M△NIC-ARTIFICE

The fear was part of it.

She’d remembered, when Voxia could still go out in public and thought everyone was talking about her, plotting against her, when she screamed at the doctor that he had put a nonexistent probe in her brain. The fear, growing worse with time until she couldn’t leave the house at all anymore. Perhaps a fear similar to the one that had Hal shaking beneath her blanket, a terror of death that had her spiraling.

Hal couldn’t die. Halinor Artay Nima was not going to die here, on this unmapped planet in front of an Irken- an Invader, no less. Whether he intended to help her or intended to toy with her like so many other Invaders did with their hapless prey. What if he was the one who got her sick to begin with?

Her own dread gave way to another coughing fit, this one having her curled up until she was nothing more than gray horns peaking over a fleece blanket. Anger, stress, terror all bubbled within her until she felt like she might immolate right there, made worse by the feeling of sickness permeating throughout her body. And at the center of it, Zim, who she couldn’t help but notice was still there.

Why?

“I hope you’re right.” she mumbled, her voice muffled by the soft material, “They don’t make those pills here.” with a groan, she unfurled herself, laying on her side to face him, “The uh… ones my mom stopped taking.”

An exceptionally painful way to die, for a woman with a choice. Hal was naive, but she wasn’t dumb, of course it had been a choice. An active, yet passive act, an end to her misery in the bathroom cabinet waiting to be utilized, and yet it never was. Voxia Artay was a broken machine, she was nonsensical data, she was a haunted gust of ash in a cold, metal box tucked away.

“…and no, I dunno why.” Hal seemed to anticipate his next question, “You’ve- you’ve been sick here too before, right?”   

“Y-ye--” Zim stopped himself. “Your mother stopped...” His eyes went wide for a moment as his antennae drooped slightly, his words almost at a half whisper. Was that a question he’d even want to ask? Huh. Okay. Alright. This was getting to be strange, even for him, even for how macabre and awful his life and own self were. Of course, he wasn’t entirely sure what pills she was talking about but he assumed they had to be important in staving off whatever it was entrops did.

He stood there, staring for a moment, his expression still somewhat in shock. Again, part of him almost found it funny. If this weren’t someone he’d known, perhaps he’d even laugh again, but he couldn’t quite manage to even speak. Part of it was how off the whole situation was but the other half was that Hal had never really been this open before... And this is what she chose to talk about in depth first. Was it trust? Or was it simply because the only other choice right now would have been Gir or Dib who wouldn’t have even really been able to comprehend or lacked the experience.

Maybe he should have answered as to whether he’d been sick on Earth before but what could he have said that would have actually quelled her concern? Certainly she was trying to cut him out, close off what questions he could ask. A strange and annoying little behavior of hers. If he weren’t so taken aback, maybe he could have chastised her but right now it simply wouldn’t have been (though he didn’t quite know why he cared) appropriate. Weighing his options, he settled on playing along.

He quickly turned around and looked at the chair behind him. Seemingly Hal’s computer chair, he grabbed one of the armrests by its base and dragged it on over to where he could face Hal who was now somewhat unobscured from her cloth burrito.

He cleared his throat. “Of course I’ve been sick here before.” He scoffed. “This planet’s a... breeding ground of disease and horror. In more ways than one.” He narrowed his eyes, seemingly wandering into some little hateful realm of thought again before snapping back into looking at the girl’s blanket-buried form.

“I suppose you must wondering how this... Base’s diagnostic systems rate in handling situations such as this, hmm?”

Hal could feel her stomach drop in the silence that followed. He was thinking awfully hard, that didn’t mean he thought she had it, right? Hal grit her teeth as though expecting the worst of news. Why it was so important Zim specifically validate her suspicion, she could only blame her troubled mind for. He was the only person there at the moment, the first time she’d been sick in what seemed like years and it had to be here; a place she shouldn’t find herself suddenly gripped with such helplessness.

So why then did this feel like her fault?

Somewhere in the recesses of her memory was a hunched woman, her skin a pale gray, just barely visible in the low light of their dingy apartment. Around her, a barricade of things. Piles of them. She’d been just as helpless, just as weak in body and later in her mind, look where it got her. 

…maybe there was a box awaiting Hal’s ashes too.

“Nononono. No.” Hal swallowed hard, then inhaled her first deep breath in what seemed like hours, hands trembling. 

What was wrong with her? Why was she even thinking that? And to freak out like this in front of him of all people, possibly the king of freaking out. She pushed her horns away from her face, fingers lingering on her forehead as she attempted to catch her breath.

Get ahold of yourself. Why are you being so weird about this?

“Ugh it’s just…” Hal shook her head, he was looking at her expectantly, confused, to be honest so was she. Should she even get into it?

“My mom… it’s what my mom died from and… I dunno if there’s a chance… maybe…” her gaze fell upon the bio scanner in Zim’s hand, “I can’t die.” she mumbled, voice almost a whisper. 

Zim watched the child with a look of certainty that slowly melted off of his face into one of absolute confusion. He was puzzled. Hal seemed... Troubled, but he hadn’t exactly seen it slip like this. And what exactly was he supposed to be about this anyway? He stood there for a moment as the situation seemed to get worse in her head. Should he have been waiting? It felt like he was almost more watching himself watch her. What would the appropriate response even be? He made sure to not move too much, somehow feeling like even doing that would make the strangeness of this situation somehow more uncomfortable for the both of them.

It was rare for him to be legitimately cautious like this. Even he wasn’t sure exactly what to do with it. He wasn’t even sure if that was the right call for this but finally she began to speak, pushing her horns from her view. 

The realization hit him. Or at least he thought it did. Did it? Entrops? Her mother died of that? Admittedly, part of him was shocked somehow that Hal had a mother. Sometimes he needed to remind himself that not everyone was born in a tube like he was. The fact took him out for a second or too that felt like too long. A brief moment passed, a pause that felt too long and he could tell they both felt it. He did the mental math... It didn’t add up. Hal wasn’t that old. 

“Heh... Aeh *cough cough*” Zim gave a surprised and horribly inappropriate laugh at the absurdity of the situation and attempted to cover it up with a cough, putting a fist to his mouth and jerking his head away and hopefully obscuring the view of his mouth until he regained his composure. She thankfully continued speaking, maybe she hadn’t noticed. Good glob this was absolutely messed up. Was her mom even alive when entrops was at its peak??

The crab seemed to assess them, then quickly loose interest and scuttle away. Hal forgot where the remaining four were, probably somewhere in the house for Zim to discover to his own horror later. That seemed about on par with everything else, anyway. She had expected him to leave at that point, hoped he would, actually. 

His paranoia was doing nothing but put her more on edge, flinching at every way her own body seemed to be betraying her. Hal didn’t put a lot of special effort into not getting sick. At the very least, not in the same way he did. Hal didn’t go out of her way to avoid the others at her school, hardly had any problem living in hovel. Should she be surprised? Instead he lingered there, judging her cluttered dwelling in a way that made her want to scream at him to leave her alone.

Instead she sighed.

“It’s not messy, I have a system.” Hal defended, what that system was, she couldn’t describe, it was too complex even for her… probably, she turned her head, miserably, in his direction, pink face deathly pale. 

What was it like to get so sick you let it overtake you? 

To give into the circuit marks of massive veins beneath thin, frail skin? The jutting of bones from a long-gone appetite; the slow dirge to an emaciated figure hunched over on the universe’s most comfortable couch, dying alive. What was it like for her that she let it eat her at the way it did? Hal pondered this, although she didn’t want too.

“…but- are you sure?” 

In spite of everything, how badly she wanted to be alone, his answer was what she needed to hear. Though not heartfelt by any standard, Hal didn’t exactly know what that meant either. He had no real heart to feel with. And her? Jury was still out, but it wasn’t looking good. Expecting Zim to really care about her was about as likely to happen as it would with anyone else. Thinking about it was just as stupid.

So why then was his reassurance suddenly so important?

“Entrops.” she stated, the word like poison on her tongue, “You know anything about it?” 

Zim was not privy to the thoughts that circled the girl’s head. She had an odd relation to sickness and a morbid relationship with death, though neither of these were really all that unusual for Zim or the people he knew. There was a definite disconnect between the level of stress she was in and the level he was in. Theoretically there was always some level of disconnect between how dire things seemed to others and Zim’s interpretation of them, but this time felt different. He could tell on Hal’s pensive face that he was missing something. A context for all this was escaping him. Impressive considering he kept psychological profiles on just about everyone under his roof.

Never before had he seen Hal so certain of her death. Something she seemed to all but confirm. Half of him told himself he could just leave this room. He was aware he entered without asking and was occupying space simply because he could and he was involved in this situation previously. Certainly he had the right to continue doing so. The other logistical alternative was to do this after forcing another bioscan to confirm to her that ‘The Sickness’ she was down with was not going to be fatal. He thought better of it though, she was already in her bed and seemingly dismissive of him in a way where he might have to actually care about the consequences of his actions here. This room didn’t have the same equipment as the ‘living room’ and to drag her back out there? It seemed like a recipe for situations he wasn’t going to ever want to deal with. 

“...Entrops....” Zim replied, thinking. Processing his thoughts. Entrops. It barely rang a bell. If he were more aware of it, maybe he would have been running, screaming down the hallway and locking Hal in a purification chamber for a month. In his time working on Vort however, it had been fairly well documented as being cured. “Heh... Yes, I’m familiar. ...Sort of.” Zim responding, blinking as he thought about it for a moment, antennae flicking forwards. He wasn’t lying. Well, he was sort of lying. He was barely familiar. He knew it was a disease once. It killed some people. A lot of people? Then it was cured and it’s been cured. Right? Aside from this, he was more or less... Feigning understanding what it was she was talking about.