Disclaimers: Everything belongs to Joss, except for one character of my creation ----------------------------- **Mousing over the Chinese should reveal the English translations on most browsers. If not, translations follow the story. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The snow was deep, and the going was slow. Jayne walked the fencerow at the rear of the prison property. The fence was about the only thing left standing intact after the riots and fires gutted most of the buildings. Guards stood at intervals along the inside. A couple of them looked Jayne over, but, as Logan had promised, no one bothered him, as he was outside the prison grounds. He looked up the fence, at the roll of razor wire along the top. Pieces of fabric fluttered along the wire in places. Jayne shuddered, thinking of the poor bastards who were so desperate to escape they shredded themselves going over. If they hadn’t bled to death in the woods after that then God or someone was really looking out for them. Jayne sighed and shook his head. Where to even start in this go tsao de mess? He surveyed the tree line downhill from the fence. The woods stretched out interminably before him. To say it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack would be the understatement of a lifetime. Pick a place to start, he told himself. Y’aint gonna give it but a quick once-over anyhow. Just need to be able to go back and tell Mal you tried. Jayne didn’t figure he needed to try terribly hard, because he knew they weren’t going to find her. The chances of her being out here beyond the prison walls were slim; the chances of them actually finding her even if she was got considerably slimmer yet. Most likely she had burned up in the fires that consumed the buildings inside the fence, if the rioting prisoners hadn’t gotten to her first. One small woman didn’t stand much of a chance against the sheer number of brutal men on the loose. Even Jayne, for all his resentment of the situation and his reluctance to make this trip couldn’t help but feel sorry for her and what she must have gone through before she died. He finally just started walking, down the hill and into the woods straight out from the corner of the burned-out building closest to him. There was what looked to be a path of sorts leading into the woods, even though it was mostly filled in by the fresh snowfall. He opted to follow the beaten-down trail, since the snow was slightly shallower there and the going would be easier than forging a whole new path of his own. He pulled a gun and kept it at the ready. It was very quiet in the woods. If there had been activity of any sort through there it looked to be over. The situation in general appeared to be pretty much under control at this point, since rescue crews and Interpol had been on the scene for several days. Jayne wondered just how many people, either prisoners or staff, were actually going to come out of the situation alive. Judging from what they had seen on flyover, he guessed not too many. He had walked a fair piece into the woods when he saw a large hump in the snow, ahead of him on the trail. He cocked his gun and approached it slowly. The hump was completely covered with fresh snow, but appeared to be about the size of a human form. Jayne nudged it with the toe of his boot. It was frozen and wouldn’t budge. He started brushing and kicking snow away from it, and finally uncovered it enough to tell that it was a body. He kept sweeping the snow away until he was able to tell that the uniform on the body was a guard’s uniform, and the body was that of a young male. He had a wound in his forehead that looked to Jayne to be an exit wound. He tried to roll the man over, but he was frozen to the ground on which he lay. Jayne grunted with disgust, but pulled back the ice-covered coat enough to check for weapons that he could salvage. There were none; apparently he was not the first vulture at the scene. He continued along the makeshift path. A little further on he came across another body. This one appeared to be a prisoner, a large, rough-looking man with hands, arms and neck shredded from the razor wire atop the fence. He was not buried as deeply and looked to have been there less time than the guard. The snow around him was partly melted from the large amount of blood that he’d lost. Besides the slashes from the wire he had at least one bullet wound that Jayne could clearly see. He continued a little further into the woods. Here the snow got deeper, and he began to lose the tramped-down trail. If anyone had gotten this far, enough time had passed for the snow to obscure and fill in any footprints. He began to feel he was completely alone; and, judging from what he’d come across so far, that probably was not a bad thing. Ahead of him a hundred feet or so was a large deadfall; a huge tree, uprooted and lying across what Jayne could now just barely make out had once been the trail. The tree itself was coated in fresh snow, unsullied by human contact. Jayne made up his mind that the deadfall would be his stopping point. He would turn around then, and start slowly making his way back toward the ship. He’s take his time so Mal thought he was putting in some real effort, but Jayne was no idiot; he could see how fruitless his search was going to be, and he saw no real reason to continue it. He slogged through the deepening snow to the downed tree, and leaned against it to rest for a moment before turning back. He looked around. The forest was quiet. He could hear noise from the prison, but down here in the valley and back in the trees the sounds seemed a million miles away. It was apparent that he was the only human—living human, at any rate—anywhere around these parts. He realized he needed to pee. Seems like as fine a place as any to tap a kidney, he thought. He turned around to face the roots of the tree, undoing his fly as he turned. Then he froze, zipper at half-mast. A gloved hand protruded from the snow beneath the roots, a gun dangling loosely from its limp fingers. Jayne knelt down and peered into the tangle of roots, bark and snow-covered clods of displaced earth. Just behind the hand, and the arm that he could now see from his new vantage point, he could make out a tangle of hair. He frowned and leaned in, brushing snow away with his hand. A hat that matched the glove covered the head, but hair spilled out and around the hat. Long hair—woman’s hair. Jayne swept away more snow. “Gorramn!” he breathed as he saw the face. It was her. The face was bruised, swollen and misshapen, but it was definitely her. Heart beating faster, Jayne crawled between the roots and began digging into the snow, uncovering her face and upper body. He saw that she had used the rotted out tree trunk for cover, crawling into it so only her head and arms were exposed. He turned her face toward him. The features were slack, eyes closed. Where she wasn’t bruised or cut her skin was ashen. Grasping her armpits, Jayne pulled her out of the shelter of the hollow tree. She did not appear to be breathing. He winced as he saw the blood dried on her, and saw the shredded coat, gloves and pant legs where she had obviously scaled the razor wire fence to escape. Girl had some guts, he thought as he looked her over. Shame she didn’t make it after gettin’ so far. He gathered her up, intending to carry her back for Mal to see. The search was over; now they could be on their way out of this forsaken place. Mal wouldn’t be happy, but at least he would know her fate. Jayne suddenly yelped in pained surprise, and let her fall back into the snow, as something slashed through his coat sleeve and into his arm. He stared as blood welled up through the tear in the fabric. “ Ta mah duh hwoon dahn! ” he cried. He knelt down beside her body again and began searching for whatever had been sharp enough to lay his arm open that way. A large bloodstain on her right hip led him to the answer; a broken blade of some sort, handle missing, imbedded in the joint. “Gorramn!” he exclaimed for the second time. He couldn’t begin to imagine how she’d got herself stabbed in such a way, or how she’d gotten as far from the prison as she had in that condition. He started to pick her up again, mindful not to get his arm near the blade this time. He was surprised at just how limp she was. He recalled the two bodies he had come across before finding her, and how stiff they had been, frozen to the snowy ground. She was— —She was too limp. Jayne pulled off a glove and felt her neck, under her jaw line, just ahead of her ear. It took him several tries, but then he found it. It was faint and thready—but it was a pulse. He fumbled his radio out of his coat pocket and keyed it with trembling hands. “Mal!” he shouted into it. “I’ve got ‘er!” He gathered her up and slung her pack over his shoulder. Then he headed back as quickly as he could the way he had come, following his own footsteps out. He had only gone a few paces when Mal’s voice came back over the radio. “Is she alive?” he asked, sounding breathless. Jayne hesitated for an instant, then answered, “Barely.” “Where are you?” “Meet me at the ship.”

When Jayne broke into the open and got within sight of Serenity, he could see the others starting to gather outside. Mal was pacing at the top of the ramp, where he had a vantage point. When he spotted Jayne he ran toward him, meeting him a short distance away. His anxious eyes swept over Alex, taking everything in; then he removed a glove and checked for a pulse just as Jayne had done. “Get her to the infirmary,” he commanded, turning and trotting back toward the ship; but not before he gave Jayne’s shoulder a grateful squeeze. “Wash!” he barked at the pilot as he ran, “Get us in the air! And get Logan for me.” To the others he said, “Get all the blankets you can find, start warmin’ her up. Let’s go everybody!” He ran into the bay. “Doc!” He yelled for Simon as he ran. “Doc, get to the infirmary, guhn kwai! ” He slapped the button to close the airlock, and took the stairs to the foredeck two at a time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHINESE: go tsao de = dog humping Ta mah duh hwoon dahn! = Mother humping son of a bitch! guhn kwai! = hurry! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Go to Chapter 13.

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