Fic: Along This Crooked Road - chapter 1 (2/5)

[caluk]

The sky is red, clouds are gray, and copper moon. One day I'll tell you.
The threats are veiled, snow-blind at first. Unfurl the sails for heavens' blue and dark uncertain waters.

~~Unbalanced Pieces, Soulsavers

Arizona, June 2010

It's hard to tell which is hotter, the ground under his boots or the sun, or the furnace-blast heat of the air itself, baked dry as the sand and dust that's swirling around them in a wind he only wishes he could feel. Or maybe the betrayal burns more, the demon he'd thought they could at least rely on to be the enemy of their enemy showing his true colors now. Their shadows ripple and shimmer and for a moment he thinks he's imagining it, or hallucinating it but then he realizes it's the ground, shaking itself loose to rise in the funnel that's forming around them as Crowley chants steadily, “Qui cecidit, et omnes duces, servi et creaturis qui habitant in ignis. Sedenti super thronum sanctum et vilicum, qui in mundo spirituum et dracones, dici! Venite, et apparent in loco isto dedit filiis hominum tuus, tua vasa secunda rerum principium!”

“Crowley, you sonofabitch!”

He shouts, instinctively, raising his voice over the intangible wind and barely hears himself; back to back, his brother leans closer and yells “What?” into his ear and he only just makes it out. Maybe they can't feel the wind, or hear it, but the power that's beating down on this little patch of desert is real enough.

Dean shakes his head, tilts it back to call, “We gotta stop him!”

Sam shoots him a look, perfect bitchface and he grins, despite himself. Despite everything.

It fades away, withers like the dead, stunted things that clung to life here, once, before the desert sucked them dry and he pulls the Colt from his waistband, hands it to his brother.

“You think it'll work?” Sam hollers, and Dean shrugs.

“Running out of plans here, dude.”

He drags Ruby's knife from the sheath he fashioned for it on his hip, palm sweat-slick around the grip, gritty where the dust and sand have caked themselves right down into his skin. It took them two days to hike out here, answering the coordinates the demon sent them and they're both exhausted, worn thin by weeks of running from one side of the country to the other, hunting for a way to stop the Devil.

And now they're trapped, nowhere to run, the steady cadence of the demon's summoning rising and falling, whipping the sand into his face as he tries to push forward against the power. It tingles against his skin, raw and burning and he ducks his head into a raised arm, forces his feet to move, reaches out clumsily to pull Sam with him but they'll never get close enough in time and he knows it. So he stops, lets Sam brace against him to steady his aim in the disorienting swirl of desert but the shot goes wild, sucked into the storm that's building around them and that's when he thinks this is it. It's over.

The demon's voice rises to a shout, far louder than should have been possible; “Et coronatus fuit et Dominum omnium aquarum firmamenta, ignis Domini omnis firmamenta, Dominus universae terrae firmamenta, Dominum omnium caeli firmamenta erit vos surgere ad potens sedem omnium caeli!”

The echoes roll out across the desert like thunder and everything stops, goes still, as if the world is waiting for something, listening to the fading rumble of Crowley's summoning.

Dean licks his lips, tastes sweat-salt and a dry, metallic tang and he takes one step toward the demon, still standing a dozen yards away, arms raised, head tipped to the sky, the morning sun rising behind him shining through the haze of dust hanging motionless in the air but before his heel touches the ground it shakes, a hard quake that knocks them both to their knees, leaves them sprawling.

“Dean?”

“What the hell?”

Sam's hand latches onto his arm, fingers bruising tight and he drags Dean around to
face the same way he's staring, away from the dawn and the demon silhouetted against it to see the darkness coloring the western horizon. It's deeper than night, thick, churning black that makes him want to choke up everything he's ever eaten and he thinks he hears Sam echo his shocked, “oh god.”

It's getting closer and when he shuts his eyes, just trying to block it out, to not see that awful black he hears something just as bad, if not worse; a vast fluttering of wings against the fabric of the world itself and he understands then, just how screwed they are, growls wordlessly and throws himself into a lunge that's as futile as it is doomed; Crowley just flicks two fingers and he's slammed back down into the ground so hard he thinks he must have left a dent six inches deep. He manages to force his lungs to work again as the demon tips his head forward at last, looks at him from white eyes shot through with black and red and gold, barbed veins that twist out to writhe under his skin.

“Sorry, boys. But I'm not backing the losing horse anymore.”

“I'll kill you,” Sam spits out behind him and Crowley laughs, deep and rolling but it's not the demon who answers.

“Sorry, Sam. I try not to kill off the help,” Lucifer says, stepping out of nothing to stand at the demon's shoulder. Crowley drops his arms, steps back into the black-eyed crowd that follow Lucifer.

“Of course, Michael could smite him for you,” comes a new voice and they both twist back to see Zachariah standing before the massed ranks of the angels.

“Sammy?” Dean rasps out, reaches back blindly as the angels and demons spread around them until they're standing in the middle of a perfect circle, maybe a mile deep and he thinks this must be every angel and every demon in heaven and hell.

They're trapped.

:: : ::

Miranda, high orbit. 2519

“Mind telling me what we're doing here?”

The flight deck is cold, lit only by the dim glow from the controls and the screens, and the faint, pale gleam of the stars outside. He's down in the very bow of the ship, so close to the glass he can reach up and touch it, feel the coldness of vacuum on the other side. She's behind him, almost as cold as the space inches from his palm.

“Makin' a deal, Zoe,” he tells her, low and steady. There's a confrontation coming, but it doesn't need to be now. Her reflection is a pale blur over his shoulder, the weight of the anger that drives her almost as cold as the emptiness of the void outside and he wonders again why she hasn't left, how she can stand to be here.

Unbidden, his gaze flicks up, catches against the jagged scar on the join between hull and glass, where the spear tore through both and it's not the only scar Serenity carries, not even the worst; there's a long, dark lightning strike burned across one of the shuttle bays from a laser cannon, another that curves frighteningly close to the opposite drive pods, both relics from running one blockade or another and the dining hall is never going to be the same after they took on a life-pod full of refugees from a Reaver-gutted ship who turned out to be just as crazy as the monsters they were running from. Some of the scars are less physical, an absence more than an indelible mark and just that thought is enough to put the smell of jasmine and lilac into his breath, taste of silk and skin on his tongue along with the char and the cloying stench of burning meat.

“A deal for what?”

“A job. So we can keep flying.”

It's the wrong thing to say. He opens his mouth to apologize, to... something, but she's already gone. He winces, smacks his forehead lightly against the glass and watches his breath form patterns against it as he berates himself.

“She misses him.”

He resolutely doesn't jump, and he certainly doesn't give a little shriek. He coughs, feels his cheeks burn and looks over his reflection's shoulder. It's Kaylee, sitting cross-legged, tailor-style on the cushions behind him.

“We all do,” Mal answers her.

“But she was his wife, Cap'n,” the mechanic says, like that explains everything. It doesn't, not even close, but he's not sure how he can tell her how guilty Zoe feels, how she wishes it was her they'd buried on that desert moon.

How he wishes it was him.

“Gotta keep flyin', little Kaylee,” he tells her instead. “All I can do is keep us flyin'. War's right on our heels, followin' us everywhere we go like a gao yang, bringin' us nothin' but trouble. This deal, might maybe buy us room to breathe, get some clear space behind us.”

“I know,” Kaylee says, unfolds her legs. “That's what you do, Cap'n.” She comes to stand next to him, presses her hand next to his against the glass. The promise ring on her finger clinks softly against it, the small stone still glittering and new, despite the grime worn into the creases of her skin. He's not sure he'll ever get used to the idea of her and Simon, even after a year. “But did it have to be here?”

He thinks maybe Badger chose it deliberately, knowing what it would do to him and his crew, to be back here where it all began. Behind their hands, the planet swings into view, their orbit carrying them across the terminus where night slips into day. It looks just the same as it did before, a blue and white marble, quiet and still, and he wonders if they're still there, the lost and forgotten, rotting slowly where they lay down to die.

Miranda.

“I know,” he murmurs. Kaylee sighs and leaves, and he stands there staring at the planet as it rolls across the vast blackness long after the door has whispered shut behind her. Soon, he'll have to take them in, pilot his ship down through atmo and he wishes, not for the first time, that he'd looked for another pilot. It was never quite the right time, not enough jobs to pay another wage, no need for it when all they were doing were shuttle runs between colony worlds, struggling to survive without the Alliance, without that thin veneer of what Inara'd called 'respectability' once she'd left again and feeding the desperately needy never paid quite so well as supplying the folk rich enough to afford a Companion's rates.

The war is a smugglers' paradise, but it means a lot of folk left stranded on newly terraformed worlds and every time he sees them, starving, disease-wasted, he can't help but feel guilty for starting it.

“Shoulda left it well enough alone,” he tells Serenity. “Kept on doing what we were doing.”

The ship pings and creaks around him, tiny noises of the hull reacting to the light from the sun. He can feel the engine, beating steadily through his palm, up through his boots from the deck and a smile twitches at his mouth.

“One last job,” he says. “Then we can retire, find some backwater corner of the system and run pleasure cruises for rich folk don't know better than squandering their credits on pretty views. Just this last job.”

It's a dream, nothing more, but he's lived by dreams for a long time and it's as good a cause as any. He pats the glass, then turns, jumps up the short steps to the flight deck and drops into the chair. He reaches up for the ship's conn, thumbs it on.

“Ladies and gentlefolk, this is your Captain speaking. We will shortly be heading in atmo, so best strap yourselves in and pray to whatever takes your fancy.” He flicks it off, weighs the small box for a second, then mutters an oath as he switches it on again. “Make your way up here, Albatross.”

If he listens, he can hear Jayne shouting irritably, banging around in his quarters and he grins as he begins to turn the yoke, steering them 'down' toward the planet. River slips quietly onto the deck, takes her seat and he notes that she's barefoot again.

“You up to helpin' me fly this bird?” he asks the girl. He's learned how to read the wild shifts and swings of her psychosis - mostly - and barefoot usually means she's in one of her more... peculiar phases. She glances sidelong at him, hands steady and confidant on the controls as she helps him fly Serenity.

“Bird flight evolved as a form of ambush. Selection for enhanced lift-control led to improved lift coefficients. Serenity doesn't have wings.”

“That's... shiny,” Mal manages.

River's look turns wry. “I can fly her,” she pronounces, and then Serenity is shaking, fire licking up along the screens before the girl flips her over. She's a natural at the helm, on her good days at least, flies with a kind of instinctive grace that he's only ever dreamed of, or seen in only the best pilots. For a moment he could tell himself it's Wash at the controls, it's so smooth, the bone-jarring rattling easing down to a fine tremor, even the scream of wind-roar as they drop down into the atmosphere proper fading to a loud susurrus, and then something flashes against the sky, bright enough to blind them, flashes and flickers and there's a harsh tearing sound and Serenity shudders, jolts sideways so violently he's thrown out of his seat, lands face-down on the deck. River falls on top of him, sprawls there and he can feel her breath on the back of his neck, too fast and shallow, and her heart beats against the back of his shoulder, hummingbird-quick. He scrambles away from her, crawls up on to his hands and knees, tries to work out what happened. The deck's quaking beneath his boots, his knuckles are white around the grip of the revolver he doesn't remember drawing and in the corner of his eye he sees horizon-sky-horizon-sky flickering past, he hears the whining shriek of the engines red-lining, feels the twisting pitch and yaw in his guts as the grav fails to keep up with the rapid shifting of 'down'. Simon barges past him, reaching for his sister, and somewhere just outside the door Jayne yells, “Who's flying this gorram ship?!” just as that blinding light flickers again, comes with another horrible, rending shudder. He lunges for the nearest set of controls, River's, gets one hand on the yoke and hauls it back, wills the ship to climb, gorram it, climb, a thin growl rumbling between his teeth as she fights him.

“Siddown!” he shouts, because the nose is coming up but they're dropping too fast still, and some things are as inevitable as war. “Hold on to something!” and he forgets that he's not holding on to much of anything until they hit the ground and there's a split second of awful, chaotic weightlessness when he thinks I'm flying, before everything goes black.

:: : ::

Last time he saw his ship look this wrecked, they'd just flown through half the Alliance fleet with a pack of Reavers on their six. He stands on the crest of the bow-wave Serenity plowed across a kilometer of almost-desert, sandy soil churned up in a deep furrow that stretches like a scar toward the horizon. The Firefly is shattered, hull torn, glass cracked where it isn't glittering in the sand. One engine is hanging drunkenly askew, the other is just gone, so much scrap metal spread across the land.

Mal supposes they're lucky the drive didn't blow.

It's hard to feel lucky when every inch of his body aches, a thousand bruises and cuts clamoring to be heard over the relentless pounding in his head. Concussion, Simon told him, coolly professional as he put a half dozen stitches in the gash along Mal's scalp.

He didn't wait long enough for the small dose of local anesthetic to numb the area, but the captain gritted his teeth and did his best to ignore the sharp, bright pain and the nauseating tug and pull of thread through his skin.

The stitches itch now, drying out in the arid climate. They finally came down fifty or so klicks north of the nearest settlement on the colony world, just on the edges of the terraforming.

“Least there's no Reavers out here,” he mutters to the wind, and limps down the rampart of dirt circling Serenity. He can smell smoke; Zoe set a small fire and now River is huddled close to it, staring rapt into the flames. Fire's not something they see much of in space.

“Cap'n?” Kaylee calls out to him. The mechanic is sitting on the ramp of the rear hatch, surrounded by bits of engine, he thinks.

“Yeah, Kaylee,” he answers, rolls his shoulder gingerly as he makes his way around Serenity to her. He dislocated it in the wild tumble of their dead-stick landing and it still throbs, deep, slow waves of hot pain rolling across his chest and down his back, counterpoint to the beat in his bruised skull. Kaylee squints at him, one side of her face swollen and scraped, one eye half-closed. “How're you doing?” Mal asks her. She grimaces.

“Port filter's blown out. We lost the coil when we lost the engine, and the drive shaft is ghosa.”

He doesn't need to understand what she's talking about to know how bad it is, but he asks her anyway.

“Captain speak, Kaylee.”

“We ain't goin' nowhere. She needs a month or two in dry dock, drain down the system properly, patch the tears in the fuel lines and make sure there's no leaks, and that's before we start on the drive system or the catalyzer. Need a whole new shaft, probably a new coil too. We're grounded.”

He tells himself there's absolutely no reason for his heart to lurch the way it does, but the jolt that shakes him right down to his toes is unmistakeably familiar; fear. He can't move, can't fight, can't run on the ground. The sweat on his back turns cold and clammy.

“Do what you can,” he forces out, turns his back on her helpless protest. Zoe's watching him, her hands sure and steady as she strips down a rifle. She doesn't even twitch a smile when he shrugs, and something sharp and ugly twists in his stomach at the coldness in her stare. There's a thin scrape down her cheek, a white bandage showing around her arm through the tear in her sleeve.

“Doc checked that out?” he asks, makes himself walk closer. They've avoided each other for months and he's not sure why. There's never been much more than a trace of blame in her face, he's fairly sure he holds himself more accountable for what happened to Wash than she does, but there are a lot of memories between them, a lot of deaths and he thinks maybe there's only so many times he can remember them all.

“He did,” Zoe says, quietly. Mal's almost certain she wouldn't even have noticed the blood that's run down her arm to stain the back of her hand, offers a silent thanks to Tam's calm professionalism.

“That's good. Kaylee's gonna do what she can get us flyin' again.”

For the first time in months, the barest hint of a smile plays around her mouth.

“She's good, but she's not that good.”

Mal sighs.

“No. She ain't. Buys us a little time though, to think of somethin' else.”

“Might be parts in the cities. Flew over a pretty big town when we were crashing.”

“Really? I didn't see anything.”

The smile spreads, fractionally, sharp and cutting.

“That's because you were too busy knocking yourself cold on the ceiling. There was a town.”

“You're thinking could be parts there, fix Serenity up enough to get us back to what's passin' for civilisation. That's... good thinking.”

It's a long shot at best and they both know it, but it's all they have. Mal turns, looks out over the desert. The sun's edging down toward the horizon, and a shiver crawls down his spine as he remembers all those bodies, all those sightless eyes staring back at him.

“Ain't headin' in there in the dark,” he murmurs. Zoe racks the slide on the reassembled rifle, a loud kh-chkck and he jumps a little.

“Not a good idea,” she agrees. “Jayne's finding firewood.”

“Okay then. We wait 'til morning.”

The mercenary brings back a bundle of twisted, dead roots that burn easily, their fire bright in the gathering dusk. On most planets, Mal would keep an eye out for scavengers, predators drawn by the light but there's nothing alive here, nothing but his crew as they eat and watch the fire burn down to embers. He pushes to his feet, stands on the other side of the glowing pit, thumbs tucked through his belt loops.

“We all know ain't no way Serenity's gonna fly without a good deal of work and parts we don't have.”

“I'm sorry, Captain,” Kaylee says mournfully. Mal shakes his head.

“No one's blamin' you, Kaylee. Ain't a mechanic in the 'verse could do more'n you do to keep that ship in the air, but it's plain and simple truth. We need more'n we got. So. This is how it is. Zoe spied a town as we were crashing, might maybe be a workshop there where we can get what Kaylee needs to get us some kind of drive back. Parts, tools, whatever else she needs. It's not the only option. We could wait for our contact to arrive, send out a broadcast to make him aware of what happened. Or, last resort, we take one of the shuttles, rig it for long distance and go get help. Bring a crew back here if we need to, but I'd rather fly my ship off this planet my own self. Too many scavengers out there, perfectly willing to salvage a ship ain't derelict, and likely
kill us to boot, if they don't just strand us here.”

Dark eyed, Zoe stares into the fire and doesn't look up at any of them as she murmurs, “won't ever get a chance.” For a while, after they won the battle that started the war, he thought she'd leave them, half-expected her to enlist again against the alliance.

Instead, she's grown almost fanatically protective of the firefly class, and her crew.
He wonders what will happen if he ever has to give the order to abandon ship, and shivers again.

“That's as may be, Zoe, but as I said. Last resort. First choice is to scavenge what we can from the city. Now, we all know what's in there. Ain't gonna be pretty, so any as want to, can stay here. Only need me and Kaylee, long as there's nothing too heavy for us to load onto the mule.”

“I'm coming,” Simon says, glaring fiercely at Mal, who nods back.

“Glad of it, doctor. Your sister?” he asks, not quite sure himself what he wants the answer to be. Simon looks to the girl, drawing patterns in the dirt around her combat boot.

“River? Do you want to stay here?”

She shakes her head, hunches her shoulders. “Shouldn't go.”

“That's okay, River. You can stay.” Simon soothes her, puts a hand on her arm. She shrugs it off.

“No. None of us should go.”

Jayne snorts.

“Girl's afraid of the dark.”

After the battle on Mr. Universe's moon, the big man seemed to forget what the girl could do but Mal caught him staring at her once or twice, scared, and knew he hadn't forgotten anything.

“Of course you should be afraid of the dark!” She bursts out, rolling to her knees and staring wildly out into the desert. “You know what's out there!”

They all look out but there's nothing there, just sandy scrub and the silhouettes of the city against the sky on the horizon. Still...

“Doctor? Any chance she's pickin' something up?”

Tam meets Mal's eyes and shrugs.

“I don't know. Truly. We've been trying some new meds, and she's been pretty stable but it could just be the... the city.”

The people in the city, he means, and Mal remembers the way the girl reacted to them last time.

“That's settled then. We're all goin'.”

“What?!” Jayne shouts, surges to his feet. 'Vera' is cradled in his arm, not quite aimed at anyone.

“Ain't a request this time, Jayne. We all go, or we all sit here 'til we rot.”

“I ain't rottin'!”

“Didn't think so. Best get what sleep you can. We head out first light. Zoe, you have first watch.”

He strolls a few yards away, kicks the sand into a shallow burrow and settles down into it, lacing his hands behind his head and staring up at the stars. He's weary, so tired his bones are aching, muscles sore and his head's started throbbing again, but sleep's never felt so far out of reach.

Part of it's being back here, on this planet. He's dreamed about it, in the months since they fought their way here to find the awful secret that was locked in River Tam's mind; wondering if he did the right thing or if it's all just another doomed battle he's fighting. Part of it's thinking about the war he started, the first time he saw a squad of reformed Browncoats walk into a tavern, recruiting, playing that poor damn dead woman's message. He'd have signed up then, just to wear the Brown Coat again with pride, but he's not sure the revolution will be any better than the Alliance.

He's had enough of fighting, of wars that can't be won.

Sleep steals him away even as he's thinking it will never come, swallows him whole as he stares at the stars and he dreams that the space in between snuffs them out, one by one, until there's nothing left but him and the vasty black, infinite and empty.

:: : ::

Screaming wakes him.

It's not exactly unusual, he's lived through one war and nothing gets a man used to screaming faster than war. River Tam's nightmares have had the whole ship at battle stations before now, too, before they even realize there's no actual threat, but this time, the girl's shrieking is different. Raw and harsh, wailing that makes his own throat burn in sympathy as he scrambles to his feet and scans the desert. It's empty under the moon, the hulk of Serenity lying crooked in the trough she carved into the sand blocking out the stars near the horizon beside them.

“Doctor?”

Simon's already at his sister's side, trying to catch her hands but she wrenches them out of his grasp, claws at the sand and then at her face.

“River? River, come on, it's me. River, it's Simon.”

Jayne's on the other side of the fire, glaring between the girl and the desert. He's holding Vera again, shifting and shifting his hands on the rifle, nervous and trying to hide it. Zoe's calm, implacable, scanning the desert steadily. Mal remembers a time she would have been as nervous as Jayne, before the war drilled that out of her, remembers, too, that there would have been compassion softening the hard planes of her face once. River's dragged trails of dirt through the tears streaming down her face, smeared it into mud across her cheeks, black as blood in the dull light of the fire and Kaylee's trying to wipe it away, trying to help Simon restrain the girl but she won't be quieted, still crying out a nonsensical diatribe against no one.

There's nothing out there, but Mal finds his gaze drawn out to the desert, the nape of his neck prickling as the hairs stand on end. It feels like someone's watching him.

“Kao, this is kwong-juh duh, Doctor, shut her up!”

In the end, it takes a dose of sedative to quiet her, Simon's hands gentle on River's arm as he withdraws the needle. He murmurs to her as the drug takes effect but it's Mal she looks at, eyes heavy. Her pupils are blown in the dim light, huge and black and for a moment, he's reminded of his dream, the empty void between the stars swallowing them all up, one by one.

“It's out there,” she says, clear as day, and then slips gently into sleep.

“Well what in guay does that mean?” Jayne demands. “What's out where?”

“I don't know,” Mal answers, absently, looking from River to the desert. It's still empty, but his skin's still crawling. “Given what River's seen and done before though, I'd say it's safest to assume she's right and we ain't alone down here.”

“Could be Badger,” Zoe puts in.

“Could be.”

None of them think it is.

They don't sleep for the rest of the night, take it in turns to watch over River, or to patrol slowly around the edge of camp and by morning, they're all tired and worn thin, on edge from the feeling Mal guesses they're all getting. He leads them out just before dawn, as soon as it's light enough to see and they traipse across the desert with the sun rising behind Serenity at their backs. River's still groggy with the sedative, fretting against her brother's shoulder as he half-carries her.

An hour into the trek, Zoe circles back toward him. She's been ranging around their little procession, a hundred yards ahead, to the side, covering every angle like she doesn't feel the building heat as the sun climbs fast. They've landed on what passes for Mirandas' winter; short, brutally hot days tempered by long, only slightly cooler nights. He doesn't think they'll make it to the city without camping again.

“Anything out there?” he asks Zoe, lowly. She shakes her head.

“Nothing, Sir.”

It's easier to slip back into the old routine down here, away from some of the memories. She hasn't called him 'sir' much since they left Haven for the last time, not unless she's been trying to prove a point, but he's not sure if he's missed it all that much.

She hasn't moved out again, keeping pace beside him.

“Something on your mind?”

Zoe hesitates.

“Last night. I felt...”

Mal nods. “I know. Girl wasn't wrong. Whatever it was it's gone now.”

“Yes.”

“Figure all we can do is get to the town fast as we can, get what parts we need and get
the guay off this gorram planet.”

“You really think we can fix the ship?”

“No.” It hurts him to say it, sticks in his throat and he coughs harshly to clear it.
“But I aim to try. And when we can't, we'll try the shuttle. Gotta be someone out there scavenging in the Reavers' belt.”

“There's always Badger.”

“That there is. Don't like to think on what he'll charge for a rescue, though.”

Zoe snarls and hefts the shotgun. “We don't have to pay him, Sir.” Mal winces, shies away from the sight of her cold, hard determination. After what they've been through, they've all changed but this is a side to her he never thought he'd see. Ruthless, pragmatic, willing to do anything and everything just to achieve her goal.

“Yes, we do,” he says softly, puts a bit of steel in his voice and the sharpness in her face softens a little. She nods once, and circles back out, Mal looks behind him, at his crew strung out across the desert. Jayne's at the back, eyes everywhere, Vera twitching from one spot to another but he's looking at River as much as he is at the dust and scrub surrounding them. Simon's got one arm around his sister's shoulders, his hand up, carding through her tangled hair as she leans into him and Kaylee walks on his other side, close enough that their fingers brush together every few steps. The promise ring on her finger catches the sun, glitters brightly and she looks down, twists it with her thumb. When she looks back up, her gaze meets Mal's, and he forces a smile.
There's a long streak of grease across one cheek, dark even against the bruising that's turning spectacularly colorful.

And then her eyes skip over his shoulder, and they widen, shock spreading across her features.

“Captain!” she blurts, but he's already turning, one hand dropping to the revolver holstered at his hip, half aware of Jayne doing the same, Zoe running in from his left, shotgun tucked into her side, aim steady on the dark shapes suddenly huddled together in the middle of a patch of scorched, dark sand that shines smoothly a couple of hundred yards away. He can't figure out how they missed seeing it, the two figures, he's sure they weren't there a second ago and if the reactions of the rest of his crew are anything to go by, they're thinking the same. The dark sand has turned to glass, fused in cracks and ripples that center on them, two men. One of them stands, hands held wide, the other stays on his knees, one arm wrapped around his torso, the other down, hand splayed against the glass.

The tall one shouts something, unintelligible, his voice is shaking so much. Mal tightens his fingers around the grip of his revolver. Looking at that blackened patch of desert makes him think about the force that slammed his ship out of the sky.

“Who are you?” he demands, takes a step forward as Jayne and Zoe arrive to flank him.

Together, they present a front, a wall between the Tams and Kaylee and the strangers. The tall one calls out again, edging in front of the crouching man. Mal can't see any sign of a weapon on either of them but he knows, now, that not every weapon looks like one and something about the crouching man sets his teeth on edge, reminds him inescapably of River. “Start talkin'!” he yells, just about ready to draw his revolver.

“Please,” tall-guy shouts, clearly this time, although his accent is strange. He steps closer, wobbles, and drops hard to his knees on the melted sand and he looks up at Mal again, visibly shaking. He opens his mouth to say something else, but never manages it. He slumps forward, sprawls prone on the glass and lies unmoving.

“Well that's... odd,” Mal says, catches Zoe's shrug from the corner of his eye. He has the uncomfortable idea that she's about to suggest leaving them, and while he'd drop anyone who's a threat to his crew in a second, somehow, despite the strange feeling crawling around his guts about the still-crouching man, he doesn't think they're in any danger. “Doctor,” he calls over his shoulder. “Think you've got yourself a couple new patients.”

Simon comes up to stand beside Jayne. He's passed River off to Kaylee, but the girl is more alert now, staring between them at the two men with intense curiosity. She looks up briefly, catches Mal's eyes. “They're not Them,” she says, odd inflection on the words. “Not anymore. Safe now.”

He can't tell if she means the crew or the strangers, decides to ignore it and walks forward. “Jayne, stay with River and Kaylee. Simon, with me. Zoe - ”

“I've got your six, Sir,” she interrupts. When they get to the edge of the glass, Mal pauses, crouches to dig at the sand. It's a clean line, soft, powdery dust on one side, solid, shadowy glass on the other and when he scoops a handful of sand away from the edge, he finds it goes deep, straight down. This close, he can make out shapes in it, curves and patterns of ridges.

“Are they feathers?” Simon asks, kneeling beside him, leaning forward over the glass.

“Looks like,” Mal answers. He runs a hand across the smooth surface, finds it hot, more than it should be, even after baking in the desert sun for a few hours. Simon mimics
him and winces.

“We need to get them off this.”

It's easier said than done. They get within a few yards of the two men, and that's when the crouching guy surges up. He's tall as well, solidly muscled and this close, Mal can see his eyes, bloodshot and red-rimmed but startlingly green, bright against the blood masking his face, thick in his hair and the scruffy beard darkening his jaw. He can see burns, too, livid through charred cloth on Green-eyes' knees and arms, but it's the gun in his hands that holds Mal's attention, bright chrome winking in the sun as it twitches between them. He draws his revolver, hears the sharp sound of Zoe racking a round on the shotgun.

“Sir?” she calls, and he shakes his head, holds his free hand out to the side, palm down.

“You're in no danger from us, son,” he calls, and the stranger flinches.

“Not,” he manages. It sounds like he's got a throat full of gravel, forcing words out. “Not right.”

“What's not right?”

“You. Me. This, fuck, this place...” the man trails off, looks up at Burnham and Qing Long; the latter is pale, distant, an over-bright star next to the closer sun but there's no mistaking what they are. “Two,” he murmurs. “Sammy, look, there's two - ” he looks back down at the other man - Sammy, Mal guesses - still prone at his feet and lets out a low cry. “What did you do to him?!”

“Whoa, whoa now, hold on. We found - ” Mal starts, but Green-eyes isn't listening to him, staring wildly off to one side.

“No! You can't, not here. Left you... where, somewhere, we, what did you do? Fix him!”

He snaps off a shot that echoes across the desert like thunder, cracks away from the obsidian and Mal ducks, but Green-eyes is shooting at nothing, two more rounds that ricochet away from the glass and hit nothing before there's just a dry click every time he pulls the trigger. Mal rushes forward, snatches the gun out of the man's hand while he's staring dumbly at it, ready to grapple with him but the man just sinks to his knees, crawls to 'Sammy' and shakes him. Simon crouches beside them.

“Will you let me help him?” Tam asks.

“You a doctor?”

“Yes, I am.”

The man nods, watches as Simon rolls Sammy over. His face is bright red where it had pressed against the hot glass and now, Mal can see that he's in almost as bad a state as the other one; blood trailing thickly down his face, pain tightening sharp features.

Simon shakes him again with one hand, digging in his case with the other and he pulls out a chubby penlight, flicks the beam across the eyes he thumbs open.

“His name's Sammy?”

“Sam,” Green-eyes corrects him. “Sammy's a chubby twelve year old.”

Simon nods, half-smiles. “What's your name?”

Green-eyes doesn't answer, staring intently at a spot on the glass a few yards away. There's nothing there. Simon frowns, but turns back to his patient. “Pulse is strong. Help me move him, Captain?”

They carry Sam off the glass, Green-eyes stumbling along behind, always just close enough to touch Sam. The tall man moans softly as Mal and Simon lay him down on the sand and it's enough to bring Green-eyes back to the here and now.

“Sammy? C'mon, dude, wake up.”

“Dean?”

Mal watches Simon check the gash in Sam's hair, still sluggishly oozing dark blood as he fumbles for Green-eyes - Dean's arm.

“Yeah, dude. Right here. You gotta see this place, man,” Dean babbles hoarsely, flashing a quick glance up at the twin suns. He looks back down quickly, almost as if he's afraid he might lose himself if he looks away from Sam for too long. “It's, Jesus, Sammy, it's nuts. Like somethin' outta Star Trek, you know?”

“Dean, stop,” Sam mumbles, tightens his grip on Dean's arm and the other man subsides, fidgeting anxiously. Sam rolls his head across the sand, ignores Simon's annoyed hiss as it pulls the gash out of reach and stares straight at Mal. “Where are we?” he asks, and there's an intensity to it, to the tight focus of his bloodshot eyes that tells the captain it means so much more than just what planet they're on.

“Miranda,” he answers. “We're on Miranda.”

Confusion flickers through the other man's face.

“Miranda?” he echoes. Mal nods, wonders where they've been that they haven't heard of the planet that started a new war.

“Abandoned colony planet on the edge of the system.”

Dean's head snaps up, and Sam surges up onto his elbow.

“Colony planet?” he blurts out. “What the hell?”

Simon sits back on his haunches. “Where are you from?” he asks them, and they trade looks that speak a thousand words, none of which Mal can decipher.

“Earth,” Dean finally answers, guardedly. Mal snorts a laugh.

“Earth-That-Was is a myth,” he says, fingering the grip on his revolver again.

Something's off with them, and he's beginning to wonder if he was wrong in his instinctive assessment of them. “Try again.”

“I don't... Sam?” Dean says, looking at the other man helplessly, but Sam's staring hard at Mal again, eyes narrowed. He looks to one side, fixes on someone and River steps up past Mal, kneels beside her brother, right in front of them.

“Don't ask, don't tell,” she says, leaning forward. “The numbers are all wrong.”

“When are we?” Sam asks her in a whisper, “What year is it?” and she bites her lip.

“Wrong, too many,” she tells him. “Can't go back. Can't go forward. Can't go anywhere at all.”

“Please,” he breathes, and she deflates, sinks back onto her haunches, speaks so quietly Mal almost can't hear her.

“Twenty five twenty.”

:: : ::

They don't go any further that night. Sam keeps telling himself it must be some kind of joke, something Zachariah set up, maybe, to coerce them into saying 'yes', as if he can really forget the taste of Lucifer's glee when he'd forced that word out.

One look at this crew, and he knows it's no joke. The angel would go for something recognizable, at least, but this is insane. He glances up, the moon hanging sideways, crescent tilted on its back like a knife-blade smile, too big, the horizon too close.

Vaguely, he thinks this planet must be smaller than earth, remembers science classes at school when the mars probes landed and those strange, staticky pictures of alien rocks and skies that looked so familiar.

That, in turn, makes him think about everything the captain, Mal, told them; Earth-That-Was, over crowded and failing, and the desperate rush for the stars. He'd shared a look with Dean, then, and they'd agreed silently not to mention the deal, what they'd won with their capitulation. The end of the world.

“Jesus,” he mutters, looks over at his brother now. Dean's huddled by the fire, staring, rapt, into the flames. He's picking at the bandages Simon Tam wrapped around his battered hands, burned and bloody and Sam stretches out one leg far enough to kick gently at his brother's ankle. Dean starts, stares wildly around like he's looking for someone to fight, and Sam's reminded again of just how much they've given up. “Hey, hey man,” he says quietly, not really relieved when Dean's stare snaps over to his.

Dean's wrong, like something vital got left behind five hundred years ago.
All Sam can think of is why he isn't as messed up as his brother, and he wishes he could remember what happened between them standing back to back in the middle of the scorched plain, surrounded by angels and demons with no way out and waking up in the center of a patch of desert melted to glass.

“This is insane,” Dean says now. Sam thinks he's shaking.

“I keep thinking Cas is going to turn up and snatch us out of here,” he answers, and knows his brother is remembering the angel's terrible scream as Lucifer plucked him out of the air and simply tore him apart when Dean flinches and swallows hard. “Sorry,” Sam mutters, and his brother twitches one shoulder in an awkward shrug. Out on the edge of the firelight, the tall woman circles their little camp. Zoe, Sam remembers, turns his gaze to Mal, cleaning and oiling his revolver. It's strangely soothing, a ritual he knows so well and he finds his fingers twitching along with the movements of the captain's hands. When he looks up, Mal's staring at him, curious and more than a little suspicious.

“Had a gun like that once,” Dean says, and they both turn to him. “They said it could kill anything.”

Mal raises one eyebrow.

“Could it?”

Dean bites his lip, worries at the bandages on his hands. “No.”

“What happened to it?” a new voice asks, and Sam looks over to find the girl, Kaylee watching them steadily, tucked against the doctor's side and under his arm.

“We lost it,” he answers for his brother. He thinks he hears Dean say, “We lost it all,” but he's not sure.

“Careless, losin' a gun,” Jayne says over the top of anything his brother might have voiced.

“You don't know,” Sam growls. “You don't know what happened.”

“Simmer down,” Mal snaps, authoritarian and they both subside. Sam looks up at the sky again.

“Two,” Dean whispers, and he nods, remembers the two suns shining side by side in the pale blue.

“Yeah.”

“We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”

Sam grins before he realizes it's not Dean's voice, it's the dark-haired girl. She's crouched over by the fused desert ground, tracing the shapes Sam won't let himself look at, feathers burned into glass.

“River?” the doctor says, pushing up out of his crouch. Mal swears quietly, words Sam can't understand, and doesn't need to.

“Here we go again,” Jayne mutters.

Simon's striding over to his sister's side, Kaylee standing where he left her and Sam rises with a wince, stiff, aching muscles protesting.

“How'd she know that?” he asks, no one in particular. It's clear from the looks on the crews faces that it means nothing to them, equally clear that something's wrong.

“Girl's a reader,” Mal says, eying him as if he's looking for a reaction. Sam can't work out which one he wants to see.

“As in, telepathy?”

“Don't rightly know what that means, son,” the captain mutters. “Reader can listen in on a man's thoughts. River was... she was made into one.”

A shiver crawls down Sam's spine and his mouth fills with the taste of blood, rich and metallic. It makes him want to throw up and leaves him craving more, even now.

“How?” he forces out, can feel his brother's eyes on him.

“Alliance doctors messed with her brain,” Mal answers.

“Oh,” is all he can manage. Simon's drawing the girl into a hug, rocking her as she cries quietly but Sam can see her fists grinding down into the sand on one side, against the glass on the other until the doctor catches them and pulls them up to his chest. He half-carries his sister back to the fire, hesitates, but she pulls out of his arms and settles down next to Dean, joins him in staring at the low flames.

“Everything burns,” she murmurs.

“Everything,” Dean echoes. River reaches out, touches his face gently. He flinches, but she just trails her fingertips up to his brow.

“It's not here,” she says softly. “Somewhere else. Fractured, missing your reflection, man with no shadow. Hurts.”

Dean nods.

“I keep thinking I can see it,” he whispers. “Just in the corner of my eye,” and he casts a glance at Sam. “But I left it behind somewhere,” he says.

“We'll find it,” Sam bites out, stomach churning. He feels suddenly, acutely alone, walks away from the fire with unsteady steps, wanting the dark and the cold of the desert. Someone follows him but he doesn't look back until he's circled the patch of glass, standing on the far side of it, staring out into the dark. It's the dark-haired woman, Zoe.

“I don't understand this,” Sam tells her. “Any of it. I thought I knew what was going to happen, but I didn't know a thing.”

“None of us do,” she says.

“Five hundred years. Jesus.”

“It's a hell of a tale.”

He laughs.

“I'm not sure I believe it either.”

“Oh, I believe you,” Zoe shrugs. “Doesn't make it any less strange.”

“I mean, spaceships? Time travel, sure, I guess. Been there, done that. But this... What do we do now?”

“Captain has a habit of picking up strays.”

“I do not!” Mal yelps, picking his way across the ripples of glass toward them.
Zoe laughs silently. It doesn't reach her eyes.

“Besides, need a ship to pick anyone up.”

“Anyone can get Serenity flyin' again, Kaylee can.”

“I'm not so sure anything short of a full crew can get her off this gorram rock,” Mal mutters. To Sam, it feels like an argument they've had a dozen times.

“You said you were heading for a city?” Sam asks. “Can't you find a ship there?”

“Nothin' much left here,” Mal tells him. “Alliance pretty much stripped the place bare when they cleaned out and what they didn't take, the Reavers did.”

Zoe's knuckles turn white around her shotgun and Sam finds himself wondering who she lost to the crazed men they'd told him were created here. It's just one more unreal twist to the tale.

“So if Kaylee can't fix your ship, how do you get off this planet?” And can we hitch a ride? he wants to ask, except he's not quite sure he wants to leave this place, monster stories be damned. It's where they landed after... whatever happened, and he's clinging to the hope that someone will find a way to get them back.

“Could take a shuttle, maybe,” Mal's saying. “Or wait for our contact to turn up. Badger's a slimy cockroach, but we should be able to bargain for a lift out of here.”

“You still have cockroaches?” Sam asks, and they both grin.

“We get out of here, could take you with us, drop you off planet-side somewhere,” the captain offers. “Plenty of worlds lookin' for able-bodied folk willing to work.”

The vague hope of rescue crystallizes, into determination as hard as the glass behind them and he shakes his head.

“No. We're getting out of here.”

“You got a plan as to how, exactly?”

Sam smiles, thin and hard.

“You still have roads, right?”

They both nod.

“Then you still have crossroads.”

And of course, that's when screams and gunfire rip the night apart.

They all spin, Sam reaching to the small of his back for a gun that isn't there and he mumbles a curse.

“Goddamit.”

“Here.” He looks up, catches the gun Zoe's tossed to him and it's strangely weighted, sitting too far back in his hand but it's a weapon and it's all he has and all he needs. He takes off, back around the glass, instinct keeping him to the more certain terrain of the sand and Zoe and Mal are on his heels, come up alongside him as they reach the fire. Jayne's still firing out into the dark, Kaylee's curled up small on the ground and Sam catches a glimpse of her wide-eyes between her arms as Simon stands over her, River beside him, Dean on his other side.

The screaming's coming from the desert and there's something familiar about it, something that catches against a memory that snatches Sam's breath away but disappears before he can place it and he hurdles the fire, puts his back to his brother's. He can feel a fine tremor in Dean's shoulders, pressed up against his, realizes the older man's chanting something, over and over, “it's coming it's coming it's coming.”

Mal steps closer, catches his eye.

“Either of you know what that thing out there is?”

Sam shakes his head.

“You have a reason why I should believe you?”

The hunter freezes for a moment, fear running cold and sharp under his skin. He knows Mal would drop them in a second if he thought they were a threat.

“Wouldn't've helped us if you didn't trust us,” Dean says. Sam hadn't been entirely sure his brother was even aware of what was going on, but Dean leans back into him, steady pressure against his shoulders.

“Don't mean I believe you.”

“Yes, it does,” Dean answers, and Mal sighs and rolls his eyes, turns his stare and his revolver out to the dark.

“Zoe?” he calls softly. The dark-haired woman materializes at his side.

“Sir.”

“Anything out there?”

“Nothing I can see. But there's something there. I can... feel it.”

“Feel it?”

“Can't explain it sir. Like someone watching you across a room full of people.”

And that, apparently, is enough for the captain. He nods once, decisive, and raps out orders; “We're headin' for the town, right now. Doc, you and Kaylee stay in the middle, Jayne, you keep on 'em. Drop anything even looks at 'em crooked. Zoe, keep an eye on our guests here. River, you're with me.”

It's instinctive to fall in line, comforting to let someone else take control, but every time he's done that for the last few years, everything's gone to hell and back. Literally. He keeps the gun Zoe tossed him out, cocked and ready and the tall woman walks beside him as they head out across the desert, coaching him on what's changed in the last five hundred years. It's not much different to the weapons he grew up with, designed to be reliable and sturdy enough to survive the most hostile environment with barely a scratch, a finer weight on the trigger and a quicker action that means it fires almost as fast as an automatic. It's easier to reload, too, stronger materials mean the walls of the barrel are thinner, the whole piece lighter and soon enough, it settles comfortably in his hand.

It takes him a few miles, the tops of the buildings of the city coming into view on the horizon before he realizes he hasn't once thought of trying to secure a gun for Dean, nor has his brother asked for one and when he looks around, he finds the older man walking behind him, gaze a thousand miles away, face tight and pinched.

“Dean?” he calls softly, the first tingling edge of worry crawling along his skin when his brother doesn't respond. Sam stops, for the second or so it takes his brother to catch up and walk straight on by him.

“Sam?”

It's Zoe, watching them carefully.

“Something's wrong,” he answers her, reaches out to catch his brother's arm. The tips of his fingers brush Dean's skin through his tattered sleeve, and his brother flinches, just fractionally, turns his head so, so slowly as Sam tightens his grip on his arm but he never meets Sam's eyes, stares just over his shoulder.

“Dean?” he asks again, tugging gently to make his brother stop walking.

“It's coming,” Dean breathes,and Sam finally recognizes the look on his face as the awful, twisting fear that he'd worn when they were trapped in the desert, caught between Lucifer's demons on one side and the massed host of the angels on the other.

“What is?”

“Sir,” Zoe calls, but Sam tunes her out, turns his head to catch the odd echo to his brother's voice as Dean whispers again, “It's coming.” The bottom drops out of his stomach as he realizes it's River, five or six yards away, murmuring the same words as his brother, at the exact same time. Simon is holding her arms and Sam knows he's demanding much the same answers from her as he needs from his brother.

“Dean, what is it? What's coming? When?”

“Now. Here. It's coming,” River and Dean answer, voices clashing, jangling discord that sets Sam's teeth on edge.

“Lao tyen yeh,” Jayne says, and Sam turns, finds the big man staring up at the sky.

“What the guay is going on?” Mal growls.

“It's eatin' the stars,” Jayne blurts out. “It's eatin' the gorram stars!”

Sam follows their gazes up, sees the cold, bright lights winking out one by one. I know this, he thinks. I've seen this before. He shuts his eyes, breathes in and the air tastes of mesquite and dust instead of the dry, arid, alien smell of this strange world and he can hear wings, uncountable wings beating toward them. When he opens his eyes again he's expecting to see the dozens of demons and angels that had trapped them, run them to ground in the mid-West desert but there's nothing there.

“Move,” Mal grates out. “Zoe, take point. Jayne, you got our six. Now!”

“Too late,” River says, and Dean speaks over her, voice thin and sharp and strange;

“I'm coming.”

Sand lashes up into the air, whips around them and their cries are lost in the shrieking wail. Sam ducks, throws his arms over his head, spitting out sand as he tears at his shirt, rips a foot-wide strip from the hem and fumbles it around his head, trying to cover his mouth and nose. Half-blind, he doesn't see the shape come surging through the choked-air until it slams into his side, a glancing blow that tosses him back and leaves his left side singing with pain. His arm is useless, dangling dead-weight as he rolls over and tries to remember how to breathe, swallows sand and blood and reaches up with his right hand to find his lip torn, the tip of his tongue bitten clean through. Someone stumbles past, trips over his legs and he almost shoots her, finger tight on the trigger before he recognizes the mechanic.

“Kaylee!” he shouts. She doesn't hear him, scrabbling desperately away from him on hands and knees and he crawls after her until he can catch her shoulder and pull her against him, putting his back to the brunt of the driving sand,leaning hard into the wind. “Kaylee! It's Sam!” he yells again, straight into her ear. She turns wide eyes to him, grabs hold of his shirt - he realizes, belatedly, that he lost the torn off piece when he was struck - and clings to him.

“What's going on?” she screams at him.

“I don't know!”

Neither of them bother suggesting it could just be a sandstorm. There's something out there watching them, a presence that makes the sand flay at any exposed skin until Sam's body feels burned.

When it stops, it's so sudden he almost falls over. The sudden silence is deafening, just the quiet rasp of the sand falling out of the air.

“Runtse de shang-dee” Kaylee breathes. She lets go of his shirt but he catches her arm before she can stand.

“Wait.”

It's not over, he can still feel that presence watching them, cold eyes on him, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

“What?” she asks him, peering around nervously. He follows her example, spots Jayne, shaking sand out of his hair, goggles over his eyes. Behind the big man, Zoe's rising up out of a crouch, shotgun tucked into her shoulder. She meets his gaze and shakes her head and he knows she feels it too, tension coiling between them.

“Can't you feel it?” he asks Kaylee.

“Feel what?”

“Never mind,” Sam mutters, a million questions blurring through his mind. He searches for his brother, finds Mal instead, River beside him, both staring hard out into the desert and then he sees Simon, crouched over a still form lying in the sand. He knows, long before the doctor looks up, and he scrambles across the desert between them in a low crouch.

“Oh god. Dean.”

His brother's sprawled face-up, broken doll, arms and legs crook'd and he's half buried in drifting sand, blood trickling from his nose and ears, his features still and slack.

“He's alive,” Simon says, and Sam's sure his heart just stopped for the second time in as many minutes. He drops to his knees, presses two fingers up under Dean's jaw anyway, needing to feel the solid, steady pulse of his brother's heart. He's out cold, though the doctor tells Sam he can't find an injury so Sam shakes him, rubs his knuckles hard against his brother's sternum and finally he just drags Dean up against him, tries not to think dead weight, not to remember - blood under his hands his own and
more and scorched feathers sifting down around them and whispering please, don't you do this now, don't you dare you sonofabitch don't you fucking dare until the sun creeps up over the horizon and the cold, awful presence watching them fades away with the dawn.

Dean twitches once against him, sucks in a gasp and lets it out with a wet, ragged cough. It's one of the most beautiful things Sam's heard in a long, long time and he laughs as he pounds his brother on the back until Dean splutters and pushes him away.

“Well fuck me sideways.”

He freezes, sees Dean's face turn gray at the familiar voice.

Can't be, he thinks. Not here.

The last time he heard that voice it was selling them out, raised in a summoning that called all of heaven and hell right to them, stranded in the middle of the desert.

“What the hell have you two morons done this time?”

“Crowley,” Sam snarls, and Dean's right beside him as he spins and surges forward.

Briefly, distantly, he notices that the demon isn't quite the same, dressed in a threadbare version of his usual suit, scruffy beard darkening his jaw and then there's nothing but the mad, desperate tangle of fists and boots and shouts until a shot rings out across the desert and everything stops dead.

prologue
chapter 2