“Kid?” she said. “Kid?”
“Allister,” he mumbled.
“Allister? Is that your name?”
“Yeah.”
“Listen to me, Allister. We need to get you to a hospital.”
“No,” said Allister. “No hospital. Can’t afford. Mom… My mom. Nurse.”
“Your mother is a nurse?”
“Used to be. Got sick. Got fired. No money now. But she can help me.”
“Where does she live?”
“Our apartment. Over in the riverside district.”
Zoë ground her teeth. The kid wasn’t her and Jayne’s responsibility. Sure, they’d saved him. That didn’t mean they were stuck with him. She had more important things to worry about. Namely Mal. It was possible the captain was fine and well, just off somewhere with Hunter Covington thrashing out a deal. She didn’t think so, though. He had almost certainly said “Strawberries” over the comm link, once if not twice. The fact that she couldn’t raise him on the comms now was also worrisome. His link had already proved faulty but at least there had been some signal. Now there was none at all, implying it might have been switched off, or even smashed to bits.
“Okay,” she said. “Listen, Allister, you think you can make it back home?”
The kid nodded weakly. “Figure I can.” But when he tried to stand, he almost fainted.
“It’s no good. Jayne, you’re just going to have to take him.”
“What?” said Jayne.
“Like it or not, Allister needs our help. We can’t just leave him in the street. People are still fighting in there.” Zoë gestured at Taggart’s. The noise coming from within hadn’t quieted. If anything, it was getting louder. Things were crashing and splintering. After the ruckus was over, there probably wouldn’t be a stick of furniture in the bar left intact. “Only a matter of time before it spills outside, and Allister will get caught up in it all over again.”
“But why do I have to take him home?” Jayne groused. “I ain’t no crummy babysitter. Why don’t you do it?”
“My leg is injured,” Zoë said. “Might be broken, even. I can barely walk myself, let alone help someone else along. It has to be you.”
“What about Mal? I’d say he was more important than some kid we only just met.”
“Bad leg or not, I’m going to go look for him.”
“Two of us could do that better’n one.”
“Agreed. So as soon as you’ve gotten Allister to his house, contact me. With any luck I’ll have found Mal by then, but if I haven’t, you can join in the search.”
“And if I can’t get ahold of you?”
“Go to Serenity. I’ll be back there at some point.”
Jayne bellyached some more, but Zoë was adamant. In the end he relented.
“All right, all right. Gorramn it.” He extended a hand to Allister and unceremoniously hauled the youngster to his feet. “Which way?”
Allister waved a vague hand in a westerly direction.
“Okay, get me there, kid. Zoë, the moment there’s any word on Mal, you let me know.”
“Will do.”
Supporting Allister, Jayne headed off.
Zoë unmuted her comm link. “Kaylee? Me again. Kaylee? Do you copy?”
“Oh, good, hi,” Kaylee said. “Sorry. I got, ah, distracted. Are you guys coming back anytime soon?”
“Distracted? What’s going on there?”
“River says Serenity needs to take off. She keeps saying it over and over. She can’t exactly explain why, but she’s getting a little— well, a lot — jumpy.”
“Jumpy? Jumpy how?”
Something clattered and then someone shrieked in the background at Kaylee’s end of the transmission. Maybe it wasn’t so much as shriek as a laugh? A wild, crazy laugh. Either way, Zoë was sure it had come out of River. Wearily, she touched her fingertips to her forehead and felt wetness. Blood. She didn’t think it was her own.
“Jumpy how?” she repeated.
“Oh, like really scared,” Kaylee said. “She made a fort.”
“In her room?”
“No. The dining area. Table’s all sideways. She’s brought in her blankets and pillows for the walls.”
“What about Simon? Can’t he take care of her?”
“Well, he’s doing his best,” Kaylee said uneasily. “Inara too. We all are.”
“Okay, Kaylee. Keep a lid on things there if you can. Also, tell Wash to try to raise the captain. Let me know if, when, he gets through.”
“Aye-aye. What do you figure’s happened to Mal?”
“I wish I gorramn knew.”
Zoë set off down the street in the opposite direction from the one Jayne and Allister had taken. She estimated it had been five minutes since Mal’s alarm call. He couldn’t have gone far in five minutes.
However, Zoë couldn’t walk anywhere near as fast as she would have liked. Each time she put weight on her injured leg, it was like a jolt of electricity was shooting up from shinbone to kneecap. She told herself to ignore the pain but the pain told her it wouldn’t be ignored. Soon every step was eliciting a curse from her, while sweat broke out on her forehead and dampened her armpits. Maybe she should have listened to Jayne. Maybe they should just have ditched Allister. Mal was the priority. But then the kid was their responsibility, and even Mal, she thought, would have said she had made the right decision. The captain might be big on self-interest but he wasn’t selfish.
She pushed on, but after a good quarter-hour exploring some of the city’s grimiest, most deprived areas — neighborhoods that were run-down even by Eavesdown’s admittedly low standards — she had to stop and rest. Murmuring “Zāo gāo” to herself and panting hard, she leaned against a wall.
Just as she was preparing to renew the search, Kaylee buzzed her on the comms. “Zoë? Any luck finding Mal yet?”
“No. What’s the situation like with you?”
“Not shiny.” Kaylee sounded agitated, which, for someone as usually upbeat as her, was disquieting. “River’s getting more’n a mite antsy now.”
“What’s bothering her so? Why’s she so anxious Serenity should take off?”
“It’s the boxes we took on board. You know, Badger’s big metal crates. She’s saying they’re not safe and then all kinds of other stuff like there’s going to be a surprise, a nasty one, and that’s why she’s made the fort. It’s like the worries in her mind are suddenly too much for her.”
“Put Simon on.”
Moments later, Simon’s well-educated voice came on the comms. “Hello, Zoë.”
“Is there something you can do about River? She seems to have Kaylee spooked.”
“I’m sure she’s going to calm down soon.” He didn’t sound convinced.
“Could you perhaps tranquilize her?”
“Tranquilize her?” Simon echoed.
In the background, River cried, “No needles!”
“I don’t think that’d be a good idea,” Simon said. “As you can hear, she’s not likely to be cooperative, and when River won’t cooperate…”
“Needles!” River hollered.
Zoë knew that if Simon attempted to sedate River, she would fight back. Someone would get hurt, and it wasn’t liable to be River.
“Okay, then can you just talk to her? Maybe settle her that way?”
“What do you think I’ve been doing?” Simon’s well-to-do upbringing prevented him from giving vent to his true feelings, but Zoë could hear the exasperation underlying his words.
“River, no, sweetie, don’t touch that,” Kaylee said in the background.
Then came Inara’s voice, also gentle and soothing. “She’s right, darling. Someone might get hurt.”