Unidentified Reaver victim

name
Biographical information
Homeworld	Bernadette
Gender	Male
Occupation(s)	Settler
Statistics
Weapon(s)	Various blades
Ship(s) captained or crewed	Converted cargo hauler
Affiliation	Alliance settler families

[Source]

"Weak, they were all weak... Cattle. Cattle for the slaughter."

―Survivor

This male survivor of a Reaver attack was a member of one of roughly fifteen families that departed from Bernadette in a converted cargo hauler. He and the other settlers were hoping to make a new start on Newhall. However, they never made their scheduled landing. A group of Reavers boarded the vessel and very brutally killed everyone except the one man. They forced him to watch the extreme torture and mutilation, set up a booby trap for passerby vessels, and left the emotionally-destroyed man behind.

He remained there for at least three weeks until Serenity boarded the derelict vessel to see if there was anything worth salvaging. He surprised Jayne Cobb from behind, but was grazed when Jayne shot back. Malcolm Reynolds and some of the other crew found him hiding in a wall; Mal punched him out cold for the safety of his own crew, but brought the man aboard Serenity to the infirmary.

Simon Tam found the man to be suffering only from borderline malnutrition, and the crew was pleased to rescue someone. But Mal listened carefully to the man's apparently senseless ramblings, and surmised that he was transforming into a savage Reaver's mental state, unable to find any other way to cope with the horrific events that he had witnessed other than becoming the thing that had so destroyed him. He ordered Simon to dope the man, and locked him inside the infirmary. The man lapsed into unconsciousness as Mal explained that he would have to be returned to the derelict. The fearful crew was slow to comprehend the danger, but they were suddenly approached and boarded by Commander Harken and Alliance marines from a Tohoku-class cruiser.

Alone in the infirmary, the man awoke from his stupor, laughing madly, and began to mutilate himself (including slicing his tongue down the middle, and inserting medical staples all over his face). Elsewhere, the psychic-sensitive River Tam picked up on his madness and shrieked in horror. The man was soon retrieved from the Serenity infirmary by Alliance medics, who believed that he had been tortured by the crew. Inside the Alliance vessel, he slew a number of the medics and escaped back to Serenity, killing at least one marine on the way as he tried to return to familiar territory. There, he waited to ambush Simon and River, but River was aware of the man's horrible presence and held her brother back. He found new prey, however, when he slashed another marine and assaulted Harken. The killing spree was ended when Malcolm throttled the man to death with his handcuffs.

Behind the scenes

The victim was portrayed by Branden Morgan.

Appearances

• Firefly – "Bushwhacked"