Double Crossed (Invader Zim)

Chapter 10

I wake up when I feel myself moving, bumping up and down. Looking under me, I see the ground, which looks a bit to far away. I try to push myself up, only to find that there are metal beams wrapped around my torso.

"Oh, are you awake?" The voice is obviously Zim's.

"Yeah, why am I strapped in metal?" I ask, trying to move my arms again.

"You were asleep. Duh, didn't think I had to tell you that," Zim says, and I can hear the eye roll in his tone.

"I mean why didn't you wake me up when you were leaving?" It was my turn to roll my eyes.

"You looked so peaceful... I didn't want to ruin it." Zim says softly, almost regretfully.

"Can you please put me down?" I sigh. "My arms are starting to cramp up."

The metal beams- which I now know are Zim's "spider legs"- drop out from under me and I fall to the ground, which just so happens to be concrete. Great. I decide not to get mad at Zim as I realize that we're here. The doors of the military base tower above us intimidatingly. Were they always this tall, or is my stress just causing me to exaggerating things?

"So. I'm guessing there are air vents in this place?" Zim asks.

"I mean, they kind of need fresh air," I say, rubbing my head, which had knocked against the pavement when I fell.

"Alright then, we can get in through those," Zim says matter-of-factly. His face looks so confident, like he knows we can't fail. I'm not going to try to object. "Then we can split up, and search the place separately to cover more ground."

Until now.

"I am not going in there alone," I say, shaking my head. If I'm doing this, I'm doing this with Zim.

"Nonsense! It'll be much easier to do if we search separately!" Zim reaches down and places a device in my hand. "If anything happens, you click the blue button on there and we can communicate through my Pak. You can also press the red button to halt any communications, in case you need to stay quiet. That way, I can't call you."

For what seems like the hundredth time, I decide to give up on arguing. I won't be able to change Zim's mind no matter how hard I try, or how compelling my arguments are. I bite my tongue as Zim lifts me into the air vent with his metal arms.

"What does it look like in there?" Zim calls quietly. "Are there branching paths?"

Right in front of me is a path that goes left and a path that goes straight. "Yeah, there's two ways. I'll go left," I say, deciding quickly to avoid wasting time. I don't hear an answer, so I start moving, still nervous. I can't tell if I'm sweating because I'm worried, or because it's just about half the temperature of the sun in here. Aren't air vents supposed to be cool?

I can hear Zim bumping around behind me, though he is a lot quieter than me. He wasn't just being cocky about the whole stealth thing, he's actually pretty good at sneaking around, even if he is incompetent when it comes to taking over the Earth. It always surprised me that he was never able to do that; he's actually pretty smart. I thought so highly of him that I felt I needed to stop him, so much so that when I stopped, my life became so much more boring.

While I was thinking, the sounds of Zim making his way through the vents is now gone. I bet he's already in the halls, sneaking through doors. I keep moving, my forehead dripping sweat.
Seriously, why is it so warm? This is the exact opposite of air conditioning.

Below me, I see a dim light, and realize all at once that I've found a way down. Carefully, I back up a bit and grab at the edges of the vent cover. It comes away easily, and I just fit through the opening before dropping to the ground into a room full of papers. How convenient. I walk up to the first table and grab a stack, sitting in a chair to read through it. There were things dating back to the first and second world wars. Whatever this was, it definitely wasn't up to date. I sift through the piles, finally finding one that seems relatively recent. The disappearance of Mars. The paper on Mars itself doesn't seem to important, so I rifle through the stack (seeing a few things about me along the way), only to find that no alien activity had been spotted... pretty much ever. Man, humans really are stupid.