A/N: Dib wakes up to find himself strapped down in Zim's laboratory with an alarming hole torn in his pants. There's talk of sausage links, Dib's fear of needles, and Zim's growing frustration at the fact that the big-headed boy just can't seem to remember what the heck happened to him last night.

*Warnings for language, descriptions of some icky shit, and needles

Chapter Two:

The Ooze

Darkness. Like waves rolling, swelling, carrying me along. Drifting endlessly amidst the black. Just the empty quiet, the hollow cold, enveloping the nothingness. Am I dying? Is this what it feels like to pass from one realm of existence to another? To float from the fleshy cage of the physical into a higher plane? It's...almost peaceful -

"Watch out for the Monkey!"

Oh, no.

"The Monkey is of little importance right now, GIR! Move it out of the way - he's dripping his filthy human fluids everywhere -"

"NOT ON MY MONKEY!"

"THEN MOVE THE MONKEY!"

I can feel my body being dragged around like a bag of wet dirt. My head bumps into something hard. A moan rumbles up my sore throat as the pain starts to register. It's dull at first, but as I crawl into the light of consciousness, it sharpens. My lungs are aching. My chest is on fire. It hurts to breathe.

"This isn't funny, Dib-stink."

His voice swims in and out of my ears. I clench my eyes shut, the muscles in my jaw contracting as my teeth grind on one another.

"Stop acting so... weird !" Metal clangs somewhere behind me. He hisses. A mixture of several beeping machines starts to fill the air. "Zim commands you to return to your normal state!"

My senses are gradually restored to me. I'm breathing. I can hear my heart beating. The blood rushing. My head pounding. I'm lying down on something cold and hard and I begin to panic -

"Be still, human," Zim snaps. "GIR, find the restraints!"

He unleashes a whine shrill enough to spur a ringing in my left ear. "But I'm uuuussssiiiinnggg them !"

"GIR, I will not ask again - listen to Zim or I will remove your battery for the rest of the day!"

The little robot shrieks in despair as he runs out of the room. My lips feel numb. I manage to pry my eyes open just enough to see Zim standing above me, wearing white, glossy goggles and fidgeting with a fistful of tubes while muttering under his breath in Irken.

" Mmmph. "

His attention snaps to me. He yanks off his goggles and leans over my face, searching my eyes with his bright red ones. His skin is slick with sweat; he looks tired.

"Stay. Still." A gloved finger pokes the center of my forehead to punctuate each word.

I swallow hard. "W-What's-"

"You've had three seizures," he slides his goggles back over his face and leans to his right to grab a clear tube with a shining point. It takes a moment to register that the object he's holding is a massive needle.

"H-Hey!" I try to squirm away but I still can't properly control my body. God, my throat hurts. "Don't you fucking stick that in me-"

"GIR, where are those restraints?" he yells. He grabs the hand I've just barely managed to lift and presses it back down against my side. "Zim said to stay still , human."

"I found them chains, Master!"

I can hear GIR's heavy robot feet clomping into the room, but the table I'm lying on is too high up to see him. Zim's mouth purses before stretching wide in an angry scream.

"Those are SAUSAGE LINKS, GIR!"

Another devastated wail. Glass shatters and the table shakes a little bit when I see the aforementioned chain of very discolored sausage links go flying across the room before landing with a sticky thwack on the windshield of Zim's spaceship. GIR's crying echoes across the lab, even after he's run out and presumably back upstairs.

"You stupid, idiot robot, I said - oh, wait." Zim sets the needle down and bends over, shuffling through what sounds like a stack of drawers. "I found them."

"You're not tying me up, Zim," I snap. "I thought we got past the whole 'let's dissect each other' thing?"

He waves his hand. "Zim never made any such commitment! Besides, your movements are far too erratic for me to extract a sample."

A sample? A sample of what? I manage to lift my head a tiny fraction when I see what the hell Zim's doing. There's a fucking hole torn through the left thigh of my jeans (far too high up for my comfort), exposing blood-smeared skin and a dry, crusting wound with a concerningly purple hue.

"What the fuck is that?!" I yelp. If I could crawl outside of my own body, this would be the time. My legs begin to shake and twitch as if I could scramble away from my skin. My quadriceps contract and a small squirt of dark, black fluid starts to ooze from the site.

"Yes, see?" He grabs one of the steel shackles and pops it open. "This is what I was talking about. Your disgusting human infection is rotting your brain and it's making you even more terrible than usual at listening to instructions."

"Zim, wait - hey!" But he ignores my protests. All I can do is let out a string of obscenities while he leans over my quivering form and secures the shackles around my ankles and wrists, snapping them to the metal rungs on the side of the table with a weighty click.

"There!" Zim sits back and admires his work with a grin. I feel like an animal, an experiment strapped down in a cold, alien laboratory. How many nightmares have I had like this?

I pull uselessly at the cuffs with the minimal strength I have left. "Zim, please - I don't know what the fuck that thing is, but for the love of god, please don't screw up my leg - there are important arteries in there and if you-"

"I will not 'screw' your femoral artery, Dib-stink," he spits. "Zim is well aware of your inferior anatomy. I am merely extracting the filthy ooze to see what has poisoned you. Now, try to keep the screaming to a minimal level." He adjusts his goggles with one hand and grabs the needle from the tray with his other. "This will hurt, probably."

I tilt my head to the side and clench my eyes shut. Yep. I'm going to die.

The tip of the needle touches my flesh, meeting the tiniest bit of resistance before puncturing the skin and sinking to the tissues below. My heart slams against my ribs. My toes curl. The pain sends me reeling and I'm suddenly grateful for the restraints as every limb tenses and pulls hard enough to make me want to split into pieces. I can't control the sound that rips up my throat - all I can do is press the side of my face into the cold surface of the table and yell, eyes squeezed shut, my brain electrocuted by a billion pain signals.

"Zim," I gasp, wishing I could crush my skull into the table to end it, "please - fuck - stop! "

"Almost done." His voice seems so far away. Drowned out by the torrent in my head. The firestorm in my veins.

I open my mouth to expel another slew of curses when a wave of darkness swells from below and billows across my thoughts. My consciousness slips, and down I go into the murk.

…

…

"He sure does sleep a lot - is that 'cause of his big head?"

" Nhnn." My eyes peel open slowly. I'm still in the lab...so it wasn't a dream. God, it feels like I've been hit by a truck.

"Hi!" GIR's bright blue eyes fill my vision and he grins so wide it doesn't seem plausible. I become aware of the weight on my stomach and notice he's straddling it with his hands planted firmly on my chest. "Did your big head get a good nap?"

I groan and wince at the blinding light, turning my face towards the table. "No, not really." My brow furrows. "Wait, where's Z-"

The sound of doors bursting open makes me almost jump out of my skin. GIR bounces off of me with his hands thrown in the air. "Master! The Dib is awake now!"

I lift my head and see Zim stomping towards me and he's looking rather pissed. He's changed back into his wig and contact lenses, but that does little to hide the alien rage emanating from his tiny red pupils.

"Alright, human, " he snarls, stopping next to the table to point a claw dangerously close to my eyeballs. "Where have you been in the last Earth cycle?"

I frown and strain my neck to avoid the tip of his claw. "What? What're you talking about-"

"Your disgusting OOZE, Dib!" he yells. "Your filthy human body is riddled with it and Zim needs to know what garbage dump you've frequented so I can formulate some sort of antidote."

Antidote? Have I been poisoned? "But..." I blink hard and shake my head in confusion, "it was just an old building. It's been abandoned for decades." I close my eyes for a moment to try and rethink last night. Remembering how dark it was, how the dust rose up in clouds with every step on the wooden floor. The smell of the must, like old, wet clothes and weathered books. The building was aged and lonely, but it was quiet, almost peaceful. I had been hoping to find ghosts, but my spirit box didn't catch a single sound. No EVPs, either. I considered last night another flop in a long history of flops in my paranormal career. "I didn't see anything strange. No one was even there-"

He leans an inch away from my face but doesn't lower his voice at all, which is unfortunate for my ears. " What building, Dib-stink?" Zim isn't really one to joke around anyway...but there's another layer of severity in his gaze that I've never seen before. It brings a cold, heavy sensation to my gut.

"It's on the outskirts of town," I answer. "About a mile past the landfill, where the woods end." My thoughts are scrambling to find some kind of memory of last night to explain the thing on my leg. Scenes flash behind my eyes but they're all as empty and uneventful as the last. I come up empty and stare up at the thick coils weaving across the ceiling of the lab to avoid the intensity of Zim's unwavering stare. He grunts, unsatisfied, and pushes away from my face to begin unlocking the restraints one by one.

"You will take me there," he says, unshackling my left leg. "We will find the source of your extra stink and…" he glares at the irritated wound on my thigh, "... that. "

"Oh, oh! Are we going on an ADVENTURE?!"

GIR scrambles up onto Zim's tool bench and does a little dance. Or at least, that's what I'm assuming it is.

"I've already made the snacks!"

Zim unlocks the last restraint on my wrist and a sigh of relief escapes me. I sit up slowly and rub the tender flesh, noting the red marks the shackles have left. I seem to have more control over my body now. Maybe that rest did some good. Or maybe Zim actually helped me by extracting some of the goop from my bloodstream.

" You will not be accompanying us, GIR," Zim mutters. He fiddles with one of his contact lenses and then brushes his uniform off with his hands. Before GIR can throw himself into another tantrum, Zim interrupts. "You will be given a more important task."

The robot's eyes light up and he leans forward in excitement. "Oooohhhh what is it, Master?"

Zim pushes his lower lip out. "You will...guard the TV. From the gnomes. I've heard they have plans to steal it."

GIR's face drops in an exaggerated gasp. "Not the TV!"

"Exactly! Not the TV, indeed. So you must guard it while we're away." He snaps his fingers in the most dramatic fashion. "Your mission begins now!"

GIR's eyes flash red for the briefest of seconds. He offers a salute (with the wrong hand) and tears across the lab, vanishing beyond the doors. The thick walls muffle the sound of him clomping through the house and something breaking. Zim stands there and huffs, a hand on his hip.

"That should buy us the night." His gaze shifts to mine expectantly. "We will take the Voot to this wretched dirt building."

My heart flutters and I sit up straighter, grinning wide. "You're letting me fly in your spaceship? For real?"

"Yes, yes, for real ." An expression of distaste crosses him. "But do not think that means you can touch anything in there with your grubby skin hands, Dib-beast. This is a one-time arrangement and Zim is only allowing it because I do not wish to walk that far."

I shift to the edge of the table and let my legs dangle. My skin tingles when I see the angry lump on my thigh. I'm going to need new clothes.

"So...what's wrong with my leg?"

Zim grabs a small metal rod from his workbench. When he taps the end, it extends six feet. "Something, for certain."

My expression deadpans. "Wow Zim, you're so helpful."

He walks over to his spaceship, and with a look of utter disgust and dread, uses the pole to fish the rotting sausage links off of the glass. He flings them to the farthest corner of the lab and grumbles under his breath. The pole is then shrunk down and thrown into a large, steel canister and immediately incinerated.

"Zim has been more helpful than the Dib-stink deserves." He wipes his hands off on his uniform again and sneers at me. "You'd still be covered in your awful stomach liquids and lying in front of Skool if it were not for me graciously assisting you."

I glance down at my clothes that are still very much crusted in vomit. "All you did was tie me down and stab my leg, Zim."

He sticks his freakish tongue out at me and I wonder if I'll ever get to the point where I won't see it as an enraged worm. "Far more than you deserve, human . Now, stop wasting Zim's precious time and get in the Voot so we can be done with this horribleness."