File: Journal

Entry: All goes well, I think. She's slept for the past few days, which has given me plenty of chance to work uninterrupted. I've gotten together believable replicas of all the necessary papers, and I'm going to get a state ID today. Got an address for a house not far from here that's abandoned . . . hopefully no one's going to be checking on it but me. The place looks like it could be inhabited, but it's not, so should be safe for deliveries as well, provided I keep an eye on it. Yeah, all goes well. Especially once I get a few of those credit cards in the mail.

File: ReplacementJournal

Entry: I've just been listening to "This Is the End of Your Life" over and over . . . there's nothing else to do.

Nothing.

To.

Do.

I'm trapped here, unless I want to try and get help from Zim or let that . . . whatever he is in to kill me.

I'm using the beacon. There's nothing else I can do if I want to survive.

File: Journal

Entry: Bastard bitch! I can see his cruiser on the radar now. Guess I'll go try and salvage this mess . . . but she gets nightmares for this.

File:ReplacementJournal

Entry: This is bad.

This is really, really bad. Extremely horribly bad.

The whole main room of the plant is covered in blood and wreckage. Everywhere.

Carved into the wall, in Irken, "Give it up. Zim is dead." With a still-sparking PAK nailed next to it.

What have I gotten into?

File: Journal

Entry: It has been years since I last had that much blood on me. It felt good. I've always loved getting reactions, and Night's was excellent. Well worth destroying a stupid, annoying Irken whose only function was to keep poor little emo bug's favorite musicians safe from the Armada.

It's time to start messing with her dreams. It means I'll have to be extremely careful so she won't discover me, but the risk is worth it. At least until my packages arrive at the house later this week.

File:ReplacementJournal

Entry: Heck with the difficulty, I'm doing a memory download. No other way to record a dream.

Memory download: Weird dream

I bring my ship into the Massive's docking bay and unpack the evidence I brought for the Tallest. A guard meets me as I get out and escorts me to the bridge. The Tallest are there, lounging in a giant sundae made of gummy plooka with butter rum sauce and berry-flavored fudge. I walk up to the edge of their platform.

"My Tallest!" I say, saluting.

"Night!" Red says warmly. "Wanna come swim in the sundae with us?"

"My Tallest, I've brought you proof of Tak's death."

"I need popcorn," Purple yells. He has a melting pile of ice cream on his head. "Somebody get me some popcorn!"

A tech rushes up with a bag of popcorn and hands it to Purple. Purple dives into the sundae with it. The tech turns to leave and notices me. "Night?"

Those eyes are familiar. Red, yes, but with the faintest tinge of deep purple creeping into the depths, patterning like veins near the back. The effects of a rare variant of the virus Spectrum. One I only used twice, on myself and on . . .

"Rife?" For a moment he doesn't respond, and I start to think I'm wrong, but then he rushes toward me.

"I can't believe you're here," he says, placing his hands on my shoulders, looking down at me with incredible warmth. "I missed you so much." He pulls me to him, and I tense. This is stupid, this is wrong . . . but I missed him too. I relax, let my arms slip around his waist, nuzzle into his chest.

"Why didn't you tell me you were leaving? Why didn't you contact me?" I ask.

"I'm a tech. I don't have the kind of liberties an Elite Master does." He pulls back slightly to look me in the eye. "But if I knew I could find you, I would have gone rogue to get to you."

I smile. "All you had to do is look in the corridors of power."

He grins back. "Why do you think I requested this assignment?"

And I wake up.

Entry: So . . . that was it. I cried. Seeing him again hurt, even if it wasn't real. I don't know how I could have ignored the fact, working with defectives like I did, but Rife undoubtedly had hormones that most Irkens don't. I've seen sexualized males and . . . he wasn't one. But he wasn't normal either. He liked to be touched, and he taught me to like it, at least from him. I don't know if I could ever go as far as letting him hug me on the bridge of the Massive, but . . . I'd give almost anything to have him here right now.

"No one's here, and I fall into myself." - Evanescence

File:ReplacementJournal

Memory download: Odd dream

I bring my ship into the Massive's docking bay and unpack the evidence I brought for the Tallest. A guard meets me as I get out and escorts me to the bridge. The Tallest are wearing judges' costumes and sentencing robot rodents to death by whacking them with huge inflatable hammers.

I walk up to their platform.

"My Tallest," I say, saluting.

"A bug!" Purple screeches, raising his hammer to whack me. It turns into cotton candy, and he starts eating it.

"Why are you here, little bug?" Red asks, munching on his own cotton candy hammer.

"I brought you proof that Tak is dead," I say.

"Good," Red says, "but why aren't you an Irken?"

"I am an Irken, Tallest," I reply, confused. "Just a mutant Irken. It comes from working with genetic viruses."

"Oh, you're that one," Red says. "Shade, was it?"

"Night, Tallest," I say.

"I was hoping for Shade." Red looks hurt, then brightens. "We need to call Zim and splatter him all over some walls. You wait down there with the techs."

I withdraw, feeling all the techs stare at me as I descend from the dais.

One of them looks extremely agitated. He keeps shifting in his seat, looking at me, looking away. I meander around aimlessly, seeking only to move to keep myself occupied, and I soon find that I'm standing right behind him. He turns around, and our eyes meet.

"Night!" he exclaims. I recognize the voice.

"Rife?"

In answer, he gives me such a passionate hug that I almost can't breathe. I hug him back, hard.

"It's so good to see you," I murmur, my voice muffled in the front of his uniform.

"I know. I missed you so much," he says softly.

"Traitor! Defective!" a voice overhead screeches. We look up to see Tallest Purple leaning over the edge of the dais, glaring down at us. He sweeps me up into the center of the platform.

"I'm sorry, Tallest, I --"

"Silence!" they roar. They both raise their hammers, now made of gleaming metal, and I curl up in a ball, hoping it won't hurt.

That's how I wake up.

Entry: I was so convinced that dream was real . . . and I have to admit, it's left me shaken. Losing Rife once was enough. To lose him, my rank, and my life all at once . . . if there was an afterlife, I wouldn't be sane in it.

There were a couple of strange things, though, now that I look over that transcript. Red said he "was hoping for Shade." Why? It's not like the other things, the random dream weirdness. It's got something behind it. Who, or what, is Shade? What does that word mean to me? It is my dream, after all, right?

"The glitter, it comes back to haunt you." - Joy Electric

File: Journal

Entry: Hm. Might need to be more cautious. I don't want her knowing who I am yet; I think I know how I'm gonna announce myself, and I want her to be . . . cracking. Ready to fall to pieces. And if she's not, she should at least be weak enough that I can break her. Nothing more to spark her intelligence, only enough to fuel her fears and depression.

So welcome, everyone, to Night's horrible new world. Hope you're enjoying it more than she is.

No hints as to who/what this Shade creature is, no matter how hard you beg.