Chapter 1 – The Scream
Her brown eyes opened wide, shocked from their sleep, the scream still resonating in her mind. Her heart was thumping like she'd just run a mile and her chest heaving for breath; while sweat traced her glistening brown brow. The shear panic of the scream forced her bolt upright in the bed, still clutching the pillow that now lay in substitute for her partner. Her gaze darted around the room frantically looking for the source of the cry, but the room was dark and empty.
Slowly Zoe unclenched her supple fingers from the pillow and let it fall to the bed. Something was different. Something was very wrong. Like all the other times this scream was in her head, an anguished cry of pain as if your heart itself were being ripped beating from your chest. But this time the scream was not her own. Not from the dream that had plagued her for two long years, not from the vision of her husband's death in his pilot's seat replaying over and over before her eyes, not from the emptiness that she fought every day or the feared that assailed her every night. This time the scream was from someone else.
The former warrior slipped silently from the bed and picked up the sawed-off rifle that she kept close at hand. She moved carefully through her room, toward the ladder that led to Serenity's upper corridor. Her toned, coffee arms and legs and long black curls blended into the dark just as much as the loud Hawaiian shirt she wore stood out, giving the eerie impression that her dead husband's shirt was hovering through this spaceship on its own, his ghost prowling the passages of its former home.
The upper corridor was empty, the Galley to the left silent and dark, the dull blue glow from the bridge consoles faint and distant to her right. The ship was still, quiet, almost too quiet. She turned to the bridge, her legs cold from the chill dry air. The metal floor under her bare feet caused a shiver to run along her spine, or was it the lingering memory of the frightened shriek.
The cry had been unmistakably female, but not her own. High pitched, almost like a ripping of the air itself. Had it been Inara? Her breathy tone crying out contraction pains from her lush shuttle? Or perhaps Kaylee from her austere engine room? Had it been River, from the bridge?
"River?" Zoe's voice was hush and had that just woken rasp to it. "River, are you up there?"
She felt as if she were moving through a dream as she climbed the steps leading to the bridge. Her bare feet fell silently to the metal steps making no perceptible sound. The soft whoosh of exhaust fans and console beeps from the bridge ahead creating an undertone of ambient silence. No one else was about. No one else had heard the cry. If this was a dream, Zoe resolved to do this right. No sloppiness – just because it wasn't real.
The warrior stepped through the door into the empty bridge, gun at the ready. River was not at the console, where the teen-aged girl should have been. Zoe crossed the bridge to the front. Stars slipped by Serenity's windscreen, silently passing as spaceship sped to her destination. They seemed to repeat the same pattern over and over as they passed by, heightening the déjà-vu like dreaminess she was feeling.
She forced her gaze down from the window to the stairs before her. The glow of panel lights illuminated the small sensor pit below. The teen was not there. She was not behind the console. She was not anywhere.
Zoe examined the controls. Coordinates good. Still on course. Four more hours to go to Boros. Proximity alarm enabled. Everything looked fine until her eyes settled on the pilot's chair, the chair where Wash had always been, the chair where River was supposed to be.
River's silk sundress lay deflated in the chair, as if she had vaporized from inside and it had just settled there in place. The arms of her sweater lay on the arms of the chair, as if it were lounging there without her. She had a quick flash of her dead husband sitting impaled in that seat. A flash from the all to familiar dream she so often had. She shook it off. The teen's coplex shorts fell from inside the dress as Zoe lifted it. The warrior's expression turning from cautious, to perplexed.
"Shen me di yu?" She muttered.
Letting the dress fall back to the seat, Zoe headed for the galley, grabbing a dry marker from the rack as she left. Block clear, she thought, that would be best, especially if this is a dream.
She placed a mark over the bridge door as she exited. Captain's cabin was open and quiet, he would be with Inara, in her shuttle. She marked over the door. Jayne, asleep and dead to the Verse. She marked. Kaylee – open, never in her room. Probably in her engine room hammock. She marked.
Galley was empty. The quiet hum of the engine room filled the galley from the port on the other side. A small pair of eyes stared back at her from the far door, before scurrying off toward the engine room. The corridor was dark, so Kaylee was likely down in the passenger modules with Simon. She would be back, though, before the night was over. Something about the engines that she could not leave alone for very long. Still – another mark. All the while Zoe kept her rifle at the ready and strained her eyes and ears for the slightest glance or the smallest sound. The constant background of quiet beeps, small pings, whooshing fans and hissing pipes filled her ears, but all that faded into the constant backdrop of normalcy. Nothing was out of the ordinary, except that nothing was out of the ordinary.
The upper deck was clear. Zoe headed for the cargo hold descending the forward steps to the gangway. She turned onto the grid walkway and scanned the bay below. Her eyes quickly found what she was looking for, a lone figure standing in the middle of the vast open floor. Her alabaster skin shone out like a beacon in the dim reserve lighting of the bay below. River Tam stood stark naked in the middle of the hold, hugging herself, shivering violently and muttering something under her breath repeatedly.
Zoe approached carefully, silently. It was always best to be weary of River. The warrior never quite knew what to expect from her. This was one of those situations.
"I did it. I did it. I did it." She mumbled.
"River?" Zoe touched the girl gingerly on the shoulder.
The girl startled and locked on Zoe's eyes. "I didn't like it there." She said weakly. "Too cold, too much nothing."
Zoe caught the girl as she fainted dead away. Though River had been for the most part coherent over the past two years, she still had her moments. The captain seemed to take them in stride, River was part of his crew now, but they still concerned Zoe. She was still likely to wind up in a room full of dead people soaked in their blood one day – or standing naked in the middle of the cargo hold ranting about nothing with her empty clothes left to pilot the ship.
'Why did I expect anything different?' Zoe thought to herself as she carried the teen back to her module.
Her skin was cold to the touch, as if she'd been in a freezer or out in a winter storm and she was shivering uncontrollably. The warrior laid River gently down to sleep in her bed; carefully tucking her in like a unpredictable, yet loved child. Then Zoe made her way back to the bridge.
Folding River's clothes neatly, and laying them on the copilot's chair, she took up her place at the console.
"Just you, me and the crazy old universe again dear." She whispered, as she curled up in the pilot seat and pulled a small blanket over her legs. She shrugged her shoulder up to her nose and breathed in the faint fragrance of his cologne still lingering in his collar. "Another day of wonder in outer space."
Zoe sat watching the stars slipping by, in their familiar pattern and wondered, as she drifted off to sleep, exactly what it was that River had done.