The Treasure of Lei Fong Wu

Chapter Seventy

GAMMA TEAM REMNANT –23:55

River was awake long before she opened her eyes. Inside her head, still sparkly and achey from the neural residue of the sonic stunner, she was imagining herself sitting in darkness, within a loose circle of glowy vortices whirling at various rates, pulsating at various tempos. A few were familiar, comfortable. Most were strange, and there were one or two that seemed exceptionally pointed. In her semi-conscious state her subconscious still held enough sway to allow what little lucidity she possessed to be expressed this way, symbolically. She knew the moment she pulled back from that state that her pretense at mental coherency would shatter like glass as her wayward conscious mind took over. The world of abstract symbols would give way to wild flights of uncontrollable thought and emotion. When Simon used his drugs on her, she was able to force them, through sheer will, to settle down to the point where she could mimic sanity. But those drugs were out of her system, now. For the moment, she would cling to this symbolic world and allow her conscious mind to rest before it undertook the arduous task of opening her eyelids. One by one she looked at the vortices, studying them, ascertaining their composition and state. That would be helpful when she did awaken fully, even if her conscious mind didn’t remember them. She started with the familiar ones, the ones close to her. The first and most comfortable was a whirling, mottled mass of light that would churn along steadily for a while and then flash unpredictably. There was the aroma of regret and fear about it, but it was overpowered by the thin, reedy sound of cognition – this one was planning. This one always planned. This one was always ready. This one, she realized, was Malcolm Reynolds. She reached out her focus and brought the spark towards her, studying it. Mal was one of her favorites. Her subconscious brought images of her father to bear in relation to it, but there was much, much more than a mere Elektra transference to a convenient protective authority figure. Father was well put-together, orderly, socially conscious, embedded in the strict hierarchy in which he had grown up. Mal, on the other hand, eschewed order and hierarchy like they were diseases. His natural inclination was to lash out at it, destroy it. But that was well tempered by weary experience. In her liminal state she recognized that coupled with his iconoclastic nature was a deep sense of personal order, one that recognized his crew as the last vestige of family he would ever have. The deep, dark pall that surrounded part of his soul came from watching thousands die senselessly, culminating in the hellish carnage at Serenity Valley, and yet more came from hearing about the destruction of Shadow, that black miasma had made his sense of personal order all that more important to his psyche. If Mal could not control the fate of the ‘verse, he could at least try to control the little ‘verse he had built on Serenity. Nearby to Mal’s comfortable swirl was one she easily identified as Jayne. His was as familiar – she doubted it would ever be comfortable. It snapped and twisted with a combination of raw fear and fearless stupidity. It churned with thoughts of escape and victory, and she knew he was looking for the right moment, the right turn of circumstances that would allow him to act. Jayne was all about action. Typically, he hadn’t even thought about giving up, even in the face of torture – though his bravery was tempered by a keen desire for personal survival. No, Jayne hadn’t given up. He was bound and captured, but he was not defeated. Jayne Cobb, survivor to the end, didn’t know the meaning of the word capitulation. Literally. He didn’t know the meaning of the word. Near him was the far more composed vortex of Colonel Nathaniel Campbell, smooth and steady, pulsating with a calm that belied the seriousness of the situation. Whereas Mal was sizing up his prospects for escape with the eye of a cunning warrior, and Jayne was seeking his moment with grim self-preservation in mind, Campbell was evaluating every nuance of every word spoken, every glance that anyone made, their physical positions and their manner and doing his mightiest to determine what they were thinking. He knew the probable location of every weapon in the room, authentic and improvised, and knew to a fault his chances of reaching them. He was a calculating man, but his aim was not survival: it was fulfilling the greater goal of keeping the ship out of Shan Yu’s hands. He was more than willing to die for that. The duty lay thick about his swirl, like an opalescent cloud. The Imperial Commandos sat scattered to her right, in various states of anxiety, fear, and steely resolve. These men were soldiers, every one a veteran of the War, and they were prepared to die. Not all of them were prepared to be tortured, however, and she saw the jagged lines of self-doubt tinge their vortices. Of course poor Fue’s swirl was spiked by near constant, soul-throbbing pain. As horrified by it as she was, she was drawn to it with morbid fascination. He was a brave man, a kind man, a man consumed by duty. He delighted in it to the point of pathology. Even as he writhed in agony there was a perverse part of him that appreciated that he had been wounded in the service of the Empire, and by no less than the great Tyrant of his childhood stories. River’s subconscious made a face. Men were weird. The vortices on her other side, the ones that represented the Hammerstrike men, were a sad combination of extreme self pity, foolhardy bravery, and abject terror. There were exceptions, of course, men whose substance seemed more akin to the commandos, or even Jayne. But they were disorganized, chaotic impulses, not the disciplined determination of the Imperials. Then there were those stark swirls on the periphery, the men who saw themselves as ferocious predators, the White Tigers. They all had the thin, reedy whine of fanaticism about them, and the ropy texture of fatalism. They saw themselves as already dead, gloriously slain in the service of their Master – just not quite yet. That gave them an edge in combat, allowed them to take risks that men with a better grip on their mortality would not. They were ruthless because they had no greater ambition than death. They scared her – not as bad as Reavers, maybe – they were still thinking, feeling men. But their minds were so rigidly poisoned by discipline and fanaticism as to make their humanity the subject of doubt to the casual observer. Lastly, there was the bright, fiery swirl that was Shan Yu. Flashing vibrantly with grandeur, the whirling energy that was the Tyrant of Yuan was racing, oscillating wildly in every direction as the man’s mind jumped from one titanic fragment to another. It was caged with self-delusion and had the painful, screeching sound of an ego far in excess of its rightful bounds. There was pain in that swirl, and malice, a hatred of the ‘verse for being less than it should be. There was aspiration and, ironically, hope at the center of the vortex, its aroma sweet against the metallic miasma that surrounded the swirl and told of suspicion, fear of betrayal, and a complete lack of trust. Shan Yu was a very sick, very bad man. Steeling herself by reminding herself that he could not yet hurt her, she peered more closely at the wildly cycling spiral of thought and emotion, knowing if she focused sufficiently she could gain some insight. As repulsed as she was by it, this was data she needed, information her mind felt compelled to explore. She would likely vomit, later. But now, she had a chance to glimpse the origins of this monster, see where he left off being a man, and perhaps find the fulcrum that Mal and Campbell so desperately wanted. At first there was little she saw that was surprising. There was an abusive father, a cold and uncaring mother, overly competitive siblings. The one sister he had been close to had died in childhood. A string of bitter disappointments and the lure of duty had forced him into the military, where his orderliness had made him a competent officer. And then she found it. Plunging her self into that node of consciousness, she rode his thoughts back to their root, their origin in his past. There was a camp, she saw, a refugee camp on Xiao, on the Southern Continent, that he had been posted as a young lieutenant. There had been an abusive commander who had been given the task of provisioning the camp, and only half the rations to do so. The commander had, in turn, ordered a young Shan Yu to eliminate one third of the refugee children that had come in from the ration rolls, as the sudden inclusion of two orphanages in the camp’s population had not been planned for. Rather than request more rations from Imperial Supply and concede a failure, the commander had quietly tasked him with finding a solution. It had torn him apart. He had been pulled on one side towards the stirrings of conscience and his own humanity – slaying a foe on the field was one thing, abandoning children to the horror of the battlefield was another – and the dictates of his proper duty as an Imperial officer on the other. He had, indeed, searched for a solution that would have spared their lives. But the province was in tatters from bombardment and attacks by both sides. He had made an abortive search for additional rations, but was unable to discover any source in the wasteland. Even with Imperial soldiers contributing their own rations – against standing orders – there was no way to provision the children. So Shan Yu’s mind broke, and he gave in to duty while allowing his humanity one last desperate shot. He would not abandon them to starvation and disease and the prospect of rape and terror and all the other evils of the battlefield. He had the surplus children brought in for dinner. Each received a single bowl of beans – good, nourishing food, the kind that had been largely absent from their lives for some time. There was laughter and shouting and all the other fanfare a group of busy children bring to the table. He watched them eat and play and laugh, and he watched them, one by one, lay their heads down and stop breathing. He stayed and watched until the very last one was still. He had completed his task. He had followed the order. They had died painlessly and humanely with full bellies, not screaming in agony and terror. Over a hundred and thirty children he poisoned that day, and his soul had been mortally damaged ever since. Lt. Shan Yu had been given a commendation for his action without the details being recorded. But the smile and the laugh of each and every little boy and girl was forever graven on his soul, and much of what came after was his attempt to justify his mass murder. The long campaign provided plenty of opportunities for ruthlessness, and he took every one. Before the year was up, slaughtering children was a minor matter. It was in torture, especially, that he excelled. He studied it with the dedication of any Confucian gentleman-officer, researching techniques designed to make the staunchest Xiaoan soldier give up his secrets. His reputation began to capture attention in certain circles. Imperial Intelligence made use of him often, and in the process he was able to cultivate political contacts that ensured yet higher promotion. He was opportunistic, ruthless, and bold. Yet he did not descend to the bestial level of some of the Thousand Families – his family was outside of the Military tradition, and he loathed the insular nature of the Families. Instead he took great care to demonstrate his gentility and culture, up to composing poetry to honor his superiors and entertain their wives. And every cocktail party, every late-night session of bloody torture and pain, every banquet dinner led closer and closer to the inner circles of Imperial Government. His crimes, especially that horrific first crime, would be of no consequence to a highly placed Minister, he reasoned. And they would not matter at all, whispered part of his mind, if he were the Emperor. His planning of a coup d’etat had been the logical conclusion to his grandiose plans. He went about the plot systematically, reasonably, building his strength and biding his time. He cultivated allies, identified enemies, laid traps for his foes and promoted those who would in turn support him when the time came. He waited for just the right moment, and when it was upon him, he struck without mercy and without hesitation. By that time his soul was so empty as to be hollow, a mere vessel for containing his hate and fear. He had tried to fill it with his ambition, the reigning sovereign of the Empire of Yuan, but it still pained him. He tried to fill it by eliminating his enemies in the purges that followed the fall of the Imperial House, and thousands more joined the orphans. Still it ached. He tried to fill it by a renewed campaign against Xiao, and millions perished and still the emptiness consumed him. He tried to fill it with song and poetry and entertainment, yet his rage and fear surged excessively even when he wrote passionately about the sublime experience of pain and the sweet purifier of agony. Nothing filled the void. His late nights in his “lab” were the only thing that came close, when the cunning application of agony stripped away the pretensions and illusions of his subjects and the true man, at last, came forth moments before death. When, at the last moment of consciousness he had realized that his long-feared betrayal had finally come to pass, there had been relief as he lost consciousness. He had not anticipated Lei Fong Wu’s mercy – if mercy it was – and he had expected to be slain while unconscious, of not placed on trial and executed. When he awoke he had been faced with an existential crisis. When one has consigned oneself to death, it was a heady vindication of his former life to have been given a second chance at not only life, but greatness. Obviously, he thought with some part of his mind, the gods had intended him for domination, for a glorious return to ascendancy in a complacent and decadent time. The ‘verse had need of Shan Yu once again. Why else the present situation? The voices of the children – and the millions who followed them – were nearly silent, their faces and voices buried by a century of forgetfulness. None remained, save his loyal Tigers, who remembered those days, those faces, those voices. And the Tigers would not accuse him. They were ensured to be loyal by their own freely-given vow . . . and other considerations. Shan Yu was, he thought, free at last of his burden. Free to become the sublime ruler that the ‘verse had mandated. He but needed this ship, as an instrument of his power, and the rest would happen as naturally as the fall of rain. River recoiled as she absorbed the sheer madness of the man, the delight in pain and the joy in misery. His soul was a rotten, septic stain on the ‘verse. Death was, indeed, too good for him. He was vile and inhuman. And he intended to kill them all. River backed slowly away from the foul swirl, yet did not take her metaphysical eyes off of it until her revulsion forced her to turn to the comfortable to reestablish her calm. She came to Mal’s vortex, and there she lingered. He, too, had seen horror, had participated in massacres. He had done that from which he would never escape, and of which he would never be proud. War calls for vile deeds, and he did his share. But he had not lost his humanity. Thrice he had refused unlawful orders that would have resulted in the deaths of civilians, and twice he had lost his rank as a result (there would have been a third time but the Purplebellies had attacked and the offended officer had not survived). Mal had dealt with the scars on his soul with the grace and righteousness of God, until God had left him on Hera. He didn’t depend on God to get him through the night any more. He relied only on himself, his people, and his luck. That was what he was counting on, now, she saw. He was ready to act. He knew his people would move the stars in their orbits to save him. And he counted on the fickle nature of Luck, personified, she saw . . . . . . by her. River did a mental doubletake and was compelled to examine the thought in greater detail. There was no mistake. Mal saw River as the personification of his luck, an agent of Fate that would somehow, some way, intervene on his behalf and spare God the privilege of final Judgment. He really saw River as a . . . token, a lucky charm. He did not depend upon her – he had a wise man’s knowledge of the folly of doing that – but he looked to her to provide the fulcrum, give him the angle, in some inherently River-like way. River’s subconscious wrinkled its brow. No pressure. As she was contemplating this – she had never been important to anyone before like that, apart, maybe, from her brother – there was movement and motion and a wave of energetic sparking amongst the prisoners’ vortices. Mal was moved, up past painfully spiking Fue, as was Campbell. Right next to the seething whirlpool of Shan Yu. He intended them harm. He was angry. He would kill them slowly. He wanted something. He would enjoy their pain and eventual death. Mal looked at her, turned his attention to her, expecting . . . something. River panicked. She didn’t know what to do. The expectation of salvation was just too much for her mind – conscious or unconscious – to handle. What could she do? She was just a silly girl, a silly girl who, through an accident of fate had been tortured herself, and who had received an unusual ability from the experience. Sure, she had been trained in a thousand ways to kill, against her will, and had learned many more from the minds of her instructors, ways they had thought were hidden away. But she was not on a mission. She was bound, and her head hurt, and she loathed the idea of wakefulness because it was long, long past time for her meds and she hated the prospect of confronting her own insanity upon opening her eyes. Here, in the darkness, she could think and act reasonably, within narrow parameters. Open her eyes and join the ‘verse and she was wacky ol’ River the dangerous nutcase again. She was just a tied up little girl who was tired and crazy and scared and exhausted and had to pee really badly and – There it was. The answer. The solution. She did the math. It would work. River opened her eyes as Shan Yu raised the knife. “I’ll tell you the code,” River said, standing up. “Don’t hurt them – I’ll tell.”

*

“. . . everybody wants to get into the act . . .” muttered Mal with typical gallows humor. “Come forth, little one,” Shan Yu said soothingly. “Let us hear what you have to say.” “She doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about!” insisted Mal. “She’s clinically insane,” Campbell said at the same time, looking her in the eye warningly. He needn’t have bothered: River could spare no gaze for anyone but Shan Yu. “River, sit the hell down and shut the hell up afore you get us all funeralized!” bellowed Jayne. River ignored him. She stared madly at Shan Yu. “They doth protest too much, methinks!” the dictator said with a gleam in his eye. “Hamlet,” River quoted, her eyes flashing from side to side as if reading invisible text. “Act three, scene two, Hamlet to Ophelia during the play within a play. Ophelia was supposed to be crazy, because she was in an impossible situation. ‘They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table!’ Complex character, Ophelia,” River said knowingly, looking away into space. “Very misunderstood in the theater.” “If this is theater, then it is high drama, indeed!” cackled Shan Yu. “You’re willing to trade the codes for their lives, I take it?” “She doesn’t know any codes!” Mal reiterated. “She’s touched, I’m telling you, totally addled! No way would we trust her with that.” “He’s quite right,” added Campbell. “Pathological liar, among other things.” “They didn’t tell me the ruttin’ codes, damn if they were gonna tell the ship’s idiot!” declared Jayne. “River, sit the hell down!” “No,” River said quietly. “No?” Shan Yu asked, shocked. “No?” Mal asked, shocked. “You ain’t sittin’ down, or you ain’t trading the codes?” Jayne asked confused. “No,” River repeated, a little more intently. “He wouldn’t trade this one . . . two . . . all of you – for anything. You belong to him, now. He would say he’d trade, but he wouldn’t. Not for your lives,” she said airily. “You’re right, I would,” Shan Yu agreed. “They tried to humiliate me, to mock me; their lives are forfeit. But the nature of their passing is quite open to negotiation. It needn’t be painful. I might even take them into service if they were willing to submit to . . . certain precautions,” he conceded generously. “But their lives now belong to me!” “He wants to do things with your brains,” River explained, knowledgably. “I really wouldn’t let him. I wouldn’t recommend it, not at all. Unnecessary brain surgery is just a bad idea,” she said, looking around crazily. She stopped her random motion and fixed Jayne with a chilling gaze. “Believe me, I know.” “Girl’s gonna get us all killed,” whispered Jayne, swallowing nervously. “Well, if you won’t trade the code for their lives, then I suppose you are attempting to trade your own life for it,” Shan Yu reasoned. “Not particularly – oh, I thought about it – when your brutal thugs clubbed my brainstem into sonic pulp. But I’m awake, now. Crazy awake. And self-preservation just doesn’t . . . interest me like it should.” “Then what?” Shan Yu asked, mystified. “Go back to the part about our lives,” urged Jayne. “Focus on that one!” “No, no, no, no,” River said, walking up the narrow path between the Imperials and the Hammerstrike team. Suddenly she moved her arms in some odd way, and the plastic restraints that had held her bound were dangling from a fingertip. “No, no, no! No, Jayne! He won’t do that! Didn’t you pay attention? IS NOBODY PAYING ATTENTION?” she screamed, holding her fingers to her temples suddenly. “Oh, we are so dead,” muttered Jayne, closing his eyes. “River, perhaps it would be best if you were to lay down—” suggested Colonel Campbell reasonably. “But I have something to trade!” she insisted. “Trade, trade, commerce, exchange, swap, barter, trade!” “If you don’t start making some sense soon, little girl,” Shan Yu enunciated carefully, “you wont have much to trade for. I can take that code from your pretty little head – I’m quite good at that sort of thing.” River looked him up and down and scoffed. “Really, Shan Yu, you have no idea what you’re talking about. What you did to Shepherd Book?” she asked casually. “Nothing. Pain, simple, clean fresh pain. You know what pain is, Shan Yu? It’s not in the skin and the flesh and the bones. It’s in the brain,” she explained, then turned back conspiratorially towards Jayne and pointed to her temple. “In the brain!” she whispered loudly. “Oh, I was just getting warmed up with the preacher,” Shan Yu dismissed. “I can do much better than that.” “Still won’t matter,” River sang. “Because nothing you can do to me can be any worse than what has already been done to me. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over . . .” “My patience grows thin,” complained Shan Yu. “What is it you want?” “I . . . want . . . to know . . .” she began, like a four-year-old little girl who was about to tell a secret, “if . . . they . . . knew.” “If they what?” Mal asked. “If who knew?” asked Campbell, confused. “If who knew what?” Shan Yu asked, impatiently, as the girl approached him. His escort stiffened and started to bring their weapons to bear, but he put out a hand to steady them. “Jesus, we’re dead,” Jayne moaned. “The kids,” River explained, as if he was dense. “If the kids knew . . . what?” “About the beans,” she said, simply. Shan Yu’s face was contorted in a rictus of concentration, then a dawning expression of horror. “You,” he said, stammering. “Did they? Did they know? When you led them into the tent, and brought out the pot of beans, did they know then? Or did it take them a while to figure out?” “Be silent!” Shan Yu commanded. “I’ll have your head for this temerity!” “Take it!” she said, accusingly. “One more won’t matter!” “You’re mad!” he barked back. “I believe I mentioned something about that,” Mal added lightly. “Give me that code!” he insisted. “Or I’ll gut you all!” “Did they know, when you lined them up, and promised them a hot meal, did they know?” “Shut up! Give me the code!” “Tell me!” Insisted River. “Tell me if they knew! Did it register in their eyes then, or later? When they started dropping?” “What the hell is she talking about?” murmured Jayne. “Give me that code!” repeated the Tyrant, closing his eyes and attempting to banish the vision that haunted him. “You know what happens if you don’t get it? In just a few short hours this ship dives for the center of the gas giant and everyone in here will die. So I win, if I don’t give it to you. But I will. Just . . . tell me!” “No one interrogates Shan Yu!” he burst out. “It’s not an interrogation,” reasoned River. “Is it Harvey? No, it’s a simple question. You can answer a simple question, can’t you?” “I’m warning you,” he said, menacingly. “And I am warning . . . you. Are you really so fragile you cannot look me in the eye and answer the question? And be honest – no one likes a liar!” She looked pointedly at Mal with that. The Captain shrugged in his bonds. Shan Yu thought a moment, then sighed. “And you will give me the code, then, if I tell you this thing?” “And don’t lie,” River added. “And don’t lie,” agreed Shan Yu. “And let the prisoners go,” Jayne added. River looked back at him sternly. “I will. Answer me that, and I’ll tell you the code. I’ll shout the gorram thing to the rafters, if you want. But I . . . I need to know.” “How did you know about them?” he whispered. “No one . . . I made sure . . . no record . . .” “Yes, you had everyone involved executed – predictably. But there was one person you forgot. One person who was there and saw the whole thing.” “Who?” asked Shan Yu, mystified. “Yeah, who?” asked Jayne. “Tell me my answer, and I’ll tell you. But I warn you: you should have had him executed long ago.” “Fine! You want to know? I have no secrets. But I need that code!” “So tell me, and I’ll give it to you!” “How do I know that?” he asked, suspiciously. “Oh, I suppose I could offer myself and the crew as hostages, but that might be a little redundant, don’t you think? Answer the gorram question!” River burst out in frustration. “No,” Shan Yu answered, simply. “No, they did not know. I told them that they would be fed, and that after the meal two lorries would arrive to take them back to our base camp, and then off-world to safety,” Shan Yu whispered. He suddenly looked aged, as if every year that he had spent in hibernation had come back to him at one moment. “See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” River asked soothingly. “They didn’t know – not until the first ones started dying. Then they knew. They cried and begged you, and you just sat there and watched.” “I . . .” “Even the little girls. The little girls that looked just like your sister. And you watched them. Watched them die. And you thought nobody knew. You thought you killed everybody who knew. But the ‘verse, it knows. The ‘verse knows everything. And it will hold you to account.” “You’re some kind of witch!” the Tyrant said, horrified. “That’s what I’ve been saying,” Jayne muttered. “The ‘verse knows, Shan Yu – you’ve been a very, very naughty boy. And the ‘verse has a way of punishing naughty boys. What would be the worst thing the ‘verse could do to you, Shan Yu? What could climb back past a century and punish you, a man who has lost everything?” “You?” “I’m just the messenger girl,” River said innocently. “I’m just . . . crazy ol’ Ophelia, spouting gibberish. Ask them. ASK THEM! They know. Half of everything I say is complete go se – ask them! Crazy ol’ River. ‘They say the owl was a baker's daughter.’ I have it on the highest authority,” she said haughtily. “I did what you asked,” Shan Yu said, breaking himself away from his train of thought. “Now fulfill your part of the bargain so I can—” “Get on with the slaughter of all of us vile intruders on your ship?” River supplied. “And then move on to conquest. I suggest you start with Hecate – that’s a fitting place to begin. They sat down and picked up the spoon and dove in – them was good beans! And it had been ever so long since they had eaten. Even put some bacon in it, didn’t you? For the nourishment,” she said, sagely. “That and a little poison. The stuff you used to kill rats. It mixed into the beans nicely, didn’t taste or smell or turn colors . . . you sat down with them, chatted with them like a friendly uncle, and watched. You watched them eat every bite,” she accused. “GIVE ME THOSE CODES!” Shan Yu bellowed. “ ‘God be at your table!’” River quoted, her eyes narrowed in disgust. Shan Yu lost his patience and picked the serrated knife back up and held it to Mal’s neck. Mal swallowed involuntarily. “The next words out of your mouth had better be the code phrase, or this man will die in an instant. And then the next one. And one after that, until you tell me those codes!” River closed her eyes, tilted her head down towards her feet, and put her hands to her temples once more. “Omega!” she shouted, loudly, the word reverberating around the wide chamber. “Excellent,” Shan Yu whispered . . . although something nagged at the back of his mind. “Shiva!” River continued – and Shan Yu’s eyes opened widely, as if seeing her clearly for the first time. “Stop her!” he commanded, his face frightened. His men started to move when the girl spoke again. “Exeunt Omnes!” River screamed. And a moment later, over three dozen small pops – no louder than a Christmas cracker – also echoed through the room, and every white-clad body in the place toppled forward, a thick smear of blood and brain tissue trailing out of their necks. Everyone was startled by the unexpected action. Shan Yu even dropped his knife, as he turned around wildly, staring at his men who were falling on their faces, their white uniform cots stained with blood – and in a few cases, their heads rolled away, decapitated from the force of the tiny explosion.. “NO!” the old dictator screamed. “NO! No No No nononono!” he chanted pathetically. The prisoners were starting to realize that their guards were all dead. That the only foe in the room was a wiry old man whose eyes had grown white with fear. “If I were you,” River said calmly, “I would commence to running, now.” Without another word Shan Yu stared at her in horror, then bolted for the doorway behind him. In moments he was gone. Everyone in the room stared at River. Everyone looked at her with a mix of amazement and awe. There were murmurs among the Hammerstrike team, especially – they had been told she was dangerous, but this . . . River suddenly realized that she was the center of attention. She was confused, at first, then frightened herself. So she gave a lopsided grin and did a theatrical tap dance flourish that ended in a bow. Then she threw up. A lot.