Shakespeare reference: Macbeth Act 1 Scene 1

Mal's throat was suddenly parched. His stomach heaved while the sea roared in his ears. Focus, focus, damn it! Won't do the women any good you showin' weakness.

"Wasn't easy to find you. Or Corporal Alleyne." Callum hitched forward a little, and his voice dropped low as he added, almost to himself, "You know, I think I'm even more pleased to see her than you."

"Callum," Mal somehow kept his tone level and firm, "you got a score to settle you settle it with me. I was in command, I gave the orders. Ain't no call to drag others into this."

"But Sergeant," he spat the word again, "didn't Shan Yu say 'Attack a man's strengths, not his weaknesses'?"

"We should settle this like men, Callum, you steaming pile of crap." Callum made a slight motion, and beyond him Mal could see men grab hold of Kaylee and Zoe, dragging them out of view.

"Coward!" No, mistake! Too emotional.

Callum shrugged off the word. "You ever read 'Macbeth'? 'When shall we three meet again / In thunder, lightning or in rain? When the hurlyburly's done / When the battle's lost and won.' Today my battle lost gets won. Your pilot's already dead. He didn't look to afford much sport, so my boys cut his throat. A mercy killing, really, in the name of fashion. But Corporal Alleyne and this sweet little thing - they're perfect for what I've got in mind." He turned to someone off-screen. "Strip 'em."

"Chur ni-duh, it was a war!" Mal sputtered. "Not personal, Callum. Never was personal!"

Callum turned back to the screen sharply, and locked eyes with Mal. And Mal knew that long after he'd killed Callum, watched him gurgle out his last breath, Mal would have nightmares about those eyes. Hear in the night's quiet the inexorable march of what followed:

"I'm gonna torture these girls, Sergeant. I'm gonna break them on the wheel. I'm gonna ruin them. Then maybe I give them both over to the Reavers. Or maybe -- and now I have the little one here, too, I think this might actually be the way to go -- maybe I stuff 'em down a hole and starve 'em by inches. Like old times. See how well Corporal Alleyne remembers her training."

Mal stood stock still as his world fell away. His whole being now a cauldron of anger and frustration, and something he hadn't felt since the surrender - impotence.

Callum continued, speaking slowly, deliberately, each word a smash of the mallet on the anvil, with Mal's chest in between. "There should be no misunderstanding about one thing, Sergeant. whatever I do to them, you will never know. I'll die someday, probably soon. You might even track me down and kill me. But you will never find them, nor any trace of them. And your not knowing... That, Sergeant, is my victory."

The screen went blank.

It took Mal a while to realize he wasn't breathing. A thought flickered in the dark. Trace the wave, trace the gorram wave, you hwoon dan! But the gos se thing was scrambled beyond all comprehending. And Mal cursed Wash, cursed him for not being there to trace it back proper. Cursed all three for being so hopelessly yu bun duh as to get themselves za jiao captured. Zoe, Zoe should'a been more careful.

Mal pounded on the cortex console.

- Don't pound on the gorram console, you idiot! his frontal lobe screamed.

- Shut the fuck up! his hind brain bellowed. Gotta do violence to something!

- Yeah, but you're gonna gorram break ....

Sparks flew, the panel sputtered, and then went dead. Mal stumbled back, stunned. Then he could almost feel the synapses in his brain, which had paused in disbelief, start firing again. He cocked his head to one side, knowing.

"Jayne!" Mal roared over the blood pulsing in his ears, lunging towards the hatch, "Get every mother-humping gun, knife and grenade you got t'hand. Crew's in trouble and we're going after them!"

Zoe struggled up from unconsciousness. Her neck protested mightily when she tried to raise her head. Where the hell...? She tried to put a hand up to her throbbing temples, and realized both were tied, stretched straight out on either side. Her legs were lashed down, too. She was lying on a gurney of some sort. It had side extenders for the arms and was tilted at a 45 degree angle. And she was naked.

Instantly, the agony in her head was forgotten. Zoe's pulse shot up, but nevertheless an eerie stillness settled over her. Whoever took her probably wanted her to panic, struggle, maybe even scream for help. But Zoe was a soldier, and a damn good one.

Okay, okay. Conserve energy. Breath. Assess the situation.

A room. Rough plastered walls, dingy white, high ceiling. Too brightly lit. Check the exits. Instead of a window to the outside, there was a narrow ventilation grate on the ceiling diagonal to the gurney. But the air was stale. The only other opening in the room was a small, square observation glass two-thirds of the way up on the door, covered from the outside by a metal panel. Some kind of cell. Prison? Mental hospital, maybe? Despite the circumstances, Zoe just had to curl her lips a bit over that. Perfect!

Okay. Must be a corridor behind that door. A gray metal chair was set about five feet in front of the gurney. So somebody was planning to visit. To her left was a long, narrow rolling metal table. A variety of instruments laid out neatly -- tongs, scissors, knives and scalpels of varying sizes, and something that looked like a long ice pick curled into a hook at the end. Zoe forced her mind to push past the contents of the table, focusing instead on its distance from her outstretched hand. Slightly under one meter. Too far away. Wrenching her eyes from the table, she braced to inventory herself.

Stay cool, count slowly to five. Straighten your posture, focus on your breathing.

Except for the headache, the stiffness in her neck and the numbness in her wrists and ankles from the tight straps, nothing hurt. Looking down, she didn't see any blood. So whatever was going to happen hadn't started, yet. Zoe embraced the wave of relief that rushed over her, even as she despised the indulgence of it. How long had she been there? The last thing she remembered was looking at Kaylee....

Kaylee! Gotta get out of here, gotta find Kaylee. Poor thing was defenseless. And they probably had Wash, too.

Now Zoe started to struggle some. Not frantic, but systematically trying her strength against the thick leather bindings. No give on the wrists, both held fast. The strap on her left ankle was almost imperceptibly looser than on the right, but that only meant a little less numbness in her foot. Great! Zoe though, I can wiggle my ninja toes at those filthy cattle-fuckers when they come. Zoe smirked at her grim little joke. Gotta hold on, gotta keep up morale. No question Mal and Jayne were looking for them. And God have mercy on the mole-ruttin' bastards when Mal arrived, because no other power in the 'verse would.

Nothing to do but wait. So she waited.

And waited. Zoe tried to keep count of the time, but her head really did throb something fierce, and when she dozed a little by accident the task became hopeless. Occasionally, she heard footsteps coming down the hall outside her room. They'd approach the door, slide open the metal panel and presumably someone would look in. From her position on the gurney, Zoe couldn't see any faces. She was cold, her arms ached, and she dearly wished she could reach that table, just one tantalizing meter away, with all those nice sharp objects for cutting leather restraints. But also for doing other things, a timid voice inside her added.

Then Zoe would shake her head purposefully and square her shoulders. Ninja toes, girl! You will get through this!

His ship was drifting slowly amid a field of shooting stars. The streaks of light spiraled and swirled a silent symphony before the cockpit windows, forming endless patterns in the Black. It was beautiful, but Wash was terrified. He didn't recognize this part of space. And the ship had no power. His hands danced over the switches and buttons on his beloved console, but nothing worked. Suddenly he saw it off the port side -- the Southern Cross. And Wash knew, down to his very soul, that if he could bring the ship around, just point Serenity's nose straight towards those stars, he could find his way home. He struggled with the yoke, straining for all he was worth, but it wouldn't budge. Then he heard a high-pitched hissing sound. Looking up sharply, he saw that the glass had cracked and oxygen was leaking out fast. He began gulping air. Not fair! Not fucking fair! There was the Southern Cross, so close....

"Wash! Oh, screw the universe into Tuesday! Wash, wake up!" Kaylee was hissing in his ear and pinching his nostrils together.

Wash gasped and bolted upright, reflexively swatting her hand from his face. He rubbed his nose gingerly and was about to protest that she'd pinched pretty darn hard. But then he saw she was shaking, and looking at him like he was her last hope in the 'verse for sanity.

"Where are we?" he asked, beginning to climb stiffly to his feet.

"We were drugged!" Kaylee blurted out. Then she blinked. "Oh. I don't know."

End Chapter 2.