River Tam was dreaming.

Wrapped in the threadbare comforter Simon drew around her shoulders earlier that night, she entered REM. Underneath her eyelids, her eyes rolled and twitched in terror. Her throat was taut, holding back the whimpers and moans that tried to fight their way free. She didn’t want to let them know how much they were hurting her.

She is sitting in a large silver chair, her arms and legs held down by restraints. Technicians work around her, their professional chatter lapping like waves against the edges of her mind. Their words and their thoughts overlap and intertwine and it is hard for her to separate them.

She’s been in this room many times before. They call it the Neural Re-Imaging Chamber, but to her it is the Blue Room. The low-level blue lights make the stainless steel equipment around her glow eerily, as if they aren’t real but only half-formed images at the edges of her brain. River always feels as if she’s in an alternate reality when they bring her to this place; like living in a nightmare. She wonders if her form is as insubstantial to the doctor and technicians as their tools are to her. More and more, she questions the existence of anything outside this room and the pain it brings.

She used to think she was a girl, but now she’s not even sure if she really exists.

She doesn’t need to hear the whir of the pneumatic doors opening to know the doctor has arrived. River can hear the glide of his feet against the tile; the gentle in-and-out of his breathing; the way his heart beats irregularly behind the cage of his ribs. She is aware of each individual strand of hair on his head, can feel it growing. He is agitated today, his muscles tense and stiff with displeasure. It is easy to determine the source.

Normally, the doctor is by himself when he enters the room, but sometimes other people are with him. River senses a new presence before she sees him - a well-groomed man, in a tailored gray uniform of a high-ranking Alliance official. He remains in the shadows, studying her intently, but she doesn’t need to see him to know that he’s there - she can smell the rich scents of leather and expensive cologne permeating the air around him. He is a man used to giving orders. His heart beats strong and purposeful in his chest, every muscle coiled, as if he were a lion among men; or a shark. Perhaps he is. It is this man’s presence that has made the doctor so uncomfortable.

The doctor tries to ignore him as he murmurs softly with the technicians, before he grabs a pad and punches in a code. It’s her code, the one they always use to access her file. The pulse tones have a distinctive rhythm. There’s a broken melody to the sequence that appeals to her: 1122TAM. After scanning the pad, he grimaces and nods his head before turning and handing it to the Alliance officer. A well-groomed hand reaches out to take it, but the man doesn’t even bother to look at the screen.


The soft hiss of the electronic IV indicates that the doctor is ready to begin his tests. River does not want to close her eyes because she knows the minute she does, they’ll hurt her even more, but the effects of the drugs are inevitable. Her eyes drift shut, even though the rest of her senses remain on high alert. She is not asleep, even though they think she is. She never sleeps in the Blue Room. In fact, she tries not to sleep at all.

The drugs make her easier to control though -- it is harder to fight them when her veins betray her by carrying liquid poison through her system. The drugs help them rip into her brain -- she can feel them forcing it to expand. This is the worst part, because she can feel them rushing into her -- not just the men in the room -- but all the other people in the building -- their memories and thoughts bombard her, breaking her apart, burying her in the rubble of her mind. Each time she comes to this room, she loses more of herself. She cannot make her own voice heard over the cacophony of the other voices in her head.

“Nightmare?” someone asks.

“Off the charts.” The technician nearest her taps a code into the data pad attached to her chair and smiles. His mind says I hate this job, but his voice says “Scary monsters.”

The doctor steps closer, before demanding, “Let’s amp it up. Delcium, eight-drop.” He eyes River coldly and clutches his clipboard a little closer, before once again turning to the man standing at the back of the room.

“See, most of our best work is done when they’re asleep. We can monitor and direct their subconscious, implant suggestions...” He stops when River starts convulsing, before he moves closer to the man he’s talking to and indicates the girl in the chair. “It’s a little startling to see, but the results are spectacular. Especially in this case: River Tam is our star pupil.” And why do I have to explain myself to you?

“I’ve heard that,” the other man states as he steps forward into the light. His body is tight with the professional stance of a commander and his face displays no emotion as he studies the girl. She listens intently, but instead of hearing his real voice, all she hears is static, as if he’s not really there or somehow managing to shield himself from her. Her internal radar pings off him, but he is insubstantial, like her, and difficult to determine.

“She’ll be ideal for defense deployment, even with the side effects.”

“Tell me about them,” the other man demands.

The doctor smiles the tight, rigid smile of a man not used to having to explain himself to anyone. “Well, obviously, she’s unstable --the neural stripping gives them heightened cognitive reception, but it also destabilizes their own reality matrix. It manifests as borderline schizophrenia -- “

The other man nods slightly at this, even as he interrupts the doctor. “What use do we have for a psychic if she’s insane?”

The doctor objects to this question strenuously. “She’s not just a psychic; given the right trigger, this girl is a living weapon.” The cool regard of the younger man is making him nervous and it’s starting to show. “And she has lucid periods -- we hope to improve upon the...I’m sorry, Sir, I have to ask if there’s some reason for this inspection?”

“Am I making you nervous?”

The doctor blinks at this non-answer. “Key members of Parliament have personally observed this subject. I was told their support for the project was unanimous. The demonstration of her power --”

The younger man cuts him off: “How is she physically?”

“Like nothing we’ve seen. All of our subjects are conditioned for combat, but River --she’s a creature of extraordinary grace.”

“River? You refer to your subjects by their first name?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, instead he moves closer to the girl in the chair. “Please check your com-link. You will have received a directive over the Cortex by now, Dr. Mathias, regarding your experiment and this particular girl. We want her. We want to test her.”

“I can assure you, she is undergoing a barrage of --”

“Not your tests run in a controlled environment. We want to test her out in the real world, to see if her training will hold. Before we can let these experiments go any further, we need to make sure they present no danger to us.”

“She’s not ready.” The doctor says this as if he has the last word on the matter. The cold smirk the younger man allows to cross his face says otherwise.

“We think she is,” he replies. “More than ready. Our request is simple enough and until you’ve complied your funding is cut off, effective immediately.”

“You can’t just turn her loose in the world!” the doctor responds vehemently. “There’s no telling what she’d do.”

“We don’t plan on turning her loose,” comes the measured response. “We’ve invested too much money in her.” The man examines the doctor coldly. “We’ve invested too much money in this program. No -- she’ll be with someone who will be able to study her and determine the feasibility of this plan. She’ll be with her brother.”

“Brother?” the doctor questions, his voice high-pitched with stress and nerves. “She doesn’t have a brother.”

The younger man is leaning forward now, studying the girl’s face. “She does now,” he responds softly. When her eyes pop open and lock on his, the blue of his gaze freezes her to her soul.

“River!” Someone was holding her; arms warm around her to chase away the demons of her dreams. “Shh, mei-mei. It’s all right. It was just a nightmare. Shh.”

The shadows drifting around her weren’t blue and artificial, but gray and black and real. They helped calm her down, as did the warm light flickering in front of her closed eyelids.

There was never anything warm in the Blue Room. There was never anything real there.

She could feel a hand stroking down her back; she could taste the salt of her tears and the copper-tang of blood in her mouth, where she had bitten her cheek. She was not restrained anymore.

She was free. She remembered. She was on Serenity and Dr. Mathias would never stick needles in her brain again. Her hands flew up to clutch at the man holding her, digging into his shoulders as she keened her distress. She could feel the cotton of his nightshirt underneath her palms, each individual thread pressing against her skin.

“Just a dream,” she repeated brokenly after him. “Not real.”

The problem was they felt real - at one point, they were real. She knew she was remembering what had happened to her and only wished she could tell Simon, so he could help her. But the words she needed were only fragments in her mind, and Simon didn’t understand her.

Simon: who loved her.

We don't plan on turning her loose.

Simon: who risked everything to save her.

She'll be with someone who will be able to study her.

Simon: her brother.

She doesn't have a brother.


She stiffened against his chest, her sobs frozen in her throat as she pulled away from him and looked up into his beloved face.

His jaw was tight with the anguish he felt on her behalf, his lips pulled into a thin line of regret and guilt. His dark hair stuck up unbecomingly and she knew her dreams had roused him from his bed: she could see a crease against his face where the piping of the pillowcase had indented it.

His eyes were warm and blue, filled with concern as his thumbs made calming circles against her collarbone.

The sleepy heat emanating from his body enveloped her like his hugs and his smile.

Normally, she found it comforting, but tonight she was real. Tonight, it made her shiver.

She told herself he was her brother. He has always been her brother. He had promised her he’d always love her and protect her. She knows...she knows....

“River?” he whispered. “River?”

She’d heard that voice before, in her nightmares.

His fine, aristocratic features have haunted her dreams. And his eyes -- those warm blue eyes -- they have looked at her coldly before, as though she were a bug under a microscope.

River Tam stared at Simon, and screamed.

She had no brother.

Continue to part two