Chapter 14:

What Lies Below

[Dib]

Neither of us are able to move. The creature approaches with slow, fluid steps - as if her nine-foot frame holds no weight. My pulse is either too fast for me to register or it's stopped altogether. The strange pull in my gut becomes sickening when she starts to speak from a mouth that hardly moves.

"There you are."

If it weren't for the way Zim tenses next to me, I wouldn't know if the words were audible or a frequency blasting through my cells. It's low and high and thin and dense - a whisper made of screams.

Her head tilts unnaturally to the left. Wet pops lace the movement in rapid succession. "You took your time, little thing."

The sound of her voice ricochets through my bones and scatters the atoms until I feel like I don't exist anymore. Zim's grip slides from my forearm to my wrist and tightens. He takes a step in front of me. Her smile doesn't falter, but something within it becomes angry.

"Insect." Her voice fragments into three. Or four. Or a hundred. The tone vibrates with a rage I can feel in my gums.

Zim looks back at me with an expression I choose to interpret as 'Jesus fucking Christ, no,' and I nod in solidarity. We take off running. My legs don't feel attached to my body, but it doesn't matter - they carry me anyway, and we scramble out of the corridor and into the main cavern. The increasing distance lifts the fog from my brain and all the words come flooding back to me.

"You said it was a shriveled old lady!" I snap. "Not a fucking - whatever that is!"

"I only saw her face!" He scowls. "She was hiding behind all the boxes and garbage in that filthy basement - I didn't - ugh it doesn't matter - go that way!"

He pulls me to the right and we slide behind the closest group of stalagmites.

"Okay," I pant, slumping to the floor. "New plan: we grab a sample and get the fuck out of here."

He nods breathlessly. "I-I'll allow it."

I lean my head against the slick stone and try to slow my heart rate. "What do we need? Blood, hair, a finger?"

"Spinal fluid." He hasn't let go of my wrist. "How fast can you run?"

My eyes narrow. "...Why?"

He groans. "It clearly wants you. Go distract it, and I'll scale the ceiling and drop down on its back."

"Can you come up with a plan that doesn't involve using me as bait?"

"We're only here because of you, idiot!" he spits. "Just don't get too close, and keep it talking. You're good at running your mouth."

Fear burrows up my throat. "What do I do if it attacks me?"

"Are you stupid?" he snarls. "You fight back!"

"With what–"

A high-pitched hum raises the hairs on my skin and I flinch.

"I won't chase you, little thing." Her voice carries, filling every inch of the cavern with ease. "There is no need. This is inevitable, after all."

I sink lower to the ground and wish I could disappear. Zim's claws pinch my skin.

"I'll be fast," he whispers. "Now go."

I try to swallow the lump in my throat, but the terror only builds as I push to my feet. The oxygen brings no relief to the burning ache in my muscles. I clench my fists and look over my shoulder, but Zim's already gone.

For the love of god, please hurry up.

I take a deep breath and step out from behind the rippled pillars.

The creature stands in the cavern's center; tall and gangly, as if the marrow was taffy stretched from her bones. Her empty sockets are locked on my face, and even in the absence of her physical eyes, the weight of her stare falls over me like a lead coat.

I approach her despite every particle of my being screaming at me to stop, to leave, to run as far away as I can for the rest of my life, until my lungs burn to ash in the wind. With maybe fifteen feet between us, I plant my feet in a wide stance and force my gaze to meet hers.

She has not stopped smiling. I'm not sure if she's capable.

Keep it talking.

The effort to avoid scanning the ceiling for Zim is strikingly difficult.

Say something, dipshit!

I dig my nails into my palms and start with the word that hasn't left my brain since she spoke it.

"You…you said 'inevitable.'"

My voice comes out pathetically small, but she smiles all the same.

"It is," she answers, and I feel the buzz in my flesh. As I muster the courage to ask her what exactly is inevitable, the question is drowned by a barrage of flashing images - memories captured by another set of eyes. They move too fast, blurring together, muddled and wet. The air sticks in my throat and I clench my jaw, choking on my next breath as I try to blink them away. Her smile holds and the images come in again, stronger now. A flood of snapshots - all different, all the same.

"You see." She doesn't step toward me, but her presence seems to stretch like a shadow, enveloping my body with something invisible and horrid. "Don't you?"

I can't speak. The words are trapped beneath my tongue, void of air. The pictures flicker across my mind like bright projections, and the details become clearer.

Every single one of them is of me. I watch my blood spill, my bones crack and splinter, my ribs separate, the edges bursting through my flesh. In every image, a different scene, but all end in death. The flashing frames speed up and become steeped in red, warping with darkness and heat.

The inevitable.

"No." The word slips through my teeth and I take a step back. "No - I won't – I-I can just leave."

"You can." Her jaw clicks and snaps as her grin pulls higher, reaching the empty sockets of her eyes. "But will you?"

Her body holds no tension. No coiled muscles ready to spring. In all the horror of her appearance, she looks perfectly at ease.

"I-I will."

Good job, real convincing.

"Then go." She lowers her head a fraction of an inch. Strings of dark hair fall around her cheekbones. "Go, and return all the same."

If I were outside of my body, I'd find this situation laughable. Go? Okay - goodbye forever! But I'm stuck. Trapped in the tangled network of tendons and flesh and veins, imprisoned by her shadow, by the deep, thrumming hiss left by her voice. I couldn't leave if a fire was lit under my boots. And the longer we stare at one another, the more apparent my newfound prison becomes. It has no bars beyond my mind - but that's all she needs.

You're going to die.

The images fade in and out. Not enough to disappear, but enough to softly stain the tail-end of each thought. Enough to echo when I blink.

You're going to die.

I know I should be talking. I should be asking questions. I should be distracting her. I should be doing something, but I can't. I can only stare into the black of her eyes, slipping into the void.

The inevitable.

It's only when Zim drops from the ceiling that I realize I've been closing the distance between us with steps I don't remember taking. Her towering form is only feet away when chaos erupts.

He lands on her back and her bones ripple from the force. I fall backward just as her claws swipe in a wide arc, barely missing my head. She twists around in an attempt to dislodge him, but he's quick - his PAK leg glints in the blue light of the cavern and the pointed end stabs her spine.

Her jaw unhinges in a roar so piercing, it reverberates through my soul. I scramble away before clutching my hands to my ears in a desperate effort to block out the sound, but it's futile. It's deafening; a violent change in pressure that sucks the air from my lungs and leaves me hollow and gasping with no relief in sight.

Their shadows sway in the corner of my vision; hers contorting in sickening angles; his struggling to hold on. He's yelling at me, but the words melt under the heat of her screams.

You're going to die.

My perception fizzles and warps beneath the friction of two realities. Ribs snapped, head split; pieces of me clattering to the stone, floating in a pool of red. A million deaths strung together in a web of searing torment. Not a threat, not a promise - but a memory.

The inevitable.

In my periphery, his figure leaps from her coiled spine, landing hard on the wet ground, boots and claws scraping as he rushes towards me. I'm jerked back to the present when our bodies collide. We roll once, twice - then he springs to his feet, hands clutching my clothes, and hauls me upright. The shower of insults doesn't register. My eyes are on her. She's crumpled in on herself like a dying spider, a gaping wound torn through her side, oozing black tar.

"I've got it," he says quickly, blocking my view with bright red eyes. The interference cuts through the haze. "No thanks to you, meat bag - you almost walked right into it!"

He pushes me towards the tunnel. My legs are numb. He snarls at my dead weight and pushes harder.

"What is wrong with you?! MOVE!"

Less than ten feet away now. It looms ahead, whispering death. Will I die because I stay, or because I leave?

Something burns behind my eyes and tears pool along the rims, sliding down my cheeks in rivers of fire and salt. My chest heaves.

I can't breathe–

You're going to die–

My throat swells–

You're going to die–

My knees shake and buckle and he curses as he catches me–

Inevitable, inevitable–

"Dib!" He spins me around to face him, digging his claws into my shoulders. The rage in his eyes quickly melts into something else when he sees me gasping under the heat in my skull. "What are you– Why–" He grimaces and shakes his head. "Whatever it is, I can fix it - but right now, we need to leave."

It takes all my strength to simply nod.

"Come on." He latches onto my wrist and pulls me toward the tunnel. The mounting terror does not relent; with every step, it blooms; red algae on the shore. We're just about to cross the threshold when a new noise fractures the air between us, and we stop in our tracks.

She's…laughing. The sound is nothing short of demonic - a wild ribbon that cuts between a child's squeal and the guttural, wet grunt of a boar. Zim's shoulders pinch upwards and our eyes meet with shared panic. We have no choice but to turn and look.

Inevitable.

She's still folded in on herself, but her gaze is locked on ours. Black slime gushes from the wound in her side as her laughter hitches and wanes, spilling over the stone. The demented sound slowly twists and curls like smoke until her tone becomes soft.

"He'll come back," she coos. "Won't you, little thing?"

A molten sickness washes over me. I can't look away. Zim glances at me as if I could somehow explain the weight, the tension, the wicked pull that roots my feet to the ground. I have no words to convey the dread piling up in my blood, the images of my death sparking across my neurons, draining my energy.

"You'll come back," she repeats with certainty. A memory. "Leave now, and be haunted, little thing. You will dream of this place until your waking moments are consumed, and you will return. It is inevitable ."

Inevitable–

You're going to die–

It is inevitable–

My vision blurs with the sting of salt. Zim clenches hard around my wrist, siphoning my focus from the pit of her gaze.

"Don't listen," he says. "It's lying."

His eyes are bright flames. I blink at the tears that won't stop falling and stare back at him, useless and pleading - but for what, I don't know.

"You can't stop it, insect ." The word is steeped in acid. "He will come, and he will come alone, and we will crack his body open on the rocks until we fit inside the pieces, and his flesh will become our flesh, and he will be no more."

Inevitable, inevitable–

"He won't," Zim hisses, baring his teeth. "I'll make sure of it."

Her smile stretches to a sickening degree and the white hairs dance from her sockets. The cold ache in my bones becomes debilitating when I see the gaping wound on her side start to stitch back together in thin, worm-like motions.

"Imprison him all you like, but it won't stop." She stands to her feet; a towering shadow of slick flesh and jagged bone. The wound is gone. "He will be drawn to us for as long as we live."

Zim's hand slides down my wrist, and for the briefest moment, his fingers graze the spaces between mine. The ghost of his contact leaves a trail of sparks under my skin - but then he pulls away and takes a step towards the creature; his back to me like a shield against the dark.

His voice drips with a venom I've never heard before.

"Then you will die."

All four PAK legs spring from their compartments at once as he lunges. My heart plummets. Even if I could speak, even if I could move, I know there isn't a force on this earth that could stop him.

The cavern quickly swells with the sound of clashing metal and screams. I smell his blood before I see it splatter across the stone. An animalistic snarl rips from his throat and he rolls to the side, barely evading the daggers of her hands.

I'm frozen–

Help him–

Useless–

Help him–

Waiting inevitable waiting inevitable waiting–

DO something!

He's yelling at me. My vision splits between the present and the memory, between one breath and a hundred thousand gruesome ends. The scenes glitch behind my eyes. He scrambles from her grasp and shouts again. Throwing something.

Clink!

A vial of dark fluid clatters and rolls towards me.

Run he'stellingyouto run –

Bones crack. Hers, his, both. The vial stops at the toe of my boot.

Grab it and run–

If I go, I die–

Grab it and run –

If I stay, I die–

"Go, Dib!"

The sound is strained, frantic, airy - a million notes, shredded.

"Run!"

The realities overlap. They're on the other side of the cavern now, weaving between columns of limestone, trailing blood, smearing footprints. A bright laser blast illuminates the stone for a split second, casting tangled shadows on the walls.

Go anddie stay anddie–

My fingers press against the thick glass. It's hot. Somewhere in the black, the gears begin to turn. I should run…

But then he will die.

No.

An inferno lights in my veins with a heat so sudden, all other thoughts disintegrate in its wake. I pull the bag off my shoulders and shove the vial inside before tossing it over the threshold of the narrowing tunnel behind me.

"Zim," I call - but god, it's weak–

I'm not running–

"Hold on!"

I stumble from the place where my feet were rooted. My legs are heavy, dead flesh stitched to my torso, but the second step is stronger than the first, weaker than the third, and as my muscles reconnect, I begin to sprint towards them. The walls rush past me. I'm close – I'm almost–

Something hits me from the side and slams me into the ground with dizzying force. Warm, putrid breath steams across the back of my neck.

Oh.

It dawns on me with all the weight of an avalanche.

She said 'we.'

[Zim]

Rage comes in relentless, crushing waves as I watch its melted flesh regenerate again and again. The hole I blasted through its gut is mended in an instant. My body shakes, dripping with sweat, exertion, animosity. My lips pull taut over teeth stained with blood.

"You cheating, wretched filth," I spit. "Just die already!"

It rattles with laughter and hisses through its smile of needles.

"Your efforts are meaningless." I stagger to the left and block her talons with my PAK leg. The scrape of metal sends a shiver down my bones. "Does that frighten you, insect?"

"Nothing frightens Zim," I snarl. "You're like every other pathetic meat bag on this stinking planet: a waste of my time."

I lunge at it again and launch myself into the air with a spring of my PAK legs. It moves quickly, contorting unnaturally as it dodges the first strike. The second lands, but the projection is off, and the blade only catches the edge of its shoulder. My boots press hard against its chest and I use the momentum to flip backwards. The landing is unstable, but the sight of dark blood shoots an encouraging heat through my skull. I brace myself for another attack when his scream shatters my resolve.

I lose my balance, my head snapping instinctively towards the noise, dismantling my form. I see him clawing frantically at the ground as his body is dragged across the cavern by a second creature.

Our eyes lock. His mouth stretches in a cry that impales me in a place I didn't know existed.

"Zim!"

I have no time to react. A hand snags my leg, and in a violent rush, my body is whipped into the ground. My PAK hits the stone first and the brute force sends my spine into a searing arch. Something cracks. Sparks ignite behind my eyes as circuits flare, overloading–

SYSTEMS OFFLINE, OFFLINE, OFFLINE–

Electricity crackles in sharp spurts and all four PAK legs simultaneously fall limp, clattering around me like useless metal branches.

The air is stomped from my chest as it grabs my body, pinning me beneath its skeletal frame. One hand slams between my shoulder blades, and the other digs into the top of my head, pulling my neck at a blinding angle.

"Fear is bittersweet," it whispers. Moisture plumes from its mouth, prickling my antennae. "I smell it on your breath, pest. Are you frightened now?"

A strangled whine is all that can fit through the narrowed passage in my throat. It laughs again as Dib's writhing form is lifted off the ground. The second creature is larger, taller – its spine pops, and a wriggling mass of tentacle-like appendages unfurl from its flesh. I can't breathe.

"W-Why?" The word is frayed. My mind burns. Why this, why him, why?

" Why ?" it hisses against my neck, grinning wider and wider. Nails draw blood from my scalp. "Our shells decay with time, insect. New hosts must be acquired for the cycle to renew."

Dib's legs kick wildly. He scratches at the claws around his throat, choking on words I can't discern. My vision blurs, wet and cold.

"The human body is a fickle thing. Without prior mutation, they do not survive the transition. The serum has already changed him - his shell is ready."

Its claws dip from my head to the side of my neck and it growls.

"I see he has fed from you." A sharp sting erupts from the puncture marks that haven't healed yet. I gasp at the pressure, at the rippling pain in my spine. "I look forward to purging your existence from his veins."

My body flexes under its tightened limbs, but the attempt is fruitless. It forces my jaw up to watch as the squirming things wrap Dib's arms to his torso and coil around his neck. The noise is squeezed from his chest. The creature's jaw unhinges with a nauseating crack and the terror becomes suffocating.

"You may have polluted him," it sneers, "but it will only prolong his suffering. It is inevitable."

A mass of white flesh emerges from the gaping maw, and Dib's mouth is forced open.

"Watch with me, you wretched mite."

Blood drips down my collar.

"Watch what you've done."

[Dib]

My heart drops and shatters at my feet when I see Zim smack the ground and go limp. The creature pounces him in an instant, wrapping her wiry limbs over his body like a fresh kill.

"No," I gasp. My fingernails peel against the stone as I'm pulled further away. Red bubbles up and smears my palms, sticky and hot.

He'sdyingyou'redyingit'sallinevitableit'sallyourfault–

"Zi–"

My body is tugged up in a sharp, unforgiving jerk. The air plummets to the base of my lungs. The ground shrinks below me as bony hands clutch my neck to twist me upright.

The creature's face fills my vision; a nightmare of sunken, peeling, weeping flesh plastered over its frame. The black hair is longer than the other's, but thinner, dispersed with wriggling white filaments like maggots and snakes. Its smile is wider, its teeth sharper, its eyes deeper - a carnivorous vacuum, devouring the world.

"You must be in pain," it drones. The sound burrows into my skull, laying eggs, hatching nightmares to plague my every moment. It inches closer and the humid stench of it chokes my lungs. "You must be starving."

"L-let go –"

It squeezes until the words are reduced to a desperate, hacking cough.

"It is not ideal to share one host…but the experience will not be new to us."

I kick at it, thrashing my legs, ripping what's left of my nails across the back of its hand. It doesn't flinch, doesn't relent - it merely stares with empty sockets, boring past my mortal cage to the flickering core beneath.

Fading, fading –

A cacophony of visceral pops explodes from its spine. White, sticky tendrils burst from the space between vertebrae, wriggling in the faint blue light. They stretch and coil around the beast before snapping in my direction, latching onto my arms and pulling them behind my torso in thick ropes, curling, tightening–

You're going to die–

Zim–

Fading–

"The pain is inevitable, I'm afraid. But it has an end. You will find sleep soon enough, little thing."

Pressure builds and sputters, breaking trains of thought, turning memories to dust, dismantling pieces of myself to feed the void. The scream sticks in my vocal cords - an airy whine, the dying breath of a rabbit as it fragments in the wolf's crushing bite.

Its jaw clicks and snaps and unhinges from the joints, dropping like a serpent, starved and waiting. I try to twist my neck, to turn my head, to fight the pulsing things wrapped around me, but I'm trapped–

Inevitable–

Something squirms at the back of its throat. Slimy, translucent, gelatinous flesh. My vision darkens at the corners. A worm. A maggot. A writhing, gleaming slug. It inches over the creature's tongue, its cylindrical body covered in the same white hairs that dance from the creature's empty eyes. Though its mouth is small, it's lined with rows and rows of fatal, spirling teeth.

I raise my knees - choking, clawing, gasping - but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

The creature's free hand snakes through the greasy, tangled nest of my hair and yanks my head back. It's hard to keep my eyes open. It's hard to breathe, to think, to be.

Inevitable –

Pain radiates in hot bursts from my jaw. The creature presses the joints until the bone dislocates with a vicious crunch, forcing my mouth to open as the shock swallows my screams.

No, no, no, no–

Inevitable-

Zim–

Fading, dying, you're dying, he's dying, you're both dead–

Tears stream, thinning the blood trailing down my cheeks and neck like watery paint. The worm crosses the space between us, reaching my bottom lip with microscopic tendrils as it climbs over my tongue. My feet thrash in sheer, uncontrollable spasms. I can't stop it, I can't stop it, I can'tIcan'tI can't –

A new pressure swells against my teeth, splitting my lips, crawling further and further in until its gooey form stretches the back of my throat and sends shockwaves of agony through my sinus cavities. The thin hairs prickle as it moves. My ears pop in sharp stabs of heat and my jaw is pried open to the point I fear it will tear from my skull entirely. Rivulets begin to flow from every hole in my head. It moves down, down, down - squirming into the tight passage of my larynx. My eyelids squeeze shut and all I see is red.

I'm drowning, breaking, snapping, bursting. Cartilage rips, blood vessels leak, my collarbone cracks. The air no longer reaches my lungs, and as I suffocate, a buzzing heat warps and expands across my skull. Neurons rupture beneath the violent surge of gamma waves, dumping floods of serotonin, and I'm consumed in the final, cosmic blast of mortality hurtling toward the white light of death.

[Zim]

I've seen many lifeless expanses; countless oceans void of even the most basic single-cell organism. Cold. Sterile. Empty.

That same emptiness I once passed without a second thought is now rushing to consume me. I've lost all feeling in my limbs. Memories spill from my head and down my throat, pooling and freezing at the bottom, anchoring me to the stone. The hollow place is fast approaching.

The beast collapses in a heap of folded skin; a paper molt. Dib's body is quick to follow, breaking what few bones remained intact. He twitches sporadically in the growing crimson bloom. Viscous, wet gurgling bubbles from his throat as the worm burrows through his organs.

There's an ache somewhere inside of me. Somewhere new and tender and horrible. It throbs with an agony I have no words for, and the pulse of it makes me want to die.

The creature above me trembles in grotesque pleasure. "A beautiful metamorphosis," it hums. "You are lucky to have witnessed this before your end."

He's stopped moving, and so have I, and the world is suddenly different. A sinister reflection, bathed in red, septic and distorted. The hollow sea falls over my bones in chilled whisps, taking more and more of me in its tide. There's no point. For reasons I'll never understand, the void has always been my fate.

My mind slips between the cavern and the dark unresponsiveness of my PAK. The creature drones on - the words are galaxies away. I let myself fall further and further, surrendering to the numbness, the limbo, the cosmic purgatory–

The creature suddenly snarls and the curved blade of its voice disrupts the tide. "Insolent mutt."

I blink through the heavy fog in my skull. His body is…moving? The angles are odd, erratic and sharp, unnatural in every sense, but it can't be the worm - the creature is too angry.

"You," it hisses against my neck. "You did this."

My brain short-circuits. His body twists and his hands jerk toward his mouth, reaching, clawing, and it hits me.

He's fighting.

Warmth floods my system, and out from the aching place comes a lightning bolt of urgency and instinct. My muscles snap into gear. I strain my neck and sink my teeth deep into the rubbery flesh of its forearm. A wailing shriek rings through the cave. One arm releases me. I bite harder, gnashing, shredding, ripping. Black tar spurts over my mouth and tongue. It tastes like rot, like death and decay, like mold and damp, putrid soil - but I don't stop.

The weight lifts from my spine. A burning flash erupts in my side as its talons slash away. Wet splatters of blood litter the stone, but the pain barely registers - a missile beneath the waves. I scratch at its arm and lock my jaws on the dark pulp between my teeth until I feel tendon and bone sever.

It roars and slams me into the ground. I don't stop. Its claws stab my abdomen, punching hole after hole, squelching with gore. I stare into the pit of its eyes, its arm still firmly clenched in my teeth, unrelenting. Every second I hold on is a chance for him to escape. To be safe.

"I will take you apart, insect!"

My body jerks with the impact. A dull static spreads from my chest.

"I will pull out your pieces and break them in front of you!"

Its bloody hand grabs the cusp of my PAK. I can feel the nails dig hard where the metal meets skin. My spine lights up as it starts to pull. The pressure is fatal - my senses scatter and my vision tunnels to pinpricks in a sea of black and gore. The waters rise over my head, but as I sink into the deep, I find the ocean that swallows me is no longer hollow – it's filled with the sound of his voice, calling my name.