"Mal!!" came the cry from down below. Frantic footsteps clanged up to the mess through the sudden darkness of the vessel and through to the bridge to reveal Jayne – closely followed by Simon – as the source of the disturbance. The ship was suddenly a hive of activity; Kaylee was screaming expletives from all the way back in the engine room, her voice crackling with static over the intercom, probably trying to figure out exactly what went wrong. Jayne was a flurry of nervous anxiety, babbling an explanation Mal couldn't make sense of over Simon's infuriated cries. Inara tried to sooth the two men, to no avail.
Mal stood there for precisely five seconds before he took charge of the situation.
"Enough!" he bellowed, and his crew immediately obeyed, lapsing into silence. Something in his eyes warranted no argument; the situation had pushed Mal to the limits of his patience, and he was teetering on the edge of it. He drilled into Jayne with his eyes.
"What is it?"
Jayne blinked, gulped slightly and adjusted his collar. "Uh…it's gone."
The absence of light seemed, at that moment, to give life to the absolute silence that filled the room almost physically. When Mal spoke, it was quietly, and very dangerously.
"…What do you mean…'gone'?"
Jayne seemed to sweat a little, and shifted from foot to foot. "It ain't in the cargo bay no more."
The ramifications of what he said sunk in; Inara leaned against the nearest console, and Simon completely deflated from his angry rage, as if he hadn't considered what Jayne's mistake had meant to them until just now.
Mal didn't say anything, because Jayne hadn't finished.
"It's…uh…it's bigger."
"How much bigger?" asked the captain.
Jayne's eyes were hollow with disbelief at what he had witnessed through the window of the cargo bay door.
"A lot bigger."
That took a few moments to sink in.
"I take it the thing went through the wall with the main power conduits?" asked Mal, still icily calm. Jayne nodded an affirmative. Mal considered this.
"Kaylee," he called to his box-like personal intercom. Kaylee should have hers in the engine room, and if the main power conduits were blown then they were the only things left on the ship that would have power. "What kinda repairs can we make to the ship to get her power again?"
The answer was hesitant, but almost immediate. "Uh…nothin'."
"Nothin'? You've fixed her when she was broke a thousand times before now. Hell, she's been flyin' on nothin' but spit and polish for the past six months. You could keep this ship in the air by thinkin' it, and you're tellin' me there's nothin' you can do to fix her up again?"
"…Yeah. Cap'n, this ain't some trinket I can cook up a replacement part for with a kitchen knife and a coat hanger. It's the main power conduit. They don't break, ever. If somethin's broken the line, there's nothin' I can do. Maybe I could've fixed the dorsal cluster with time, but…it's like cuttin' up somethin's heart and expectin' it to keep on tickin'. It can't be done."
"C'mon, Kaylee. I've heard this talk from you before. There's somethin' you can do, and you've got less than an hour to think it up. So I'd get on it."
"Yessir."
"Zoe, stay with her. Anythin' nasty comes knockin' on the door, you answer it with violence, you got it?"
"Aye."
Mal turned to gaze out of the forward cockpit viewport. The Alliance ship was much bigger now; they must be pushing their engines to the limit to catch up with them. He turned the situation over and over in his head, trying to figure out a way through it. His ship had no power…the creature was loose on it…and the Alliance were, judging by the distance involved, less than an hour away…and they were gonna crash into a moon way before that.
Nothing immediately hit him except the imminent loss of his vessel. He knew it, deep down in his gut. Serenity was dying. Just like Kaylee said, this monster had cut out her heart, and now she lay lifeless in space, doomed to the mercy of whatever gravity held her. He knew it better than Kaylee did. If that thing had gone through the main power conduit, there was nothing they could do to fix it; it was the one part of the ship that simply didn't break, that the rest of the ship was built around. Hell, even when they were constructing a ship, they started with the power conduits in the same way a foetal human begins with the beating of cardiac cells.
This was how he arrived at his next course of action. He turned back to the others, who had remained silent, allowing him to brood.
"I need to see it."
"I dunno where it went," said Jayne.
Mal shot him a glare. "Not the creature, you chou ma niao. The gaping hole in my ship." Not waiting for a response, he stormed to the hatch of the bridge before Inara caught up to him, grabbing him by the arm.
"Mal…that thing is still out there," she said, and Mal just shook her hand free of its grasp.
"I know," he said, and marched out off the bridge, not even bothering to check around him for the monster. All emotion had left him now; all that mattered was making sure that Serenity was okay.
As he marched through the mess, a part of him marvelled at how composed he was under the circumstances. Occasionally he had considered what he would do if the unthinkable were to happen to Serenity on cold, lonely nights in his bunk. The ship had sheltered him and his, gave them a chance to live free of the oppression of the Alliance. Sure, he might have bitched about it at the time but even River and Simon had carved out a place here, finding refuge when the all-seeing eyes of the Alliance were seeking them out. Kaylee had found her independence here, and he and Zoe had found the same thing, although they had needed it for very different reasons. Even though she would never admit it to him, Mal had seen the affection in Inara's eyes when she talked about her shuttle, and even Jayne showed marginal signs of putting down roots, in the way he had customised his bunk.
Speaking of whom, the big brute was clumsily trailing behind Mal as he strode down the steps to the infirmary and up to the entrance to the cargo bay.
"Mal, are you crazy?" he hissed, catching up to his captain, but Mal was just looking up at the bulkhead mounted above the gangway.
There was a vent that allowed manual tuning of the main power conduits; or rather, there had been before ten minutes ago. All that was left was a twisted hole that the creature had made, slipping through the confined space with strength, the cold, analytical part of Mal's brain filed away, that was beyond human.
He felt emotion seeping at his eyes, willing him to shed the tears his soul screamed for, but they were overridden by another drive; cold, hard rage. He trembled slightly as the loss finally sunk in; that the unthinkable had happened. Serenity was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.
His thoughts swam with the memories of the ship; the same way a mind reacts when informed a close friend or loved one has passed away. The first look he took of the ship. Introducing Zoe to her. The crew assembled around the mess table, laughing at one of Book's stupid stories. Crawling through the corridors of the ship, a bloody hole in his side, spare part in his hand, trying to get the life support back online. Wash, in the pilot's chair, just before he died.
And finally he thought of the terrible moment in the elevator, back at Mr Universe's place, riding back up after broadcasting the signal that had crippled the Alliance. His momentary elation had evaporated when he had recalled Book's death, and Wash's murder. Who else? he had thought. Are there going to be any more corpses waiting for me? Who was going to be next to go?
But now he realised that it had been the ship, who had protected them from the elements for so long, who had died next. They stood within a corpse, killed by a creature born from death.
His fist finally clenched, and he turned to look at Jayne. He received a timid glance in return.
He swung and caught Jayne right on the jaw, knocking the mercenary over and into a nearby crate. He pounced on him, raining blows onto wherever he could land them, venting his anguish and loss onto his man's stupidity.
"Where were you?" he cried. "I told you to keep watch, gorrammit!"
Jayne just lay there and took it, knowing somewhere within him that all of this was somehow his fault. Even a day ago he would have beaten Mal to a bloody pulp in retaliation, but some part of him that was rational and human saw that he could have prevented this; that he had been the one to destroy their home, and so lay there and received the physical and verbal abuse without complaint.
Finally, Mal rolled to the side, exhausted, and a single sob escaped him. His emotion had been vented, and now there was nothing left except the loss. Now he had nothing in all the verse. Nothing except the corpse of a ship and a crew with no home.
They lay there for a stretch of time that neither of them could measure before Jayne looked up.
"Ohh…" he said reflexively. "Mal…"
Mal, completely empty, looked up. And frowned.
A mound of biological matter clung to the ceiling above them, rising down towards them like a stalactite in a cave. It glistened with some kind of resin, slime coalescing into solid matter. Pieces of bone jutted awkwardly from the structure, and Mal looked to where Harvey's corpse was earlier and saw nothing. A smaller structure hung from the side of the first, ovoid in shape. While the large stalactite was a silky white colour, the smaller structure was shiny and black, and much harder looking.
"What is that stuff?" asked Jayne in a whisper.
"It's Harvey," replied Mal in a normal tone of voice. "It ate him up and spat him back out up there." Then, as if on a sudden impulse, he jumped to his feet and started yelling. "You hear me? I'm not afraid of you! You come and get me next, see where it gets you!"
There was no immediate response to this outburst, which galvanised Mal into further action. He almost ran out of the cargo bay and back up to the bridge, Jayne tagging along behind him. On his way, he picked up his pistol from the mess.
"What's the damage?" asked Inara.
"Everyone into the shuttles," said Mal, ignoring her completely. "We're abandoning the ship."
"What?"
"You heard me. The ship is toast," he said all too calmly, and then repeated his order. "Everyone into the shuttles. We're abandoning the ship."
"What do you mean, 'it's toast'? Surely it can't be that cut and dried?" asked Inara, shocked. Mal just looked at her evenly.
"It is. The main power conduit's gone. Ain't nothin' can fix that. Go ask Kaylee, she'll tell you the finer points, but you heard what she said."
"No!" said Inara. "I refuse to accept that. There must be something we can do. There's always something."
"There ain't nothin'," said Mal, a little of his grief spilling over into his voice. Inara's eyes widened, seeing that beneath his calm exterior boiled a sea of emotion. "We're getting off this thing. And that's it. We don't have any time; we're gettin' closer and closer to that moon and there's gonna be a big bang when we hit it. I don't wanna be on this thing when we hit surface, and I don't want you to be either. So let's go."
He moved to the doorway, loading his pistol. Suddenly he turned and saw Kaylee and Zoe jogging towards him. Kaylee's eyes were full of grief; full of the knowledge of having to say something she really, really didn't want to say. Zoe stood reassuringly behind her.
"Cap'n, we gotta…we gotta abandon the ship," she said, tears shining in her eyes. Mal grabbed her shoulder, reassuringly gruff.
"Way ahead of you, girly," he said. "C'mon, everyone to the shuttles!" His mind was working again, more focussed on the crisis rather than the situation.
He pushed everyone through to the corridor, the ship listing slightly as it started being pulled towards the moon.
"Ya'll have precisely thirty seconds to gather up your things; hop to it, people."
The enclosures to everyone's bunks, having popped open automatically with the power failure, allowed those with rooms up here to descend into them. Inara suddenly broke from the group and headed down through the mess hall.
"Inara!" called Mal, heading after her. Jayne, whose only possessions he cared about were in the mess hall, watched them both pass with a sort of bemused disbelief.
"What the hell are you doin'?" cried Mal, trying to catch up to the Companion. She was at the bottom of the stairs before he had gone down halfway, plunging headfirst into the darkness.
"I need to get River's medication," she said, entering the common area. "I won't let her live through what she does without some kind of help!"
"We don't have time for this!" called Mal, and Inara turned to look at him.
She gave him her most resolute, self-assured stare. "I'm making the time," she said.
The darkness behind her became physical, extending towards her with terrible, jet-black limbs. They looped around her body, sweeping her off the ground and smothering her mouth before she could even scream. Her eyes were the only things Mal could see, widening as if they were trying to put forth that burst of noise on behalf of her mouth.
"Inara!" he cried, going to run forwards towards her as she disappeared into the blackness surrounding him. But suddenly Jayne was there, grabbing him by the arms and dragging him backwards.
"Mal, she's gone!" he roared into the captain's ear, fighting with the struggling man. He let go with one hand and jabbed Mal in the throat with his extended fingers. Mal went limp in his arms, stunned by Jayne's attack, allowing the mercenary to finish dragging him up the stairs.
The rest of the crew crowded around the doorway to the mess, their eyes frantic. Jayne nodded quickly at Zoe, who took control of the situation in Mal's stead.
"Let's move, everyone!" she shouted, and there was a mass exodus towards the shuttles.
Mal was blinking, some of his senses restoring themselves. He expected to wake up any second, but the harsh reality of life stayed solid around him.
How had this happened? His ship was dead, Inara was…gone. How had everything gone so badly wrong in such a short amount of time?
His eyes darkened. That thing. The alien. The Void, as River had taken to calling it. It had popped out of Harvey and destroyed everything he had left to care about. It was evil incarnate, and Mal was going to make it pay. And he knew exactly how he was going to do that.
Jayne felt some of the strength flow back into Mal and he allowed the Captain to start to walk on his own, Mal coming up to run alongside him as they mounted the stairs leading to the entrance to the shuttle. He felt himself being evaluated, but apparently he passed Jayne's visual scan without raising any alarms.
They reached the entrance to the secondary shuttle, Zoe pushing Kaylee inside, followed by Simon. Jayne vaulted inside of his own volition.
Zoe went to mount the stairs into the smaller craft, but paused when Mal made no move to join her. She glanced back at him, puzzled.
"Sir?"
Mal was staring at her almost blankly, a faint smile on his face. "It's okay," he said quietly. "Four to a shuttle. You know the rules."
There was a commotion behind Zoe, and Jayne shouted something that was just inaudible. She turned, torn between going to resolve the ruckus and trying to convince Mal to come with them. She turned back to him, anguished.
He nodded. "It's okay," he repeated, entirely calm. "I'll be up behind you. You need to leave, now."
She held his gaze for a few long moments, the deck tilting more to the side. One of the bulkheads popped with the change of gravity pulling it.
"Hear that? It's the old girl's curtain call. Came outta nowhere, didn't it? Seems like two minutes ago we were…" He broke away from his sentence, unwilling to draw Zoe into a conversation. She seemed to understand at last.
"Sir…"
"Like I keep sayin', it's okay. I'll take care of things here. You need to take care of the others. Tell them that…" He paused, looked away, tried to find the words. Finally he smirked ever so slightly and shrugged helplessly. "Just tell 'em, okay?"
She nodded slowly, sadness creeping into her normally stoic expression. Another yell from behind her. Mal jerked his chin at the shuttle.
"Guess that's your final call. Take care, Zoe."
"It's been an honour, Sir," she said. But then she frowned, counting something in her head.
"Wait…where's…?"
A blur of motion shot forward, shoving Zoe back over the threshold into the shuttle. It hit the switch for the manual override and the shuttle hatch swung shut. The docking clamps released and the smaller vessel started to rise from Serenity's hull.
For a few seconds he stood, absorbing the silence that was all that was left of the ship. Then he looked at the cause of the blur.
"Guess she caught on, huh?" he commented wryly. River shifted slightly in the darkness in front of him, looking at him with knowing eyes, almost accusing him.
"You're not going to use the other shuttle."
He shrugged, held his hands up. "Ya got me. Guilty as charged. You do realise the only way to get out on the shuttle is by activatin' the manual override outside. One of us is gonna have to stay, and it ain't gonna be you, and it ain't gonna be Inara. Granted, I hadn't planned on you stayin' behind, but there's room in my plan for change."
"This selfless nobility isn't befitting a rogue," she said loftily.
In other circumstances he might have feigned offence at being referred to as noble or selfless, but with River it was more or less defunct. She knew what he was thinking, so there was no need to communicate it with words; or as was more Mal's style, cover it up with false bravado.
"She's still alive," said River, and a small ray of light shone from the middle of Mal's beaten heart.
"That was kind of central to me staying behind; thanks for clearin' it up."
"Aren't you going to ask me why I stayed?"
He shrugged again. "Figure you'd tell me if I needed to know."
River almost smiled. "Oh, you'll need to know."
What was left of Mal's tattered emotional core sent a chill that travelled right up his spine.
"I belong here," she said. "With It."
"The Void," said Mal; not a question. River nodded slowly, looking away as if feeling another input than her own to her mind. The sedated look they had become so accustomed to over the past week washed over her face. The creature, he realised. It's up in there, inside her head. "You and I gonna have a problem here, girly?" he asked warily.
River shot him a look. "Not as long as you stay out of my way," she said. Abruptly she turned and plunged into the darkness that blanketed the ship, and Mal was left alone.
"Huh. Well…that was…huh."
He stepped to the small port that afforded a view of outside. The ship was inside the moon's atmosphere now; had been for a while. They had suffered the power failure inside it, so he didn't have to worry about burning up. He figured he had maybe five minutes before the winds started to shake the ship.
He stepped back onto the walkway proper, and a small, ever so slight sound made him look over his shoulder. A wall of solidified blackness blocked his vision, teeth and claws flashing towards him in a chilling display of a totally silent predator.
He had just enough time to raise his arms to his face on reflex before the creature was upon him.
But he didn't feel its arms wrap around him, as it had grabbed Inara. Something whistled past his ear and the sound of something sharply cracking assaulted his ears; like a steel pipe hitting concrete.
"Go!" shouted River, bringing her weapon back down onto head of the creature. Mal saw he at least got the metal bar part right, but he was surprised to hear such a solid sound come from such a relatively frail looking creature. He cowered past River, his arms still raised to fend off blows from either the pipe or the Void, and the girl reigned blows down on the creature.
It hissed and whipped its tail at River, but she skipped away from it, dropping the pipe and heading down the corridor behind Mal. It lunged forward at her, and she bounced sideways, avoiding its grip. They danced like that for several more moments, and Mal realised why; where the Void lacked River's evasive grace, it had impenetrable defence. It could withstand any attack she could make, while only one swipe would finish River – if it could hit her.
Finally it tired of the game and rushed her but she vaulted up onto its back, grabbing its tail as it swung up to impale her.
"River!" shouted Mal, and the monster looked up long enough for River to pick up the bar from the deck. She swung it solidly into its…where its face would normally be, but it seemed undamaged.
"Go!" she called again, and Mal saw the insight into her earlier words. Not as long as you stay out of my way. She wanted him away, so she wouldn't have to worry about him. Ignoring the effect that thought had on his pride – and his selfless nobility – he turned and bolted from the corridor, bounding along the gangway until he emerged in the mess, trusting that River would be all right.
He wrenched at the door that had sealed the creature into the cargo bay, sweat beading on his forehead, trying to get the door open. The Void was huge. When had it grown to such a large proportion? Probably when Jayne was supposed to be keeping an eye on it, he thought bitterly, but then the hatch popped open, interrupting his thoughts. Down into the cargo bay next, for Mal knew exactly where he was going to find Inara.
"Oh my God," he whispered as he came into full view of the bay.
Inara hung from the large white…cocoon he had seen earlier. It had wrapped her up inside it so only her face was visible. Her face was half covered in a yellow fluid that Mal didn't want to guess the identity of, and it stretched to where he could no longer see, down her neck. Her eyes were closed.
He ran forward, eager to free her of such an insidious prison. In the blackness of the ship, the white cocoon looked even sicklier. Mal felt his gore rise at the thought of what Inara was feeling right now. The deck now steeped at a twenty-degree angle, so if he leant out slightly off the gangway he stood on, he could reach the viscous substance that held Inara to the ceiling. Hesitating a moment, he plunged his hands into the mass and started ripping chunks of it away, the alien substance falling far down to the deck below them with noisy splats.
She stirred slightly and he silently thanked Buddha – on her behalf – that she wasn't already dead. But who knew what this alien was capable of; maybe it had put one of its spawn inside of her, like it did with Harvey. Mal quickly shut his mind from that possibility. It was too awful to consider.
Suddenly the ship lurched beneath him, and his feet swept off the gangway below. Only quick thinking allowed him to plunge both of his arms into the cocoon, affording him safety from plunging to his death.
The atmosphere, he realised. The winds were starting to buffet the ship. He had run out of time.
The g forces increased, tearing at his body, willing him to be released from his sanctuary; afforded by the monstrosity he was trying to kill. The plan had been to get off the ship before this had started, but the Void had ambushed them.
Just as his thoughts turned to River, impossibly, the power started to flicker back on around him, illuminating the cargo bay in a strobe effect. Something big and mechanical groaned to life in the heart of the ship, and the gravity pressing onto his body ebbed slowly away. His feet swung back to over the gangway and he dropped onto the cold steel, starting his work on freeing Inara again.
After several moments, something clanged into the hatch from the common area below him and his heart jumped a few beats in his chest; but a quick glance revealed River looking unblemished after her encounter with the monster.
"What'd you do?" he called, trying to kerb his anxiety by speaking as conversationally as possible, but it sounded wrong when it came out of his mouth.
"The automatic stabilisers," she replied, emoting the calm that Mal was striving to find. "I tore out the backup power supply for the life support. I don't think we need it any more."
"Good work."
"Yes. But it will only help us for approximately twenty seconds."
"What…River? What do you mean?" he asked, but she had wrapped herself around a nearby support. Mal cursed and sunk himself into the cocoon again, bracing himself for something.
The ship shuddered violently, almost shaking Mal loose of the web of resin. The cargo bay door beneath him groaned loudly, several rivets popping and water springing from them. A jet of water shot from the very bottom of the door, flooding the deck of the bay instantly. The lights flickered one last time and died again, the machine – the stabilisers – silenced from the impact.
River was bounced from her support, rolling to her feet just as soon as the ship had stopped juddering around. Her cold, analytical eyes swept the cargo bay, assessing the damage that had been caused by the impact. Thank God we didn't hit land, thought Mal, and she looked up to him and nodded.
"Fortunate," she said. She moved to where the power conduits lay exposed to the environment and started to tear one of the sparking cables free from the bulkhead. The power was still being generated, but the Void had torn through the main regulators that moderated the use of power throughout the ship. What River was holding in her hand was the energy that had powered the ship up until now in its purest form; the last, dying breaths of the ship.
Mal continued to dig at Inara's prison while the cargo bay rapidly filled with water below him. The pressure increasing on his ears told him they were sinking at an equally rapid pace, and really needed to get off Serenity five minutes ago. The second shuttle should still function under the water; they would rise with a built in flotation device to be used in such an emergency, and then use the engines to reach orbit, and with any luck, the others.
With a loud, organic sucking sound, the cocoon released Inara and Mal staggered back with her sudden weight fully on him. She didn't wake up.
"River!" he called, but the girl suddenly glared up above, abandoning her task of freeing the power cable.
Before he could even guess what was happening, he was violently thrown from the gangway by a force beyond his comprehension; one second he was standing near the roof of the room, the next the air had been ripped from his body and he was under six feet of water. Inara had been torn from his grasp and he struggled to get his bearings so he could fill his empty lungs.
The back of his throat burned as he flailed around, and he touched metal beneath him. He pushed up with his feet and he mercifully erupted from the water, sucking oxygen into his beaten body.
"Inara!" he cried weakly – and in vain, because the Companion was surely still unconscious and under the water to boot. He took another breath and submerged himself, desperately scanning the murky depths for any sign of her.
Cargo containers obscured his view as they floated on the ever-rising surface, and his heart nearly burst when he caught sight of her still form, lying prone on the deck. He launched himself towards her and, one hand under each arm lifted her to the surface of the water.
Mal emerged to sounds he would never have thought would be coming from inside his ship. Water was pumping up from below him, churning up onto the surface in a violent, bubbling froth. Fuel was trickling from overhead, one of the lines obviously succumbing to the pressure of being beneath an ocean, and the black fluid was forming into pools on the surface of the water. Bulkheads were creaking, popping and groaning around him. One rivet burst free, clanging off the opposite bulkhead. More were inevitably soon to follow.
"What happened?" he called to River, who was somehow still standing in exactly the same place he had last seen her. A closer inspection revealed that she, too, was soaking wet, and this perversely made Mal feel a little better.
Her eyes met his, still appearing to be drugged. "The Alliance. They're dropping depth charges on us from orbit."
"What?" he exclaimed, horrified. "Why would they…?" but his question was cut off as he lost the strength in his legs and sank under the surface again. Not that it mattered. He could figure it out later.
He emerged once again, and for the first time thought to check Inara's neck with his fingers.
There was a weak pulse, but a closer inspection revealed she wasn't breathing.
"River!" he called, the water streaming from his hair into his eyes. He suddenly felt very weak, and was afraid he could no longer support both his and Inara's weight in the water. "Help me!"
But the girl didn't answer him. She just stared vacantly at the surface of the ocean inside the ship, apparently lost to the world. Mal flinched as the sparking power cable she had freed ignited a nearby pool of engine fluid in a pillar of flame. It spread rapidly across the surface of the water, illuminating the bay in an eerie, flickering light.
Then she looked darkly towards the cocoon, hooded eyes filling with a raw, animal emotion Mal couldn't identify. He heard something clang onto the gangway just below the organic, alien prison and knew what was in the bay with them.
This is what she's been fighting, thought Mal with a sudden flash of insight. We brought that thing on board the ship, and ever since – even before – it was here she's been acting strange. Sedated. Drugged. She's been feeling that thing's mind, trying to hold on to her humanity, and she's exhausted. It doesn't think, it only acts on instinct. It's been rubbing off on her, and now it's right here in the room with her. I'm on my own now.
The Void hissed above him, and Mal tracked its movement down the bulkhead and onto the gangway River was standing on. She made no move to intercept it, and within seconds it was right in front of her, River merely following it with her eyes.
Mal's guts loosened inside his body as it stopped just centimetres from her face, the rows of gleaming, dripping teeth practically scraping her face. But River just met its gaze – because it was looking at her, eyes or no – without any fear or hesitation.
They stood there, the water bubbling up around Mal, the fire spreading across its surface, the bay filling with the cold, salty liquid, for several seconds before either of them moved. They started to sway side to side, and Mal had taken their distraction to start to swim towards a nearby strut that he deemed would support one person's weight. He needed to get something solid beneath Inara so he could pump the water from her lungs.
Abruptly River hissed at the Void and it retreated two steps away from her, as if it were afraid of her somehow. But then it erupted forwards, sweeping with its claws at River's head. She danced sideways and avoided the strike, kicking at its body. But she all but bounced off the creature's exoskeleton, so little damage she did.
Mal was nearing the strut when another spark fell in front of him, igniting the water around him. Cut off from the strut, he flailed backwards in an attempt to avoid the fire, but it licked at his body, searing his flesh. He cried out in pain and swam backwards with Inara clutched to him.
Suddenly he was struck by the intensity of the situation. He swam in a quick circle, sweeping the bay. The water now filled more than half of the room, the ship starting to list badly to the side. The flame was sweeping across its surface, cutting off any access to an escape route. The only way out left was – and he wasn't surprised in the slightest – where River was engaging with the Void.
But he could see another way out. The power cable that River had torn from the main conduit swung sparking from the ravaged remains. With the way the ship was listing, the cable could be easily reached from the water. Mal swam to it, bringing Inara along with him.
River pushed with all of her strength against the bulk of the Void, and miraculously it lost its balance. She leaped up and grabbed a support girder protruding above her and swung both feet into its body. It flew away from her and splashed loudly into the rapidly rising water.
Mal grabbed the cable as the Void thrashed to the surface just a few feet away from him. His guts did that loosening thing again. He swallowed his fear and looked directly at the thing that had taken away everything he cared about in life. He pushed Inara away from him, towards River, and he was glad when she took the initiative and pulled the Companion out of the water and onto the gangway. He cast his eyes towards River, and time seemed to slow around them, River holding his gaze for what seemed like an eternity. Some of the humanity seemed to return to her all of a sudden, and she shook her head.
"No!" she cried, and she was just an innocent crazy girl again. Mal smiled, but he couldn't feel his lips move.
"Things got messed up real quick, huh?" he said as roguishly as possible, and he realised their minds were somehow communicating, because he didn't speak the words aloud.
The water flowing into the ship trickled to a stop. The fire froze in mid-blaze, and the Void, most importantly, stopped in its rush towards Mal. It had to be less than ten feet away from him, and it looked like it was a strong natural swimmer. Its teeth gleamed in the firelight, and the water was streaming off its body like something metal. One of its claws extended forward, pre-empting the clutch of death it would soon inflict on Mal.
"This isn't the way it should be," said River, and Mal could just shrug as best he could inside a mental link. He supposed he should be disturbed by this event, but nothing seemed to surprise him any more. Maybe this is what it meant to be at the end – when life couldn't throw anything else at you that you'd be shocked by.
"Nothin' ever is, li'l albatross. You take care of yourself, y'understand?"
He took a final glance around the ship and decided that overall, he could be dying in a worse way. Serenity was going down, he was going with her and he was dragging the thing that killed her along for the ride. He even got to save the girl on the way.
He looked back at the monster coming for him and swallowed the fear that rose up from his stomach into his mouth, trying to escape in a sob that, once uttered, wouldn't let him stop. Shocked, no, but terrified? He was scared witless.
"Okay, girly," he said to River, his voice trembling slightly. "You let me do my thing now." He felt rather than saw River nod, and time started to flow back to normal around him.
The water splashed from the bulkhead, the flames started to rage again, and the Void surged forward for his neck.
He grimaced more than smiled, and just as the Void gained back its full momentum, he gripped the sparking power cable tighter in his hand.
"Goodbye," he said to no one in particular.
And plunged the cable into the water.
Next on Void
"I take it you know who I am?"
Thanks to Angus Hardie, MAndrews and Tyramir for your reviews! And thanks to whoever added Void to the C2 group Firefly Fics. Because it wasn't me!