Dib wasn't very good at using these legs. Zim had managed to use them with a sort of commanding grace. Dib felt like he was liable to slip and fall flat at any given moment. The fact that the floor seemed to be as flat and as sleek as ice didn't help.

Neither of the two had access to that timer anymore; they had no idea how close they were to dying. Both of them, of course, as Dib had put himself in danger, too. It certainly felt like they were ticking closer to their death as Dib, struggling to hold Zim in any secure fashion, dashed madly down the seemingly endless hallway, debating whether to try and take a corner whenever one appeared. He had repeatedly elected not to, afraid he would trip or slip and would fall.

But as the chase continued, with the guards somehow not gaining ground, and Dib not having outpaced them, it seemed more and more important to try something, anything, to escape. They needed Zim's PAK to be returned, and there was no way to do that in their current conditions.

Then, as if Dib was no longer in control of his own actions, he blanked. Afterward, he practically couldn't remember what had happened. But Zim watched as he skittered around a corner, taking a hard right. Then almost immediately, a hard left. He was slowly escaping the guards chasing them, against all odds. Then, behind a fourth or fifth corner, Dib pulled the mechanical legs in and leaped into a large chute, with its opening in the wall at the side. He fell down the chute, unknown to the both of them, then used the PAK's legs to dig into the thin walls of the chute and come to a stop, hovering above the darkness out of sight of the guards, who could be heard continuing to rush by, down the hallway.

When the guards had all seemed to have left, Dib used the legs to pull himself out of the chute and back into the hallway. If Dib had to guess, there might've been maybe four minutes left for the two of them. Hurriedly, Dib set Zim down against the wall. Dib pulled the legs back in and crouched down, with his back to Zim. "Get this thing off of me," Dib muttered.

Zim took Dib's gun from his hand and used the butt of it to bash off the PAK, which, perhaps surprisingly, worked. The PAK was loudly knocked off and onto the floor, where Zim picked it up and, with some difficulty, reached around and put back where it belonged. Still in pain, still feeling the exhaustion of nearly dying, again, he wasn't exactly in pristine condition again, neither was Dib, but the two had to move regardless.

Everything had gone wrong at the end. The Tallest, far from being dead, they were probably coordinating an even stronger force to attack Dib and Zim, who were on the run now, it seemed. And that was without mentioning GIR and Minimoose, who were by themselves, right outside the bridge, with the Tallest.

They could turn right around and go back into the bridge the way they left, hopefully killing the Tallest for real this time, with no more surprises. They could circle around and get back in the hallway where Minimoose and GIR were, where they'd originally entered. They could go a really roundabout way and travel around the Massive to lose the Tallest and come back untracked. Who knows, they could ev—

"Untracked?" Zim asked.

"Well, if we lost them, we could have an advantage. You know, element of surprise," Dib explained.

"But we can't." Zim was contemplating something, seemingly deep in thought.

"What?"

"We can't get lost, and we can't be untracked." Zim looked up, staring directly into the face of a camera, pointed right at them. He began to stand up. "They're always one step ahead. Because of these cameras."

In the bridge, Red screamed into a communication device. "You passed them! I can't believe your incompetence! Yes, shoot!"

Dib looked where Zim was looking. Zim ushered him up. "Let's get out of here." As he said that, the soldiers that had been chasing them returned from the direction they had passed them, and were heading right for the two. "Go!"

Zim turned quickly and tossed Dib his gun back. He nearly failed to catch it and stumbled for a second before running with Zim, behind him. Shots were already being fired, and with their backs to the source, it seemed disturbingly possible that one of them would strike one of them square in the back.

Running straight down the hallway, as was the case before, wouldn't help the two escape from the guards; quite the opposite, really, as the guards were almost certainly faster and, again, were already shooting at them. Every second they spent running was leading them closer to their death. Again. Well, already, Zim had had enough of his life ticking down, and, as they were approaching a four-way intersection in the hallway, Zim reached into his PAK. It was bizarre that only moments ago, this had been attached to Dib's chest. Zim would have thought about it more, but instead he retrieved one of the two EMPs that remained of their stockpile, and he threw it behind them. It had the intended effect, stopping the soldiers behind it as the two could take a right and disappear out of sight.

That wouldn't last forever, though. So, doing much the same as Dib had done earlier, they wound around several corners. And eventually, Zim took the opportunity, while quite a bit ahead of the soldiers, to run into a room, of which the door was open. Dib, of course, followed.

Zim had the door shut, and the door disabled, giving only him, on the inside, control. Dib, gun up, searched the room quickly, looking for Irkens. But, the room was empty. It was also rather cold as compared to the other rooms. Taking a glance up would explain why.

Practically all of the walls of the rather small, roughly cylindrical-shaped room was taken up by, as Dib perceived them, computer servers. And they went up for quite a while, with the ceiling maybe being ten, fifteen meters up. Other than these servers, the room was completely empty, giving a clear view up the room, which was being cooled, presumably for the computers' sake. Both Dib and Zim were interested in the room they had found themselves in. But the situation didn't allow for gawking at anything, really, so Zim pulled his eyes away and began to think out loud, although Dib continued to examine everything.

"The Tallest always know exactly where we are because of the cameras everywhere, so it'll be difficult to try and go back to the bridge without—"

"Oh, speaking of which," Dib pointed up, "looks like there's a few up there." Indeed, there were five or six cameras spread throughout the height of the room.

Zim wordlessly pulled his gun out and shot each camera out one by one. Halfway through, he began to think out loud again, continuing to aim and shoot. "So unless we disable more cameras, the Tallest will see us and reposition troops to stop us. And then…" Zim paused after shooting out the final camera, all the way near the ceiling of the room.

"Yeah?"

"The Tallest…"

"Yeah?" Dib was more forceful now. "What about them?"

"...What did the Tallest say to each other while they had me in the robot arm?"

"Uh, I don't know; they said a lot of things."

"No, when they pulled each other closer."

"Um… something something 'handsome'? 'Love you'? Maybe?"

Zim quietly hummed. "Exactly."

"Exactly what? What are you talking about?"

"They've never made their… strange feelings very hidden."

"Okay…" Dib had a pretty good idea of what feelings Zim was talking about. Dib agreed; it was rather obvious.

"We can use that to our advantage."

"You nee—"

"It's an even smarter plan! How did neither of us think of it before? Perhaps because we hadn't seen exactly how they were together. But regardless, we have it now, and, well, you must agree that—"

"Zim. What are you talking about?" Dib paused between each word, and he said it more like a statement than a question.

"We don't need to kill the Tallest. Shouldn't kill them, even."

"Woah woah woah, I thought you had gotten past all of this and agreed to kill them." Dib looked into Zim's eyes concerned. "That's the only way we can make sure they don't, like, come back and destroy the Earth for real. Remember?"

"But if we kill the Tallest, then perhaps the next Tallest will harbor the same feelings." Zim quickly put his gun back into his PAK as he excitedly waved his hands as he explained. "And I won't have to kill the Tallest." Zim stared at Dib. "All we have to do is use their feelings for each other as leverage."

"Leverage?"

"We don't kill them; we just threaten them both. Maybe wound them to prove that the both of us are serious. Then, use Red's attachment to Purple to force him to stop what he's trying to do."

"Threaten and beat them up? Then what?"

"Threaten to kill Purple, in front of Red. Maybe nearly fatally wound him."

"Like, gun to his head?"

"Exactly." Everything that had happened aboard the Massive was pretty macabre.

"How would that be better than just killing them?"

"Red considers Purple too important to let him die. He probably considers Purple surviving more important than killing me."

"That doesn't stop them from killing us after we leave."

"But if we nearly kill them, then the Tallest'll know that we could kill them if they try to. Then they won't try to kill us, cause they'll know that we could kill them if they tried."

Dib considered it, deep in thought for a minute. Zim was clearly excited by his new plan, the stroke of genius he had suddenly had, as it allowed him to get out of this alive without killing the Tallest. Sure, it still involved hurting them severely, and everything he'd done was still probably firmly against the empire, but it meant that he wasn't going to double his Tallest kill count. "You really think that could work?"

"Yes."

"And you think that's better than just killing them?"

"Yes." He seemed sincere. If it was simply the years of Irken propaganda speaking on behalf of the Tallest, it did a very good job of hiding that.

"Alright then, Zim. I guess I trust you on it. You know more about all of this than me anyway. But that doesn't solve the whole camera thing."

Zim sighed. "You're right." He rummaged around the inside of his PAK, retrieving the last EMP he had. "This is the only one we have left. These could put out cameras extremely efficiently, but this won't do enough alone." He passively examined it.

"Well, we'd want to put out the cameras before they saw us, right? Otherwise, it'd be pointless."

"Exactly. I don't know how to do that with what we have left."

Dib was aimlessly looking around the room again. "Do you think something in here could help?"

"I don't know."

"Well, what else do you have left with you?"

"This one gun and this one EMP." He was starting to sound despondent.

"What about the map?" One of the servers had some sort of drawer sticking out of it.

"Oh, well, I have that, too."

"Is there, like, some path we could take without cameras?" Another had a monitor displaying a bright white light.

"I… don't know."

"Could you figure that out on your map?" All of the servers at about eye level had monitors that were pitch black and disabled.

"Maybe." He sat down, setting his gun and the EMP beside him as he reached into his PAK again and got the map.

A monitor near the very top seemed to not be flush with the curved wall like all of the others. "How long do you think we have before guards start assembling outside the door?"

"Not long, probably. Which is why we need to figure something out quickly."

"Well, have you found anything?" Hey, one of the terminals had a monitor that was displaying green text. It seemed to be the only one that was like that. It was maybe three meters off of the ground. Dib couldn't tell what it was. "Hey, one of these monitors says something."

"It's a monitor. Usually they do that."

"No, this is the only one I can see."

"What does it say?"

"It's too high up, I can't read it."

Zim finally looked up from his map, looking to Dib. Dib pointed up at the terminal. "What, do you want me to read it?"

"I mean, you have the mechanical legs in—"

Zim immediately went from sitting to being hoisted in the air as the PAK's legs shot out and put Zim almost at eye level with the titular monitor. Dib stared at the legs for a moment. It was really, really weird to think that minutes ago they had been spewing out his own chest, and now they were attached to Zim. Dib shivered. Some part of him was glad that he probably wouldn't be interacting with this much alien tech after all of this.

Zim pulled himself over to it and began to silently the Irken text scrolling along the screen. After a moment his countenance became more contemplative. "Hmm."

"What? What does it say?" Dib loudly spoke, up, towards Zim.

"It says that thirty-six cameras are disconnected."

"Thirty-six?"

"...Hold on." Zim quickly started typing into a small keyboard that pulled out of the server. Dib watched on with anticipation.

It had been a bit now. Not quite a minute, but certainly a while, in complete silence, except for the sounds of typing. "...Well?"

"There are thousands of connections to this terminal. All cameras around the front of the Massive." Zim seemed practically delighted. "This server handles the cameras for this whole area, except for the bridge itself. Everything between here and there."

"Really?"

Zim lowered himself a little bit with the legs. "How did you see the one terminal that handles cameras?"

"I…" Dib felt like he'd just had a deus ex machina type moment.

"Doesn't matter. I'll handle this." Zim grabbed the last EMP again and, after activating it, placed it on the keyboard that pulled out from the server itself. He then lowered himself back onto the ground and the legs retreated back into his PAK as he stepped backward.

And suddenly, the server, as well as a lot of servers near it, went completely black, probably being completely destroyed. Then, as it seemed successful, several around the room began seemingly randomly sputtering out, too. I happened in waves, with these individual terminals shutting off. Zim and Dib watched on with confusion and a vague sense of dread. It eventually slowed down, and then it stopped. After this cascade of shutdowns, more than a third of all of the servers seemed to break.

"What just happened?" The lights in the room suddenly went out, with the only light coming from the servers that were still functioning, although almost all of the remaining ones seemed to display red errors on their monitors.

The EMP shut off a lot of servers, just about all of them Zim had no idea what they did. And many of the servers probably extensively relied on each other, so when a few shut off, it sent a wave through the connected servers that suddenly couldn't function. It could have untold effects on the ship as a whole. Zim tried not to think about that. "I killed a lot of servers."

Red emergency lights flickered on. "Is that good?"

"Probably not." A rumble resonated through the ground and the walls, as if coming from a far off explosion. "No. Not at all. We need to go, now."