Dib had dug the PAK legs deep into the wall behind his father's corpse. It took Zim almost an hour to pull them free, and his gloves were tacky with drying blood by the time he was able to lay Dib on his side, metal legs spread around him in menacing radii. Zim retched at the metallic stink and threw his gloves to the side of the room. He knelt next to Dib.

The PAK hummed sweetly under his hands. Zim press himself against it, arms wrapping around Dib's chest to hug it closer.

Mine it's mine. Not fair. Not fair. Cut it out. Take it back. Mine.

He pretended, for a few minutes, that he could do that. Rip it out of Dib's back and press it to his own. Pretended hat he would ever get to feel the icy shiver of tendrils sliding beneath his skin and interlocking with his nervous system. The quiet in his own mind was too much. He needed it gone, overrun with hissing, stinging rage at the universe, at anyone who would stand between him and his mission. What was an Irken without that constant knot of acid and hate writhing in their chest? Without a purpose?

He pressed himself against the PAK until his chest ached, and he cried. The tears were another reminder of how he had changed, and that brought the tears on thicker and deeper. When he couldn't stand it anymore, he shoved Dib away from him and slammed his palm on the floor. As he focused on the pain, his breath slowed, and the tears dried up. When he was ready, he sat up, wiped his face, and assessed the situation.

He had time. For the first time in days, that was one resource he had in abundance. The police had been called off, and the building was empty.

He had an escape route. The fires that had consumed the majority of the lab had largely died down, and ventilation fans were hard at work extracting the smoke. Beyond lay the path Dib had torn through the building.

Now what? Zim had no idea how one would forcibly remove a PAK. A soldier could remove it for short periods of time to perform minor repairs or receive upgrades, but there was no conceivable explanation for why one would take a PAK by force. Irkens didn't fight other Irkens, and executions done on Irk destroyed the body, leaving a perfectly reusable PAK sitting in a pile of ash and bone fragments.

He clenched his fist. If the Tallest could turn off his PAK from across the galaxy, then he could do it.

Zim rummaged through the few standing cabinets, pulling out anything that might help. There wasn't much. He ended up with wire cutters and a surprisingly sophisticated handheld EMP generator. He also found a coil of high-gauge, rubber-coated wire which he initially passed over before throwing it onto the pile.

First he bundled the PAK legs as tightly as he could with the wire, bending the joints to point the tips back at the PAK, despising the feel of rubber dragging across his palms. If Dib woke up, at least he wouldn't be able to get far. Even comatose, Dib's legs trembled and jerked. The PAK's system was playing havoc on his nervous system.

I need him to be ok. He hated it, hated that he thought it, hated that he knew it was the truth. He could have been gone by now, speeding out of this miserable solar system. Space had never seemed lonely before. It was nothing, how could nothing be lonely? Space was a lack of things one went through to reach new territory. But now the idea of traveling through it alone made him feel empty. What would be the point without this infuriating man beside him, getting embarrassingly excited over the most basic aspects of space travel?

With the legs bound up as best as he could manage, Zim brought the stiletto blade up to where the PAK met Dib's skin and tried to pry open a gap. Just a little, just enough that he could maybe force in the wire-cutters and try to cut away the connections. He winced as blood trickled down Dib's back. He pushed a little harder, feeling the blade barely move forward before snapping. He looked dumbly at the handle in his hand then at the spike, which fell to the floor and rolled out of sight.

He tried the EMP generator next, pressing the front of it to the PAK, wire cutters at the ready. Zim hit the button, heard a crackle, then was thrown backward as the PAK, perceiving a threat, returned the shock with a stronger one. He hit Membrane's desk with a thud and dropped the EMP generator, acrid smoke pouring out of it.

Zim didn't know what else to do. There was so little to work with. He needed Dib to be here, to make a suggestion so laughable it would inspire something ingenious.

They know how.

Even if he wanted to call the Tallest, he couldn't. Most of his lab was torn apart, and what was left was still in lock-down. There was no way to reach- except he had Tak's ship. He didn't want to do it, but after stroking Dib's cheek and watching the shallow rise and fall of his chest, he had no choice. Irkens were not known to relinquish what they had conquered.

He debated taking Dib with him. He could find a car, throw Dib in the back, and work from the storage unit. In the end, he left Dib there and returned to the storage unit on foot. It would take longer, but he was less likely to run into any obstacles if he avoided driving a stolen car.

In his haste to fire up the ship and fly it back to the lab, he may have caused the storage facility to collapse, and he may have flown over a crowded playground, and he may have knocked down a cell tower, but, really, who cared?

He landed the ship on the roof of the lab and activated its tech integration sequence. As he slipped on a new pair of gloves, taken from Tak's delightfully well-stocked vessel, thick cables sprouted from the ship and sunk into the roof, digging until they found power supplies, routers, and servers. Once the ship was happily sucking up electricity, he patched the communications system to run through the lab's computers.

Finally, he dragged Dib over to the console, laying him at the feet of the late Professor Membrane's ostentatious chair. When he called them, he needed to be within reaching distance of Dib.

Whatever the Tallest did, Zim would have to do his best and hope it left him in a better situation. He sat in the chair and took a deep breath.

Notes: did some real hand-wavy "tech" stuff in this chapter. sorry it took so long. not in love with how this chapter is written but needed to get it out. I meant for this chapter to go longer, but my plan is to write chapter 23 this week. really really do not want to keep this six-month-gap-between-updates routine going. not fair to you guys and not great for my writing. In the meantime, I recommend reading andystarr's "Time & Space": /works/15493605/chapters/35967405 Also, huuuuuge thanks to the amazingly talented bakaramiart on tumblr, who illustrated a scene from Ersatz! post/188462080512/turn-me-into-someone-like-you-find-a-place-that