Trigger warning: Description of a dub-con situation. (The grafted memory)

Chapter 16 - The Galaran Endeavour

The Laboratory
Galar

Carter showed up again in the afternoon at his cell to tell Mitchell that she and Jackson had managed to convince the General to let him stick out for the conclusion of the investigation. The news brought a small measure of peace to Mitchell's mind.

They were both escorted to the lab where the memory grafting project resided by the same group of guards who arrested him the night before. They entered the chamber to find the two technicians from the demonstration, whom they now knew as Dr Marell and Dr Amuro, already stationed at the controls, studying computer displays intently.

"Doctor Marell and Doctor Amuro will be conducting the analysis," the officer said, glancing at them both. "Now, if there's anything else you require?"

"As a matter of fact, there is," Carter jumped in when Mitchell shook his head. "I understand that a sample of Colonel Mitchell's blood was taken when he was arrested?"

"In order to determine his blood alcohol level, yes."

"We'd like a portion of that sample sent back to Stargate Command," she said, smiling thinly. "Just to corroborate your results, of course."

"I'll see to it." The officer nodded and turned back to leave.

"You can take the guards with you,'' Dr Marell called out before he left the chamber.

"This man has been accused of murder–" the main guard started, pointing at Mitchell, only to be cut off by the scientist.

"I don't want them in my lab."

The security officer nodded, letting out an imperceptible sigh before turning to his two officers. "You can wait outside," he said to them as they all left the chamber together.

"Are you sure you want to be left alone with me?" Mitchell asked the two doctors who approached him and Carter.

"Doctor Varrick was our colleague," Amuro said. "If we thought for one minute you actually killed her, we wouldn't be helping you."

"Then who do you think did kill her?" Carter asked, digging a medkit out of her backpack.

"Reya was going to do everything she could to oppose the militarization of the project," Marell said softly, looking disturbed. "So, they got rid of her."

Mitchell and Carter exchanged a confused glance. That's not what she had told them the day before. Mitchell said as much to the doctor as Carter took out a sample collection kit with a vial and a syringe.

"I know her," Marell insisted. "She was vehemently against the entire thing. If she said something different to you, either she lied to you or she had no idea what she was saying."

"But that would be weird," Mitchell said somewhat distractedly, watching Carter wrap a tourniquet around his bicep. "She seemed pretty chill about it yesterday when she was talking to us with Varta…"

When Carter took out the syringe and started slowly tapping his inner elbow looking for a vein, he decided to speak up. "Also, Carter, what are you doing?"

"Taking another of your blood samples," she said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world before sticking the needle in without further warning. Mitchell barely bit back a surprised yell but managed to keep his arm still as she started to fill a small vial with his blood. "With what Dr Marell just said and the way you acted, I have a feeling there's been some sort of a drug involved too. We need a fresh sample… just in case."

She was done in a few seconds and withdrew the needle, slapping a small plaster on the spot where she had pierced his skin. She then packed everything back in the kit and shoved it all inside the backpack.

"But why frame me?" Mitchell asked, genuinely confused.

"If she had to be silenced before she made any unnecessary waves, they needed a convenient target to take the blame," Carter said thoughtfully before turning to Mitchell. "She was clearly interested in you, and that made you fit the bill."

Mitchell winced internally at that. He had never really noticed that until he had found himself in her home, utterly confused for a short coherent moment before everything went to hell. Marell also didn't seem to like the fact she'd had an interest in Mitchell if the way he tried to hide his grimace was any indication.

"They also assumed that you'd claim diplomatic immunity and therefore no prosecution would be necessary," Amuro pointed out. "The whole thing was to be swept under the carpet."

"Well, they assumed wrong," Mitchell said through gritted teeth, cursing the hazy images of her final moments that sparing to the front of his mind.

"And for that, we are grateful," Marell said, sounding quite sincere.

"Can you prove the memories false?" Carter inquired.

"Well, unfortunately, Doctor Varrick was the most qualified to do this work, but…"

"I'm sure you'll do fine," Mitchell said quietly when Amuro trailed off.

The scientist nodded with renewed determination and led him towards the Chair while Carter and Marell moved over to the system consoles. Amuro connected the electronic leads to Mitchell's forehead, which lit up from within when they made contact with his bare skin. In his periphery, he saw the display in front of Marell come alive with various complicated wave patterns just as Amauro finished connecting him to the device.

"Brain activity is extremely fluid," Marell explained from his station. "We can't read a memory like opening a drawer and pulling out a file. Patterns shift and mutate. One memory colours another–"

"That's why it's so difficult to create a successful graft," Amuro added. "You have to be careful not to cause too many inconsistencies."

"All right, Colonel. We need to establish a baseline," Marell addressed Mitchell. "What I've done is identify a series of key memories from your childhood. These are seminal moments. They stand out like signposts, and they influence everything that came after them. I'm going to activate one now."

He turned back to the console and entered some commands. Amuro stepped behind him to activate something at the back of the chair. Mitchell closed his eyes and leaned his head back as he had done the first time, getting ready to fall back into his past.

…

The hospital corridor was mostly deserted, but it was weirdly familiar, and so was the nurse that approached him where he was sitting on a bench by himself. She smiled kindly at him when he looked up, placing her hand on his shoulder…

It took him a moment to place the memory. It was no wonder because this incident now playing in the forefront of his mind was more than two decades old.

"You all right?" He heard Carter. She sounded a little concerned.

"Yeah, it's just… weird," Mitchell answered without opening his eyes.

"What are you seeing?"

Mitchell watched through the eyes of his younger self as he walked alongside the nurse. "I'm in the VA hospital where they brought my father right after his accident."

"He was a test pilot, right?" Carter asked.

"Yeah."

The nurse stayed behind him as Mitchell approached the doorway of the room where his father sat on the hospital bed. He couldn't aver this gaze from his amputated legs, with the remaining portions just above the knees wrapped heavily in bandages. There was another nurse beside his father, checking his IV. When his dad finally saw him, he immediately tried to sit up before he remembered that he couldn't. He tried to turn sideways, to face him fully, but couldn't quite manage it by himself. The nurse had to help him to turn.

Mitchell took one last close look at his father's missing legs. He then met his dad's eyes and smiled nervously. He felt a sense of relief wash over him when his dad returned his smile.

"It's the first time I saw him after the crash," Mitchell said quietly, doing his best to keep his voice even and not let the intense emotions the memory invoked leak out in his tone. "Scared the hell out of me to see him like that. Somehow he made it seem that everything was going to be okay."

"We're moving into a related memory now," Marell instructed him then, warning him of the incoming change.

Some time had passed since his dad's accident. He could tell by the way the amount of bandages had reduced on his dad's legs.

"It's a couple of months later…" he murmured as the memory unfolded itself.

He was visiting him again, and this time he was sitting on the bed next to his dad, watching the television.

"We're watching the launch of the first Space Shuttle. Ah, I can't be much more than ten years old."

His dad had his arm around him, while they watched the Space Shuttle lift off of its launch pad.

"Go, baby, go!" Dad cheered on as the rocket flew skywards. Then he turned to Mitchell. "What do you think of that, Cam? Space planes. I tell you what, if they can pull that off, the least I can do is walk again, right?"

Mitchell nodded with a smile, thinking…

The memory faded as gently as it had arrived, leaving him in a pitch-black and empty place. He felt Amuro detaching the leads and he slowly opened his eyes, blinking to adjust to the bright, white lighting.

"Well done, Colonel."

Mitchell sat up, rubbing at the temples to relieve the slight pressure build-up he felt there. "So, what's next?"

"With this data, we should be able to precisely calibrate the equipment," Marell said before turning to face him with an apologetic expression. "And then comes the hard part."

"We'll need to run through your memories of the murder," Mauro explained, seeing his frown. "We may have to do it several times."

"Great," Mitchell muttered sarcastically.

….

They took a small break before it was time for Mitchell to hook up to the machine that was supposed to unscramble his brain. Unfortunately, it had to do a whole lot of stirring and muddling before it could get to the unscrambling part.

This time, the device took him on a stroll down the memory lane from the night before, where Varrick had been flirting with him according to Carter. Now, reviewing and reliving the memory of her charming smiles, coy looks and the food she offered, he felt like an idiot for having missed it all in the first place.

He placed all the blame on the alien fruit drink that had no business masquerading as a non-alcoholic beverage when all it did was make you ignorant and stupid when it came into contact with your stomach acid.

A flash of memory had John's smirking face, the same one that had floated to the front of his mind when the Galar brandy had hit him enough to clear the fog from…whatever he had been given.

He remembered the yearning he felt for the man… remembered wanting him in his arms just before Varrick's voice brought him back to where he actually was.

He remembered recoiling from her…from the fact that he had followed her home to…to…

Try as he might, Mitchell couldn't follow that line of thought anywhere coherent. The device took him away from that useless pursuit to other much clearer memories.

He was kissing her. He was kissing her as if that was the only thing that mattered in his entire existence, swallowing her throaty moans with possessive growls of his own.

The house was dark, but the iridescent light from the gas giant outside made the pale skin on her naked body look almost ethereal in its shine as he lowered her gently on the plush sofa in the lounge.

She looked up at him with pure longing in her big dark eyes and he was lost.

"Jesus fuck…" Mitchell cursed softly. Despite how much he hated having that memory etched into his brain, a confused part of his mind insisted that those moments were real, as well as everything he had felt for the woman right then.

The discord in his mind made him feel sick to the stomach.

"Cam…" He heard Carter calling out, sounding concerned. The device must have picked up on his revulsion and how miserably torn he felt.

"It's fine. Keep going." He ground out while his mind raged that it was not. There was nothing fine about any of that.

The memory sequence changed again, taking a sinister turn to let the rest of the evening play out.

The stone statue felt heavy in his hand. He was furious, enraged beyond measure, only he didn't quite know why. The next moment, he was hitting her with the statue as she screamed. The squelching sound the statue made when it impacted the gaping opening on her forehead for the second time was way too louder than it should have been.

He remembered closing his eyes on reflex and turning away to avoid the blood splatter as he hit her again, putting an end to her dying whimpers.

When the stone statue finally slipped from his finger, it made no sound as it hit the carpeted floor.

He turned his hands, palms up and idly wondered how the blood so warm a moment ago cooled so fast.

The memory sequence should have ended there. Instead, it revealed itself to be a loop and took Mitchell back to where it all began at the reception the day before and started playing the whole ordeal, over and over again.

…

Carter concentrated on the readings that depicted Mitchell's emotional response to the memory sequence he was forced to relive continuously as the two doctors tried to spot the markers of a memory graft.

According to the fluctuating lines and ever-darkening red and yellow shades, the Colonel was immensely distressed, which she supposed was expected, considering what he was reliving. Still, it didn't mean that she had to like what they were doing, putting him through that again and again, even if the end goal was to clear him of the accusations.

"We must be missing something," Amuro muttered, drawing her attention back to the main display.

"We've been through it three times!" Marell snapped.

"What's the problem?"

"Well, maybe we should run another diagnostic–" Mauro started, ignoring Carter, only to be cut off by a frustrated Marell.

"It's not going to change the result!" he spat, pointing angrily at the display. Then he stood from his chair abruptly and left the lab through a side exit, muttering to himself about needing fresh air.

"So far, we can't find any evidence that the memory is false," Amuro explained apologetically to Carter when she turned to him. "According to these results, Colonel Mitchell really did murder Doctor Varrick."

Carter glanced back at Mitchell. He lay there unmoving, his mounting distress only visible in the way his eyes rapidly moved back and forth under his closed eyelids. She left her own chair and went out of the same exit Marell had taken, intending on finding him.

She didn't really have to search for him. He was right there, standing next to what looked like a potted fern in the small courtyard.

"Doctor Marell," She said, approaching him. "You have to continue with the analysis. Please. You know he didn't do this!"

Marell looked at her with tired eyes. "That's not what the machine says." He sighed.

"Look, I know Doctor Varrick was your friend–"

"She was more than that, Colonel–" he said roughly, interrupting her. "She was my wife. We'd been separated for two years. I guess I was still hoping there might be a ch–" he cut himself off with effort and shook his head. "I can't help you."

Carter could only watch the man in shock as he walked away towards the opposite direction from the lab.