SPECTRE
Chapter Seven: Dib -Termination-
We fall to the floor/The rest of the day stands still
Fine line between this and that
When things go wrong I pretend the past isn't real
Now I'm trapped in this memory
And I'm left in the wake of the mistake/Slow to react
Even though you're so close to me
You're still so distant/And I can't bring you back
No
No matter how far we've come
I can't wait to see tomorrow
No matter how far we've come I
I can't wait to see tomorrow
With you.-
-"With You", Linkin Park-
-Discomfort endlessly has pulled itself upon me
Distracting/Reacting
Against my will I stand beside my own reflection
It's haunting how I can't seem...
To find myself again
My walls are closing in
[Without a sense of confidence and I'm convinced
that there's just too much pressure to take]
I've felt this way before
So insecure
Crawling in my skin
These wounds, they will not heal
Fear is how I fall
Consuming what is real.-
-"Crawling", Linkin Park-
You don't need a telescope now. The ships are hovering, just above the city, not only visible but impossible to miss. The purple and magenta shades capture the attention, ensnare it in a death grip and refuse to let go. I wonder what they're waiting for.
The people in the street aren't waiting. Most have given up on governments and gods. They run, screaming, through the streets. The few who still trust to someone to save them are huddled in their houses. Through the windows their faces are lit by the dancing glow of televisions, skin and flesh gaunt and tense in the harsh flickering, pulled tight over boney skulls. If they looked outside they'd know-they won't live to see the declaration of war on the television screens. Their lives are ended and they don't even realize.
At least the looters aren't living on blind faith. They're breaking into the houses and stores that aren't occupied, taking what they can carry and running, presumably on their way out of the city. Rain beats on backs hunched against the wet, the cold; it's somehow dark despite the pale sky. I wonder if he can hear the drops hitting the roof, if it's filling him with that old fear.
I'm about to find out. Water drips from my trenchcoat and pools on the porch as I pause in front of the door, taking inventory. The tools I grabbed from the lab are just as I left them, hidden in the slightly musty folds of black leather. A joyous high-pitched squeal sounds, deep in the yard behind the house. Ignorance must be such bliss. I open the door.
At first there's silence. The place is empty. My feet find their own way into the living room. Several game systems litter the floor before the big screen TV, dangling cords evidence that each had been hooked up and then unhooked to make room for the next. An empty bowl sits on the floor in front of the couch, and a black blanket is thrown haphazardly across the arm, wrinkled. I rub a finger along the cushions. It comes away a deep red-hued purple.
"The mess is your fault. I suppose it's too much to ask for you to clean it up." I can just imagine the look she's shooting at me, can feel it burning into my shoulderblades, that one-eye-slitted-open glare that she'd perfected by the age of two, that never fails to quail any opponent. Never, until now.
I turn and face her.
A gun rests in her hand, a smooth chrome design that doesn't look out of place there, despite the ridiculously large size. Dad gave it to her on her twenty-first birthday. He was always worried about her safety-ironic, considering-but until then he'd trusted me to take care of her. I wonder now if maybe he'd wanted me to protect everyone else from her. But I know too that she won't use it, not against me. The only purpose it had was negated when I came alone.
"There are only two things on this planet I still respect, Dib. And they aren't even from this world. What does that tell you? What does that mean for the unevolved neanderthals you tried so hard to protect? About their worth. About just how much they deserve the salvation you tried to bring them."
"I didn't come here for them."
"I know what you came for." She pauses, opening both eyes to stare at me fixedly. "'Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and Hell is only a poor synonym.'(1) It must've been hard. No respect, no love, shunned by an entire race, no family to speak of."
"You were family enough for me."
"I wasn't talking about you, Dib."
I tuck my hands into my coat, one going into my pocket, the other wrapping around cold metal. "You'd still defend him." Even to my ears it rings flat, not even a statement, let alone a question. We both knew what her place in this would be. "What's left? There's no place in this universe for him, no matter how much you wish it were different."
Her posture becomes a strange mix of defensive and aggressive. "I can't fail. I can't let it happen."
"You won't. There's nothing you can do to stop it." A split second after I've brought my hand up her eyes go wide. A split second after that she's on her knees in the doorway, her hair falling to gravity, covering her face. Involuntarily I wince as she reaches up and rips the hypodermic needle out of the flesh below and to one side of her collarbone.
The paralyzing agent is quick acting. At the stomp of my heavy boots she glances up, head moving slowly as if she hasn't even the strength for that. She glares for all she's worth as I kneel down and pull her up into a sitting position against the living room wall.
Her head lolls to the side slightly; her body falls limp against the wall. Her gaze locks on mine, though, untainted by the lethargy of her body. I don't, perhaps can't, break the eye contact. After almost a full minute she turns away as much as she can. Her eyes remain wide. A single tear runs down her cheek.
"Damn you." Her voice is barely audible. I kiss her once on the forehead, barely noticing as my tears mingle with hers, then rise, and descend to the lab.
The new hypo slips easily into the chamber. Inside the glass swims a thin blue liquid. It's a tranquilizer we developed in our study of him. Nothing on Earth worked, so we had to improvise and experiment with blends of his technology and ours. The dosage is four times safe levels. Each step sends it up against the sides of the glass in tiny waves, a miniature ocean in a storm, trapped in a bottle. Funny how something so mudane can be so pretty. How something so deadly can be so beautiful.
I expect to have to search for him, for Gaz to have sequestered him in one of the dozens of hiding spaces in the lab, the places I used to sneak into as a baby to watch my dad work. When I get down there I see him standing in the middle of the room, right before the stairs. Waiting for me. His chest is covered in bandages. He's staring at me, unflinching, unblinking, with those eyes that have dominated my entire life. That'll dominate me till the end.
"You're not going to take me back."
"No."
A nod. He knew as well as I that it would end this way. Suddenly I have to ask him, though I don't want the answer, don't want any answers. "Do you regret it? ...Any of it?"
His glare gives me what I was expecting. "I spent a lifetime in blind obedience to beings that would've been overjoyed if I turned up dead. Only once did I feel I was actually worth anything, and that period was cut short all too quickly."
He pauses, stares at the floor. "Do I regret? Yes. I regret I couldn't spend more time with Gaz, with GIR. I regret I ever turned away from my mindless service, that I ever experienced joy of any kind. The presence of comfort only makes its absence all the more painful." Red eyes meet mine, sorrow turning to anger as I watch, and he growls. "I regret ever coming to this forsaken ball of dirt!"
Another pause as he rubs his head, sighs. His gaze turns inward, almost as if he's rethinking his answer. "Regret is wishing that an event didn't happen. ...No. I regret nothing. Nothing but the time I've lost. Time that could've been spent with them...with you."
The anger is gone from his stare and replaced by sorrow, so painful I choke for several moments on the breath hitching in my throat.
"Did you want me to say I'm sorry for trying to take over the human cattle? For the fights we had, the games we played? That's all they were, games." His tone becomes mocking, even more harsh than it had just been. "But the period after, that was a game too, wasn't it? Did you find it funny, how much I trusted you? All those times you bugged me with questions about Irk. At first it was tiresome; I still didn't trust, couldn't."
He turns from me, clenches and unclenches his fists at his sides. "But so much time passed and nothing happened, none of the attack I fully expected. I began to believe it really was simply your insatiable curiousity. That there was no longer anything to fear. It even made me think your disgusting species might not be such genetic rejects after all, that eventually the planet might become something worthwhile."
Suddenly he rounds on me, and I stumble back a step in surprise. Moisture starts to glisten at the corners of his eyes, as he shouts, "You were all I had! You and her! I was a prisoner, but at least I wasn't alone. Then it was gone because of you, all of it gone! Do you have even the most remote idea of what it means to lose everything? Everyone?" All I can do is stare at him, and he stares back appraisingly, coldly.
"Yes, I think you do. You found out the same time I did." In his eyes pity mingles with a familiar contempt, the kind I haven't seen in many years, that was only ever turned on me. Pain lances through my chest, and I tear my gaze from his, from that dominating red. Tears melt everything around me.
The sound of metal on metal screeches off the walls as the back entrance to the lab is opened. A familiar high-pitched, questioning voice echoes throughout the room. "Master?"
I raise the gun and squeeze the trigger.
"Goodbye, Zim."
(1) Quoted from Salem's Lot by Stephen King.
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