Flashes of a boy running through a dark forest with a flashlight. Suddenly a scream. The boy keeps running, stumbles, and falls. Suddenly, he is confronted with two Vulcans. He screams again.

Picard and Guinan wait at a table in an interrogation room. Handcuffs lie on the table near blood smears.

Wells enters and begins his interview. He asks them if they are extra-terrestrial life forms.

Guinan doesn’t answer because she’s laughing too hard. Picard answers that he is not.

Wells accuses them of planning to sabotage the Europa mission.

Guinan points out that this interview isn’t authorized. Wells agrees and implies that he will make them disappear and no one will ever know.

Outside the dive bar Jurati trashed, Raffi checks in with Rios while Seven continues to investigate.

When Raffi asks Seven to channel her Borg sensibilities, Seven is offended and hurt. Instead, she approaches the bar’s manager and questions him.

In the interrogation room, Wells shows Picard that he was caught on camera at the Europa gala. Guinan continues to question Wells about his motives.

Wells questions Picard about the IV bruise on his hand. Picard deflects. Wells leaves them alone in the room again. Picard worries that if Wells tells someone the Europa mission is under threat, the mission will be canceled and time will be broken.

At Adam Soong’s house, Kore watches the videos again. She decides she needs to investigate the scene more closely. Using a VR headset, she directs the computer to recreate Soong’s lab from the time of the last video. Once in the holo environment, Q appears to her.

He shows her the genome code that was her beginning. Kore suspects the truth. Q offers her a key to freedom from Soong and challenges her to use it.

When she removes the VR headset, a notification sounds, alerting her to a delivery. She finds a vial inside the package, labeled “Freedom.”

Raffi and Seven find the red-bearded man Jurati left the bar with. He’s dead and dumped in an alley.

Looking at the man, Seven offers a guess as to how a Borg queen would act in this situation.

She posits that the queen hasn’t been able to assimilate anyone yet, and when she tried to connect with Red Beard, she failed and took it out on him.

Raffi tries to praise her for the insight, but Seven accuses her of manipulating her into accessing the Borg motivations.

Seven catches sight of a deconstructed cell phone and realizes the queen is feeding on the lithium ion battery to foster more nanoprobes. They hear a crash nearby and find Jurati in a junkyard feeding off car batteries.

The queen/Jurati attacks them and has Raffi by the throat. Jurati manages to assert some control to prevent killing Raffi. The queen leaves them.

Wells returns to the interrogation room. He’d deduced that Picard had been treated at Dr. Ramirez’s clinic and investigated. He found the ICE report where Rios claims to be a spaceship captain and warns about the Borg queen. FBI agents found Rios’s com badge at the clinic.

Wells has Guinan taken to a different interrogation room.

On La Sirena, Rios shows Teresa and Ricardo the replicator. Rios and Teresa discuss her life with Ricardo. Teresa proposes a role play. Ricardo interrupts, but she kisses Rios quickly before seeing to her son.

Wells tries to frighten Picard into talking.

In the other room, Guinan discovers the other interrogator is Q. He’s annoyed that she used the summoning ritual to call him. Guinan voices the emptiness she felt during the summoning and realizes that it’s coming from him. She realizes he’s dying.

When she tries to get him to reveal his plan and why he trapped Picard, he states the trap is immaterial, it’s the escape that counts.

Adam Soong returns home. Kore confronts him about the truth. She threatens to walk out into the sunlight unless he answers whether he loves her or his legacy more. He stays silent and she walks out.

He chases after her and is stunned that she has no reaction to the sun or grass. She shows him the vial Q gave her. She leaves, threatening to call the cops if he follows her.

Seven and Raffi recover from the attack, reasoning that Jurati has some control still otherwise the queen would’ve killed Raffi. Using Red Beard’s cell phone, they discover the beginnings of the queen’s plan.

Raffi confesses to manipulating Elnor into staying with Starfleet. Because she convinced him to stay, she feels directly responsible for his death.

Adam is getting drunk when he hears someone come in. It’s the Borg queen.

In Picard’s interrogation room, Guinan projects herself into his sight to give him the message that all humans are trapped in their past.

Picard uses that hint and gets Wells to reveal his childhood encounter with a team of surveillance Vulcans that put him on his alien-hunting path. Picard reinterprets the memory for him.

In exchange for Wells’s story, Picard shares his truth and asks for Wells’s help.

On La Sirena, the transporter goes offline. Rios checks in with Raffi on Picard’s whereabouts.

Guinan and Picard debrief on what’s happened recently. Wells returns, having been fired. He returns Rios’s com badge to Picard. He lets them go.

The Borg queen uses Soong’s computers to access the Earth’s satellites. She offers him a legacy if he helps her stop Renée Picard from completing her mission, as well as removing Jean-Luc from their way.

Raffi and Seven find Picard at Guinan’s bar and fill him in. The queen is making a move to take La Sirena. Picard determines they must defend the ship. They will use Tallinn’s transporter to return to the ship.

Soong uses his connections to acquire a military task force. The queen assimilates them.