The dust cakes her boots as she strides down the street, just outside the main docklands area of New Dunsmuir. There's less bustle here; fewer tourists but plenty of nondescript company uniforms. Most of the buildings here are warehouses of one sort or another and the people who pass who are on their way to or from shifts, quietly absorbed in their own comings and goings.

Units 9-11 unsurprisingly turn out to be a boxy grey building, absolutely nothing to distinguish it from all the others in this part of town. There's a door, brightly painted under a layer of the clinging yellowish dust. It bears a discreet plaque, telling her she's at the right address.

She's tempted to head round the back, to the big bay doors. Assuming this offer is on the level, there'd be the business of loading and unloading going on. She could slip in relatively unnoticed, get the feel of the place...

Legitimate business enterprise, she reminds herself. Tax-payers and everything, all legit. Even got its own small and typically clichéd article on the cortex. Wymann Inc, Transport Solutions – “We Get It Done.” Probably not going to be too impressed with a crew-member who takes it on her own initiative to spy out their operation. No Jayne, no (visible) guns, no sneaking around – on Inara's request.

Zoe steels herself - You trust Inara, don't you? - and presses the intercom button next to the dusty blue door.

“Wymann Industries,” says a slightly bored female voice.

“Captain Reynolds,” she replies, “Here to see a Bill Wymann.”

“One moment.”

The door is opened by a slight girl with mousey hair, dressed neatly in a blue suit. “Please come in, Captain Reynolds,” she says, and it's the same voice that spoke over the intercom. Zoe follows her inside.

To her surprise, she finds herself in what it obviously a waiting room. Blue chairs line the cream walls, several of them occupied. A receptionist's station occupies most of the central space, three more girls sitting behind screens. There's a look about most o