soda. Water is carefully distributed, and only at certain times, and the guards are always heavily armed. Everyone feels sick, but they are worked to the bone regardless, their Irken supervisors only granting the occasional leave of absence to pregnant women and new mothers.
Gaz would never bring a child into a world like this.
—
"Word is Elite Officer Pegg is taking a human companion."
Gaz gives the neighboring worker an incredulous look. "Where'd you hear that?"
The woman pauses her work. She's an Electronic Disassembly worker like Gaz, but she's at least a decade older. Tireless slave labor has made her look twice as old.
"Heard it from the human in question," says the woman, speaking low. An Irken factory guard makes rounds from one end of the conveyor belt to the other. "Erika, works in Factory 4. Said the Elite Officer asked to speak with her personally after day shift last week."
Gaz doesn't recognize the name. "Good for her, I guess."
"You're damn right," the woman barks, forming a deep furrow between her brows. "That girl is going to live in a different world. She won't touch another busted laptop for the rest of her life."
—
The Invasion began and ended in the same year, within a single month.
Human armies led a harrowing campaign, but ultimately the military failed. They had guts, but their skill was incomparable to the Irken Elite, their technology defenseless against the incredible threat of the Armada. Huge populations were wiped out completely. Half of the world was decimated.
Gaz was just a kid when it started, but she remembers it vividly: the panic, her father's hand tight around her wrist, her brother's voice ("I told you! None of you believed me!"), police sirens and EMS vehicles, an emergency alert broadcasting on every channel, a massive fleet hovering just above the stratosphere.
"He did it," Dib croaked, his eyes darting between the television and the sky outside their window. "Zim really did it."
"You can't be serious," said Gaz. Zim couldn't have pulled this off, there's no way—
Dib's voice, now quiet, interrupted her thought. "What are we going to do?"
—
The walk home from the factory is a dizzying one. She's heard of them—human companions—but it's a relatively new idea. High-ranking Irken officers and commanders stationed on Earth taking humans as potential mates, and humans willingly—
She feels traitorous even thinking about it.
It's been nearly a decade since the Invasion. Ten years since she's stepped foot in her childhood home or attended school or seen her family, but it still feels very recent. The spotlights in the sky, the sound of gunfire, the smell of disintegrated bodies. She remembers it all distinctly.
She wonders if Erika has lost any family. She wonders if she can sleep at night.
—
The Empire began colonizing almost immediately. They combed through the population, meticulously separating humans into groups and sub-groups. It was a long, slow process.
Gaz spent weeks moving from camp to camp. Improvised internment camps were set up inside half-destroyed airports and crumbling shopping malls. Their numbers shrunk as the days passed—Irken scientists were flown in once a week to give examinations and prep humans for relocation, escorted by Elite guardsmen armed with laser pistols.
They came for her father soon after the Invasion had ended. An unfamiliar Irken soldier fastened hand-restraints tight around her father's wrists, and gave a quick yank on the chain.
She couldn't read her father's expression, but she could hear the uncertainty in his voice. "It'll be okay, honey."
She was separated from the group and interrogated for the good part of a month on the whereabouts of her brother, and after a lengthy investigation she was released back into the population. She had nothing to give them. Dib was gone.
Human factories were in the process of being re-purposed into Electronic Disassembly plants, and boarding houses and feeding centers were built in the surrounding areas. This would become the main labor camps for most of the population; humans that could be utilized in military research and technology were taken elsewhere, somewhere unknown and mysterious and constantly on Gaz's mind.
Finally, an Irken scientist took one look at her—a small, ten-year-old child—handed her a grey and black worker's uniform, and shipped her off to the nearest Electronic Disassembly camp.
—
By the time she makes it back to the boarding house, the sun has already set. Other workers make the same journey, exhausted like she is, eager for their cotton bedrolls.
Gaz uses one hand to brace the wall and walks blindly through the two-story building. When she reaches the sleeping quarters, she finds her place easily in the dark. She collapses into her bed, stretches and sighs, and rolls onto her side.
People pile in, one after another, finding their mats, and Gaz's thoughts shift suddenly. In an almost drunken haze, she thinks about what that woman said, thinks about human girls and boys with Irken claws around their waists and thighs, thinks about Erika and the Elite Officer, thinks about living quarters with air-conditioning and electricity.
She falls in-and-out of sleep, expecting her night to be devoid of dreams. When she's this tired, sleep is nothing but a long, seemingly endless stretch of darkness.