A former Independent soldier, who had served with Mal and Zoe in the Unification War, returns in a dramatic manner, with a vicious Alliance officer chasing after him for some unusual smuggled goods.

Inside the exhibit, Simon and Kaylee stare at a tall, illuminated cylinder that holds a strange and apparently dead creature that is actually a mutated cow fetus.

Simon uses this moment alone with the engineer to attempt to get closer to her, but when he mentions that the other women he knows are either married (Zoe), professional (Inara), or related to him (River), Kaylee leaves in a huff.

Seven years earlier, at the Battle of Du-Khang, the young Private Tracey calmly prepares a meal behind cover, not knowing an Alliance soldier is sneaking up on him.

Back on the station, two Alliance marshals and their commander, Lieutenant Womack (Richard Burgi), threaten the postmaster into telling them where to find Tracey's coffin.

Whilst Mal and Zoe describe their war-time experiences with Tracey to Inara, the ship is suddenly shaken by a warning shot from an Alliance craft.

Finding nothing, they decide to have Simon conduct an autopsy, but the doctors' first incision causes the "dead" man to leap up and attack him; it turns out he'd taken a drug that put him in a temporary coma.

Mortally wounded, he asks Mal and Zoe to really deliver him home this time; they agree, finishing the earlier saying, "When you can't crawl anymore, you find someone to carry you."

Simon refused to treat her gunshot wound unless they protected River from the Alliance in "Serenity" (although Kaylee believed he was bluffing), and in this episode Tracey held her at gunpoint.

Joss Whedon wryly observes in the DVD commentaries that threatening Kaylee became a formula for drama, one he admitted using in early Buffy episodes, in which he would put Willow in danger to win over the viewers.