A/N: Here is the next installment. Hope you like it.

“We need to finish,” Zoe prompted Simon.

He took a deep breath in.

“I know,” he said hollowly. “What do we need to do?”

“I’m going to the engine room. When I tell you, I want you to give a short burst from the thrusters. I don’t want us to go too fast. That other ship could still be Reavers and we can’t look like we are running. I just want to move us away from here.”

“You want to give the allusion that we’re drifting?”

“That’ll be a start. Wait for my signal,” Zoe said. She turned and exited the bridge. She got down to the engine room and set the controls as they needed to be. “Now Simon!”

Simon let the thrusters burn for about 20 seconds and then cut them off. Zoe shut down all power to the ship, including life support. She made her way back to the bridge, sealing up the doors as she went. When she got to the bridge, she sealed the last door.

“How’s it look?” she asked.

“We’re moving away from them. No one is following,” Simon reported. The ship was dark except a single indicator on the console. “Did you shut everything down?”

“Even life support. Only thing on is the comms. I want to know who we’re dealing with should anyone come calling. Did you know that an encrypted message was sent out when I keyed in the Plan’s execution code?”

“There was?” Simon questioned as he stood up. “You don’t know who it was sent to?”

“No,” Zoe said as she shook her head. “Must have been important though, I mean, for Mal to send out something like that to someone outside this ship.”

Simon nodded in agreement.

“How long are we going to stay like this?” he asked.

“I don’t want to fire things up until it is totally necessary.”

“I agree,” Simon concurred as he walked over to the lockers. “I’m going to get us some blankets. As we know from our past experience with no life support, it’s going to get cold in here.”

Simon opened the locker that he needed. He reached into the locker and started to pull out a blanket, but something in his pocket caught his attention. He tugged Inara’s beacon out and regarded it for a moment before tossed it into the locker. “I guess we don’t need these anymore.”

“Guess not,” Zoe answered back, hollowly.

Simon grabbed a blanket out of the locker and turned to give it to Zoe, but the room started to spin wildly. He fell back softly against the locker doors.

“I suppose I might be losing more blood than I thought.”

In an instant, Zoe was next to him and helped him down to a seated position on the floor. She pulled out the rest of the blankets and closed the door. Reaching into a different locker, she pulled out a lantern and a med kit. She set the lantern on the very lowest setting, just to give them a modicum of light and moved on to evaluating his injury.

“I can clean and dress it,” Zoe told him. “But that is about it.”

“You can apply one of the heavy-duty pressure wraps on the wound. Should slow down the bleeding,” Simon told her.

Zoe nodded and set off to her task. After a considerable amount of pain, Zoe had him cleaned and patched up.

“All done, Doctor,” she said with a slight smile on her lips. “I think I have the wrap on right. We didn’t have such fancy things during the war and that’s where I’ve had the most practice.”

“Feels better,” Simon reassured her.

After she was done, she picked up the blankets and sat down next to Simon on the floor. She covered both of them up and they sat in silence for a bit.

“Were you going to blow the airlock after you sealed everything up?” Simon asked, breaking the silence.

Zoe took a deep breath before answering.

“Planned on it, but I decided against it,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Didn’t seem we needed to go that far… yet.”

“You didn’t blow the airlock because of Mal, didn’t you?” Simon asked. The comment didn’t seem to register with Zoe, but after a bit, she nodded her head.

“Couldn’t take the chance that he’d come loose. We ain’t losing crew because of something we done ourselves.”

Simon nodded in agreement. He took in a breath and exhaled wearily.

“I miss Kaylee. What if…” he started.

“Can’t dwell on the ‘what ifs,’ Simon,” Zoe said cutting him off. “What’s done is done.”

“I still miss her.”

“Yeah.”

“Everything is just so wrong now.”

“Been wrong for awhile,” Zoe agreed. They sat in silence for a while longer. It was then Simon realized Zoe was crying. Using his good arm, he pulled her close.

“You miss him.”

“More with each passing day. Wash was a good man. And now Mal… I-I don’t know if I can…” Zoe wept. Simon didn’t need to be psychic to know what she meant.

“We still have things to do. Mal would want you to make sure they were done.”

“I know.”

“We’ll get him someplace where we can give him the help he needs,” Simon reassured her. “He’ll be OK. I swear that man has nine lives.”

Zoe half-chuckled at the comment.

“That he does.”

An Alliance officer looked into the room through an observation window. Inara Serra lay curled up on the floor of a padded room. Her hair was unkempt and she didn’t even resemble the companion she was. He looked at her chart with suspicion.

“There has been quite a bit of improvement, Sir,” the Guild doctor reported. “When we first rescued her, she was quite violent. She ranted about Reavers and a planet full of dead people. We had to restrain her.”

“And now?”

“She still has episodes where she babbles incoherently. Usually, it is something about that Captain who had her. I think it is a touch of Stockholm syndrome; seems that she is fiercely loyal to that man. Sometimes, she also insists on going back to that ship where she was being held.”

“Serenity,” the officer stated.

“Yes, that was the name,” the doctor continued. “We haven’t been able to disassociate her with her thoughts of the Captain quite yet, but we are working on it.”

“Interesting.”

“We also think she actually believed that the unauthorized wave broadcasted about Miranda was real.”

“Does she still speak of the broadwave?”

“Of course not. She understands that it was all an elaborate hoax made to make the Alliance look bad. Miranda is a black rock,” the doctor said. He let out a small laugh. “Everyone knows that something like that would never happen. It’s too barbaric. Plus no one could cover up something so large. It fooled a lot of people out on the Rim, though.”

“Indeed,” agreed the officer. He looked up from her chart and back to Inara. “Well, everything looks to be in order. I am following this case very closely.”

“The Guild appreciates your interest in helping Miss Serra. She has been through much.”

“We just want to see her well,” the Alliance officer said, sounding less than sincere.

“Thank you, Sir.”

The officer left the hospital and went to file his report. After a safe amount of time, someone went into Inara’s room and knelt down next to her.

“Inara? It’s John. You are doing very well,” John whispered as he smoothed her wild hair and squeezed her hand in comfort. “Just a little while longer.”

John got up and disappeared as quickly as he came. Inara’s stare was fixed on the opposite wall.

“Need to go back. Mal. Please don’t be dead. Want to go home. Have to help them,” she softly babbled over and over.

Thanks for reading. Please comment. Shiny reviews are immensely appreciated.