Chapter Two - The Meeting.

A man entered a room. Not in itself an unusual event but this was no ordinary man and this was no ordinary room. The rooms sole occupant stood up from his desk to welcome the new arrival, who couldn’t have been less interested if he tried and who merely stared with disdain at the offered handshake.

“Sit.”

He commanded, the occupant returned to his seat, already trembling slightly at the superior presence in his office.

“Where is the guard?”

The man at the desk pushed a button and a moment later the young guard who had escorted Mal entered the room. Covered in burns he had only survived the grenades by virtue of the fact he was already out cold on his front, almost as far from the grenades as Mal and Jayne had been.

“Your orders were to appear like hired help while at the same time relaxing our guests, it was very simple.”

“And you” said a second man, who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, to the man behind the desk “, your job was to give them theirs and NOT put them off, a simple job you were assumed to be capable of being a middle man, evidently you are not a very good one.”

“Because of you”, the first man resumed, “we have once again lost our quarry and will have to set up a new deal”.

The seated man seemed to gain an ounce of courage at this point.

“Don’t worry, I can get Captain Reynolds back here, you’ll have him yet, trust me.”

“You were selected for this position and you failed, there is no second chances”.

“No, wait, please”, begged the man, “I can’t go back”, the man who had, only hours prior, appeared as a tough gang lord the Captain was now very much the opposite.

“Oh, you need not worry about that, you debt to society is paid” replied the suited man, “as is yours” he said to the guard to his right.

Both other man blew out huge sighs of relief.

“One last thing before we go”, said the suited man as a blue hand pulled a small metal rod out his top pocket, his counterpart doing the same…

Chapter Three - Search.

“Not since we left the planet” replied Mal in response to Simons question.

“Since or before we left?”

“Before but us you and Kaylee are only ones who left the ship, she’s likely hiding, plenty of places I can get so a girl like her I wouldn’t like to guess on. When she’s ready she’ll be back, around next meal time I’d fathom.”

Grudgingly accepting this Simon left to check on his patient, Mal, deciding his random course was sufficiently set left too to see what people were up to. He followed the doc down to the infirmary but got quite a shock when he got there.

“Jayne, are you putting on face cream!?” Asked Mal spotting him standing there.

“Hell no, I ‘aint no queer, not that I got a problem with thems that are mind” he replied.

Mal, significantly cheered by the sight of Jayne stood at a mirror putting on creams, looking like he a pretty boy and was about to make another retort when Simon stepped in to clarify.

“I gave him something for his burns, they weren’t major but that cream should take the heat out, and Jayne, taking care of your appearance doesn’t make you a homosexual.”

“Well you’d know what does what with…”

“Jayne!” Mal warned, cutting him off, turning to leave.

“Where we headed then cap’n?” asked an every cheery Kaylee, bounding up beside him.

“In all truth I’m not too sure, I set a course to Persephone, see if there’s any jobs going but I’m not too confident, thing’s have been a little too quite recently, and that job we didn’t get had a smell to it. Is Zoë in her bunk again?”

“Far as I know.”

“River’s not with her is she?”

“Nope, not last time I checked anyhow.”

Since the death of her husband Zoë had spent a lot of time on her own, she still came on jobs and did her part but beyond that she preferred the privacy of her bunk, occasionally with people coming to see her, usually Mal or River when she too was felling alone. At tea that evening neither of them had shown up, Zoë had been again consulted on the River issue but could shed no light and by this point Simon was almost in hysterics.

“Don’t you know it’s rude to play with your food?” asked Mal to Simon jokingly, trying to cheer him up “I’d ‘ave though a fancy boy like yourself would know that.”

Simon, who had been very sombre up to this point in the meal and who had barely touched his food, merely pushed it around his plate, suddenly burst into life.

“She’s missing Mal, she’s gorram missing! She can’t possibly have hidden this long, what if Zoe was wrong, what if we did leave her, you know what she’s like, she could well have slipped out without being noticed. Kenton’s out cold, I would normally be thankful for that but I don’t have a clue where she is and that hwoon dahn may well, I’m going to go wake him, I don’t give a go tsao de gos se what happens.”

With this my jumped up and stormed out the room while people sat in shock at his very improper outburst. After a moment Mal abrupt left the table and headed down after him. Bounding down the stairs he caught the Doc just before he gave his patient an adrenaline shot and punched him in the face, sending him sprawling into the cabinets at the side.

“Calm down Doc, that’s an order, there are plenty of places on this ship she could hide. I’ll open up the conduits and you can crawl about in there for a while, look for her and give you a chance to calm down.”

He grabbed Simon by the collar and dragged him up. Pushing past Jayne and Kaylee who had gathered at the entrance to the infirmary he pulled him up to the crew corridor, opened the hatch in the floor and practically slammed it back down on him. Jayne, who had followed shot of a comment of “how come you always get to him him?” and left to finish his tea. Kaylee scolded and hit Jayne as he passed then turned to Mal.

“Why’d you do that, you know he’s worried and he don’t often blow off, give him a break cap’n, I really think we should go back, just so as to show she’s still here.”

“We aint turnin’ round.”

“Would you keep goin if you left me?”

“Well no, but…”

“But what?”

“But we don’t know we’ve left her.”

“We don’t know we’ve not.”

“Sir, we should go back.” said Zoë appearing out her bunk after coming to see what all the noise was about “she’s a part of the crew and we don’t leave our own behind.”

“Zoë, you missed your meal” replied Mal and left for the cockpit.

Chapter Four - River and Kenton.

Despite being at full burn for a large amount of it they were already so far out that the return journey took a few hours. People decided to use the time to get some rest (as it was night by ship time), Mal, his usual insomniac self, sat up on the bridge thinking and trying to avoid sleep and the thoughts it brought. About twenty minutes out he heard a clatter and went to investigate, coming downstairs he found Kenton up and staggering about dazedly, obviously still groggy. Slowly focusing on Mal he suddenly stood bolt upright and started shouting.

“Where is she? Where’s the girl? What’d she do? Why am I in her?” And headed for the door. Mal, stood in the door, held him back.

“Sit.”

“I’m gonna kill her.”

“Choo fay wuh suh luh you are!”

“If need be!”

“I aint in a mood for hitting another crew member, so SIT! NOW!”

Kenton relinquished slightly, stepping back but not sitting down.

“Don’t move, I’m going to get the Doc to take a look at you first, and we’d love to know where that girl is too, so just wait.”

He walked round to and knocked at Simons room. When no answer came he first peered in then headed up to Kaylees. Kaylee answered but he wasn’t there.

“Err sir” said Kaylee, looking at the decking. Mal glanced down then back at her.

“Gorram it, we left him in the floor, he’s likely got himself lost, took me months to learn fractions of them conduits. Strange we ant heard banging or shouting.”

Waking everyone else up to assist and explaining than they had now lost both Tams but that Simon would likely be much easier to find, they set off around the ship shouting. After not too long at all he was discovered to be in the port wall of the cargo bay and was VERY angry.

“I’ve been banging for hours, I started looking but couldn’t find her or a way out.”

“Well we’ll help you out but you’ve to promise to not do anything improper when you get out.” shouted Mal through the walls.

“What counts as ‘improper’ when you’ve been stuck and abandoned in a wall for hours?”

“Anything you wouldn’t normally do.”

“Simon?” piped in Kaylee “Simon hun it’s ok, we made a mistake, we’re sorry, I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

“So you gonna be all calm like?” asked Mal again “Kenton’s up, we’re gonna ask about what happened.”

“OK” consented Simon.

“Jayne” said Mal, turning to the merc and gesturing towards a pannel. Jayne, barely containing his laughter at the Docs predicament, moved towards the wall and helped Mal remove the indicated panel.

“Can you see the light?” asked the captain into the hole.

“Yes” replied Simon and a few moments later he appeared, very grubby and unlike his usual pristine self. “Where’s that pilot, I want to talk to him.”

“Now calm down Doc” said Mal, holding the Doctor back “’member what we said when you were in the wall? We’ll all go talk to him.”

They all headed through to the infirmary, Simon having to be held back by Mal and Jayne.

“Where’s my sister?” shouted Simon to Kenton, breaking through at the last moment and grabbing him. Kenton just turned to and threw him across the room.

“I don’t gorram know, she just looked at me, next moment I’m here, I was trying to stop her leaving, like told, she just said she was anyway and did something, musta bin with her brain cos she didn’t touch me, she musta left on the planet.”

Mal turned to look at Zoe, “Guess she did get past you some way.”