Author's Note: Well, this chapter isa bit sooner than I thought it would be for this post. Yay for me. Hopefully, this will clear up a bit of the "observer" confusion. However, please know - the reader is not meant to know who the subjects are and why. It was planned this way for a reason. Patience, Agustus, and "Not 'til you're twelve, son!"

Chapter 13

Newton Vineland's picture did not do seeing the real thing justice. He sat in an isolation room at a table, his hands folded neatly on the surface, waiting. It had taken Mitchell just two hours to track down the scientist and bring him back to Prime for questioning.

Sam watched him through the security camera feed. The feelings that had inundated her in the office flickered through her mind. She worked to keep them at bay, knowing she needed every ounce of concentration when interviewing him. It had not been her forte in the SGC to interview detainees, but she been privy to enough of them to learn a few tricks.

Mitchell stood next to Dekker, his bulked arms folded across his expansive chest.

"Where'd you find him?" Rachel asked, looking at the monitor.

"Sleeping it off in his apartment with a hooker," he said.

Sam's most important concern was the timeline. "Was she with him all night?"

"She said they met up after a bar closed around two. She didn't know when he got there, only that he walked her out, and they ended up back in his apartment until we came to get him this morning."

Sam took a deep breath. "You believe her?"

Mitchell snorted. "Yeah, she was scared shitless. Had no idea who we were, probably thought we were cops. She bolted as soon as we told her she could go. She has no reason to protect Vineland."

"Okay," Rachel agreed. She looked to Sam. "You ready to talk to him?" She moved toward the door of the interrogation room.

"Wait," Sam said, stopping her. "Might be better if I go in alone. He doesn't know me. It'll keep him off balance if I'm doing the talking."

Rachel hesitated, but then relented with a disappointed shrug. "Have at it. I just want you to be prepared for his mind. It's a sewer."

"Yeah," Sam replied. "I got that from his file." With that, she opened the door to the interrogation room and stepped within it.

Vineland looked up at her, smiling politely. "As I live and breathe," he said with a slight southern twinge in his voice. Sam could not place it decisively, but it rang of the Deep South, like New Orleans. It was higher than she expected, as if he were talking gently to a child. "If it isn't the charming and enigmatic Major Samantha Carter." He stood obediently and held out his hand.

Sam stepped forward, but did not return the offer. She sat down in the chair on the opposite side of the table. She waited until Vineland retracted his hand and took a seat again. He looked nonplussed at her rejection.

"I was only trying to be polite," he said, sugary sweet and false. His eyes, dark and sharp, bore into her, scanning her ever so slightly.

"I think we can forego the pleasantries, Mr. Vineland. I have some serious questions for you."

"And I probably have some serious answers, Major. May I call you Sam?"

"No," she answered without missing a stride.

"Well, you can call me Newton. Everyone does."

She gave him no latitude to get comfortable. "Where were you around nine last night?"

"Reading a book in my apartment on deep space telemetry. I was so excited you were coming to Prime that I thought I'd read up on your cover story, maybe swap anecdotes. Quite an exciting field, actually. Did you ever wonder what life would be like if you really did that job instead of jumping through wormholes?" he asked whimsically.

She had seen enough interrogations, had even conducted some herself, to know not to get sidetracked during an interview. "Can anyone account for your whereabouts?"

"Major," he said in mock defense, "I'm a solitary man. I don't socialize all that much. A man like me doesn't have many friends."

"Yet you took someone home with you last night from a bar."

He gave the accusation no merit. "I got bored. I went out for a drink. She was attracted to me. I wasn't ready for the night to be over, so she came back to my apartment. She was a lovely woman," he continued. "She thought she knew the score. Who'd have thought she was with such a vile man?"

"And she was with you all night?"

Vineland's eyes scanned Carter's body. He made no attempt to hide his actions. He gave a satisfied sigh when he was done with his examination. "We had sex until seven this morning. I can't call it 'lovemaking'. That would imply there was something more to it. And we all know lying is a sin."

"Ellen Bainbridge was assaulted last night."

"Yes, I heard about that when that gorilla, Mitchell, came to collect me," Vineland said, patronizingly. "It was shocking news. Just shocking."

"Yeah, I can see you're all broken up about it."

"Oh, come on," he said. "You really expect me to feel bad that someone got as fed up with her as I am? Like I said, we all know lying is a sin."

"So are other things," Sam said. "They found trace evidence in her house. What are the odds it'll lead back to you?"

"Zero!" he said solidly. "Major, I don't know how else to convey to you that I wasn't there. Now, unless you have something a little more substantial to fire at me, I'd like to get back to work on the MALP. My shift started an hour ago." He smiled pleasantly. "I understand we'll be doing some development on it. I'm looking forward to working so closely with you."

She could feel the sleaziness in his tone dripping onto her bare forearms as his eyes once again passed over her, lingering in different areas.

"I'm afraid I can't allow that," she said, trying to keep her voice neutral and purposefully bringing her position as an officer and pseudo-informant to the fore. She took comfort in it, realizing in mere seconds what her dedication to her career had afforded her. Her allegiance to the SGC was unwavering. For the first time in a domestic setting, she used it as leverage against a man she did not know but knew was bad for the genetic pool.

"And why not?" he snapped haughtily, not expecting her response.

"Until we can verify your whereabouts last night, you're in lockdown. Once you can be cleared, you'll be back to work on the MALP." It was a lie. If she had any say in it, Newton Vineland would never touch another MALP unit in his lifetime.

He held out his hands before him in a pleading gesture. "You're convicting me of the crime without a trial, Sam," he said, purposely using her first name.

"Right now, I am the all-knowing, infallible God of your universe," Sam said confidently. "The Air Force will back me on this, Mr. Vineland. If I tell them you should never see the light of day again, they'll take my word for it."

"You won't do that, though, Sam," he said, emphasizing her first name again. "You're too good at following the rules. That's your forte, you know. It's what keeps you out of trouble and what got you in such a pickle with some of those missions of yours."

Her senses tingled at his hints. He was successfully baiting her. "What missions would those be?"

"All of them, from what I can tell," he said. "I see your name over and over again, always doing the right thing, always being so upstanding. Didn't you ever wonder, just once, what it would be like to be a bad girl?"

"It's interesting that you know that," Sam said. "The SGC doesn't make it a habit of letting those mission records become public knowledge."

"Oh," he said in a knowing way, "you'd be surprised what Prime knows. It's rather like watching a soap opera some days. I've even made a few extra dollars in the company pool about mission outcomes." He winked slyly at her, grinning slightly. "You're always a good bet for me."

She was not about to bite on the lure he was dangling in front of her. "Did you assault Ellen Bainbridge?"

Vineland rolled his eyes in disgust. "Now why would I do that? I may not like the woman, but I do have my limits."

"I find that hard to believe. Your criminal record is prolific, to say the least."

"So, I'm a suspect to you because I made a few mistakes in the past?"

"I don't call raping three women 'mistakes'. They were violent crimes, and you managed to walk away from them unscathed."

He brushed off the accusation. "You have your good friend to thank for that. To tell you the truth, Sam, she's more my god than you ever will be. You're more eye candy – a fantasy, if you will. I do so love a woman who can handle a gun." He grinned, loving the idea.

Sam willfully detached herself from Vineland's game. He was trying to pull her into his world, his fantasy, to get her to bite at his comments. She had seen this before, when system lords had used similar tactics. What Vineland could not know is the resolve she had developed inside her from experiencing blatant torture at the hands of those tyrants. She had resisted and overcome more than Vineland could possibly have known by reading reports. He could only fantasize about the power contained in such interrogation devices as the Blood of Sokar and Tok'ra memory devices. The danger lay in what it might inspire him to create with the endless resources of Prime Power.

"Somehow, I doubt that, Mr. Vineland. You prefer your victims don't fight back and that you can control them completely."

He gave a heavy sigh, as if tired of listening to her. "Harsh," he said. "In any case, Sam, you're going to find that I am completely innocent of harming Doctor Bainbridge. I think the evidence will prove that. I've never even been in her house. Nor would I want to be. And really, let's face it – she's not my type. I prefer them, shall we say, younger – more complacent?"

His vile description of his victims was nauseating, but somehow, it was unexpected to Sam. She had been prepared to some degree of his attitude and his values.

Sam stood. "We'll be talking again soon, Mr. Vineland. Let's hope you don't show up as a suspect. You don't want to meet the people who will have an interest in you then."

Before she could answer, she turned her back on him and left the room.

Rachel sat at the monitor console bank. She leaned back in the chair once Sam was out of the interrogation room.

"I tried to warn you," she said, still watching the monitors at Vineland's perfect posture and neatly folded hands.

Sam refused to waste time. "Where's his office?" she asked, already leaving the monitoring area and forcing Rachel to catch up with her down the halls of Prime with its muted light and maroon carpet.

"Hey," Rachel called, finally evening up their strides. "You all right?"

No, Sam, thought, she was anything but all right. It was not that Vineland had gotten under her skin. He had merely left a slimy film with his eyes. She felt herself getting closer to an answer. The whole point had been to find those answers and do the right thing.

"I'm fine," Sam said confidently. "I want to see what he has locked up in there. And would you mind explaining to me what he meant by the company pool on mission outcomes?"

Rachel dodged the question with a nervous laugh. "It's not what you think."

"I'm thinking all kinds of things right now," Sam said, with no mirth. "Your best bet is to set me straight."

"It's based on MALP telemetry and video," Rachel said in confession. "When we get those units back, we watch the mission data and analyze it. But after you've been analyzing four thousand data sets, you begin to look for something to make it enjoyable. So, some of them made a game out of it. Most of it is nothing, no more than 'guess the atmospheric contents'. Some video, though, makes for a bonus."

Sam had no idea what to say to her. The whole idea was so vain and ludicrous that she felt she might explode with anger and Prime's invasion of a very private war for some SGC members. There was no telling what Prime's staff had seen in terms of the death and destruction of very human people who had willingly put themselves in harm's way on another planet to protect their own.

Rachel guided Sam to a locked office door, which she opened with the same prox card she had used on Sam's office. They stepped inside as Rachel called for Archie to turn on the lights.

Newton Vineland was not only a freak socially, but he was a neat freak. His office was pristine and perfect. Sam immediately noticed the symmetrical stacking of papers, the few there were on his desk. Everything was at perfect right angles or some variation of an even geometric pattern. His chair was pushed neatly under the desk, awaiting his return.

Sam moved toward the desk where Vineland's computer terminal sat. She pulled back the chair and sat down in it.

"He's going to get all excited you did that," Rachel commented offhandedly.

Sam shook her head, ignoring the fact, and focused on the terminal. She entered the super user information. Archie immediately responded that she was cleared to proceed.

"Archie," she said, "search Newton Vineland's personal directories for any files pertaining to Major Samantha Carter." She felt odd saying her name in the third person, but it was the best way to make sure Archie understood. Computers, to the best of her knowledge, did not understand the concept of "me" or "I".

"Archie, belay that order," Rachel called out quickly, stopping the search. She looked pointedly at Sam. "He's got a serious thing for you," she said. "There's no telling what he's got in there."

"Stop trying to protect me, Rachel. It's only making you look guiltier. Every time you do that, I find something more I didn't expect to see."

"Fine," Rachel said shortly. "Have at it. This is the one area I know nothing about because I refuse to step into Newton's world. He's like Salavador Dali on crack, and he has nothing short of a constant hard-on at the mention of your name. I just don't want you opening up something that you can't reconcile."

"And you can?"

"We've learned to deal with him and all his eccentricities. We've learned to take away his power."

Sam turned back to the console. "Congratulations. Archie," she called out, "continue search."

Archie complied. Rachel did not attempt to intervene with the command. Almost immediately, Archie found personal files containing Sam's name. She opened the first, knowing that was where she had to start.

She steeled herself for what was in the file, replaying in an instant Vineland's disgusting demeanor and deciding he ranked on the short list of people she wished she had never met in her life.

The file, to her surprise, was technical data. Her name was associated with it because she had written the report on stabilizing MALP telemetry in gates with heavy atmospheric electrical disturbances. He included his own brilliant notes and insight, proving he was as smart as Rachel said he was. He was far-thinking, able to deduce answers from limited data and put it to use in improving MALP technology.

There were hundreds of reports, and all of the followed the same pattern, to the point that Sam was opening each one and skimming to find the truth. About three quarters of the way down the listing, however, what she had been looking for sat there plain as day amid all the technical reports Vineland had produced. She stared at the report titles, unbelieving.

He had not even bothered to change the names of the records to hide them. She read the titles, one after another – medical, psychological, technical – all the evaluations she was subject to as a member of SG1 on a regular basis. Not that she liked Vineland in any way, but she hoped there was something different in each report, that somehow, he would not have been that stupid.

Stupidity was universal, she concluded. The reports were genuine. He had been caught with the reports in his personal queue, probably figuring no one would have noticed or had the stomach to enter his office and look for them.

Sam sat back in the chair, looking at an image of herself and the report on her contact with Jolinar. It was all there – Janet's report, MacKenzie's evaluation, even General Hammond's notes on the matter within the service record.

She had found the culprit.

"Holy shit," Rachel breathed, looking down at the screen. "Sam, I . . ."

"I know," Sam said, cutting her off, "you didn't know a thing about this. I'm getting used to hearing that."

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The observers watched as Subject 1 followed the path of discovery the hierarchy had predicted. It had set out markers for Subject 1 to follow, and they had been followed perfectly. Subject 4's reaction to Subject 1 had been perfect, also, as it had been planned.

The observers watched Subject 4 in the interrogation room, noting its silence. Then, it erupted.

"Mitchell!" Subject 4 yelled. "Mitchell, you big gorilla! I want a glass of water."

The door to the interrogation room opened, and Subject 30192 stepped inside toward Subject 4.

"You're not getting shit," Subject 30192 said. "Bad enough I have to see you every day."

"Bring me a glass of water," Subject 4 said, "or I'll start a vicious rumor that you and I are having an affair. I do like 'em big, you know. I'll make it stick, Mitchell. Everyone will believe me, or at the very least, doubt you."

Subject 30192 hesitated, calculating. "If I get you a glass of water, will you shut the hell up?"

"I'd be most happy to," Subject 4 said.

The hierarchy began its own calculating. An opportunity had presented itself. The hierarchy relayed its commands to the actuators, who set forth, following Subject 30192. It would be a matter of timing and transportation. Some dropped down for a ride, scuttling and hopping along the subject's arm until they were in position, completely unnoticed.

Subject 30192 retrieved a paper cup and approached a water receptacle. As the water flowed into the cup, so did the actuators, still undetected. They floated around, controlling their buoyancy with ease, despite the subject's jostling of the water. All that was necessary was to stay away from the surface of the glass. The actuators moved in formation to the bottom of the glass for safety.

The observers watched as Subject 30192 brought the glass with the actuators into the interrogation room and sat it in front of Subject 4 with the actuators inside it.

"Why, thank you ever so kindly, Mitchell," Subject 4 said. "And my offer was sincere for a relationship, if you're ever interested in trying something new."

Subject 30192 scowled. "When hell freezes over, you little worm."

Then Subject 30192 was gone, leaving Subject 4 alone with the glass of water and the actuators. The observers watched as the actuators flowed into Subject 4's body without so much as a fight. Their mission was simple, as the hierarchy had determined. All the observers had to do now was watch for the results.

Subject 4 leaned back in the chair and took a deep breath. He smoothed his hair back with his hand, smiling at no one, though the hierarchy deduced there was knowledge of a surveillance system. The actuators were swimming, gaining formation. It would not take many of them. Their target was small and required only a small compliment to destroy.

Suddenly, Subject 4 took a deep breath, holding it, in pain. The actuators' work had begun. The target was isolated and easy to get to, given the ability of an actuator to push through organic material as needed. From there, they would regain formation and head straight for the core of electrical cardiac impulses that kept Subject 4 alive.

"Mitchell!" Subject 4 yelled, clutching his chest. He pushed away from the table, setting it askew. "Mitchell!"

The door to the interrogation room opened. Subject 30192 appeared. "What?" he asked sharply, not fully appreciating Subject 4's distress.

"I think," Subject 4 gasped, "I think I'm having a heart attack."

"Nice one," Subject 30192 said. "Let me know when you've kicked off."

Subject 4's distress became acute as the actuators closed in on the nerve bundle they required for success. Subject 4 fell out of the chair and on to the floor, clutching his chest. His body jerked with the pain of the flow of blood to his vital organs suddenly being disrupted.

Subject 30192 finally realized Subject 4 was having difficulty. "Oh, shit!" he breathed, leaving the room to call for a medical emergency in the interrogation room.

The observers watched impassively, reporting to the hierarchy as Subject 4's lips began to take on a bluish tone. He quickly became diaphoretic, and his respirations became shallow and short. No matter how quickly a medical team might respond, a time that the hierarchy had calculated, the actuators had long been complete in their work.

Eventually, Subject 1 and Subject 20192 entered the room, along with Subject 30192. They hesitated, discussing among themselves what to do. They made the decision to wait for the medical team, a fatal decision for Subject 4. Nothing they would have done would have made a difference, but it had been the sealing of fate for both the subject and the actuators.

And though the valuable actuators had been lost, the mission had been accomplished.