Warnings: Gore, Violence, Death, Blood, Outer Space (?), Implied Alcohol Use (Beer), Toxic Mindsets.
Alien (1979)! AU. This follows the basic premise of the film (i.e., the crew of a space tug unwittingly ferries a hostile alien specimen) but differs in many ways.
A.N. - No one has asked for Invader ZIM content, but I devoted far too much time to this idea to simply discard it.
A force slammed into the rear of the starship at an incredible speed, triggering a series of alarms inside the control bridge as the vessel swerved out of its landing position. Flashing lights accompanied the bright messages that overtook the computer screens and radar. "Heavy damage sustained by hull," announced an automated voice with dissonant serenity, but the panicked howls of the crew smothered its analysis.
"Put the landing gear down now!" roared the captain, lurching forward and clutching the sides of his chair to avoid flying into the windshield. Droplets of spit burst from his mouth, but Darius faced the ominous clouds that broke before his eyes like ancient ruins with unwavering resolve.
Frantic beeps and buzzes emitted from the control panel as the pilot, Jill, yanked the joystick towards herself. "We're coming in at an almost 60-degree angle!" When the screen that displayed the simulation of the planet's surface began to contort and flip, she retracted her hand as if it were a beast gnashing its fangs. "If we land, the ship might split!"
Shouts were tossed back and forth across the bridge. One half of the crew argued for a reckless abandonment of safety, while the other half countered this with crash statistics and a lack of visibility. Instead of contributing to the debate, which was ultimately a fruitless endeavour due to its chaotic volume and emotions, you focused on the dark shape gliding past the corner of the windshield.
It was spherical with what appeared to be engines protruding from its sides, but the object was too far away and obscured by the thick atmosphere to distinguish colour or inhabitant. The possible spaceship dove in front of your nose before descending into the foggy depths of the planet. While no additional sighting of the aircraft was offered, the clouds dissipated to reveal a cold world designed to trap and take all life that visited it.
Rocky formations that ended in spikes jutted from the surface like rows of crooked spears. An earsplitting ringing filled the control bridge that mimicked hundreds of bells tolling at once, and waves of rocks pelted the hull. Sliding across the unfriendly land was akin to tunnelling inside the heart of a typhoon, catastrophic winds that held no deeper wish than to tear apart everything in sight shoving and jerking the starship as if it were a toy.
When the vessel slowed to a stop, it released a stentorian groan that reverberated through the planet. It shook the floor beneath your feet, and for a long while, you expected to hear an explosion and witness flames devouring your vision.
Darius lifted himself from his crumpled position at the base of his seat and murmured, "If that looks as bad as it sounded, we'll both be sending an SOS."
* * *
The spacesuit pulled every part of you towards the barren embrace of the gravel that crunched under the weight of your feet like walnuts. Its clunky and puffy appearance was the embodiment of safety before comfort, and the glass helmet had, after an hour or two of exploration, become a prison of sweat and humidity.
Multiple voices gushed from your handheld transceiver with varying degrees of worry and aggravation, each one clamouring about the disappearance of the pilot and reporting vain searches. The chatter that, combined with the incessant buzz of the static, had begun to irritate your mind was silenced by a click of the receiver button. You expelled a troubled sigh and looked at Darius, who was marching forward with steely composure.
"Jill's nowhere in the ship. Wasn't she with you?" The perturbation in your question was indisputable, but the captain acted as if you had pondered the colour of grass.
"That kook broke off to fix the engines," he explained, not blinking once.
Activating the receiver, you had an impulse to rebuke his nickname for Jill with a far more fitting one but decided that finding her was the chief problem. A sudden burst of static drew your attention to the walkie-talkie, an 'uh' emitting from the device for several, uninterrupted seconds before the actual message was aired. "We have an LGM in sector thirteen."
Feet halting on a short pile of rubble that overlooked the remnants of a sentry turret, you clenched the button that activated the transmitter and rose the handheld transceiver to your mouth with slow bewilderment. "Mind running that by me again?" Voicing the question and, by extension, acknowledging the possibility that the statement had not resulted from an audio glitch or a poor attempt at humour summoned an unsettled tension to your jaw.
The static returned as a fuzzy voice, too muddied by insistent pops and buzzes to assign to a particular crewmate, announced in a much more confident tone, "That is a … confirmed LGM in sector thirteen."
A small, bipedal creature with skin the colour of summer leaves was perched atop the remains of an escape pod. The debris had become too well-acquainted with the local fungus population to be fresh, yet his cerise tunic was untouched by the gales of dust and gravel circulating through the air. He hopped to the ground with practised finesse, boots crunching rocks.
The top of his head barely surpassed your knees, and his slight frame resembled that of an eleven or twelve-year-old child. "Hello, humans!" The extraterrestrial waved his three-fingered hand in a rigid, passionless manner while sporting a fake grin and elucidating in an overly cheerful tone, "I, the Almighty Zim, have crash-landed on this planet just like you."
His voice was shrill like the scream of a fox and grating like the sound of a thumb dragged across sandpaper. The lilting inflection of each sentence caused every other word to burst forth with unprecedented loudness before dwindling to a low tone. This puzzling assignment of emphasis confounded any attempt at determining his intentions, and the captain filled the lack of answers with immediate distrust.
"What do you want?" queried Darius, forehead wrinkling and eyes narrowing. The man did not refute his observation and, perhaps because of this, refused to lower his head to face Zim directly as if doing so would have been a premature show of acknowledgment.
The extraterrestrial clasped his hands together in front of his stomach, rocking back and forth on his heels and angling his head towards the ground so he had to look at you through the roof of his gaze. "In a purely hypothetical sense, who would you say is the weakest among you?" His tone was deliberately soft and quiet, the type of meek stance a predator would take to lure its prey.
Darius drew his head back and crinkled his eyes in suspicion, mouth opening slightly.
Your impassive expression was unruffled as you confirmed in a decisive tone that allowed no room for argument, "Jill." The look of shock and anger that Darius hurled in your direction was ignored, for Jill was a recreant hermit who had yet to step outside the sterile walls of the control room until this mission. As soon as her name had landed on the roster, your faith in the sanity of your superiors, a proposition that was already dubious, had plummeted to bottomless depths from which it would never resurface.
The extraterrestrial, too, seemed uninterested in exploring the apparent disagreement. His large eyes neither blinked nor strayed from your own, even as Darius turned to face you in a silent challenge to acknowledge him, and he proceeded with the inquiry as if the man were invisible. "Where might one find this … Jill-human?"
"That part," you began, pointing the antenna of the handheld transceiver at him, "is a mystery to all of us."
* * *
A boulder with the rough texture of a cat's tongue sat in the centre of a peculiar clearing. Where heaps of rocks and rubble littered the rest of the surface, or at least as much of it as you could see, this boulder was surrounded by a flat circle of gravel. The incline of the ground towards the rock hinted at a powerful impact that was not unlike a crater, and chunks of lichen dangled from the object as if they had recently been disturbed.
"Why don't you call your alien friend? See if he can move it."
Taking a moment to process the umbrage sprouting in your gut, you inhaled through your nose and raised your head to scan the distant ruins that populated the surface of the planet. A tight smile formed on your lips, and you propped your arms on your knees to propel yourself upwards. "Maybe it's my not-talking-about-killing-him vibe that earned his trust."
A boisterous grunt resounded from directly beside you. "Eh?!"
Darius yelped and leapt backwards, arms rising from his side. His feet struggled to grip the loose chunks of scrap metal beneath him. After narrowly saving himself from a painful fall, he peered at the source with embarrassment and agitation.
Your head swung towards the noise, and the sight of Zim leaning forward as if straining his invisible ears to hear prompted you to hop a step away.
He retreated to an upright position, examining the subject of interest with narrowed eyes and a jutting jaw. After a moment of head tilts that were not unlike those of a bird, a conclusion was reached. The extraterrestrial rested a hand on the collar of his uniform and marched to the slab of detritus with strict, confident strides. "Zim would be delighted to aid his human comrade!"
Four knobs had begun to protrude from his PAK when the extraterrestrial gained a look of alarm. The small objects receded, and Zim cast a wary, wide-eyed glance over his shoulder as if fearing an attack at any moment. Upon receiving bored and impatient stares, he allowed his shoulders to slump in relief.
The endeavour seemed to require every drop of strength that the alien possessed, but even then, the rock only raised enough to fit a thin finger inside the space below. A spindly, angular mass became visible beneath the boulder. It was fleshy and unnaturally hollow, appearing concave in places where it should have been convex.
Inexplicable dread accumulated in your stomach like a pile of marbles. Before you could identify the source of your newfound discomfort, the rock plummeted to its original position with an upsweep of dust. Squinting, you bobbed your head from side to side before taking a step closer to the debris. "What's that under-"
Rather than a handshake, which is what he appeared to believe he was doing, Zim grasped the top and palm of your hand with both of his own and shook it up and down in a robotic manner, asserting in an equally forced tone, "Nothing worthy of the note, human ally."
"He could help us find Jill," came a feeble voice from the direction of your starship. The crunches of pebbles and flimsy pieces of decrepit machinery sought to muffle the words, but they rose with a hesitant strength that betrayed their soft nature. Turning to identify the speaker yielded Luise, a chubby woman who acted as the navigator for this mission.
Luise was the kind of timid soul who was uncertain about her right to speak and ended every other sentence with "I don't know". She rarely stood at her full height, hunching her shoulders and angling her back forward. Her support earned a look of surprise from both yourself and Darius, but the latter soon deepened his frown into a scowl.
"What a shock," he muttered, eyes flitting to the belts of rocks and dust contaminating the atmosphere of the planet.
Gaze dragging on the ground and head downcast, Luise moved to stand behind you. It seemed like she found solace in having you between Darius and herself, for she managed a defiant glance at the man. Zim scurried a few, short steps away as if repelled by her approach and drew his arms to his chest, lips curling and eyes narrowing in perplexed annoyance.
He brushed the front of his tunic with the palms of his hands before turning to you. "As recompense for my invaluable service, Zim requests transportation to the planet Earth."
With a look of scathing displeasure, whether from the request itself or the fact that the alien seemed to think you were the commanding officer, Darius countered, "You tried to lift a rock and failed."
Zim outstretched an arm, face contorted in disbelief and middle finger pointing at the captain. "Zim doesn't see you lifting the rock, inferior pig-human!"
Mouth bobbing and eyelids fluttering in frustration and resentment, Darius scoured his environment for an adequate response. Monotone rocks and dilapidated crash sites laughed at his endeavour. He shook his head and turned to you with cold hostility as if you had forced him to land here. "That thing is not coming on my ship."
The comment provoked an enraged screech from Zim, who balled his fists and flashed a mouthful of zipper-like teeth. "You have no authority over Zim! If Zim wishes to board this primitive vessel, then he shall!" His anger seemed to stem from the denial of service rather than the objectification, which he had accepted with almost dismissive ease.
Darius looked to be withholding an exclamation of rage as he whirled in the direction of the starship and began storming away. He had dismissed Jill as a victim of poor planetary conditions and was moving to abandon this world, so Luise hurried to accompany him.
You watched as she voiced a concern that was, to your thick helmet and distance, silent. The captain reacted with a sharp turn of his head and clenched fists, causing the navigator to flinch and shrink. Flexing your jaw in disdain, your tired gaze lowered to the extraterrestrial, who was standing in an uncomfortable daze like a penguin in the desert. "Welcome aboard."
* * *
The ladder descended into a corridor full of burnt umber hues and rusted blue tints that seemed to stretch from one side of the ship to the other. Layers of dust and residue populated the floor and walls, which consisted of a series of metallic strips that housed dim, rectangular lights. Consoles shaped like half of an octagon protruded from the walls, and rows of buttons and switches sat upon them, dark and stiff from lack of use.
Pipe systems ran along with the corners of the ceiling and floor in groups of three, supplying fuel and coolant to the engines. There was no amount of wall space that did not flaunt a unique collection of wires or valves, so the narrow, brass path that imitated the appearance of a drain grate was hailed as the singular clear area. The industrial style of the starship was reminiscent of the naked interior of old factories that left no ambiguity in how the building was constructed and functioned.
"Do all spaceborne humans live in such filthy conditions?" inquired Zim from his perch upon your upper back. You had discarded the bulky layers of the spacesuit, a decision about which you were having lingering regrets, and were now exposed to his natural weapons. His claws were clenching your shoulders with a painful intensity that was not unlike a cat afraid of falling, while the heels of his boots had implanted themselves into the bottom of your ribcage. He regarded each deposit of grime and rust with narrowed eyes and a tight frown, claws pressing further into your skin.
Disdain, an anticipatory shade of it as if he had been expecting the mess, was the main ingredient of his question, but the hint of genuine curiosity gave you enough of a reason to answer. "The Company doesn't waste money on beauty. The food court is nicer, though." The bitter amusement in your voice that bordered on a chuckle earned a look of confusion from the extraterrestrial.
The dining room moonlighted as a common area.
The walls sported a labyrinthine pattern as if they had been designed to emulate the point of view of someone looking down at a hedge maze from the sky. A cylindrical shape with six monitors attached to it drooped from the section of the ceiling that overlooked the round dining table, with three brown and white couches surrounding the table that appeared to be welded to the floor. The surface of the table was polished and grey like marble.
Zim loosened his grip to lean higher above your shoulders, stretching towards the coffee machine and containers of dry food sequestered in the corner. His head twitched up and down like an insect sniffing scraps. A foul odour seemed to greet him, for he recoiled and stuck his tongue, which resembled a worm, out.
As the footsteps of your crewmates approached from behind, eager to fill their stomachs and chat about trivial subjects, you hastened your pace to the storage room. The dining area was disappearing when the faces of Darius and Luise emerged at the rear of the first couch. The fear of being followed hung over your mind as if eyes were peering from every crevice in the vessel, and you dashed inside the storage room with mild tightness in your gut.
Noticing the lack of additional doors, Zim dropped to the floor with a clank. He walked around you and stood in the centre of the room, hands rigidly planted on his hips. A dim, magenta light cast a subtle glow upon the walls, where crates of cargo lay in stacks. The redolence of musk and balm clung to the air.
The extraterrestrial swung around to look at you with abject horror. "You expect Zim to dawdle in this pigsty?!" he howled like a king torn from his castle and pitched into a shanty, eyes wide and disbelieving. His lips drew back into an expression of disgust, and he held his arms in front of his body as if hoping that you would offer an antidote for his shock.
"I can't book the Ritz," you whispered despite knowing that the alien would not understand the joke. Hearing one of his screams without a glass helmet to muffle it was like dragging a fork across a porcelain plate, and you withdrew from the room as the door began to slide shut. It was the first of several days to begin and end with distant shrieks and quiet scratching.
* * *
"Zim does not need your filthy human dirt!" he had declared with great fervour the first time you brought a collection of leftovers. The extraterrestrial had smacked the tray out of your grasp and eyed the beans as if they were a poorly hidden beartrap, causing you to believe that his reaction stemmed from food allergies rather than the absence of a need to eat.
When his resistance persisted no matter the variety of scraps, which was admittedly limited due to the vacuum of space, your visits to the storage room decreased from multiple times every day to once every second or third day. It was then that he revealed an occasional taste for human food.
Standing in the doorway, a humanoid automaton was propped against the neighbouring wall, drenched in a wave of the dull light above. Its joints were inflexible and unresponsive to any attempts at moving them, and its synthetic skin, while brittle and peeling in some places, was free of fungus but overcome by dust and age. It was dressed in the same uniform as the crew, albeit one that had faded and wrinkled from neglect, yet it found itself among the trash.
Zim gazed at the inactive android with an odd sort of recognition as if the static, polished visage of the automaton conjured pleasant memories. "Must everything you humans create remind you of yourselves?" A hint of earnest amusement lingered in his voice, which had lowered from its usual screaming heights into a calm murmur, but the touch of unresolved frustration prompted you to retract your last step.
His eyes darted to meet yours, followed by the slightest tilt of his head. "What troubles you, human? Do you not respect the truth?" Despite the wig and contact lenses obscuring every questionable trait but the green skin and the pink tunic that could have been dismissed as an eccentric style, this hastily conceived disguise seemed powerless to mask the inhuman being that had taken to interrogating you.
"I suppose you create what you know," was your eventual response, one given after scanning a random array of objects in nonplussed deliberation. The string of questions reached into paradoxes of human nature, a topic for which almost any worthwhile answer would have required hours of reflection. Your simplification of the complex matter and subsequently apparent disinterest in it evoked a show of disappointment from the alien.
Upon narrowing his eyes, he returned his attention to the android. "Zim does not create." He raised a hand towards the torso of the automaton as if he were a child about to ask for his parent to hold him, only to ball his fingers into a fist that quivered with subdued ire. "Zim conquers." The extraterrestrial bared his teeth and angled his head to the ground, inspecting the android through the roof of his gaze.
His critical stare flitted to the tray of leftovers in your grasp. "I see you've brought more of that sickening human grub." There was an inquisitive edge in his voice, hidden in the gale of disdain, that conveyed a reluctance to approach but a willingness to entertain as if he were waiting for you to eat it in front of him or throw it against the wall. When you did neither of those things and instead watched him with cautious patience, Zim raised a fist to his eye and rubbed the contact lens.
"Itchy human contraption," he muttered before ambling in your direction. The meal, which consisted of dry cereal because it was insipid and harboured only the dull smell of wheat, was eaten with visible discomfort. His eyes crinkled to slits, and the rotations of his jaw were slow and forced. Swallowing the grain was like swallowing rocks, the food dumped into a stomach that had no idea what to do with it.
Zim seldom finished a bowl. A few bites were all he could manage before his body punished him for filling it with foreign and unnecessary materials. His digestive threshold was nearing its peak for the day, but as you sat on a crate and spoke of an Earth he did not remember, he found he had consumed the cereal without a memory of it.
* * *
"This is the third time today you've brought your scraps to storage," accused Darius, his eyebrows rising and falling in sync with his words.
You pushed the moving door with your palm as if it would compel the mechanism to close sooner. Without fully turning to face him, you watched his look of suspicion grow from an uncertain idea into a staunch belief through the corner of your eye. "Mmm, you keeping count?"
He viewed your endeavour to stall the conversation as an admission of guilt, and his voice dropped its commanding intensity in favour of quiet smugness. "Yeah-" he offered a slight nod of his head "-because you've been doing the same thing for the past three days."
Storing extra food was an improbable justification considering the crew had only awoken from hypersleep a few weeks prior, but you coasted through the argument on the backs of caution and safety. Darius, having made his paranoid streak as obvious as the sun in the sky, was susceptible to the right blend of what-ifs.
His lack of immediate knowledge of the passcode, a task that traditionally rested on the security officer, urged him not to alienate you completely. Teeth clenched and lips pursed, he had returned to the dining area.
A series of metallic percussions emitted from the ventilation shaft that left the storage room and curved through the inside of the right wall. The duct joined into a crawl space that ran above your head for the length of the corridor, a space designed to provide an accessible passageway to the inner workings of the vessel in the event of a short circuit or engine overheating. It was more convenient than removing sheets of metal from the walls, but the absence of light and reign of darkness had at once obtained a degree of menace far superior to its innocent purpose.
The sound was reminiscent of a musician striking a bass drum. When you continued down the hall with slow, wary steps meant to test the patience of your observer, it morphed into the clanks of claws tapping steel. The crawl space had a chain-link floor that emulated the pattern of a honeycomb. You reacted to the noise, and as your head was turning, a shadow retreated from the corner of your vision. Eyes flitting between the crevices in the links of the chain, you searched for an outline so vigorously that you began to doubt the validity of any findings.
While the existence of the sound was unquestionable, fear was often self-fulfilling. The fruitless search proved that whatever was tailing you had been swallowed by the darkness. Your fingers pressed the correct sequence of keys with expert speed, a learned attribute drawn from months of every door requiring a passcode to use. Even as the chatter and smell of bread from the common area flooded your ears and nose, it was not until the door obscured it that your gaze left the crawl space.
* * *
The spine of a green spiral notebook was clutched in Darius's hand. Its pages were white like fresh snowfall and held the codes to every door on the starship, a topic that had invaded his sleep and prevented him from following his crewmates to the hypersleep chambers. The static, red light that sat atop the storage room door beckoned to his shadowy figure, and he illuminated the remainder of the path with his flashlight.
Zim stood where the light and the shadows combined, his backside shrouded in darkness while his front shone with brilliant lustre as if it were a diamond. His eyes, which had been fixed on the captain before the light revealed them to be, observed the man's approach with deliberate intensity. Darius briefly pondered whether a few strikes with the flashlight in his hand would be enough to kill the extraterrestrial, but his focus was diverted by a pouring of blame onto your head.
The black pigment of his bouffant hair, which sported a grey stripe in the centre, had been invisible among the dense shadows, but with the introduction of Darius's flashlight, it shone like a pit of tar. Lavender eyes looked up at the captain with the blank interest of a solitary animal observing a sign of life, and the extraterrestrial's mouth was reduced to a straight line. The absence of a visible nose caused Darius to bend his knees, squint, and lean forward.
Zim's eyes, while similar to his own in colour and structure, were unnaturally large, claiming nearly a third of the alien's face. The glossy texture of his sclera reflected the light source like a mirror, and the notion that Zim had concealed his real eyes became entrenched in the captain's mind. The extraterrestrial's head rocked up and down as he scanned Darius, pupils shrinking in contempt as if confirming some unknown piece of information.
A wave of dread crashed over Darius when Zim's hair began to detach from his skull. It teetered to one side before plummeting to the floor, the appearance of thread and glue on its underside exposing it as a wig. Twin antennas unfurled atop his head as if they were a nest of writhing snakes and elongated into an erect stance, with the tips slightly curled towards Darius.
The contact lenses popped out of the alien's eye sockets before sliding down his cheeks, revealing a pair of solid ruby eyes that bulged from his head like goose eggs. A caramel fluid with the viscous consistency of peanut butter leaked from his eyes, which were red and swollen around the edges.
A sound that fondled the line between a groan and a howl, vaguely human but possessing no humanity, began to rise in the extraterrestrial's throat, and a pointed tongue akin to a flexible needle sprang from his mouth. Rows of round teeth glistened with saliva and absorbed the light, each one resembling the zipper of a jacket. The gaping hole in the back of his mouth expanded as his jaws contorted into a sinister mockery of a smile.
Four legs with the gangly design of a spider protruded from his back. The appendages were coated in metallic paint that glinted under the flashlight's reach, their joints too rigid and thin to be organic. They jabbed the ground like anchors plunging into the seafloor, bits of rock and steel leaping out of place, and lifted Zim into the air. The mechanical legs spun in the opposite direction and latched onto the chain-link floor of the crawl space.
Darius pursued with his flashlight, uncovering the massive split in the chains that drooped towards the ground. It was an opening produced by a robust force, one that could snap bones and crush bodies as if it were the hand of a deity. As the extraterrestrial suspended himself above the captain, a sense of unconditional inferiority and existential weakness, like an ant beholding the heart of a tsunami, gripped Darius's being.
The front left PAK leg swung forward in a diagonal motion, sweeping across his neck and upper chest. A shaky, defeated breath that cracked with pain slipped from his lips as no more than a whisper. Darius collapsed onto his back, rattling the brass grate that brushed his fingers. Sanguine fluid leaked from a gash that began at the right side of his ribcage and ended at the left corner of his lower jaw.
Zim descended from the rafters like a leopard examining a fresh kill, embedding the tips of his PAK legs into the section of the floor that cradled the captain to form an outline of the body. The extraterrestrial swayed back and forth between the direction of the dining area to check for rebellious eaters gorging themselves while their crewmates slept and the direction of the sleeping quarters for insomniacs prone to wandering. His antennas wiggled in an up-and-down rhythm, and he drew nearer to the corpse with a morbid assortment of pride and curiosity.
The hind legs of his PAK curled around the now-dead Darius's shoulders, scooping the body off the ground with the practical gentleness of one wishing to keep their presence a secret. Releasing a whirr, the front legs hooked onto the self-made hole in the ceiling and propelled the extraterrestrial into the crawl space.
* * *
When Luise rushed into the sleeping quarters with a bloody flashlight and tear-stained cheeks, you had tumbled out of a hypersleep chamber with chapped lips and a dry throat. She wept about a dark puddle in the corridor outside the dining room and Darius's apparent disappearance. The loss of his domineering personality was not a crisis by itself, but the potential killer was enough to call the rest of the crew into the common area.
Deciding Zim's guilt without a shred of tangible evidence, leaving a vague distrust of the unknown to be the backbone of the argument, was presumptuous at best and fatal at worst. Still, the thought lingered in the forefront of your mind as you entered the passcode to the storage room door.
The semblance of a human, its features too mangled and disfigured to be called a person, laid supine on the metallic table in the centre of the room. A pair of legs and arms dangled from the sides, but the grotesque cavities that decorated the body like tattoos and exposed its innards to the light gave the appendages the illusory sense of belonging to a separate creature. The sterile and pungent stench of antiseptics and aromatic cedar, a kind of medicinal odour that repelled scavengers and induced sickness in the faint of heart, clung to the air.
Unwilling to approach further, what little bit of visibility into the chest and stomach you managed had revealed sunken and white organs. The skin was absent around the head and neck, and two gaping holes replaced the eyes. The complete lack of blood in or near the remains caused it to imitate a cushion that had deflated because of a tear. Each incision traced the body with surgical exactness, impossibly clean and expressing a level of precision that was almost too perfect for reality.
Zim dropped from the ceiling and landed on his feet with the dexterity of a mountain lion, his arms outstretched in a manner resembling an emperor announcing victory to his warriors. "Rejoice, human!" Crimson streaked across his face as if someone had wiped a bloodstained hand on it, and the front of his tunic had sacrificed its pink colouring for a viscous magenta. Bits of flesh hung from his gloves, with dark droplets coasting the length of his fingers and tinting his black leggings.
"For Zim has acquired his first human test subject!" His lips drew back and his eyes widened to form a strained, ebullient expression. "Rejoice with Zim." A tremor invaded his limbs before he paused to look at you with expectant joy, oblivious to the sense of nausea pervading your gut.
"Why would you-"
The extraterrestrial closed his eyes and rested his hands on his hips. "I am practising the human art of co-operation. You-" he opened an eye "-in your narrow, little quest for vengeance, desire to retaliate this flesh pig's transgression." After flicking his wrist at the mutilated mockery of life behind him, he pressed a hand to his chest and turned his head upwards. "And I, with my superior Irken intelligence, require a human subject to dissect."
"You took his organs?"
The inability to thoroughly process this grisly scene that painted your face in contorted shades of bewilderment and fright and that robbed your voice of discernible words puzzled Zim. Eyes wide and free of remorse, he met your struggle with unfettered poise. "It is Zim's mission to harvest the organs of every human onboard." The alarm of someone who had realized the error of his words only after speaking them muddled his composure, and his eyes crinkled in a hasty display of benevolence. "Well, not your organs."
Whether the comment was a sincere promise meant to comfort you or a desperate attempt to mask his true intentions, which he had just flaunted like a new coat, you were unconvinced of your safety. Remaining inside the storage room seemed an invitation for further dissent, so you slid your foot towards the exit.
The extraterrestrial pressed his fingertips together and straightened his posture, attaining a regal stance. "As a show of gratitude for your earlier assistance, Zim shall leave your organs intact." Zim extended his leg in a vertical position and spun on his heel to face the mutilated remains, mechanical legs bursting from his PAK. "Come, human! Look upon Zim's work and be amazed."
As you slammed your palm into the control panel, the hydraulics of the door released a loud hiss. Zim pivoted in the direction of the entrance, his countenance twisting with shock and betrayal. "You pitiful spy!" came his enraged shriek of exaggerated vowels, each word rising in volume and taking longer to pronounce than the last. The middle finger on his right hand outstretched to point at you, and his facial features stretched to such an unnatural extent that his skin imitated a strip of rubber.
The final sight to greet you before the door severed your view of the extraterrestrial was his body succumbing to a violent tremor. The steel that, in an earthbound world, would have provided a sense of security merely amplified the malevolent energy leaking through the crevices like a dam begging to break. The subsequent boom of Zim charging the door caused your heart to palpitate, urging you to turn and scurry in the opposite direction.
Less and less time passed between each bang as his protests evolved from frantic yells, which consisted of demands for you to open the door and vivid declarations of the depravity of humanity, into incomprehensible screams of rage. The grating sound of claws stripping the metallic texture of the door as if it were a banana peel pumped a second rush of adrenaline into your limbs. The commotion on the opposite side of the door ceased, only to be replaced with a series of percussive clangs that ascended the ventilation shaft.
"Heavy damage sustained by interior storage room door." The futile proclamation from the artificial intelligence underscored the rapid clanks of PAK legs nearing your position.
Your footsteps grew clunky and forceful as you hurled yourself at the door to the dining area, knees buckling and hands grazing the floor to keep moving. The head of the engineer, seeking to investigate the announcement, filled the gap between the door and the wall. As they opened their mouth to question your appearance, you knocked them to the ground by sprinting inside.
Grey noodles and half-empty beer cans sailed into the air, drenching every napkin on the table and blanketing the floor with clumps of food and overturned plastic containers. Bits of soggy paper and loose collections of cereal created tripping hazards, and a small puddle accumulated beneath the dining table. Shouts of surprise and fright clamoured in every corner of the room as crewmembers collided with each other and dragged utensils off the table in a frenetic struggle to retain balance.
The shattering of porcelain plates failed to mask the rumbles emitting from the overhead ventilation system, and like a balloon popping under pressure, the section of the ceiling that overlooked the dining table exploded. Sparks of electricity and glass shards cascaded down upon the table in a squall of light and ringing, with a handful of pieces bouncing to the floor. A mess of mechanical limbs and bulging eyes swooped onto the metallic surface, fists balled and teeth bared. "You betray Zim?!"
Senses heightened by the frenzy enveloping his thoughts, the extraterrestrial followed the medic, who was tumbling past him into a flurry of paper shreds and spilt beer, with his head. "Your miserable species is not allowed to betray Zim!" He had crouched and gripped the side of the table, preparing to impale the fallen human with his PAK legs, when the hiss of an adjacent door opening captured his attention. The sight of you retreating to the armoury infuriated him, and he stood with a call for confrontation.
"Human, get back here and face me!" The words spewed from his twitching lips like a feral cry as fury and malice consumed his movements. When his demand was unheeded, the violent enthusiasm that guided his behaviour possessed his PAK. The mechanical legs began to slash the fluorescent lights one by one, and the room was plagued by intermittent flashes of darkness as the lights flickered and cracked. A hysterical Luise scrambled to follow you, accidentally bumping Zim in her panic to reach the armoury.
The extraterrestrial lurched forward. Instinctive umbrage filled his thoughts, but upon recognizing the woman, it swelled to volcanic wrath. He sprang from the table and dug his claws into her shoulders. "Get out of my way!" shrieked Zim, his tongue protruding from his mouth in anger and dotting her face with saliva. The PAK legs abandoned their self-imposed task of engulfing the room in shadows and, with a metallic squeal, plunged into the navigator's stomach.
Screams of panic and agony that overlapped and fought for dominance, accompanied by further crashes and thumps, echoed from behind. The door muffled the cacophony of woe but could not obscure the images populating your mind. Rows of black lockers lined the walls of the armoury, and you slid a key card down the door of each one like a cashier scanning a cart with one of everything in the store while other customers hollered in impatience.
As if your superiors had plotted your downfall, the shelves were all empty. The only weapon to have survived this alleged purge was a flamethrower. It was the length and width of an adult ball python, with its nozzle barely fitting inside the confines of the locker and a fuel tank collecting dust at the bottom. You slipped the leather straps over your shoulders and hoisted the incendiary device into your arms.
The lilting rhythm of various klaxon alarms wailing in different sectors filled the spaceship. An automated voice erupted from the entire intercom system like a collective entity, each recording of the warning blending into another with flawless precision to enhance the sense of urgency. "Self-destruct sequence initiated. The ship will self-destruct in T-minus ten minutes." Its cheery emptiness, devoid of any genuine fear or concern and articulating what little inflection its programmers had allowed, betrayed the horrific nature of the announcement.
A drone reverberated through the room like a strike of lighting, a click marking the initial swell of noise. The rumbling, like the hums of a massive beast or the roar of a distant thunderstorm, descended in pitch and tempo until it mimicked a dying engine slowing to silence. The weakening of the fluorescent lights coalesced with the sound, and the glow flickered like a candle struggling to remain lit. Within a few seconds, the room was enclosed in a case of thick darkness that seemed to compress your body.
Emergency lights bathed the shadows in waves of electric red. Where pools of black once reigned, viscous shades of scarlet and vermillion absorbed the area. It was like gazing into the core of a red giant surrounded by the inky depths of outer space, and your overwhelmed eyes failed to recognize the shelf bolstering your weight. Every piece of machinery gleamed with a violent lustre that caused bursts of pain to twist the inside of your head and panic to invade your breaths.
Piercing laughter echoed from the air vent bordering the East side of the room, which led to the main corridors and common area. Zim burst from the layer of darkness that filled the service ducts and rattled the floor with his landing. His antennas twitched in various directions before pointing to you, and the extraterrestrial turned his head with agonizing slowness.
Your distress seemed to please him, for he looked at you with mischievous glee. As his lips receded to the sides of his head, the red glow of the emergency lighting stained his fangs. "Feeling light in the head, human?" His voice was laced with a malign awareness that taunted your plight and made your next breath escape as a strangled gasp. "While you were playing with those filthy humans, I memorized the design of this vessel."
The bitterness that lowered his voice for the first half of the sentence stirred a rise of choler and antipathy, and your grip on the flamethrower tightened. Zim halted his approach and scanned the unfamiliar weapon with narrowed eyes, expressing the first show of fear towards a product of humanity that you had witnessed. This discovery injected a rush of courage into your mind.
A spurt of flames prompted him to leap away, and the door that stood behind him no longer seemed like a hopeless fantasy. You held the trigger down and scurried to the opposite side of the room. The extraterrestrial fled from the gust of fire back into the ventilation shaft, his PAK legs gripping the wall like a frightened spider.
Instead of directly tailing you, Zim pursued through the service ducts. The mundane appearance of the hanger door betrayed the intricate pipe systems and cargo that was too large to be kept in the storage room. It was the most spacious area of the starship, and the distance between yourself and the escape pod was akin to half a football field.
You had not taken more than three or four steps forward when Zim crashed into your side. Spitting and hissing, he grasped any piece of the flamethrower he could fit into his palms and attempted to yank it from your grip. His struggle would have succeeded if his PAK legs had not been slower to reach the ground, for this momentary lack of support allowed you to press your foot against his stomach and kick him into the flanking wall.
A funnel-shaped cloud of steam gushed from the pipe beside his head, caking his face with an onslaught of searing heat. Zim collapsed in a frenzy of pain, and his PAK legs began thrashing like a robot doused in water. As the pipe was split into two halves and propelled towards the ceiling, a collection of steel support beams plummeted to the ground.
The long objects whose weight was similar to that of a truck landed on his back and legs. With a laborious grunt that evolved into a scream of defiance, he sprang up and threw the debris off himself as if it were no more than a thin blanket draped over his shoulders. It clattered to the floor in a cacophony of rumbling and metallic screeching.
You had no more than a handful of seconds to prepare before Zim lunged across the hanger, extending the flamethrower in front of your chest as a diminutive shield. He slammed into it and wrapped his claws around the side of the nozzle and leather grip, and he did so with such immense force that you staggered backwards into the wall. The surface was cold and stiff like a glacier against your body, which ached and begged for rest.
Through the pall of steam that muddied your vision, you could not miss the smile on his face. It was wide, uncompromising, and, despite the many reasons, flimsy or stable, to curse your name and species, not a side effect of baring his teeth in strain. He was deriving genuine enjoyment from simply combating you with no real desire to end your life, for if death was his goal, a quick slash by one of his PAK legs, which you had no hope of parrying, would have spilt your guts onto the hanger floor.
Watching the mechanical limbs bob and slither, it suddenly became less of a fight and more of a competition in stamina. Every attack, since the moment you entered the hanger, was designed not to draw blood but to exhaust you. Whenever you attempted to shove him away, he would push back with enough strength to nullify your effort but not enough to knock you off your feet. Instead of finishing the battle, he awaited your next move with the frenzied enthusiasm of a gladiator who respected his opponent.
Twisting the weapon up and down and exploiting the height difference, you watched with gratification as the extraterrestrial struggled to simultaneously remain balanced and clutch the flamethrower. His PAK legs had begun to search for places on the crowded floor to imbed themselves when you heaved him back into the line of steam.
"You now have two minutes to abandon ship. The ship will self-destruct in T-minus two minutes." As electric sparks and the distant sound of alarms echoed in the vibrating walls, the vessel itself seemed to acknowledge its impending demise.
Allowing the flamethrower to go with him was a necessary sacrifice, for your time to live was dwindling with each second the computer mainframe processed. While the countdown was not yet audible, every heartbeat was treated as a step closer to doom. Your legs did not seem fast enough, so you leapt into the floor of the singular escape pod. The metal floor was coarse and jagged like crushed asphalt.
After slapping the door controls, you leaned against the wall and surveyed the lifeboat. Its tight design and dual pilot seats welcomed one less survivor than it was meant to sustain. Sparse light peeked through the windshield, which faced the endless depths of outer space, and the twin windows that were shaped like half an octagon on the door. Jumping at a thud on the glass, you spun around to find Zim peering into the shuttlecraft.
He raked his three-fingered hand across a small portion of the window, each claw producing a vertical stripe that appeared white against the clear glass. Humid gales of his breath beat the solid in the form of intermittent mist that obscured his face. The transparent nature of the material was unforgiving at that moment, and you almost expected him to walk through it.
As if beckoned to an unseen objective, the extraterrestrial retreated and disappeared into the shadows. The thought of him sprinting out of the darkness to reenact his assault on the storage room door gave you the last rush of courage necessary to activate the launch sequence. With the pipes hissing and the orange lights on the ceiling revolving, the escape pod ejected from the bottom of the starship.
The distant shape of the space tug gradually shrank from a behemoth to a speck before it was lost among the infinite array of stars. A blinding explosion swelled across what seemed to be a massive expanse of space but, in reality, was a mere anthill collapsing into the dirt. Shock waves that resembled magma in colour expanded in every direction, and witnessing the sight was like peering into the belly of an active volcano.
Through the brilliant light illuminating this desolate corner of the universe, a black dot pursued the escape pod.