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Chapter Nine: Gaz

"Gaz," a faint voice called, but it was too distant to matter.

"Gaz," they said again, a little louder.

I groaned. Why couldn't whoever it was just leave me alone? I was sleeping.

"Gaz!"

The owner of the voice shook me awake, and I looked up to find Dad. What was he doing here? Wasn't he in a meeting?

"I got an alert saying that an unfamiliar person had broken into our home," Dad explained, picking me up from the ground. He sat me down on top of one of the various observational tables in the lab. "Do you know what happened?"

It took me a moment to remember. I couldn't tell Dad that I had broken Dib out of the Crazy House for Boys, and he probably wouldn't find out otherwise because I had my face covered when I got him out. "Dib broke out of the hospital," I lied. "He came here and went down to the lab. I didn't know he was here until some people from the hospital burst in and ran down here."

"Dib broke out?" he yelled, backing away. "Why would he do that? Aren't they helping him there?"

"Maybe he doesn't want to be helped," I suggested.

"Why wouldn't he want to be there?" Dad countered. "They're making him better!"

"Dib didn't say that they were," I said.

If I can't break Dib out, maybe I can convince Dad to take him out of the hospital. Dib didn't belong there, and it was getting too quiet in the house.

"I will go back to the hospital tomorrow and talk to the people in charge about what happened. Maybe they can clear it up," Dad ranted, marching up the stairs.

A few days later, I met up with my online friends at the park after school. "How did everything go?" Sam wondered as I sat down next to her.

"I got him out," I muttered.

"And?" Ron urged.

"I took him back home, and we managed to stay there for a few hours before they found us."

"I'm sorry," Sam sighed. "At least you didn't get caught."

"Yeah, if they caught you," Jeremy agreed, "they would have hauled you off with Dib, right?"

"I suppose, but you never know," I countered. "My dad is going to have a talk with them the hospital directors today and ask them about what happened."

"Well, fingers crossed," Ron uttered, doing just that.

"What do we do until then?" Sam wondered.

"Game?" Jeremy suggested after a beat of silence.

We all pulled out our Game Slave Twos and synced them up, beginning to play.

When I got home that night, Dad was sitting on the couch watching something. I dropped down onto the seat next to him and pulled my Game Slave back out. I was just about to unlock the second hidden level on a game I've been playing for a few days, and no matter the circumstances, I wasn't going to stop now.

"Look at this, Gaz!" Dad shouted as I powered up my gaming system. I looked up at the TV and realized that he was watching what looked to be security footage. "Who is this person that broke Dib out of the hospital? I've gone over this same shot a hundred times, and I still can't figure it out."

After a second or two, an image of me in the ski mask appeared on the screen, dragging Dib after me. Dad paused it on the clearest shot of me that the cameras ever got. "Who is this girl?" he muttered, rubbing his chin.

"I don't know," I whispered looking down at my Game Slave. "Someone from school, probably."

"That's it!" Dad exclaimed, pointing towards the ceiling. "We will interrogate everyone in Dib's class to make sure that if it was one of them, that he or she will be caught and ensure that they never break Dib out again!" Dad rushed off, and then I heard him talking on the phone in another room.

If Dad's interrogating just Dib's class, then I'm in the clear.

Two months later

The investigation into our school finally slowed to a stop and the case of who broke Dib out of the Crazy House for Boys was declared cold. That allowed me to breathe a little easier, but the silence in the house was weighing on me more than ever, especially now that it was summer break. I had infinitely more time to game, but when I took off my headphones at the end of the day, I could practically feel the silence pressing on me. Dad was either in the basement lab, doing some other scientific investigation across town or following up with the investigators who looked into Dib's breakout case.

Dad and I got to visit Dib once since I broke him out. He seemed even worse than that night. He could barely keep his focus on us for more than a minute or so at a time before staring off into the distance for a while. I wanted to know what they were doing to him, but it was too risky because the security was even higher now. There were bars on the windows and even more cameras, and you needed a key card to use the elevator.

Dad told me that at this rate, Dib could be declared cured by the time school started for next year. He was already taken out of the Treatment Level and brought down to the Observation Level, where they were much more relaxed, according to Dad. Dib would have to go in for follow ups, and he would be on some medication, but he would be out and away from there. There would be noise in the house again, and he could resume his plans to prove that Zim is an alien. No matter what they did to him, that place couldn't take out my brother's core nature.

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