Truth and justice are complicated things, and far less the realm of cops and heroes than many would ever imagine. When Taelia's older brother is accused of a crime he didn't commit, the young kit must learn one of life's hardest questions and its even harder answer: What do you do when there's nothing you can do? Maybe it's nothing, and maybe... it's everything.

Certain elements of this chapter may strike a familiar chord for some of you. Although a good many details included were changed to suit the characters and setting, the predicament in which Richard found himself was based largely on an actual experience of mine in the workplace. I won’t go into all the details here, but the experience certainly drove home for me something I had long believed but never had an experience to which it so decisively linked: namely, that truth is not impacted by others’ opinions – opinions, in this case, of one’s actions or character. For the purposes of the story I kept it narrowed down to the specific concern at hand.

The reference to the Underground Railroad was inspired in no small part by the radio series ‘Adventures in Odyssey,’ which had a miniseries of episodes detailing that historic undertaking and referred back to it on several later occasions. Cycling through the series via its app (free in the iTunes app store, by the way), I came across them as I was working on this chapter, and the line, “I’d rather be in jail with a conscience than free without one” was too appropriate not to reference somehow.