Notes: I'm so sorry it's been so long. The chapter I was working on morphed into a huge monster and was taking forever and a year. So here's the first part of it; just so you know I haven't forgotten you all. Again, thanks for reading!
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Mal murmured as he stared at the bodies in the mess hall, instinctively reaching for the crucifix around his neck, forgetting that he no longer wore it.
"What do you think killed them?" Zoë asked.
"Dunno. Don't suppose it matters much." Mal picked up the com. "Uh, hey, Wash. Seems we ain't going to have much opposition here. There's a comp console in the corridor. See if you and Kaylee can get any info out of it."
"Anything you need to tell us, Captain?" Wash asked guardedly.
"No. Uh, but if you see River, get a hold of us. Immediately."
"Aye, aye," Wash responded knowingly.
"Okay," Mal turned and addressed his companions, "if you were a crazy experiment-gone-wrong that just finished a lovely day of massacring purple-bellies, where would you hide?"
Jayne waded through the piles of bodies to stand in the middle of the room. He slowly took stock of the number of dead, and then laughed mirthlessly.
"Damn, Mal. Wasn't her."
Mal shook his head. "Had to be, Jayne. Who else has got a bone to pick like this? And can shoot blindfolded?"
"There's too many. She wouldn't kill everyone. Maybe just the doctors. And some soldiers. But, the cooks? The scrubs?"
"What, she's a murderer with a heart of gold?"
Zoë stayed in the doorway, watching the exchange and trying to keep her mind off all those dead bodies. She'd seen way too much death, didn't need to dwell on it any longer.
"Captain, maybe he's right. River's no monster."
"Look, it ain't her fault, but these doctors turned her into something unnatural."
Mal and Zoë continued arguing while Jayne crouched to examine one of the bodies. The face was contorted in a ghastly grin, the lips peeled back from the teeth. There were no bullet holes, no slash marks. Just a strange, blue tint around the nose. Definitely weird. River didn't do it; Jayne was sure of that. But that meant that there was something still on the space station… something that could kill a few hundred men without any problem. And River was still all alone.
Jayne jumped up and stormed out of the room, brushing past Mal and Zoë. Mal looked skeptically at Zoë, but she just shrugged and followed Jayne out the door.
The trio continued down the hall, checking doors and calling out for River. Mal figured there was no sense in being sneaky, what with all the crew getting nice and moldy.
They passed barracks and storerooms and auditoriums… all empty and no sign of River.
Static crackling from Mal's belt stopped their search.
"Hey, there. It's us. Wash and Kaylee. And Simon, too."
Mal sighed. "Thanks for the introduction, Wash. What's up?"
"Kaylee and I got the console to search for heat signatures. We ruled out engines and electronics and ourselves, and there're two extra hot thingys. River's probably one of them."
"And the other?"
"Well," Wash continued, "it could be some gizmo we forgot to count…"
"No, it ain't!" Kaylee chirped from across the com. "We triple counted and cross-checked with the computer's own inventory. Unless it's a surprise to the ship, there's somebody else here. Probably somebody bad," she added with a small amount of trepidation.
"No worries, Kaylee," Mal said soothingly. "Where are they? The two hot spots?"
"We don't know. It'd take hours to pinpoint. We were running the search through the sub programming, using the maintenance scans to check unreliable…"
"Never mind, mei-mei. Get back to the shuttle. We'll stay on our toes." Mal sighed. "This keeps getting more and more entertaining."
"Told ya it wasn't her that killed them all," Jayne smirked triumphantly.
"Now, just cause there's a live one running around doesn't mean that River ain't armed and dangerous. So quit grinning and start searching. Carefully."