Merit Anneliese looked up from her Chief Floor Nurse post at the Brising Amen City Delphine Emergency Surgery. It was a local hospital, catering to all of the local folk, with only a little Alliance support. The fees were reasonable, the doctors professional and courteous, and the nurses kind.
Of course, there was a dark side to this business, she knew. She was one of three nurses in the company that owned the surgery that knew of the 3 surgical suites that existed on no floor plan or government list. She wasn't quite sure what happened there, had never been told, but she figured it wasn't exactly repairing the average injuries incurred by farmers and merchants.
She checked her planned operation list for the day; two appendectomies (for some reason, the terraforming on Brising Amen had left a susceptibility to appendicitis as a genetic condition, and appendectomies were common), 2 tonsil removals, and one double bypass surgery were scheduled. Of course, the Delphine Emergency Surgery received numerous cases of emergency operations; the place was a favorite of various underworld and illegitimate businessmen, and they often brought their wound cases in here to be handled cleanly and quietly.
She looked up and saw the first case of the day. A tall man wearing a long brown coat (those weren't very rare around here; a fair proportion of the illicit surgeries that the surgery handled were for old browncoats, especially those that flew in old, beat up spaceships), a darker-skinned woman wearing a leather vest, and a little slip of a brown-haired girl were wheeling in a big man on a gurney; a bloodstained shirt was held over what she presumed was a gunshot injury.
"Heard tell this place might be able to help us." the tall man said.
"Well, normally we don't take in cases off the street, but we might be able to assist you. Accidental wounding, sir?" the nurse said smoothly. She had her finger over an alarm button, just in case there was trouble.
"Yes ma'am, bystanders at a gun fight." the tall man deftly lied. Merit smiled, and took her finger off the button.
"We'll do everything we can to help him out." she said, pressing the call button for the orderlies to take him straight off to Surgery 1. She heard a slight crackling sound, but disregarded it as a problem with the comm system. She'd check it after she'd checked them in. She took some forms and put them up on the counter, missing an exchange of glances between the girl and the tall brown-coated man; she was surprised, then, when the tall man's iron-hard hands looped around her wrists and pulled her halfway across the counter, away from the alarm button.
"You're bound by law, on suspicion of illegal slave and organ trafficking." he said harshly, pulling cuffs out of his pocket and cuffing her, then dragging her away from the comm panel, holding up an arrest warrant for the facility. The two orderlies that had arrived found themselves staring at guns held in the hands of three of them, including the big man on the table. He levered himself easily up and cast aside the bloodied shirt; he wasn't injured at all. The two orderlies found themselves cuffed in short order, then the tall man held his wrist up to his mouth. "Team two, you have a go. Team three, come in behind us and begin securing the prisoners."
A short, busty brunette, a tall lady with mocha-colored hair, and a tall thin man with black hair and goatee came in directly, with stun weapons and more cuffs.
Jim Raven, Jo Stephens, Al Remshaw, and Ken Baldwin were at the rear door of the facility. It was access-controlled, but that locking mechanism wasn't anything that could stop Al Remshaw. Baldwin just shook his head as the normally jittery mechanic smoothly penetrated the encryption and popped the lock without effort, without a tremble of the hands.
"You'd better not tell me how you learned to do that." Baldwin muttered.
Remshaw just grinned. "Couldn't say. Just figured out how this very day." Raven and the others snickered at Baldwin's discomfort.
Baldwin rolled his eyes, then got ready to cover their entry into the building.
Mal, Jayne, Zoe, and River proceeded smoothly down the hallways; several nurses and surgeons were detained for questioning and sent to the front office, or bound by law and cuffed, depending on River and Mal's gleaning, then the four continued again, moving with military precision.
They passed three exam rooms and two surgery suites, and hit a dead-end; River pointed to a janitor's closet though (the door was too wide for a janitor closet), and instead of finding a collection of mops and buckets, they found a clean, empty elevator big enough for a surgical team and a gurney.
They entered and pushed the button on the panel that pointed downward. After a few moments, the door opened. River was first to peek out, carefully feeling for minds before she checked both ways. The aisle was clear for the moment.
Pointing to the left was a sign marked "Surgeries." River led them rightwards first. Jayne kept watch on the aisle behind them, while the other three began checking doors.
One door was an office, with what Mal assumed to be important flimsies and records that they'd be confiscating. Another was a drug supply closet; River quickly scanned some of the drug names and recognized a few from her gleanings of Simon's mind.
"Surgical prep drugs. Anti-rejection drugs. Surgical anesthetics. It's adding up, Mal." she whispered.
The next two doors were locked from the outside with electronic combination locks. River blew past the encryptions, and opened both doors; a call to Jamie before she opened the doors silenced the alarms before they could go off.
Mal and River had some idea of what they would find in the two rooms, but Jayne and Zoe were fairly floored; there was a red-headed woman on one bed, strapped down and heavily sedated. The other room held a boy, about 3 years old, with black hair. Zoe's face hardened at the outrage of using children for illicit transplants, while Jayne's face turned stony and cold, fury boiling beneath.
Mal was suddenly caught in an avalanche, a tidal wave of swirling emotions from River's mind; he struggled to contain it, to keep it from overwhelming them both, dragging them under. Finally, with considerable difficulty, he had both of them clear-headed enough to operate; both of them were paler from the concerted effort used.
"Pull the IV's for now, don't know what's goin' into 'em. We'll have to get the docs in here to take care of them." Mal ordered coldly, then they turned towards the surgeries; Jayne took rear guard at these doors, to make sure nobody touched the victims until the doctors arrived.
They peeked into the other doors; three surgical suites. Two of the suites had nurses and doctors prepping, while the other was dark and silent. They were joined in less than a minute by Jim Raven's team, which had entered from the lower entrance.
"Jamie, lock down their wave systems and kill their computers."
"On it." the whisper came back from his earwig.
They saw as the computer monitors went down, and only then opened the doors to the first surgical suite.
"You are all bound by law for illicit organ trafficking and implantation, and anything else I can think of!" Mal said wrathfully; the nurses and doctors in the adjoining surgical suites paled at the weapons held steadily in the hands of these cold-faced agents.
The Delphine surgery was shut down for the moment, its in-patients being taken care of by nurses recruited from other facilities and being paid double-time for their assistance while the others were detained and awaiting questioning.
Inside the shuttered building, the two teams of Marshals were now sifting through evidence and downloading computer systems to portable drives. Jamie and Baldwin had been peripherally acquainted during Monroe's time with the Marshals previously, and were working together to gather all of the digital evidence, inserting backstops and shunts into the communications systems so any communications would appear to go through as normal. Cortex operators (from Jamie's old unit) would be covering that, making sure that the other sections of this organ ring didn't become aware.
Mal had taken River back to Serenity, and they were closeted in their bunk at the moment, trying to rebuild River's (and Mal's) balance and mental defenses. Zoe and Raven had taken over the crime scene for the moment.
"Simon, they're waking up."
"Good. Hopefully we can find out who they are; the DNA checker is taking too long." They'd found medical histories attached to the beds, but no names. The DNA analysis system operated over the Cortex, and they were rather distant from the facilities on Osiris that housed the main information databases.
The child woke first, because of his faster metabolism and heartrate; he screamed in terror as he looked up at the man and woman dressed in scrubs.
"It's alright, little fella. My name is Maggie, and this is Simon. We're Federal Marshals, and we're here to help you." Maggie soothed, showing the boy her shiny badge. "What's your name?"
"'m Brian." the boy whimpered into his shoulder, hiding his face.
"Well, Brian, we just want to make sure you're alright, then we'll try to get you back with your family."
"Kay." he snuffled.
"'Nara, can you meet us down here? The little boy just woke up."
"Be right down."
"Mr. Chan."
"What have you found?"
"A growing string of slave markets have been shut down, including the markets that supply our test subjects. We have also received word through corroborating sources that the Zhu Que syndicate's chief enforcer is currently being held incommunicado by Federal Marshals."
"Womack. That Yi Dwei Da Buen Chuo Roh."
"We also have a name of an arresting agent from our sources."
"No."
"Yes. Reynolds."
"G'en Ho Tze Bi Dio Se."
"We are issuing warnings to all of the remaining Zhu Que organization's elements."
"Good idea. Find out what's happening. We need to end this now."
The red-haired woman had just awakened when Inara reached the lower level.
"Well, hello." Inara smiled at the little boy, dark-haired and green-eyed.
"Hi." the boy said shyly, slowly recovering, gaining some semblance of courage. He was sitting on the edge of the bed.
"I've checked him over, and he seems to be fine. I've drawn some blood to test it, but the results won't come back for a while, cortex transmission speeds being what they are. Can you take him someplace else? Serenity, the upper office, somewhere? We've got to treat this woman." Simon said quickly, then turned back towards the other room where Maggie was speaking softly with the stuporous woman on the bed there. Simon pulled a blood draw kit and took a tube, putting it into an automatic analyzer.
"Of course. Come on, sweetie. Let's go see Serenity." Inara reached down for his hand, but the boy reached both arms upwards, obviously wanting to be picked up.
"Okay." Inara said, bending down. "Oof, you're heavy."
"Mama sometimes said that."
"And where is your mama?"
The boy's eyes darkened, and she saw the partially-healed grief in them, as well as the sting of mortality understood too soon. "She died."
"I'm so sorry, sweetie." Inara said, feeling her heart break for the child, as they rode the elevator up. "Do you know where your daddy is?"
"Never met him." the boy said dejectedly. "Only had my mama."
Inara hugged the boy a little tighter, and felt hot tears on her neck as he nuzzled into it.
As she walked out of the surgery's main office, she saw Jamie look up as she passed; he smirked at the boy in her arms, and turned his attention back to what he was doing. She rolled her eyes in return.
"Well, hi there!" Kaylee gushed at the boy Inara held. "I'm Kaylee. What's your name?"
The boy's face brightened at Kaylee's eternal optimism. "'m Brian." he said, solemnly shaking her hand.
Kaylee had been forewarned about the boy, and didn't mention parents. "Would you like something to eat? My sister Jenny is a great cook."
"'m hungry." he said, brightening further at the prospect of food.
"Let's go find something, shall we?" Inara said, still carrying the boy as they headed into the galley. Kaylee smiled at the natural look of the child in Inara's arms, and followed.
"Kaylee, do you think we have any clothes in storage for him? Maybe in the stores the Marshals gave us for these situations?"
"I'll go take a look. You're what, 3 or 4?"
"'m three."
"Okay, sweetie. I'll find ya somethin' to wear." Kaylee bounced off. Inara thought she looked even more happy than usual, had a certain glow...no, she couldn't be. She wondered about that as she walked up to the galley.
"She's nice. She glows." the boy said, a knowing look in his eyes, more knowing than a three-year-old should have mastered.
"What do you mean?" Inara said, smiling indulgently at the boy as she sat him down at one of the chairs.
"It was on her face. She was all shiny, enough for two." Inara controlled her own face with her Companion training, but a thrill and a chill shot through her. Was this child like River? He seemed smart enough, and he seemed to see deeper into a total stranger than could be warranted.
Jenny walked over from the stove, where she'd been preparing some sandwiches for the crew. They'd be back soon enough, and although she couldn't keep food hot for them, she could at least put something together for them to have when they got back.
"Hi there, sweetie. I'm Jenny. Are you hungry?"
"Yup!" the boy said, beaming now. Inara marveled at the strength of the boy, at his resilience to changing situations. Most kids in this situation would be incoherent, maybe even catatonic.
"Well, I've got beef and turkey here. Which do you prefer?"
"Either is good." he said, smiling even wider.
"How about we go with half of one and half of the other?"
"Okay!" Jenny cut the sandwiches in half, and put half of each on a plate. She poured him some juice out of the cooler, and sat down opposite while he devoured the food. "So what's your name, short stuff?"
"'m Brian." he murmured around a mouthful of food.
"And where are you from?" she asked carefully, eyes on Inara. She nodded slightly as she sat next to the boy, approving of the gentle questioning.
"'m from Ar'el."
"Really? That's Yeh Lu Jwo Duo Luh Jwohn Whei Jian Guay! Jamie, one of our crew, is from Ariel."
The boy smiled, too busy eating to answer.
Simon heard the beep from the automated dna tracer. Maggie had cajoled the redheaded woman, a Cynthia Bartole, into a wheelchair, and wheeled her up in the elevator; Simon was cleaning up the gear and getting ready to head back to Serenity.
He picked up the Biomed Industries CX-23 automated blood identifier/tracer/analyzer and checked the analyzer section first; the boy's blood had trace quantities of the surgical prep meds he'd expected, and the sedative he knew was being given to him, but nothing else. The DNA analysis did have some unusual traits...The identifier gave his name as Brian Faulkin. The legal guardian listed on the tracer was listed as Mari Faulkin; deceased, 29, born on Ariel. The boy had gone into foster care after the death of his mother 8 months ago. And the dna match on the father was...
Wo De Tian A!