Continued thanks must go to Leiasky for her invaluable insights, support and just plain old humor! Thanks my friend.

All disclaimers apply (as I haven't put one on any of my stories lately). Just writing for fun and love of the 'verse!

Read and review - that's all I ask!

***

Martin Jin felt the girl’s body go limp and rose slowly after he was sure she was indeed unconscious. Within minutes the room filled with some of his associates. Glancing to them, he wiped his bloody knuckles with a rag as he said, “Take her to the exam room. There is still useful information we can glean from her.”

Three of River’s fellow students stepped forward and obliged. A fourth came up to him and reported in a monotone, “Two ships are hovering within our no-fly zone. A firefly and a shuttle.”

Jin smiled tightly despite the pain it caused. “Good. It would be a pity if the brother couldn’t see his sister one last time.”

The sentiment was completely lost on the younger student. He was barely in his teens and Jin knew he had been programmed to not care. That was part of their training regime, had been every since River had escaped. And they had gotten much better at making sure the imprinting took.

“Do not interrupt us,” Jin ordered over his shoulder as he followed the way the three other students had gone with River’s unconscious form. “If the girl’s brother makes it through, leave him to me.”

With that Jin exited the room and walked resolutely toward his first and last experiment.

***

Kaylee had patched the engine room’s comm into the bridge, knowing that the captain would need her right at hand with no lag time. So she had heard Simon’s voice as the shuttle hailed them. Her heart swelled just at the sound and tensed at the emotion it conveyed. Tears sprang to her eyes as she heard Simon tell the captain about the kids guarding that torture chamber. She knew he was trying to stay strong for River and for everyone so that they could survive this. But Kaylee knew him and she could tell it was eating him up.

And she had heard with startling clarity as he’d admitted that River was gone. Kaylee didn’t want it to mean what she thought it did, but just hearing the words and the pain in her bao bei’s voice forced the tears pooling in her eyes to spill over. With little will to do anything else, Kaylee sunk to the floor of the engine room, her head in her hands, and cried.

***

“You really think that’s gonna work?” Mal fixed his merc with a hard glare, not at all liking the readiness or seeming willingness with which he wanted to attempt his plan.

“It did once ‘fore,” he said, shrugging slightly, Vera still cradled against his chest.

Mal let his questioning gaze fall to Simon. The doc had been barely present the last few minutes as they had puzzled out another way to go about this rescue. Mal tried not to dwell on the pain or sadness that marred his features. He instead chose to believe that the kid was not as crazy as his sister and therefore could not know that River was really gone. It just wasn’t possible.

Sighing, Mal said, “All right. Simon, you up for this?”

At the sound of his name, Simon turned hollow eyes back to the screen and Inara bit back a sob. The doctor was literally a shell of himself and she wished she had the power to restore some of the light that he normally held in his eyes. Even the intense fire of retribution would be better than the nothing residing in his blue eyes now.

“I am, captain.” His voice was just as dead as his look, if that were possible.

Nodding once, Mal said, “All right, get your gear on.” The two men exited the cockpit and Mal turned back to Inara. “You up for this, bao bei,” he questioned her quietly.

She turned a watery smile to him and shrugged lightly. “Not much of a choice now is there?”

Mal returned her grin and glanced over his shoulder as Zoe exited the bridge to prepare herself. When Mal again looked to his beautiful girl, Inara could read the fear in his face. “I’m sorry.”

Puzzled, and wondering if they really had time for this, Inara asked, “For what?”

Running a hand through his mop of hair, Mal said, “For this, all of it. I never wanted you to be in this kind of danger.”

Frowning knowingly at him, Inara leaned in a bit closer to the screen and rested her fingers lightly against it. “We live in a dangerous ‘verse, Mal,” she reminded him, her voice soft. “I chose this life when I chose you.”

His eyes widened slightly at her admission, surprised to hear the words come from her so plainly. No teasing, no confusion, no hurtfulness, just truth. “It’s still the only choice I could ever make,” she added, her voice dropping even lower.”

Mal held her look for a moment more and then leaned into the screen himself, ghosting his fingers against hers. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you, Inara Serra,” he told her, matching her tone. “But I aim to keep doing it every day for the rest of my life.”

She smiled at him, a genuine warm smile that reached her amazingly large brown eyes and told him, “Just love me, Mal. That’s all you’ll ever have to do.”

With that, she turned off the wave and slumped back in her chair, trying to quell the fear and the tears that consumed her. She just hoped she had the chance to be with her family again, to be with Mal again. She just hoped she had the chance to tell him one day that he was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

It was a chance she needed and one she was not certain she would get.

***

Sharp and invasive. Painful and many. They were hurting her again. River kept her eyes closed, her mind trying desperately to block out the pain as Jin stuck her with more needles and injected her with more drugs. Why? She was no use to them anymore. Didn’t he know he’d won? He had finally broken her and yet it wasn’t enough.

He had to take the last shred of her sanity and her life and twist it, chew it up and spit it out until it was nothing. Until she was nothing. Crying through the pain and the heartache, River lulled back into unconsciousness and waited for the end to come. She had failed.

***

Jin saw River’s brain activity spike and watched as the girl tried to fight. Instead she whimpered pathetically and again passed out.

Smiling tightly, Jin looked to the two blue-gloved agents who had joined him. “Get what you need and then get her out of here.” Turning, he headed for the room’s only exit. “The sooner she’s gone the better.”

***

Simon was painfully aware of the harness cutting into his hips and thighs. Having never worn one before he had thought Jayne had been trying to intimidate him when he’d joked about how uncomfortable it would be – for the first time that Simon could recall the big ape-man had actually been telling the truth.

The shuttle swerved slightly, throwing the bigger man off balance as he loaded Vera. “Gorramit, ‘Nara, hold ‘er steady!”

Simon was fairly certain he heard the composed woman say something decidedly unladylike, but he chose to ignore it. This was going to be hard enough without any distractions.

“You ready, doc,” Jayne asked gruffly, his hand resting on the shuttle’s door release.

Taking a deep breath and marveling at the idiocy of the question, Simon nodded. Jayne returned the nod and with a great pull opened the shuttle’s door, sliding it soundly into its pocket. A rush of wind entered the small space and Simon braced himself against the door’s edge. Risking a glance outside, he quickly pulled his head back in and tried not to think about how high up they were.

The only way into the Academy without blasting through throngs of children involved descending from above. Having brought every kind of equipment known to man, Jayne had made the good suggestion of rappelling to the roof of the large building to avoid a battle with the students. It would also allow them to avoid the invisible security fencing as preliminary scans of the building showed the barriers did not reach the roof.

And why should they? Simon peeked again and again had to remind himself not to look down. The tallest point on the Academy’s building was an observation tower at ten stories in the air. The idea of someone trying to infiltrate the building from such an altitude wasn’t just inadvisable, it was suicide. Well, thought Simon tightly, leave it to Jayne to find the riskiest, most implausible and dangerous solution. Good ol’ reliable.

“’Nara, you gotta take her down, ‘nother fifteen feet, at least.”

Inara heard Jayne’s shout and bit back another string of curses. If it was that easy she would have already done it. The truth was the shuttle was already straining and she could feel her arm muscles growing tired as they fought to hold the ship at the right height so that Jayne and Simon had chance of alighting to the roof without breaking their necks. But the wind sheer at this height, coupled with the drag she was getting off of Serenity, hovering just a few feet away, was causing all kinds of complications. And the sweat on her brow and the ache in her muscles told her, this wasn’t going to get any easier.

Slowly she eased the ship down, trying to drop them horizontally so as not to throw either of her passengers off balance. She saw from the corner of her eye as Serenity did the same, Zoe no doubt straining just as much as Inara to keep the ship steady. Mal was no doubt barking orders at his first mate as well, all trussed up in the cargo bay to join Simon and Jayne when the timing was right.

Simon glanced back to Jayne and cocked his own gun, one of Jayne’s throwaways that he had been kind enough to lend the younger man. “All right, ‘Nara, that’s good,” Jayne yelled over the rush of wind. The shuttle shuddered for a moment and then took up a more or less stable position.

Glancing back to Simon, Jayne shouted, “All right, doc, on the count of three.”

Simon nodded and focused out the shuttle’s door, wishing he didn’t feel as if he was going to vomit at any moment. “One, two …”

With a fierceness Simon had not been expecting, Jayne roughly shoved him out the shuttle’s door. Barely prepared, Simon scrambled to slow his descent, pulling on the winch that was built in to his harness. The roof was coming up awfully fast, but after what seemed an eternity, Simon slowed just slightly, hitting the hard surface with a thud, but making it in one piece. Jayne landed next to him a second later, followed by Mal.

Scrambling up, Simon was furiously unhooking himself as he shouted, “What the hell did you do that for?”

Jayne threw him a knowing smile as he undid his own gear. “Couldn’t risk you gettin’ cold feet, doc.”

Simon could think of dozen, untraceable ways to kill the man, but swallowed his ire as Mal came up beside them. “You ready?”

“Let’s go,” Simon said, for once leading the way. Neither the merc or the captain questioned it for a moment.

***

Simon accessed the building’s schematics from a random terminal quickly as Mal and Jayne stood guard. Scanning through the floors of the building, he wondered where they would keep the body of his dead sister. Swallowing back tears and an even greater urge to scream, Simon memorized the data in moments and turned to the other two men.

“Chances are she’s down below in one of the exam rooms,” he told them, his voice hard and cold. “I would imagine she’s being held there until they can determine how to dispose of the body.”

“Stop sayin’ that,” Mal bit out, risking a look at the doc. A fire in his eyes, Mal warned, “You don’t know she’s dead.”

Simon studied the older man for a moment and saw his own fear reflected back at him. He really did love River like his own and that made Simon feel all the more sorry for him. But eventually he would have to accept the truth. Not bothering to contradict him, he continued, “The exam stations are on level five, north and east sides of the building. The quickest way down is a lift shaft, but –“

“Chances are they’re monitored,” Mal finished, wishing he had a better idea of how to get the girl and get out. He was liking this place less and less by the minute. “Stairs it is then,” he muttered and headed to his left, diving deeper into the northern section of the building.

All three of them were down to the seventh floor when they finally heard the approaching footsteps of guards. No, Mal thought, biting back his anger, kids. Not soldiers, not guards, not even those blue-handed bastards, but kids, like River who had been trained and brainwashed to fight – fight battles they had no part of and kill folks who had never wronged them. It made Mal’s blood boil.

Pausing on the stairs, all three of them crouched low and backed into a corner, trying to stay out of anyone’s line of sight. Jayne cocked an ear listening more intently. After a few moments, he pointed up and whispered, “Comin’ from above. They musta traced us from our comp time.”

Mal nodded once and thought quickly. If the path was indeed clear from below then they could continue towards River. However, chances were the lower floors would be teeming with more kids the closer they got to lil albatross’ location and that meant a fight.

Glancing to Jayne, Mal could read the recognition in his eyes. Nodding once, the mercenary eased himself out from his hiding place and stealthily made his way up the stairs, back the way they’d came. Turning a confused look to Mal, Simon whispered, “What’s he doing? We don’t have time …”

“I know, doc,” Mal told him, readjusting his grip on his gun and getting ready to continue their descent. “Jayne’s gonna hold ‘em off.”

Simon didn’t give him any more grief as both of them continued down the stairs.

***

“Anything yet?”

Zoe could not risk glancing to Kaylee as the younger girl entered the cockpit. It was taking all her strength and concentration to keep the ship steady. She had eased her up a bit the minute the captain had hit the deck, but she still felt the need to stay close. Looking out the cockpit’s window, she could see Inara’s shuttle sticking close as well; neither woman wanted to stray too far.

“Not yet, Kaylee-bird,” Zoe said, her voice strained against the effort to keep the ship floating easy. “Not yet. But it’s early still.”

If Zoe had been facing the girl she would have seen her nod numbly, would have noticed her shoulders slump in a posture of defeat, would have witnessed the tears that still fell down her cheeks.

Turning to leave, Kaylee said to no one in particular, “Cake’s done.”

***

Simon knew they were close. He didn’t exactly know how he knew, but he did. And that gave him hope. Despite his earlier assumption that she had died, Simon was getting the slightest flicker of his sister’s presence. The closer they got to where he suspected her to be the more he thought she wasn’t dead, so much as in danger.

Tightening his hold on the gun Jayne had loaned him, Simon almost ran into Mal as the other man stopped abruptly. “What is it,” he whispered.

Mal listened for a moment more and said, “Company.”

Simon cursed silently and tried to think of a plan. They were just a few steps from the door to the fifth floor, and behind that door, Simon was certain he would find his sister, and now he was more and more certain he would find her alive.

Turning to face him, Mal said, “Look doc, you gotta get River and get back to the roof, dong ma?”

Simon saw the resignation in Mal’s eyes and nodded once, swallowing past the sudden lump in his throat. “What are you going to do?”

“Just play a little schoolyard game with the kiddies,” he answered wryly. Taking up a position just past the door Simon needed to walk through, Mal said, “On my signal, go. I don’t care what you hear or what you see, just go.”

Simon nodded again and waited as Mal said a silent prayer to the Shepherd. I ain’t saying I believe, Book, but if you’ve got any pull at all, now would be a nice time to call in some favors. With a barely perceptible nod, Mal signaled the doc and the boy was through the door and into the hallway before the first shot rang through the stairwell.

Smiling tightly, Mal looked over the edge of the railing to take in his pursuers. Well now, this might actually be fun.

***

Simon was shocked as he sprinted down an empty hall. He had been convinced that the closer he got to River the more resistance he would meet, not the other way around. With a sinking feeling in his gut he feared that maybe he’d been wrong and she wasn’t here after all. Shaking the thought away, Simon slowed as he reached the first exam room door. Can’t think like that, he chided himself. Just have to find her.

He had looked in at least ten rooms before he opened the door to see her still form. The room was tinted a garish blue and it was cold and large and empty. Empty, except for a few medical machines and his sister, lying on the metal table at the room’s center under a large, bright light.

As Simon approached her, his breath caught in his throat at the sight. They had hurt her again. He could see the cuts and bruises along her body and noticed the odd angle at which her right arm was crooked. The closer he got the angrier he became as he noticed not only the physical damage but the needles and machines hooked up to her, pumping her full of drugs that would only serve to cause her more damage. The only bright spot in all of this was that if they had River plugged in to all these instruments it meant she was still alive.

Biting back tears, Simon shoved the gun into his waistband and started disconnecting River from the machines in the room. Noticing a monitor, he read her vitals quickly, trying his best to ascertain the seriousness of her condition. And the chance that she’d wake up. Simon was still weak and feeling none to steady since he’d dropped from a shuttle and sprinted through a large utilitarian building. He didn’t know if he’d be able to carry her out of here. But he would if that’s what it took.

Removing the last electrode from her forehead, Simon gently stroked his hand over her hair and kissed her cheek gently. “Mei mei,” he whispered. “Can you hear me?”

River was deep in her own subconscious as Simon’s soft voice called to her. She had retreated there once the pain had started again. She had been trying to build a little fortress in the corner of her mind where she could escape the chemicals and toxins they were pouring into her system. She had almost succeeded too, when Simon’s gentle hand had rested against her forehead and she had heard him reach out to her.

She wanted to tell him she was there, that he couldn’t give up on her, couldn’t leave her here. And she wanted to warn him, wanted to tell him to look out for the red-gloved man. But with an internal whimper, she knew she’d be too late.

Simon was so intent on studying River for any kind of reaction he didn’t hear the other man enter the room. He didn’t even hear the man approach him until his arm was around his throat and the gun he’d had in his belt was firmly pressed in the square of his back. “Doctor Tam, I presume.”

The voice was well-oiled and full of sarcasm. It made Simon’s lip curl. He knew with certainty the man who held a gun on him now was the man who had hurt his sister, again. Simon’s body tensed as the need to inflict severe bodily harm coursed through him.

Sensing his tension, the man whispered in his ear, “Now, now, doctor Tam. We are civilized men. I would expect more from you. A doctor, a trauma surgeon, raised by one of Capitol City’s most well-respected families. Shame, shame.”

“The apple fell a little farther from the tree, I’m afraid,” Simon bit out, speech becoming increasingly difficult as the man crushed his windpipe.

“Yes, yes, your father is rather disappointed in the way you turned out now, isn’t he?”

Simon knew the man was trying to taunt him to death and truth be told, he didn’t have time for these types of games. He needed to get his sister and get the hell out of here.

“What did you do to her,” Simon questioned, trying to stall as his mind formed a plan. His options were looking fairly limited at the moment.

“Nothing she hasn’t experienced before,” the other man reported, his voice detached. “A little psychotropic stimulation, some testing for her pain response, the usual.”

Simon bit back the bile that rose in his throat. Getting angry with this hun dan would only please him and Simon had no intention of doing that.

River could feel Simon’s desperation and his pain and she wished she could do something, wished she was strong enough to fight her way back. But she was lost, buried deep within her own psyche and though she was scrambling her way to the surface she knew she wouldn’t get there in time.

The little lost girl that was River crawled into the darkest corner of her sanctuary and pulling her knees to her chest rocked herself as she cried.

***

Jayne was really tired of shooting at kids. What was the point? The little rugrats couldn’ta been more than twelve or thirteen and while he supposed they were all geniuses like moonbrain, they were all severely lacking in one very important area – experience.

How else could one explain his ability to make it to the same floor as them? Sure they kept firing their pulse rifles, coming awfully close on a couple of occasions to taking him out, but so far, each shot had missed and now he was close enough to finally get the drop on them.

Smiling tightly, Jayne pulled one of the concussion grenades off the belt across his chest, glad that for once he hadn’t listened to Mal. The captain just had an unhealthy aversion to ‘em, that’s all there was to it.

Relieved the other man wasn’t here to scowl, Jayne activated the fist-sized bomb and chucked it down toward his attackers. Class with Professor Cobb is now in session. ***

Simon was starting to see stars. The edges of his vision were clouding as the man at his back kept pressing on his throat, stopping his oxygen supply.

“Tell me, Simon, because I truly am curious,” the man asked, his sardonic tone evident. “How does it feel to know that you’ve failed your sister so thoroughly?”

When Simon didn’t answer, more from the lack of air than anything else, the man continued. “Because I’m thinking that this is just the latest in a very long line of gigantic mistakes in your treatment of your beloved River. First there was letting her come to this Academy all those years ago, then the inability to convince your parents to get her out and then your need to rescue her, not once, but twice.”

Tsking into his ear, Simon was trying hard not to pass out, but he knew his brain would be unable to function much longer. “Really, doctor, for the top three percent, it’s quite a disappointment, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yeah, well schoolin’s overrated.”

Simon barely registered Mal’s voice or the release of the man’s arm on his neck as he dropped to the ground.