Chapter 12: The Escape

There was no telling how long Zim would stay unconscious. Dib had gotten a few good hits in - straight-on and powerful - but Irkens tended to recover quickly. Dib turned away from his fallen enemy, uneasy at leaving his back exposed but aware that there was no other option. Gaz was still staggered against the wall and evidently unfazed by her brother's small victory. She glared up at him and her body stiffened as Dib approached her.

"What are you doing?" she barked, as he grabbed her shoulder.

"Shut up, Gaz." Snapping back at her with equal violence, he began undoing the buckles of her straitjacket. There was a time when he might have tried to help her pull the thing over her head. Now, instead, he yanked every strap free and stopped, letting Gaz work out the rest for herself.

A gasping squeak echoed suddenly around the room. Dib felt his whole body tense, ready for battle, as he turned on Zim's senseless form. The alien hadn't moved. From the far corner came another whimper; GIR seemed to have finally realized that his master had been knocked out.

"Master! You can't sleep now! We was going to get a tobaggan!" GIR hollered. The little robot broke into a sprint, heading for Zim's side with the toy he'd been playing with still gripped in one metal claw.

Dib wasn't about to see what would happen if GIR made it to his goal. He snatched the robot by the wrist mid-run, holding him up off the ground. There had to be a way to disable GIR - a switch on his back, a chip to remove, something...

GIR kicked about half-heartedly in the air, making soft swooshing noises with his mouth as he swung his toy around with the arm that Dib wasn't grasping tightly. Up close, Dib saw that it was a scale model of the Space Shuttle.

Just like the ones in Joby's living room.

"Where did you get this!" Dib managed to pry the Shuttle from GIR's hand, shaking it emphatically in front of the robot's teal eyes.

"Little boy on the ground floor. Master said he wouldn't need it anymore. It can go all the way into space, just like the squirrels, and then the big mean Martian zombies show up-" GIR rambled on incoherently, long after Dib had stopped listening to him.

Now was as good a time as any to do something stupid and heroic. What did he have to lose? Gaz had robbed any last dregs of self-worth from him, and Zim's accusations that this whole nightmare was his fault still rang truer than he liked. Maybe if he could find Joby and bring at least part of the kid back with him, Dib would have something to show for this torturous ordeal. Maybe he could still salvage some purpose from his scraped-bare life.

It was a vain and deluded hope. Perfectly suited to the boy.

GIR clattered to the ground as Dib released him. Wrapping his fingers tightly around the Space Shuttle toy, Dib half-turned to his sister, who by now had worked herself completely free of the straitjacket.

"There's a broken window on the East Wing of the second floor. You can climb through it onto a tree and get outside that way," he said curtly, heading toward the door without looking properly at her. It was all he could bear to be in the same room with Gaz, with her cold and shameless cruelty. Dib half feared that if he looked her in the eyes he'd get angry beyond stopping.

"Where are you going?" Gaz demanded.

"To finish this case."

"I'm coming with you."

"Fine."

It wasn't fine. Even with his shoulder to her he could feel Gaz scowling at him, her amber eyes (regrettably) like his searching for any sign of weakness, any other flaw to pick apart and throw in his face. Dib wanted badly to turn on her and scream. He wanted to demand to see her Certificate of Perfection, bring her attention to the bitchiness and selfishness and shallowness that she so proudly cultivated. All of which he had tolerated because he loved her and had imagined that she loved him too.

But Dib had not the time or energy for such a fight. It would come later. He felt the inevitability of it coil patiently within him like a starved snake.

From out of the corner of his eye he watched her approach GIR on the floor and snap the top of his head open with a well-placed tug on the android's antennae. She rooted around inside of GIR's skull before pulling out a crowbar far too big to have fit in the storage compartment.

"But who was phone?" GIR sobbed, tugging pitifully at the hem of Gaz's shirt. "Who? Was? Phone?"

With an unceremonious brutality she knocked GIR aside with the curved end of the crowbar, sending the little robot careening into a pile of cables. She walked over to Dib and jabbed him sharply in the ribs with the pointed end.

"Go," she said flatly.

"I am."

They slipped through the heavy doors, with one final glance to the still and drooling lump of alien in the center of the room.

Gaz followed him silently into the hallway, which was half-collapsed from the weight of steel coils and from walls half-torn-down as part of Zim's insane remodeling. Dib wondered vaguely where they all originated from - surely Zim didn't just run them across the asylum for his amusement?

Dib broke into a half-run, his footsteps slamming loudly on the floor as the rows of doors flashed by, desperate to put as much distance between himself and Zim as possible. Not that it would do him a great deal of good if the Irken woke up. Gaz's stride was much shorter than his; he heard her panting somewhere behind him as she tried to keep up but he felt no inclination to slow down for her.

The stairs proved simple to find. Most of the signs from when the Crazy House had been functional were still intact upon the scratched walls, pointing the way helpfully to the Electroshock Wing and the Art Room and the Experimental Brain Worm Testing Chamber. Before long they'd turned a corner and found a heavy door leading into an industrial stairwell.

The steps leading down to the first floor were caged in chain-link, undoubtedly to keep any suicidal inmates from throwing themselves off. Dib found the metallic clatter of their steps as they descended to be nerve-wracking; at every turn he expected to see Zim's gleaming biomechanical legs beside him. Instead there was only Gaz, who trailed a few feet behind him like a wraith.

They'd spent their childhood this way, he realized. Creeping around haunted graveyards, spying on Zim's bizarre green house, having stakeouts near ponds full of monsters.

It felt strange, to want her away from him so badly. With every step he was trying to put distance between he and Gaz as much as Zim. And always she caught up with him, refusing to be left behind, riling in Dib the same frustration that a tailgater might only magnified a thousand-fold.

Dib opened the door into the first-floor hallway, gazing down the lines of cells. For a second or two Dib stood frozen, nearly overwhelmed by the place and his uncertainty. Every primal instinct in him was screaming Run! Get out!, and it took all of his focus to ignore them. Joby was here, somewhere, if he could only find him.

Most of the doors hung open at strange angles, and Dib ran past these without a second glance. From the few that had windows he could almost make out a clouded and moonlit sky beyond the glass, but the thought of a world outside of this asylum stretched his brain painfully. There were people out there, somewhere, living normal lives - but Dib believed this as concretely as he believed that the characters in comic books were real.

Finally, at the end of one of the twisted halls, they stumbled across a door that was shut and locked. Dib breathed heavily onto the tiny paneled window in the door, using the steam to wipe the glass clean with the edge of his shirt. There wasn't much light to work with, but the barred window across from him cast a pallid glow on a bundle of something huddled in one of the cell's corners.

He could hear Gaz breathing impatiently behind him.

"Give me your crowbar." Dib held out one hand, stupidly expecting her to comply.

"No goddamned way." Instead Gaz elbowed him roughly out of the way, half-kicking him in the shin until he moved aside. He watched sullenly from the middle of the hall as she rammed the pointed end of the crowbar into the doorjam, throwing all her weight against it to lever the door open.

Dib began gnawing on the nail of his right middle finger while Gaz was getting the door open, straining his ears for any sound of motion from the floor above them. That creaking - was it wooden panels moving beneath the spider-legs of an alien, or just the building settling around them?

Finally Gaz's forcing proved successful. The cell door swung open, pieces of broken wood falling to the ground in an arc on the floor where she'd broken the lock. Moving past her, avoiding eye contact, Dib rushed into the little room.

"No! I won't look at you anymore, I promise! Please, just leave me alone." The quivering ball in a Transformers tee-shirt squeaked and kicked. Joby covered his face, half-sobbing as he shrunk away so far into the corner that Dib almost feared he'd disappear.

The kid's reaction stopped Dib dead in his tracks, looming awkwardly over Joby as his whimpering grew steadily more hysteric. It seemed impossible to Dib that he'd been this small when he was ten years old. No child this size should ever have to be so frightened.

Dib crouched down a few feet away - keenly aware that time was of the essence, but unwilling to overwhelm Joby anymore. He pulled the Space Shuttle toy from his pocket.

"Hey, Joby." The boy held perfectly still at the sound of his name. "I'm Dib. Your mom sent me to look for you. I know this place is really scary, but if you come with me I think we can find a way out. Is this yours?" He held the toy out as some kind of pathetic offering.

Joby revealed an eye for the first time. Grey and shiny as it peaked out from between his fingers.

"Yeah." he said softly, reaching out and grasping one of the plastic wings with a sweaty and grimy hand. "You're not...you're not that monster."

"Heh. I guess I'm not." Dib felt his mouth twist into a smile that was nearly meaningless as he stood back up. Joby uncurled himself from the floor, taking Dib's hand as he offered it.

"Look, this is all really freaking heartwarming. But we've got to get going, Dibshit." From the hallway Gaz snarled at them, striking her crowbar pointedly against her palm.

And just as the last echo of her voice died away, there came a thundering crash from above them. The crumbled walls shook ever so slightly, and Joby squeezed Dib's hand reflexively. There was no more room in Dib's mind for shock or careful planning. His thoughts seemed to rearrange themselves automatically like Tetris blocks, finding the correct alignment without his help.

"Run," he whispered.

The three of them bolted from the little room, tearing down the hallway in the direction opposite the staircase. Joby did an impressive job of keeping up with them, never loosening his vice-grip on Dib's hand as they searched for a way out.

From the floor above came the sound of a bellowing scream, and in the tumbling rattle that followed Dib realized that he knew, somehow, that Zim had descended to the first floor. He could come stalking around any corner, any instant, and this time the alien would likely not be in the mood for torture games or speeches. His vengeance would be quick and violent.

Dib fought against the prickling chill that the noises rose on his skin, his legs nearly giving beneath him with each slamming step. Every cell in his body seemed to quake and jitter as they ran on through the halls in desperate search of a way out. Gaz's rasped panting behind him echoed his own, and when he glanced over his shoulder her hair was sticking erratically to her sweat-streaked face.

They turned a corner, Dib's eyes raking the hall for any aberration, any sign of escape. He saw one - twenty yards ahead of them, one of the doors was thrown open. Light beamed out from it like a beacon, clear and white and perfect. This was it. This had to be it. Their ticket to freedom.

"There!" he called unnecessarily.

The sound of stomping and rattling was growing louder, imminently close now. It didn't make any difference. They were nearly there, the light was growing brighter. Dib felt his lungs swell almost to bursting within his chest in a strange mixture of relief and anticipation, as if this light was the lucky break he'd been waiting for his entire life. Dib nearly dragged Joby over the threshold as they ran through the door with Gaz close on their heels.

Except there was no outlet. No gateway to safety. No end-of-level marker. Dib looked dumbfounded around the room, lit brightly by a sparking energy reactor, and remembered with a disappointment that seemed to crush his very bones that it was still nighttime. There was no way that the light could have come from outside.

All around them great blue beams of energy were snapping and cracking between different parts of the reactor - Zim must have built it to run his vile machines, because no human energy source could produce power so cold. Unlike his father, Dib didn't have much interest in alternative sources of electricity. He only superficially noticed the sparking shafts of light and Tesla coils as he stared around the room in which he'd trapped them.

Dib's stomach jerked inside of him as he tried to backtrack, nearly yanking Joby off his feet. He shoved past Gaz who was gaping just as intently at the dead end as he had been, the crowbar hanging limply by her side. It was, of course, all for nothing - because just as Gaz began to protest at his roughness there came a darkness across their only way out.

Zim had found them. His Pak legs spread the full width of the doorway, his scarred face glowering down at them in the sparking light which emphasized every murderously twitching muscle. Dib was allowed a single second of choking fear as Zim slipped into the room and stomped their chance of survival down to zero.

Without gracing Gaz or Joby with a single glance, Zim descended on Dib with all the speed and violence of a pouncing raptor. This was no time for words. Zim had clearly grown impatient with his monologues and plans of torture, his delusions of evil grandeur. As the alien's claws sank into his shoulders, Dib realized that Zim was sick of all this sadistic foreplay and now merely wanted him dead.

Well, he's going to have to fight for that pleasure, isn't he?

Before Zim could shove him to the ground, Dib brought his fist around as hard as he could into the side of Zim's head. Evidently the spot was still sensitive, because Zim howled and stumbled away beneath the blow.

Dib took his window. Running on fear and anger, cramming every drop of energy into one motion, he smashed another fist into Zim's midsection, knocking the wind out of the invader and throwing him back toward one of the energy reactors. One of the beams of energy jittered as Zim's Pak leg grazed it while he tried to regain his bearing.

Zim retaliated the instant he righted himself. Bearing his teeth, seething and growling rabidly, Zim heaved one of his Pak legs high above them both and brought it smashing down toward Dib's head like a guillotine. By some miracle of animal instinct Dib intercepted the strike. He wrapped one hand around the leg mid-air, yanking it backwards and bringing Zim crashing down onto his back.

"Fool boy! The reactor!" Zim yelped incoherently, scrambling desperately away from the beam of energy he'd fallen next to. For the first time, Dib saw Zim's face stretch and voice heighten into something very like fear when the alien almost touched the blue shaft of light.

The Hunter reawakened. It wanted to see that expression on the alien's face again. Dib's body was too full of screaming adrenaline and mixed emotions to argue with it.

Clearing the space between them with a single, long-legged leap, Dib landed roughly on top of Zim's small body. Dib bore down on Zim, hands locked around the Irken's shoulders, forcing him toward the beam of energy.

Beneath them both the Pak legs pushed feebly against the ground in an attempt to protect their master. Zim flailed against Dib's glacier-like bearing, now clawing at his arms, now spitting into his face - but Zim's head was only a few inches away from being wiped cleanly away. He was only a few inches away from finishing this for good.

Dib heaved his weight forward, every muscle strained to snapping, the great blue cascade crackling as their human and Irken sweat flew against it with each grappling change in position.

In a sudden jarring instant, Dib had nothing to push against. Zim let his Pak legs collapse, slipping out from beneath Dib's grip so neatly that not even his antennae grazed the energy beam. It happened far too quickly for Dib to see what kind of acrobatics the Irken had managed. Far too quickly, too, for him to stop himself before his right arm rammed straight down into the fluctuating blue mist.

There was no pain. Not in that instant, anyhow. Dib felt a sort of numbness spread to about halfway down his forearm before he jerked his arm reflexively away. An arm with the hand and wrist now missing.

For a second or two he stared dumbly at the charred stump, willing his muscles to move fingers long disintegrated. And then, as if his body was just now catching up with itself, the place where his hand had been began to flare with a seething agony as if on fire.

Dib screamed. He scrambled awkwardly across the floor, away from the reactor, holding what was left of his arm far away from his body as if it were a foreign object. Every thought came into his head already jammed and jumbled, a flickering pain-and-shock-induced insanity that robbed him of anything more than an insect's level of comprehension.

Zim was far too cunning to let Dib's temporary stupor go unnoticed. With a sweeping blow, the Irken knocked Dib onto his back, forcing every bit of air from his lungs. Dib coughed and gasped for a fleeting, precious instant before Zim fell upon him. Slamming his knees into Dib's stomach, Zim perched on top of his weakly struggling form. Both of Zim's clawed hands locked around his throat, digging out rivulets of blood, squeezing breath and vision from him.

Not that Zim was about to be satisfied with suffocating his enemy to death. Dib stared as a single, gleaming point rose above both of them from Zim's Pak - glittering spectacularly in the strobing blue light. The metal spike tensed like a scorpion's tail. The world fell still and silent around them, a void of nothingness that extended in all directions beyond the alien and the boy.

So this was it. This was death. He was a fish gasping for breath as it waited to be put out of its misery by a flashing blade.

Perhaps this was all the better death Dib deserved, really. He'd done nothing but fail his entire life. Capturing Zim had been a failure within itself. He'd spent his whole life disappointing his father and cultivating a hatred within his sister. He'd failed to protect Gaz, failed to rescue Joby. What more could his life possible have been besides more failure?

Dib closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and waited for the spike to descend.

Years must have passed. With a sudden and elating whoosh Dib realized he could breathe again. Had that been all? No pain? His mind tidied itself with surprising rapidity as soon as oxygen began taking up its rightful place in his lungs, and Dib opened his eyes to see if he'd landed in purgatory.

The world was moving in fast-forward. Everything that had been still and silent before was suddenly a rush of noise and violence. And six feet from him, grappling in a twisted mass of purple and green and steel and flesh, were Gaz and Zim.

They fought like dogs, each one constantly gaining and losing the upper hand. The hooked end of Gaz's crowbar smashed down on Zim's fragile body with the same ferocity that the Irken slashed at her with his claws and spiked biomechanical legs. Blood splashed the floor, both snarling and grunting profanities with each failed or successful strike.

Across the room was Joby, hunched fearfully near the door, evidently so petrified by the roiling battle that he'd forgotten to run away. Dib scooted very carefully across the floor toward him, never standing and never taking his eyes off of Gaz and Zim's tussle.

Gaz seemed to have finally discovered a weakness. Zim got a hold of one of her arms, trying to sink his peg-like teeth into her hand, but Gaz retaliated by planting a boot on his chest and kicking back with a snap of her leg.

Both arms finally free, she gripped her crowbar two-handed and knocked Zim onto his stomach, ramming the pointed end of the metal into the wafer-thin space between Zim's back and his Pak.

The biomechanical legs tried vainly to twist around and stab at Gaz, but she was positioned too close to Zim and was moving too quickly.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" Zim screamed, clawing desperately at the ground, single eye widened in a demented expression of shock that Dib had seen once before. The alien had been on a dissection table then.

Gaz clearly experienced none of the conflict that Dib had felt on that day five years ago. Instead, she heaved the end of the crowbar backwards, dodging flailing Pak legs as Zim's domed, metallic life-force came popping off of his body with a satisfying snap. Instantly the rail-thin spikes retracted back into the little device, no bigger than a box of tissues.

Zim screeched, fumbling for the thing as two thick wires writhed snake-like from his back. Swinging her crowbar in a great arc, Gaz knocked Zim away, snatching the broken Pak from the ground and throwing it full-force into one of the blue, sparking energy beams.

Perhaps she'd expected the thing to disappear, just as Dib's arm had done. Vaporized from the reactor's power output. Instead the place where the Pak had landed began to expand outward in a sparking wave of heat, an explosion that wasted no time with fire and went straight to convection.

Dib watched as Gaz leapt from the Pak's violent reaction with the energy beam. She hauled him up off the ground, and he managed to find his feet after an instant or two of wobbly-kneed hesitation. The heat was igniting the cheap wallpaper, scorching the aged carpet, failing to activate the defunct sprinkler system.

With a strength that came from nowhere Dib scooped Joby up with his good arm. The boy locked himself around Dib's neck, shaking so badly that Dib had to use his mangled right arm to hold the kid still.

None of them hazarded a backward glance as they ran from the fire and the doomed Irken writhing on the floor.

I haven't decided yet whether to have two more chapters or just one – I guess it depends on how efficient I can be with the resolution. Most of the heavy action is out of the way, now we just need some falling action and a few last conflicts to be resolved. I admit that I didn't proofread this chapter as much as the last few, just because of time constraints and a few other things, so if you notice anything overtly weird, please let me know via a review! ^ ^

As we're winding down, I just wanted to take this opportunity to say THANKS SO MUCH for all the beautiful reviews I've got on this story. When I posted this like three months ago I never in a million years dreamed that I'd one day be updating a 70-review IZ story, but here we are, and that's all thanks to YOU fantastic people. I've got a couple other projects simmering right now – a couple of one-shots, a short story, and two radically different bigger stories – and you all have given me the oomph to keep writing beyond this little story. So thanks, it really means a lot : )