Firefly: "Fathers and Sons--Part Two"

Disclaimer: If I weren't just a poor college student and could finance the series myself, I would, but I can't. So all I can do is just play around in Joss Whedon's 'verse. Also, I don't know a lick of Chinese so I haven't bothered to put the translations because they're probably horribly wrong. If it were Japanese or Latin, well, that'd be another story...

Episode six of my second season of Firefly: The crew of Serenity scramble to get a deathly ill River to a place that can cure her, and they learn the hidden past of Kyo in the process. Part two of two.

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"How bad is it?" asked Captain Malcolm Reynolds at the door to the infirmary. In the passenger lounge just behind him, he could hear the cries of Gabriel and Regan Tam clamoring to know just what was going on. That was something Mal wanted to know himself; why five Academy children like River had woken prematurely from cryo-sleep; why River was deathly ill. But Mal knew "why" wasn't so important in a situation like this. What they were going to do, and how they were going to do it, took slight precedence.

"I suggest you let your gifted boy work his mojo," warned the rough, gravelly voice of Jonah Hex, Serenity's cook, to the distraught Tams.

"It's bad," said Simon Tam in a calm voice, but Mal'd grown used to the boy's stoicism, and knew fear when he heard it--maybe not so much when he saw it. He was still running around River's prone form on the operating chair, checking on tubes and periodically peering at the many screens against the wall. "I've managed to get her fever stabilized, and her seizures have stopped, but she's completely non-responsive."

"Well--uh--have you applied the cortical electrodes?" wondered Jayne Cobb who was standing on the inside of the infirmary, leaning against the door with his large arms crossed over his broad chest. Simon and Mal looked at the mercenary simultaneously, before returning to the conversation at hand.

"Her systems are beginning to shut down," said Simon, seemingly deflating at his sister's bedside. "Nervous system, circulatory system, even digestion. She's fallen into a coma, and she's slipping by the second. There's--there's nothing I can do here. I--I don't have the equipment or--"

"Don't worry," said Mal as he turned to leave. "Mind yourself with our two sleeping beauties that Zoe's watchin' over. Make sure none of 'em get a mind to walkin' anytime soon. I'll tell Kyo to set us down on a dustball with a hospital."

Mal left Simon standing there and allowed Kaylee, his wife all of twelve or so hours, to console him some. The boy needed it, in Mal's opinion. With a tenseness that wound him up tighter than a compression coil, he began to bound up the stairs that lead to the aft corridor. Inara was waiting for him in the mess hall, and waylaid him before he could reach the bridge.

"She ain't well," Mal told her softly. "I'm gonna see Kyo 'bout settin' us down on the nearest planet. Doc seems to think he can't cure her, so we're gonna have to find some help."

"We're out on the border worlds, Mal," whispered Inara; her dark eyes pooling with unshed tears. River'd become sweet to everyone in her time with them--except maybe Jayne; she was everyone's mei-mei. She'd saved them all back on Mr. Universe's world when she'd taken down a whole pile of Reavers by her lonesome. None of them wanted her to die.

"I know that, 'Nara, 'cause that's where I put us," said Mal with a weak smile. "By my reckonin', closest world's Persephone. It's civilized, so we might get a chance. Maybe send word to Sir Harrow to lend us a hand."

"Mal, you know as good as Sir Harrow might be, the best chance River has is a Core hospital like in Ariel City," replied Inara.

"Now that ain't an option," said Mal firmly. "We got ourselves four fugitives now, all goin' by the name of 'Tam.' Ain't no way we can slip into a hospital this time to treat the girl. We don't even know how long it might take. Let's not forget the fact that time--well, time ain't on our side, 'Nara. Persephone's close, it's civilized, and it's our best chance. Gave Simon some busy work, and Hex is dealin' with River's folks, but I'm thinkin' Kaylee could use some one."

"Of course," said Inara, knowing that Mal's decision was made up. Still, it didn't mean that was the only option. She could go to the Guild and maybe find a way there to help River. That would be done easiest from her shuttle, and Inara knew Kaylee would be anxious to help. "I'll see to her."

Inara slipped gracefully around Mal and practically glided down the stairs in her shimmering robes that looked so out of place against the dirtied steel of Serenity. Mal shook his head to return to the problem at hand. Wasn't any time for daydreaming about Inara's beauty, or the way her hips swayed under them shiny gowns of hers.

"Lay in a course for Persephone," ordered Mal the moment he stepped into the forward corridor where the crew bunks were. It was alarming not to see Kaylee's lights and sign on her room, but then again, it wasn't Kaylee's room anymore--it was Zoe's, now. Things were changing, but he'd like his little Albatross to not be one of those things.

"No," said Kyo Nagiama, Serenity's pilot, from his chair.

"You--no?" frowned Mal as he loomed over Kyo's shoulder.

"No," reiterated Kyo, keeping his attention on the nav sat screen. Mal saw that Kyo'd already piloted a course towards a border moon called Angel--a good ways from Persephone. "Persephone don't got what we need."

"Oh? And Angel does?" asked Mal lightly, but with an affronted edge to it. Serenity was his ship, and he was captain, and though he appreciated independent thinking in a crisis, that didn't mean he was going to be ignored.

"Yup," said Kyo, completely unperturbed by Mal's glowering. "We'll burn all our fuel just to get there, but if I push her we should make it inside of thirteen hours."

"River don't got thirteen hours, and Perse--"

"I know," said Kyo tersely, cutting Mal off.

"You know?"

"Her body's shutting down, system-by-system. It's a race to see which system will kill her first. Will she starve to death? Asphyxiate? Will her brain shut down? I know, Mal, believe me," said Kyo sadly.

"Then you oughta be gettin' us down on Persephone, which is only a five hour trip at hard burn," said Mal with an arch of his brow.

"They don't got what we need for River, Mal," Kyo told him, finally looking up from the screen. Mal almost had to take a step back. He'd fought with Kyo during the Unification War, and he'd seen him pull off many crazy stunts in the face of insurmountable odds, but he'd never seen Kyo hold such fear and pain in those gray eyes.

Mal softened his hard approach, knowing that Kyo was just as worried for River as any--more so, probably, given the recent closeness of their relationship--but facts were facts. "Maybe they do," Mal temporized, shifting his posture to lean against the upper console, "but that still don't solve the problem of River not bein' able to hold on for thirteen hours."

"Those kids had cryo-sleep containers, didn't they? Active ones, right? Stick River in one of them. It'll slow down the disease some," said Kyo, who made to pivot his chair around to face the nose of Serenity, but Mal held him back.

"Disease?" repeated Mal, bending over to look squarely into Kyo's eyes. "Contagious?"

"No," said Kyo.

"Seen it before?"

"Too many times," admitted Kyo softly. "Promise, Mal, you can buy me a drink and I'll tell you all 'bout it when we touch down on Angel. 'Til then, I got a contact to make and a favor to ask. You oughta get River into a container jin-kuai."

"All right, Kyo, and I'll be lookin' for that drink, dong-ma? I think Hex still has quite a collection for us to go through," said Mal with as close to a smile as he could manage. He gave Kyo a solid pat on the shoulder before turning around to job back down to the infirmary.

Kyo lowered his head over his folded hands. It wasn't a prayer, so much as a chance to prepare for what needed to be done. He didn't believe in God, after all. God didn't make him. People playing God? That was something entirely different.

*****

He was about to leave his makeshift office on Osiris, just having concluded every bit of business he'd came for, when the door slid open. He rose quickly, reaching for the pulse gun strapped under the desk. A lifetime of training made him take steady aim at the door in less than a second, but judging by the easy gait of the person entering, this wasn't an attack. That is, he amended, it wasn't a raid--not all attacks were of Captain Reynolds's variety.

"Hello, Operative Ex-five," said a chillingly familiar voice before he saw the crisp, platnium colored suit with silver tie stride into the very rustic interior of the office. Flanking the man were two others, middle-aged with stark blue gloves on; Cleansers.

"Mr. Khan," said the Operative, though he kept his weapon trained on the man.

"Please," frowned Mr. Khan, noticing the weapon aimed straight at his forehead. "That's a futile gesture, and we all know it. My Cleansers would intercept the beam at the slightest inclination you had of firing, and then strike you dead before you had a chance to squeeze off another shot. So, please, put that training of yours to use and lower the weapon. I'm here to talk."

"And what, pray tell, do we have to discuss, Mr. Khan?" asked the Operative in his genial voice, while he lowered the weapon onto the aged desk.

"The Tams, primarily, Ex-five," said Mr. Khan.

"I no longer go by that designation," the Operative informed Mr. Khan. The other man merely cocked an eyebrow in amusement and bade him to continue with a nod. "I've taken a new name--Azrael--and I would appreciate it being used, Mr. Khan."

"Very well, Azrael," said Mr. Khan in a humoring voice. "We're here to discuss the Tams...and you."

"I believe I gave my report to Parliament when Miranda was broadwaved and I never returned," replied Azrael with an apologetic smile.

"Not those Tams, Azrael. I was referring to their parents, and the missing children from five prominent families in the Core," returned Mr. Khan. There was a frigid edge to his politeness that Azrael recognized well. He'd been trained to utilize that very same voice, after all. "Your mistake, if you're wondering, was using the tactics we taught you."

"You?" questioned Azrael, furrowing his brow in confusion.

"Oh, my apologies, didn't you know each training regimen is Blue Sun approved?" smirked Mr. Khan with his hands folded behind his back, mirroring Azrael's stance. "That was your flaw. Operative training is highly specific, and there is only one known rogue Operative at the moment--you. Acquiring the Tams' fortune in hard currency in such record time was the dead giveaway. It allowed us to reach the children before you."

"And?" prompted Azrael, who was feeling the uncomfortable emotion of fear creeping into his belly.

"Technology can make amazing leaps in only a few years," Mr. Khan began to answer in a roundabout way. "You see, I invested a lot into Project Gilgamesh. I consider them my children, if you will, and after the pain of having to put an end to the first batch, I vowed not to give up so easily on the second. We finalized the subliminal conditioning. It did wonders to soothe the psychosis the children suffered. We implanted a command."

"What sort of command?" Azrael had to ask.

"If it'd been a simple kidnapping? Some sort of amnestic measure, perhaps? But as your plans were funded by the Tams, we had something special in mind."

"It wasn't accidental, was it?" questioned Azrael as understanding finally sunk in. "You were deliberately giving Gabriel Tam the lowest paying jobs, and ostracizing the Tams from any social event. So long as River Tam remained at large, you were going to increase the level of social torment on their parents, until they'd be forced to leave. Hoping they'd take the route as good parents, you were going to follow them to River, however long that might've taken."

"A long-term plan," smiled Mr. Khan in confirmation. "One that you shortened considerably, might I add? You presented the perfect opportunity for us to find Miss Tam. They were to keep their minds awake and open through sleep, until they were in close proximity to River Tam. Then they were to awaken and free themselves so that they could capture her. All we have to do is wait for them to send word of their success."

Mr. Khan paused to observe the labored, but controlled breath of air that Azrael took in. His keen eyes took in the clench of Azrael's jaw and the tenseness of his shoulders. All of them were tells that Azrael was both afraid and angered at his failure. Taking advantage of Azrael's internal distractions, Mr. Khan held out his right hand to the corresponding Cleaser. The sound of a sword being drawn broke Azrael out of his reverie as he stared intently at it.

"As I recall, there was a custom of men who fell on their swords when they failed as greatly as you," said Mr. Khan with a sickening smirk of triumph. "And you, as it were, failed twice. First the Alliance when you failed to contain Miranda's secret, and now your new masters--whoever they may be. So, Azrael, shall you do the honors? Or shall I?"

Azrael glanced down to the proffered, gleaming sword fashioned in the stiff-backed katanas used by ninjas in feudal Japan, ages ago on Earth-that-was. He wondered how many people had he sent to fall on blades like that. He remembered each of their stammering arguements, and the few who actually tried to fight back instead of running away. Never had he imagined himself being put to the blade. There was, however, one gleam of hope.

"Have you actually heard that River Tam has been acquired?" asked Azrael softly.

"No," said Mr. Khan slowly, losing some of the smile on his face. "We will, though. It's only a matter of time."

"I'm beginning to doubt that," said Azrael with polite pride. He knew Serenity and her crew. He'd fought them, after all, and they'd bested him. Moreover, Gabriel--not the Tam, but the Eden-Two representative--had confirmed, shortly before his demise, reports of Serenity's newest aquisition. That, he was most certain of all, was a fact still unnoticed by either the Alliance, or Mr. Khan. "I wouldn't underestimate the resiliency of the Tams. I am, of course, willing to wait on word from either party. If you don't mind?"

Azrael gestured to the simple, wooden chair across from his desk. There was no reason for Mr. Khan to take Azrael up on the offer. At an order, the Cleansers could kill him within a second. Mr. Khan had done a sweep personally, and knew there was no back up for Azrael to call. Then again, there was no reason for him to come and do this personally, nor offer Azrael the option to fall on his sword, in the first place. It was all perverse satisfaction in humiliation, and if waiting was what it took to get it, then Mr. Khan could wait.

"Very well, Azrael," returned Mr. Khan with polite acceptance before he took his seat. "Clear my schedule until further notice," he ordered to the Cleanser at his left as an afterthought.

*****

Kyo leaned forward against the console. Course had been set hours ago, but he hadn't left the flight deck for anything. He'd grown used to having River's thoughts and emotions meld against his own for the past few months. Hell, he'd grown used to her presence period. Sleep wouldn't come tonight, or any night that River wasn't awake and alert and not in a box. Even the thought of sleep made his chest tingle from where she'd lie on it every night. As unusual as it was to him, he'd grown used to it, and wasn't quite ready to give it all up.

Taking in a deep breath, Kyo reached over to flip on the com system. He swiped the camera clean before tapping into Telofonix through the Cortex. Kyo then attached a small box with bright, LED lights onto the console that would ensure a secure channel for communication. He couldn't lead Blue Sun straight to the place they needed to be, after all.

On the monochrome screen, a face soon flickered into existence. It was one Kyo recognized well; squat face with a large nose; bushy white eyebrows and beard; coal black eyes. There were more lines on his face than Kyo'd remembered, but he still looked remarkably strong for a nearly seventy year-old man.

"Kyo? Is that really you?" asked the man incredulously on the other end. He kept wiping his eyes like they were playing tricks, or weren't functioning like they should.

"Yes, yi-shi," said Kyo tightly. "It's me."

"Jia-ru shang-di cun-zai biao-zi," exclaimed the man on the other end in disbelief.

"Well, wouldn't that be interesting," chuckled Kyo slightly. Kyo sobered up, however, and got to the heart of the matter. "We're coming into Angel, yi-shi. Got a girl who needs medical attention. She's got the affliction. Third stage from the sound of things."

"Mirage?" the man asked fearfully.

"No. Someone else."

"That's...bu-ke-neng," whispered the man.

"Maybe, but it's so," reported Kyo tersely. "We have others to prove it. Tell me you've come up with a cure in the last decade or so."

"Well, yes," said the man tentatively. "That is to say, I believe I did. It's hard to say, really. There's no way for me to test it, obviously, because neither you nor Mirage have come down with the malady. Kyo--"

"Be ready for our arrival," Kyo informed the man, cutting him off quickly. "We should be hitting Angel's atmo in under ten hours. We have the girl in a cryo-sleep container, so be ready to transport when we set down. Look for a Firefly-class transport."

"Kyo, just let--"

"You save her," said Kyo quickly in a very grave tone. "You save her, yi-shi. Then we'll talk...maybe. Probably not." With that, Kyo switched off the com before leaning back in his chair. He felt more tired than he should as he rubbed his brow wearily. It was going to be a long ten hours.

*****

The young boy, tall for his age of ten, stood calmly though surrounded on all sides by armored, Alliance soldiers. When a red light in the all white room turned on, they attacked without hesitation or mercy; unfortunately for them, the boy responded in kind. He had speed on his side, and genetically enhanced strength. More so, the soldiers underestimated him in spite of their training; children were targets they weren't accustomed to. He exploited them perfectly.

After dispatching three with a rapid succession of kicks, the boy caught a fist thrown by a fourth and snapped up with a high kick to his elbow, snapping it cleanly at the joint. While the man screamed, the boy brought his heel down on the soldier's kneecap, breaking that as well. Before the soldier collapsed to the ground, the boy flipped him over his shoulder and onto the hard floor. The last soldier ran up, but the boy threw out a kick with impressive flexibility to get the reach. The foot split the helmet off the last soldier's head, and he collapsed to the ground in an unconscious heap.

"Time," called a strong, but elderly voice. The boy with short, dark hair and gray eyes turned to look over at the old scientist with white hair, beard, bushy brow and big nose. He peered down at an antique stopwatch that he held in his hand with a smile. "That's a new record, One. Five troopers in fifteen seconds. Most impressive, boy. Most impressive."

"Thank you, sir," said the boy coolly and nodded in acceptance.

"Come, come, One," gestured the old man after he pressed a stud on the wall to open the concealed doors. "I think Dr. Mathias is almost ready for everyone's afternoon lesson."

"He is," said One, who followed the old man down the gray-blue corridor. His voice was clinical in its facts, and the distant quality of it related to the focus he employed to narrow his mental faculties for a specific target. The old man kept careful mental notes of all that when a pad was unavailable. If, in the unforseen event, he forgot, the children would remind him--they always did. "He's nervous. He's always nervous. Even his thoughts are nervous. Can't you handle our lessons, Dr. Hikari? It's so hard to learn from Dr. Mathias."

"Give Dr. Mathias some time, One," smiled Dr. Hikari in a grandfatherly fashion. "The lad merely needs to get his legs. You intimidate him; you all do. Each of you are more brilliant than he could even hope to be. It's only natural that there be some wounded pride or jealousy."

"It's not that," said One with a finite shake of his head. "He's lacking self-esteem. There are many embarassments in his past, and he hates the fact that we can see them all, so he dwells on them. He doesn't realize that if he'd stopped dwelling on them, he'd stop broadcasting them and we could ignore them. Twelve likes them, though; considers them hilarious, and they are to an extent."

"I see," chuckled Dr. Hikari fondly. "I'll make a note to speak with Dr. Mathias about that."

They strolled down the corridor for some time in silence, passing the occassional assistant or technician in the process. Alpha-site was a secret only known to Parliament, Dr. Hikari, Dr. Mathias, and the children--though, it was hard to keep a secret from them. All other staff were transported there under blindfold. Delieveries were made by Cleansers, whose loyalty to Blue Sun, the privatized sponsor of this program, was unquestionable.

"Dr. Hikari?" asked One, sounding so much like a real boy in his reluctant tone that he almost believed it to be so.

"Yes, One?" prompted Dr. Hikari.

"What is our purpose?" wondered the child, his head bowed slightly as he stared at the floor. "Why do we exist?"

"You know the answer to that, One," said Dr. Hikari with a frown. He tapped the side of his head for emphasis. "You know whatever I know, boy."

"Yes, and I know that, sir," said a slightly smiling One. "But, I mean, it's all wasted, isn't it? I know about Phase Three--we all know--but then what do we get to do? Are we going to be used practically? Will we fulfill our expected roles in our life? That doesn't seem...fair. It doesn't...feel right, to be made to do something, and not get to do it. I understand the reasons and the necessity, but I feel restless. I'm not the only one--even some of the doctors think so."

Dr. Hikari frowned at the questioned posed to him by One.

"I know that possibility has never entered your mind, Dr. Hikari," One added hurriedly. "I just thought it should be presented to you to think on. I wanted to know your opinion on the matter, once you had some time to think it through. Dr. Mathias is ready for my lesson now. Good-bye, Dr. Hikari."

"Good-bye, One," said a stunned Dr. Hikari while One exited the corridor through the door. Hikari began to feel his face heat as his mind shifted into overdrive. It was a waste, wasn't it? All those children already lost. Those children who have survived--that Hikari and the others were putting all their time and investment into--wouldn't see any practical usage. But then, what did it matter? The children weren't real children after all. If they weren't real, it was all right to toss them aside--like prototypes for a new vehical that have to go through extensive testing before a finished product can be massed produce. Yes, that was it.

Even though he'd arrived at an answer suitable for the subjects to hear, Dr. Hikari retraced his steps with a boulder steadily growing in the pit of his belly. As he walked down the hall, he passed directly through the ghostly image of River, who'd been observing everything with her head cocked to the side.

*****

Simon stared down at the white box that now contained his sister's body. An unwelcomed feeling of deja vu sent skin rippling shivers along his spine. He thought the first time would be the last time. The fact that both times were to save his sister's life didn't help matter any. She was a human being, not a piece of freight. She deserved sunlight and laughing, dancing, and, yes, even some love--although Simon still wanted to reserve veto power on who she could love, as petulant a thought it was to even himself.

"Sweetie?" came Kaylee's wonderful voice, making him turn his head to look at her. Married only a day, but somehow the joy of it seemed a million years in the past with this crisis. "You need to get some rest, hun."

"I've pulled longer shifts before," was Simon's answer, but there was no denying that at the mention of rest his eyelids felt ten times heavier.

"There ain't nothin' you can do now," said Kaylee, slipping under his left arm to stare down at the box. "Cap'n's takin' her to get help. Just gotta wait."

"I still don't know why we're going to Angel instead of Persephone," sighed Simon wearily.

"Cap'n says they got the help River needs," explained Kaylee. "Threw 'Nara for a loop too. She was tryin' to plot up somethin' with her Companion contacts. Thought the Guild mightn't ask too many questions if she said she had a Companion-in-training who needed the assistance in the Core."

"Sounds like it would've been an interesting plan," remarked Simon dryly.

"Mmhmm," Kaylee exclaimed, noting with a smile that Simon was putting more weight on her. "C'mon, sweetie, let's get you to bed."

"Bed," repeated Simon fondly; his eyes were half-open as a smile creeped over his lips. "No!" he contradicted suddenly, snapping awake and trying to stay on his feet. "No, m-my parents--I should talk to them."

Kaylee looked at Simon, taking in the reluctance all across his pretty face along with the stubborn glint in his eye. With a sigh, Kaylee tugged at Simon's hand to lead him down into the passenger area. Gabriel and Regan Tam were still seated in the passenger lounge, cuddling tightly against each other, while Hex hovered outside the infirmary. The one-eyed cook was staring intently at the unconscious bodies of the two surviving Readers from the attack.

"You should be getting yourself some sleep," Hex advised them gently--or as gentle as he could manage with his gravelly voice. "We'll be landing on Angel within the hour. A power nap certainly wouldn't hurt."

"No, but I don't think it'd do much good at the moment," said Simon in a meek form of self-deprication. Simon turned to look at his parents. Gabriel was staring right back at Simon; his face an unreadable mask.

Mal came peeking through the infirmary door shortly after Simon and Kaylee entered. Jayne was hovering over Mal's shoulder, chewing on an apple skewered by his knife. Simon tore his eyes away from his father's to stare over at Mal's placid face.

"Jayne, Hex, grab a stretcher," ordered Mal to the two biggest men. "Doc, why don't you fill me on what you've learned?"

"Subdermal transmitters," said Simon, walking into the infirmary to retrieve one jar filled with five, tiny, flesh-shaped ovals. "I've never seen this variety before. I wouldn't have noticed if I didn't do a complete body work on the dead ones."

"Er-zi shen biao-zi, they broadcastin'?" asked Mal tensely while he shook the jar slightly.

"Well, they were," admitted Simon. "Scramblers didn't kill the signal--they were running on some ultra-high, narrow-band frequency--but fortunately physical damage is always effective."

"How far back?"

"Few hours ago," reported Simon.

"So, it's a fair bet that every Alliance ship in the system might be on our tail?" laughed Mal in disbelief. "Well, ain't this a pickle? Don't matter much now, seein' as we're almost there, and your sister's in need of the help. We'll cross that rickety bridge when we get there, same as always."

"There's more," interjected Simon just as Mal turned to leave. Simon cast a glance over towards his parents before returning his gaze to Mal. "Inside of the crates were some sort of overide switch. The crates work fine, so they should've been asleep and unable to use the switch to manually overide the locking mechanism, unless..."

"Unless what, Simon?" Mal asked tensely, casting a look over to Gabriel and Regan Tam.

"Unless there was a trigger of some kind to wake them up," finished Simon.

"We talkin' physical trigger--the sort me and Zoe might find iff'n we tear 'part your folks' belongings? Or we talkin' the type of trigger like back on the Maidenhead?" Mal wanted to know; his hand dropping down to his pistol grip automatically.

"Subliminal, I think," said Simon hurriedly, certainly not wishing to place blame on his parents. "If it were a remote of some kind, my parents would've triggered it the moment we were all asleep and not a second sooner."

"Safe to say," nodded Mal, easing his hand away from his gun.

"The children weren't triggered until River stepped into the cargo bay," continued Simon. "I think she was the trigger."

"And what about now? They gonna be risin' up in close proximity to your sister?" asked Mal, again his hand slipping down to his pistol while he stared at the two children.

"It's a fair bet," temporized Simon. "Cryo-sleep is as deep as the drug-induced coma I've put them in. There's no way of confirming if the safeword terminated the subliminal command."

"All right, we'll seal off the infirmary when we leave, maybe leave Jayne back to keep an eye on 'em," said Mal tentatively. "Now go on and tend to your sister. She needs to be out of the box when we land. Kyo says the help'll be waitin' for us the minute we touch down."

"You trust them?" Simon had to ask.

"I trust Kyo," was all Mal could say to reassure the doctor.

*****

A beeping sound echoed through the rustically rendered den. Azrael raised his brow at the sound, and Mr. Khan smiled apologetically before he reached into his suit pocket. He retrieved a palm-sized, leather-bound tablet, which he clicked open. With a press of his thumb on a gray, circular button, he answered the call. The mildly blank face of a Cleanser stared back at him, with a brightly lit backdrop of the interior of an Alliance cruiser behind him.

"Report," prompted Mr. Khan.

"Lost contact with the tranceivers five hours ago," said the Cleanser in the screen. "We traced it back to Station Thirty. It appears the Tams and their cargo got off on the station before they acquired passage with a Firefly-class transport."

"And does this Firefly-class transport have a name?" inquired Mr. Khan with triumphant mirth.

The embarassed and downcast expression of the Cleanser sucked the mirth out of Mr. Khan's face like a lightswitch. "No, Mr. Khan, unfortunately we do not. They landed without broadcasting their registration."

"What do the citizens of the Alliance pay the police for? It's their job to ensure all ships have their seals in order, and log their registration each time they dock," said a barely restrained and irritable Mr. Khan.

"Yes, sir," said a deeply apologetic Cleanser. "Three planets were in the area where the signal went dead. I've scrambled ships to scan the worlds for a Firefly-class transport."

"Keep me informed," ordered Mr. Khan before he snapped the tablet shut to end the transmission. He replaced the pad into his jacket and turned his attention back to Azrael, who seemed to be smiling smugly despite his polite expression. "You seem awfully smug, Azrael. I notice you haven't received word yet."

"Yes, but in my situation, no news is good news," answered an amused Azrael.

"My news would be better if only your command ship had survived your mission," glowered Mr. Khan. "Then we'd have the name of the ship that Simon and River Tam have stowed away on. Alas, that ship was destroyed by Reavers, and as per your Operative status, you don't send hardcopies of your reports. As I assume you won't tell me the name now, is there anything you can tell me about them?"

Azrael paused and swiped at his eyebrows to smooth them down, apparently formulating a diplomatic answer. "They are resourceful--more than you can imagine. You've not yet dealt with the likes of them, Mr. Khan. They won't be easy prey. In fact, I think it'd be best if you decided not to make yourself a target for them. You saw what they did with Miranda. You wouldn't want Blue Sun's deepest, darkest secrets to be pulled into the light, would you?"

Mr. Khan leaned forward menacingly across the table; flames practically licking out from his narrowed eyes. "They're one crew; one ship. We are many, and we are strong. They are no more dangerous than the bug that class of ship is named after."

"Ah, but a firefly creates its own light," was Azrael's reply. "And the 'verse could always use some illumination."

*****

Kyo piloted Serenity quickly but gently through the atmosphere of the white moon Angel. It was sparsely dotted with green fields and large lakes, but no farmlands or oceans to speak of. That, more than anything, marked Angel as a border world and not a part of the Core. Core worlds were much better terraformed than the Rim worlds, but those harsh environments worked to the advantage of smugglers. Case in point, the mountains that Serenity was headed towards.

He'd been to the secret base many times, and knew the route like the back of his hand. Not like it really mattered. With his Reading abilities kicked open full, all he needed to do was pinpoint the one brain crazy enough to live out in that wilderness. There were a multitude of reasons why he didn't want to do that; chief among those reasons was the tentative grip he had on River's mind. He was pouring all the concentration he could spare into keeping her anchored to the world, hoping to keep her mind stimulated while the rest of her systems shut down. Even if that meant baring all the secrets he'd locked away.

Nearing a very complicated stretch of snow-capped, white mountains, Kyo reached over to flip a switch on the box he'd attached to Serenity's console. Five mountain peaks fizzled away to reveal a gaping hole in the mountain farthest back. The holographic equipment had been risky to steal from out under the Alliance's noses, and a prototype no less, but it made the greatest cover. Kyo was amazed to find it still working after nearly a decade.

Serenity swooped into the open hangar just before the holographic field re-emerged. Even though the interior of Serenity was well shielded, Kyo swore he felt the hairs on his arm raise against the high electric charge of the field. He saw them clearly on the landing pad; a team of doctors and Dr. Hikari himself waiting patiently for the ship to land. For a moment their eyes locked and the doctor nodded, just before Kyo set down Serenity. There was something in that look--a promise that rattled against Kyo's attention--but he didn't pay too much attention to it. Everything was going towards River.

*****

"That'd be us landin'," said Mal from the hangar controls as Serenity gave a slight lurch. He switched on the button that controlled the ramp so they could peer out through the diamond-shaped portholes in the door. They appeared to be scientists or doctors, from what Mal could see, and the short, old man at the front certainly seemed harmless. He turned to look up at the catwalk where Zoe was standing with her sawn-off rifle at the ready, just in case. She gave a nod back to indicate she was ready, and Mal gave a nod right back. "All right, Hex, Jayne, get ready to move River. I'm openin' her up."

Mal clicked the button to activate the main doors and took a step back with his hand going to his pistol grip. Simon stood defiantely on the metal grating that bisected the middle of Serenity's floor, acting like a human buffer against potential harm and his unconscious sister. The harsh, guarded look on his face melted into one of utmost shock, however, as the short, old man stepped into the cargo bay.

"Professor Hikari?" whispered Simon in disbelief as he stared at the unforgetably large nose, beard and brow.

"Simon?" frowned the man in a strong voice that'd been weighed down by aged. "Where's the patient?"

"Behind Simon, yi-shi," called out Kyo, who was scrambling down the stairs like Serenity was about to explode. Inara's training instantly pegged the stiff, guarded posture the man, Hikari, had assumed at Kyo's presence. "It's his sister."

"Sister?" stammered Hikari, and Simon took a step aside so that the old man could see River. A horrified Hikari turned his attention back to Kyo, who'd finally jumped down to the cargo bay floor. "But the disease, that's--"

"Stage three," said Kyo coldly, picking up River's stretcher easily by spreading his arms as far as possible, and reaching over River's body to grab the handholds diagonally opposite from each other. Jayne and Hex took a step back in surprise. River wasn't heavy in the slightest, but handling a stretcher with one person was mighty cumbersome. The contorted position he'd been made to assume should've weighed him down some, but Kyo walked to the awaiting gurney like he was just carrying air between his fingers.

"She's been exhibiting symptoms for two days, and she's been in the coma for thirteen hours," reported Kyo clinically as he set her down onto the gurney. The paramedics strapped her in immediately and began to attach readers onto her finger and neck. "We delayed the spread by placing her in a cryo-sleep container."

"Get her to lab four, we've had it prepped," ordered Hikari to the paramedics, equally assuming a clinical mode, but the tension between the two was palpable to any who could see it. He turned to Kyo as they wheeled River into the cold, gray hangar with moss growing on tubing and dim lights flickering overhead. "Are you open?"

"Wide," said Kyo, "but I need it to anchor her."

"That's all we need," assured Hikari while they strolled briskly behind the paramedics. Simon had rushed off after them immediately along with Kaylee, Gabriel and Regan. Mal stayed behind for a moment and ordered Jayne and Hex to keep a sharp eye on the sleeping beauties resting in the infirmary--much to Jayne's displeasure--then he, Zoe, and Inara charged off after everyone else.

They followed through winding corridors, both tight and wide, and ranging in consistency of looking bombed out and brand new. Mal thought some of the architecture looked familiar--old shelters and bunkers from the war. Everything had a piecemeal quality to it, like it'd been fitted together with spit and glue and prayer.

The procession finally burst through flat, gray double-doors with a sign marked "Lab Four" in block letters hanging haphazardly by only two nails above it. Simon went to rush in along with Kyo, but Hikari turned around and laid an old, prune-shriveled hand on Simon's chest.

"Last I heard, you made trauma surgeon on Osiris," said Hikari, with a mild glimmer of pride in his eye. Simon gave a hesitant nod and tried to push past Hikari, but the man held him firm. "This isn't a place for trauma surgeons, Simon. You can watch from the observation level." With that, Hikari walked backwards into the room and shut the doors as he retreated.

Simon didn't wait long. The moment Hikari slipped behind the doors, he dashed up the stairs to the left that curved around the circular room. He violently crashed through the flat doors there, and jumped down the short, flights of stairs until he pressed himself up against the dividing glass. Gabriel and Regan weren't far behind him, but instead of watching the proceedings, they took the nearest chairs they could find.

"Someone's got a twisted sense of entertainment," remarked Mal in an undertone as he, Inara, Zoe, and Kaylee made their way down the stairs at a much more controlled pace.

"They're modelled on designs from Earth-that-was," came a new voice from the door, which made Mal and Zoe turn like lightning. They saw a woman standing there, no older than Kaylee, with mousy brown hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. She was dressed in a white lab coat, starched shirt, and trousers like all the other doctors, except she clutched a clipboard tightly against her chest. "Back then they used to have observation levels like this for students to watch proceedures. These days it's not necessary with holo-recordings and the like in the Core, but out here... I'm sorry, my name is Melody Hikari. I'm Dr. Hikari's granddaughter."

"Captain Reynolds," said Mal with a curt nod. "This here's Inara, Zoe, Kaylee. Back down yonder, lookin' like he's pressed up against a pet store, is Simon. Sittin' are his folks, Gabriel and Regan."

"That's a lot to take in, Captain," smiled Melody good-naturedly as she made her way down the stairs. Kaylee tugged at Simon's shirt-sleeve and he pulled back from the glass enough to give his wife a one-armed embrace. Mal, Zoe and Inara stand some distance away from the pair, observing everything down below tensely.

Melody's eyes caught Kyo being strapped into an operating chair not far from River's, and a frown marred her childish looking face. "That's Kyo, isn't it? I haven't seen him since I was a girl."

"Care to fill us in on the situation?" asked Mal tightly.

"I would, but ye-ye never speaks much of his life before he set up Cadmus," said Melody apologetically.

"Kyo and Dr. Hikari didn't part on the best of terms, did they?" asked Inara, catching everyone's attention. At Mal's questioning look, Inara continued, "I could read it plain as day. There's so much tension between the two, it's a wonder something didn't snap."

"I don't remember much of it," admitted Melody with a shrug. "I think it was the second year of the war when Kyo left to enlist. Ye-ye wasn't happy about it, and they had a huge zheng-lun. It'd been building for years, though. Ye-ye and Kyo never got along well, but I could never understand it. Ye-ye and Kyo were always so nice and kind to me, and to everyone really."

"You didn't call him 'doctor,' son, you called him 'professor,'" said Gabriel warily, an arm slung around the shoulder of his shivering wife. "Are you sure he's qualified to be helping our River?"

"I don't know," said Simon slowly, not tearing his eyes from the scene below. "I knew him from the medacad. He was a professor there for my neuro-biology and physiology. He left, though, shortly before I graduated."

"That'd be when Cadmus was completed," supplied Melody helpfully. "Ye-ye was using his teaching position as a cover. It allowed him continuous access to the medical equipment that Kyo would later steal."

"What is it with docs and their criminal mindedness?" asked Mal rhetorically, to which Zoe and Kaylee gave small smiles--Kaylee's more on the prideful side as she gave Simon's side a squeeze.

"Simon, you didn't--"

"This is life, Dad," was all Simon could say to his father. "If you're going to live out in the Rim, it's something you're going to have to grow accustomed to it. Besides, it's not like your hands are any less dirty than mine."

Gabriel opened his mouth defensively, but shut it as he had no retort for his son. Simon was in no mood to listen to a lecture either. His eyes were glued onto the operation below as he watched Dr. Hikari work on River after sedating Kyo for an unknown reason. Moreover, Simon had no idea why there were neural images of both River and Kyo floating up in the air, but both were highly active judging from the colors, which was a good sign against River's failing nervous system.

*****

Kyo recognized his younger self, along with the domed room he found himself in. It was the central lab of the old facility, with its white and grays, and sleek, sterile machinery. The smell of the cold air made his head feel light for a moment, and though his shape was merely a projection, the nausea felt quite real. Not all his memories of this place were fond ones, and judging from the dark-skinned, emaciated boy laying on the table, this was one of the worst.

He turned from the scene playing out before him and spotted River sitting on a nearby counter, watching everything with interest. She caught his look and smiled brightly to him--a smile he'd hope to see back in reality real soon--and beckoned him over to an empty space beside her.

"Christmas!" she beamed, brushing her shoulder against his, which conveyed her unfiltered elation through their link. "Thank you for the present!"

"I'd hardly consider my deepest, darkest memories to be a present, lai," Kyo protested as he leaned against the counter and folded his arms across his chest.

"But they're special," River stated, dipping her head to peer intently into his eyes. "Cornerstones. Foundations. They hurt you. They define you. Asks questions that need answering--and I am a genus, remember?" Kyo said nothing as the doors slid open to reveal a young girl with pure, ivory skin and golden blonde hair. Mirage, only she wasn't Mirage yet--just a number, like him. River pouted some before adding, "I didn't get you anything."

"You just wake up, lai, and you'll give me the 'verse," Kyo requested earnestly, uncrossing his arms to take her hands in his own. Fear overwhelmed him then, an emotion that didn't happen often, but this memory reeked of it. It was hard for him not to notice the parallels; that back in the real world, it was River lying on the table, suffering from the same affliction that had just robbed Twelve of life.

"I won't sleep like him," River promised, sending waves of reassurance through their link that Kyo grasped onto tightly. She turned her head to look at the memory, and her eyes focused immediately on the dead boy on the table. "He was Twelve, but he was also the eighteenth--eighteenth flower to die. Kept making you laugh, even until the end. You loved his jokes and his impersonations. I liked them too."

"Everyone thought I was the tree of our little 'family,'" said Kyo softly. He walked away from River to stand beside his younger self, who was arguing with Mirage; asking the "Why's" and the "How's," and voicing the fear of not knowing whether he should fight for survival against cancellation, or if he should just accept it like a good experiment. "I wasn't, though. It was Twelve and his unflappable humor. We would've all gone crazy if Twelve didn't keep us entertained. Hell, I still think I've gone crazy most of the time."

"He was like Mal," said River, now standing right beside Kyo. "The old Mal, which is to say in contradiction, the young Mal; the Mal of the war. Cheerful, upbeat, quick with a story and a joke. You're not wrong when you say he was the rock, but then you're not right either. If you weren't there to be strong and steady, he wouldn't feel comfortable joking. You were a pair."

Kyo said nothing. He just laid his hand upon the stiff, wrinkled brow of Twelve. A bitter pain of longing swallowed up Kyo, as the contact called forth all of Twelve's voice--his laughter--and with it, the faces of all nineteen siblings he'd once had. It was a raging sea of depression and loneliness that Kyo'd found himself lost in more than once in his life.

A sharp tug on his sleeve and a whimper brought his attention back to River. She seemed to be more translucent, and flickered with every shiver of her body. Kyo removed his hand from Twelve's head to embrace the quivering River.

"D-don't!" she cried out, and Kyo could feel the panic radiating from her. "Don't leave! Can't get lost, not now! N-need--need--"

"Shh," soothed Kyo while rubbing the small of her back. "Not leaving, lai. Not leaving."

"Brook. Small river," she smiled against his chest once she'd calmed down. "Time doesn't stand still. It moves, and you have to move with it. Can't stay anchored in the past, or it'll tear you to pieces."

Like someone had switched channels on the Cortex, the lab flickered away just as Dr. Hikari entered. It was the meadow his mind often created as a manifistation of his memories. The solid, bare tree that stood rooted in the emerald grass, under the clear, sunny sky. Flowers of all shapes and colors spread out from the tree, but none were closer than the flower colored in all shades of blue that made a spiral design out of the petals.

"It's not what you think," River told him softly as they stood between the flower and the tree. "Doesn't matter what it is or what it isn't. What matters is what I need."

Kyo smiled as he laid his head down on top of hers. He pressed a soft kiss into her hair before saying in his acquired accent, "Well, you best be wakin' up soon, lai, 'cause I need you just as much as you need me, y'hear?"

"Trying, but there's holes in the dress and the weaver's working as fast as she can," River replied with a slight frown. "How about we open more presents?"

"Fine," groaned Kyo good-naturedly. "Which one?"

*****

Dr. Hikari walked into the observation level after the operation was complete. All eyes turned on him expectedly while he walked down the stairs on shaky legs. Melody moved to help her grandfather, but the most he would accept was laying his hand on her shoulder. Down in the operating room, Kyo and River were both laying sedately on tables, and no one had any indication if the procedure had been a success.

"Well?" prompted Gabriel aggressively, with his shoulders thrown back and his chin raised.

"We've done all we can," said Hikari in a tired voice. "We've stabilized her failing systems with a measure of stop-gap solutions until the restorative serum I injected can take effect. Only time will tell whether we were successful or not. If we were, she should be waking within the next few hours."

"What's wrong with her?" asked Simon who was frowning in confusion.

Hikari took a deep, steadying breath before sitting down on the nearest, blood-red chair. "We had no name for the disease. The more poetical ones among us, took to calling it the Serpent's Trick. Eight of our children in Project Gilgamesh succumbed to it. Strange that River should suffer it as well."

"You know what they did to River?" demanded Gabriel angrily. His eyes narrowed and he moved to confront the doctor, only to be restrained forcibly by Zoe. "Did you do this her? You pu tamade hundun!"

"Language, Dad," remonstrated Simon in a deadpan. "Professor Hikari, I--I don't understand."

"That makes two--no," Mal counted off the heads of everyone, "a bunch of people who feel a mite out of the loop, Doctor, Professor, whatever, so tell us everythin', and don't spare the scientist gab. Simon here'll translate, hopefully."

"I suppose the beginning would be the place to start," sighed Hikari with a nervous smile on his face. "Sixteen years before the Unification War, the Alliance already knew it was a possibility. Loyalties were so split among the worlds, that if negotiations and amendments failed to satisfy dissenters in a peacful manner, a war would be massive and it would be bloody. In the infinite wisdom of the Parliament, they decided to create a weapon to limit casualties in the Alliance; special assassins who'd infiltrate enemy lines and wipe out whole battalions; kill high-ranking officials to cut off the head of the enemy. Me, being young--well, younger--and loyal to the Alliance, thought a more efficient war would be a more humane one. Silly me."

"Sixteen years?" repeated Simon in confusion. "River wasn't even born then."

"Surprise to me as well," admitted Hikari, shifting his eyes down to where the operating room lay beneath the floor. "You see Project Gilgamesh was deemed a failure two years before the war. Per standard, covert operating procedures, all data was destroyed with only one hard copy existing within the files of the Prime Minister. River is evidence that they started again. Worse, they started with real children."

"Real children?" Mal prompted. "What'd you start with? Rabbits?"

"Kyo was one of them, wasn't he?" asked Zoe cuttingly. "That's why he and River get along so well. Hell, that explains why he was such a good pilot in the war. He always knew where to go, like he knew exactly what the enemy pilots were thinkin', despite him bein' so young."

Hikari nodded in confirmation, and Mal had to say, "Well, it seems to me that Kyo's real, so whyn't you explain again, Doc?"

"Looks can be deceiving--"

"Captain Reynolds," Melody informed her grandfather.

"Captain Reynolds," finished Dr. Hikari, nodding his thanks to Melody. "There were twenty subjects in the initial version. And, yes, Kyo was one of them--the first, actually."

"Why was it a failure?" asked Simon as he leaned back against the glass.

"Why else?" laughed Hikari hollowly. "Money. You see, the goal of Project Gilgamesh was to create a small regiment of ultimate warriors. To accomplish this, cloning technology would be needed, but as any scientist knows, cloning successively is ultimately detrimental. There's no evolution, no variation, and so eventually the clones would find themselves susceptible to the most seemingly insignificant thing. To get around that, a large, compatible gene pool was required. We would then be able to mix and match with every generation to keep the strain fresh."

"Twenty hardly seems like a large number," Simon pointed out.

"Again, money. It was all the Alliance could afford," explained Hikari. "You see the twenty weren't taken, or volunteered, they were created. Specifically created. We genetically engineered people."

"That's--that's--ke-pa! Bu-ren-dao ke-pa!" whispered a truly horrified Simon, who'd grown extra pale.

"We talkin' clones here, Doc?" asked Zoe. "Gene-babies?"

"No," said Hikari. "Clones were the final phase of the project, once we had pure bases to work with. Gene-babies would be useful, but not enough. You see, we desired absolute control over all variables. Babies produced through natural means are--how can I put this--chaotically random? To get around that, we built each child from the cellular level. Kyo has no parents, and so, is not human in the traditional--or legal--sense. Every trait, every cell, we engineered from scratch before incubating him for nine months. The side-effect to this process was a disassociation of sorts from the subjects. They weren't technically human under any recognized charter, and so we could work with a clear conscience."

"Bu-ke-neng," exclaimed Inara, and everyone else had similiarly stupefied expressions on their face--Melody included.

"Is it?" scoffed Hikari with a harsh slap on his knee. "In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, mankind mapped the human genome and came up with the first, crude, cloning procedure. Do you think technology would've stalled on that front in five-hundred years? The only draw back was the cost to isolate and spur cellular mitosis. That and we had to develop brand new technology to incubate a baby for nine months; starting all the way from a tiny embryo. We wanted no risk of contamination, and so having a woman artificially carry the children was out of the question. The incubation process was the most cost consuming resource, and limited the number we could produce. If the experiment had been a success, the Alliance would've swallowed the cost, or would've tried to streamline production."

"Well, if that ain't a noble reason to pay taxes I just don't know what is," commented Mal glibly, trying to use his humor help digest a monumentally disturbing revelation. "Makes you ashamed that we fly under the Alliance radar so often, don't it, Zoe?"

"Tragic, sir," deadpanned Zoe.

"Oh, it's not all taxes," promised Hikari dryly. "A project of that scale? There's a good deal of privatizing that's gone in it. More often than not, Blue Sun picks up the tab."

"Why ain't I surprised?" sighed Mal in exasperation. "Things we been hearin' makes it sound like Blue Sun's the boogeyman."

"That I can't say," shrugged Hikari. "I've dealt with the C.E.O. of Blue Sun and the Prime Minister of the Alliance, and I honestly couldn't tell you which one is less duplicious."

"How did the twenty die?" asked Simon. "Why is Kyo the only survivor?"

"Kyo's not the only survivor," corrected Dr. Hikari. "There were two out of the twenty. Kyo and Mirage."

"M-Mirage?" exclaimed a floored Mal, who began to gape like a fish. "Captain Mirage? Tall girl; blonde, ivory skin; looks like a statue? That Mirage?"

"Ah, you've met her," chuckled Dr. Hikari. "Is she well?"

"Oh, she's well," sputtered Mal. "Nearly blew our gorram ship outta space, she's so well!"

"She's a pirate," supplied Kaylee helpfully.

"A pirate?" asked Hikari incredulously. "She never seemed like the type to me."

"All right, so two of the twenty survived, but the others?" prompted Simon, wanting to get back on track.

"Right, right," said Hikari who nodded apologetically. "Well, we lost five during the incubation. Either they didn't accept it, or their cellular structures degenerated beyond repair. Out of the remaining fifteen, we lost two before they reached five years, and another three before they reached nine. Mostly due to surgeries, or insanity on account of their mental abilities. One of them was through a plain accident."

"But the ten..."

"The Serpent's Trick," confirmed Dr. Hikari gravely. "You see, we planned their genetic structure perfectly. We expected to lose some, but ten was still acceptable. Unfortunately, there was something we didn't anticipate."

"Which was?" asked Simon.

"Puberty," Dr. Hikari told them with a wry smile. "Hormonal imbalances and emotional shifts. They wreaked absolute havoc with our perfection."

"But River's--"

"I know," said Dr. Hikari placatingly. "I know, Simon. River's too old for that, but puberty was only the trigger for the disease. It pushed the children beyond their limits until their bodies couldn't handle the strain. Now, admittedly, I don't know what they did to your sister. I have some idea, but Kyo was grown from scratch to meet specific parameters. Your sister... I'm not entirely sure how they made her, perhaps it was a delayed incubation of the disease, but she had it."

"Kyo never got it?" Mal asked.

"Neither Kyo, nor Mirage came down with it," said Hikari. "It wasn't so much some natural immunity to the disease, so much as it was luck. We determined that, if we were to clone Kyo or Mirage, there'd be a high probability of some of the clones coming down with the disease. Which is another reason why the project was terminated."

"This is preposterious," blustered Gabriel. "You--you... I don't--"

"Gabe, please," said Regan, trying to restrain his anger.

"What they did to your sister, Simon, was mostly surgical and psychological," diagnosed Hikari, ignoring Gabriel for the time being. "I could discern that much from my initial scan. I'd like to find out more, but examining River more thoroughly might prove...harmful..."

"Well, this is your lucky day, Doc," said Mal, drawing the com box out of his front shirt pocket. "We got five more; three dead, two unconscious. Thinkin' you might do an autopsy on the three, see what you can 'bout deprogrammin' the other two. We're on a time table, though. They had a transmitter in 'em. We weren't followed, but quicker is better."

"I'll see what I can do," promised Dr. Hikari.

*****

"More tea?" Azrael asked Mr. Khan, hefting a fine, porcelain teapot and looking directly at the gilded cup sitting before the man.

"No, thank you," Mr. Khan declined politely with a smile and a raised palm. At that moment, his coat pocket beeped again and he withdrew his leather bound tablet. He pressed the large, gray button and answered the wave. "Yes?"

"Still no sign of the Firefly," reported the Cleanser, much to Mr. Khan's ire. "However, long range sensors on the cruiser Telemachus have picked up an usual amount of energy being displaced deep in the Zodiac mountain range on Angel. No geothermal activity has ever been recorded in Angel's post-terraforming history, Mr. Khan."

"A base, perhaps?" mused Mr. Khan thoughtfully. "Some hidden installation?"

"We cross-referenced any previous anomalies," continued the Cleanser. "There are rumors of a hidden med-lab on Angel, where anyone can get very qualified, but highly affordable medical attention. Moreover, several captured, unregistered doctors have cited a Cadmus Institute as their center of learning. We have yet been unable to substantiate these rumors."

"Then do so now," ordered Mr. Khan firmly. "I don't care if you have to turn over every rock, or dig a ditch into the very core of that moon, I want that installation found! There is not a doubt in my mind that the Tams, and the children, are there. The list of places they could have ran to is very limited."

"Yes, sir," said the Cleanser before the wave terminated.

Mr. Khan smiled honestly for the first time in a day as he slipped the pad back into his jacket. He turned that smile towards a glacierlike Azrael and gloated, "Shall we be preparing the sword for you, now?"

*****

"I can't believe what they did to her," said Gabriel softly as he stood outside the glass window. River's condition had mercifully improved to the point where she could respond to external stimuli, and could breathe without the aid of a pump. They decided to move her to a room that might be more comfortable to wake up in, given River's previous aversion to operating rooms and infirmaries. Simon wasn't entirely comfortable with Kyo being moved into the same room, but he could understand the reasons for it now that he knew more about the man's past.

The man... Was he a man? Even Simon had to question that, but there was no mistaking the wince when he did so.

"Believe it, Dad," said Simon, who'd long ago came to terms with River's condition. Ever since Ariel when he'd first seen the scars for himself. Miranda only magnified that for Simon.

"You could stay here, you know?" said Gabriel. It was such an abrupt turn in the conversation that Simon thought he'd imagined it for a moment, but Gabriel's expectant look told him otherwise. "This place is...well, it'd be good for all of us, I suppose. River could get the help she needs, you could be the doctor you were supposed to be, and your mother and I could take care of you."

"Take--take care of me?" laughed Simon in utter disbelief. "Dad, I stopped needing you the moment I took River from the Academy--we stopped needing you. And have you forgotten the part where I'm married? Kaylee loves Serenity, and I'd never do anything that'd take her away from that ship. River loves Serenity too, for that matter! They're good for her--been good for her! Good for us."

Simon turned to walk away, but paused as an odd thought finally pushed its way from the back of his mind to the front. With a very suspicious look, he faced his father again. That look immediately put Gabriel on the defensive, and did a lot to confirm Simon's burgeoning suspicions.

"That's why you wanted to find us, isn't it? It wasn't just to apologize to me and River, you actually wanted things to go back to the way they were. You wanted to control our lives again, just like when you pushed me to become a doctor, or sent River off to the Academy--"

"I did no such thing!" interjected Gabriel heatedly, taking a step forward to Simon and pointing a finger at his son's chest. "No one forced you to become a doctor, Simon, and we didn't send River off to the Academy--she wanted to go just as badly! Don't you put this blame on me or your mother!"

"Dedicated source box, brilliant doctor," repeated Simon, who showed no signs of backing down. "That was the deal, wasn't it?"

"It was just a joke," countered Gabriel.

"A joke that lasted my whole life," stated Simon. "All you ever cared about was my career, even when River was trapped in that hell hole, you were only worried about me becoming Medical Elect, or my position at the hospital! And you could've verified the Academy instead of sending River there blindly! It's not like we'd ever heard of it before!"

"We had no reason to suspect!" retorted Gabriel. "None! Not even you! And we cared about your future! As any good parent would! You worked so hard and we didn't want to see you throw it all away!"

"HEY!" shouted Kyo's sleepy voice from the door, capturing the Tams' attention. He was dressed in a not so flattering hospital gown, which he only seemed to be aware of at the moment he'd spoken, and was leaning against the door frame for support. "The hell d'you think you're doin'? This is a hospital for cryin' out loud."

Kyo waited until Simon and Gabriel both looked appropriately contrite before continuing in a smirk, "Now ain't this a strange position to be in; me bein' dressed in nothin' but this here thin cotton, same as your sister and your daughter. So what say I get dressed and leave, 'cause I got me a pretty little angel that wants to say 'ni hao' to the pair of you."

At the jerk of Kyo's head, Simon peered through the open blinds of the window to see River look at the three of them. She gave a smile at Simon's look of utter relief, and gave a slight wave to her father. Kyo tossed her a smirk over his shoulder, and over their very open connection warned her jokingly not to stare too hard at his bare ass. To which River sent back waves of mock condescending criticism, and stuck her tongue out at him.

*****

Dr. Hikari peeled off his bloodied latex gloves and stepped back from the coroner's table. Every snap of the glove or squeek of his heel on the tile floor seemed magnified in the absurdly quiet space. Even his breath seemed too loud to his own ears. Dr. Hikari massaged the sweat saturated powder from the gloves into his hands as he strode away from the three bodies laid out beneath the harsh lights. He turned to the rear of the oblong room, where the two live subjects still lay unconscious, covered only by an iridescent thermal blanket.

"Initiate log on my mark," he spoke softly, but firmly, to the empty room. "Mark." A click and beep from the far console indicated the microphones were active and the computer was recording, and so Dr. Hikari began his report. "Completed a full autopsy of each...child. Their ages range from eighteen to twenty-two years. Full-spectrum analysis reveals severe scarring on the brain tissue, and the faded bruises on the neck and arms are indicative of multiple exposure to needles. Mem-scan reveals exhaustive tampering to have been done in the subjects' minds on account of an unknown psychoactive drug introduced into their systems.

"Comparison to the results of the primary experiment reveals that the goal of the second version was to exceed the expectations we set. They used the original twenty as blue prints and sought to push beyond that. They went so far as to strip the amygdala and surgically manipulate the temporal lobe, so that the children will never be able to shut off their ability to Read. Lei-shui ci-bei, they were just children. Mathias really did have self-esteem issues."

"How're they different from River?" came a voice from the door, which startled Hikari tremendously. The doctor fumbled for the remote in his pocket to pause recording as he spun around to spy Kyo, half enshrouded by the shadows with his arms folded. He wasn't dressed in the flightsuit he wore when he arrived, but in combat boots, trousers, shirt and brown duster. With the gunbelt slung at his hip, Hikari realized he'd never seen Kyo like this before.

"You aren't open?" wondered Hikari.

"I am," said Kyo as he moved around the corpses to stand beside Hikari, "but I'm focusin' my attention on River. Your thoughts are just...pressure. I ain't peakin'."

"The accent's new," remarked Hikari, raising a bushy brow at Kyo.

"I've changed, yi-shi," said Kyo, who wasn't looking at Hikari at all, but stared down at the still forms of Jack and Marla--the only surviving Academy children from the fight on Serenity. "Changed a lot. War does that to folk. This is who I am, yi-shi. Ain't One no more, and I ain't your son."

Hikari took in a shuddering breath at that proclaimation and bowed his head. It hurt; it hurt so much that even Kyo could feel it, as much as he was trying to ignore Hikari's thoughts. In fact, Kyo hadn't even been expecting such a powerful response, and couldn't suppress the surprise that flickered across his features.

"Surprised?" asked Hikari, noticing the look on Kyo's face. "Well, it's understandable. I had no right to stop you from going off to war, Kyo. I realized that not long after you left. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, as they say." Hikari gave a bitter smile while he dragged a metal stool close to him so that he could rest his aching knees; arthritis was setting in, despite the treatment he'd prescribed. It was he who was surprised when Kyo moved to assist him, as if the younger man had finally realized how old Hikari was becoming.

"Yi-shi..." Kyo began to say, but Hikari forestalled it with his raised palm.

"Now, now, there's no need for you to go and be all apologetic," said Hikari with a wry smile. "Just--just let an old man say his piece. Now, like I said, I had no right to dictate your life. I'd never been a father to you, and never thought of you as a son until my own was taken from me. That wasn't fair, and I realize that. I did no favors for you, jumping between positions your whole life. One day you were a real boy to me, but then I'd think it over and become confused on the matter. Another day, I'd consider you to be my crowning scientific acheivement, and think you only as a marvelous specimen.

"I know that confused you greatly. You were all so impressionable to our thoughts. You'd take our personalities and just...meld them into your own. It's no secret that you were my favorite then, and you were never far from myself when I was near. It was you I had the highest hopes for, and you who were the leader and guide for all the others. I suppose you patterned a lot of yourself on me."

"Some," admitted Kyo with a nod, but there was a fond twinkle in his gray eyes that told Hikari how much that "some" was. "Actually--uh--some of it was patterned on the memory of your son, 'fore...y'know..."

"It was my mistake," said Hikari to cover the uncomfortable feeling that permeated the room for a second. After a contemplative beat he added, "Again. Seeing you huddled over each and every one of your siblings that became sick and died should've finalized it for me--and it did, after a while, because it certainly made me disobey the order to terminate all of you--but I never got it until you left, not Mirage."

"And what's that?"

"I got so wrapped up in trying to find out whether or not you were human, or metahuman, or a failed experiment, that I never saw you. You, Kyo. You have your own identity, strengths and flaws. Saving you and Mirage remains the greatest choice I've ever made--well, short of marrying my wife, God rest her soul. You said it yourself when you walked in here; This is who you are!" and Hikari emphasized his point by poking Kyo's chest, right over his heart.

"Yi--Dr. Hikari," said Kyo thickly, and he could detect a smile from River across their link. Just calling him by his name brought a smile to Hikari's old face. "There ain't no need to be apologizin', Doc. After all, we're only human."

*****

"Family's together," smiled River contentedly as she snuggled back into her sheets.

"Yes, mei-mei, we are," Simon agreed, taking her hand in his. He looked out the window to where his father had disappeared not two minutes ago in search for Regan, and a part of him was hoping that the crew would hear the news before his mother did.

"Not us," said River, obviously disappointed at the interpretive skills of her brother. "We're fractured. Halves of a whole, but the tiny pieces are missing, so the vase won't fit right together. There are holes. They'll always be holes."

"All right," said Simon slowly, deciding to treat his sister's statements like a riddle. "You're talking about us? Me and you, and Mom and Dad? You don't want to be reunited?"

"All the wrong reasons," River told him with an encouraging nod. "Half-truths, thinking you're the boy he never knew. They worked on you before."

"Half-truths?" asked Simon.

"They left because they weren't satisfied with the well level, even though there was enough water to live," River lectured to him.

"You said that when we were arguing in the cargo hold," remembered Simon, looking back out through the window. "What do you mean, mei-mei?"

"Drought dirtied their clothes, left them with enough water to survive, but not to gorge or bathe," said River, somewhat vacantly. "Thought to seek our well and share, approaching dirtied and trodden to seem like us, but they can't see our well's no deeper."

Understanding finally flickered through Simon's eyes, drawing River's focus towards him. "I'll go get Kaylee, or the Captain to sit with you," promised Simon as he stood up, but he imagined she already knew where he was heading for.

*****

"Well, little girl, you're a picture of health," said Dr. Hikari cheerfully as everyone crowded around the cargo door of Serenity. Jayne had been insisting on leaving for some time, and Inara had pointed out reasonably that they needed to find a job. The money from the last job had gone to refueling and resupplying, and most of the fuel had gone to saving River. Cadmus and Dr. Hikari could spare enough to get Serenity to the next port, but little else.

"There's nothing you can do about..." Simon trailed off hopefully.

"I'm afraid what's done has been done," said Hikari apologetically. "I can't repair the surgical damage done to River's brain, so she can't tune out her skills like Kyo can. Fortunately, she hadn't been through the finalization phase like the others. The two survivors, Jack and Marla, will have to remain here for observation and deprogramming, but I know how to handle them."

"Broken, but not useless," River told them all. "Function's changed, nothing else."

"Well put," smiled Hikari, who had his fair share of experience with the riddle-speak of Readers.

"Sir, we got somethin' on the scanners," said Zoe from the catwalk inside Serenity's cargo bay. "Alliance cruiser's bound for Angel. They've slipped into orbit, and from the chatter on the Cortex, seems like they're preparin' troop transports. Thinkin' they're searchin' for their wayward babes."

"You remember the Passages?" Hikari asked Kyo intently, who nodded once before retreating back into Serenity alongside Zoe.

"Got yourself a plan?" Mal asked Hikari.

"This isn't the first time the Alliance has come looking for Cadmus," said Hikari wryly. "Admittedly, this is the first time they've ventured so close. We're shielded to prevent their scanners from pinpointing our location, but once they get near the energy output of our hologram will light up their screens like Christmas lights. We have contingencies, however, so you needn't worry, Captain."

"All right," said Mal, who lingered for a moment as Gabriel and Regan Tam emerged from Cadmus's main facility. He gave a look to Simon and River, and Simon just nodded back evenly. Mal returned the nod before charging up the ramp himself.

"What's going on?" demanded Gabriel, seeing his boxes and bags stacked up neatly away from Serenity. "What're you doing? Where are you going?"

"We're leaving, Dad," said Simon shortly, leveling his father with a stern look.

"Well--"

"We're leaving, and you're staying here," Simon informed his father, and he resisted the urge to smile at his father's dumbfounded look. "I know, Dad. River told me, and I confirmed it on Cadmus's connection to the Cortex."

"River?" wondered Gabriel, who turned his attention to his serenely smiling daughter.

"You thought you had to leave Osiris, Dad," said Simon simply. "Oh, I'm sure you feel very apologetic about abandoning River and I, but you didn't choose to come after us like you did. You felt like you were forced to."

"Of course we were forced to!" said Gabriel defensively, and Regan closed her eyes and lowered her head. "The Alliance was making our lives hell!"

"Yes, Dad, because taking lowly cases that would earn you enough money to live for a year out on the Rim, and not being invited to parties where you can speak about nothing, is the universal definition of hell," said Simon sarcastically.

"Don't you take that tone with me, young man," warned Gabriel. "You don't have the slightest idea--"

"No, Dad, it's you who doesn't have the slightest idea," returned Simon with a smug smile, which was mirrored by River. "But you'll learn. Live out here and you'll learn quick what hell can really be. I wish you the best of luck in that endeavor, and I'm sure Professor Hikari will help you find a suitable place to live, but River and I have our own lives to get back to. Namely, I have my wife, and River...well..." Simon trailed off uncomfortably as he looked down at his sister, who shot him a warning glance. "She has someone who I'm slowly garnering some respect for."

"We love you, but we out grew you," said River gently, but lovingly. "You have replacements, if you like."

"And, not that matters to defend myself to you, Dad," added Simon as they turned to walk up the ramp, "but I'm proud of the life I made for myself here. It's real and it's honest, and it's...it's mine. Bye, Dad. Mom. Good luck."

Gabriel and Regan watched as Simon and River entered Serenity without the slightest look back. Their eyes remained riveted on their children, even after the doors whined shut. Dr. Hikari lifted his eyes up to the cockpit of Serenity and locked eyes again with Kyo. He gave a slight smile and a nod in good-bye, before he initiated the engines and began to lift off.

"Melody?" said Dr. Hikari to his granddaughter. "Sound word for a Priority Two evacuation; load any equipment that isn't bolted down, and get all personnel to transports! Ready the E.M.P. pulse."

"Ye-ye?" asked Melody fearfully.

"There isn't anything else to do," was all Hikari could tell her. "We can't hold off armored platoons of soldiers, sun-nu, and we can't let any information stored here fall into the hands of the Alliance. Not only would the E.M.P. make this lab worthless, we can also take out the cruiser in orbit to give our transports a window to escape."

Melody just stared at her grandfather for a long moment before nodding in agreement. Straightening her back as much as she could manage, she trotted briskly back into Cadmus's main facility, leaving Hikari to stand with the thunderstruck Tams.

"You two best come with me," Hikari beckoned to them. "We can take you to the Cadmus's beta site, and from there you'll have a stable base to search for your new home. You aren't the first people we've had to help relocate, and we understand how disorienting it might be."

*****

When Serenity was safely away from Angel, Kyo leaned back against his chair and breathed a sigh of relief. The Passages were a series of subterranean tunnels that bore deep into Angel's core, which allowed Kyo to pilot Serenity safely out the opposite side of the planet, but they weren't easy to navigate. Once they hit atmo, Cadmus itself fizzled under the powerful light of an E.M.P. pulse being generated from its geothermal reactors. The bright, blue beam pulsed from a concealed shaft and struck the Alliance cruiser directly. By the time the cruiser began to careen towards Angel, Serenity had hit full burn.

That meant they were in the clear--as much in the clear as they could be with known fugitives on board. The heavy fall of Mal's boots on the corridor made him collect himself slightly, so that he didn't look like a pile of sludge in a chair. It did feel good to be back out in the black, though.

"Well," was all Mal said as he leaned against the upper console, just over Kyo's shoulder. "You ain't--ah--y'know?"

"No," Kyo said simply, feeling somewhat nettled at the question.

"Sorry," said Mal apologetically. "'S'all sorta new to the old noggin'. In fact, lotta new stuff been goin' 'round lately. Thinkin' I might put a shipwide ban on changin'--for a spell."

"Good luck with that," chuckled Kyo, understanding Mal's uncomfortableness. "For your information, I can control it, unlike River. 'Course, River's got--uh--more range, y'know?"

"Good to know," nodded Mal. "And for your information, you're a man to me. A good one. One I'm proud to have on my crew, and to have served beside durin' the war. Ain't no one gonna tell me different."

Kyo smiled fondly with his head slightly bowed over the control yoke. "Thanks, Mal. I'm kinda comin' to terms with that myself."

"So, what we got?" asked Mal, instantly shifting into business mode. They were manly-men after all, and they'd exhausted their emotional quota.

"We got enough fuel to reach..." Kyo held the last sound as he flicked the nav com online. His eyes scanned over the planets before reading off their names, "Whitefall, Greenleaf, Persephone, Medea, or maybe Boros. Beylix is possible if I fly her right."

"Stick with Greenleaf," Mal advised, looking over the map thoughtfully. "Might find ourselves a simple job there, after all this excitement."

"Right," laughed Kyo. "Simple, sure. May the 'verse swallow me whole should that ever happen."

"Hey," warned Mal mockingly as he strode away. "Never know. It might. Best anchor yourself down."

"Oh, I have," whispered Kyo with a fond smile, running his hand along Serenity's console. "I have."

*****

Simon lay on his bed with his shoulders propped up against the headboard. His hands sat on his stomach, holding an old capture by the edges. It was Christmas, one of the last before River left for the Academy. He hadn't watched it in a while, and with everything that'd happened in his life of late, he'd even forgotten what his presents were that year; so even he found himself enraptured by the opening process.

"Hey, sweetie," said Kaylee, catching his attention. He looked up from the capture to see her walking into the room, only slightly covered in engine grease. "What'cha doin'?"

"Reliving old memories," Simon sighed before shutting off the capture and putting it face down on the dresser. "Serenity working all right?"

"Shiny," grinned Kaylee while she unzipped the front of her cover alls. "Just some minor problems, but ain't nothin' I can't handle."

"That's my genius mechanic," smiled Simon, feeling the need to say it after everything his father had said about her. Then, because it was such a new thought that it hadn't occurred to him immediately, he added, "That's my genius wife."

It gave Kaylee a slight shiver to hear it coming from him. Though many things had changed in the last few days, she could still count on the fact that Simon loved her. It'd worried her some that his parents might try to take him away, or that they might not approve of his marriage, but things had seemed shiny to her. Admittedly, Gabriel had a bit of a temper on him, but she chalked that up to his parental concern over River.

"You're parents seemed nice," commented Kaylee as she changed out of her work clothes and into her pajamas.

"Yes, nice," Simon echoed, which made Kaylee frown. She knew that politely patronizing tone. It was the one he typically reseved for his quiet rants, or whenever he dealt with Jayne. Simon caught her frown and his face became immediately apologetic. "Sorry, I'm just tired is all. We've had a lot happen."

"Not too tired, I hope," grinned Kaylee coyly as she sponged off the engine grease from her face. "We ain't had our honeymoon yet."

Simon couldn't resist the chuckle that filled his face. Kaylee could always brighten him up no matter the situation. He wondered... "So, when're we going to meet your folks?"

"Mine?" asked Kaylee, genuinely surprised at the question. "Dunno, next time we're in the system I s'pose. They're all anxious-like to meet you, though."

"Tell me about them, bao-bei," Simon requested softly. "Tell me what it was like."

Kaylee looked at Simon, but his eyes were directed towards the bright orange ceiling. From the lost, nearly vacant expression on his face, Kaylee got the impression that it was something he really needed to hear at the moment. Smiling fondly at him, she crawled onto the bed and slipped under the covers next to him. Feeling the pressure on the bed, Simon moved to dim the lights from the remote switch over the bedside table.

"Well," she began as they snuggled together in the darkness.

River smiled with her ear pressed unecessarily against the sliding door, which now bore the sign "Simon and Kaylee's Room," along with all the lights that'd been outside Kaylee's old bunk. Happily, she skipped away up the stairs, heading straight for Kyo's bunk.

*****

"Telemachus crashed into the surface of Angel as a result of an unauthorized E.M.P.," reported the Cleanser in a wave. "A transport did manage to land safely, however, and the lieutenant reported the findings of a large facility within the mountains. Naturally, the pulse erased all data in the computers, but some of the technology--including a large-scale, prototype hologram generator--were reported stolen a decade ago during the rash of robberies on Osiris."

"Yes," drawled Mr. Khan, like an old scab had been picked. "I seem to remember our dear friend Dr. Hikari had long since been suspected of being behind those thefts. Strange how he decided to disappear on us abruptly. Yes, this makes sense. He's certainly the most qualified to help deprogram the children."

"Speaking of the children," began the Cleanser, "we found three of them in what appeared to be a morgue. An autopsy looks to have been performed. All three were killed by a gunshot wound each, it appears."

Mr. Khan's eyes immediately snapped towards Azrael, who was in the process of standing and smoothing out his tunic with a smug smile plastered on his face.

"Turn that base upside down for any viable information," ordered Mr. Khan through gritted teeth before snapping the tablet shut.

"I believe that confirms the Tams are secure," remarked Azrael. He gave a curt bow to Mr. Khan before he began to stride out of the rustic office. "Perhaps you should consider keeping that sword. You might find a...personal use for it."

Azrael kept the smug grin on his dark face, even under Mr. Khan's withering glare. It was Mr. Khan's first inclination to grab the sword resting against the desk, and fling it right at Azrael's back. Of course, it was a futile gesture; Azrael's Operative training would enable him to dodge, and worse it'd be confirmation that Mr. Khan had lost his temper.

"Orders, Mr. Khan?" asked the Cleanser to his left once Azrael left. Instinct told him to follow Azrael, but it'd be useless. Azrael was worth more free and breathing. He wouldn't be able to completely shake free his Alliance training, and that would be valuable for Blue Sun. If there was a weak link in Azrael's new organization, it would be him.

"None for the moment," said a much more controlled Mr. Khan, as he made a show of smoothing out his suit. "For now, leave the Tams alone. There are other agendas that require my attention, and other methods that we might employ to protect the Alliance and Blue Sun, should Charon be activated by the Rebels. After all, it wouldn't hurt to lull them into a false sense of security. Let them think we've forgotten so that they may become sloppy. I can be patient. I can be very patient."

------

Author's Notes, Justifications, and...well...Excuses:

So here we have it. The end to the first mini-arc within my second season. Conveniently, it's an arc for both Simon and Kyo, but mostly it's for Kyo. All the little hints about his past are revealed, and I'm finally free to return to zany caper storylines. This was a tough one, though, because originally the Cleansers were supposed to invade Cadmus, but then how the hell is Serenity supposed to escape without this turning into a three-part? But the main reason is a whole lot of exposition that needed to be covered, and mostly by poor Dr. Hikari. I mean, if this were a real episode script, you can imagine the monologues he'd have to do.

The idea of Kyo being a genetically created soldier comes from a multitude of other sci-fi things, but primarily it's things like Metal Gear Solid. The whole Genom soldier thing and L'es Enfants Terribles. Also, because I had no place to fit this in, if you haven't figured it out, Kyo can't dream. That's why in earlier episodes River describes his sleep as being like postcards. He can't dream because the scientists couldn't figure that out, but because we need to dream when we sleep, they inserted those picturesque landscapes.

And in face you haven't noticed, up until this point, Kyo speaks normally with River, but assumes the same sort of accent as Mal and Zoe with everyone else. Obviously, that's something he picked up as a Reader during the war to better fit in.

Dr. Hikari comes from Megaman. Only, instead of calling him Dr. Light, I used his original, Japanese name. Melody is another Megaman reference, since Dr. Light created Blues, Rock and Roll (original Japanese names for Protoman, Megaman and Roll), I named his granddaughter Melody.

Cadmus itself is a reference to the Superman mythos. Cadmus is the lab that clones Superman in the Death and Life arc to create the leather jacket wearing Superboy.

Gilgamesh is a myth about a Babylonian/Sumerian king who was supposedly wise, super-strong and a great warrior (precursor to Hercules). The name of the disease--the Serpent's Trick--is another reference to the legend. Gilgamesh sought immortality, which required a specific flower/plant that grew in the bottom of the ocean (or deep lake), and after he picked it, he fell asleep. A snake ended up eating it instead, which explains why snakes shed their skin.

It is also the project in Batman: The Animated Series that is responsible for Bane.

Azrael and Mr. Khan scenes were predominantly necessary for me to explain why the Alliance/Blue Sun doesn't know Serenity. Same reason I had it that no one knows that they were responsible for the Miranda broadwave. Life would just be too damn hard for our Big Damn Heroes if that were the case. Plus, it'd draw them into the spotlight again, and Firefly was a show about people just getting by. Which is another reason why I had them just run away at the end.

And keeping with my intentions to make everyone complex. In the final arguement between Gabriel and Simon, Gabriel says some things that are completely legitimate, and Simon says some things that are completely unfair. Mostly, it's Simon arguing from a moral high ground, and unconsciously showing that he is indeed his father's son.