"Explain." Captain Reynolds demanded of the small girl. She was still a girl, really, by Alliance standards; only seventeen. But seeing how young their mechanic was, River decided that it must be different in the rim.

River placed a dainty hand on her brother's forehead, trying to calm herself. The Sheppard knew his way around an infirmary, though she could tell it was only by watching others.He knew enough to comment on how poorly it was stocked, though,and between the two of them they had gotten Simon sedated.

"Have you ever met a genius, Captain?" That hadn't been what she wanted to say at all, but she was so off balance emotionally she couldn't put her mind to the situation properly and assess what she should say. She couldn't take her eyes of Simon to take in reactions and adjust her approach to be the least offensive or informative. She was a genius, true, but she was still only seventeen. "This is Simon, my brother."

"I think we gathered that already." River finally looked up to meet the Captain's eyes, and liked what she saw there. He was a good man. But he was also a protective man, and she knew that if anything she said somehow threatened his crew, she'd be gone.

"Simon and I… they used to call us the 'Tam Smarts.' The genius Tam siblings." River giggled a little hysterically at that. "Simon was in the top four percentile of everything he did. It's my opinion he wasn't in the top one percentile onlybecause he never tried for his grades, but he'd tell you differently."

"And you?" River's eyes had strayed back towards her brother.

"I'm a different kind of genius than my brother. Simon thought in books and equations and facts, inside-the-box kind of thinking. Me, I can't think like that. I think in theory, grand scale. I'd tell you some to try to explain the difference better, but it'd go over your head. It goes over Simons head most of the time, so don't be offended."

"I'm not. I know how smart I am, and where my limits are. Continue." The Captain still had his arms crossed, not really defensively, but crossed all the same.

"Simon could have been anything, everything that he wanted to be. But he was raised by an upper-class father, who wanted his first and onlyson to do as he asked, to be the regular richboy and have no job at all. Simon, in contrast, wanted to be a doctor, to heal people. He passed all of the exams and requirements when he was twelve.

"Father was not impressed, and didn't allow him to start an internship. Simon was always trying to impress our Father."

"Can you get to the point please, miss?"

"When Simon was seventeen, we received an invitation across the Cortex. It was for an Academy that invited only those with high intelligence, to be with others like them and learn at their level. Needless to say, both Simon and I were ecstatic. We both wanted to go, but my dancing career was just starting to really pick up, and I love dancing more that the mysteries of how the universe came into existence.

"So I declined. But Simon, unfulfilled and without a drive, needed to be doing something to work his mind. And he went. A year later his letters started to get jumbled up, confusing, talking about some of my favorite theories but twisting them around and mixing them up. I knew something was wrong immediately, Simon knew my theories perfectly." Here River paused. She wasn't sure if it was for dramatic effect or not, but it just felt natural to pause there.

"It was code. It took me longer than it should have to riddle it out, but Simon got it mixed up in one of his letters, and I had trouble picking out which parts were coded. He'd jumbled the whole letters up, you see. But I finally got it." River looked solemnly up a Malcolm Reynolds then, uncharacteristically grim.

"They said 'Help me, they're hurting us' and then the letters stopped."

This has turned out to be a lot harder to do than I anticipated, but don't fear. I hope this answered some questions. Sorry for the long explanation, I know Simon made it shorter. But River is younger, less socially stiff, and I needed to explain how it turned out to be Simon instead of River. I hope this chapter was realistic. Thank you to my reviewers.

I do not own the characters, plot, or setting of the show Firefly.

TS