Simon and Zoe had returned to the same section of the station where Simon had purchased River's medications, barely an hour ago. Zoe was attempting, Simon thought, to reestablish contact with her blonde alter-ego, whom she seemed to think could be useful. Apparently, Simon could not be of any real use, so he had appointed himself lookout, and was standing partially concealed behind an information kiosk, trying to be unobtrusive while keeping alert. But the circuitous route Zoe had taken from the docks seemed to have thrown off any pursuit, and Simon soon found his thoughts wandering -- to Kaylee, and River, on the ship, without him. They were probably wondering whether he was safe. It ought to be possible to get a message to River. She had made them several secret identities for use on the Cortex, and forced him to memorize all of the relevant profiles. In fact, she made him rehearse them every few days -- or had, before the last of the medicine had run out and she had become progressively less lucid. In case we ever get separated, she said. And in case they were ever captured or on the run, she had recorded a couple of the identities in the ship's computer for the crew's use, and made some of the crew memorize them. Inara knew one of them, Simon thought, and of course Kaylee. Maybe Wash. Anyway. He should be able to send his sister a message. Safely, from the kiosk. A message that Kaylee could also find, if she thought to look. Simon glanced around him. Zoe was talking to some station denizen a meter away. No one in the crowd of unfamiliar faces was looking in their direction with any curiosity. It should be safe. As safe as anything had been since he took his sister and went on the run, anyway. Drawing a deep breath, Simon turned slightly and put his fingers on the kiosk's keypad. When he entered one of the accounts River had put in the ship's memory, a new message from Inara popped up on his screen. Simon opened it. Inara, looking both beautiful and weary, simply said, "If you get this message, contact me here," and touched the screen, attaching an account marker. Simon touched the marker. "Would you like to hold, or leave a message?" the kiosk asked him. "Leave a message," Simon said, but before the words were out of his mouth, an indicator at the bottom of the screen blinked -- Inara was there. Had she been waiting for his call? He pressed 'accept.' "Simon! You're all right! Is Zoe with you?" She must have been worried about them, then, because it wasn't like Inara to skip the pleasantries. She must know how serious their situation was. "We're fine -- right now, anyway," he said. "But I think --" She cut him off. "Listen. Mal's had to leave the station. He's asked me to round up you and Zoe and River and keep you all safe here at my client's place until he can get back for us." Alarms ripped through Simon's mind. "River? But she's --" "She left the ship. I don't have details, but she's somewhere on the station," Inara said. "We need to find her and get her here, keep her safe." Simon nodded. "I'm sending some of Jerrode's people to pick you up and bring you back here," Inara said. "Just wait right where you are, and when you get here, we'll start looking for your sister." "Uh. . . right . . ." Simon said. "But --" "They'll be right there," Inara insisted. "Just wait for them. I'll see you shortly." She cut the comm. Simon, confused now and flustered -- River was off the ship? How? Why? Where? -- logged out and turned to look for Zoe. She was talking with the blonde amazon woman, a few steps away. "Zoe," he said, and she turned to look at him. He opened his mouth to tell her about Inara, and River, and what he'd just found out, but before he could say the first word, he saw beyond her the face of the man who'd looked through the window at them. The face of their enemy. The man's eyes met Simon's, and widened in recognition. He motioned to the other men with him. "Zoe!" Simon said, pointing, but she didn't even turn to look. Instead, both women reached out, each grasping one of Simon's arms, and pulled him out of sight of the men. Simon found himself running through the station again, on the heels of the two women, too breathless to get the words out: River's on the station! And we were supposed to wait there for help from Inara! ** Wash was back in the pilot's chair; Mal was bent over his shoulder, peering at the displays. Kaylee perched on the edge of the copilot's seat with her hands pressed between her knees, and Jayne lounged in the doorway. "You think they're looking for us?" Wash asked, and Mal nodded. "Ain't nothing else out here," he said. "And that's a search pattern they're running." He'd been watching the other ship, trying to keep a safe distance away, ever since it had turned up on his scans. It was moving slowly, in a pattern that would have left no gaps in its scanner coverage as it moved. Not a ship that had somewhere to get to; a ship that was hunting something. Wash's hands moved on the controls, keeping Serenity's distance from the other ship. The top-of-the-line long-range passive scanners they'd cadged from Mr. Universe were all they had going for them right now; certainly they couldn't run at top speed with the ship so heavily damaged, and Serenity wasn't armed. "What do they want?" Jayne asked from the doorway. "That cargo? That it?" "Most likely," Mal said. He'd been wracking his brain trying to figure out what to do about that. "What is that thing, anyway?" Jayne demanded. "It's way too heavy for its size. Damn thing looks like a missile. Are we gunrunners now?" Mal whirled around, and Wash and Kaylee turned, too. "Missile?" Kaylee said. "You been in that crate," Mal accused. "Why?" Jayne shrugged. "Wanted to know what it was I was 'bout to get blowed up over. Some kind of weapon, I guess, but not one like I ever seen before. If that thing's a missile, it could probably take out half a planet." "I don't rightly know what it is," Mal said. "Fellow who set the job up seemed to think I was better off not knowing." "Oh, those are the jobs we want," Wash said, and Mal considered it heroic that he didn't smack the pilot. "It was good money," he said. "Better'n the Lassiter." "Enough to fix the ship?" Wash challenged, and Mal took a step away just for prudence' sake. If that other ship did see them, and come after them, he might need his pilot, smart mouth and all. "Enough to fix everything you lot have been whining about for the past six months, plus the ship," he said, and watched Wash and Jayne both take that information in. A lot of money. Still could be -- Mal hoped so, anyway. They were just going to have to work a lot harder for it now. "Is it a missile?" Kaylee asked, and Mal was grateful for the simple curiosity in her tone. Unlike Jayne and Wash, Kaylee wasn't challenging him; she was just askin'. "It ain't a weapon," he said. "Client told me that much. It's a prototype something, stolen from the R&D lab that made it, to be sold to their competitor." "Industrial espionage," Wash said. "Great. So now we're going to have how many private armies hunting us to get their hands on this thing?" "At least three," Jayne said. "People that made it, people we were supposed to sell it to, and whoever it was near blew us up back there." "Yeah," Mal admitted. "Gorram thing's way too hot. I'm thinking the first thing we need to do is get it off the ship. Hide it somewhere." "That way when they catch us, they'll have to torture us to find out where it is instead of just taking it and shooting us," Wash observed unhappily. "You got a better idea?" Mal asked. "We got to get this ship fixed, we got to get the rest of our crew back, and I don't think we can do either with that thing sitting in the bay." "Where we gonna put it?" Jayne asked. "Well. I been thinking on that," Mal reached up above the pilot's console and pulled out the charts. He spread them out, hunting for the one that showed Nassau Point and the space beyond it. "This whole area was slated for terraforming and settlement, before the war," he said, locating the chart at last and pulling it out. "Never got done. But what did get done was the surveying and the core sampling -- all that preliminary work. There's bound to be bits of research stations and outposts left on some of these rocks out here. I'm thinking if we stash it there, it won't look out of place -- just another piece of discarded equipment. We do that, we can go take care of the other stuff we need to take care of, and come back to it later." "What if somebody finds it?" Kaylee asked. "Well. Then we'd have to get it back, is all," Mal said, but he could tell by their faces that they all saw straight through that one. "I really think it's better if we're not carrying the thing around. Gives us a bargaining chip, if we know where it's at and nobody else does." "We'll have to move it in a shuttle," Wash said. "I don't want to try to put the ship on the ground; might not get her off again." Mal nodded. Jayne glowered, Kaylee chewed her lip, but they were on board too. Certainly nobody else seemed to have a better idea. So Mal went into action mode. "Wash. Find us a place to put the thing. Jayne, you and me are going to move the cargo into one of the shuttles. Kaylee, see what you can think of might stabilize our situation with the ship a little more -- temporary repairs or something." He moved toward the door, Jayne moving ahead of him. Wasn't much of a plan, but it was something to work with, and they'd do what they always did: see what happened, pencil in the changes as they went along, and hope to stay one step ahead of the bullet. ** Aboard the ship Henh Ly had put her on, River had her own coffin. That was what it felt like, this narrow tubular bed built into a bulkhead that backed up against the ship's engine room. She'd lain inside it for what seemed like hours after the old woman led her aboard, delirious and wracked with seizures, worrying the blankets in her hands and wanting desperately to wake up, to find Simon bending over her -- "Mei mei, it's okay, shhhhh . . ." But she never woke; Simon never came. And the ship's noises weren't Serenity's noises, just as her smells weren't Serenity's smells. She was far from home. She decided, in a lucid moment, to find the showers. The were not far from her bunk, and she stood under the water fully clothed, soaping and washing body, hair, and clothing all together. River threw her head back, letting the water pound on her face, letting it wash all the sweat and horror away. When she lifted her head again, a woman stood silhouetted in the shower entrance. River turned off the water. The steam cleared. It was the old woman who had led her aboard. She looked concerned -- she spoke. River had been certain, when she was led aboard, that the old woman spoke Chinese, but now her words were incomprehensible babbling. "I don't understand you," River said. The old woman disappeared briefly, then reappeared, holding out a thin robe. River reached out and took it from her, stripping out of her wet clothes and pulling the robe against her skin. Holding her dripping clothes in one hand, River let the kind old woman take her other hand, and lead her out of the shower room. The old woman spoke, but again, River could not understand what she said. "What happened? Why don't you speak Chinese now? Or some other language I know?" River asked her. "I know lots. I'm a genius, you know." The woman led her to a dining area and seated her at a table. She brought tea, a bowl of rice, and a small plate of vegetables. She motioned for River to eat. "Don't ever be a genius," River said, as the old woman slipped into a chair beside her. "It's not worth it. What they do to you. I wish I'd been born an idiot." Tears sprang to her eyes. "Then at least I could be happy." The old woman reached out and patted River's hand, and said something soft in her unintelligible speech. River ate, and cried.