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Oct. 18th, 2005 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
river_meimeiThe ship is deserted. Ransacked, doors hanging from their hinges, bits torn from consoles, but it's old violence. No bodies.
Everything is still.
Serenity's crew picks their way through the sparse debris. Those that carry guns are holding them at the ready, but it's halfhearted now. There's nothing to kill here. Everybody's already dead.
It's a research vessel, and its tables and counters are scattered with the detritus of that work. Papers and wires, the blinking lights of sensors and the beacon they followed, a hologram disc lying crooked in its player.
River's hand settles on the disc. Turns it. It clicks into place, and the player's data-clips rise around it.
A flickering in the air, and then the hologram begins.
Screens, with still pictures of corpses. The ones from outside -- dessicated, mummified, untouched by any poison or violence. In streets, in houses, in shuttlecraft and offices. More, and more.
"These are just a few of the images we've recorded," says the doctor standing behind them. She's calm, tidy, competant, but weary horror lines her face, reddens her eyes. "And you can see it isn't... it isn't what we thought."
"There's been no war here, and no terraforming event. The environment is stable."
"It's the Pax." The words fall like stones into the silent room. "The G-32 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It's..." The researcher is tearing up, now, her voice trembling as she tries unsuccessfully for control. "Well, it works."
"It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Make a peaceful... it worked. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, stopped breeding... talking... eating... There's thirty million people here and they all just let themselves die. They didn't even kill themselves. They just..." She swallows. "Most starved. When they stopped working the power grids, there were overloads, fires -- people burned to death sitting in their chairs. Just sitting."
There's a loud bang, and everyone jumps -- but the researcher jumps, too, and gathers her focus. It's part of the hologram, part of this recording from no one knows how many years ago, and whatever it is it terrifies her.
"I have to be quick."
"There was no one working the receptors when we landed, so we hit pretty hard. We can't leave. We can't take any of the local transports, because--"
Another bang, louder.
"There are people... They're not people. About a tenth of a percent of the population had the oposite reaction to the Pax. Their aggressor response increased... beyond madness. They've become..." She's fighting back tears again, trying not to shake. "They've killed most of us. Not just killed. They've done... things..."
"Reavers," Wash whispers, as the holographic doctor falters. "They made them."
"I won't live to report this," the doctor tells her recording device. She's trying to be businesslike, and almost managing. Almost. "And we haven't got power to... People have to know." The noises from outside her ship are louder, now, and her control is fraying away to nothing.
"We meant it for the best," she pleads with no one, brokenly. "To make people safer." More banging, and inhuman snarling. "To -- God!" She whirls, fires a gun at something behind her, and raises the gun to her own temple, crying and laughing and shaking so hard the gun barrel trembles. She never gets off the shot -- a Reaver is on her, knocking the gun away, biting and tearing as she screams and they fall from the projector's view, and she's still screaming, and the mad snarling howls--
"Turn it off," Jayne rasps.
Wash twists the hologram disc to the off position with a hand that shakes almost as much as the nameless researcher's.
The abrupt silence is deafening.
Everything is still.
Serenity's crew picks their way through the sparse debris. Those that carry guns are holding them at the ready, but it's halfhearted now. There's nothing to kill here. Everybody's already dead.
It's a research vessel, and its tables and counters are scattered with the detritus of that work. Papers and wires, the blinking lights of sensors and the beacon they followed, a hologram disc lying crooked in its player.
River's hand settles on the disc. Turns it. It clicks into place, and the player's data-clips rise around it.
A flickering in the air, and then the hologram begins.
Screens, with still pictures of corpses. The ones from outside -- dessicated, mummified, untouched by any poison or violence. In streets, in houses, in shuttlecraft and offices. More, and more.
"These are just a few of the images we've recorded," says the doctor standing behind them. She's calm, tidy, competant, but weary horror lines her face, reddens her eyes. "And you can see it isn't... it isn't what we thought."
"There's been no war here, and no terraforming event. The environment is stable."
"It's the Pax." The words fall like stones into the silent room. "The G-32 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It's..." The researcher is tearing up, now, her voice trembling as she tries unsuccessfully for control. "Well, it works."
"It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Make a peaceful... it worked. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, stopped breeding... talking... eating... There's thirty million people here and they all just let themselves die. They didn't even kill themselves. They just..." She swallows. "Most starved. When they stopped working the power grids, there were overloads, fires -- people burned to death sitting in their chairs. Just sitting."
There's a loud bang, and everyone jumps -- but the researcher jumps, too, and gathers her focus. It's part of the hologram, part of this recording from no one knows how many years ago, and whatever it is it terrifies her.
"I have to be quick."
"There was no one working the receptors when we landed, so we hit pretty hard. We can't leave. We can't take any of the local transports, because--"
Another bang, louder.
"There are people... They're not people. About a tenth of a percent of the population had the oposite reaction to the Pax. Their aggressor response increased... beyond madness. They've become..." She's fighting back tears again, trying not to shake. "They've killed most of us. Not just killed. They've done... things..."
"Reavers," Wash whispers, as the holographic doctor falters. "They made them."
"I won't live to report this," the doctor tells her recording device. She's trying to be businesslike, and almost managing. Almost. "And we haven't got power to... People have to know." The noises from outside her ship are louder, now, and her control is fraying away to nothing.
"We meant it for the best," she pleads with no one, brokenly. "To make people safer." More banging, and inhuman snarling. "To -- God!" She whirls, fires a gun at something behind her, and raises the gun to her own temple, crying and laughing and shaking so hard the gun barrel trembles. She never gets off the shot -- a Reaver is on her, knocking the gun away, biting and tearing as she screams and they fall from the projector's view, and she's still screaming, and the mad snarling howls--
"Turn it off," Jayne rasps.
Wash twists the hologram disc to the off position with a hand that shakes almost as much as the nameless researcher's.
The abrupt silence is deafening.
