Beauty In The Breakdown, 3/3. NC-17
Title: Beauty In The Breakdown
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: NC-17 for one scene chapter 1. Otherwise, some language and violence, though most of the bad language is in Mandarin. ;)
Pairing: Ariadne/Arthur/Eames, River/Jayne
Disclaimer: Inception belongs to Christopher Nolan and not to me. Firefly/Serenity belongs to Joss Whedon. Their toys are fun to play with!
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-movie for both fandoms. For the
inception_kink meme prompt in round 6: After being captured by the infant organization known simply as Blue Sun for their technology and knowledge, Arthur, Ariadne, and Eames awaken from stasis hundreds of years in the future in the cargo hold of Serenity. Slightly different from the prompt, but I hope it still works out. :) Title and chapter titles are from Frou Frou's "Let Go."
Summary: Most people think of Blue Sun as a research and development company, a place where new tech is tested for the good of the Alliance worlds. It was around for much longer than people realized, and not all of their research was intended to benefit the masses. Mal finds something in their storerooms while looking for archival data that changes things for the crew of Serenity.
Previous chapters: One - Leave Your Things Behind
Two - No Time For Later Now
Jayne hovered outside of the rec area, not sure if he should go inside. River was there, a pile of drawing pads on it with neat rows of Chinese calligraphy beside her. She was concentrating on the writing, and Eames had been pretty clear about letting her do that to clear out her head. Jayne had been tempted to ask him how the dynamics worked between two men and a woman, but figured that was a question best left alone.
"You think too loud," River said, looking up at Jayne.
"Yeah, well, they're planning all that go se downstairs. Took over the entire cargo area so I can't work out." He waved in her general direction. "They said this would help you think clear and stuff. Is it working?"
River actually seemed to seriously ponder that. "Not in the way we were all led to believe," she said slowly.
Jayne frowned. "So what does it do?"
"Arthur believed this would slow me down, force me to think in linear fashion. It really doesn't. I continue thinking in terms of a branched and layered reality, all in confluence." She could tell that the vocabulary was over Jayne's head, but he was game. No knives hurled at me, still okay, he was thinking, and River paused. "I'm not violent," she said abruptly. "It's not like that. Not on purpose." She pressed her lips together. "Everything moves in so many directions at once." She indicated herself. "I am a three dimensional object. But reality is actually thirteen dimensions."
"Now that's lying," Jayne said, shaking his head. "You ain't big enough to be thirteen dimensions. You're an itty bitty thing."
River smiled faintly. "I was going to say that I can perceive all thirteen at once. But thank you. I think."
"What? Ain't your fault your brain works funny. And you're pretty when you ain't crazy and all."
"I suspect I will always be 'crazy,'" she said, using air quotes. Jayne snickered; it was a very close mimicry of Simon's behavior. "It's modulating that crazy. It's... Arthur perceives it as slowing me down. It's more like picking the three dimensions that matter to everyone else and discarding the importance of the other ten."
"Huh. And what does the other ten look like?"
"They're bound so small and tight as to be only visible on a subatomic level," River said. "It's a physics thing," she said, copying the way Kaylee or Ariadne might speak. It seemed to work, because Jayne's expression shifted to one of understanding. "I remember too many disparate things at once and can't always associate them in ways others would understand."
"I told ya before. Start with how you speak. Use them nouns and stuff. And not those fancy Core words you got. Not everybody had book learning."
She smiled shyly at him. "Thank you for the reminder."
"Yeah, see? That's pretty." Jayne stopped when he realized what he had said. "Well. You know. Just saying."
"Just saying," River repeated softly. She rose to her feet and approached him. "I believe I am a clockwork thing looking like a girl. The others disagree. You are a weapons master. You are aware of what I can and cannot do, and that there are triggers." She stopped two feet in front of Jayne and looked at him hopefully. "Am I a girl? Or just the weapon they fear me to be?"
"You can be both," Jayne said with a shrug. "You know, just because something's sharp don't mean it's always dangerous." He turned away slightly when she cocked her head to the side in consideration of his words. "Depends on how you use it."
"Oh." She blinked in surprise and then smiled. "Oh. I understand now."
She darted forward quickly and dropped a soft kiss against his cheek, then darted away faster than Jayne could blink. "Xie xie," she whispered.
Jayne frowned as he went into the rec room. She was a girl, and of legal age. And undoubtedly a thousand flavors of crazy and complicated, which was something he didn't need at all. He gathered up the pads of paper she had left behind, pausing at a set of characters he could almost read. His book learning had been weak as a child, especially in Mandarin, but he could still recognize a few.
"I... fear... house? Home?" He twisted the characters sideways to see if he could recognize that better. It didn't work. But there was Blue Sun on the page, as well as the characters that would spell out his own name, as well as that of the crew. She was afraid of what would happen, of what this current job was going to be like.
Well, then. Perhaps she was a lot saner than anyone else realized.
***
Henry Ballinger was currently in charge of the research division at Blue Sun. Since the theft of deep storage equipment, the entire company had been thrown into an uproar. He hated getting his schedule shifted around. Instead of working first shift, he had been thrown to third shift. It really messed with his circadian rhythms, and he had mentioned to his physician that he needed to take sleeping aids at night to help him sleep. It was also causing him to have horrible rebound insomnia when his shift was over, however, and his physician decided that a vacation would be needed to reshuffle his biological clock. "Go somewhere out of the way," his physician had said. "Then start shifting your schedule slowly." He even had a sleep schedule that could slowly shift his circadian rhythm around. Henry supposed that he could do it at home, but on vacation no one would bother him. It had also been years since he had taken one.
Bellerophon was a lovely place, according to the brochure. The hanging gardens in some of the floating estates looked very similar to his favorite park on Londinium, so that helped.
He was greeted at his rented estate on the second week of his stay by a petite brunette. "I'm just here as a courtesy of the booking agent," she had said, clipboard in hand. "We want to be sure that our service meets your needs."
Impressed, Henry let her inside the house. It didn't occur to him to hide his passkey code, and he answered her survey. It included sleep habits, but because it was bundled in with other questions on appetite and activities he enjoyed during his stay, it didn't seem out of place.
He never did catch her name.
He was surprised to see his physician on Bellerophon a few days later. "Doctor Perry! You didn't have to come out all this way just to meet me."
"You should be about done with the sleep shift, correct?" Perry asked, brusque as ever.
"I suppose so," Henry remarked.
"Are you ready to get back to work?"
With a sigh, Henry nodded. "I suppose so. It's been very lovely being on vacation. It's been my first in years. Thank you for suggesting it."
Perry smiled thinly and indicated that Henry should sit down on his patio. "Perhaps you can close your eyes and imagine yourself back to work. A visualization exercise, where you picture it in your mind and then describe it out loud in words. It's very helpful to decrease anxiety for many people."
He laughed and nodded. "Very good, doctor. But I'm not terribly good at words like that. It's partly why they're sending me to third shift."
Perry retrieved a small book from his lab coat pocket. "Then perhaps if you simply look at the designs and plans of the Blue Sun building? Imagine yourself walking into the building, through the halls, into the different offices. Point them out to me as you go."
"Oh. I can do that."
Henry opened the book. At first it seemed blank, but when he blinked, it was suddenly bright and alive with colors and design specifications. "Ah. There we are." He pointed at each and every room he could remember, describing who worked there and what he could remember of what it looked like. "Here's the pharma labs," he said, indicating a hallway marked "Red Hall" in Mandarin script. "And my lab is back here," he said, pointing at "Green Hall."
"And the Blue Sun president?" Perry asked idly.
"Oh, Pietro? He's in the Grand Salon. That's in Yellow Hall." The Yellow and Red Halls were actually close to each other on the plans. "I don't have any business down there. I still run sims on the students."
Perry gave him a curt nod. "Any promising ones, by any chance?"
"Lawrence says that one or two might hold the same promise Miss Tam did, but I don't think so. There had been some coherence to her dream states when Matthias did the testing. These girls don't have that at all." Henry shook his head. "No, I don't think we'll ever have another Miss Tam. A shame, too. I think I know what Matthias overlooked in the programming stages, why it all went wrong."
"Really?" Perry asked, eyebrow lofted in curiosity. "Do tell."
It didn't seem incongruous at all that his personal physician was interested in what he did for a living, or that he understood its complexities. "Well, the neural stripping had completely obliterated her amygdala. There's no emotional regulation, so there's nothing to give credence to one information feed over another, no sense of importance for processing. The problem with all of this is that if you don't strip the amygdala, but some other part of the cortex, there's less stability in the encoded signal triggers. The self preservation instincts are too strong. I'm still trying to work around that, but I don't have any luck yet."
"I'm sure the answer will come," Perry remarked with a shrug. "Is there any way to reverse the stripping that was done?"
"Not at all. The damage is permanent. Matthias knew that, but pushed on ahead anyway. Important figures of Parliament were present in some of the early testing, after all. He couldn't look foolish in front of them." Henry paused and leaned backward in his chair. "I suppose if various parts of the cortex was rewired, if other circuits were implanted that could bypass the amygdala? I admit, I don't even know how that would work."
Perry stood and clapped Henry on the shoulder. "Well, I'm sure you'll do just fine on your return to work. This vacation has been quite useful."
Henry smiled and stood as well. "Xie xie, bó shì," he said with a deep, respectful bow.
Perry left the estate with a nod of his head. Henry continued to sun himself on his deck.
Once outside of Henry's view, Perry became Eames again, and he met up with Arthur. He handed over the notebook. "This is just too easy."
"Just wait," Arthur said, shaking his head. "The president of the company won't be quite so easy to break."
"They don't know what to look for, darling." Eames flashed him a brilliant grin. "I think we'll be able to do this after all."
***
Pietro Gray had risen to the top of Blue Sun by sheer force of will and underhanded tactics more than by the grace of his intellect. He had enough underlings to do the research that needed to be done, and he oversaw them all with an iron fist. He had assumed the position of president of Blue Sun, and he had a tight affiliation with the Academy and various Alliance outposts. He didn't assume that whatever he wanted would be the way Parliament would vote, but sometimes it was a near thing. If he gave his support, nine times out of ten he wound up influencing policy.
A young woman he didn't recognize came into his office. "Sir?"
"Who are you?"
"Hay Lin was sick today, sir. I am her replacement for today."
Pietro sighed. "Very well. I have this memo for the Prime Chancellor that needs to be transcribed."
The woman smiled and nodded. "Certainly, sir." She approached, the sensible heels clicking across his marble floor. She sat down much too close to him, and Pietro frowned. "Is something wrong, sir?"
He opened his mouth to speak, but she lunged forward and plunged a needle into his arm. He felt the sting of something go in, and she skittered backward out of reach gracefully. He lurched forward, stumbling over his own feet before crashing face first into the floor.
The last thing Pietro Gray saw was her high heels heading out of the room.
When he came to, he was tied to his office chair and staring at River Tam. Holy shit, I'm going to die.
"If you're as smart as you think you are, you don't have to die," River said in a calm voice. She smiled, though her eyes were cold. "You did many bad, bad things to me and to other students of the Academy. You still are."
"I do what needs to be done for the Alliance," Pietro said stiffly. He truly believed that, too. A few lives in the grand scheme of things was a worthy sacrifice.
"You meddle," River said, and suddenly she was right there, right in front of him with a knife pressed beneath his eye. "Do you see, Dr. Gray? Do you see as I see?"
He didn't know how to answer that. He didn't know what she wanted him to say, and he was literally balanced on a knife's edge.
"Your mind is empty," River said quietly. Pietro didn't even try breathing. "Tell me the combination to your office safe."
"What safe?"
"Every office has a safe. Didn't they tell you that?" Her tone was light and mocking, and Pietro felt a cold sweat drip down his spine. This is what he had created. This was what they had wanted her to become, and it was sitting right in his lap with a knife against his cheek. "Tell me the combination."
He said the first three numbers that came to mind, though he didn't understand what she was talking about. Two men he didn't recognize took down the massive painting of the known 'verse behind him, and there was a massive combination safe behind it. They spun the dial and inside of the safe were books and ledgers and data cartridges that he hadn't known were there. All of it was put inside a bag he hadn't realized the men were carrying. "You can't do this," he said abruptly, watching the men leave.
"This is what you made me for," River said, pressing the knife infinitesimally harder against his cheek. He could feel the blood well to the surface, could see a drop run down the blade of the knife in his peripheral vision. "I am everything you made me to be, Dr. Gray. Aren't you proud?"
"Come back to us, River," he said, licking his dry lips. "We can help you. We can get you off the wanted lists, take the triggers out, give you a position in Parliament. It's what was meant to happen when the training was done."
She tilted her head to the side, lips parted in an almost vacant expression. Only, it wasn't truly vacant. Her eyes were still sharp and calculating. "No."
"We can help you. We can fix this."
River smirked at him. "I know you can't, Dr. Gray. You're the same as Dr. Matthias. His sin was pride. Isn't that yours as well?"
A chill rolled down Pietro's spine. Of course he had seen the security holos of Matthias' death. Everyone had, and he had approved the Operative's involvement to get River Tam back. He hadn't realized he would lose Matthias in the course of that investigation, but the man had been sloppy anyway. Still, Pietro had no intention of following in his footsteps.
"I can make your problems go away, River. We have the best minds available here. We are the front runners in technology and pharmaceuticals. We can fix this."
She pressed the knife fractionally harder, increasing the flow of blood along the blade. It trickled onto her fingers and dripped onto his lap. He spared a fraction of a thought for his trousers, spun from Shinon's finest looms, but squelched the thought. The price of the dry cleaning wouldn't matter if he was dead.
"Oh, yes, Dr. Gray. Set your priorities straight."
She grinned and pulled her hand back. She carefully licked the blood from her fingers and then the knife, making it seem like almost a sensuous move. "I am what you made me, Dr. Gray. I do adore the Pax. It makes this so... delicious."
There was a warmth in his lap, and he knew he had just lost control of his bladder at the dark look in her eyes. Wo de tian, he was going to die.
River laughed. "I'm not going to kill you, Dr. Gray." She smiled, and it chilled him to the bone. "What I'm going to do is so much worse." She backhanded him hard enough to have the back of his skull strike his hard-backed chair, making him lose consciousness.
When he came to, he was seated at his desk. There was no one in the room, and he wasn't tied up. There was no evidence of having urinated on himself. He turned to look at the painting of the 'verse behind him, then carefully got up and tried to pry it from the wall to reveal the safe. It didn't come up. There was no safe.
His communications officer was shouting through the door, pounding on it. That was what woke him up. On wobbly legs, Pietro opened the door. "Weston?" he rasped.
"Red Hall's been cleared out, sir. All power and comm lines were down for the past hour, and security feeds were disabled. Everything's gone. And the CFO mentioned that you just authorized a transfer in the accounts."
"That's impossible!" Pietro shouted, feeling suddenly wide awake and in command of all his faculties. "I was tied up in here! River Tam held me at knife point! The little bitch cut my face!"
Weston eyed him strangely. "Sir? There are no marks on your face. And River Tam certainly was not here during the power outage. Even without comms or cameras, our security team would have known about that."
Pietro touched the cheek that River had cut into, and there was no dried blood there. He looked around at his office, that seemed pristine. "Where's Hay Lin?"
"You sent her home, sir. She was feeling ill."
"Was there a replacement sent in?"
"No, sir." Weston surreptitiously took a half step back. "Perhaps I should find the CFO."
"No, goddammit! She was here!"
"She hasn't been seen since the attack on Osiris, sir," Weston dutifully told him. "She wouldn't come here."
Pietro pressed his lips together, curbing the urge to smack Weston across the face or fire him. "Check the planetary grid. We know what ship she sails on. Find it!"
But no records of a Firefly-class ship were found, and rumors began that Pietro was starting to crack. The loss of the research and medications were massive, as well as the direct financial losses that couldn't be traced.
As far as the rest of Blue Sun and Parliament were concerned, Dr. Pietro Gray was damaged goods, and no one wanted anything to do with him any longer. His career was finished.
***
"Here's your cut," Mal said, handing Fanty and Mingo a credit stick. "Pleasure doing business with the two of you."
"You must tell me who your benefactor was," Fanty said with a smile, pocketing the stick.
"In case they have need of our other ships?" Mingo added.
Mal laughed and got up. "I think we're flush for a while, folks. But I'll keep it in mind if other jobs come up."
He nodded at Jayne at the bar, who was keeping River company. The two of them were cautiously spending time with each other, and Mal had to admit that he got over his qualms about it pretty quickly. Jayne had a point about her; Simon coddled her something fierce and Kaylee would never push her hard enough to fit in with everyone else. She had a bag slung over her shoulder which was stocked with notebooks and old fashioned pens, and when truly disturbed she would start scribbling madly in it. Jayne reminded her sometimes, but there wasn't a meanness in it. As he approached, he saw Jayne pick up her hand gently and lean in. River turned her head toward him, lips parted to speak, and their mouths met. Startled, they both leaned back and away from each other, eyes wide as they stared. Mal took the opportunity to lean in between them, and slung an arm about both their shoulders. "Well, this round at the Maidenhead seems to be going our way. Time to meet our other friends, right?"
"Uh, Mal? We'll catch up." Jayne nodded at River. "Me an' River got to talk a bit more."
"You sure it's just talking you're doing?"
Jayne flushed with anger. "Now you look here, Mal..."
River unwound Mal's arm from her shoulder and patted Jayne's thigh gently. "Our Captain is no doubt concerned for the future."
"Of course I am," Mal said, rocking back slightly on his heels and nodding. "A concerned captain looking after my crew."
River smiled sweetly at him. "I promise not to break Jayne and to use contraception at all times. I'm not ready to be a mother yet."
Jayne spewed his drink across the counter and Mal stood stock still. "Wh-what?"
She turned that same beatific smile toward Jayne. "I have seen many interesting things in the minds our new friends that I find intriguing. I wish to try them for myself. I'm acrobatic, as you know. I'm sure it will be easy to replicate."
"Okay, now that's just way too much for my virgin ears," Mal interjected, turning away from Jayne's interested expression. "Just... Don't tell me nothing about it, don't make Simon come crying to me and for god's sake, no babies on my ship!"
River laughed as Mal raced out of the Maidenhead, forgetting to get his gun out of the weapons check carrel. She turned back to Jayne. "I hope I was not too forward or presumptuous."
Jayne snorted and gave her an almost playful leer. "Presume away."
In the meantime, Mal burst into the bar where he had left Zoe, Ariadne, Eames and Arthur. "Give me a double of whatever they're having," he told the waitress. Zoe merely lofted an eyebrow at him in curiosity. "River. And Jayne. Together-like. My brain simply don't need to go there."
"They look cute together," Ariadne said with a smile. "I hope it works out."
"Have you seen Jayne?" Zoe asked, eying her oddly.
"Not so bright in the academics, but I believe that's a moot point in your line of work?" Eames said politely. Arthur merely coughed to hide his laughter.
"I don't want to talk about them anymore. Where'd Simon go?"
"He's talking with that other friend of yours to start breaking up the goods into smaller shipments." Arthur took a slow sip of his drink. "It should probably be worth the hassle of putting up with us, I believe."
"Well... Things don't often go smooth for us," Mal admitted. "This went down smooth."
"I'm surprised electronic security really hasn't changed much in five hundred years," Arthur replied almost sadly. "I was expecting a challenge."
"So there could possibly be a future for us out here," Eames said. "It would take time to build up the contacts we once had, get our names established."
Mal nodded. "That it would. Not to mention getting your own boat and pilot."
"There's that to consider. Or we could just continue to work with you," Ariadne said, smiling brightly at Mal. "We like our room. Well, mostly, but we could always change a few things around a bit. We have money now to pay you room and board as passengers, or we can figure out how to help out as crew."
"We can figure that one out as we go, I suppose," Mal replied. His drink arrived and he downed it in a single swallow. "Keep it coming," he told the waitress, handing her the glass back.
"Put it on our tab," Eames offered, giving the waitress a lazy smile. "The least we can do as a thank you," he said to Mal, shrugging at his surprise. "You didn't have to help us."
"With a six figure payout in the offing?" Zoe asked, amused.
"Well, there's that. But teaching us things to fit in? That went above and beyond."
"Whatever puts a bee in the Alliance's bonnet makes me smile. And some days it's hard to remember I know how, dong ma?"
"To a successful partnership," Ariadne said, lifting her glass in a toast. "May it always work out."
Mal's new glass arrived just as everyone finished downing theirs. He knocked his back easily and smiled at the three of them. "You guys ain't so bad. Maybe this mind crime business is just the thing we need to stay sailing in the black."
Simon returned soon after, with word that he was setting up sales across various border worlds, undercutting Alliance hospital prices. "That should freeze them out for a while and still help them fight. It'll be a long process, but the Alliance just might give concessions to the other worlds."
"Never thought I'd hear a Core doctor say so," Zoe said with a small smile. "But I suppose if you live long enough, anything's possible."
"Definitely."
Afterward, Ariadne, Eames and Arthur would all agree on one thing. As ragtag as the crew of Serenity were, they were like a family, and the ship was home. Thankfully, it was a place they could now call home as well.
The End
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: NC-17 for one scene chapter 1. Otherwise, some language and violence, though most of the bad language is in Mandarin. ;)
Pairing: Ariadne/Arthur/Eames, River/Jayne
Disclaimer: Inception belongs to Christopher Nolan and not to me. Firefly/Serenity belongs to Joss Whedon. Their toys are fun to play with!
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-movie for both fandoms. For the
inception_kink meme prompt in round 6: After being captured by the infant organization known simply as Blue Sun for their technology and knowledge, Arthur, Ariadne, and Eames awaken from stasis hundreds of years in the future in the cargo hold of Serenity. Slightly different from the prompt, but I hope it still works out. :) Title and chapter titles are from Frou Frou's "Let Go."
Summary: Most people think of Blue Sun as a research and development company, a place where new tech is tested for the good of the Alliance worlds. It was around for much longer than people realized, and not all of their research was intended to benefit the masses. Mal finds something in their storerooms while looking for archival data that changes things for the crew of Serenity.
Previous chapters: One - Leave Your Things Behind
Two - No Time For Later Now
Jayne hovered outside of the rec area, not sure if he should go inside. River was there, a pile of drawing pads on it with neat rows of Chinese calligraphy beside her. She was concentrating on the writing, and Eames had been pretty clear about letting her do that to clear out her head. Jayne had been tempted to ask him how the dynamics worked between two men and a woman, but figured that was a question best left alone.
"You think too loud," River said, looking up at Jayne.
"Yeah, well, they're planning all that go se downstairs. Took over the entire cargo area so I can't work out." He waved in her general direction. "They said this would help you think clear and stuff. Is it working?"
River actually seemed to seriously ponder that. "Not in the way we were all led to believe," she said slowly.
Jayne frowned. "So what does it do?"
"Arthur believed this would slow me down, force me to think in linear fashion. It really doesn't. I continue thinking in terms of a branched and layered reality, all in confluence." She could tell that the vocabulary was over Jayne's head, but he was game. No knives hurled at me, still okay, he was thinking, and River paused. "I'm not violent," she said abruptly. "It's not like that. Not on purpose." She pressed her lips together. "Everything moves in so many directions at once." She indicated herself. "I am a three dimensional object. But reality is actually thirteen dimensions."
"Now that's lying," Jayne said, shaking his head. "You ain't big enough to be thirteen dimensions. You're an itty bitty thing."
River smiled faintly. "I was going to say that I can perceive all thirteen at once. But thank you. I think."
"What? Ain't your fault your brain works funny. And you're pretty when you ain't crazy and all."
"I suspect I will always be 'crazy,'" she said, using air quotes. Jayne snickered; it was a very close mimicry of Simon's behavior. "It's modulating that crazy. It's... Arthur perceives it as slowing me down. It's more like picking the three dimensions that matter to everyone else and discarding the importance of the other ten."
"Huh. And what does the other ten look like?"
"They're bound so small and tight as to be only visible on a subatomic level," River said. "It's a physics thing," she said, copying the way Kaylee or Ariadne might speak. It seemed to work, because Jayne's expression shifted to one of understanding. "I remember too many disparate things at once and can't always associate them in ways others would understand."
"I told ya before. Start with how you speak. Use them nouns and stuff. And not those fancy Core words you got. Not everybody had book learning."
She smiled shyly at him. "Thank you for the reminder."
"Yeah, see? That's pretty." Jayne stopped when he realized what he had said. "Well. You know. Just saying."
"Just saying," River repeated softly. She rose to her feet and approached him. "I believe I am a clockwork thing looking like a girl. The others disagree. You are a weapons master. You are aware of what I can and cannot do, and that there are triggers." She stopped two feet in front of Jayne and looked at him hopefully. "Am I a girl? Or just the weapon they fear me to be?"
"You can be both," Jayne said with a shrug. "You know, just because something's sharp don't mean it's always dangerous." He turned away slightly when she cocked her head to the side in consideration of his words. "Depends on how you use it."
"Oh." She blinked in surprise and then smiled. "Oh. I understand now."
She darted forward quickly and dropped a soft kiss against his cheek, then darted away faster than Jayne could blink. "Xie xie," she whispered.
Jayne frowned as he went into the rec room. She was a girl, and of legal age. And undoubtedly a thousand flavors of crazy and complicated, which was something he didn't need at all. He gathered up the pads of paper she had left behind, pausing at a set of characters he could almost read. His book learning had been weak as a child, especially in Mandarin, but he could still recognize a few.
"I... fear... house? Home?" He twisted the characters sideways to see if he could recognize that better. It didn't work. But there was Blue Sun on the page, as well as the characters that would spell out his own name, as well as that of the crew. She was afraid of what would happen, of what this current job was going to be like.
Well, then. Perhaps she was a lot saner than anyone else realized.
***
Henry Ballinger was currently in charge of the research division at Blue Sun. Since the theft of deep storage equipment, the entire company had been thrown into an uproar. He hated getting his schedule shifted around. Instead of working first shift, he had been thrown to third shift. It really messed with his circadian rhythms, and he had mentioned to his physician that he needed to take sleeping aids at night to help him sleep. It was also causing him to have horrible rebound insomnia when his shift was over, however, and his physician decided that a vacation would be needed to reshuffle his biological clock. "Go somewhere out of the way," his physician had said. "Then start shifting your schedule slowly." He even had a sleep schedule that could slowly shift his circadian rhythm around. Henry supposed that he could do it at home, but on vacation no one would bother him. It had also been years since he had taken one.
Bellerophon was a lovely place, according to the brochure. The hanging gardens in some of the floating estates looked very similar to his favorite park on Londinium, so that helped.
He was greeted at his rented estate on the second week of his stay by a petite brunette. "I'm just here as a courtesy of the booking agent," she had said, clipboard in hand. "We want to be sure that our service meets your needs."
Impressed, Henry let her inside the house. It didn't occur to him to hide his passkey code, and he answered her survey. It included sleep habits, but because it was bundled in with other questions on appetite and activities he enjoyed during his stay, it didn't seem out of place.
He never did catch her name.
He was surprised to see his physician on Bellerophon a few days later. "Doctor Perry! You didn't have to come out all this way just to meet me."
"You should be about done with the sleep shift, correct?" Perry asked, brusque as ever.
"I suppose so," Henry remarked.
"Are you ready to get back to work?"
With a sigh, Henry nodded. "I suppose so. It's been very lovely being on vacation. It's been my first in years. Thank you for suggesting it."
Perry smiled thinly and indicated that Henry should sit down on his patio. "Perhaps you can close your eyes and imagine yourself back to work. A visualization exercise, where you picture it in your mind and then describe it out loud in words. It's very helpful to decrease anxiety for many people."
He laughed and nodded. "Very good, doctor. But I'm not terribly good at words like that. It's partly why they're sending me to third shift."
Perry retrieved a small book from his lab coat pocket. "Then perhaps if you simply look at the designs and plans of the Blue Sun building? Imagine yourself walking into the building, through the halls, into the different offices. Point them out to me as you go."
"Oh. I can do that."
Henry opened the book. At first it seemed blank, but when he blinked, it was suddenly bright and alive with colors and design specifications. "Ah. There we are." He pointed at each and every room he could remember, describing who worked there and what he could remember of what it looked like. "Here's the pharma labs," he said, indicating a hallway marked "Red Hall" in Mandarin script. "And my lab is back here," he said, pointing at "Green Hall."
"And the Blue Sun president?" Perry asked idly.
"Oh, Pietro? He's in the Grand Salon. That's in Yellow Hall." The Yellow and Red Halls were actually close to each other on the plans. "I don't have any business down there. I still run sims on the students."
Perry gave him a curt nod. "Any promising ones, by any chance?"
"Lawrence says that one or two might hold the same promise Miss Tam did, but I don't think so. There had been some coherence to her dream states when Matthias did the testing. These girls don't have that at all." Henry shook his head. "No, I don't think we'll ever have another Miss Tam. A shame, too. I think I know what Matthias overlooked in the programming stages, why it all went wrong."
"Really?" Perry asked, eyebrow lofted in curiosity. "Do tell."
It didn't seem incongruous at all that his personal physician was interested in what he did for a living, or that he understood its complexities. "Well, the neural stripping had completely obliterated her amygdala. There's no emotional regulation, so there's nothing to give credence to one information feed over another, no sense of importance for processing. The problem with all of this is that if you don't strip the amygdala, but some other part of the cortex, there's less stability in the encoded signal triggers. The self preservation instincts are too strong. I'm still trying to work around that, but I don't have any luck yet."
"I'm sure the answer will come," Perry remarked with a shrug. "Is there any way to reverse the stripping that was done?"
"Not at all. The damage is permanent. Matthias knew that, but pushed on ahead anyway. Important figures of Parliament were present in some of the early testing, after all. He couldn't look foolish in front of them." Henry paused and leaned backward in his chair. "I suppose if various parts of the cortex was rewired, if other circuits were implanted that could bypass the amygdala? I admit, I don't even know how that would work."
Perry stood and clapped Henry on the shoulder. "Well, I'm sure you'll do just fine on your return to work. This vacation has been quite useful."
Henry smiled and stood as well. "Xie xie, bó shì," he said with a deep, respectful bow.
Perry left the estate with a nod of his head. Henry continued to sun himself on his deck.
Once outside of Henry's view, Perry became Eames again, and he met up with Arthur. He handed over the notebook. "This is just too easy."
"Just wait," Arthur said, shaking his head. "The president of the company won't be quite so easy to break."
"They don't know what to look for, darling." Eames flashed him a brilliant grin. "I think we'll be able to do this after all."
***
Pietro Gray had risen to the top of Blue Sun by sheer force of will and underhanded tactics more than by the grace of his intellect. He had enough underlings to do the research that needed to be done, and he oversaw them all with an iron fist. He had assumed the position of president of Blue Sun, and he had a tight affiliation with the Academy and various Alliance outposts. He didn't assume that whatever he wanted would be the way Parliament would vote, but sometimes it was a near thing. If he gave his support, nine times out of ten he wound up influencing policy.
A young woman he didn't recognize came into his office. "Sir?"
"Who are you?"
"Hay Lin was sick today, sir. I am her replacement for today."
Pietro sighed. "Very well. I have this memo for the Prime Chancellor that needs to be transcribed."
The woman smiled and nodded. "Certainly, sir." She approached, the sensible heels clicking across his marble floor. She sat down much too close to him, and Pietro frowned. "Is something wrong, sir?"
He opened his mouth to speak, but she lunged forward and plunged a needle into his arm. He felt the sting of something go in, and she skittered backward out of reach gracefully. He lurched forward, stumbling over his own feet before crashing face first into the floor.
The last thing Pietro Gray saw was her high heels heading out of the room.
When he came to, he was tied to his office chair and staring at River Tam. Holy shit, I'm going to die.
"If you're as smart as you think you are, you don't have to die," River said in a calm voice. She smiled, though her eyes were cold. "You did many bad, bad things to me and to other students of the Academy. You still are."
"I do what needs to be done for the Alliance," Pietro said stiffly. He truly believed that, too. A few lives in the grand scheme of things was a worthy sacrifice.
"You meddle," River said, and suddenly she was right there, right in front of him with a knife pressed beneath his eye. "Do you see, Dr. Gray? Do you see as I see?"
He didn't know how to answer that. He didn't know what she wanted him to say, and he was literally balanced on a knife's edge.
"Your mind is empty," River said quietly. Pietro didn't even try breathing. "Tell me the combination to your office safe."
"What safe?"
"Every office has a safe. Didn't they tell you that?" Her tone was light and mocking, and Pietro felt a cold sweat drip down his spine. This is what he had created. This was what they had wanted her to become, and it was sitting right in his lap with a knife against his cheek. "Tell me the combination."
He said the first three numbers that came to mind, though he didn't understand what she was talking about. Two men he didn't recognize took down the massive painting of the known 'verse behind him, and there was a massive combination safe behind it. They spun the dial and inside of the safe were books and ledgers and data cartridges that he hadn't known were there. All of it was put inside a bag he hadn't realized the men were carrying. "You can't do this," he said abruptly, watching the men leave.
"This is what you made me for," River said, pressing the knife infinitesimally harder against his cheek. He could feel the blood well to the surface, could see a drop run down the blade of the knife in his peripheral vision. "I am everything you made me to be, Dr. Gray. Aren't you proud?"
"Come back to us, River," he said, licking his dry lips. "We can help you. We can get you off the wanted lists, take the triggers out, give you a position in Parliament. It's what was meant to happen when the training was done."
She tilted her head to the side, lips parted in an almost vacant expression. Only, it wasn't truly vacant. Her eyes were still sharp and calculating. "No."
"We can help you. We can fix this."
River smirked at him. "I know you can't, Dr. Gray. You're the same as Dr. Matthias. His sin was pride. Isn't that yours as well?"
A chill rolled down Pietro's spine. Of course he had seen the security holos of Matthias' death. Everyone had, and he had approved the Operative's involvement to get River Tam back. He hadn't realized he would lose Matthias in the course of that investigation, but the man had been sloppy anyway. Still, Pietro had no intention of following in his footsteps.
"I can make your problems go away, River. We have the best minds available here. We are the front runners in technology and pharmaceuticals. We can fix this."
She pressed the knife fractionally harder, increasing the flow of blood along the blade. It trickled onto her fingers and dripped onto his lap. He spared a fraction of a thought for his trousers, spun from Shinon's finest looms, but squelched the thought. The price of the dry cleaning wouldn't matter if he was dead.
"Oh, yes, Dr. Gray. Set your priorities straight."
She grinned and pulled her hand back. She carefully licked the blood from her fingers and then the knife, making it seem like almost a sensuous move. "I am what you made me, Dr. Gray. I do adore the Pax. It makes this so... delicious."
There was a warmth in his lap, and he knew he had just lost control of his bladder at the dark look in her eyes. Wo de tian, he was going to die.
River laughed. "I'm not going to kill you, Dr. Gray." She smiled, and it chilled him to the bone. "What I'm going to do is so much worse." She backhanded him hard enough to have the back of his skull strike his hard-backed chair, making him lose consciousness.
When he came to, he was seated at his desk. There was no one in the room, and he wasn't tied up. There was no evidence of having urinated on himself. He turned to look at the painting of the 'verse behind him, then carefully got up and tried to pry it from the wall to reveal the safe. It didn't come up. There was no safe.
His communications officer was shouting through the door, pounding on it. That was what woke him up. On wobbly legs, Pietro opened the door. "Weston?" he rasped.
"Red Hall's been cleared out, sir. All power and comm lines were down for the past hour, and security feeds were disabled. Everything's gone. And the CFO mentioned that you just authorized a transfer in the accounts."
"That's impossible!" Pietro shouted, feeling suddenly wide awake and in command of all his faculties. "I was tied up in here! River Tam held me at knife point! The little bitch cut my face!"
Weston eyed him strangely. "Sir? There are no marks on your face. And River Tam certainly was not here during the power outage. Even without comms or cameras, our security team would have known about that."
Pietro touched the cheek that River had cut into, and there was no dried blood there. He looked around at his office, that seemed pristine. "Where's Hay Lin?"
"You sent her home, sir. She was feeling ill."
"Was there a replacement sent in?"
"No, sir." Weston surreptitiously took a half step back. "Perhaps I should find the CFO."
"No, goddammit! She was here!"
"She hasn't been seen since the attack on Osiris, sir," Weston dutifully told him. "She wouldn't come here."
Pietro pressed his lips together, curbing the urge to smack Weston across the face or fire him. "Check the planetary grid. We know what ship she sails on. Find it!"
But no records of a Firefly-class ship were found, and rumors began that Pietro was starting to crack. The loss of the research and medications were massive, as well as the direct financial losses that couldn't be traced.
As far as the rest of Blue Sun and Parliament were concerned, Dr. Pietro Gray was damaged goods, and no one wanted anything to do with him any longer. His career was finished.
***
"Here's your cut," Mal said, handing Fanty and Mingo a credit stick. "Pleasure doing business with the two of you."
"You must tell me who your benefactor was," Fanty said with a smile, pocketing the stick.
"In case they have need of our other ships?" Mingo added.
Mal laughed and got up. "I think we're flush for a while, folks. But I'll keep it in mind if other jobs come up."
He nodded at Jayne at the bar, who was keeping River company. The two of them were cautiously spending time with each other, and Mal had to admit that he got over his qualms about it pretty quickly. Jayne had a point about her; Simon coddled her something fierce and Kaylee would never push her hard enough to fit in with everyone else. She had a bag slung over her shoulder which was stocked with notebooks and old fashioned pens, and when truly disturbed she would start scribbling madly in it. Jayne reminded her sometimes, but there wasn't a meanness in it. As he approached, he saw Jayne pick up her hand gently and lean in. River turned her head toward him, lips parted to speak, and their mouths met. Startled, they both leaned back and away from each other, eyes wide as they stared. Mal took the opportunity to lean in between them, and slung an arm about both their shoulders. "Well, this round at the Maidenhead seems to be going our way. Time to meet our other friends, right?"
"Uh, Mal? We'll catch up." Jayne nodded at River. "Me an' River got to talk a bit more."
"You sure it's just talking you're doing?"
Jayne flushed with anger. "Now you look here, Mal..."
River unwound Mal's arm from her shoulder and patted Jayne's thigh gently. "Our Captain is no doubt concerned for the future."
"Of course I am," Mal said, rocking back slightly on his heels and nodding. "A concerned captain looking after my crew."
River smiled sweetly at him. "I promise not to break Jayne and to use contraception at all times. I'm not ready to be a mother yet."
Jayne spewed his drink across the counter and Mal stood stock still. "Wh-what?"
She turned that same beatific smile toward Jayne. "I have seen many interesting things in the minds our new friends that I find intriguing. I wish to try them for myself. I'm acrobatic, as you know. I'm sure it will be easy to replicate."
"Okay, now that's just way too much for my virgin ears," Mal interjected, turning away from Jayne's interested expression. "Just... Don't tell me nothing about it, don't make Simon come crying to me and for god's sake, no babies on my ship!"
River laughed as Mal raced out of the Maidenhead, forgetting to get his gun out of the weapons check carrel. She turned back to Jayne. "I hope I was not too forward or presumptuous."
Jayne snorted and gave her an almost playful leer. "Presume away."
In the meantime, Mal burst into the bar where he had left Zoe, Ariadne, Eames and Arthur. "Give me a double of whatever they're having," he told the waitress. Zoe merely lofted an eyebrow at him in curiosity. "River. And Jayne. Together-like. My brain simply don't need to go there."
"They look cute together," Ariadne said with a smile. "I hope it works out."
"Have you seen Jayne?" Zoe asked, eying her oddly.
"Not so bright in the academics, but I believe that's a moot point in your line of work?" Eames said politely. Arthur merely coughed to hide his laughter.
"I don't want to talk about them anymore. Where'd Simon go?"
"He's talking with that other friend of yours to start breaking up the goods into smaller shipments." Arthur took a slow sip of his drink. "It should probably be worth the hassle of putting up with us, I believe."
"Well... Things don't often go smooth for us," Mal admitted. "This went down smooth."
"I'm surprised electronic security really hasn't changed much in five hundred years," Arthur replied almost sadly. "I was expecting a challenge."
"So there could possibly be a future for us out here," Eames said. "It would take time to build up the contacts we once had, get our names established."
Mal nodded. "That it would. Not to mention getting your own boat and pilot."
"There's that to consider. Or we could just continue to work with you," Ariadne said, smiling brightly at Mal. "We like our room. Well, mostly, but we could always change a few things around a bit. We have money now to pay you room and board as passengers, or we can figure out how to help out as crew."
"We can figure that one out as we go, I suppose," Mal replied. His drink arrived and he downed it in a single swallow. "Keep it coming," he told the waitress, handing her the glass back.
"Put it on our tab," Eames offered, giving the waitress a lazy smile. "The least we can do as a thank you," he said to Mal, shrugging at his surprise. "You didn't have to help us."
"With a six figure payout in the offing?" Zoe asked, amused.
"Well, there's that. But teaching us things to fit in? That went above and beyond."
"Whatever puts a bee in the Alliance's bonnet makes me smile. And some days it's hard to remember I know how, dong ma?"
"To a successful partnership," Ariadne said, lifting her glass in a toast. "May it always work out."
Mal's new glass arrived just as everyone finished downing theirs. He knocked his back easily and smiled at the three of them. "You guys ain't so bad. Maybe this mind crime business is just the thing we need to stay sailing in the black."
Simon returned soon after, with word that he was setting up sales across various border worlds, undercutting Alliance hospital prices. "That should freeze them out for a while and still help them fight. It'll be a long process, but the Alliance just might give concessions to the other worlds."
"Never thought I'd hear a Core doctor say so," Zoe said with a small smile. "But I suppose if you live long enough, anything's possible."
"Definitely."
Afterward, Ariadne, Eames and Arthur would all agree on one thing. As ragtag as the crew of Serenity were, they were like a family, and the ship was home. Thankfully, it was a place they could now call home as well.
The End