Tuesday, 7:00 am. Charlie.
A harsh buzzer like a steam engine horn jolted me awake. I swung my legs over the edge of my cot and pressed the soles of my feet onto the cool tile floor. My short black hair hung in my eyes and I swung my head to right it. The door, a few feet straight across the room from me and almost the same height as the ceiling, opened without a noise.
"Breakfast." The voice in the darkness of the hallway stated.
"I know." I returned.
A hand that seemed to have no body pushed a tray into the light from my room and returned. The door closed.
The ridged shiny metal tray had a bread roll covered with extra flour, boiled corn, and sticky lasagna from a box. They must still have leftovers from Sunday.
12:00pm.
"Lunch."
"I know." Before the door closed and I stuck my plastic spork into my watery corn, I called out, "Your kitchen must be having a strike or something, huh? I expect more variety from this establishment."
No answer.
I wanted to ask, Why am I here? What are you doing with me? Am I just a prisoner because of what I know about Zim? But they would never answer me; not even when, days ago, I had asked something as small as, "Where is Dib?"
6:59 pm.
"Day Three of my imprisonation. Imprisoning? Impris... Whatever." I didn't know if there was a secret camera in my room somewhere, but if there was, some guard had already seen me pee in the little metal toilet in the corner, so what did a little crazy-talk matter? Even if they could see or hear me, there wasn't any secret information they could get from my muttering. If anything, it would make the watch guard's 9-5 day go by a little faster.
"So far I have been surviving on corn and lasagna. One time they brought a muffin that was probably from the guard's lunch the day before. Over. Kssssh." I clenched my fist into a ball and tapped my thumb on my index finger in the motion of turning off a walkie-talkie. In a deep voice I replied to myself, "That was nice of them. You should ask for a brownie next time, over. Bsssttt," My normal voice again, "Yeah, I'll do that, over. Kshht."
After dropping the tray onto the cot beside me, I wiped old spaghetti sauce from my mouth from lunch onto the thin blanket folded on top of the cushion. Hope you guys have Tide.
Then a voice said, "Dinner!"
"I kn-" I began, looking up at the hand that held a tray level with my head. The hand was bare, not gloved in white like the people who worked here. My eyes continued up. Black jacket, blue shirt with a smiley face. Big glasses on a big head. Hair like a scythe.
"Hey Charlie." He set the tray on the ground and knelt down to meet my eyes.
Dib. What are you doing here?
I realized I didn't say it aloud, cleared my throat, and croaked, "Dib?" He smiled, and it sent fire bubbling through me. I began to shake, not with cold, with... with...
"Dib?"
"Yeah, it's me."
"Dib... you..."
"What is it? It's me."
"You motherfucker." Dib's eyes went wide as I lurched to my feet and took a single step toward him. "Do you have any idea how long...? How long I've been in here. Where were you?"
He took a nervous step back to match mine. "I know, I'm sorry, I wasn't allowed to come see you. I asked if I could when I found out you were still in here but Agent Darkbootie only just let me in the lab today and he-"
"So you knew I was in here this whole time, and you did... nothing?"
All I got in response was a weak smile and, "I-It was only a few days, right?"
I let out a growl and reached forward with my hands towards him, envisioning my fingernails as claws. He yelped and leaped back, pressing his index finger onto a glass box beside the door and pulling it closed as I reached it.
"No!" I screamed, slamming on the cold door with the palms of my hands, "It's YOUR FAULT I'm in here! Your fault!"
I heard his voice, faint on the other side of the thick metal, "I'm sorry, Charlie." And then footsteps walking away down what sounded like a corridor outside my room. I shook my head. Stop calling it your room. It's your cell.
Slapping both hands to the metal one more time, I turned around and faced my cell, back slouching against the door. It was smaller than I remembered now, barely the size of three or four Port-O-Potties stuck together. After seeing Dib's face and clothing in color, the white walls and floor were maddening. Realizing that I was gnashing my teeth together, I made myself exhale slowly. So much for Dib coming to get me out.
Spiky haired bitch.
Stop, think! You can figure this out.
Thanks subconscious! But how? There's nothing in here to use to escape.
Isn't there?
My eyes flitted over the tray, the food that Dib had just brought it. With his bare hands. I stood up straight, mind stirring after days of sluggishness and unuse. The other guards always wore gloves, but Dib... Oh what an idiot.
I raced forward and slid to my knees where he had dropped the tray. Pressing my cheek to the ground, I touched the tray with my fingertips to angle it toward the light in the ceiling. Yes! The greasy spots where Dib had held the tray were still untouched. Some faint memory of a spy movie came to my mind. Dust... dusting for fingerprints! But what dust? This place was always so clean...
My eyes widened. The roll. The bread roll. When Dib set the tray down, most of the extra flour dusted on the crust had floated off and onto the ground. Thinking quickly, I grabbed a tuft of hair from near my ear and lunged forward. I dabbed the ends of my hair into the thickest area of dropped flour and tapped it against the side and edge of the metal tray when I saw the most cloudy spots. There!
The flour clumped and coated on the oils left on the metal. After a couple of the gentlest dabs I could manage in my excited state, I could see the swirls and outline of Dib's first three fingers.
But how do I transfer it to the scanner? In the movies, they always used a piece of rubber, like a rubber glove or something. I didn't have anything like that. I straightened to my knees and looked around, on the edge of panic. Rubber; something sticky and flat and...
I could have smacked myself. There's no way this will work. Dropping to my hands and knees again, I used my hands to pry the top layer of rubbery melted cheese off my lasagna square. Underneath, coated in red sauce, was a flat, sticky layer of noodle. I plucked the first lasagna slice up and slid it into my mouth, flooding it with saliva and sucking off the chunky spaghetti sauce. When it was clean and dripping with my own gross spit, I waved it around like a miniature square yellow flag, getting flecks of saliva all over myself and the floor. As it dried, I thought for a second what I must look like if someone were to walk in, looking flat at the ground with my butt in the air as I dumped flour in my hair, and now waving my dinner noodles around in my hands. But escape was more important than appearance at this point. When the flat piece of pasta was dry and sticky again, I bent down and used my thumb to press it to the clots of flour I had made on the edge of the tray. It stuck, miraculously. I pulled the layer away, and nearly melted with relief when I saw a (mostly) clear imprint of Dib's finger in flour. Situating the fingerprint directly over my own fingertip and wrapping the rest of the flat pasta around my finger, I walked slowly to the door.
"There's no way this is going to work."
It will! It has to.
"No way. The scanner has to be more high tech than this."
I doubt they have a noodle-catcher setting.
Good point. Stop talking to yourself ang GO!
I took one more deep breath, and pressed my makeshift Dib's Finger onto the little glass scanner. A red line traveled up and down and before I could blink, a green light and a small click made me jump.
No way.
The door was cracked now, trailing open away from me. I began moving forward and pushed through the door into the hallway before my brain comprehended what had happened.
After the brightness of my white cell, the hallway looked pitch black. But my eyes adjusted within seconds, and I saw that there were tiny red LEDs along the edge of the walkway, like at a movie theater. The walkway extended both to my right and left. I slowly pushed my door closed behind me, hearing it click closed and lock again. Making sure my lasagna fingerprint was securely stuck to my finger, I started to the right without letting my panicked thoughts stop me, following the red-lit corridor with my bare feet making small thuds on the floor.
As I walked, I saw more windowless gray doors in the dimness of the hallway, one every twenty feet or so. I moved faster. No time to free any other prisoners. But then I froze.
I could hear footsteps echoing down the hall towards me. I frantically started to the left, and then the right, before finally darting for the closest door that I had passed, a few feet back. There was a pad to the right of the door and I pressed my pasta-covered finger on it. BUZZ! Jerking from the loud noise, I crept through the unlocked door and closed it behind me. The whiteness blinded me. Blinking several times, I saw a shadow in the cloud of white just in front of me. Finally, it became clear.
An Irken alien was lying on its side on the cot in front of me. It looked a bit like Zim, about the same height, but was much squatter. Its closed eyes were round, matching its face and body. It had several stains on its reddish uniform, and was covered in bruises.
I had to cover my mouth to not make a sound. Remembering why I had ducked in here, I pressed my ear to the door. The footsteps were coming past... and walked away. Whew...
When I looked back at the alien, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Its pink eyes were open. They narrowed at me.
"Well you don't look like one of the guards," The voice sounded male, a bit nasally. The alien sat up, stretching his arms above his head with a sigh,
"Let me guess, the Tallest finally sent a rescue mission for me. I knew they would! Your human disguise is very good!"
"The Tallest? What's that?"
"You don't know who..." He paused, looking at me suspiciously, "Who are you?"
"I'm... I'm here to rescue you?"
"But you weren't sent by the Tallest?"
"No, I don't even know who that is."
He shrugged and pushed absently at his empty dinner tray with his foot, apparently figuring any rescue mission is a good one, "The Tallest are the leaders of our race: The Irken Empire."
"So you're the same species as Zim."
His eyes went wide.
"Zim? You know Zim?"
"Yeah, he's the reason I'm in this whole situation. He crashed in my backyard and these Matrix-leather-type agent guys came and kidnapped him and me. They brought me here, but I escaped from my cell. I just came in here to hide from a guard walking by."
He looked impressed, "You escaped your cell? What's your plan now?"
"Um, well. Not exactly sure. I just have to get out of here."
The Irken shook his head, "If only we had my ship! Then we could fly out of here."
Oh. Duh.
I grinned at him manically, probably scaring him a little.
"Zim's ship is here. I saw them loading it onto a truck to bring with us. It's here somewhere!"
"Excellent!" He gasped, "Do you know where?"
"No, but... I mean, this place can't be that big, right? We just have to sneak around until we find it! I'm Charlie, by the way."
"At your service," The alien stuck his hand up to his forehead in a salute and sideways smile, "Invader Skoodge, at your service!"