More Questions Than Answers

With ongoing thanks to jpdt19 for beta-reading.


The Sleeper Awakens
Part 2: More Questions Than Answers

The atmosphere in the infirmary was so thick you would have needed a very shape knife to cut it, but it could have been used as low-grade building material: Jack sat on the examining table, his coat at his side, while Mal and Zoë stood watch at the door; weapons holstered but within easy reach. Every now and then the ship shook slightly, passing through patches of turbulence, as it climbed up through the atmosphere and out into the eternal black embrace of space.

“Guys, this is really unnecessary.” Jack looked at the other two with a lop-sided smile, “You know it's me.”

“All I know is that you're wanted by the Alliance, and you brought that onto my goram ship!” Mal snapped back, “We've only just gotten out of one run in with them, and lost good people in the process. Now you come along and bring a whole other world of hurt back down on me and mine?”

“We both joined the Independents because we knew it was the right thing to do, because we knew that the Alliance couldn't be trusted,” retorted Jack. He shrugged, “Trust me, I've seen what unchallenged power can do to people, the good and the bad. Now I just want out, to go where the Alliance can never follow me, and if you can get me to Woodstock, then that's just what I'll do.”

The sound of someone coming down the stairs from the upper deck distracted everyone, and a genuine smile played across Jack's face as Simon walked in.

“Kaylee said you wanted me?” He looked at Mal and Zoë, his eyebrow slightly raised at the sight of a strange man seated on his examination table.

“On second thought, I feel that a full physical is the only way to prove I am who I say I am.” Jack cut in, giving the young doctor a suggestive wink, “So, do you need me to tell you about any interestingly placed birthmarks or scars I may have?”

“Ignore him.” Mal rolled his eyes, remember what his former CO had been like back during the war, “But do give him a good going over. He says he just escaped from an Alliance prison, and I for one want to be sure he doesn't have a tracking device, or something even nastier on him.”

“Like a biological-mantrap?” Simon asked, somewhat surprised, “Those are illegal.”

“I would have thought that you would be the last person to think that the Alliance plays by the rules.” Zoë's voice was cool and level, “They used them during the war: seeded out wounded with them to take out our field medics.”

“Now there's an unpleasant memory.” Jack shuddered visibly as images flicked through his mind; he'd seen the affect of more than one mantrap, twice up close and personal.

“Like I said, anything that shouldn't be there.” Mal grunted, looking round as if he was expecting to see someone else standing in the doorway, “Soon as she's set course for Dyton, I'm having River give him a full once over.”

“I don't like you using my sister like she's some sniffer-dog.” Simon complained as he pulled on a pair of latex gloves and started to set the infirmary up, “It's degrading.”

“She's as much a part of this crew as you are.” Mal countered, “I've lost track of the number of times she's stopped us getting into trouble. Probably the same as the number of times she's gotten us into it...”

His words tailed off, as alerted by some sense he couldn’t quite put a name on to the fact that there was someone behind him, he turned to find River frozen in the doorway. The comment that had barely formed in his throat died unspoken when he saw the look of pure revulsion on her face. For a moment he was worried that she was going to throw up all over his feet, but instead she reached out and grabbed the hatch way for support. She looked at Jack, her expression that of a deer stuck in headlight, too terrified to turn and run.

“Wrong!” River almost retched, “Flat-fact, shouldn't exist.” Reaching out, she grabbed Mal's gun from its holster and before he could react, eyes clenched shut, pulled the trigger.

The bullet hit Jack clean between the eyes, the soft-lead more than enough to shatter the front of his skull and send him flying over backwards. He landed in a heap on the floor, lifeless eyes staring at River with a slightly resigned look. Mal grabbed the gun back out of River's hand as the young pilot sank to the floor, sobbing.

“Mei-Mei!” Simon was at her side in an instant, “Why did you do that?”

Before she had a chance to answer, there was a shape intake of breath, like a drowning man who had finally broke the surface, and Jack sat bolt upright. The wound in his head started to close, and as the others watched in awe and disbelief, the bullet that had apparently killed him came sliding out and dropped onto the deck plates. Or it would have done, if his hand hadn’t come around fast as a rattlesnake and caught it midair. River looked at him with the same look of disgust as before, then fled up the stairs to the upper deck.

“Goram it!” Jack coughed, noticing the way the others were looking at him, “I hate it when that happens...”

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The room looked like it belonged in a serial killer’s worst nightmares: blood and body parts coved the floor, walls and ceiling like a macabre paint-scheme. Some of the meanest, hardened killers on Persephone, men whose names could insight terror all on their own, had died and died badly. Their executioner, her face as devoid of emotions as it had been while she carried out her grim task, stood over the only survivor, her right foot all but cutting off the blood supply to the whimpering mans brain.

“Now then, Mr Badger, I want to make one thing perfectly clear, so that we are all reading from the same page, as it were.” The senior of the two Operatives, his clothes spotless, knelt down beside the petty crime-lord, and spoke softly to the choking man, with an odd sort of smile on his face, “I am not a very nice person. In fact, I am about as far from being a nice person as you can be without being a literal psychopath. I have what could be called a certain, moral flexibility, when it comes to matters such as hurting people; I take no pleasure in causing others pain, but I likewise suffer no revulsion at the thought. This makes me useful, but the wrong instrument for these situations.”

He glanced up, and a genuine warm smile flashed across his face, “My companion here, is, well, she is a psychopath, as you have no doubt come to realize. There's no problem with me saying this with her right here, as she is fully aware of this fact and embraces it whole heartedly, making her the perfect instrument for these situations. In fact, I once saw her stab a man in the heart just to make sure her knife was sharp. So I hope you understand me when I say that killing you would mean less to her than deciding what to have for lunch. The only thing that could possibly save your life, or at least earn you a quick and painless death, is answering my earlier question.”

“Never saw the guy.” Badger gasped, “But if he wanted off-planet fast, without drawing any Alliance attention, then there's only one ship he could have taken.”

“One ship?” The Operative raised a suspicious eyebrow, “That seems awfully helpful, and more than a tad unbelievable.”

“It's that damn Miranda broadcast: lot of people on the outer planets are talking, getting angry. Some say there might be another war coming.” The gangster explained, “That sort of talk makes a lot of Captain's uneasy: they don't want the Alliance taking over their ships and making them run troops and supplies out to the boarder. That sort of work might be steady and pay well enough, but it gets you a bad rep as a government errand-boy. There's only one Captain crazy enough to stick his fingers up at the Alliance and keep flying wherever he wants; seems to think that they're scared of him or some other gos-so.”

“And who, pray tell, would this overly bold Captain be?” The Operative smiled again.

“Malcolm Reynolds; he captains an old Firefly called Serenity.” Badger answered eagerly, hoping to save his own skin at the expense of others, “Word is he's involved in that Miranda thing: got a lot of people killed, that did. Alliance and, shall we say, 'hard working members of the community'?”

“Thieves and liars the lot, I have no doubt.” The Operative stood, “I'm going to let you live: what you say tallies with the information we already have. But I want you to understand that if anything you've told us turns out to me a lie, then you will suffer unimaginable pain for whatever remains of your natural life. You see, I've always found the threat of death, even a slow and painful one, to be a tad empty. After all, the pain and suffering will end with death.”

The man paused, as if for dramatic effect, and then continued.

“So if I find out that you have lied to us, then we shall come back and I will cut off your hands, feet, ears, nose and tongue, then pluck out your eyes. Then I'll castrate you, and we shall see just how you like living in a world where you have no way to communicate with the outside world, and everyone who ever looks at you will know the price you paid for your many, many sins. And oh, how you have sinned, Mr Badger.”

He looked at his colleague, “You can let him go: we have a ship to catch.”

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“We'll, River's calmed down.” Simon made his way down the steps from the upper deck into the small passenger lounge outside the infirmary and sat down on the arm of the chair Kaylee was sitting in, putting a protective arm around his lover's shoulder, “I've never seen her act quite like that: she seemed almost physically ill, even worse than when she senses Reavers.”

“And that's a might unsettling.” Mal nodded, running his fingers over the scab that had formed on his chin as he thought, “That girls still got her ways and secrets, but she's been a lot better these past few months. Fact is, I was beginning to think she might end up something approaching normal, least by our standards.” He looked at Jack, “Anything you want to add?”

“I've an idea why she went crazy like that.” Jack was reluctant to continue, but the one look at the ship’s captain made it clear that he needed to, “One thing she said stood out amid the rest: she called me a 'fact'. Now I've been called that before, but a long, long time ago, and I don't see how or why she'd do the same.”

“Our Little Albatross has a way of seeing into the truth of things.” Mal explained, “Truth is, I think she might be a Reader.”

"Oh, juh jen sh guh kwai luh duh jean jan..." Jack rolled his head back and pressed the palm of his hands against his eyes, “If she's a Reader, then I'm the last person she should be sharing oxygen with: the memories I've got floating around in my head would give a demon nightmares.”

“That's not all, now is it.” Zoë looked at him with an icy glair that could have stopped charging armies, “She shot you, right between the eyes, and yet here you are.”

“That was going to be my next question.” Mal nodded, “We say you die, for a second time, and I somehow doubt that this is all because of something the Alliance did to you.”

“Yeah, that?” Jack looked around at the rest of the assembled crew, “You got anything stronger than tea around here? Because I think we're all going to need it before the night’s through!”

To Be Continued...

Sorry if Jack's flirting with Simon felt a little forced: I don't normally write MM slash

Gos-so – crap
Mei-Mei – Little Sister
Goram – God-damn
Juh jen sh guh kwai luh duh jean jan – this is a happy development