Sarah Harper had figured that taking the job with the mysterious doctor might have been a mistake. Unfortunately, there had been little work on her homeworld of Dionysus, and the opportunity to earn decent coin had been too tempting to pass up.
She had been working as a lab technician for about six months when she was told that she would be assisting the various doctors that came and went with some testing. At first, Sarah thought there would be a large group that would be test subjects, like they did in the clinical trials back home, but to her surprise there only seemed to be one person—a pregnant girl that was not much older than herself.
Sarah had learned quickly not to ask questions, having made the mistake of expressing concern over the repeated testing of the girl. She worried that the extreme nature of some of the tests, like directly exposing both the girl and her unborn child to certain toxins, would cause irreparable damage both. She'd earned a severe rebuke from the doctor, who called himself Dr. Tam, and a quick transfer to the kitchens. Though Sarah knew something wasn't right about this whole operation, she couldn't afford to lose the job—there was no one else to take care of her.
There were times she saw the poor girl being marched through the halls, her hands held behind her back by a pair of silver wristbands. Sarah had tried to catch the girl's attention, but often the girl was either staring at the floor, choking back sobs, or trying with all her might to keep from being pushed into yet another exam room. It pained Sarah to see the girl being put through this much torture—it wasn't unlike the actions of the gang factions that plagued her own homeworld.
After two months of kitchen work, Dr. Tam requested that she herself see to bringing the girl her meals. She saw it as a way to repair her standing and possibly return to the lab, and she did so. Her instructions were simple—take the tray, place it on the table, and leave. There was to be no conversation with the girl at all, and if she tried to engage her in any, the tray was to be pushed through the door and left at the next meal. Sarah knew that she had to follow these instructions to the letter, and that the doctor had hidden cameras all over the facility—making it easier to spy on his employees.
The first few weeks, Sarah did as she was told. She came in, placed the tray on the table, and left. When the girl tried to talk to her, she shoved the tray through the door at the next meal. There were times when Dr. Tam personally took the girl her meals, and as of late those occurrences became more and more frequent.
Sarah held her breath and stepped inside the freezing room. She'd had to wait for the two guards standing watch to open the holo-door for her, and the process always took a minute or two. She fingered her white insulated parka, the one she'd been issued when she was assigned the job. At first, Sarah didn't understand the need for one—the facility was a bit chilly, but nothing she couldn't handle—but when she stepped into the girl's room for the first time, she thought she was standing inside an old walk-in freezer from Earth-that-was. It was so cold that she could faintly see her breath as she exhaled.
Today was no different—same freezing room, same girl, same routine—but when she entered, she saw something that completely shocked her: the sight of the poor girl, completely naked, huddled into a chattering ball on top of the great four-poster. Sarah was appalled and infuriated that someone would leave the girl, in her condition, in this state. It was then that Sarah realized that there was definitely something wrong about this whole operation.
It had taken a week to procure, but Sarah managed to sneak one of the fleece blankets from the supply closet into the girl's room. She'd managed to tuck it around herself and hidden it underneath the white parka. The guards never noticed. She'd taken care not to wake the girl from her fitful sleep, but she whispered this into her ear: "Take this. Hide it as soon as you hear someone come in. I'll see you tomorrow." She'd made sure to be a quiet as possible, on the off-chance that the video feeds were equipped with sound, but she could no longer see this poor girl suffer as she had been. She left the tray on the table, and made her exit.
She only hoped that the gesture would go unnoticed by her employer.
***
Pierre Cardin was not having his best day ever.
Oh, things had started out well enough—he'd managed to secure deals on two more of the pricey asteroids in the Cerephus belt. The cluster held endless possibility for earning potential, and seeing as he was the sole agent for the area, he was making a killing.
He had been finishing the initial paperwork on one of the sales—a tiny half-mile rock called Delta Cervatim—when suddenly the front door to his office had come crashing down.
Within seconds, no less than four types of firearms were pointed directly at him. One of the intruders, a man wearing no less than eight shades of brown as well as a knee-length duster, stepped forward.
"Seems to me like you got a nice little operation here," he said casually, as if he was opening a business deal. "I got no problem with a man doing business—like to do it myself, on occasion. What I got a problem with is people who don't see reason real clear. Now I'm only gonna ask this once, and then every time I don't get an answer, one of these folks behind me is gonna shoot ya. Dong ma?"
Pierre stared at the motley crew behind the man. There was a stunning colored woman holding some type of sawed-off weapon, a lithe little girl pointing a pistol straight for his legs, and an ugly-looking ogre with an odd sort of sneer that seemed to be carrying no less than eight different types of weapons. He himself was no expert, but Pierre thought he saw what looked to be a grenade hanging from the man's belt.
"What do you want?" he squeaked, hoping he could get out of this without divulging client information. It was one of the few things that attracted his rich clients—the belief that their information would never be made public.
A man stepped forward, looking like a younger version of one of his wealthy clients. He pulled a photograph out of his vest pocket and handed it to Pierre, who nervously accepted it. "Which parcel did this man buy?"
Pierre studied the photo. The man looked familiar, but not so that he could place him. "I-I'm not sure," he replied meekly.
The next thing he felt was white-hot pain shooting through his right leg.
"Now our doc here is one 'o the best," said the man in the duster, and if you answer quick he might just see to patching you up. On the other hand, you could not answer the question again, earn yourself more pain and lead…"
"The man never gave his name!" Pierre cried. "He bought his parcel under a company name…it was something Old Egyptian…"
There was a second burst of pain, and he saw the ugly man replace a revolver into its holster. Pierre looked and saw that his right arm was oozing blood.
"Left untreated, that will go into sepsis," said the young doctor. "Or you might just bleed out and die. I'd start answering the questions."
"Pharoan!" Pierre cried. "Pharoan Medical Research Institute! I can look up the parcel slip!"
"Well, that's more like it," said the man in the duster. Pierre managed to pick himself up off of the carpeted floor, dripping blood from his wounds. He knew that the carpet would certainly have to be replaced. He hobbled over to a datafile system and began typing in the information. Within seconds the sales slip came up on the screen.
"Here," Pierre said, turning the monitor towards the people in his office. "Is this what you want?"
The young doctor studied the information for a few minutes. Pierre had to bite back the urge to hurry the man so that he could receive medical attention.
"Here it is," the young man said finally. "He's on Centauri Five, furthest point in the cluster." He then turned his attention to Pierre. "How far is that from here?"
"I-I-I…" Pierre stammered, hoping to stall them, but now the girl began to aim her pistol. She seemed to be trying for an area between his legs that Pierre very much wanted to keep intact. "It's about three weeks from here," he said finally.
"There now, that wasn't so hard, was it?" The man in the duster smiled, and then sent the three shooters back to wherever it was they had come from. The young doctor pulled the bullets out of Pierre, and stitched him up. "Almost finished, doc?" the man called out.
"Keep this clean, and change out the bandages every couple of hours. It should heal nicely." The young man repacked his little red bag, and then left, the man in the duster following him.
Mal pulled Simon aside as they headed toward Serenity. "Nice work in there," he said, giving the boy a firm grip on the shoulder. "I know that wasn't easy, just letting us shoot him like that."
Simon's face showed no emotion. "I don't like to see people hurt that don't have to be. 'First do no harm,' you know?" Mal nodded as they stepped inside the cargo bay. "But in this case, if we didn't do what we did, it might mean more harm being done to Kaylee, or the baby." The younger man sighed. "It's a lesser of two evils, I suppose."
The look on the boy's face was enough for Mal. Simon had done what he had to in order to save his family, but it didn't mean he had to like it any. It was one of the things that Mal liked about him.