My Own Kind of Freedom, page 159 by Steven Brust
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but she ignored him. She went over to Jayne, who had was looking upward with fractured shards of consciousness coming and going like his breath; wrung out, shot full of drugs and holes with his life flowing through tubes and his spirit spreading through the ship like the ghost locked up in the hold.
She stared down into Jayne's half-open eyes. "Boxing is just like ballet," she told him, "except there's no music and they hit each other."
Then, satisfied, she turned and went back to her room.
Serenity: Cargo Bay
She walked away from the speaker and took another glance at Sakarya. He was well secured to the stairway with steel cuffs. There was nothing within nine feet of him. He looked back at her; his eyes were dead things.
"Food, water, and toilet break in an hour," she told him. Then she turned back to the speaker, punched a button and said, "Wash, surveillance check."
"We're good," he said. "Dining room?"
"Yes."
"All right, I'll be there as soon as I'm sure nothing is coming to eat us."
She looked at the prisoner again, wondering why she didn't hate him; wondering if there was something that had died, somewhere along the road.
Someone said, "So, did you think it was a good operation?" Zoë recognized her own voice, and wished to hell she could take the words back.
"Quite professional," he said. "Do you actually care what I think?"
"Evidently."
He nodded a little. "Why?"
"I don't know."
"No, I mean, why was it important to ruin me?"
"We were much too late for that, Colonel."
"Glad to have given you the opening for the line, but you know it doesn't answer the question."
"Yes it does," she said, and turned a