The Academy was in deep turmoil. Never in its history had it faced such a fearful future and all because of one little girl and the secrets contained within her extraordinary brain. Secrets that could put not just the facility in danger but also upset the knife edge balance of the entire 'Verse.

With the escape of River Tam, they had to rethink their whole security system and screening process. It had been almost six months since her brother - a respectable doctor on Osiris that could have had great prospects in his chosen field - had just walked in, poached her right from under the Alliances nose, and disappeared into the ether. He'd thrown everything away, his entire life and even his family to take his sister from the Academy because of a few silly childish letters she had sent him that informed him that she was being hurt.

If they'd had a chance to talk to him in a professional capacity, they would have explained to him that the tests they did were necessary to make River into everything that she could be. To make her into the perfect evolution of the human. That was all they were trying to do, they were innocent in all of this. Of course the brother would then have spent the rest of his natural life on a prison moon on the raggedy edge. That sort of information was best left unknown by the general public.

It had taken millions just to keep the breakout under the radar and further millions of the tax payers money to increase the security mainframe. They had to take out new precautions, if the Academy was seen as weak, the Alliance was seen as weak and now was not the time for weakness. Not with the fine line they walked on with the Boarder worlds.

But what had happened? The Head of the Academy, under pressure from the share-holders and in their desperate need to find the girl, sent out a message on the Cortex that the girl and her brother were wanted fugitives, that she'd escaped from a Alliance Secure Base. What had they got back? Very little it seemed.

They had spent almost six months looking for the boys conspirators eager to find out how such a breech of security had come to pass. But every lead they had came up a blank. It seemed that they had disappeared without a trace, just like their young prodigy. They were like a wisp of smoke blown away into the depths of the chaotic maelstrom which was the 'Verse.

That wasn't the only issue they had. River Tam had been their star… 'Pupil', and with her gone that meant a cut in their expenditure, which in turn meant a cut in Government coin and job losses in every department. The money that was safeguarded before the escape went on the new Security System, leaving them with little monetary funds left for the remainder of the year. Things were getting desperate.

They knew that there had been a number of sightings of both the Tam's on a Firefly Class transport ship. The ship was never in one place too long keeping to the backwater moons and never straying too close to the core worlds. The ID number and name of the ship, 'The Happy Trader', came up as a blank as all ships that dealt on the black market usually did. Even the name they had, 'Captain Harbatkin', was a fake name made up by the real owner of the ship, a man who remained a ghost to them.

The boy was not an issue, he was just a third party in all of this, along with the crew of that vessel. Admittedly, if he was caught he would spend the rest of his natural life imprisoned for crimes against the Alliance but it wasn't imperative that he was captured. The crew of the ship needn't be harmed in the end, but if they got in the way… well, that would be just an unfortunate accident. If harm came to the girl in any way, there could be serious repercussions.

Then again there was much more of a chance of people getting hurt by her. She was after all very much the perfect weapon in the shape of a 16 year old girl. If that weapon, no matter of it's shape, fell into the hands of the Independents then the Alliance would be at a serious disadvantage. There was no denying that the girl was a threat to the fine balance of the Alliance controlled systems and the Underground Independent Loyalists. She was the tipping point, the key variable and under the right conditions, the unstoppable force.

The things that she had locked inside her head, the things that they had inadvertently put there, the things she had found out. She was a walking time bomb. It would only be a matter of time until she understood her full potential and when she did the probability of getting her back to the Academy were… poor at best.

They had to get her back, the damage that she could do with the secrets in her tiny, fragile little human mind could rip apart the very backbone of the Alliance. But they would find that ship before that happened. They would take her back, for the good of the Academy. No, for the good of the ALLIANCE.

Serenity: River's Room

River Tam is wide awake. She has been for the past hour, since her brother had woken her up and unceremoniously stuck that rutting big needle in her arm. She would have kicked him if he'd not been her brother and he'd not ensured her with all his heart that what he was injecting into her wouldn't make her all haywire, but actually make her feel like a human again. At least for a little while. It was better than nothing, she supposed.

She's waiting for the drugs to kick in. She holds her arm out and watches the pulse in her wrist for a while, her skin jumping slightly with every beat of her heart, the blood rushing to her fingertips making them bright pink. It was weird, if she really thought about it she could feel the drugs racing through her system, through every blood vessel and artery in her small body. She prods the little round plaster on her arm where Simon injected her, watching as the blood is soaked into the gauze to dry.

She drops her eyes to the floor as they begin to slip out of focus. She shouldn't do that, think. It made her head hurt and bad memories would come to the surface. It'd feel so much better when the drugs took hold, if she could just stop thinking until then. She could sleep, she could be herself, she could be free if only for a little time.

In the Academy they had made her think, and stuck more needles in her if she didn't. She'd had funny daydreams where they'd taken her memories and tampered with them, messed them all up so they weren't in the correct files anymore or she saw them from a different point of view like an out of body experience. Then she'd wake up and her head would be bandaged and when she asked what had happened, they said she'd 'taken a little fall'. After the first few times, River found it easier to believe them. She'd quickly learnt that in the Academy the rule was, 'anything for a quiet life'.

They'd given her drugs that made her sleep for long periods of time and others that had made her stay wide awake for days on end. When she managed to sleep naturally in her room, things dug into her back through the mattress and caused her so much pain. It had taken so long after Simon had rescued her for her to be able to sleep in a normal bed without the fear of things being stuck into her spine. When she tried to sleep now, she could still hear the screams of the other pupils at the Academy, calling for help, calling out for something for the pain, even for them to end it all for them, but never ever being tended to by the tall nurses in masks.

Every time they put her through some painful new kind of 'treatment' as they put it, she would always ask, 'Why are you doing this to me?', and the reply was always the same from behind their mask covered faces, 'You're special River, don't you want to be your best? Don't you want to be perfect? We can make you perfect.'

The worst thing by far was that they had lied to her face. She'd asked the Principle of the Academy if she would still be aloud to dance when she went for her interview. He'd smiled a warm, welcoming smile and said yes, unequivocally yes. Maybe if she'd looked at him closer, she would have seen the smile he gave her didn't reach his cold gray eyes.

She didn't dance, they told her what she was learning was dancing, but it sure as hell didn't feel like it. Dancing made you feel free, but what they had made her do just made her feel more and more caged. If she'd known that she wouldn't have been able to dance, then she would never have gone to the Academy and this thought had tortured her for many hours in her lucid periods.

River hated it when she thought about the Academy, but it's like a part of her mind wouldn't let it go, no matter how hard she tried to shake it from her consciousness. She felt she would never be able to let it go, not until all the secrets spilt out of her head and even then they'd sit there in her head like some horrific tumour in her mind.

She tilts her head on one side and closes her eyes tight as the drug finally begins to take effect. It's a surreal feeling, like everything is untangling and slipping back where it should be. Like tectonic plates sliding past each other, she thinks, with a smile to herself. She takes a deep breath and opens her eyes as the drugs finally reach her brain. Everything seems to jump into focus and the colours around her seem normal for once. She looks up and smiles as her brother gazes at her lovingly from the open door.

Avalon

Avalon is a strange little moon, with a population of just over a million people. As with all moons, it has its quirks. Then again why wouldn't it? After all it is named after an old Earth-That-Was myth that told tales of a time of magic, dragons and knights.

Not that many remembered the tales anymore, those kind of books were on the Alliances banned list and few got to see them. In fact they were buried deep in the libraries of the Alliance records where you needed six different kinds of clearances to see them. It was as all information was kept these days, only the privileged got to glean from the knowledge of old.

Avalon's lush green fields, beautiful deep blue lakes, almost all year round sunshine and warm climate make it an ideal spot for tourists and those looking to retire to a place in the sun. Thems that can afford it at least.

Its placid façade and low slung unpopulated valleys makes it the ideal breeding ground for crime. But sometimes crime doesn't exactly go as planned. Especially for the crew of Serenity, and today is really not their day.