Note: I tend to edit quite a bit after posting, so comments are particularly welcome! Had to overcome some significant writer's block on this chapter, and I haven't done much proofreading, so it's kind of rough.

_________________________________________

Aside from the unending boredom, recurring nightmares, and constant soreness, Mal wasn't doing half badly. He'd been moved out of the main hospital into the "recovery ward," which near as he could tell was a prisoner's housing unit; only difference was, you got nurses instead of guards, and they poked needles into you and muttered reassuring words instead of ordering you about.

It also had a problem with an idiot infestation. He wasn't keen on telling a living soul what had happened, so his fellow prisoners did what people do when they have no clue; they decided they knew all about it. A couple of the more popular rumors involved his falling from a shuttle during an ill-advised escape attempt or inciting a riot because he thought he was receiving telepathic signals from the Browncoats. He rather liked the latter, and derived some small entertainment from rubbing his forehead at random intervals before exclaiming "The Browncoats are coming!" Nobody ever got the joke, but they sure as hell left him alone.

Mal looked up as a sharply uniformed guard entered the ward and called his name. His initial guess that the officer had come to transfer him back to general housing lost credibility as three more stony-faced guards lined up behind him, refusing to meet Mal's eyes. "What's the occasion, sir?" Mal asked innocently.

"We'd like you to come with us, sir," Mal recognized the deeply reserved look on the man’s face as the expression of one who knows very bad news about you. He’d worn that expression on the battlefield many a time himself, facing soldiers who were dying in front of his eyes. " They're going to kill me after all, " he thought miserably.

Mal's mind raced as he walked through the maze of fences and hallways, his head spinning alm