"Will!" Deanna called, as she rushed up behind him in the hallway.
"Hey Counselor, what's the hurry?" He asked. He said it lightheartedly, but she could tell that under the smile his mood was much more serious.
"I need to know what happened on that planet today, Will. I need to know about Sarah."
"Sarah?" he asked, although it seemed as though he already knew.
"The girl you brought back. She's been badly hurt, Will. And not just once. I want to help her. But I can't do that without any information."
The commander sighed, as though this was what he had expected. "I don't know how much information I can give you, Deanna. We went down and completed our mission. Everything was going smoothly...too smoothly. I should've known something was about to happen. Just before we were about to beam back, the ambassador's daughter, Meena, approached us. She said that she had a friend from school, someone she'd known since they were young children. But her family had always been controlling, and now Meena hadn't been able to contact her in weeks. When she tried to go to their house, nobody ever answered the door. She was concerned about this girl's welfare, and we didn't want to risk the negotiations we'd just finished by angering the ambassador's teenage daughter. So we agreed to stop by her house on our way out and see if we could find anything." The commander paused in his story as another officer walked by, then continued.
"When we arrived at the house, nobody answered the door, just like Meena had said. We were about to leave, when Data said he registered a life force inside, one that was weakening. He thought whoever was inside might be dying. So we broke in. There was only one person inside: Sarah. The house was a mess. It looked like it had been ransacked. She was laying on the floor in the bedroom, just like she was when we brought her to sickbay. Rather than wait for whoever had harmed her to return, we beamed straight back to the Enterprise. She never woke up, and I never spoke to her, so I can't tell you anything more than that."
There was a moment of silence while Deanna pondered what Will had said. Nodding decisively, she forced a brief smile, and thanked him, before turning back towards the turbo lift. Sensing that the situation had upset him as well, she briefly laid a hand on his shoulder, before boarding the lift and returning to her rooms.