Over the next few hours, Mal arranged a watch over Hunter. He made it perfectly clear to Simon that, as the doctor, the officer was primarily his responsibility, but he also assigned watches to Book and Inara. Simon spent most of the next day in the infirmary with his assistants, making sure that they knew what to watch for on the monitors, how tight to make the bandages, and any drugs they would be administering if he weren’t there.

Kaylee came in every spare moment. She hadn’t spent but an hour alone since returning to the ship. Jayne came in almost as often, sitting silently out of the way. Simon wouldn’t have thought that the merc could ever have made himself so small and quiet, but half the time, he didn’t even realize when Jayne was there. It was a little unsettling. Simon had once asked him why he came in so often. Jayne had given him a look and told him he was just doing his job as the drunk Icaran muscle in case anything went wrong. Simon didn’t believe him, and he could tell that Jayne didn’t much believe himself, either.

Even had Mal not assigned him to watch the greyback, Simon would have. Alliance or not, Simon held a grudging respect for the woman who had fought so hard to save Kaylee’s life. And there was the little matter of his Hippocratic Oath. Mal had given Simon strict instructions to keep Hunter locked in the infirmary at all times, and that she wasn’t allowed out under any conditions.

A day and a half after the initial surgeries, Simon decided to sedate Hunter again in order to apply some larger dermal weaves and speed the healing process. Inara came to help, smiling and chatting at Hunter as Simon prepped her for surgery. Hunter had been in and out of consciousness for the past day and had spoken little after her bizarre announcement to Simon. She had only asked for water and when she might be able to wash her hair. Simon had promised that it wouldn’t be long, but he wanted to make sure that the weaves on her forehead and the back of her neck had taken before getting wet. She had wrinkled her nose a little at that, making her seem oddly human. Simon had almost smiled back. Almost.

“You’re going to be going to sleep again,” he said to Hunter. “It won’t be so long this time, and once we get these in place you might even be able to get up and around in a few days. You’ll want to watch the weight you put on your left leg, but other than that, I don’t see any problems. We’ll just take it slowly.”

Hunter nodded. “Thank you.”

Simon blinked, caught a little off guard. “You’re welcome.” He adjusted the drip in her arm, adding the medication in his hand. Within seconds, she was once again unconscious. With Inara monitoring Hunter’s vitals, Simon carefully unwrapped the bandages crisscrossing her shoulders. He stood staring at the carefully sutured wound below her collarbone for so long that Inara finally looked away from the monitor to see what was wrong.

“Simon? What’s wrong?” The Companion’s smooth brow was slightly furrowed in confusion as Simon stared back at her, more perplexed than she.

“Nothing,” he finally managed. “Nothing at all. And that’s the problem.” Telling Inara to keep her under for a few minutes more, Simon washed his hands and hurried from the infirmary to the hold, where Mal was doing a last-minute manifest. Simon tapped him on the shoulder.

“Got a minute?” Simon asked, doing his best to look nonchalant and urgent at the same time.

Mal shrugged. “A minute. This about your patient?”

Simon nodded as he led Mal back to the infirmary. He spoke as he walked. “When I was in med school, I had a mentor who was fond of authors and philosophers from Earth-That-Was. I don’t remember the exact words, but one of his favorites was about how the brain needed exercise just like the body, and how, if possible, one should imagine three impossible things before breakfast. And if you were a visual learner, he thought it best to see impossible things.”

“There a point to this?”

Simon pushed through the doors of the infirmary. “Jayne was wearing matching socks today at breakfast. Impossibility number one. Number two, Kaylee beat me at chess about two hours ago. Granted, I was a little distracted, but…” He was interrupted when Mal cleared his throat. Pulling himself back to the present, Simon stepped to the side of the infirmary bed. He gently pulled back the edge of the bandage he had left on Hunter’s shoulder as he looked at Mal.

“Impossibility number three.”

Simon watched Mal and Inara stare at Hunter’s shoulder. Although Simon knew that he was one of the best doctors in the ‘verse, he also knew that when he had repaired Hunter’s mangled chest and back, he hadn’t left it looking as well as he would have liked to.

However, even how he had left it was nothing close to what it looked like now. Simon spoke in the silence. “I’m estimating she’s healing at about four times what she should be. It shouldn’t be this clean. It shouldn’t look like this after only 48 hours. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“What do you think it means?” asked Inara.

“It goes a long way toward explaining some things,” Simon replied. “Elevated metabolism, a couple of random readings off the charts…”

Mal replaced the bandage. “Yeah, but what does it mean? Stimpacks? Injections? What would cause something like that?”

Simon shrugged. “If I didn’t know any better, from the readings I’ve been getting and now this, you’re looking at the result of cellular manipulation, possibly even at the genetic level.”

“Excuse me?”

“Rumor had it all throughout the medical facilities on the Core that the Alliance has been doing this for years. Working for longevity, mostly, though before I left Osiris there were rumblings that there was more in the pipeline.”

“Looks like a lot more than rumblings,” Inara remarked. “And she looks a little older than the couple of years you’ve been gone. Is she aging faster, too?”

“I’d have to do more tests to be sure, but I don’t think so. From the readings I've taken, though, I would guess there's a balance. Her body and metabolism can slow down or speed up as applicable. It washes out so that everything looks overall normal.” He looked at Mal, confused. “Do you think that’s why they were keeping her on Quan?”

Mal’s eyes narrowed. “It would be a good bet. I’m not sure. The sooner we get her off this boat, the better. Keep her locked down, and if you don’t think you need to use those weaves, don’t. I don’t know how well this job is going to go over, and if she doesn’t need the supplies, we will.”

“Understood.”

Mal and Inara left, and Simon brought Hunter back. She didn’t mention the weaves missing from her chest, and Simon thought better of telling her why. He had a feeling she already knew.