Chapter 13 - The Unluckiest Chapter Ever
"Don't you have a flashlight or something?"
"A.. flashlight?"
"Yeah, or emergency lighting.. why doesn't your base have emergency lighting?"
"Oh, it does have emergency lighting, just not where it isn't necessary," Zim pressed a button on his PAK, activating a mechanical arm from within. The end of the arm glowed with a whitish blue light, allowing Dib to see where they were going. "The only places that have emergency lighting are the potentially dangerous places, such as the catwalks and stairs or the area near the kitchen garbage disposal, which in fact isn't really a garbage disposal at all. I have no use for emergency lighting anywhere else."
Dib turned his head to look behind them as Zim helped him down the hallway towards the stairs he had used only hours before. He could see a pair of round eyes glowing in the darkness, staring after them and then fading to red as they moved off in the opposite direction.
"Zim?"
"Yes?"
"I think your robot's on the move," the boy answered. His voice was soft, almost a whisper. Zim turned slowly, peering down the dark hallway beyond the places the light touched.
"He better not have moved from that spot if he knows what's good for him!" Zim said threateningly, loud enough for the robot's hearing sensors to pick up. There was nothing there.. no lights.. no sounds except for the pair's breathing. Zim saw nothing in the gloom and just shrugged it off.. Dib started thinking that he may have just been imagining things... and perhaps he was. "Worry not, human," Zim said as he continued half-dragging the boy down the hall.
They reached the emergency staircase, which turned out to be a very painful encounter for Dib. About halfway down to the floor which contained the house's AI brain and also the main computer system, Zim slipped on something that was covering a few of the stairs. As he tried to regain his balance, he accidentally dropped the Dib, who went rolling and screaming away down towards the floors below. The slippery stuff turned out to be the remains of a knocked over, unfinished Brainfreezy that GIR had left behind. Zim growled, making a mental note to clean that up and to remind GIR that drinks were no longer allowed on the stairs as he cautiously made his way downwards to retrieve the Dib.
Dib groaned softly. His head was hurting again. He could hear the faint sound of Zim's footsteps somewhere above him as the alien descended towards where he lay.
"Dib-human?" Zim called for him. The Irken was answered by a faint moan far below. The human had fallen farther than he had expected. "Hang on.. I'll be there in a moment!" He called again. He cautiously stepped around something else that was glistening faintly on the stairs. The emergency lighting reflected off of it.. perhaps it was just more of the Brainfreezy? Zim turned up the light from his PAK so that it now illuminated the stairway like daylight. Not bothering to investigate any further, he bounded down the stairs as quickly as he could to the human below, nearly slipping about 6 times in the process.
When he arrived Dib wasn't groaning anymore, but just staring blankly at the ceiling with those amber eyes of his. He blinked slowly, and he was surrounded in a pool of the same substance that was covering the stairs. Zim gasped loudly and shuddered when he realized that it was the human's blood. Gingerly, he lifted the human once more as he activated his spider-legs. Dib was bleeding from the back of his head.. his clothes were becoming covered in it. The boy groaned faintly again, and Zim's hands were beginning to sting.. to sting as if he was exposed to water. He gritted his teeth and set the human down in a sitting position away from the pool of his glistening red blood.
"Zim?" Dib said weakly. It felt like he had been hit by a truck.. maybe his bones were broken..
"Yes, Dib-human?" The alien asked him, reaching into his PAK for something to patch the human up with.
"I think I'm dying.. this hurts."
Zim snickered in the light as he pulled out a roll of what looked like ordinary gauze bandages. He pulled Dib's head forward and placed a pad of cloth over the wound and started securing it. He winced as Dib's blood touched him again.
"You were dying before.. and.." Something nagged at the back of his mind, trying to break down the barriers of his pride as he tried to wipe the blood away. "I'm sorry for dropping you down the stairs, even if it was an accident."
Dib smiled faintly, but Zim could see the look of pain in his eyes. This boy had been through too much in the last few hours. It was a miracle that he was still alive at all, especially after that fall. He should have been dead, Dib knew it, Zim knew it. The pain almost made him want to be put out of his misery, but he had to live. Who would fight Zim if he didn't live? He had to remain.
"That was unexpected," Dib said. He looked serious now as he stared up at the alien.
"What?"
"You're actually sorry for causing me excruciating amounts of pain?" Dib smirked. Zim felt himself cringe.
"Ohhh.. don't make me take it back!" He threatened with a growl. Dib just laughed softly. The alien sighed and picked the boy up once more. His spider-legs clicked on the floor as he carried him through the room with the AI brain, and he was ignoring the Dib's sounds of moany-groany pain. There was nothing he could do for him at the moment anyway. He paused in front of a huge monitor on the wall in a somewhat smaller seprate room that branched off from the one with the house's brain, setting the Dib down on a sort of cushioned Irken chair.
"How many computer screens do you have in your house?" Dib blinked.
"I would say about 50," Zim answered absentmindedly, he was fiddling around with something in the slim space behind the monitor and not really paying attention. Within moments the monitor flickered on to a blank purple screen.
"Computer override," The computer said faintly, "switching to manual control only until user Zim activates base automation."
Zim pressed a few buttons on the control panel until the main operating system loaded before him. Dib gasped softly, the memory of Purple's message resurfacing in his mind. He also managed to remember that Zim had told him it was his Uncle.. which the human believed to be a load of bullshit, for lack of a meaner word to call it.
"Dib-monkey, tell me.. what does a human computer virus look like?"
"Eh.. well.. it's usually a sort of file.. there's so many different kinds, Zim. They all do different things. They could erase everything or make your computer crash all the time.. I dunno what exactly your computer has." The boy shrugged. Zim shook his head.
"No matter.. I think that it should be fairly easy to locate and destroy." His eyes scanned the computer screen as he moved through the file system. Eventually he found it, the only file that was named in English, rather than Irken. It was slowly duplicating itself in an effort to not be removed, but it was having trouble controlling the Irken system. Zim removed it completely, and put a block on the part of the system that had accessed the human internet per GIR's controlling.
Dib leaned back against the chair, trying to focus on what Zim was doing. His eyes were growing dimmer and his breathing was becoming more ragged, the pain definitely wasn't going away.. He felt something trickling down the back of his neck and realized that he was bleeding through the cloth that Zim had placed on his headwound. He felt broken, and it was as if his conciousness was slipping away.. but something else too.
The room suddenly filled with light, which continued through the base once more. Dib closed his eyes tightly, the light only made his head hurt even more than it already did. Everything hurt so much. His clothes were sticking to the back of the chair, soggy with warm, red blood. Zim was smirking triumphantly at his ingeniousness, he laughed, then turned and said something to the human. When Dib didn't respond, he looked concerned. Dib watched him, saw him coming closer, but couldn't understand what was going on.
Zim flattened his antennae against his head, his eyes were growing wide as he saw the human's dimming. Without hesitation he reached forward and pulled the boy against him. Dib may have screamed from the sudden pain he felt, but he couldn't tell.. he wasn't listening to himself. All he could hear now was the blood rushing in his ears, his own heart pounding loudly. Zim was barking orders to the computer, ordering it to take them back up to the floor with the medical room. A platform appeared beneath them and started lifting the two of them up to the floors above. Dib's pain seemed to lessen as Zim moved out of focus. He felt cold again, despite the warmth of Zim's close body. His heartbeat was slowing.
"Don't you dare, Dib!" He heard Zim shouting, but now he sounded so far away, as if he was on the other side of the stars. "Don't you die on me! You have to live and try to protect your wretched planet from my alien evil! You can't go! You hear me?! You can't die yet!" Evidently Zim could feel his slowing heart, could see his life threatening to leave the boy that was his enemy forever.
"So this is what death feels like?" Dib questioned to no one in particular. Zim was leaning close to him, his voice must have been barely a whisper. Dib just stared at the alien as the world slowly went black for him. Zim screamed and shook him as all of the light faded from his eyes completely.
"No no no!" He shouted, then slowly stopped shaking the boy as he managed to regain whatever was left of his composure. He was trembling. "Goodbye, Dib."
Dib woke with a gasp, in a cold sweat, coming face to face with a very annoyed looking Zim. Zim's arms were crossed in front of him, he was wearing his disguise. Dib was panting loudly, looking around at the room. His skin was chalk-white, as if he had seen a ghost. Why was he in the living room?
"FINALLY!" Zim shouted, sounding on the verge of strangling him. GIR appeared next to him, smiling and drinking another Brain Freezy. "How many of those alarm clocks do you use in your wretched home, Dib-human?! I've been trying to wake you up for the last hour!" Dib was staring at him in a mixture of disbelief and horror.
"I'm.. alive?" He asked uncertainly. He was expecting heaven or something.. not Zim's house. Maybe this was hell?
"Of course you're alive! Not to mention we're more than an hour late for skool," Zim said, though he sounded less than enthusiastic to be going back to that miserable place.
"What happened?!" Dib demanded, hopping off the couch and suddenly feeling shocked that his legs could actually hold him.
"Well duh!" Zim said impatiently. "The antidote worked! You're just as alive and irritating as you ever were."
"Wait a minute! What about the virus in your computers and the stairs? I.. you slipped while you were taking me down to the main computer and dropped me down the stairs and... I died from the fall. I died!" Dib looked around him, his eyes shifting from side to side. Zim looked at him in confusion, then smiled.
"Dib.. you've been unconcious since you fainted yesterday, right after I told you what was going to happen," Zim said with a laugh. "You had another.. dream? Is that what humans call them? A subconcious illusion that happens during sleep? Yes. I never carried you down any stairs.. you never died, Dib."
"Then why did I feel so cold? And the blood was trickling down my back and.. and the pain.. you said goodbye to me!" Zim rolled his eyes, sick of the boy's rantings.
"You felt cold because you still had a fever.. and the stuff trickling down your back was actually coffee, because GIR spilled some on you last night.. and the pain must have been from your stupid twitching!"
"I was twitching?"
"Your muscles were spasming most violently when the antidote was taking effect. I thought you were going to fall off the table. You were twitching like a.." Zim paused to think. "Like a filthy spider trying to tapdance." He shuddered at the thought. Dib started to smile, though.
"I'm alive!" He shouted gleefully. Suddenly he felt like dancing. Zim shook his head slowly and threw Dib's backpack at the boy's large cranium.
"Yeah, unfortunately for me. Your sister dropped that off earlier. She said that your father will not accept you staying here for the day, so she was forced to bring it here for you. Then she muttered something about science and you being an ass and walked off." GIR got all smiley and giggly when Gaz was mentioned. Dib managed to have ducked just in time to avoid the projectile and slipped his bag onto his back. "But now that you're awake, get out of my house!" With that said, Zim roughly shoved Dib out the front door, following closely behind him. Zim still felt exhausted, but he could handle a day at skool.. he would play sick tomorrow.
Zim started down the sidewalk, then growled at Dib when the boy started walking next to him. "Honestly, haven't you had enough of being near me this weekend, Dib-stink? You're starting to piss me off... no, you've been pissing me off for the last 48 hours. Can't you just leave me alone?" Dib looked akward for a moment, looking down at his feet.
"Zim?"
"Hm?" The alien narrowed his eyes at the boy.
"Thank you..."
Aftermath Author's Note: I want to thank all of you that gave me a review.. thank you all so much! I love you guys! Now, I am going to take a short break from fic writing to do some reading and some artwork, but I will be back. It may not be until after I move, though, which will hopefully be very soon. gah. Once again, though.. thank you all. Your reviews and support mean a lot to me.
Oh, as for the dream thing, some people think that if you die in a dream, you die in real life.. but how will we ever know if that's shit or not?