"You're sure you didn't bump into something?" He asked again. It was a stupid question but he kept hoping she would remember something.
"No. This 'Freddy' guy grabbed me." Zoe said, not looking at the clear, dark bruises that offered an unquestionably hand-shaped mark on her shoulder.
"And you're sure you've never met him before?" Simon repeated, wincing as she turned a baleful glare on him.
"Think I'd remember if I did. Nothing about him was familiar. The only thing in the dream that I recognized at all was the severed head of our old passenger talking to me. I'm not claiming anything - just wanted your opinion on that bruise."
He nodded, unnerved by her intense gaze. As nice as she usually was, Zoe could be terrifying when she wanted to be. "It's pretty deep. Likely to hurt for quite a while. While it does look remarkably like someone grabbed you it could still be a coincidence. You said you were sleepwalking and while it's unusual to spontaneously start doing that, it's possible you bumped something hard and it affected your dream. After what happened I would be surprised if most of us didn't have troubling dreams."
She nodded, pulled her shirt back up over her shoulder and slid off the examining table.
Jerry's body was prepared for disposal. There were no further tests he could run, no point to having it sitting out. All it could do was frustrate him and upset the others. Mal wasn't going to like his lack of progress in finding a rational explanation for what happened but it was either admit to being stumped or make some absurd claim like 'he swallowed a grenade'.
Simon rolled his eyes. Seriously? Where had he come up with that? It didn't take a trained professional to see the very clean cuts. No explosive is going to sever all joints and leave a perfectly straight line completely bisecting the torso. That was the part that really bothered him. Even the spine was perfectly split in half. No compression, no rough edges. Anything that could do that was insanely sharp and masterfully used. For it to also be invisible to a witness…
He had considered that Jayne may have been drunk… asleep himself perhaps. It still left a lot of questions. Foremost being who would have done it? Jayne certainly lacked the skill for such perfect cuts and no one else was likely to either kill or do so in such a strange way. Most of those who fought relied on guns or fists. It just didn't make sense and exhaustion was creeping up on him to further skew his judgement.
With a sigh he left for the night and dropped into his bed. He had barely closed his eyes when something splashed on him. He looked up to see River on the edge of laughter, a bottle of soda in one hand. "What are you doing?"
"You look annoyed." She observed without a hint of guilt in her smile.
"I need sleep, of course I'm annoyed! Go bother Jayne or something." He grumbled, starting to resettle. River took another sip of soda and spit it at him. It took a moment for his tired brain to comprehend what she had just done. Was she seriously spitting sticky substances at him and onto his bed? She started to take another drink.
"You wouldn't dare…" He stated incredulously. She spit another thin stream to splash across his chest.
With a peal of laughter she darted out of the room with him close behind. Get the soda first, then a shower, change the bedding, then sleep. He scowled and was glad for the years of all-nighters in med school.