"Please, Jack," Ron moans. "Please, I don't know anything."

Jack turns the corner, his outline silhouetted in black. "Ron, Ron, Ron," he tisks. "What did I say about begging?"

"I don't know anything, Jack," he repeats, tears streaming down his face. He's struggling against the restraints, and a small pool of blood collects under his bound hands behind him. A familiar bag hangs before him from a crude apparatus attached to the low-hanging ceiling.

"Ron, that's not the issue here." Jack sits across from him and feigns pity as he lays his hand on Ron's shaking leg. "Relax, Ron. You know it only gets worse if you struggle."

He readjusts himself in the chair. "You know, Ron, this issue here isn't that you don't know anything. I know you don't, we know that Wesley hasn't been manipulating anti matter in your lab." He rolls his eyes. "I would even hasten to say that your work is a little humdrum… hmm? A little boring... " He smiles, "But that's not the issue here." He leaves his seat and begins to pace. "The issue is that you didn't do what we asked which was to deliver him to us willingly…"

"B-but that's not my fault. He was happy to stay at UW! I couldn't force him!" Ron's eyes are bloodshot and his tears are a trigger for all of our own.

"And whose fault is that, Ronnie?" Jack moves close to him again and moves his finger painfully over the site of catheterization drawing a wince. "It hurts, doesn't it, Ron?"

The older man weeps, "Please Jack. Just let me go. I promise I'll get him here. Just let me go home to my girls!"

Jack moves to make an adjustment on the line leading into Ron's arm. With a tweak of the line, "You're divorced, aren't you Ronnie?"

The older man nods his head.

"Well, I'll bet your girls won't even miss you. In a few moments, all you'll be is a distant memory to them." Jack leans down and kisses Ron's cheek, "I've always said, Ronnie, that if you play with fire – you get burned. It was nice working with you."

Abruptly the visual cuts into static. I hold Wesley close to me as I try to wipe the tears streaming down his cheeks. "Ugh," he moves away from me as he tries to regain some semblance of a detached, focused countenance. He turns back to Will, "This one has to enclosed. They murdered an innocent man and if this isn't evidence enough, then I don't know what is."

Will moves closer, "Wes, about that 'black book'; it's useless unless we have direct, documented communication between those individuals and the Daystrom Institute."

Wesley nods and wipes away his last tears, "I know." His head falls into his hands. "The problem is that we don't know who the Daystrom Institute is!" I can tell from his voice that he's agitated. We all are. Having had to sit through these recordings of torture and death of innocent people for the last two hours has frayed all of us. Things that we couldn't imagine happening within the Federation, unspeakable evils and horrors too grotesque to be imagined had been committed and most of them, sadly, were at the hands of Jack Crusher.

He was obsessed, maniacal. Every individual he heard of having close to any type of super-human abilities, he'd entice, woo, and then turn on. None of them made it out alive. Once he performed the test and found them lacking in the spark he was looking for, he'd kill them. And he did it the same way each time – with the Klingon drug of Death.

Hours and hours of footage are devoted to people's last moments. These glimpses are full of pain, indescribably suffering, crying… It's too much and we've only seen two; the Traveller's the Ron Gerhardt's.

The Traveller's video was of particular interest. Jack, though, hadn't seemed to find what he wanted. The shots taken of him drugged in the dark room are remarkable. What to me looked like blasé charts and schematics, to him seemed rational, ordered even. Even under the influence of the hypnotic, the readouts on the console took on a specific life without him having to make any somatic contact with the computer whatsoever. "That…" Wesley had said. "That is what I remember being able to do." After a moment, he sat back. "Sometimes, I still remember doing it. But, there's no need for it anymore…" He meant there's no need for it in his line of work. But, the hidden meaning is that he no longer wants to pursue it. Not after this.

Traveler, that sweet, taciturn man met the same end as Ron Gerhardt. But, he did so quietly. There was no begging in the face of Jack's relentless taunting. There was just silence and peace. And when the Pur'pard had finished, he passed serenely and gracefully from this life and into the other. But, an itching feeling tells me that his passing was not complete.

Will's voice rouses me from my sadness, "So, what am I bringing to the reporter?"

I turn around, "Were you able to get ahold of her?"

He holds up the comm. "I spoke with her a few moments ago. She said she'd be very happy to meet with me at 1600 hours."

Wesley turns around, wide-eyed. "So soon? Will, that's in an hour!"

"Wesley, the authorities are going to figure out sooner or later that you're here and we don't have that much time."

Data nods, "He is right, Wesley. Logically, there are not many places where you could hide. Sooner or later, they are going to come back."

"So, besides the footage, what else am I giving her?"

Wesley turns back to the console, his despair settling in. "Like you said, Will, we can't find anything directly linking the Daystrom Institute with any of the people in Jack's black book. There's no paper trail. There's nothing." His shoulders slump. "And though I'm sure these videos are enough to rouse suspicion, they're going to do nothing to exonerate us of the charge of murder in three counts…"

Deanna concedes. "You could claim self-defense…"

Wesley throws his hands up in defeat. "We're going to claim that anyways!"

"Wes," Jean Luc draws Wesley close to him. "Calm down, it's alright…"

Wes sits up abruptly, "It's not alright! Who could these people be? Why is this such a mystery? Why would Jack have recorded all those names? None of this is making sense!" His questions pour forth as his pacing around the small, crowded room grows more erratic until he comes to a halt. "Unless…" He looks up at the rest of us. "Unless that black book is the Daystrom Institute."

The front door opens abruptly with a slam. "Beverly!" Hope runs in out of breath and her hair a mess around her head. "They're coming, Beverly! They're coming!"

A cannon ball hits me in the stomach and the blood drains from my face. "Who is coming, Hope?"

"You were spotted." She looks over my shoulder at Jean Luc. "Someone spotted you and reported you. I was just on my way to the school to get the boys and I heard the news." Tears spring forth from her eyes. I turn to my husband and our friends. "What do we do?"

In a moment of utter calm, as eerie sirens and flashing alternations of red and blue dance lugubriously across the walls, my husband wraps his arm around my waist and tenderly kisses my forehead. "We trust our friends. We trust that they'll do the best they can." He sighs and keeps his eyes trained on mine. "We trust that Justice will out."

Data asserts himself. "Captain Riker will do everything he can. As will I and Commander Troi."

Deanna's eyes are tear-filled, "We will. We'll get you out of this. All three of you and you'll be home before you know it."

Footsteps draw nearer, "Thank you." I whisper.

The words spoken by the men who have come to take us don't register as I feel my hands bound. I look back to the study where Saoirse and Aaron are asleep in their playpen. I'm numb so tears don't come.

Hope and trust that justice will out and that by some miracle, Will, Deanna, and Data will come through.