Chapter 4

Simon woke suddenly and sat up without thinking. He had slept too long—the past near-week had already trained his body to the schedule of being woken every few hours by one of River’s nightmares. And now, as he got up and opened her door, he saw why he had remained asleep.

“River?” came his voice, slightly hoarse after just waking, but concerned all the same. Yesterday she had hidden under her bed, but she never failed to answer when he called. And there was no answer.

Throwing on a shirt and trousers, he left the room in search of her. It was late in the morning, and the ship was alert. This was bad, this was very bad.

He moved swiftly through the lounge and checked in the infirmary, then went up to the kitchen, pausing only to ask Kaylee and Book as inconspicuously as possible if they had seen River. He hid his worry at their negative responses, and ignored Jayne’s comment from across the room of “Girl was creepin’ around my bunk last night, doc, n’ I don’t want it happenin’ again,” then went up to the bridge and then down to the cargo area. She was nowhere.

“River?” he called in the cargo bay, and it echoed slightly.

“Is something wrong?” asked Inara, just leaving her shuttle.

“I can’t find River,” he confessed, holding back the desperation in his tone.

“She can’t have gone anywhere,” said Inara, reassuringly. “Did you try the other shuttle?”

Simon at once turned and went up the stairs two at a time. “River,” he called, as he struggled for a moment to get the shuttle door to open. The door finally slid aside to reveal what Simon had hoped for and been afraid of.

“Oh no, mei mei,” he murmured, coming forward to kneel and wrap his arms around her as she knelt on the floor. She was shaking and breathing frantically, eyes wild and not teary, hands buried deep in her tangled hair.

“Rabbit holes,” she gasped, neither fighting nor resting in his arms, but almost ignoring his very presence. “A safe trap, doors look as many but lead to only one,” she rambled on, her breathing