Author's notes:

If you're evil and you know it...your name is probably MechanicGirlKaylee.

I'm starting to make myself sad. Which is bad. A big damn rescue will happen soon, I hope. I have very little control over it.

This chapter is sponsored by the fact that I was upset most of this afternoon.

This started out as part of the "Your Song" series which I haven't updated in seventy billion years, and evolved into this on it's own. I felt kind of weird making up my own characters, but they're not Mary Sues (Marty Stus?) or anything like that, just necessary evils. Title is loosely derived from Ender's Game, because that's what inspired me.

Italics denote the alliance guys talking. (or, later, flashbacks)

'...' denotes thought, which is only necessary for our psychics.

Feed me! kaylee@kikiroxxorz.com

Pairings are: (Simon/Kaylee, Mal/Inara, Jayne/OC and River/OC) but they're not truly important to the plot. Except maybe the River/Adam dynamic. That's kind of important.

~*~

“We must hasten the procedure. They managed to reach out to the girl.”

“Sir, wouldn’t that be an indication that perhaps we should be phasing out this procedure instead of phasing it in?”

“What are you implying?”

“This isn’t right, sir.”

“The subjects are heavily sedated. When all goes according to protocol, the subjects lose the ability to differentiate between here and the rest of the world.”

“But it rarely ever goes according to protocol, sir. Not this procedure.”

“And this time, it will.”

~*~

Ainslee screamed. She screamed and fought and kicked and tugged on her own hair. If it worked one time, it would work another time, she reasoned. The smiling lady wasn’t smiling anymore. “Delcium. Twelve drop. Restrain her,” she said, gripping Ainslee’s arm. Ainslee kept screaming, nonsense words, little bits of conversations, stories, anything to confuse and distract them. She flipped herself over in the chair. “I will make a nice light snack of your flesh!” she yelled as the men with blue gloves turned