Note: This story starts out just like the episode so that everybody who reads will be aware of where things are starting out. Pretty soon though, you'll notice that the gaps that were left in the episode start to fill in. Keep reading and please review! Thanks for checking out this story. As a disclaimer, I do not own Star Trek but do enjoy creating stories based on it.

Chapter 1

He felt as if he were falling. His limbs became heavy and tingly, but his mind began to float on the cool air around him. There were voices around him, but he couldn't be sure to whom they belonged. It didn't really matter. He didn't care.

"Name?" said one of the voices.

"Picard, Jean Luc." The words were coming out of his mouth, but he didn't remember actually saying them. Strange.

"Rank?"

"Captain"

"Mission?"

"Special operations…Celtris III." It was like he was listening in to some else's conversation, but he also knew that he was the one answering the voice. It was a strange sensation! He would have to discuss this with Deanna when he got back…Got back? Where was he? Oh, yes, he was captured by the Cardassians, brought into a room… It suddenly dawned on him what was going on. That pinch on his neck was a hypospray injecting a drug into him, and he was being interrogated. His defenses immediately went up as a moment of lucidity came back to him.

"Who was with you?" Picard didn't answer. He was not going to cooperate.

"Increase the serum level."

Picard heard more than felt the hypospray this time. The senses he had briefly regained quickly dissipated back into the floating fog of the drugs.

The Cardassian walked slowly around him, boots echoing on the floor. "Shall we begin again? Name?"

"Picard, Jean Luc."

"Rank?"

"Captain."

"Mission?"

"Special Operations Celtris III."

"Others with you?"

"…Dr. Beverly Crusher. Lt. Worf." Picard hesitated at that but not for long.

"What are the Federation's defense plans for Minos Corva?"

"I don't know." Picard could hear all of this in the distance but didn't give it much notice. He recognized the voice as his but didn't care.

"Increase the serum level slightly," the voice said.

There was another hiss in the distance and Picard drifted even deeper into the fog, even deeper into the drug-induced dream. Deeper into not fighting, not caring…

Gul Madred menacingly circled his bound and drugged prisoner. The human, Picard, was sitting in a chair, his hands bound in front of him, a sharp white light glaring onto him from above. This was the moment Madred had been looking forward to. To actually have the captain of the Federation flagship here in his interrogation room was a dream of a lifetime. He had been given the honor of this interrogation by his superiors who saw his skill and years of experience at extracting information from the most stubborn criminals. It was a matter of pride to be able to break the will of anyone who was unfortunate enough to be sitting in the chair in which the human now sat.

Madred's orders were to extract the Federation's defense plans for the Minos Corva star system. It was on the border of the Federation/Cardassian border, and in the event of a Cardassian invasion (which was well past the planning process); their invasion would be more swift and devastating if they knew the Federation's defensive strategy, sensor buoy net codes, command codes, and such. The decorated and esteemed captain of the Enterprise surely knew much of this, if not more. All it would take would be a little coaxing to get what they needed, and the Cardassian victory over the Federation would be at hand.

Madred had ordered the physician, Gavek, to administer the truth serum to expedite this task. Madred would get the information his superiors required immediately, and then he could take his time and enjoy extracting anything else he could at his leisure. How he hated to be rushed in his work, but his superiors wanted the information yesterday. Such a shame. Interrogation was a fine art, little understood by those simply wanting the information as quickly as possible. However, Madred was fast becoming irritated. The human was now drugged to a level that would be suitable for a large Klingon, yet he kept saying that he had no knowledge about defense plans….no knowledge of sensor buoy codes…no knowledge of command codes other than the Enterprise's. And, of course, those codes were useless since they would have been changed when he left on this failed mission. Could the human truly be this ignorant of the workings of his mighty Federation? This captain?

He could see that the glassy-eyed human was no longer fighting the interrogation. He wasn't lying. He wasn't able to. So, the Cardassian government had spent considerable time and effort to get the captain here, and he did not know the information that he was supposed to know. Madred's reputation as a master interrogator was now not the only thing at stake. This could be a major embarrassment for the military if he could get no important information out of the man. Extreme measure would be taken if necessary to prevent such things.

Madred hissed with annoyance and stopped his pacing. He looked at Gavek and said, "It appears that we are going to have to use stronger measures. Take him, and implant the device." The physician nodded to the two guards who had been standing at a discrete distance in the shadows. They came forward and hauled Picard out of the chair by the arms. He was too drugged to walk so they dragged him across the room and out the door. Gavek followed them down the hall to a small medical bay and located a box in a cabinet while the guards roughly pulled Picard onto a metal exam table. One guard removed the cuffs from Picard's wrists while the other unzipped Picard's shirt to expose his upper left chest.

"Humans are pathetic," the guard snarled as he looked down at the listless form he was strapping to the table. Gavek grinned to himself as he used his scalpel to make a 6 cm incision into the human's chest muscle. He knew from experience what "the device" was capable of doing to a man. During his military training on interrogation, each student was required to experience the pain it caused. That day was legendary and dreaded among the recruits and served as a way to weed out those who were not fully invested in military service. It was a rite of passage. He remembered that day vividly and how he had recalibrated his own measurement of what pain really was. Broken bones, knife wounds, phaser burns…those were nothing. Even the strongest man could be reduced to crying, convulsing heap. He knew this from experience.

The pain device was affectionately called a "stinger" by those who used them. They had a remarkable resemblance to an insect known for its vicious sting that infested many of the slums of the cities. A stinger was a small silver cylinder containing an advanced microcomputer controlled by a remote. From this cylindrical body, thread-like tendrils arched and thrashed, searching for nerves around which to twine like a vine. One had to hold a stinger with forceps lest those tendrils grab onto one's own finger and burrow into it or, if you dropped the whole thing, it would skitter across the floor. Gavek knew the latter from a rather embarrassing personal experience.

He could tell that Picard was vaguely aware of what was happening though too drugged to do more than groan softly. The human's eyes were partially open but not focusing on anything. Gavek felt a slight pity for the poor creature but inserted the writhing device into the open wound. It immediately started to dig itself deeper into the muscle. Within a few minutes, it had burrowed out of site. The human grimaced at this unwelcome sensation, then relaxed as the device finished its initial implantation. It would take a few more hours for the tendrils to increase in length enough to reach and attach to the necessary nerves. Allowing the human to recover from the drugs slowly would provide sufficient time.

"I'm going to make sure it's functioning properly before we close the incision," Gavek said more to himself than the guards. He picked up a control pad from a nearby table and checked the readout. It showed that the stinger had full power, so he pushed the test button. It switched on for only an instant, but in that second, Picard's body convulsed violently against the restraints. It worked. Gavek grinned, closed the incision with a dermal regenerator, wiped off the blood, and zipped Picard's shirt back up. He had become quite adept at installing this little gem.

"I'm finished," Gavek announced. "Take him to the holding cell. You know what to do." He wondered how long this prisoner would last once Madred began using the stinger. He guessed a few minutes. He shook his head and began cleaning his instruments.

The guards rolled the table out of the medical bay and down the corridor to a holding cell. The room was just wide enough for the table and for one guard to stand beside it while he reshackled Picard's wrists and blindfolded him. The guard cinched tighter the restraining straps across the human's legs and torso, and then added one across his neck. The latter, plus the blindfold, worked well for minimizing struggling. For the pain device to work at peak efficiency, the prisoner needed to be still for a few hours to allow for adequate tendril growth. This was the only limitation to the wondrous device, but they had found this way to efficiently work around it. The guard moved through his routine with practiced precision, and then exited, leaving the prisoner in his foggy dream world.