Being a prisoner wasn’t that bad, not for the most part. Mainly, it was kinda dull. At first, Kaylee poked around, looking for ways to escape, but the ceiling, floor and three of the walls were just solid rock, while the fourth wall was really thick—plaster or something—and the door was real solid too. So there wasn’t much to be done that way.

They hadn’t left her anything to do, that was the problem. For a while, she played with the beads, putting them on and twirling them around like she was a companion or a fancy lady or something. But then she realized that they were probably prayer beads, and she felt kind of bad for being disrespectful to them like that.

She tried shouting through the door at the people who’d taken her, a couple named Jinny and Wadi. They seemed like nice people, basically: they were real concerned that Kaylee not be worried about getting hurt. Wadi told Kaylee that he didn’t think she had kidnapped anybody—“We only took you because we know they won’t leave without you,” he said. But they were kind of down on the rest of her crew, saying that somebody else on the ship could be a bad person and not listening when Kaylee explained how impossible that was.

Also they didn’t want to give Kaylee anything to do; Wadi was real impressed with her know-how, but the downside of that was that he felt like if they gave her something, even something to read, she’d figure out a way to use it to escape. Kaylee heard them argue about it, but Wadi must have won that one because they never even opened the door.

Then there were a bunch of voices, people who sounded pretty angry. Kaylee could hear them getting more and more worked up, and that was when she began to really kind of get scared. But they didn’t come for her or nothing, everyone left instead. Except for Jinny, who told Kaylee not to worry, that they was gonna find Annelore right quick and then they’d let Kaylee out.

Jinny wasn’t too eager to talk to Kaylee after that, so she got real bored. Then there was a big bustle, with people shouting about something about Annelore and God. They sounded happy, so Kaylee figured they’d let her out. But things got quiet without her being let go, so she didn’t know what to think. Then she heard the bolt slide back.

“Thank goodness!” she said, and went to the opening door. “Hi there,” she said to the fellow who had opened it. “How’s your donkey.”

“Fine,” he said, and punched her in the face. She fell backwards, and he kicked her in the stomach. Then he jumped on top of her, and that was all she knew for a bit.

She remembered that it was warm, warmer than it had been in her cell. Then it was cool again, and she was being put in a chair. That’s good, she thought, and tried to reach up to the table for dinner. But her hands were bound together, which seemed like an odd thing for the rest of the crew to do if they wanted her to be able to pass the plates.

I need to know what’s going on, she thought. How could she do that? She couldn’t see anything. Finally it occurred to her to open her eyes. But they weren’t working right, and they wouldn’t open. One eye at a time, she thought, don’t stress the machinery.

Her left eye hurt, so she tried opening her right eye. It opened a crack, but the light was too bright, and she closed it again. Was she blind now, then? The pupils, she remembered, would be wide open because there was no light, so maybe she should try again and keep the eye open for longer. Give it a little push.

It worked, but boy was it painful. It seemed to take forever for that pupil to get its act together and make it so Kaylee could see. And then she could just see a little bit, which she realized was because she needed to open her eye wider. She did that, and saw that she was on a ship.

It’s not Serenity, she thought. I need to open that other eye.

“Devil, devil, devil!” said the voice.

Her left eye was in some ways easier. The pupil seemed to do better, so there was less pain from the brightness. But the eye wouldn’t open all the way wide. And it hurt. And (Kaylee was so proud of herself for realizing this) it was swollen!

I got punched in the face, she thought.

“Snnnnake!” the voice hissed. “Filthy snake! E mo! E mo!”

The voice was distracting, so Kaylee tried to tune it out. Her legs ached, so she tried to move them. They were tied, too.

With both eyes, now, she tried to look. At first, they wouldn’t work together, but she insisted, and eventually they did. She was definitely on a ship, a smallish vessel, not much older than Serenity. She was looking at the console, and realized that she was in the pilot’s chair.

I should be able to see out the window, she thought, and looked up.

They weren’t in space. Kaylee mulled it over and decided that was a good thing. They were on a planet. Dry scrub stretched out before her. There were hills.

Glory of God? she wondered.

“There are many faces of God,” said the voice. She hadn’t realized before how close it was. Hands reached out and swiveled her chair around. After the black spots cleared, she realized that she was looking into the intense face of the man who had hit her.

She was going to say something, but couldn’t quite manage it.

“Many, many faces. That’s the wonderful thing about God. He has so, so many, many, many, many, many faces. Everybody is a part of God. Everybody shows a face of God.”

He seemed pretty insistent about it, so Kaylee managed to nod.

“But not me,” he said. “No, no, no, not me. Not God, not me. My desires, my sins, they have no part of God.”

He leaned close and whispered to Kaylee in a strangled voice: “God has abandoned me!”

“Um,” said Kaylee. It wasn’t a very useful thing to say, but she got a noise out of her throat, which was something.

“Oh, yes! They said it wouldn’t happened, no it wouldn’t, but it did, yes, yes it did. Abandoned. Oh, I tried, I tried, I tried, I tried. The angel, the angel Annelore, every day, every hour washed clean. She was not aware, you know, not aware of the sins I heaped upon her. Not aware. Washed clean.”

“Mister?” said Kaylee. Her mouth was dry.

“But I was not. I was not clean, God did not wash me clean, I brought my sins to God’s angel and God said, You keep them! You keep your filthy sins and your filthy soul! You will not be clean!”

He laughed.

“Oh see, don’t you see? We’ve built Paradise here! Paradise! It’s all here, it’s all glorious! And I’m the serpent in the Garden! That’s me! That’s my role, what God wants for me. Dirty, dirty snake. Crawl on the ground, in the filth.”

“I don’t think—” said Kaylee.

“But I won’t do it! I defy God! I am Satan, and I defy God! I caught you—you’re clean, you’re clean, and I caught you. And you’ll be my angel. You will fly me away, we will fly away together. You will take me out of this garden, you will. I will not be the snake!”

He was down on his knees in front of her. She started when he pulled out the knife, but he cut through the rope around her hands and spun her chair back away.

“Fly me away, angel! Fly me away!”

And the tears fell because her eye hurt and her legs ached and he was scary and Kaylee knew he would never, ever believe that she didn’t know how to fly a ship. * * *

When the runner came back and reported that the root cellar was empty, the lawmen just about had a conniption and Mal was ready to have one, too.

“This doesn’t make sense,” said Xastare. “What’s he trying to do?”

“A hostage,” said Mal. “He thinks if he takes a hostage, he won’t get punished for what he did to Annelore.”

“How would that work?” asked Xastare. “We’re the only settlement. There’s no place else for him to go.”

“The desert,” said Zoe.

“No,” said Jude. “Qing tried being a huntsman once. He nearly starved to death. He doesn’t have the skills.”

“So his only option is to leave the planet,” said Mal. “Maybe he’s going to blackmail us, Kaylee’s life for a ride.”

“Or—” Xastare snapped her fingers. “I know where he’s going. Give me the com.”

She spent a few minutes on the com. “Got it!” she shouted. “The Tiger. Huntsmen say there’s a vehicle there.”

“What’s the Tiger?” asked Mal.

“That’s my ship,” Xastare replied.

“It’s spaceworthy?” asked Jude.

“Should be—you never cracked it. I flew it to where it is now,” she said.

“That’s right,” he said, and patted her shoulder. “I never mentioned it at the time, but that was very considerate of you.”

She gave a wry smile. “My dowry,” she said.

“Can Qing fly a ship?” asked Wash. “Because I don’t think Kaylee can.”

“She can’t fly a ship?” asked an incredulous lawman, the young fellow who had helped haul Spead aboard. “But she knows so much about them.”

Mal got a sinking feeling in his stomach. Oh, Kaylee. “I don’t think she ever has,” he said.

It didn’t take long for the reinforcements to show up with some bikes and almost the entire stable of horses—one good thing about their gorram clannishness, they understood that Serenity’s crew was damned well going to help get back one of their own. Mal, Zoe, and Jayne saddled up, with both doctors tagging along on the back of the bikes. The rest stayed along with a contingent of lawmen in case that hun dan decided to head for Serenity.

They followed the small blond, riding all out through the fields and into the desert and through the hills,

Mal heard it in the hoofbeats: Now she could be dead, now she could be dead, now she could be dead.

It seemed like it took forever to get there, to get to the ship with the four-wheeler parked in front of it and the trail left by Kaylee’s dragged body going straight to the sealed-tight cargo door.

“I see you, the all-seeing eye,” said the voice of that crazy e mo who had taken Kaylee, carried over the ship’s communication system. “I see your trickery. People of God, are you! I see you, and I know you. Keep away!”

The lawmen were huddled in intense discussion. Mal, Jayne and Zoe joined them. “He knows what we do,” the young fellow was saying. “He’s lived here his whole life.”

Xastare looked at Jayne’s gun. “You a good shot?” she asked.

“Qing!” it was Jude, shouting up to the ship. “Qing, show us that the girl is OK. Otherwise we’ll come after you, we’ll crack you right open!”

“If you crack me, she dies,” said the voice.

Then there was a pause.

“Hey, folks, I’m OK,” it was Kaylee. Mal felt waves of relief flow over him.

“No cracking, no, no, no!” the madman went on. “And no stealthy suits! If the door opens, you’re down there, and I’m up here, and she dies. I see Xastare. Step up Xastare, step where I can see you. No crawling up the ship. If I can’t see you, Xastare, if you vanish, this filthy bint dies.”

Xastare twisted her mouth but stepped away from the clutch of lawmen, holding her hands up.

“You’re no angel, you know,” the voice continued. “Oh, no, no, no, you think that you can be washed, washed clean, clean and pure. But it will stick to you, yes it will, the filth will stick to your soul forever. The blood of the people you killed. The men you left in the desert to be cut down like goats. I remember that day well, so well, so much blood, so much blood—so does God. Filthy bint. Filthy, lying bint. Hypocrite! Pretend because you cut it away. Liar!”

She winced, but stood firm. Keep his attention, Mal thought.

“This one lies too, yes she does. Lying bint. When she dies, the blood will be on your head. The sin will be yours.”

“The sin will be yours, Qing, if you kill her,” Xastare shouted. “The sin will be yours.”

The voice groaned. “More filth. Dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty e mo. Serpent. Satan, Satan, Satan.”

“I don’t like the sound of that, Sir,” said Zoe.

“Nor do I,” said Mal.

“We don’t have a lot of options,” said Jude. “He’s sealed up tight in there. Unless your man gets a lucky shot through the window”—he gestured to Jayne, who was settling into a sniper’s position up the hill facing the ship—“we’re going to have to wait him out.”

“He sounds like he’s about to crack himself, and I don’t think that bodes well for Kaylee,” Mal said.

“Maybe he’ll just give up,” Jude replied, without much conviction.

But he was right, as long as Qing was in the ship, they really had no choice but to sit him out and hope to get lucky. Qing could see Jayne setting up as well as they, so if he had sanity enough left, he’d be using Kaylee as a shield. Mal checked his gun again, and wondered if there was some way to use Serenity to their advantage.

“Hey, are you OK?” a woman’s voice shouted out. Mal looked up from his weapon. It was Annelore, holding a med kit.

“Oooooh!” the voice exclaimed. “You, you, you!”

“Do we know each other?” the woman asked. “I can’t seem to remember. I don’t know what’s going on here, or who you people are, except I went to school with him”—she pointed at Simon. “Anyway, I’m a doctor, and I want to help you. You don’t sound very well. You sound sick.”

“I’ll say,” Zoe said to Mal.

“My name is Annelore Hidalgo. I think there’s something wrong with my memory, but I graduated from the Capital City Medacad, which is the best medacad on Osiris. I remember all my medical training. I can help you.”

“You’re dirty now! I heard it! That’s what they said, she’s dirty, she knows the filth,” the voice said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Annelore continued. “I follow sterile procedure, if that’s what you’re worried about. I know I can help you, if only you let me.”

“Oooh, oooh,” said the voice. “Walk up to the cargo door—by yourself! I’ll be down there. If the others try any trickery, the blood will be on them! Their souls!”

Annelore walked up to the cargo doors, where she stood for several moments. The door slid open slightly, and Qing, standing well inside the hold, but across the door, beckoned her in, a knife in one hand. She walked through, and he again put his body between her and the doorway, as though to bar the way against invisible enemies.

With a sudden viciousness, Annelore swung the med kit with both hands over her shoulder, hitting Qing on the back of his head with an audible thwack. He staggered and turned to her, knife up, but she hit him in the gut with a well-executed a side kick that threw him back out of the doorway. A second kick, and he was clear of the hold completely. She ducked behind the doors.

Jayne had one shot, and oh, did he ever take it. The report sounded as Qing threw both hands to his back, dropping the knife. He staggered away from the ship and fell onto the dry earth.

The lawmen and Mal and Zoe sprang into action, surrounding Qing—just like anyone with any experience in these things, or common sense for that matter, would do. Check him first for surprises, then take a team in the ship to make sure there were no surprises there, and then get Kaylee. But Simon sprang into action, too, running past all the people who were actually armed with real weapons, holding his med kit up like it would protect him against whatever booby trap or ambush lay in that cargo hold.

“Gorram!” said Mal and the young lawman, and they both ran in after Simon, with Zoe on Mal’s heels. Might as well all go down together, Mal thought, as they ran past Annelore in the hold, up the stairs, and into the cockpit after the doctor.

* * *

Kaylee had been beaten fairly badly—a nasty shiner on her right eye, a sore stomach from being kicked, bruising from the ropes, and a fat lip that looked quite fresh. That animal had knocked her out to bring her there, and although she seemed largely recovered Simon was going to be damned sure that she was kept in the infirmary and watched carefully for signs of a serious concussion.

But she could stand and had no broken bones—a miracle, really. Wonderfully, she kept insisting that she was fine, as though the worst part of it all was the emotional pain her trauma caused others.

Mal, Zoe, and soon Jayne had joined them, along with Krak, who kept saying that Simon cost him a day’s labor for making him swear—apparently there was some obscure ship-storming protocol Simon hadn’t followed, but he couldn’t be bothered about it right now.

Kaylee could walk, but Simon put his arm around her waist anyway and helped her down the stairs and across the hold, her arm over his shoulder.

They got to the door of the hold, and that was when Simon saw Annelore. She was standing quite still about a foot away from the ship, holding her med kit and looking down with absolutely no expression on her face. They didn’t see what she was looking at until they crossed the threshold and Kaylee gasped.

It was Qing. He was still alive, writhing in pain on the earth. Blood was pumping from his wound.

Simon looked at Kaylee. She flinched, and her face turned white.

She turned to Simon. “Help him,” she said.

He nodded. Zoe came up and put a hand around Kaylee. “We’ll take her back to the ship,” she said.

“Jain Kang or Jing Mei should be able to help,” he said.

Kaylee’s lip was swollen, so he had to kiss her cheek. “I’ll see you soon,” he said.

He turned to the bleeding man.

Qing was a mess. He had been shot through the back, and the bullet had come out his belly. He was bleeding profusely, and the involvement of the intestines meant that sepsis was almost certain. The writhing had not helped matters any, and Simon quickly pulled out a needle to sedate him.

“Don’t knock him out,” said a man’s voice. Simon looked up. It was Krak. “Stop the pain, but don’t put him to sleep.”

He looked at his patient. Qing was shaking his head and mouthing the word “No” over and over again.

Obviously some sort of religious prohibition. “I’ll give you a pain-killer then, but you have to lie still,” Simon said.

There was a chance, but not a great one, that he could be saved, especially if the bleeding could be stopped. Simon wondered if the infirmary on Xastare’s ship was as well-stocked as the last one. He looked over his shoulder.

Annelore had not moved.

“Can you please go evaluate the facilities?” he asked.

She began to laugh, then put her hand over her face, looking to see if Krak had noticed. He was looking away, so she quickly got down on her knees next to Simon.

“Are you rutting me?” she whispered. “Do you know what that chou lou bu kan bastard did to me?”

“I’m not asking you to save him,” Simon said.

“No, you’re asking me to help you save him,” she said.

“I know this is difficult,” said Simon, and she rolled her eyes. “But you are a doctor.”

“Maybe you missed the Cortex alert, genius, but you’re a doctor,” she hissed. “I’m a terrorist.”

Simon looked at her, and came up with the only argument he could think of. “They don’t know that.”

She looked at the lawmen, who had gathered around Jude. “Fine,” she said, and slowly got up and walked into the ship.

After what seemed like an age, she reappeared at Simon’s side. “How are the facilities?” he asked.

She pointed away from the ship. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.

Simon looked up. Jude was walking over to him, holding a com. His face, as always, looked grim, but this time there was a tinge of sadness. He handed the com to another lawmen, and stood over Qing. Jude reached into his shirt, and pulled out a small, white, brimless cap. He put it on his head.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Qing.

Jude turned around and put his hands up, palms in the air. As if on cue, the lawmen too began to cry.

“Come on,” said Annelore, pulling Simon away from his patient. “You can’t heal the dead.”

She smiled, and Simon felt a shiver run through him.

“No!” he said, pulling away from her and throwing himself over his patient. “You can’t!”

The lawmen came over to him, picked him up, and carried him away.

“No!” he shouted again. “It’s barbaric.”

Krak grabbed his shoulder.

“Barbaric?” he hissed, tears in his eyes. “I’ve known Qing my entire life. This is the only funeral he will ever have, and you will show respect!”

Simon stopped struggling. It was no use, anyhow. There were too many of them.

“God is great!” shouted Jude.

“God is great!” shouted the lawmen.

“Oh God,” Jude continued. “Forgive Qing Jie and have mercy on him. Relieve him of all evils and pardon him, and make easy his entrance into Paradise. Wash Qing and purify him of sins. as you purify a white garment of filth. Grant him a home better than his home, a family better than his family, and let him enter Paradise. Protect him from the torment of the grave and the punishment of hell. God is great!”

“God is great!” replied the lawmen.

“Oh God. Forgive us and him. Don’t deprive us of Qing Jie’s reward. God is great!” “God is great!”

“Oh God. Your mercy is infinite, and our need for it is also infinite. We have made the desert bloom, but we have not created Paradise. We submit to your will—but not fully, not completely, for we are but imperfect beings, weak before temptation, quick to lose the way of God.

“Long have we known Qing Jie. We know his family, and we know that losing him is a bitter grief indeed. For this is the way of the world—temptation, failure, and grief. There is no paradise here, for we are frail children of dust, feeble and imperfect. The only paradise is that which you through your mercy allow us, through your purification—a boon, indeed, to those as sinful as we.

“It is not here, but it is there—your paradise where all are pure, where all live together in peace and brotherhood as in one cave, as in one family. We beg you, oh God, to grant mercy to Qing Jie and all those who submit, however imperfectly, to your will. God is great!” “God is great!” called the lawmen.

Qing began to move again, and the lawmen moved to help him. The turned him onto his side. Still weeping, he turned his chin up.

Jude had something hidden in his hand as he kneeled next to the man. Quietly, he said, “In the name of God, God is great,” then swept his hand across Qing’s throat.

It was so quick, Simon didn’t even see the knife.

* * *

They left Glory of God soon after, as soon as the fruit was loaded and the elders who had ordered the murder of Qing Jie could give their meaningless stamp of approval to Annelore’s departure. The settlers gave her a teary farewell, recounting stories of her kindness and the lives she had saved. Simon just couldn’t stomach it, so he went to the infirmary to be with Kaylee.

She would be ready to leave there soon, and they would have to figure out where they were going to sleep three extra people on their trip back to Pfalzenhoffer. Simon knew he didn’t want to share his room with any of them, and he didn’t want River to, either.

River was back on the ship, at least. She had also stopped responding to the name “Girleen” and had stopped making baskets. She let Simon keep his, but insisted that all the others be given to the settlers, a gesture that resulted in them getting more jars of jam and tallow.

Simon waited until they left the planet before he told the crew what had happened to Qing Jie. Naturally, Kaylee was very upset, and wanted to know why the settlers didn’t help someone who was so obviously mentally ill.

All Simon could do was point out that the settlers were now completely without competent medical personnel. But Zoe had the last word: “Kaylee, when someone tells you that they are a monster, my experience is, they are telling you the truth.”

He tried to avoid Annelore. Spead was planning to bring her to Pfalzenhoffer as his fiancée—another fabrication in the tissue of lies that was his life, although at least they weren’t pretending to the crew that the engagement was anything other than a ruse to allow her to stay on the planet.

But she did corner him one time when they were alone. “You’re really upset with me, aren’t you? If I had known that Qing Jie was going to go after your mechanic—”

Simon interrupted. “When we were in medacad, you used to say that what you really wanted to do was to help people. Other people could be the fancy specialists and make obscene amounts of money, but you’d be happy to just have a little clinic on some little backwater planet that no one else cared about, helping the people who no one else would.”

She smiled. “I remember those days. When I thought it was simple. Before I realized that your little clinic would have no drugs, and a bunch of thugs backed by the Alliance would work people to death no matter what you did for them.”

She pulled her hair and sighed.

“I do regret leaving Glory of God and those people there. But this is life, you know? There’s no happy, neat ending, with everything tied up in a bow. You sacrifice what you like for what you love. You sacrifice what you want for what you need. Everything that’s unnecessary goes on the alter of that which is, and you take a knife and you just slit its throat. You just cut right through.”

They sat in silence for a minute.

“But what about you?” Annelore asked. “What happened with your sister at that academy, anyway? She’s in pretty bad shape.”

And there it was, in him—that same hardness. That same calculation. What are the chances that she knows what happened? What are the chances she can be trusted?

“Oh, I was just overreacting, sort of,” he said with a laugh. “I feel sort of silly about it now. I’m sure you’ve realized that River suffers from schizophrenia, paranoid schizophrenia. She developed it at the academy, and they didn’t recognize it right away. That’s why she was writing those letters. Shortly after I spoke to you, she had a major psychotic break—which was pretty embarrassing to have to explain to the person who contacted me. She had to drop out.”

“That’s a shame about River. I remember you saying how bright she was. So why are you both here and not on Osiris?”

Simon smiled and rubbed his ear. Why not?

“I gambled, you know—or I guess you didn’t, I was gambling pretty heavily back at medacad but I kept it quiet. Anyway—look, don’t tell anyone this, OK?—I had a lot of debt, a lot. I was in real trouble, or I guess what at the time felt like real trouble. And I had this great tip about this soccer game. So I thought I could get out from under my debts, because this tip was supposed to be really solid, but I didn’t have any collateral. And there was this man, who had a lot of money and was really well-connected, and he had his eye on River. He was, you know—he had kind of a thing for crazy girls.”

He spread fingers and shrugged, as Annelore recoiled.

“It was supposed to be a sure thing,” he said.

Annelore didn’t try to talk to him after that, and when Serenity left them and the cargo behind on Pfalzenhoffer, Simon knew she would never try to talk to him ever again. But as he sat at the dinner table with River and Kaylee and Book and Mal and Inara and Wash and Zoe and even Jayne, he felt not a twinge of regret.

Because in one respect, Annelore had told the truth: You sacrifice what you like for what you love.

—FINIT—

Dedicated to the memory of Kerry (“Lux Lucre”) Pearson and Valerie Anderson, who have found serenity.