Note stuffs Gasp! This one actually isn't a total cliffhanger! 3 And thank you, everyone who's reviewed so far. I'm very appreciative. Please dont feel offended if I havent responded to any of them. Now, on with the action stuff.
Okay. So moving Dib to an operating table was a little harder than Zim had planned on when he knocked him out. But! He managed because he was ZIM and that was that. (Well…the drones he had lying around helped too but that was against the point.) The Irken shoved his hands into the surgical glove dispenser. He certainly wasn't stupid enough to cover his hands in blood that came from a creature composed of mostly water. Zim didn't wear a mask, as sterility simply wasn't a question in the germaphobic alien's medical bay.
Alright. He mentally braced himself as he stared at the prone Dib's face. He removed the human's glasses and handed them to a waiting robotic attendant. Zim moved around so he could properly cut open the boy's head. He shuddered. It'd be better to disassociate himself in order to perform the procedure. The last thing he needed was tormenting thoughts of how he could accidentally destroy his…whatever Dib was to him now. The alien reached over to grab the flashlight he had stolen from Dib a few years back (the same Dib had, in turn, taken from his father) and flicked it on. Nifty little piece of tech. Zim shone it on the human's head and was able to see through the flesh and bone exterior of his head all the way to his brain. Now the boy had said something about a chip…nothing. He saw absolutely nothing. The Irken ran the light over the human's skull again. Nothing, nothing noth-wait. He moved the light over the last few inches he had just checked. A microchip was sitting on the brain; thin receptors spidering out from it to different parts of the cerebrum. But, what was that? What looked to be a smaller version of the chip was close to it, only this one seemed to be…attacking was the closest term Zim could give. It sent out what he assumed to be electric impulses systematically. The alien examined the surface of the brain again and, sure enough, discovered more of the same nanocreatures. His hand gripped the light so tight it might have broken. That…that! He couldn't come up with a word in either Irken or English to fully describe just what he thought of Professor Membrane. Mentally, Zim shook himself. Getting angry would only postpone the removal of the attackers and he wanted to get this whole thing over with. Using the light, he went around and counted each and every little electronic killer. Ten. With grim determination, the irken grabbed a surgical blade form the waiting panel and made the first incision to map out exactly where he would be going in.
Cold, mechanical, methodical, movements made short work of using a small saw to penetrate the skull and Zim forced himself to, once again, clear his mind of every thing that did not pertain to the matter at hand. The unfeeling logic every Irken carries with them from birth now told Zim that if he ever wanted to disable every attacker in the human's brain, he would first have to remove and destroy the motherboard in the main chip. And there it was; little receptors and everything. With forceps in hand, Zim made his move. Metal grabbed metal and pulled gently. The damn chip snagged on it's receptors and he instantly stopped tugging. Zim narrowed his eyes, thinking hard. If he pulled too hard and damaged the tissue somehow, the human's senses would be decimated. Blind, deaf, and horribly disconnected from the physical world was what awaited the human if Zim messed up. But! If he peeled away each receptor from the different areas, the motherboard should detach easier. The Irken bit his tongue and with extreme concentration he used the forceps to, one by one, lift the receptors. This seemingly simple task was complicated by the fact that he had to then hold the thing up and, with a pair of surgical scissors, sever the wires that connected each one with the main chip. When he was certain that every receptor was disposed of, Zim moved in on the main one. This time, when metal met metal the forceps easily pulled the chip out. Safely removed, Zim paused in his work to crush the motherboard in his hands slick with the human's blood and watch as the pieces fell to the floor.
The extra-terrestrial reexamined the nanocreatures still attached to the brain. With the flashlight he located one and observed it's activity or lack thereof. No impulse was being sent out to destroy the boy's nervous system anymore. Grim satisfaction was all Zim allowed himself to feel. He still had, as he forcefully reminded himself, to remove the menaces and he had about twelve minutes to do so. The electronic chart he had to monitor the human's stats was telling him that the analgesic he had administered was wearing off. The removal of the main chip had taken longer than planned and now he would have to rush the removal of the minichips.
The smaller forceps clattered to the floor when Zim, hands still covered in blood, moved to grab them. A string of angry and frustrated curses exploded out of his mouth and he ripped off the gloves he was wearing. When the latex like material snapped and splattered his face with blood he ignored the slight burn. Instead he dragged on a new pair sans robotic assistance and returned to his work. That stupid outburst had cost him precious minutes. Grinding his teeth together he moved in on the three chips attached to what the screen was calling the visual cortex. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he gently removed each one. When the last of those three where detached, Zim released the breath he didn't even realize he'd been holding. Three down, seven to go. Next up, the one designed to stack the center of human hearing, smell, and taste. Those too removed relatively well, but only five minutes remained before the anesthetic wore off and the boy regained consciousness. There were also still four nanocreatures responsible for the pain Di-the human had experienced. The ones attached to the part of the brain responsible for the sense of touch and pressure would have to be removed quickly. Zim increased his pace and finished retrieving the last attacker with only a minute and fifteen seconds to go. Gnawing on his bottom lip with desperate concentration he quickly applied a strong adhesive gel designed for medical purposes and used it to fuse the skull and then the skin back together. Three, two, one…
One by one Professor Membrane watched the signals die. Visual, auditory, each and every one of them. His face twisted with his sick grin as he assumed it was a sign that that boy had died and his brain had shut itself down section by section. So the little freak had failed then. Fantastic. Membrane stood and initiated the shut down sequence for the equipment then made sure to retrieve the data printouts from the experiment. Humming the death march to himself he exited his labs, as if it wasn't a human he had just killed, but an inconsequential rat. And sadly, in his mind that's all Dib seemed to be. He had no worries about someone possibly checking into the boy's disappearance. It's not like anyone actually cared about him.
Deep in the medical bay, before the first twitch of consciousness could complete itself, a syringe full of glowing painkillers was plunged into the human's neck. A mentally exhausted Irken fell, hard, to the ground after watery knees finally gave out and all the adrenaline left in a rush. He dragged his knees to his chest and released a massive sigh of relief.
Dib, it seemed, would survive.