Title:Guardian of the Beacon Author:Zoesbackup aka DejaThoris Spoilers: vague ones for the BDM Rating: PG for horror themes and a bit o' language

Disclaimer:The intellectual property, Serenity the movie, belongs to: Joss Whedon, Universal Studios, and Fox TV. No infringement is intended nor monetary gain realized by this work of fiction.

She runs faster than she has ever run in her life. There are bodies everywhere and terror gives her an agility she didn't know she possessed. Her manic strides never falter as she swerves and jumps to avoid the human speed bumps threatening to bring her down. Everyone is dead. Her colleagues, her friends, reduced to tatters of flesh on bones gnawed at by ---she slams the door shut on that thought and desperately tries to ignore the burning in her lungs and heaviness in her legs. Movement rushed at her out of the corner of her eye and she screeches, tripping and clawing at the air that offers no substance to cling to. She is babbling, spittle swinging from lips pulled back as if to snarl, as she struggles to put distance between the attacker and her.

It is a dog. She giggles hysterically. A skinny equally terrified dog that isn’t dead and why how where did it hide and why did it run to her?

“Come on, sweetie come on!”

She knows she has to run but she can’t bear to leave it for them. She gets back to her feet and begins to jog, still calling and crooning. The dog follows, hackles up and tail between its legs. She know she is close to the shuttle; it can’t be more than a block away. She picks up speed, mumbling to the dog whose claws made clicking sounds behind her --like teeth as they tear--she sees it, there it is!

Oh God, no! Oh please, nononono. It looks as though someone has plowed the craft into the side of the building and left it there. Why would they want the shuttle? They must have tried to *FLY* it, which meant there was an intelligence behind the savagery. She begins to panic at the thought, her lungs clamp down hard as she forces her mind to go blank. She staggers up to the shuttle door, yanking on it, expecting it to be jammed shut. She giggles as it opens smoothly, but the dog balks and tears begin to blur her vision. “Come on sweetie please COME ON!”

The dog backs off as she reaches for it. She is crying for real now, sobbing and hiccupping as she is forced to make the decision on whether to shut the door or keep trying to coax the terrified thing to follow her. Her knees give out, forcing her to turn around and crawl through entrance. A wriggling form slips past her, streaking into the dark interior. She pulls herself up, using the door handle as support, and engages the door’s auto-locking mechanism. The hiss-snick-beep causes her to crumple, leaning against the wall, as she wills herself to stop crying. Be calm be calm be calm, her brain felt as though it was trying to escape by pushing out her eyeballs and please be calm. She pressed her knuckles against her eyes.

“Two minutes” she whispered and rests her head on her knees.

A low moaning brings her back to awareness. The panic roars back into her. Her body itches, stinging from sweat, and she suddenly understands what writers mean when they talk about the stench of fear. She pushed the vee of her hand into her mouth and bites down, eyes darting around looking for the source of the sound. It is the dog, the fucking dog! Her sigh of relief is cut short as she begins to detect the other sounds, the ones that have caused the dog to make the horribly drawn out gurgling in the first place. Scrapes, the kind one hears when metal is being drug across concrete. She shushes the dog as quietly as she can and cranes her neck back to verify the auto-lock is still engaged. The noises get weirder and a sudden thump on the side of the shuttle causes her to wrench her neck, pain rips through her shoulders and spine as she freezes, waiting for the prickly blackness to fade from behind her eyelids.

Minutes go by and the silence returns. She realizes that she needs to call for help; she needs to let someone know that they were here and that she is still alive. Someone might hear her if she opens comms on all frequencies. She stays on all fours and swiftly crawls over to a communications table and sits hunched over in the chair. She opens a channel and entering her access code begins transmitting a government SOS signal that should have every ship in the sector come running. She needs to get this information out, they need to lock this place down and figure out where their tests went wrong. Someone else might be alive and hiding. It might be hours before someone is within range to receive her signal, so she goes to the data servers and picks up a recording device and speaking as dispassionately as she can, she describes the events that have occurred since their arrival. She notes the bodies found in various states, describing the wounds or lack thereof. Her clinical assessment continues for over an hour, when the dog starts to do the moaning thing again. There has been no response to her signal. The sound is bigger this time, as though there are more...things to make it.

Her eyes cast about for something, anything, to use as a weapon. She notices the bright red plastic box hanging by the wall, next to the exit. She leaps out of the chair and over to the box. Scrabbling at the contents, she tosses everything else aside, in her eagerness to get to the gun locked therein. She had never understood why a rescue unit would need a gun, she had never ever seen it used and had only attended the training because it was required. She ripped the ident-card from around her neck and slid it through the port. A little green light appeared and the container clicked open. She grabs at it, fumbling at the molded form that holds the weapon and magazine.

The hairs on the back of her neck rise as the dog begins to growl. Turning back to the comms unit, her foot kicks something that does not give at contact. It is a beacon. Clumsily clasping the gun and magazine to her chest, she picks it up and rushes over to the table. She cracks open the case and hurriedly skims the directions. The thumping starts again, this time accompanied by a faint howling. She looks up in irritation and curses under her breath. In frustration, she takes a stab at activating the beacon by pushing a large button at the top and turning the dial all the way to high, which she assumes meant high power. She grabs the recording device as she stands, flipping it to audio/video pickup.

“These are just some of the images that we’ve recorded and you can see...it isn’t what we thought.”