Debacle (R) - Subject Zim

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.


Until it Breaks

He wasn't sure how long he had slept. Pain woke him, permitting him to escape the twisting, delirium-soaked carousels of dreams that put him in a place where there were no doors, no windows, only white, growing walls that drew perpetually inwards until he was crushed between them. The agony of it as his skull popped, fingers shattering like icicles had him shooting forwards, gasping. His eyes, blurry and unfocused, stared at a solemn and plain room of silent and unmoving walls.

A simple and old-fashioned TV captured his gormless expression within its black glass.

He propped himself up on his elbows, recognition arriving in slow doses. Slender, bony fingers ran patterns along the silky pale cream sheets that clasped his body. The windows were closed with long, dark antique drapes, hiding whatever light was out there. Groping for his glasses, he slipped them over the bridge of his nose.

The unadorned and cheap plastic clock on the wall read half past seven. He hoped it was half past seven in the evening and that he hadn't slept into the next day.

He ran a hand through greasy black hair, knowing he had missed the regenerative trial. He probably still had access to what they had discovered and observed in digital and paper form, and perhaps that was better, as it kept him distant from Zim.

Pushing back sheets and blankets, he addressed the area a little more bravely, a hand lifting a sheaf of padding to see the tidily knitted line of stitching along his side above his hip. The parting had been carefully closed by a surgical hand, the long gash tidily knitted by a column of black plastic-like sutures.

Dib cautiously left the bed, wondering how far he could push himself. There was a spare change of clothing in the top drawer of the dresser, and a tray of plastic wrapped ham-rolls had been placed on the table alongside a pitcher of now-tepid water.

He sat down on a wingback armchair, meticulously peeled off the clingfilm and took a bite of the ham roll. The hunger hit him out of nowhere and he was tearing into it, gulping mouthfuls without properly chewing it.

He picked out the crumbs when there was nothing left and he cooled off his thirst with the slightly stale tasting water after pouring a tall measure into the provided paper cup.

He set it down, watched a droplet of water trickle from the rim and saw the water dripping from the bottle and onto Zim's sizzling thigh. The nausea pounced back and he clutched his stomach, immediately regretting the ham roll. Pinching his eyes shut with a forefinger and thumb, he tried to fight the dizziness as he reached for the pitcher. He swallowed down the water more carefully, and after a beat the nausea abated.

Dib brushed a finger over the stitches in mild fascination, and at how the flesh had opened so easily under the PAK leg's cool touch.

He had not forgotten the remarks of the scientists as they spoke about the unfortunate technician. He couldn't remember her name, only knowing that she had been paid off and wouldn't be returning.

Zim scratched me.

He took her whole arm off.

Was I just lucky?

The soothing heat from the shower ameliorated the stiffness in his side and helped him feel clean again. Any remnants of blood and sweat went swilling down the plug hole.

Stepping out, he dried himself off, blow-dried his hair and took pains to comb and gel his scythe until it looked sharp enough to cut something.

In a fresh change of clothing, he opened the door, incredulous that they hadn't locked it so that he could go where he pleased.

The sergeant was true to his word.

The familiar train of corridors presented the same déjà vu malady, and when he encountered a vending machine posted by an office door, he happily slotted in a few of the coins he had procured from his wallet, and heard the satisfying plonk of the soda can when it hit the bottom of the drop box. He popped the aluminium ring and slurped down more bubbles than liquid.

He imagined his father had done something for the pain, whether through tablet form or injection, though he did not remember being fed pills or getting needled. The site of injury had that unsettling numbness to it, and he wondered, not for the first time, how sterile each point of each PAK leg was. He thought of venom, how certain insects and invertebrates used it, and that some poisons had a delayed effect.

Walking past various locked doors and various interconnecting and confusing corridors that seemed to shuffle forwards into the forever, he was sure he had passed the same potted fern plant some three times until he eventually came to a stairwell, the labelled number of each level a welcome relief to where he was in the complex. He proceeded all the way down, passing few men in their stiff and immaculate white coats, their expressions equally as stiff and synthetic. They would peer over their clipboards at him, some carrying documents, with medical aprons slung over one arm; giving the impression of death-dealing surgeons than scientists.

He travelled slowly to the last floor of Geneva where they kept and contained their animal specimens. There were plenty of shortcuts to take and other routes that weren't as dreary or as cheerless, but he couldn't help but visit the puppies who jumped up to see him, planting their little paws against the steel bars of the cage and pressing their wet noses against the mesh, tails wagging.

The floor was more like paving stone, and the air always smelled of ammonia, straw, distress and defecation. Before he had even opened the door he could hear the squawk of the parakeets and the meowing of the kittens.

The air was cool and dry, with fans working overtime to push back the smell. Grates garnished the floor every eight feet or so into a drainage system. Spare animal food was usually locked in plastic containers, and laid out on a desk were piles of used and empty feeding syringes.

A stricken yelp of a puppy resonated up ahead. He looked ahead, past the various metal cages to see Torrent holding up a beagle puppy from the scruff of its neck. Its little paws dangled in the air and the dark and curious splodge on its nose told him that it was Benjamin. Just as Dib opened his mouth to shout, he watched the scientist strike the puppy across the head.

"HEY!"

Torrent dropped the puppy in shock, eyes flashing towards the voice. The puppy landed awkwardly and scrabbled to get away. Torrent made to go after it but his attempts were only half-hearted now that he was aware of the company he had.

"What do you think you're doing?" Dib walked over, fists clenched, the soda pop rolling across the floor. He could feel the heat rise into his cheeks.

Torrent looked like he was about to say something when he saw the deranged shine in Dib's eyes, and the fire about to erupt. He grabbed a bag and left in a clap of boots, taking the door on the left that led into the main storeroom.

Just as Dib got there, swinging the door wide to intercept him, the far door that opened into the cold warehouse thudded shut against its frame.

"Benjamin?" He turned, hand cupping his side. He looked under the table and in and around the other cages. Birds jostled about restlessly in their tiny prisons. The albino rats watched from their glass boxes, noses sniffing his scent. "Here, Ben. Good dog. It's just me."

He heard a snivelling whine. Benjamin lay low to the floor in a dark corner behind a towering pile of wooden crates. Even as Dib cooed to him, reaching out and bending down, the puppy backed away, watching from dark and frightened eyes.

The puppies had no names, only numbers. The same went for all Geneva specimens. Names only encouraged an attachment to animals that were things - products that helped steer the course of science in the fields of medicine and disease. But when he had accidently wandered down here, the puppy with the splodge on its nose came to him first, whimpering for attention behind the metal bars. Against his better judgement he had knelt close to the bars, fingers reaching in to try and scratch behind its floppy ears.

"Ben? I'm not going to hurt you..."

It slunk deeper into the space behind the crates, nose to the floor, shaking.

He paused, and when he swallowed he felt the lump in his throat.

The immortal soldier, effaced of strength and resilience, all his powers spiralling to dust, had suddenly become a broken and shivering animal no different to this puppy.

He backed away, hand to his throat, the sadness rising suddenly like cold water.

As he retreated he kicked aside a barrel of slop that sort of smelt like dog food.

The frantic squawking of the song birds and the snuffle of an old dog nearby only tightened the room as the walls pressed closer. He fell beside a cage, his eyes strayed to the shiny bars, and just for a moment he was inside it, imprisoned on all sides, doomed to see the world through burnished metal rods.

A warm and wet tongue began licking the fingers that insensibly clutched at his kneecaps. His vision cleared, and Benjamin was looking up at him.

He lifted a shaky hand and the puppy lifted its soft little head as he stroked him.

How can you be so forgiving? When the world has shown you nothing but cruelty?

The dog whimpered, sensing his pain, wanting to help. Tentatively, its little tail started to wag again.

The tears came, cascading freely down his cheeks as something burned in his chest.

He brought his arms around the puppy and sobbed into its fur.

-x-

"I like mud! I have lots of new friends! Dib made sure I was comfy!"

He had him...!

That Dib was holding him captive!

The ticking highlighted each tormenting second as the cramps dumped fire in his frozen sockets and muscles. Each ache of hunger made his spooch clench and boil under the stresses of its own acid. Hours more he waited for someone to end this agony as he listened to the rhythmic music of heart and clock, eyes flickering feverishly to the black screen, waiting. He was allowed no darkness to relieve his eyes of the stabbing illumination, and no place to lie down to rest.

Something tore in his chest as he laboured and heaved, the bands and restraints creaking but not giving until he slumped back, exhausted. He struggled to get his breath back and his limbs and back ached with a hurt he was unfamiliar with. Every laceration, every bruise and blemish the PAK soon tidied away, but the terrible ache inside him stubbornly remained until that of itself was a relentless torture.

He was never alone for very long. They would trample in, these tall and clumsy beings with some implement in-hand. They would take note of his pronounced veins, the shine of his skin, and then murmur amongst themselves. He would try to listen for any mention of Gir, the state and location of the Voot Runner or his base, and whenever he heard Dib's name he would battle against the restraints until there were dots flashing in his eyes.

The blinding intensity of the overhead lights made shadows and stars appear in shifting mosaics, sometimes forcing him to squint at his attackers as their bulky forms swayed to and fro, their voices a caustic dirge that filled the spaces of his mind. He would try to lock on to as many of them as he could, but he was often compelled to shift his attention from one to the other as they moved and separated and darted around him in lumbering steps, their fingers and intentions straying too close, and they would clasp and touch and prod him with uncaring roughness.

He was a stick of dynamite unable to erupt.

There was a lot of drilling and banging next door. It came intermittently or violently, sometimes oscillating through the wall at irregular intervals, which broke the painful medium of the tick tocking and blip bleeping. They could simply be expanding, but he had a feeling they were building something with him in mind.

As he flinched from their touches, his neuron pathways were hard at work, circuits firing along connections as he fought to reopen sealed PAK ports. The feeling of being plugged brought on sudden, impending claustrophobia, he couldn't breathe, he was locked in a corner where he could only sink, and panic was a hand squeezing on his throat.

He had given his oath; hand on his chest when he had stood in that meticulous and shiny row of established Elites. They had passed every preliminary; the physical evaluations, simulation after simulation, missions and do-or-die operations, psyche assessments, stress assessments... he had passed most of them just shy of one percentage from failing.

He had been trained for certain and general eventualities, most of which had intended him to be in some sort of control before he could be disarmed and neutralized. He might have hesitated with his self-destruct activation switch, but that was before.

When the 'session men' entered his chamber, he was struck simultaneously with the hopeful relief that they might release him from the chair, and the horror that they might not.

The diaphanous gown was soaked through, sticking to his bones like a second skin.

His first complaints were relatively minor hiccups compared to the other agonies that had grown exponentially. He needed to get up and straighten himself out, any part, and lay down so that he might relieve the pressure in his rear, spine, shoulders and hips. Muscles were clenching continuously, claws locking and knotting into painful cramps until the spasm began anew.

He was close to screaming.

His throat flashed when he took a nervous swallow, and his antennae dipped and lifted accordingly to every telltale movement, noise or breath as the tall men clad in their white coats circled him as vultures circled a dying beast. He looked to either of them with hate, but his hard, intense stare usually landed on Dr. Williams. He took a moment to master his voice, once more trying to enclose his emotions, to detach himself and disappear within the walls of his own design. "Do you by chance h-happen to have a pillow or cushion? This horrible chair is really st-starting to annoy me!"

He looked expectantly at their blank and stone-like faces, their eyes tiny, impassive holes. Sometimes they would peer back at him with looks that were always exclusively apathetic.

The men were easier to size up when they were without their face masks and hulking suits that supersized their forms. Torrent was not among them this time; he usually disappeared for hours at a time, and hurried right back whenever Williams would call upon him.

"Weight. 17 lbs. Temperature, 39 degrees Celsius." Williams scribbled something onto his electronic pad that he habitually left on the nearby table. "His cephalic veins are more pronounced today." He reached over, Zim stiffening, throat hoarse with grunts and growls as the flesh along his arm was pinched between forefinger and thumb. When the doctor released the pressure, the skin remained pinched.

"It's starting to stink." Commented Edward, his hazel eyes only ever briefly settling on Zim's.

He unnerved many of the scientists who were not used to creatures or animals possessing sophisticated levels of intelligence and self-awareness. Even though he was strapped down, some didn't like getting too close, while others seemed to personally enjoy his imprisonment. Torrent and Williams liked to close in around him, he would feel their breath flowing and exhaling against the skin of his neck as their fingers went to knead his throat or shoulder or hand as if the feel of him and his bony contours was too compelling for them to resist. These touches he despised, and his fear swelled, crushing his lungs and crowding his senses. Despite the camera always surveying him, Torrent seemed ignorant to the fact and would pinch and dig his fingers into various parts of him without prelude, smiling whenever he enticed A01 to hiss or buck or squeal.

"Stop circling me!" The pain in his wrists flared as much as through his arms as he twisted and struggled, prompting more spasms in his shoulders and legs. Old blood painted the armrest of the steel beneath in layers. "You're all cowards! C-Cowards and vultures and...!"

The nylon restraint had been re-fitted until it was squeezing on his sternum, constricting his breathing and his shoulders to the platform's cold and concrete-soft backrest. He had pushed and shoved himself breathless against the strap until the effort started to produce head-splitting dizziness, back pain and rapid ECG pings that refused to ease long after he had stopped to recover. Another nylon strap was secured and then tightened around his skull just above his eyes, but he had managed to loosen it so that he could turn his head beneath it.

His tenacity and resilience had quickly become renowned throughout Geneva, and was often remarked upon among his other less than savoury traits. They commented on his 'smallness,' of 'how ugly his eyes were,' and how 'buglike' he was. Now and then he would hear comments on his volatile tenacity, and how amusing it was that he kept futilely struggling.

"Avoid eye contact with it," Zim's antennae picked up on Williams's voice as he whispered to his colleagues. "Just focus on my instructions and you'll do fine."

"I am not a subject! You sh-should be the ones strapped to this chair, not me!" His voice was a low squeaking tremble.

"Where are you from, A01?" Williams's questions seemed only cursory, as if the totality of Zim's answer didn't really matter.

"Earth! You smmok hole of a dink beast!"

"Excuse me?"

"Can it be gagged, like before? Please?" Asked Rick. "What if it can mess with your head? I think we should cover its eyes."

"Dib said nothing about telepathy."

"He can't know everything!"

"I do have telepathy!" Zim roared, causing all of them except the doctor to jump back. "I can make your heads explode with a single thought! Who wants to go first?"

"Gentlemen, please! A01 is just trying to frighten you!" Williams turned to them but Rick was already running for the exit, leaving him with Edward. "If anyone leaves this room without my consent, you won't have a job to go back to!" His voice must have snagged on Rick's momentum because he paused by the door. After a second of deliberation he hit the button, the door sliding aside. He did not come back.

Edward visibly paled and was coasting cautious glances towards their growling subject.

Williams stooped towards the subject's twig-green thigh and started to cut away the gauze.

Zim recoiled, wrists and ankles hitting the restraints, teeth emerging from split and cracked lips, antennae shooting upright. "D-Don't touch me!"

The cardiologist pulled away the gauze, some of which was sticky and wet, but the cavity beneath had closed over, the deeper tissue damage having coagulated with new tissue, while the topmost layer was still soft and malleable when touched with a gloved finger.

"I would really like to see how the muscles work when A01 moves on a treadmill," Williams was saying to Edward, "this regenerative testing Carlson has fast-tracked pegs back our own research." Edward hissed, looking from him to the overhead observation screen, but the doctor didn't seem to care. "While we wait for our 'famous saviour' to join us, we may as well use this time wisely. Edward, prepare the platform to recline by, say, five inches, and spread out the leg platforms while you're at it."

"I'll kill you!" The soldier warned, his orbs now blood-red twinkling gems between narrowing eyelids. "Just you wait! Blowing you up is too quick! I think I'll tie you up! And then I'll throw you into The Pit of Weasels!"

Edward jealously guarded the table with all the surgical equipment in case the creature should somehow fly out of its restraints and grab something from it.

Using his hands, Williams carefully felt along Zim's musculoskeletal structure such as his wrists, neck, ankles and chest. He manipulated and prodded the bone of his wrists more frequently, feeling for signs of stiffness, heat or inflammation. His expression lifted slightly in mild interest, but he could have easily looked that way had he been reading a magazine about finance.

"Such remarkable strength and fortitude for something so small..." Was his comment.

Zim's antennae literally jerked as high as they could go. "I'll show you small!" He snarled.

Touch nauseated him. Touch had him pull away as if their contact hurt.

The platform suddenly dropped him back by a few inches, and the cramps surged to the fore, throwing him into a helpless fit as his sockets and joints and muscles screamed and burned.

Dr. Williams changed his thin, translucent surgical gloves for new ones, and placed one of those surgical white face masks over his mouth.

"All right, A01," came Dr. Williams from what seemed like very far away, "you seem remarkably intelligent and cohesive. If you don't want this to hurt, I suggest you just relax. If you tense up, it will take longer for me to make a diagnosis."

"A... d-diagnosis? For what, fool?"

Edward was opening a laptop that was resting on a swivelling platform of its own. "Who authorized this?" He asked the doctor.

"I did." He remarked a little coldly. "I have jurisdiction over disease control and possible contamination risks as we build a better picture of the subject. Ideally we wouldn't be ramming sessions in-between sessions like this, but I need as much information as I can before the sergeant rushes his agenda forwards."

"You can shove your agenda up your dink hole!" Zim's measured snarl turned into a girlish squeak when he felt Williams' smooth, rubbery finger dip into his opening. He involuntarily and voluntarily tightened against the invasion, becoming as tight as a straw. Dr. Williams withdrew his finger, and Zim only just remembered to breathe.

When the human coated his latex fingers in a jelly-like substance from a jar greasy with stains and started rubbing them together so that the jelly spread over the surface of his gloves, making sticky, wet noises, Zim broke all restraint and shrieked and screamed, and in-between the shrieking unearthly wails were the garbled, throaty pleas of 'no' and 'please' and 'monsters!'

Williams, unruffled by Zim's squealing, approached with his slimy fingers.

"No! NO! Nooooo!" Zim tried to toss and turn, neurons and the need flashing to his PAK as he desperately coaxed it to split open, to aid him, but the noose grew tighter, Williams was inches from him, and all he could do was squeeze his eyes shut, trying, trying to go somewhere else in his head... to escape to some other place. He would run there, if only...


-section removed due to sensitive content -


The scream was in his heart, his throat.

A creeping cold was rising through his limbs and chest. He blinked away the few stray tears before they could appear.

The doctor turned away to take something from the counter worktop. Zim tried to peer at what he was doing as his mind started to separate and ooze, fleeting hope telling him that the human monster was finishing up, when he turned back round with a long, white stethoscope dangling from gloved hands. Zim pulled back, lips upending into a frightened snarl. On the spur of the moment, with so very few tricks left, he hacked out a series of long, dry coughs.

Williams drew back at once.

"I h-have the cox!" It was hard to maintain the act when terror and shame and hurt were all there was. He fell behind rage, and the threat of tears was barred and locked and burnt away. "It's gonna spread! To you! And YOU! You'll burn up, your hands will pop off! You'll... you'll melt at the knees and turn into puddles or something!"

Edward was already rising from the laptop to back away.

The look Williams gave Zim made him want to tunnel away underground, anything to hide away, anything to disappear.

"Edward. Lower the table another four inches. I want him horizontal."

"No!" Zim's teeth clapped forwards, terror seizing him.

The platform leaned backwards, snaring him as a cradle snared an infant. Gloved hands came to rest on his bony hips, pressing and digging into the bone there before the hands, heavy and unbearably rough began to massage his tiny abdomen to palpate his lower intestines beneath the spooch. Cold gloved fingers pressed and pushed, squeezing on them: making them gurgle.

Please!

Please... stop!

Knobbly fingers and callused thumbs nudged and pushed on his diaphragm and the rigidity of his ribcage. One hand on either side started at the back of his ribs and worked their way to his sternum, collarbone and throat. The scream flew up and out, a simultaneous burst of rage and inner pain.

He was slowly but surely trickling down cracks between the internal walls.

"Slight abnormality in the abdominal region," Commented the doctor, "which could be a sign of hunger and dehydration. His temperature has risen by 2 degrees. The glands in his throat have also enlarged."

"So what?" Edward pressed stubbornly.

Williams turned briefly to the all-watching camera. "I think the regenerative testing should be withheld until we get fluids into A01."

They heard hoarse laughter booming from the intercom. When the braying was finally over, the drilling next door recommenced for another thirty seconds or so.

"Aren't you little tadpoles cute?" Came the sergeant's husky voice. From the way he spoke, they suspected he was speaking around a cocktail stick. "You build your enterprise and success on results, don't you? Then our goal is the same. We are to go ahead with the session. A01's regenerative testing has already been delayed for nearly nineteen hours now. I cannot wait for that boy any longer."

"Boy?" Edward asked Williams quietly. "The one with that ridiculous scythe of hair?"

But the doctor was already reaching for a scalpel from a nearby tray, his other hand raising the platform so that Zim was forced back into a sitting position. Holding the scalpel delicately between thumb and forefinger, Williams bent towards the subject's strong and undiscerning claws and cut into the subject's middle knuckle joint without warning. Zim muffled a yelp, shoulders wrestling futilely against the restraints. The electrodes strung to his forehead and chest flashed from side to side. Fast flowing green - as pale as pear juice beneath the fluorescent lights - spilled from the paper thin cut and trickled, drop by drop, into the provided glass beaker below.

"Is that your b-best p-plan?" Zim tried to twist away, the nylon chest-strap nicking into his ribs and creating darker bruising across his sternum beneath the gown, "...Making s-stupid little cuts?"

Williams stood back, the glistening scalpel bejewelled with drops of green. In the other hand he held a stopwatch as it ticked down the seconds. The pulses from the ECG stroked faster and faster, vivid eyes of the subject focused murderously on the doctor as claws clenched and trembled on the armrests.

After thirty seconds the cut stopped bleeding which then began to darken and clog over with a scab. After another thirty seconds Williams could brush away the scab, revealing unblemished and new skin. Even the faintest path of a scar could not be seen as the doctor inspected the site with the lens of a magnifying glass.

Williams diligently turned to the camera, his eyes sometimes looking to the scientists watching from the observation screen. "Notice that the cut increases the subject's heart rate. Not just from registered pain, but from an induced reaction similar to our adrenaline. We do not know if this activates the capability to heal, or is a symptom of it by whatever generates these fast and regenerative capabilities. We will scan its nervous system and blood to see what reactions are taking place inside its chemical composition while it heals."

Another nick was made in roughly the same place, and Zim's eyes burned even brighter.

Williams brought over a circular machine that had a winding, twirling mechanical arm sticking out of a retractable arm. Parts of it extended, and a hypo thudded into the back of Zim's left shoulder blade. He screeched, jaws clenching, toes curling, antennae arching.

The ear-splitting and pain-filled shriek had Edward step away.

"God's sake! I need someone a little more competent in here!" Williams made another cut, this time going deeper, the scalpel's tip cutting into tendon and a network of nerves.

A01's piercing shriek had Edward slap gloved hands over his ears.

"Stop it!" Phlegm trailed down Zim's ragged and cracked lips. "STOP IT!"

"Breathing and heart rate has increased again." Williams stood by the monitoring machine, looking at the stopwatch and taking notes as a vial was dispensed from the sampler machine with an output sheet of the results.

"Well?" Came the grunting demand of the sergeant through the intercom speaker that had Zim concurrently flinch and show his teeth, the pink of his pupils darting and feverishly flashing around.

Williams lifted the sheet to his face, having to pause and resettle his ancient and crooked looking glasses on his crooked and ancient nose. "There are high levels of hyaluronan in A01's system and higher levels of cortisol and epinephrine. The quantity and production of hyaluronan has increased at a phenomenal rate, perhaps the efficiency has been directed by electrical signals from the brain to this attached PAK...? Or maybe it's the other way around...?"

The high security door opened and Torrent came in, fussing with his latex gloves.

"What took you?" Williams snapped at the late assistant.

Zim's eyes darted between the superior and inferior of the two as the younger man gesticulated at the older. "I was in the crapper!"

"We're recording, you idiot!"

He finally snapped on his gloves, and flickered a gaze Zim's way. Zim was staring back, but the subject's flippant and mocking smile was gone. The creature's drool-shiny and mottled, bitten lips were trembling, and there was something else flickering in the cosmic depth of its eyes: something animalistic, something unhinged.

Torrent looked from the cardiologist to the tense and staring little creature before approaching the surgical table.

The doctor put the scalpel down in exchange for another with a slighter longer blade. "I will make another incision in the gracilis muscle to see if the site heals as quickly as the first." He lifted an edge of the subject's gown to reveal a sweaty and trembling leg. Alongside the perceptible shaft of bone pressing through the skin was a bulging cord of sweaty muscle. Dipping the point of the scalpel on the flexing tendon, Williams pressed. The cold, steel point didn't meet much resistance and it slipped smoothly through straining tissue, causing instant and rapid bleeding that trailed down the leg to the ankle in fast-flowing emerald ribbons.

Zim's pulse kicked wildly. Guttural choking noises came from the subject's throat as he leaned and pulled despondently against the restraints.

Blood trickled into the glass beaker with faster-dripping plips and plops. A01 chomped on air, trying to free his head from the strap, claws similarly clenching into the steel of the armrests.

They were beginning to notice a reoccurring trend.

The careful and precise incisions were taking longer to heal and his heart rate was taking longer to slow down.

Dark greens saturated the cloth of gown as the blade found its mark, cutting into specific muscles with the ease of a knife sinking into a steak. Each incision took twenty seconds longer to close, and had begun to protrude with inflammation when the tissue wouldn't heal correctly, with thin scar lines beginning to appear.

"Guess there is a limit to its regeneration ability." Torrent frostily remarked.

"That could mean any number of things." Williams curtly replied. "I think the subject could go on healing. But healing requires energy, nutrients. You can't get something from nothing. It is possible we are draining this creature's natural energy and resources."

Torrent was only too glad. "Thank God. For a minute there I thought we had a supreme being on our hands. Fucking regeneration. Fucking monster."

"I wonder if A01's healing ability is an active form of defence... In the interest of disease and the nature of its bacteria, we really need a biopsy right away." He shook his head, smiling dreamily. "We won't know for certain until further testing, but its DNA could apply to modern medicine and human beings! Could you imagine the breakthroughs? The possibilities if we were to eliminate injury, and to heal quickly from any disease? A01's genetic makeup is worth billions! Bruises, broken bones, they would be a thing of the past!"

Zim's mouth hung open, his eyes dilating.

"Sounds too good to be true."

"Nothing ever satisfies you, Torrent." Williams placed the dirty scalpel on a separate tray for later sanitation. "I assume the same ability of healing applies to its internal organs. It would make biopsies of the brain and heart easier, for example, but going in deeper may cause an infection."

Torrent laughed. "Have fun trying to cut it up during the vivisection then!"

Ice peeled up Zim's spine and his heart threatened to pound out of his ribcage as he listened to them casually talk about his demise.

"The... The Armada aren't c-coming!" He finally spluttered, looking between them. "That was what you monsters wanted, right? Does that mean I can g-go now?"

Williams's attention was distracted by the volatile and escalating notes of the ECG and took little notice of his pleading.

"Let me go! I'll give you monsters a ten second head start before I blow up this miserable horrible earth ball! I'll... I'll..." The subject's voice turned to a spluttering, desperate gurgle as he started to heave, and dribble and spooch acid trickled out of his mouth in drooling strings. More sweat tricked profusely down his throat and chest, his eyes hollowing as his vision lingered down a tunnel that existed somewhere between the two men. His breath stuttered out of a narrowing throat.

"Proceed!" Came the sharp, predatory voice from the intercom. "Take a sample of its skin. About six inches oughta do. From the arm, the leg, or the..." There was a shuffle of what sounded like pages being flicked "...the deltoid and pectoralis major muscles. Just get on with it."

Zim felt the numbing cold creep into his midsection and chest as panic spilled its fever into his veins, paralyzing him. They moved like caricatures, his vision picked them up, his antennae noted their presence and the warmth and sweat of their bodies, but his presence was fading, moving away, turning inwards. Torrent's large hand clapped onto his diminutive shoulder and he was brought back out, into a cold room with surgical trays and observation windows and white featureless walls where only pain existed.

"Gir... please... is G-Gir okay...?"

Williams paused, moving away a moment as he took his time presiding over the tools and sterile implements.

Zim clenched on the armrests, and tried to steady his core.

They cannot touch me.

They cannot break me.

His attention was drawn like a magnet to the sharp gleaming knife Williams held perched in his bony gloved fingers. There was no time to prepare himself. The man turned, not looking at him, not stopping to warn him that it was going to hurt. Callused, hard fingers through the thin rubber of the glove roughly held the top of his forearm, and Torrent bathed the area they meant to attack with some brown and smelling solution that made his eyes sting.

"No, no, no..." His words were cyclical in an unconscious, rambling way. "No, no... this is n-nothing! I am Zim... Invader Zim... Elite..."

Williams placed the blade on the narrow width of his trembling arm, fingers pinching there to find a place against the bone. He took another look at the knife and bent away to pick up a blade of differing length and depth, placing the other one by a growing assembly of dirtied ones.

"No, no! NO!" He rattled it in rapid sips, gasps and gurgled half-pleas. "Keep away! Keep away!"

Williams hesitated, the new knife clenched in rubbery latex fingers. Glassy and glittery magenta pleadingly looked up at him, rivers of sweat rolling down the creature's throat and exposed arms, the wet and soppy gown having slipped down his shoulders to his shiny collarbone and elbows.

For a moment Zim was certain he had convinced the squinty eyed man, and that he had got through to him, that Williams would step back and reconsider... then: "Torrent, is there a blindfold we can use? Put it over A01's eyes. It might help ease its panic."

"What?" The straps wouldn't give, he raged and battered them senseless, he was barred, he was sinking...

They cannot touch me!

They cannot break me!

The pause in the testing the stress didn't last. Torrent returned with a black length of material, and he was fussing with it.

Zim looked to the observation window, trying to see the figure of the professor through the dark of the glass.

Please!

The breadth of the scalpel fetched along his arm, he wasn't prepared, and the pain was a vice, stealing rapidly up and through his body. The blade caught on the inner seams of muscle for leverage as one would begin to peel the skin of an apple.

For a moment the subject's subdued silence was eerie as A01 fought to breathe, body erratically shaking, sweat soaking every fibre of his gown.

His eyes were glassy reflective orbs that resonated with none of the vividness of before, and the iron that had once reflected the creature's core couldn't be seen.

Williams applied pressure and searing pain followed, his arm may as well have gone up in flames as skin came away, flesh tearing as the cold tip slipped and punctured through, cutting away sinew and fibres of muscle membrane.

He found that place again, that parting in the middle, and something was torn from his arm, but he wasn't aware of it, or why his arm felt so wet and cold and hot at the same time.

The blindfold came towards him, Torrent opening it out like a handkerchief.

-x-

What they were saying was only half absorbed as if everything was happening in some distant place glimpsed through fog. He moved as quickly as he could into the main observatory to see Dr. Williams, Edward and Torrent overlooking a thin, flimsy thing that almost looked like Zim, and when the doctor turned to the observatory holding something, Dib couldn't close his eyes in time. A thin, ropey and bloodied sheet of flesh and muscle membrane hung from his bloodied fingertips.

Zim was no longer screaming. As he stared, nose almost pressing flat to the glass, he saw something almost white and not green in that steel cradle. His eyes were blank, watery muted coatings of stone.

As he stood there, eyes fixed on what Zim had become, there was suddenly nothing to say. Through the years he had pretty much built a script in his head of all the things he wanted to say, wanted to shout, wanted to scream.

Snow was purring against his ears, the silence deathly still when he stood over the bent and mangled body of a fox. It lay, panting in tainted white, with its eyes rolling in its head. Its leg had got caught in one of his traps.

He'd never wanted violence, but his whole life had only ever led to violence.

I just wished for it to stop, I just wanted to... to... win...

His father was looking at him. He could feel his heavy gaze. It made him feel so small.

"Ah, thank you, Williams. See, you are good for something." Carlson said as the doctor dropped the tapered and almost diaphanous leaf of flesh into a sterilized container that Torrent had just provided.

"How... how l-long has he been sitting like that for?" Dib struggled to adjust to the scene not far below them, as a shivery invader looked wildly and blankly at the men as a part of him was contained in a jar. Then a blindfold was lowered and tied over those glassy and frightened eyes. "What... what are you doing to him?"

"We postponed the regenerative trials for you while you rested, but we couldn't wait any longer." The sergeant, not his father, was the first to approach him, and he cupped cold withered fingers over his shoulder. "You haven't missed much, just a modest palpation on its body and a few cuts to see how quickly that little beastie heals."

"What do you mean? It's still evening, isn't it?"

Carlson gave a hearty chuckle. "No, no son. It's Wednesday morning!"

"He's... he's been sitting in that chair, all this time?"

"We can't have the enemy all comfortable now, can we?" The pat on his shoulder was a little less gentle.

The ventilation breathed coldly down the back of his neck as he stared at the piece of bloodied flesh in the container.

One or two observing scientists passed Dib strange and curious looks from their consoles, whereas his father stood stooped over a computer console, not looking into the chamber. He was peering down at the flashing and pulsing lights of the console, gloved hands spread out on it as if the strength in his legs wouldn't support his weight.

Dib ran a hand up his arm, eyes skirting back to the thin and green-speckled soldier.

Was the Irken smart enough to realize that they were merely assessing him and weighing him up in the same way he was weighing them up? They were getting everything they needed as Zim progressed through one torture after another: the basic math of his blood while it was still pure, the tempo of his organs before they began to die, how normal his behaviour before the stress deteriorated his body.

A creature that had perfectly melded into tech and power had become a startled thing straining to look at his attackers. The glistening reds of reflective nebulas that flashed with encompassing and clashing emotions were now covered away by a length of dark cloth.

They weren't invested in the Irken's atypical, neurotic behaviour and intelligence or where he had come from, they were only interested in profiting from his biology and inbuilt tech. Zim's body was that golden egg. They'd play around with him for awhile, and try to take that gift from him piece by piece, and when there wasn't enough, when the enigma of Zim was still an enigma, they'd rip him apart.

He rubbed at his sore and achy eyes.

I told you. I warned you things would be this way.

You stayed anyway. What changed? What made you finally come for me?

"Why are they covering his eyes?"

"It's proven to reduce stress in animals." Carlson offered him a cocktail stick fresh out of the packet, of which he shook his head at. It wasn't long before the sergeant then raided the nearby cabinet and produced an ebony glass tumbler for each of them, upending a bottle of thirty year old scotch and pouring out ample measures before offering the glass to Dib who numbly took it.

"What about getting information from him?" Dib asked softly.

He hadn't expected things to go this way, hadn't expected it to be drawn out with fine-tuned exactness from impartial beings who passed themselves off as scientists - as humans. He supposed his childhood fantasies of the scientists doing a vivisection right there and then without any of the prolonged torment in-between had been purely childish. He couldn't watch his nemesis endure the brutality of this torment, hour after hour. They wouldn't even talk to him, acknowledge his distress, or even look at him anymore than one would look at bacteria in a Petri-dish.

Instead of questions, of the stars, what he had seen, what he had done, they jumped ahead with the distressing formalities of cutting and dicing into him. What about the incoming Irken threat, of a potential army arriving on Earth's doorstep? Instead they were toiling around with statistics and data. Zim's healing ability was pretty amazing, but he had hoped that the uniqueness of his biology would be a lesser concern.

Dib slowly leaned away from the screen, eyelids sliding down. He'd do the same to me, given the chance. Lock me in some room down in his base where no one would find me, so he would be free to dice me up any way he liked.

Zim didn't resemble that towering wall any more. He endured the cutting with squeals, but he was looking increasingly desperate, head swivelling under the strap, eyes blinded as he still miserably tried to track them with his antennae and other senses.

He could hear his enemy's quiet sobs through the insulation of the glass, as Benjamin had whimpered and cried in the corner behind the crates.

The professor was tapping on one of the little computers, he was rewinding the recoding to moments before, and Dib could clearly hear Dr. Williams say: "His genetic makeup is worth billions! Bruises, broken bones, they would be a thing of the past!"

His eyelids lifted, recognizing the cold certainty in those words.

His father kept rewinding the recording, and when he hit PLAY he heard Zim's tinny and shrill voice: "The... the Armada aren't c-coming!"

When Dib staggered, the whiskey spilled from the glass before he could catch it in time. Carlson was watching from those wolfish eyes.

Prof. Membrane played another scene, of Williams plunging a finger into Zim's sex.

He took two steps and grabbed his father's arm. Please, stop playing it!

The professor slowly turned to look at him, the ridges of his brows above the goggles forming into a hard and knotted line.

Zim weakly squawked as he was bodily swung upwards, the chair constricting him in its rotating turns. An MRI machine was descending from the ceiling. It scanned their squealing subject, and Williams was shortly looking at the results. Dib knew what the doctor was looking at: it was the traces of energy leaving the mechanical device on its back as it travelled through networks of nerves and capillaries all over his body: the PAK being the source and supplier of this power, this regeneration they meant to take as if it was rightfully theirs.

"Delicately cutting into A01's skin and acquiring a sample is all so very nice. Like having afternoon tea with the in-laws." Came Carlson's sarcasm as he hit the intercom, "How about you 'scientists' earn your keep for once and be a little more effective this time? Give its healing powers a real challenge!"

Williams lowered the sheet of results, turning towards the observation screen. "What do you suggest?"

"Break one of its bones. I don't care which. Maybe removing a limb entirely will encourage the subject to grow a new one, who knows?"

The intercom crackled as it was suddenly turned off. The professor had his hand over the broadcast button as he stared sharply at Carlson. His goggles could not hide the pallor in his cheeks, or the frown cutting down the middle of his forehead.

Dib could see him trembling.

The sergeant shrugged and paused to sip at his scotch. He enjoyed taking his time with it.

"No." Said the professor at last. "We have acquired enough from Zim for today. He cannot endure anymore."

"Why do you insist on calling this little critter 'Zim?' You keep doing it, like you and that thing in there are in cahoots with one another." He sat on the edge of a desk, cradling the glass in his hand.

The professor didn't move, flinch or look away. Dib watched them, feeling the tension fill the room. The computer screens hummed in the near-dark of the observatory, painting their faces in eerie white.

When the professor wouldn't answer, the sergeant stood up and walked to the doorway, signalling brusquely at Membrane with a cutting gesture. The head scientist stiffened and then he joined the man at the doorway.

The soft whisper of the sergeant had the same casual air, and carried the same grating bark. "It would be a mighty fine shame if I were to declare you an enemy of the States. Your career will be ruined. And you will ruin your son's career, and his future. Do you want to hurt him? The one who sacrificed everything for this? He saved the world! And you hinder him every step of the way!"

The professor slumped as if he had been clubbed from behind.

"This place?" Carlson continued with a sharp gesture, "You're right. It doesn't matter. It's just a building made of bricks, and I need you fools to play doctor for as long as that thing remains alive. But you are starting to worry me. You could be an accomplice for another company, or be in some kind of loony confederacy with A01. Delaying the process of learning from the enemy is a deliberate criminal act! I am playing by your rules, professor. For now. Hell, I could go into that chamber right now and take its PAK clean off for ten minutes or twenty." And he went back to slurping nosily from his glass of whiskey. "Your call."

In the chamber, Williams, Edward and Torrent were looking expectantly at the observatory window for their next orders.

For seconds that felt like long minutes that impossibly stretched, the professor stood as if he had been turned to stone.

Dib watched Carlson stroll back into the observatory to place his empty glass on the desk before he stretched and yawned.

Prof. Membrane was much slower joining them, and when he woodenly reached for the intercom button and pressed, a responding crackle filled the subject's chamber. "Dr. Williams. Do you... have the a-appropriate equipment?" A bead of sweat ran down the side of his goggles and dripped into the wide brim of his collar.

"I do, professor." Came the tinny reply.

"The... urm... breathing ventilator?"

"That too, professor."

"G-Good." He drew back, shrinking from the intercom button as if it was seconds away from exploding. Dib looked between them, his mouth opened, and when he was about to say, it's enough, nothing more is necessary, it's...

"This whiskey ain't so bad." Carlson said, lifting the bottle the professor had earlier bribed him with.

In the chamber the platform clunked and whined as it lowered, presenting Zim horizontally at the appropriate height for the procedure. Slabs of chair disappeared into something of a table, and the Irken hoarsely screamed as pressure and pain was transferred from weakened muscles to other weakened and cramping muscles. "You wanna kn-know how many armed w-weasels I have?" His nasally voice was gurgling, words muttered frantically so much so that it became harder to understand his babble. "One! He's a prototype! He likes those jaws I gave him! The plasma bomb? It doesn't work! I need to make some adjustments to the cell ignition! You can have it! It's under the s-sofa somewhere! The moose with the missile launchers! It was me!"

The door opened, and Zim tipped his antennae just enough so that he could detect the professor walking in.

Williams was changing gloves and handing out a fresh pair to Torrent and the professor as they slipped on surgical masks and aprons.

Zim's less-than-convincing smile beneath the blindfold was breaking at the edges. "Please! I can give you technology! It's really no trouble!"

The professor was overlooking the yet untouched surgical tools on the trolley, all of which were sterilized and polished until they shone. He picked out a small shaft of metal and approached Zim's side. "I need you to open your mouth and bite down on this. This procedure won't take long. I promise you."

Glassy crimson tried to peer through the dark material of the blindfold. He spoke as if something was squeezing his chest. "Wh-what's h-happening?"

The professor paused a moment, looking at the sheets of green running down the Irken's left arm where a portion of skin had been removed. The parcel of skin had been stored in a sealed vial for study. A few more empty containers were lined up beside it.

Williams was looking at 'the sample' in the same way he had, when, as a young scientist, he had observed the gold and pink butterfly in a glass jar. It had been so beautiful – the way its wings had glimmered as if they had contained starlight. He also remembered how that light had faded, turning dark and brown as it died.

When he gently touched Zim's good arm below the shoulder, feeling him convulsively recoil, he could feel how cold he was through the latex of his glove. "I must perform a fracture, little one. I will make it as painless as I can."

His rapid sips of breath took an even shallower rhythm. "P-please... get me out of h-here..."

"Open." When the professor eased the metal cylinder across his mouth, waiting for teeth to clamp over it, he turned back to the implements. He took great pains to avoid looking towards the camera. "I will perform a transverse fracture on the subject's left humerus, a break that will go straight through the bone. The break will be clean, ensuring minimal trauma and bleeding. Torrent, if you can please add restraints to A01? Doctor, keep an eye on his vitals."

More nylon straps were applied and cranked unnecessarily tight over Zim's midsection, knees and throat.

The steel platform's lower shelf lifted, extending into a wider rectangular section. The professor unclipped the restraint from Zim's left wrist and planted his arm on the new extension, palm up. Metal clamps pinged from beneath and snapped down on the Irken's shoulder blade, wrist and elbow, insuring that his arm was completely fixed in place and could not be moved.

Even when he could scarcely budge, teeth and tongue muffled by the metal gag, chest barely having the room to expand, he strained exhaustingly, eyes falling shut behind the blindfold. "Corkscrews and bolts!" A01 muffled around the shaft across his mouth, "Mary had a little lamb! Five thousand fibres for nuclear cells... Twenty batteries, all told!"

Prof. Membrane lifted the Exoden bone breaker implement and released a latch that clamped its jaws on one end of the bone while applying metric tons of pressure with its paring arm onto a specific place until it snapped. The clamp had a crank that easily increased the pressure.

Williams was frowning. "You're not going to saw into the humerus?"

"Too much trauma. A perfectly controlled internal break is more efficient and less invasive! As a fellow professional I am sure you would agree. And since he is not allowed pain relief... and with the chance of infection..."

"No, no professor." Williams retort was gentle, and regretful. "As much as I agree with our professionalism, Carlson has made it very clear that we use the electric bone saw."

"Williams?"

"We must not lose sight of our objective. How can we not realize the full extent of its incredible healing if we do not push the limits of A01's biology? We must gauge the efforts, energies and time it takes for muscular rejuvenation, tissue and bone to heal if we are to learn anything conclusive. Once we have a better understanding, we can take biopsies of its internals safely. Think of what we can discover!"

The professor bent forwards as he leaned on the trolley, but the pair of them didn't wait for him to make up his mind as Torrent started unscrewing and removing the clamp.

"Let me handle it." Williams said. "I've done it thousands of times on lab animals his size."

"No. It's something I must do." His gloved fingers drew towards the electric buzz saw's blue handle and numbly clasped its chassis.

He looked down at the stick-thin arm and the sagging sleeve that had been pulled right up to his collarbone, with Williams dabbing the site with brown alcoholic solution that left a pungent reek.

He tried not to look at Zim, only on the place he meant to cut into.

"Preparing for the incision..." His goggles drew to the site he meant to penetrate, aware that everyone was watching; that the recording would go into the archives for all time. Turning away would ensure his son's ruination, Zim's end and Carlson's effortless triumph over all three of them.

He squeezed on the saw's internal button and the blade began to loudly buzz.

"T-thirty measures for that one! Two hundred and forty volts up the crank!" Came Zim's panicked muffles through the gag.

"I'm so sorry, little one." The spinning blade touched down, slicing through flesh and muscle, green splattering their aprons and masks. Zim choked against the gag, his scream a strangled pig-like grunt. The pained whimpering and guttural chokes and strangled shrieks had Dib stand away from the terminal, hands over his ears. In less than a second there was a crunch as the saw hit bone. The Irken strained out a long, harrowing scream, teeth spasmodically clenching against the gag, antennae changing direction and tension in seconds.

The teeth of the saw cut through, chiselling with rapid speeds through the bone's central point. Blood sluiced and spluttered off the metal ledge, dribbling and flowing into the plastic bucket beneath.

Static was beginning to fall over Zim's eyes, the dark veil of the blindfold now a star-filled purple. He fought to keep from feeling the pain, fought to keep distant from the fact that his arm was being severed. The PAK was burning into and through his spine, the last reserves of its analgesics not doing anything. It was unable to combat the panic soaking through him and unable to control the thuds and thumps felt through his chest wall as his heart started to fibrillate.

Tingly, cold numbness was rushing through, his legs were already cold with it as it went to his chest and head as the world tumbled around him, the buzzing of the saw his eternal company and escort.

An overwhelming urge to sleep replaced the adrenaline, his consciousness leaving him faster than he could chase it.

They were murmuring above him, but they sounded far, far away. His gurgles and pain-fuelled croaks began to weaken but the buzzing wouldn't stop.

His muscles and limbs were helplessly forced under a different kind of control as teeth clacked on the gag, eyes rolling into his skull, limbs dancing within the cradle of their restraints. The world tumbled, the ceiling was a pink sky, and for a moment he was out of the room, he was in the cabin of the Voot, and he was soaring away, escaping the pain.

Moments flashed by, dreamlike and incredibly surreal, and in those glimpses someone was clicking their fingers in front his eyes, of something heavy, bulky and suffocating being pressed over his face. Dimly, he was aware of someone or something hitting his chest and slapping his hand and...

He took a breath, the agonizing pressure in his chest demanded air, and his lungs were filled with pain.

He was vaguely aware that he was lying on the floor as if the platform had just disappeared. He looked up past the masks and the faces and watched as the ceiling opened up. The Massive had arrived, its bulk filling the night sky.

He smiled.

Voices were calling, down his long and weary tunnel. His eyes closed, and the darkness he gladly fell into.