Disclaimer: I own the Firefly and Serenity DVDs, but that's it. The characters, world, and what not still belong to Joss etc.
Author's Note: Can't guarantee quick updates, but I did finish the last Firefly fic I wrote so I have hopes for this one. I do have the first two parts already written and the first actual chapter half written, so there's that much at least.
Prologue: Member of Parliament Wetzel
A member of Parliament is a powerful person in the Alliance, one not used to being thwarted. So the fact that Simon and River Tam were still running around more than a year after Simon broke into a supposedly secure facility and removed his sister, was vexing. Blue Sun's much vaunted Blue Hands had proved incapable of even finding the siblings without being tipped off. The usual reliable bounty hunter Early had mysteriously disappeared. They had declared the situation desperate and called on the operative, already in place, to move in and take them down. He had sent one report saying it wasn't possible and then vanished himself. And the second operative they had sent had outright defected on the verge success. He had even provided the condemned siblings, and the crew that had taken them in, with quality medical care.
Operative 17 had, however, sent in one final report. The contents had caused division among the upper echelons of Parliament. Though they had cancelled the psychic program a month previously due to lack of progress, Operative 17's report indicated that River Tam had taken on a room full of reavers single handedly. It was not the feat itself that surprised, the physical aspect of the program had never been a problem, it was the fact that River had been mentally capable of making the conscious decision to use all of her abilities, even the mental ones.
So something had happened. The most popular theory was that Simon Tam, a brilliant doctor with obvious motivation, had found something their own doctors had missed. Some members of Parliament wanted to bring in one or both of the siblings in and figure it out, restart the program. But others, Marcus Wetzel included, disagreed. The Tams were a liabilty, time to stop taking risks and end it; and Marcus Wetzel knew someone who could not fail.