First thing the following morning, Mal called a crew meeting in the galley. His face was stony and set in the resolute hardness they'd come to know so well. All too often, he had to do the unpleasant things that needed to be done. Wash stood beside him at the head of the table. His eyes were clear and bright for once, although his mouth was set in a grim line.

Zoe and Kaylee sat on one side of the table, Simon and River on the other, and Jayne at the far end. They all stared expectantly at Mal and Wash with dark, heavy eyes. Not even Kaylee seemed cheerful.

"By now I 'spect y'all read through the documents?" Mal started. His eyes scanned his crew, and even Jayne nodded that he had. Mal put his hands on his belt and seemed to chew over his words before he spoke them. "Seems the Alliance sure do like bringin' a nest of trouble t'my boat," he started.

Zoe lifted her chin and spoke up. "We don't have to do it, sir. We can just walk away."

Mal fixed his gaze on her and nodded thoughtfully. "Can we?"

"Nothing points to us," Zoe answered. "We ignore it; don't draw their ire."

Mal kept his focus hard on Zoe. He turned and looked at Wash, his expression rather expectant. "What do you think?"

Wash had already told Mal what he thought. He knew the question was rhetorical. Mal wanted him to say this for Zoe and the rest of them. "Last night I remembered – well, everything." He kept his eyes firm on Zoe. "I remembered what the Alliance did to me while I was with them, and I remembered . . . why they wanted me."

"The air is full of Lethe," River murmured softly, keeping her riveted gaze on Wash.

He shifted his focus to her and nodded. "They wanted me to remember you, but I forgot," he said softly. "They wanted to use me to get to you."

"Miranda," River stated, but it was almost a question.

Wash nodded. "And whatever else you might have learned from them. Miranda was hardly their only offense."

River closed her eyes, breaking contact. She bowed her head and shook it, only stopping when Simon put a hand on her knee. "There are too many voices," River stated in a quiet, casual voice. She bore no hint of her usual watery predictions. "I can't tell them apart," she added clearly.

Wash continued. "They wanted to know how much you knew, how much you unravelled from what you picked up. Did you know about this—about Blue Sun's attempts at subliminal mind control?"

River shook her head. "I don't remember if I remember," she whispered.

For the first time since his return, the pain in Wash's eyes was for someone other than himself. "You've all forgotten," he agreed softly, sweeping his eyes over the group.

River nodded. "I pick at threads, and they unravel," she explained softly. "They fray." Her eyes were back on his. "There's something I can't find."

Wash moved forward, putting his hands on the back of the head chair. "Let me explain. This is serious, folks, and I want to take you through it again before you make up your minds. I'm sure I can explain it better than those documents.

"Let's start with Miranda," he prefaced. "We all risked our lives for that planet, and we took some very heavy losses because of it. And for what? It didn't change a thing, did it?" He let his gaze drift back to Zoe. "Well, it changed everything," he amended, "but not like we'd hoped it would." He shook his head sadly and took a deep breath. "Miranda was supposed to stir up the hornets' nest, you guys. When we went to Mr. Universe with that broadcast, it was supposed to deliver a crippling blow to the Alliance – so why didn't it?"

"The gorram 'verse is too apathetic," Jayne replied.

Wash nodded. "There is that. But there's also the fact that as soon as word got out about Miranda, the Alliance slapped together a subliminal message to change what people remembered about the broadcast. They effectively overwrote our original broadcast with their subliminal conditioning so that anyone who saw the Miranda clip wouldn't remember what it really said."

"So, you're saying everyone else thinks Miranda is fine? That there aren't thirty million dead people on it?" Simon questioned skeptically.

Wash pressed his lips tightly together like the news he had to deliver was extremely grim. He looked over to Mal, but he was staring evenly at River, as though communicating telepathically with her. "Not exactly." He returned his eyes to the doctor as he continued evenly, "I mean that everyone thinks it was a terraforming accident that wiped out the population."

He was met with a wall of silence.

"Ain't that what happened?" Kaylee questioned, confused.

Wash shook his head and closed his eyes. The pain there still seemed to show through the lines in his face. "Don't you guys even remember that there were Reavers?"

He opened his eyes to the sound of a chair leg grating against the floor as Jayne pushed away from the table, getting to his feet. "There weren't no gorram Reavers nowhere," he spat, as if invoking the name alone would draw them to Serenity.

"You're wrong," Wash forcefully stated with enough conviction to still even Jayne. The two of them stared at each other from across the table, and the tension level in the room rose. "We had to get to Miranda from Haven. That whole area is Reaver territory." He tore his eyes off Jayne and looked to Zoe. "Tell me how we got to Miranda without passing through the Reavers?"

She didn't answer.

"There weren't no gorram Reavers," Jayne repeated.

"There were," Wash enforced. "There were hundreds of Reavers, and that's why we crashed. We pitted the Reavers against the very Alliance who made them, and we didn't all survive that battle."

"What are you talkin' about, Wash?" Kaylee asked. Her brow furrowed in deep confusion. "The Alliance didn't make Reavers."

Wash's hands tightened on the back of the chair until his knuckles turned white. "Listen you guys, I can't explain all of this so you'll understand. You can't remember because you've all been subliminally conditioned not to." He looked up. "The Alliance tried to make the people on Miranda better by putting pax in the air that would calm them, so they wouldn't be prone to aggression or crime, things like that." He shook his head. "Instead, it made everyone stop doing anything." He focused his eyes on River. "They all just laid down and died."

River shivered at the intensity of his gaze.

Wash continued. "But some of them had the adverse reaction – they turned violent and unpredictable, and that violence surged into what we now know as Reavers. The Alliance created them, and the Blue Sun Corporation covered it up."

Zoe pushed to her feet and addressed Mal. "You believe this ji bai long men zhen, sir?"

"Don't see how I can't," Mal answered flatly.

"You remember what he's sayin'?" she pressed, her tone hard.

"No." Off her flat reaction, he added, "but I know what I feel is right. What he's sayin' feels right, and all these other lies, this truth we been living, don't."

Zoe raised an eyebrow. "Is that 'cause you want t'be a big time hero, sir, or 'cause you really think what he's sayin' makes more sense than the truth we know?"

Mal took a step towards her. "I know I look into his eyes and see the truth of things when no one else does, just like I look into your eyes and see the fear ain't no one else can see." He held her unflinching gaze. "You plannin' t'start questionin' my orders now? 'Cause maybe things really have changed that much."

Zoe pressed her lips together like she tasted something foul. She shifted her weight and clearly switched from defensive to offensive. "You don't think, sir, this ain't just a little suspicious?" She gestured very briefly towards Wash, not answering Mal's question. "Think about it," she added darkly, her eyes narrowing. "The Alliance kills off one of our men, miraculously revives him, and keeps him hostage for twelve months while they try to get some information out of him that he may or may not actually have. Then, despite the extraordinary efforts put into bringing him back from the dead, they decide to let him go, no questions asked. He survives that and manages to find us, yet he's conveniently forgotten all the important stuff he'd remembered while with them."

Zoe's eyes studied him closely as she took another aggressive step to close the gap between them. "He stays on the boat a couple weeks--the entire time makin' tensions rise, conflicting the crew against each other, and tryin' to win everyone's affections with his 'poor-me' ploy. Then, when we just happen upon some vessel with some top secret information that'd be mighty interesting to the Alliance, he suddenly remembers that, why, yes, that's what he was brought back for?" She paused for breath, studying Mal's face intently. After time had passed for her words to sink in, she continued. "Or you think maybe it makes more sense that the Alliance came up with some cloned mockery of Wash and sent him on a mission to find us and retrieve this information?" She paused for a second. "'Cause I know which of those I believe," she finished darkly.

The room fell deathly quiet after Zoe's tirade.

There was nothing Mal or any of the others could say after that. They all just remained where they were, staring breathlessly at the three at the head of the table, waiting for something to happen.

Wash moved first, and Zoe looked to him quickly as if expecting an attack. "I'm not asking any of you to follow me if you don't want to," he said softly, almost tenderly. "I don't even expect you to believe me right now. I know how absurd this all sounds. I just want you to hear me out."

They stared at each other for a length of time, Wash with a look of profound sadness on his face and Zoe with a determined, unyielding glint in her eyes. Wash swallowed and looked away from her. He addressed Simon. "There's got to be a trigger. You remember the commercial that triggered River in the Maidenhead?" he questioned, and Simon nodded slowly. "Well, there's got to be something like that for this. There's got to be something that will trigger the subliminal controls on you guys – something to break them."

Mal stepped aside to stand by Wash again. "He thinks if we can figure out what the trigger is, we can broadband it out over the Cortex and fix this whole sticky situation."

Kaylee shook her head. "Yes, but even if we could broadband it again, which we can't 'cause it don't work like that no more, what's t'stop them from just doin' it again?"

Zoe paced to the opposite side of the room near Jayne, who looked agitated that the crew was entertaining Wash's ideas.

"I've figured out a way to break the cycle," Wash replied with a little smile. "What I have planned should suffice to overwrite the entire network from the inside out."

"We're going to take on the Alliance?" Simon questioned incredulously. "I hope you remember where we misplaced our fleet of battle cruisers, too."

"I'm with the Doc'n'Zoe," Jayne protested from the far end of the table. "Don't see how this'll mount up t'anything but a whole bunch of bad."

"Even if it is a good idea," Kaylee breathed softly, looking for all the 'verse like she wanted to believe him. "There just ain't no way to get the signal out no more. The 'Liance would cut it off 'fore anyone worth seein' it sawed it."

Wash took a deep breath. "That's why we've got to go to Londinium." After the collective mutter of disbelief rippled through them, he proceeded. "It's the ultimate source: it's where everything Alliance originates, and it's the home of Blue Sun."

Zoe crossed her arms over her chest, turning back to Wash and the captain. "You want us t'infiltrate Blue Sun on Londinium?" she asked. Her voice sounded almost amused at the absurdity of it.

"Hang on, now," Mal countered, looking to Wash with a hint of confusion in his eyes, "you didn't say nothin' 'bout infiltrating Blue Sun."

"There ain't no way," Jayne protested loudly. "Not even 'Nara could do that and she's th'only one we know'd could even remotely have them kinds o'contacts."

Wash fixed his gaze on Mal's. "Listen, you guys. I'll worry about the infiltration. I've got a lot more important things for you to do first." He looked back to Simon. "This all hinges on your ability to break the trigger. I think River and I can help you with it, but ultimately, we can't do any of this until we've got something to broadcast."

Wash lifted his head and looked back to Zoe. "Only Mal's going to really believe me 'til then, anyway." He glanced over to Mal. "And even his trust only goes so far." His gaze returned to Simon. "So, I need you to wake up the world. Wake up yourself and River and the rest of this crew. After that, I think you'll all believe me."

Mal nodded and addressed the crew again himself. "And since we're assumin' that the good doctor here can work that miracle, we're gonna go ahead with the plan. Cain't be wastin' time," he gestured to Wash to elaborate.

For a moment Wash seemed nervous and self-conscious of what he was doing. He took a deep breath and calmed himself. "Okay," he said, exhaling. "While Simon's getting the trigger figured out, we need to get access codes for clearance into Londinium airspace. It might be costly, but without the codes, we're humped." He nodded to Mal and Zoe. "I figure you two can work that."

He turned to address the rest of the crew. "No matter how pretty we make Serenity, they're never going to clear a Firefly to land. So, Kaylee: you and I," he lifted his eyes across the table, "and Jayne," he added, softer, "need to retrofit one of the shuttles so it reads as a newer class model – something they'd let land. We can probably get Serenity close enough to break atmo so long as we just do it for just the amount of time it takes to launch a shuttle."

"Just like the ambulance on Ariel," Kaylee said with a slightly cheerful tone; this was something she could understand. "We can do that, no problem."

Wash kept his eyes on Jayne across the table, awaiting his response.

Jayne shrugged and gestured to Simon. "Hell, if th'Doc can really fix it so this whole gorram plan makes more sense, and Mal's okay with it, then I ain't opposed to it." He let his gaze flicker from Wash to Mal. "Though it ain't gonna be that much like Ariel," he added in a gruffer tone.

Wash smiled, knowing from that moment on that this was going to work. "Shiny," he stated and continued. "Kaylee, I'll need you to rig up some mechanical items for me, too, as well as a fake resume. I'll go over the details later. We'll be on Greenleaf before too long, and we can get started then."

Mal drew up beside Wash again. "Now, I'm clear on what we're all doing for this," he said with a light wave of his hand, "but it ain't like we can pass as corpses again," he noted. "In case you forgot, we're all wanted fugitives, and Londinium is the chewy center of the Core Worlds – they ain't gonna fall for no ruse. Even the slums got retinal scans."

Taking a deep breath, Wash nodded. "This is where I come in. I'm dead." He smiled grimly. "But as a result, all my fugitive files are closed. They scan my eyes, and I won't come up as wanted."

"You'll come up as deceased," Simon countered. "How is that any better?"

Wash shook his head. "I won't. When I first escaped, I tried accessing my accounts and was locked out because I was reading as dead. I couldn't even store the credits I made from new jobs in a bank account because my thumbprint wasn't registered." He shrugged. "So, I registered a new identity."

Mal nodded, thoughtfully. "Tian Tuan Ti."

"Exactly," Wash agreed with a nod. "I told the people on Clemency I'd grown up on a ranch in a backwater Rim World and never registered with the Alliance. They said they got those types on the occasion and set me right up: took my prints, retinal scan, everything." He shrugged a little. "I effectively replaced myself. Tian's a perfect citizen with a clean record."

Kaylee raised a finger, catching on. "And with a convincin' enough resume, y'could get in t'pretty much anywhere, lookin' for work and th'like."

Wash grinned and nodded. "Exactly."

"You think you can get a job working for Blue Sun?" Simon inquired uncertainly. "They're not going to hire you on the basis of your resume alone, no matter how nice you mock it up."

Wash shook his head. "I don't need a job, Simon, I just need the interview. Once I'm into the facility, all I have to do is find the brains of the operation, plug the trigger breaker into it, and broadband it. Should be easy."

Mal wrinkled his nose. "Seems to me the actual broadcastin' was the hard part last time," he noted seriously.

"Well, you guys just worry about what you need to do. I'll worry about the actual infiltration what to do inside."

"Good enough for me," Mal noted, sweeping his eyes over his crew. Everyone seemed at least somewhat eager to start except Zoe. "Well, doctor," he said to Simon, "best you'd get to work on that trigger. This whole scheme rests 'pon you now."

Simon pushed to his feet, and River followed suit. "I suppose we don't really have a choice," he noted plainly. "Funny how he's so willing to come to me on his own agenda," he muttered under his breath and stepped around the table.

Wash looked ashamed for a moment. He glanced around the room at the rest of the crew with an air of sadness and relief hanging around him, and then followed Simon out. He quietly began discussing what he knew of triggers as he descended the stairs to the infirmary.

When he was gone, Zoe returned to Mal's side.

Kaylee hopped to her feet. "I'll go'n'get started on that resume," she noted as she scurried off to her quarters.

Jayne stepped around the table until he was standing beside Zoe and Mal. Both men were looking hard at Zoe.

After the galley had been quiet several moments, she shook her head. "You really gonna let him take us right t'the heart of the Alliance, let him go free, and trust that he ain't gonna just turn 'round and point the finger at us?" she questioned.

Mal nodded firmly. "I am."

Jayne shook his head. "There's somethin' fishy goin' on here, Mal. Somethin' ain't quite right 'bout all this."

"Figure it'll all make sense once Simon figures out that trigger," Mal replied sternly.

Zoe kept her arms crossed. "That trigger is probably goin' t'be what brainwashes us all into followin' him so blindly, sir. This ain't a good plan. Tracey came back, you'd not be followin' him this blindly."

"Yeah," Jayne agreed. "What proof we got he ain't gonna hoodwink us and turn us int'the feds soon as we get there? How'd he get you so convinced?"

Mal pressed his lips together tightly and focused on them, nodding. "Ain't got no proof. Man ain't even got a very compellin' story, but I trust him just the same. Some things you take on faith."

Zoe's expression was hard. "Faith, sir?" she questioned. "Thinkin' maybe that yao wu already addled with your brain."

"There are a lot of things I ain't seen the past year," Mal stated coldly, his tone serious and even. "Lots of things I turned a blind eye to or ignored 'cause I was hurtin' and couldn't take on more'n'what I had." He shook his head before he started to reveal too much. "Well, I ain't gonna do that no more. Now, I can't rightly explain how I know he's sayin' the truth, but know it, I do. You let him get us through this trigger break, and if after that you still have doubts, I won't ask you t'follow me any further."

Zoe and Mal stared at each other hard as Mal's words hung in the air between them.

"Think even if everythin' were on the up and up, it's still too risky, Mal," Jayne stated, breaking through their tension. "One little man infiltrating th'whole big Alliance network? He fails, we're all humped."

Zoe nodded. "He's right, sir. And if the trigger does fog us up, he'll be free t'get back to them and report us." She took a deep breath and made up her mind. "If you're bent on going through with this, one of us should go with him. Might stop him should he try t'turn on us."

Mal took a deep breath and nodded. "I agree. Already plan t'head this mission myself, whether he wants me to or not."

It seemed the matter was suddenly settled.

Jayne pursed his lips, looking disgruntled. "We gonna get paid for this, Mal?"

Mal broke into an easy, toothy grin now that he knew he'd won. "We sure are," he noted rather lightly. "Just not in cashy money."
--

Wash dropped down the last rung of the ladder into Mal's bunk some time later. He looked around casually at the interior of the room, noting in what ways it had changed and not changed since he'd last seen it over a year ago. "You wanted to see me, sir?" he questioned, his eyes alighting on where Mal sat at his desk.

"Yeah," he answered, rising to his feet. "We need t'talk 'bout this infiltration plan of yours a little bit more." He gestured to his bed, implying Wash ought to take a seat. "I think we get this trigger worked out, then Jayne'n'Zoe'll be on board."

Nodding at his words, Wash moved to sit down on Mal's bed. "Good," he noted, but there was a look of uncertainty in his eyes. "What's that got to do with the infiltration plan?"

"Well," Mal said, turning to reseat himself at an angle facing Wash, "we all came to the same conclusion. Seems it's too risky for y't'be goin' off on that mission by yourself."

Wash arched an eyebrow at this proclamation. "It's not open to debate, Mal."

"They've got some suspicions," he countered. "Can't say I blame 'em. You do this mission, I'm coming with you."

In the silence that followed, Wash studied Mal's face intently from across the room. "You think I'm going to turn you guys in, don't you?"

"It had crossed my mind," Mal answered honestly. "Know it crossed Zoe's and Jayne's, too."

"I won't," Wash answered plainly. "I wouldn't do that."

Mal nodded slowly. "I know. And I trust you," he said softly. "But they don't, not yet. Point is, it's too risky t'go alone."

Wash got to his feet, incensed. "It's too risky for you to go with me, Mal," he countered. "Even if you just stayed on the shuttle while I went in. And I know you wouldn't just stay there."

Mal looked up at him with a measured glance. "I ain't exactly requestin' your permission."

"You're going to jeopardize the whole mission on the basis that I might be some sort of super spy?" He laughed derisively. "A spy with mental problems who sleeps with Jayne to fix them? A spy who remembers things about my life that no one but me could possibly remember?"

Mal pushed to his feet as an unfamiliar look crossed his face. He tried to assuage Wash with softer words. "It ain't that," he replied, his tone a rich, settling sound in the small space of his bunk. "This only works one way. I got a crew t'please, and this is what it's gonna take. I don't think it's too far a notion t'go along with, all things considered."

Wash pressed his lips tightly together, staring at Mal. "They'll follow whatever orders you tell them to. If it's going to work, I need to do it alone."

For several moments Mal's eyes just studied Wash's face, and there was a strangeness that crept into his expression. When he spoke, his tone was even softer. "You ain't been on this boat the past year. You ain't seen how completely she shattered after Miranda and us not knowin' why. Every month I turned a blind eye t'what was fallin' apart 'round me in the hopes that maybe, if I pretended th'problem didn't exist, it'd go away."

Wash's features lightened a little at Mal's speech.

Mal continued. "I couldn't rightly explain what was wrong, and now I know we'd been under this Alliance spell. Made to forget what we were willin' t'lay down our lives for; what some of us did lay down our lives for. We got a second chance t'fix the woes of the 'verse, and I don't plan on losin' that chance 'cause you weren't willin' t'take a gun hand with you."

When he spoke, Wash's voice was gentler, but his eyes were directed at Mal's collar. "If it comes to gunfire, it'll already be too late."

Mal's mouth tightened grimly as he mulled over his words with a great deal of consideration. "Against all logic and reason you came back t'us, Wash," he stated, almost whispering. "You left and this crew broke, and I think you bein' back's gonna fix us in a way we desperately need." He paused for a second and shrugged, almost helplessly. "I just got you back; seen what good y'are. I don't rightly plan on lettin' you go again."

The tenderness in Mal's voice made Wash look up at him. There was sadness in Mal's eyes, but it wasn't the same sort of sadness Wash had seen since his return. It was an open sadness, like the walls had just come down around the captain and Wash was seeing right to the quick of him. It was intensely powerful, and the look in his eyes spoke volumes more than his words. "Mal," Wash started uncertainly.

Mal's jaw clenched a little as though it was difficult for him to let someone else read him so openly, but his expression didn't change. "I just don't think I could handle losin' you again, not right now," he said in a hushed tone and moved just a little bit closer to him.

There was something Wash ought to be doing right then, but he'd long ago forgotten the proper moves to this dance. So, he just stood and listened to the blood pounding in his ears, staring into Mal's eyes, uncertain if it was fear or anticipation he was feeling. He wanted to say something, but words eluded him.

They might have stood there all night staring at each other, waiting for the other to make some first move for or against. Suddenly, the proximity alarm went off overhead and broke the comfortable silence between them.

"Greenleaf," Mal breathed. He stepped back, and his walls rose back up around him. "We must be there."

Wash didn't move for several seconds, hardly aware of the alarm over the pounding in his ears. He noticed Mal was halfway out of the bunk before the alarm had fully registered. Sounds and motor function returned to him, and he spun around, too. He found where his voice had fled, somewhere in the back of this throat. "Hope River's at the helm," he managed, starting up the ladder after the captain.

Outside Mal's bunk, the ship was a cacophony of sounds and bright lights as they hit atmosphere and began their descent. Wash stood between the two pilot consoles as River held Serenity steady and Mal played her co-pilot. He watched the land surging towards them through the fire dancing on her nose, and he rocked with the ship as she pitched and screamed in her descent. He silently wished again for the companionable warmth and quiet he'd found just minutes ago in Mal's bunk.