Against my better judgment, I followed Zim into the depths of the ship. After several minutes inched by, I had begun to think I would have found Dib faster without his help. Even worse, I began to wonder if Dib would be dead before we got to him.

I could easily blame Zim. I could say that he hadn't gotten there fast enough or that he had gotten us lost or that this was all his fault in the first place.

No matter how much blame I placed on Zim though, it didn't erase the fact that it would be my fault entirely. Zim was right. I never should have left him alone in there.

Sometimes I felt like I was the older sister and that he was more of a younger brother to me. He always followed me around like I was some kind of role model and he was some kind of baby animal. It's been that way ever since we were little kids. He would always look to me when he had problems. I guess I was the only one he could ever go to. Maybe if Mom were still alive he'd be closer to her.

It wasn't fair though. It wasn't fair of him to do that to me. He was supposed to be the one with the world on his shoulders. He's the one that was supposed to be my hero. He's the one that was supposed to be Superman. He's the older one who was supposed to know what to do or what to say. He wasn't supposed to be bent and broken the way he was. He wasn't supposed to fall apart.

He…he was supposed to be my big brother.

I couldn't think about that though; I couldn't make myself vulnerable. Besides, there was no need to dwell on things that would never change, anyway.

Our surroundings gradually changed. The numerous doors had transformed into vents and the floor had become a flimsy metal board that wove tiny holes beneath my feet. It reminded me almost of the boiler room back at skool. We were enclosed in a strange sort of narrow hallway bridge held up only by the ceiling that passed over a rather large room below. If I put my arms out straight, my fingers would touch the walls.

I could feel rising steam make the air on the back of my neck stand on end. Without a glance behind him, Zim warned me not to look down.

Pfft. As though I would be scared of heights. Tempting fate to smite me as it may, I glanced through the floor.

Smite me it did; it smote me with the force of a lead brick. My knees buckled beneath me but my feet were planted firmly on the floor. My hands caught the walls in a desperate effort to keep from falling. The platform we stood on shook and I was vaguely aware of Zim turning back to me.

There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands. It was hard to tell just how many when they all looked the same. Maybe they had different colored skin or maybe they had a few extra arms, but really they were all identical. The blood smeared the wall in the same way and all of the screams and cries sounded identical.

It was like a horrible car crash in that way. The flaming wreckage was frightening but you couldn't pull your eyes away as they pulled out the mangled bodies.

There were demons and monsters surrounding them, enveloped in shadows and darkness. With each slice of a sword or crunch of a bone another dream was broken and another one had fallen.

It was a sea of blood and gore and pain and each wave sailed up to my ears before crashing back down. I could feel myself shaking as I struggled to look away.

I was brought back down to reality by a forceful shaking of my shoulders and Zim screaming my name. I could hear my breath trying to catch up with my heartbeat.

Zim let out an angry cry of frustration.

" I TOLD you not to look down!" He growled, " I KNEW your human nerves were too feeble for this."

There was a silence between us that somehow drowned out the helpless screams of the less fortunate.

" There are so many of them…" I found myself saying softly.

" It's to be expected." Zim explained, " After all, we are in the middle of Impending Doom II."

So that was it. These were P.O.W.s, prisoners of war taken trying to defend their own planets and were being tortured to death for their heroism. It wouldn't have concerned me as much if Dib weren't constantly trying to save the Earth.

Any one of those aliens could be Dib. Any one of those corpses thrown against the wall could be his. Or his body could even be mangled beyond belief, smeared across the floor.

This wasn't something I needed to be thinking about. It would just make me even more nervous and vulnerable.

Still I needed to know. So I forced myself to ask.

" Zim…?" I called out weakly.

He had abandoned me only moments before. He was peering out of the vents in the walls. His fingers poked their way through the slots as he watched the carnage below us with unwavering eyes. It was impossible to tell whether he enjoyed this spectacle, but he certainly wasn't bothered by it.

For the first time, it occurred to me that the Irkens were a force to be reckoned with. Even if Zim was incompetent and unable to invade Earth, this torture was a normal occurrence. Pain and misery of others must have been such a common thing that it must have made them lose any kind of conscience they may have had. It must have been so easy for their army to go to planets and thrash them all one by one when there was no guilt at all.

Zim's eyes were locked on the madness that lay below us, the carnage and murder that he must have seen so often in his past. I wondered how much of it he had caused himself.

I didn't feel bad for him. I was far too concerned with something else on my mind.

" Zim?" I tried again.

I could hear my voice quiver involuntarily. I was still shaky, but for a different reason. I propped myself up against the wall so I wouldn't slink down to the floor.

Zim didn't even turn my way. There was no concern for me at all, not that I would have wanted it then.

" Why are we here Zim?" I cried out desperately to him, needing an answer, " Why did you bring me here?"

I knew the answer. There was no doubt in my mind why we were here. I needed Zim to say it though. I needed him to prove me wrong. I needed to be wrong again.

" Because Dib-sister," He sighed deeply, still not looking away from the demons below us, " If your brother was caught…he's more than likely here."

I cried. It was a strange sensation, because I almost never cry. I can't even remember the last time I cried before that. My first instinct was usually to beat down whoever wronged me in anyway that I could.

No one had wronged me then. I had wronged Dib. This was all my fault. If had I never left him he wouldn't be down…down there. If I had taken him with me we would probably be gone by now.

" Don't…don't say that…" I whispered stubbornly to the ground as I fell on my knees, " Sh…shut up! Don't…don't say that."

I wanted Zim to laugh then and take back his cruel untrue words. I wanted him to tell me that Dib was alive back at home. I wanted him to do so many things. It was a strange sensation, both wanting to snap someone's neck in two and wanting them to comfort you somehow.

I finally decided I didn't want him to comfort me. Anger and despair surged through my veins and I wanted to stand and shove Zim through the vents in the wall.

" Be quiet Earth-girl," Zim said, trying to hush me, " Did it ever occur to you that he might still be alive?"

Honestly, it hadn't. The blood bath occurring below us seemed to be so unsurvivable that I had assumed he was dead already and that we had come too late.

Zim continued to observe the chaos beneath us under his watchful eyes. His motives suddenly slammed into me without him even saying a word.

He was looking for Dib.

I suddenly felt very foolish. In my blur of worry, I had wondered if maybe he had brought me here to betray me and throw me down to the demons. I thought he wouldn't have been able to help me at all and then he was the one who wound up searching. Perhaps I had inherited paranoia from my stupid brother. I couldn't even bring myself to look down. I shut my eyes, I looked at the ceiling, anything to make that screaming go away.

I always thought I would be able to handle real life gore if I ever saw it. After all, I slayed vampire piggies daily and enjoyed watching movies where cows get eaten alive. There was something different about this though. Whether it was the knowledge that these were real creatures or the fact that I could smell the blood on their dying hands, I'm still not sure. There was something there though that made it all the more horrifying.

All I found myself able to do was wait while Zim searched for my brother. I could only stand aside. I had never felt as useless and pathetic as I did in that moment.

Somehow, I expected Zim to ridicule me. I was waiting patiently for him to spit out insults in my direction. He didn't though. He was focused and calm.

I was sort of jealous of that in a way.

The clang of metal sent shivers up my spine and Zim's antennae perked to attention. The sound rang over and over in our ears, both familiar and frightening.

Someone was coming for us.

I sprang to my feet, trying to block the mind-blowing screams of pain and torment from my ears as much as possible. Peering down the way we had come, I was astonished to find my shadow within a circle of light.

Swerving around I was blinded by the bright gleam of a flashlight. Slowly, the flashlight was pulled away and another Irken was revealed behind it. It towered over us by at least a foot and a half and its green skin was pale and sickly, possibly from lurking these dim chambers. It looked at us quizzically before speaking up.

" Who are you?" It asked in a suspicious tone, " What are you doing here?"

I was about to try and make up an excuse for myself when I felt Zim's gloved hand cover my mouth.

" This is Gaz." He explained, standing behind me and gripping my shoulder lightly, " She's transferring from a different unit and I decided to be kind and show her around."

Zim was being a little too kind for comfort in my opinion, but there was nothing I could to but wish his hands off of me. As to not draw suspicion, the hand on my mouth slowly moved down to my other shoulder.

The guard still looked very skeptical. He glanced from me to Zim and back to me again.

" And what unit were you working in before?" He asked, suspicious tones still ever present.

I had no idea. Thankfully, Zim answered for me again.

" The waste disposal unit on Conventia." He said clear and calm.

At first I was furious. Waste disposal unit? Couldn't he have thought of something…anything better than that?

" Well that explains why she's here…" The guard mused, " …but that still doesn't explain you. What are you doing up here? This is a restricted zone!"

I felt Zim's hands clamp just a little tighter onto my shoulders, probably out of nervousness.

" I'm…Zag." Zim said, taking a dangerous pause, " I'm also in the waste disposal unit."

The guard moved closer to us and my first reaction was to step back. Zim held me steady though. Bending down, the guard stared me eye to eye.

" She's very small." He observed, " Almost as small as that Zim guy The Tallests locked away. And she's…she looks ill. And what are these deformities on her face?"

Zim began to answer for me but the guard stopped him.

" She's got a voice, doesn't she?" He said harshly, " Let her talk."

I was quiet for several moments, enough to make Zim slightly nervous. Finally, I took a deep breath and blurted out an excuse for my "deformed" exterior.

" It's a skin condition, all right?" I snapped at the guard, " I'm not exactly proud of it either…"

Feeling proud of my performance I stared back at the guard waiting for some kind of surprise that I would take as my bravo.

Indeed, the guard was surprised. He stepped away from me, perhaps wondering where the sudden spunk had come from. Gazing down at me, he shook his head. I must have been really getting into my roll because I couldn't help but want to hit him.

" No wonder she was sent to work here." The Guard sighed.

" I know. It's a real shame." Zim agreed.

" Well, have a good night you two." He said, bowing his way out, " Or at least as good a night as one can have working here."

As the guard made his way passed us we didn't dare move. We didn't budge until the guard's clanging footsteps could no longer be heard.

Roughly, Zim shoved me away from him, shuddering. I backed away as well, rubbing my hands over my shoulders as though this would somehow erase the feel of Zim's gloved hands.

Somehow the encounter had helped to take my mind off of my surroundings just a little, enough to get me oriented anyway. The scent of blood and torn flesh had faded and the roaring screams and cries had become merely a low rumble, a shadow of what it had been earlier.

Zim still held a look of pure disgust, probably for having to hold me for that long. He refused to look my way as he snapped at me.

" This will never be spoken of. Understand, stinkbeast?" He said.

" Yeah, I hear you…" I said, mentally agreeing with him.

…Though it would have been fun to tease Dib about it. He probably would have gone into convulsions on the floor and spazz out about how I shouldn't let Zim two feet near me.

I could tell I was starting to feel better.

Before I could say anything more to Zim, he was gone and searching for Dib once again. I wondered why he was so persistent. After all, they were mortal enemies. Shouldn't he be the one shoving him into this torture chamber?

Then again…Zim had mentioned that Dib tried to save him. Perhaps his solider-like attitude on life wouldn't let that go.

If Zim found Dib's corpse down there among the bloodied scraps and hellish demons, would it break that icy calm on his face?

Somehow, I found myself standing beside him. With his eyes glued to the scene below us, he didn't notice my presence. I forced myself to look down as well.

We stood there for several moments, side by side, neither of us saying a word. The silence was calm, but seemed to cover up most of the roars beneath us.

Finally without so much as a glance in my direction, Zim sent me away.

" It doesn't make sense or us both to search on this side," He said, " You should look on the other side."

I was offended, but I let the ice slide as I nodded and retreated. I don't know if he looked back at me from where he stood, and I don't know if he felt any remorse. I refused to let myself care though.

After all, it was only Zim.

(A/N: Thank you once again for all the great reviews! Also, thanks for being so patient about the updates. I really am going to get the next chapter up sooner this time. Really. So anyway, please R&R and I'll get the next chapter up ASAP! : ) )