It was clear from an early age that she was special. She was incredibly intelligent and even started to correct her brothers homework. She was not just gifted. She was a gift. There was nothing that didn’t come as naturally to her as breathing does to everyone else. This didn’t go unnoticed and she was accepted to The Academy. She was very excited to go there and at first everything was perfectly fine.
But then things started to change. The Academy was not a place to nurture her intelligence but rather a place to turn her into the perfect weapon. Not only was she intelligent, she moved with grace, she loved to dance. She sent her brother Simon message. Codes saying that they were hurting her and to get her out.
It took Simon a year to rescue his sister from the Academy and he took her on board the Firefly class ship Serenity, Captained by Malcolm Reynolds. It became clear to everyone on board that River was no ordinary girl and she frequently displayed psychic abilities. Simon managed to sneak her into the core and run a scan on her brain. He discovered that the government had been playing with her brain. They cut into it over and over. They stripped her Amygdala, the part of your brain that allows you to repress things when you don’t want to feel them. She feels everything. She can’t not. She can feel people’s emotions and sense what they are thinking.