The little alien strained and fought at the tight binds encircling him. He scratched and bit madly, but to no avail, as the invisible bonds only stayed put, if anything, tightening more around the little body. Zim let out a strained choking sound as he felt his chest becoming crushed worse than before, until he could barely move his limbs for it. There was no escape for now, he knew. Not this time. It was then that the voices returned to assault his antennae. The Irken opened his red eyes to glare daggers at the offending humans. They were nameless monsters, faceless, in those ceremonial coats the creatures loved to wear on special occasions. Zim knew what those occasions were. They were like sacrifices or experiments, which entailed cutting open small, defenceless life forms. Simply to spill their blood and organs. Humans had no tact, he thought disgustedly. Oh, look. Here they came now, with their sharp little knives. Zim wanted to laugh at them. They were planning on cutting him open with those pathetic little sticks, hmm? His race's weapons were far more effective.

Nothing could stand up to an Irken's PAK legs. If only they weren't secured behind him, and useless.

Here came one of the humans now, he thought dully. Come to stick his little toothpick into Zim and see what made him tick, was he? A little snigger bubbled from his throat, in spite of the death-grip his body was enduring. No earthly tool of science could truly harm an invader! Zim possessed all the mighty endurance that Irken training and genetic enhancement could provide, and there was his PAK…

Which was defective.

The knife went in. Zim's scornful cackling rapidly spiked up into a harsh, unintelligible scream. The pain was incredible! It was as if the knife had ripped right up his spine and into his brain, and back. Everything was white-hot agony. Now the point was pushing deeper – he could feel the warm trickle carving its way down his torso. His precious blood would drip away and be lost. He felt like screaming at the humans for their…inhumanity! Instead he gritted his zipper teeth, forcing down the scream that still so wanted to come out, and stared with hard eyes up at his killer. But the creature, he saw with horror, was literally faceless. Where there should have been eyes, smelling-organs - hell, some kind of EXPRESSION would have been good - it was simply void. This creature felt nothing. It was causing him pain, and it felt nothing, and - Oh Tallest, this bleeding knife. Why, how could it hurt an almighty member of the Irken Empire so much?

Because you're not.

"What? M-my Tallest?"

You're not a true Irken. You're not one of us.

"I don't understand, Tallest!"

You feel pain, Zim. Your PAK is flawed. You're not one of us. You're a defect.

"NO! YOU CAN'T MEAN THAT!"

Defect…

Those were claws holding the knife. The human was gone, and in its place was…was…

"W-why, my T-Tallest?

His leader grinned down at him. His leader? It was surely the tall, red-eyed Irken he was looking at, but…those eyes. They looked so cold, so murderous. There was a dark, dark light in them that made Zim's very squeedlyspooch crawl. A killer's eyes. A cold, merciless killer who destroyed civilizations, wiped out whole planets for his own purposes. Because that was all he knew.

The word defect pounded in Zim's head endlessly, and it soon mingled with the soft dripping of his own blood onto the unseen floor, progressively growling louder.

/Tip. Tip. Tip. Tip./

The binds around his torso were still squeezing him tightly.

When Zim woke up, he was being strangled by blankets. There was a dull pounding in his head, and the floor was cold again. In the background there was the soft, constant Tip. Tip. Tip of the tall, dark clock reeling in Earth's time with careless automation.

The alien groaned, trying with a considerable effort to sit up under the restriction of tangled covers. They could be described as covers rather than blankets, as there was nothing commercial about sleeping in a pile of rags. Although they may once have been blankets. It was hard to tell.

How Zim hated these treacherous sleep cycles. He never used to get them this much back when his PAK worked…better. The humans engaged in them all the time, he knew, but they were a primitive species who operated solely on fuel and long hours of rest, without the use of a handy piece of AI on their backs. He'd never been plagued by these strange sleep-images before, either. It was only until sometime last year, as he felt himself gradually began to weaken (blame the terrible conditions in here) that he'd found himself having terrible vivid…dreams, were they called? He didn't know how the pig-smellies coped; although it was no wonder they always behaved like mindless animals.

He was feeling sore most of the time, too. That was because of the damaged PAK. Some of its features still worked, but the healing mechanism was faulty, which meant he had to deal with cuts and bruises the primitive way. It turned out wounds required tedious nursing and long white strips and ice packs (or whatever he could find to substitute them), rather than a simple few hours of waiting for it to heal artificially.

That was another thing that scared him about living with a badly mended PAK. If he were to seriously injure himself…

He shivered, proceeding to wrestle with the covers until they finally let him straighten them. He was still nervy about the dream, even though it had told him what he already knew. He spent most of the days not thinking about what had happened that day in his lab, that final call from his leaders, so the emotions festered and usually wormed their way out at night, when he was feeling his most vulnerable. So this was what it was like it be a defect. Suddenly he'd become smaller and more vulnerable. The world was bigger and more threatening now that he wasn't a mighty Irken soldier. And of course, though he wouldn't say it aloud, (not that anyone was there to hear) there was another reason…

The steady ticking continued. Zim groaned and shut his eyes. He couldn't bear to look at that clock; he hated it so much. It sat there day after day and ticked. It wasn't the noise that irked him so much. It was the fact that this was a monument to mankind. The way the timepiece just carelessly put the minutes away was a blatant, uncaring statement that the humans just didn't care what was happening to their planet. Zim knew what was in store. He'd felt the vibrations through his antennae, deep in the Earth's core, and knew it was preparing for the end. It was an like outcry of 'mankind, you're going to die!' that everyone refused to hear. Being outcast had opened his eyes, as had the damage in his PAK. Without the overpowering impulses from the AI dulling his mind, he'd begun to notice things he'd never noticed before. Without the PAK's restriction, Irkens had such powerful senses. He'd sensed the delicate changes in the atmosphere. He'd sensed the earth's inner workings slowly, very slowly, lock into a mad, intricate death dance. It said one thing to him: Mankind was going to get it.

And so was he. He was a prisoner on this planet, just like they were. Just like the Dib…

Closing his eyes was no better. He could feel the death messages transmitted more clearly through the sub ether when he wasn't concentrating with his eyes. He didn't need any more reminders.

But opening his eyes again, he was face to face with that swinging pendulum. It scared him, the way it swayed like that. It was easy to imagine a sleek blade in its place, like out of one of the humans' scary moving-picture films. A blade that was slowly, slowly descending like a predator, to obliviate all life.

It was hypnotising, the way it swayed like that. Like watching blood trickle endlessly from a knife wound. He would find his limbs becoming weak. He didn't want to fall asleep again, but it was happening, his eyes were slowly slipping shut. It was mere minutes before he drifted off, with the clock's ticking resounding in his antennae.

A/N: More stealing of song lyrics for the chapter title -_-

Yes, everyone, Zim is alive! (lol he's only been dead for one chapter) Yayy! Though he seems to be having a little trouble with his lifestyle as well.
Now, before you guys start flaming me about how Zim should be dead, or stupid, because his PAK broke; the PAK is an artificial brain. So my guess is that it has a similar structure to a natural brain; there are different sections which control different things. So some sections of the PAK that controlled certain things were damaged, and others were left intact. And the PAK never got fully detached from Zim. Because of friction the shrapnel only went through one cable, and the PAK had just enough power left to heal itself and then reactivate Zim. But it's still permanently damaged (and by that I mean a bit more than it already was).

Sorry if you get weirded out by all the psychic stuff going on here. This is the supernatural part coming into play. I'm interested in stuff like dreams, and how everything in the universe is connected, and how the universe affects the human (and Irken) mind. (lol if I had a religion it'd be astrology. I'm a bit of a nerd.)

Please let me know what you thought! :) and thank you to the people who are supporting this fic.