Mal and Zoe had moved Jayne from the operating table in the infirmary to the couch just outside. He had regained consciousness for a few moments. “S’going on?”

“Nothing Jayne, go back to sleep.” Mal said. “’kay.” His eyes closed.

River was bleeding everywhere and Simon was trying very hard not to lose it. Kaylee sat down on the floor next to Jayne, ignoring everything.

Simon layed River face-down on the table. “Please, Simon…please take it out of me.” River whispered.

Simon said nothing back. Inwardly he was berating himself for not seeing River’s desperation. He sedated her heavily and began to continue the incision along her spine.

*****

About an hour later, Simon emerged from the infirmary. He was pale and shaking.

“They’ve melded some kind of device to her spine. I can’t remove it.” Mal looked at Simon. “Now explain to me how that was done without you knowing?”

“I have no idea. There are no scars on her back, no markings from a tubular pump, which would have killed her in any case…” Simon was near tears in frustration. “I don’t even know who did this to her anymore! The Alliance only wanted to keep her quiet about Miranda and now something is pulling her apart on the inside and there’s nothing I can do!” He hung his head. Zoe stood up and went over to him, placing a hand on his back. He looked up into her face and smiled weakly. “S’not your fault.”

Kaylee sat on the floor next to the couch and Jayne. She had his hand in hers. She smiled up at Simon, though it clearly pained her to do so. “You just gotta do the best that you can and hope it’s enough to keep it all together and flyin.” Kaylee thought of the compression coil, Zoe thought of how she’d latched onto Simon after Wash’d died.

*****

Simon recut the sutures and skin above River’s spine. She’d been hesitant to be sedated again but Simon had convinced her that it was all for the best. The metal gleamed at him, mockingly. But he breathed deeply, thought of River, dancing as a young girl and Zoe’s hand on his back. He remembered Kaylee’s words to him only a few minutes before. He began to work.

*****

Kaylee sat with Jayne. It had been three hours since he’d been put under, longer since he’d been shot. Her ankle ached, but it wasn’t even a sprain, so it wouldn’t be hurting too much longer. When Zoe had removed the bullet from her arm, the woman had asked her some questions, right odd ones they’d been to, about Simon and when she’d been with him. Kaylee hadn’t really liked talking about him; there were still sore spots left over, like from an old brake in a bone.

For the first time in a long time, Kaylee wondered about Simon. He had been spending a lot of time with Zoe, hadn’t he? No one had really paid attention to it, simply assuming that Zoe was paranoid about her baby. And Simon had been around her all the time. But then again…

“Kaylee?”

Simon stood in the door to the infirmary. His eyes were lit up. “I may have found a way to shut this…thing, whatever it is off. But I need your help.”

“Why me?” “You’re good with machines and it’s something you can take care off, even with your arm like that.”

Kaylee looked at Jayne. He mumbled groggily in his sleep. She bit her lip, hesitantly.

“Cap? Will you sit with Jayne while I help Simon?” Kaylee called.

“No.” “Fat lot of help you are.” Kaylee sighed. She couldn’t leave Jayne alone. Hell, if she was under like this, he wouldn’t leave her. And after what River had said. That she had seen him dying…what if her just up and died and she wasn’t there?

“I’ll sit with him mei mei.”

Inara stood on the stairs. She had on no makeup and looked slightly drained. She had retreated to her shuttle while most of the action was going on, an odd thing for her to do as the companion was usually in the thick of everything.

“I’ll tell him where you are if he wake up.” She smiled at Kaylee.

Before she could reply, Simon pulled the little mechanic into the infirmary.

*****

“So tell me what I’m doing here.”

River lay on her stomach, knocked out and her back split open. A steel device ran from the curve in her spin all the way up to the base of her skull where it disappeared.

“I know I can’t remove it from her body because it has some kind of direct contact with her brain. It would kill her. But see there,” Simon pointed between her shoulder blades, “right in the middle of the thoracic portion of the spine there seems to be some kind of control node. I think if you could sever the connections there-” “No.”

Kaylee looked at the slickly designed implant. “That’s not where you want to get to. It doesn’t make any sense that the control would be there, where any idiot could get to it, just by hitting her in the back with somethin.” She pointed to where to implant slipped into River’s brain. “That’s where I’ll be needin to get to. See the two prongs branching out? That’s how the signals are getting into her mind, so the wires are probably not going ta be in there. But where they just start out…that’s where I need to get to.”

*****

“Sir, does this sit right with you?”

Mal and Zoe stood in the cargo bay, looking down at the dead Reaver. They had removed the camera from the side of it’s head which Zoe had been vehement about destroying, while Mal felt that placing the camera face down was good enough to prevent whoever was on the other side from seeing them.

“Well, it’s all a mite perplexing to me. One Reaver, all by it’s lonesome just seems to be the light whipped topping on this fe yu day. First it’s an attack on a Core planet. Now that just makes no kind of sense along with the way the raid just…disappeared the way it did. None of it’s adding up.”

Zoe cocked her head to one side. The Reaver looked familiar. It was female, somewhere under all the insanity and cuts.

“Sir!” Mal looked at Zoe. “There’s something tattooed on it’s neck.”

Mal leaned in, looking carefully at it. “It’s a number. The kind that comes on ship parts. Like a serial number.”

He peered into the Reaver’s face. “Zoe, this piece of ugly look familiar to you?” Mal kept looking at it’s blank, deformed face.

“Yes, sir. She does.” “Tiana!”

Mal looked up at Zoe.

“Get Jayne up here. Now.”

*****

Kaylee carefully cut the wire. The green one. She’d been looking at the three wires for about five minutes before she made her choice. The voice of the implant had been whispering to her, ‘the red one, the red one,” but Kaylee didn’t trust that voice. It threw her, having always trusted Serenity, whose voice was more like a song, telling her every ache and pain in her beautiful body. The implants voice was hateful and mean. It had spurred her on to get the job done.

She had been terrified of makin a mistake. After all, Buddha alone knew what could happen if she cut the wrong wire. River might just die or the whole gorram thing could explode in their faces. Kaylee’d never worked on something like this before, all the delicate electronics and so forth…she held her breath as she snipped the green wire. A small light at the base of River’s skull went out and the two plate-like pincers retracted out of her brain. She had done it.

Kaylee breathed a sigh of relief and satisfaction. Her pa was right when he’d said she had a gift. A gift from Buddha.

For a moment, Simon lost all composure and wrapped the little mechanic up in an embrace. “You did it! You saved her!” Kaylee smiled at him. “Well, I don’t know about that. I did do my job though.” Simon looked at her, confounded some. “I am the mechanic on Serenity and I just fixed what needed to be fixed. Now, get that sister of yours sewn up again.”

Kaylee peeled off the gloves Simon had given her, throwing them in the trash. She couldn’t wait until Jayne woke up so’s she could brag to him about how she’d saved River (according to Simon) and with only one hand at that. ‘Somebody oughta buy me a drink,’ she thought.

But Jayne was gone. Kaylee looked around the room frantically. Zoe was hauling a semi-conscious Jayne up the stairs to the cargo bay. Inara was no where to be seen.

“You can’t move him!” she practically shouted at Zoe. “He could split open all over again!” Zoe gave her a sympathetic look. She knew what it was like to be afraid for her man. “Captain’s orders, little one.”

*****

“Look her in the face.” Jayne was groggy and he wanted to go back to sleep. The whole right half of him felt like it was going to fall off. But Mal was shouting him, like usual. Had something happened to Kaylee? No, she had been screaming at Simon the last time he’d seen her. When had that been?

Then he saw the Reaver on the floor. Scary hundan was staring up at him with blue eyes. Eyes he’d seen before.

“God up in Shepherds heaven. That’s my little sister.”