The two worked desperately over the girl. Once enemies, united forever under a common goal and enemy, working together.
"Stay with us, Gaz," Zim hissed, hiding tears of some chemical that were dripping down his face. "Call us stupid, boss us around, anything. Just stay with us."
"So much internal bleeding," Dib said, trying to decipher the Irken labels on the machines. "What…how did this happen?"
"Meekrob. We may save her yet," Zim shouted defiantly. "No one rivals Irken medicine and Vortian-designed technology!"
Long hours they worked, at times it felt in vain. Zim had to force Dib to sleep well into the next day so that he would not make a mistake. Mistakes would be deadly in this case.
Gaz was still clinging to life, but by a thread no bigger than a strand of DNA. Zim placed her in a life support chamber that would keep her alive so that he could study exactly what was wrong with her.
***Gaz's Dream***
She watched as one by one they fell. War raged around her. Hope lifted its white wings and left them.
But something caught it and brought it back.
***Reality***
Gaz's eyes widened and she tried to jump up when she awoke, but she couldn't. Anger coursed through her directed at whomever or whatever was keeping her from doing what she wanted.
"Be still, little Gaz," a familiar voice said smugly yet gently. "See, Dib-human. I told you she would live."
Gaz groaned as a wave of nausea swept through her. She was floating in some liquid in a glass tube that reminded her eerily of what she had rescued Zim from. Gaz tried to ignore the argument Dib and Zim were having but it was beginning to be too much for her to ignore.
"I'm telling you, worm-monkey, her charts are looking very odd for a human."
"And I'm telling you, Zim, that she just almost got killed by a space thingy that apparently has no form of its own. Of course her charts are weird looking!"
"Shut up, you two, or I will plunge you into a nightmare world from which there is no waking," Gaz growled, a dark light shining from her eyes.
"Sorry, Gaz," Dib said, sheepishly. "Hey Zim! Where did you say that button for the shield thing was?"
Zim sighed and pointed to a large red button on the wall under the word 'shield'. Feeling foolish, Dib pressed it and Gaz was surrounded by welcome silence. She could still see them but at least she couldn't hear their annoying voices.
"As I was saying, her brain waves have practically tripled from that of normal humans! Something's not right about Gaz, Dib-worm. Can't you feel it?"
"Feel it? No of course not! How could you feel something like that? Besides she could just be thinking more about something, ever think of that?"
"Bah! Pitiful human! Your brain waves don't triple when you think more! Besides! What about what happened to her eyes just now? Human eyes don't become black pits like that!"
"That's my sister's fury. It happens sometimes. She can burn things that way. Your overreacting, Zim. Nothing is wrong."
"Rule one in the Academy for Invader Training is that if something is different, something is wrong! I know something's wrong with Gaz! I just know it, but I'll need to run more tests to find out what it is exactly."
"That's a weird rule but it kind of makes sense if your entire race is made up of cyborg clones that hate everyone else. Anyway, haven't you done enough tests on my sister? Can't you just let her recover?"
"Relax, Dib-weasel. I'll just need some cell samples."
"Fine then just ask her first."
"I was planning to do that."
***some other room***
Zim watched three sets of samples on the screen. Two seemed to glow, one much brighter than the other. All were contained in separate shields.
"Peculiar occurrence, quiet peculiar," Zim mumbled. "It's as if the two fused together."
The light in the room was suddenly turned on, surprising the Irken. Turning around, he saw Dib with one eyebrow raised.
"Why were the lights off?" he asked, walking over to Zim.
"I donno," Zim said returning to the samples.
"Anyway, what are those?"
"You sure ask a lot of questions, Earth-boy. That one is a sample of Gaz's cells, that one's yours, and the last one is Meekrobian," Zim pointed to each in turn.
"How'd you get my cells?" Dib studied the samples.
"I had some left over from the baloney incident. I try to keep a ready supply of human cells at all times. Anyway, I've found something interesting in Gaz's cells that do not appear in normal human cells. Watch."
The computer zoomed in on one of the cells to the left, focusing on the nucleolus. With the press of a button, Zim sent a current of electricity through the cell. Nothing happened.
"Umm…what were you going to show me?" Dib asked, confused.
"Silence!" This time the computer focused on Dib's cells. When Zim pressed the button, the electricity caused the cell to convulse and explode. The alien smirked at the human's horrified expression.
"As you can see, energy similar to Meekrobian energy waves sent through both yours and your little sister's cells causes quiet a reaction to yours but none at all to your sister's," Zim explained, pacing back and forth. "I believe that somehow when part of the Meekrob died while still in Total Control of your sister, it fused itself to your sister creating a hybrid. She now shows some Meekrobian characteristics, but, luckily enough, not the sharing of information. She's still an individual and not technically part of the Meekrob Hive. I wonder, though, if she has the Meekrob's memories up until she was fused."
"Okay the only experience I've had with Meekrob was just now with my sister and that one where you gave me a dream world where the Meekrob gave me some sort of gift to help defeat you," Dib said. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
Zim sighed. "Humans. Computer! Bring up the Meekrob's holosimulation."
A hologram of a golden creature identical to the ones in Dib's dream world appeared. "The Meekrob are beings made mostly of energy. They have a centurial crystal that acts like a main brain of sort. Because they are mostly energy, any part of the Meekrob is a conscious living thing. In fact, I'll have to destroy those cells over there so that we don't have a spy in our midst. Anyway, they operate in a colony structure called the Hive. All of them our connected so even a single cell of the Meekrob are considered a 'we' rather than 'I'. They are sort of like your Earth ants or bees except none of this queen-unit thing. They can control other beings in a process called Meekrob Total Control, or MTC for short. I destroyed the one in Gaz by stimulating her nervous system. It made the Meekrob feel things like emotions or textures. They aren't used to that, being creatures of energy and all. Very interesting reaction, if I do say so myself. I personally liked 'depression'."
"Okay, I'm in the same room with an alien who likes to torture other aliens by making them depressed," the boy said nervously.
"Very useful, actually, that device," Zim ignored everything. "Fills others with pain yet leaves no mark at all. Good for torturing potential slaves."
The room suddenly began to flash red. "Warning! Perimeter breached! They're taking Gaz!"
Both human and Irken dashed to the room Gaz only to see a tractor beam pull up the sleeping hybrid. Outside, a huge, opaque, orb-shaped ship blasted off into the stars. Zim flexed his clawed fingers, eyes glowing red.
"Computer! Ready the Voot," he commanded. "No one steals Zim's human. No one!"