Debacle (R)
Summary:
All his life Dib has wanted to capture Zim and gain the victory and fame he always wanted. When his wish comes true however, not everything falls so comfortably into place.
Disclaimer:
I do not own the IZ characters. However this story and this idea is mine.
Warnings:
Dark themes, psychological issues and angst throughout.
Dib07: I want to give a shout out to Ika-011 for absolutely amazing feedback and being a really good friend, and a shout out to daithii for amazing reviews also! It's been way too long since I last updated, and well, I confess I kinda forgot about doing anymore, sorry! So if anyone (YOU, the reader) would like an update, please ask away! Your feedback supports me and my work! If you like what you see, please don't hesitate to drop a message!
Ika-011, I have tried my best at putting into words what you suggested, it just goes so well with Dib's character!
Perchance to Dream
I could have died! Zim would have had it all! Why can't he see that?
He pressed a chilled hand against his sore and aching side, the anger some black and bitter pill he didn't want to swallow.
Why did he turn away from me? Why hadn't he said anything?
He's punishing me! I hate him! I hate him so fucking much! He never wanted me to succeed, in anything!
For the first time in as long as he could remember there was no direction to follow. No course to set out. No destination in mind. His beliefs had carried him through every battle, every purpose, the perseverance soaked by the poisons of his own philosophy. A child could dream without consequence. A child spared logic and nurtured fantasies.
And his father's reaction had been the final bullet.
He makes me feel like I'm the monster….
Poking out from his duffel bag was the half empty bottle of whiskey Carlson had given him. He choked some down, revolted at the bitterness as it burned its way to his stomach, but after a few more swallows he was just groggy enough to not care.
He made his way down to the lower levels and kept away from everyone else, aware that he was already choosing the path of the coward.
Room 12 always used to be locked - now it hung open, the clutter gone in favour of furnished storage units and modernized tools, but he still remembered how it used to look when this section was the universal dumping ground for disused and outdated equipment.
When there wasn't much else for a kid to do while he waited for his father to finish work, he would go on 'exploration missions,' convinced that Geneva had been built to contain a dangerous monster that lived deep down in the basement. He would come here, marvelling at apparatuses that looked like they belonged in some medieval laboratory where Frankenstein experiments were conducted in secret.
Old grimy surgical tables were stacked in rows. When there was a lack of anything better to do, he used to follow the rivets of the table with his finger, following the curves and channels to the hole in the middle. His father soon found out what he was doing during these explorations, and had the door locked thereafter.
Gaz would remain in the warmer, cosier lobby playing her handheld games. She would barely move from that hunched position until they were home.
When their father would finally take them home (the day dropping away to a cold and bleak night), Membrane then asked how their day was, but only out of necessity, not out of interest. Dib had fished around in his pocket one evening, feeling the sharp edges of the red detention card Ms Bitters had given him.
"I… I saw the Swamp Fish Man today, dad! Pretending to be a kid in skool! He was in the locker room, grabbing these books… and he was covered in fish scales! I had to do something! He was gonna eat the other kids, or drag them off to its lair underneath the skool…"
His father's aggravated sighs made him feel instantly devalued, deflated, before he had even spoken. "There are no such things, son."
"You don't understand! Here! I have pictures! Ms. Bitters doesn't understand the dangers! She made me take detention! Look!" He would try to wave the photos at him, with Membrane only briefly taking a tired glimpse before focusing back on the road.
"That poor child has a condition called Ichthyosis vulgaris, son. It's a medical illness."
"Look at the scales! The fins! The face! Does that look like a normal person to you?"
Another sigh. "You must stop this, son."
"Stop what? The children are all in danger!"
His voice suddenly grew sharp. "You will go in tomorrow and apologize to that poor child!"
"You don't believe me! You never believe me!"
There are too many old memories here…
This place stirred up mixed regrets and more pain than he knew what to do with. There was shame in place of the pride he thought he'd feel, hurt in place of the success he thought he'd find.
He was walking up the ragged flagstone steps, finding himself once again in the main corridor. Scientists and janitors clattered by. He rested the back of his head against a cold, angular wall, not caring when the staff gave him perplexing looks as they walked by.
There was a tip-tap of feet. He didn't look up even when a shadow coasted over his mud stained boots.
"Hey. Are you Membrane's son? Dib, is it?"
"Yeah." His reply was slightly slurred.
"I wanna thank you! Could I have your autograph?" He paused, blinking, finally looking up to see a woman looking admirably back at him. He suddenly couldn't stand the noxious stink of her perfume, or the flattering way she was looking at him for attention. "You're the one who stopped the alien, right? I'm Melinda… I've worked alongside your father… and I heard…"
He swung round, hunching his shoulders. He didn't need this right now. "Go away."
"But…"
"I said go away!" He swung at her, intending just to scare her, to rid himself of people, only to strike her across the shoulder. Before he could see the fear on her face, he turned away, hand stinging, and stormed down the corridor, jacket tails flying out behind him as sudden shame poured into his cheeks.
Damn them all! He was suddenly breathing through a narrowing airway, fists continually clenching and unclenching. No one understands me but Carlson!
Earth had been his to protect, and now all he felt was ridicule. And now Membrane had become a stone sculpture that harboured no comfort or warmth.
His father had once extended his hand and invitation for him to become a scientist: to study and to learn what made the world, and see beyond it. What might he have become, if he had accepted the offer? Would his father have loved him… more?
Carlson cares about me. Carlson knows what I've sacrificed.
As he stared at the rushing floor as he marched, mind fuzzy with lethargy and alcohol, the awful music would suddenly float in, uninvited and unwelcomed. Though he had never actively listened to the whole damn symphony (his father used to play such classics late into the night), it still effortlessly played on in his head regardless. During the course of his spying, he had unwittingly discovered that Zim listened to human music, his speakers loudly playing Chopin, Beethoven or Brahms for hours, when a monster should have no sense of a sonata that underlined deeper tones and beauty, and no sense of the mathematical undertones of a cleverly crafted, sensual experience.
But the damn symphonies would play in his head long afterwards, sometimes creeping into his thoughts in the middle of the night just as he was trying to drift off to sleep.
He decided to look for Carlson, wanting to catch up on current affairs, when really he needed his encouragement.
The sergeant would offer him support when no one else would. He would ask him if was okay when no one else would. His smile always seemed genuine enough, even if it revealed undertones of something indifferent and threatening. And though Dib desperately craved affection, he mistrusted the man's kindness in the same way he mistrusted anyone he came across. But if there was a way of finding out what the hell was going on without being directly involved, it was through him.
Treading across the hard tiled flooring, his thin silhouette passing through the cheerless light thrown by barred windows overlooking scabby hills and scraggly trees, Dib came across one of many offices, this one catching his attention. Stencilled in cold metal letters on the door were the words: 'Williams H. Aldous, Cardiologist and medical practitioner.'
He tested the control panel with his father's ID, and the door swung inwards.
The room inside was clinically pristine, the walls a fabulous white, with several long and rectangular tables accompanied by cheap chairs that looked as uncomfortable as they were to sit on. Beakers, shiny and clear in the yellowed light streaming in through the barred windows stood like glass chess pieces. Models of animals and animal skulls sat on shelves over polished countertops and drawers, with the main exhibits being the anatomical models of the heart and its branching arteries, some of which were split open to reveal the ventricles, atriums and the myocardium wall.
The room smelt thickly of bleach and latex, the layout and atmosphere bringing him back to his school days when he had had to dissect a frog. His classmates had made faces, and some of the girls had refused to go ahead with the lesson. Zim had gone blue in the face before running out the room, screaming. Dib remembered the stink of the frog's soft, oily guts when he had parted its round and pudgy belly open with the surgical blade, of how easy it was, and how wet and gruesome the innards as they pooled out.
There was a schematic sheet on the floor as if it had been accidently left there. He bent and picked it up, recognizing Zim's outline when viewed from the front. His profile was covered in a circulatory map of every branching vein and artery, making him think of circuitry and wires. But anything of the PAK was absent.
It looks like an MRI scan they took earlier…
Dib stood in the middle of the room, holding the schematic, eyes searching. There were monitors and laptop screens cluttered here and there on a desk. He numbly drew over to one, grey fingers poised over the keyboard. He finally sunk lifelessly into a chair opposite the computer, feeling overshadowed by the grisly anatomical models and charts.
With slow, uneasy deliberation, he brought up the LIVE feed camera of A01.
Trying to breathe past the weight in his chest, he told himself that this was the last thing he needed to do.
The camera revealed a prison of glass, with a pair of desolate red eyes staring out from sunken sockets as Zim peered at his confines. He was gently rocking himself to and fro, a thin, wiry arm clutching a thin blanket to his chest. He had pressed himself into the far corner, staring futilely at the glass walls surrounding him. His gown was smeared in stains, the large cast looking much too heavy on so spindly an arm, with an IV line trailing from his other hand to a distended bag hanging from a pole. There were no other furnishings, just a latrine, some blankets and a few books.
He tried not to imagine what kind of existence that must be like.
Additional contours of bone that Dib had never seen bumped and rose along the Irken's skull. It was harder to see the formidable warrior he once was, and harder to be so afraid of him.
The Irken was miserably rocking to and fro, antennae dangling lines of ragged felt in front of his eyes. Dib could see how much the situation was hurting him.
He had held onto the expectation that Zim would remain monstrous to the end. But there was no final catharsis, no rage to build from, only empty and bitter triumph when he saw nothing but a frail and hopeless creature that he had put there.
Zim then stiffly crept over to the latrine, and was bending over it while awkwardly holding the skirts of his trailing gown. The whole manoeuvre looked painful.
Embarrassed on his behalf, Dib closed the image and had the computer revert to a background screen of a tropical rainfall.
How much more are they going to put him through?
There were more notes, all written in Williams' scrawny handwriting. It seemed, even now, he preferred to write long hand despite being surrounded by computers and software.
"When the PAK defibrillated A01, he wasn't conscious. He wasn't even breathing. How then could he have controlled it? The PAK seemed to be able to determine the situation by itself, as if it can think, react… The OEM has correlations with the heart's electrical function. In nature things are rarely ever random. At first I believed this kind of advancement was to overcome physical limitations. Let's say for instance that every Irken has one of these PAKs. It's too early to make such leaps, but I have a theory that A01 belongs to a controlled society where the PAK monitors and controls an individual to some extent. A01 is reliant on it. So what then does that say about the society he comes from?
"We are in the assumption that the PAK has an 'evolutionary advantage' but A01 relies on it more than its provisional defences, not the other way round. It would make him the perfect drone. The hole in its spine is manufactured and not natural, which requires precise medical expertise or they'll be permanent damage, including paralysis, damage of the brain and spinal rupture. This suggests that it is common practise. We put microchips in soldiers to record their status, whereabouts, so what is the PAK really for?"
Beside these rushed scrawls were hand drawn and detailed sketches of Zim's PAK, each port labelled with a question mark, with the drawing accompanied by the words: How do those metal legs manage to fit inside? What material is the PAK made of?
He pushed the notes to one side, suddenly unable to stomach them. He put his head in his hands.
Get too close to the sun, Zim, and you'll burn.
The door suddenly clicked open.
Carlson? He wondered hopefully, only to feel cold disappointment when Williams poked his head into the room with Torrent close at his heels. Torrent gave Dib an annoyed look before it devolved into something condescending as if he found the younger man's presence rather irritable.
"Dib?" The doctor asked, looking a little surprised to find Membrane's son in his private office.
"Hey." He stood up, black wings of his jacket flying out behind him. "Sorry. I was… I was looking for my dad…" It was the only excuse he could grasp in the moment.
Williams smile was warm, and slightly puzzled. "I'm not sure where he is. I think he was on his way down to the laboratory Section D. "What do you think about A01's new accommodations? Your father was very specific about its design."
"Y-Yeah?" But all he could think about was the way his father had turned away from him.
"Excuse us, we're a little excited. We finally got to see inside A01 with an endoscope! We managed to retrieve samples!" Williams peered at him with a smile persistently tepid to the point of regret, but then he looked dismayed when the young man didn't seem to be as keen with their research.
Maybe he could smell the alcohol on his breath, and recognize the frazzled expression in his eyes.
"We're making headway." Williams continued, "But it's the glow inside A01 that's most fascinating! It's either a glowing bacterium or its cellular… And the arterial samples are revealing hemocyanin proteins containing copper. Perhaps this explains why its blood is green…?"
"The 'samples' you've harvested…" Torrent muttered. "Are they glowing too?"
"Yes, but the glow stopped while I was watching the cells through my microscope... I kept the samples in a vacuum to stop the oxygen from getting to them but…"
"The fluorescence could be a disease..."
"Or it may be a natural and normal part of the creature. The cuttlefish can change its colour depending on its surroundings and create complex patterns through some mechanism which is still not fully understood!"
Dib suddenly piped up. "You used an endoscope?"
They peered dubiously at him. Williams tried to mask his confusion when the boy was clearly two pages behind. "Yes."
Dib noted the challenge in his voice, and wondered why. "Has… has my father… I mean… has he been like himself lately?"
"As far as I am aware. But he does tend to… keep things to himself whenever something's bothering him. Why?"
"Nothing… I guess."
"I've been reading your files, Dib." Williams continued. "You've mentioned the creature's PAK only briefly."
"Yes." He said noncommittally, stomach churning when he swallowed.
"You mentioned that he couldn't live long without this PAK, but your notes are rather…"
"I don't remember much… He… he tried to chase me through the school after I snatched it off him..." The PAK had been heavy in his hands, and strangely warm… like it had just come out of an oven.
"Did you notice anything else at all?"
He began to grow more uncomfortable. "I don't remember a whole lot. Ask my dad. He tried to pull it off me." Hatred seethed, sudden and sharp into Dib's chest when he could only think of the way Membrane had looked at him.
"Pull what off you?"
"The… the PAK…" He thickly swallowed, feeling ants crawl up his spine. "I don't remember much more after that."
"It attached itself to you? But in your notes it read…"
"Look, can you just…"
A slow and steady siren broke the evening calm into an explosive scream. Torrent looked to the door, confused. Dib clutched at his side, feeling his mind tumble and slide around like oil in a barrel. I have to be pissed when something happens...
Williams opened the door to see a few of his colleagues hurrying down the corridor. "What's going on?" He asked in a strained voice.
Alarm bells were ringing... so many bells...
"Everybody out!" A man in military fatigues appeared, hurrying the few scientists down the corridor with fewer gestures and more shoves.
"Why?" Williams asked.
"There's a fire in the building! Can't you hear the alarm! Everyone to the evacuation point! Now!"
"A fire?!" He looked owlishly at the cadet before looking around at Torrent and the professor's son.
"Go to the checkpoint!" And the cadet dashed after the fleeing scientists.
"It's probably another fucking drill." Moaned Torrent, but Williams was already grabbing a little suitcase filled with A01's recent samples, documents and recordings.
"Torrent! Grab the laptop! We must take everything involving our research!"
With red lights wildly pulsing along the polished walls and ceiling, Dib hauled his duffel bag over his shoulder and hurried along behind them, staggering at times as the sirens pounded through his head.
Instead of using the elevator, Williams madly suggested that they take the stairs, much to Torrent's bitter objections. They then made their way through the main reception hall and out into the cold refreshing air and rain. A huddle of scientists and janitors had already gathered outside, looking worriedly back at the building, with some animatedly pointing and talking.
Dib turned to look back round.
He could see a greyish plume of smoke against the dark rain and sky as it poured through a barred window from the left wing. It suddenly occurred to him that the professor did not seem to be among those who had exited the building.
"Hey! Has anyone seen my dad?"
In the dimness and rain, the scientists became ghoulish forms in white coats with unfamiliar faces. Fewer people were coming out. Not one of them matched Membrane's glaringly tall profile.
The heady miasma of whiskey evaporated from his senses as he ran headlong towards the entrance, almost bull-charging the cadet as he passed. "Hey! Hey you!" The soldier shouted after him, "Don't go in there!"
Williams threw the suitcase into Torrent's chest. "Wait here!"
"What? You're not going back in there are you?" But Williams was already hurrying after Dib. Torrent stared, having never seen his old friend move so fast. Cursing, throwing the suitcase into another scientist's chest, he ran after the doctor.
When Williams caught up with Dib, the young man was heading determinately towards the metal stairwell. "Dib!" Williams yelled after him, his voice weedy and thin beneath the constant blare of the alarms, "What are you doing! We need to leave!"
Dib yelled back: "Help me! The animals!"
The corridors pulsed red, with ringing sirens pounding out their ears and minds. They made their way down, with Torrent desperately heaving for breath. "Where's the fire?" He gasped and choked. "Some idiot must have burnt fucking mackerel in the microwave again!"
-x-
Zim woozily looked around at the glass walls, trying to gauge what was happening. Uncomfortable vibrations from the alarms painfully thudded through his antennae and body, and the temptation to press himself even further into a corner became even greater. He pulled the blankets tightly around him to ease his inner shaking as the scream of the alarm inexhaustibly propelled him into a panic.
He unhooked a wobbly leg from under him and tried to put weight on it only for his quivering muscles to seize and contract. His head was a rolling ball, with pain sloshing around behind his eyes.
'Emergency. Emergency. Please evacuate immediately.' A detached female voice announced, booming senselessly through the intercom on repeat.
Uselessly, dispiritedly, he ran his free hand across the smooth and cold wall, his croaky groans unable to vocalize his panic. The catheter painfully tugged, the additional weight of the cast a cumbersome and limiting irritation.
He registered a whoosh of the main door opening to the room. Eyes blinking against alternating red and white lights, he watched the huge glass panel of his door effortlessly part open as if invisible fingers were sliding it along. Fresh air wafted in, as surely as sunlight.
Zim stared, hardly able to believe what he was seeing.
The door was open! He could walk out…
Gown sticking to his legs, Zim stood with his shoulder pressed to the glass, painfully shaking all over.
Fear held him there. It's another test! They're just waiting to jump me! As the sirens rattled him to his bones, he looked despairingly at the open door and the corridor beyond, fearing it, wanting it.
Bumping his cast against the glass, he awkwardly stepped forward, the IV pole squeaking along in his shadow. The freedom was so tantalizing, but the promises of what might be waiting in the corridor had him stagger to a standstill: the disconcertion tearing him apart.
Go! Run!
He took another step, the alarms confounding his senses, confusion squeezing him ever tighter.
I… I can't…!
A small bouncing thing on itsy bitsy legs came darting into the corridor. As it bobbed and weaved its way towards him, the recognition was so painful he could hardly believe it. "Zephyr...?" His vision was fragmented, blotchy, but as the silver creature drew closer, he realized the little thing was the wrong colour, and he hopelessly groaned.
The metallic creature hopped and bounced, pausing for the barest of moments as thin plates of metal slid back to reveal the soft head of a golden weasel.
Zim stupidly blinked, surprise momentarily washing out the horror. It can't be… how are you here?
Zephyr jittered and hopped, trying to entice him forwards. "This way, this way! Hurry! No time to gawp!"
He could scarcely think above the panic, and couldn't decide if this was real or if he was hallucinating.
Not knowing if he should trust in this nightmare, he shimmied on shaky legs, hugging the cast to his chest, with the IV pole squeaking musically after him. The freedom was making his head spin, but the terror of what might be lurking in wait made him freeze stupidly to the spot.
He could feel Geneva squeezing down on him.
Just go! Go now! Please!
The weasel impatiently danced on the spot. "What are you waiting for? They'll be coming!"
Pushing through the paralysis, he stumbled forwards, the sirens deadening his listless and drooping antennae to everything else. Chilled, bare feet touched the hard floor outside his glass box, the feel of different textures settling deeper chills inside his heart.
The weasel would not wait. He dived out the room, turning left.
"No, no!"
Heart pounding, he staggered after him. The promise of what they would do should they recapture him gave him strength, and he emerged into an empty, ominous corridor. The cold floor burned his feet, and though the ventilation chilled his skin, burning sweat continued to drip and roll down his chest.
The weasel hopped and bounced away. He limped and slid his way towards him, the cast off-balancing him. "Wh-where are y-you taking me?" His feet kept helplessly sliding across the smooth and polished tiles as he wrestled with his increasingly precarious balance.
The surveillance cameras, poised along the corridors, gazed down at various intervals so that they covered entire sections without any gaps. As Zim nervously looked up at them, he noticed that they were offline, with no blinking lights to suggest otherwise.
Zephyr led him through an open door to his left and into a large room. Tables and chrome chairs stood like the skeletal arms and legs of giants, the countertops and appliances distant realms where unreachable and evil objects glittered and shone. There were other horrors: microscopes, organ models and organ charts filling the walls, with glass jars lining the shelves containing sagging, sickly yellowed things.
Don't look! Just focus on what's ahead of you!
The weasel took him through the room, through an open metal door and out again to a steep barrage of stairs made for giants with giant legs. Claws grimly reaching up to sever the plastic tube connecting him to the deflated saline bag, he left the pole and its remains to hurry his way down sharp metal steps. His footfalls loudly echoed. Through the commotion of banshee sirens he could detect nothing else ahead or behind him, save his own ragged, asthmatic wheezing.
At the bottom of the stairs, he ended up in another miserable and daunting corridor that looked like an exact duplicate of the others. The weasel dashed ahead without waiting for him to catch his breath. Lungs melting, legs about to give way, Zim's limped and staggered after him, his direction becoming increasingly more sidelong.
He felt hauntingly exposed, with nowhere to escape if he was caught. His breath kept catching in his throat, with sweat and panic rolling off him.
The weasel bounced to a stop and peered round to see if he was still following. Zim took three wobbly steps before sliding sideways with exhaustion, blooms of rust filling his vision.
No, no... no! You can't stop! They'll find you, they'll kill you!
Dazed eyes tried to see the weasel. Asphyxiation rose, uncontested. His chest was all hot ice and needles.
The weasel bounced back towards him, his metal plates jingling, "What are you doing? Get up!" Tears gathered in the bottom of the Irken's eyes as he struggled to lift himself up, sweat dripping off his chin. "Now!" And Zephyr lunged forwards, his huge gnashes for teeth sinking into Zim's hand.
He choked out a scream. Pain was a crazy and instantaneous substitute for energy, his legs were filled with fire, and though his chest was a furnace with nothing left to burn, he shored himself upright. When the weasel darted away, effortlessly bouncing ahead, he drunkenly zigzagged after him, throbbing hand drifting along the cold tiles of the wall for balance.
There were doors as he passed, as clinical and as cold as their promises.
'Experimental studies, code red access only.'
'Biology lab no. 5.'
'Chemical MedLab.'
'Quality Data Control Unit.'
'Research and Tech Development.'
The corridors were empty, ominous passages of cold perversity, every corner a potential trap waiting to snare him.
He heard a crashing thud somewhere up ahead. The weasel dived for cover. He sharply turned round, heels squeaking on the vinyl flooring, and collapsed, breathless behind a corner, peeking round just in time to see two men in white coats blunder by, mere feet away, with a young man with a scythe of ebony hair close behind them.
Dib...!
It took the breath from his lungs, anger and deep-rooted terror wiping all coherent thought from his mind.
The sound of their flight soon faded, the distant thunder of their footfalls growing fainter still, but the galvanising rage and horror did not dissipate.
The weasel emerged, his coat of metal wrapping around him again until his head was a silver dome with two little eyes peeking out. It was a wonder how he could even see. "This way, this way! Why do you gawp so much! We've got to go!" Zim glumly watched the little hop and skip of his dance before the weasel headed for a passage on his right.
A smoother atrium welcomed them, the main doors fanning out like thick cathedral walls. That was when he could smell them: the fear, the urine, and the chemical stench trying to cover it all up.
They peered back at him through the bars of their hunched and dirty metal cages: dogs of all sizes and breeds. Cats. Ferrets, racoons and rabbits and rats. Zim grabbed the side of his aching, whirling head. Their cries were constant.
'Please why am I here?'
'I'm so hungry…'
'It hurts…. Why does it hurt?'
'Can't get out… can't get out…'
The crying of the animals grew louder as their soft muzzles pressed despondently through the bars. He couldn't shut them out.
The weasel approached a huge, rusted metal door that stood like a ubiquitous portcullis. "Master! Over here!" He turned just in time to see the old rusted door magically start to open, its magnetic locks springing open with a loud and sudden clonk.
Zim stared, completely daunted, when sharp winter cold blew against his feverish skin and stinking soiled gown. There was the slightest whiff of cool grass, and moist soil. He thickly swallowed, tears clinging like crystals in the wells of his eyes. The glowing frost of moon glared coldly back from the deepest reaches of a velvet sky, its halo a ring of ice.
There was a world out there, without bars, without cages...
But as he started to limp towards the exit in disbelief, he hesitated, and turned back towards the animals. Something grabbed the hem of his droopy gown and pulled. He nearly screamed, only to see the little weasel let go and indicate his little nose towards the door. "What are you waiting for? Go!"
The door suddenly clanged shut, snuffing out the world and the icy cool wind beyond it.
"There you are."
Zim snapped towards the voice, lips peeling back.
A man stood silhouetted in the opposite doorway they had just come through, the light behind him throwing his sharp features into shadow. When he began to approach, polished boot heels clapping harshly, a gnarled hand lifted out something small and black from a holster in his belt. The dull shine on the metal barrel was as unmistakable as the cold glare in Carlson's eyes. "Nice trick, getting out. Who helped you?"
The weasel leapt for Carlson's hand holding the gun, huge serrated teeth clinging furiously to leathery fingers.
"What the fuck are you…?" He slammed the weasel into the wall with a sharp and violent toss of his arm. As Zephyr came free, dropping heavily to the floor, Carlson took aim and fired three rounds into his tiny silver head.
"HEY!" His nasally scream drew Carlson to a sudden standstill. "I'm over here, shithead!"
The sergeant observed the inert weasel only the once thereafter, sparingly noticing the armour as he aimed at Zim. He kicked the inert animal with the toe of his boot to see if there was a reaction. "My, my! So you do form alliances!"
Zim backed away, chest rapidly rising and falling, sweat trickling down his throat and sternum. He felt like dust dispersing in high winds.
"How the hell did you get out?" Carlson took another heavy step towards him, sights of his gun aimed squarely at his head. "Explain, imp."
The screams from the animals grew louder.
Dark shutters tried to spill over him, errors and panic pinging through his system.
"What? Suddenly have nothing to say out of that big mouth of yours?" Carlson's smile darkened. Zim retreated until his PAK loudly hit a cage. "Tongue all tied up? Not to worry. I'll get it out of you." He took another step, his aim steady. Something malignant and gluttonous shone in his grey eyes. "You're just like all the other vermin when they're backed into a corner." He said softly. "Desperate... Thoughtless…"
Edward appeared beside the sergeant, gasping, "What the hell...? The… the alien! It's… it…s out! How did it get out!?" Then he saw the gun in Carlson's hand. "You brought a gun in here?!" His voice had the effect of a whiplash.
"Thank god for the Second Amendment. Get the net and cattle prod! We're gonna drive it back into its pen! And watch your back. This little imp has allies!"
Zim stiffened, eyes darting to the fallen body of the weasel, hoping he would stir. The temptation to surrender grew more attractive, even when the shame of doing so grew in equal measure.
More scientists blundered in from the side entrances: Williams, Torrent and Dib. The shock that had already tightened their features seemed to extract additional penitence when they took immediate notice of Carlson's intent, and the little shambolic green alien standing amongst cages and crates.
The professor burst in from a side door and skidded, gasping, to a stop. He was panting, out of breath. For a moment genuine bewilderment considerably lightened Carlson's features before his face knotted up again. "Professor...?"
Trying to catch his breath, Membrane placed himself between the Irken and Carlson. "No more!" He spread his arms wide, his back to Zim. "I'm done with your sick debauchery! I will not allow this to go on any further than it has already!"
The sergeant seemed no more surprised, and merely levelled the gun's muzzle at the professor. "Very well. You two deserve each other."
Zim's antennae rang from the tremendous BANG of the gunshot. There was a terrible moment of finality, as if the world and everything in it had simply stopped existing. Then the professor, an incomparable portrayal of steadfastness, dependability and resilience, came crashing forwards, hitting the cold floor. Carlson stood there with smoke trailing from the gun's muzzle.
Dib stood completely frozen, mouth hanging open, eyes glazing over as if he was in a dream and was just waiting for someone to come along and slap him awake.
Mind stuttering, senses sparking, Zim stared, unbelieving, at the red fast emerging from the professor's back, tainting the once brilliant pristine white of his coat.
Dib slapped his hands to his head and began to loudly moan, a sound one might only hear in a mental asylum. When he ran over to his father's side, legs buckling, Carlson barely paid him any attention, and swung his gun round on Williams and Torrent who had pressed forward, daring them to get in the way.
That was when Zim lunged, claws spread, PAK a blazing, blistering ball of crystal pink. A cutting roar flew out of his chest as he leapt, right-hand claws hooked, furious and shining; fury the sum of his parts.
Carlson, not prepared, turned to counter him, too late, and hooked claws slashed his leg open. Blood welled to the surface as Carlson stumbled, hand shakily withdrawing a black and heavy baton from his belt. "Shit! Edward! The fucking net!"
Zim pivoted, charged again, the PAK erupting with energy, as the baton flew towards his skull. When it came down, a pink bubble erupted, and the baton snapped back from the force.
"What?" Carlson looked, aghast, at the pulsing shroud of pink shrouding the Irken. "But how...?"
Crystal pink sparks flew over Zim's eyes. The crooked smile that emerged from the Elite's lips was as sharp as it was certain.
Carlson threw the baton again, gun swinging round to aim with Zim cutting beneath him. The sergeant stepped out of the way – too slow – and claws sunk through fabric and flesh on the same bleeding leg that didn't get out of the way in time. Zim pivoted round, PAK and blood boiling, claws extending. When the baton came down, aiming for his weaker side, he vaulted before it could touch his shield.
Williams and Torrent darted away, not wishing to be in the middle of the skirmish, while Dib slouched over his father, blind and deaf to everything around him.
Carlson again went to aim when he had the perfect shot, and again didn't pull the trigger. The gun was a threat, but an empty one. He wouldn't dare mortally injure and kill the very thing that would make him the most powerful man in the world, not yet, which gave Zim more courage.
Even though Zim was forced to rely on his body's weaker assets without his synthetic legs to assist him, he was still the faster. Remnant energy opened every circuit, channelling the last of everything into every muscle and claw, turning him into a living battery. Another hit and the bubble would likely defuse, but in the moment he didn't care.
Red dripped steadily and profusely onto Carlson's boot as more blood ran down his leg. "Edward!" He yelled. "The sprinklers, dammit! What are you waiting for?!"
Zim charged again, aiming to skewer Carlson's groin, when the sprinklers burst open, engulfing him and everyone in a cold shimmering cascade. He ducked, hand over his head as volleys of molten water violently struck him from everywhere. His shield fizzled out of existence with little more than a spark to signal its departure as vapour climbed in steady columns from his sizzling and saturated skin.
He snapped a look at Dib, the one who had placed him here to die – to see a shattered man slouching against the body of his father, when a heavy net of mesh was suddenly thrown over him. Suppurating flesh came away like slimy soap wherever the fine wires touched, leaving bleeding lattice gashes across his head and exposed shoulders where the gown sagged. He recognised the net's design.
The sergeant emerged from the rising mist of water. Zim clawed at the burning mesh, shrieking.
Carlson struck him with the cattle prod. The agony stormed through every fibre, as if the parts that made him were a veritable highway to only carry this pain.
"Hit him again!"
His senses were spiralling, failing…
He looked to see his arch rival crouching beside Membrane, hands pressing on his back where the blood was coming from.
Reboot me, my memory, all of it...
As he fell further, spasms flashing through him, his clawed hand jerking and clenching, broad black boots stood before him like rising tree trunks. Their voices, deep and foreboding, were as opaque as rushing water against his antennae.
The net came away. Hands jerked him upwards, the floor dropped to the nether, and Membrane lay there, not moving…
Darkness rolled in, the ice gave way, and he tumbled far, far away.