Lieutenant Lavender's office was decorated according to her last name. Lavenders were set in a vase on the desk and paintings of lavender filled fields were set up all over the walls. There was even lavender scented perfume permeating the air heavily.
"Sit down, cadet." said Lieutenant Lavender, beckoning to one of two empty chairs in front of her desk. The two sergeants stood by the door in the ready position as the lieutenant sat down behind her desk, opposite of Melbourne.
She began to type on a keyboard until a holographic image showed up.
"Do you recognize the image, Mr. Acliate?" asked Lieutenant Lavender, looking him in the eyes to gauge for any signs of shock.
Melbourne was surprised, which did affect his facial patterns, so Lieutenant Lavender snatched the opportunity to push him towards a confession.
"Your shock shows familiarity. That right there is an artifact from the Artilect War. That glowing vitruvian man with wings and an electron orbital diagrams around it was the flag of the Cosmist faction during that war that pushed humanity to the brink of extinction. You know it? Just a couple months ago, right about when you graduated high school, in fact, this exact artifact crashed into the Martian surface from space undetected before its impact alerted our seismometers. This artifact, as it so happens, crashed only a few kilometers south of a small town along the Isidis Sea called Lambdanville. Our records show that you are from that town and in fact graduated from the high school there. Is this correct?"
Melbourne nodded. "Yes, I heard about this event on a news broadcast."
Lieutenant Lavender sneered impatiently at Melbourne. "Oh, I'm sure you heard about this incident. In fact, I believe you know much more about it than the news would have shown you. They didn't show these images publicly and this image is in fact classified! Now, I'm going to reiterate my question into a more comprehensible format. Were you near the site of the crash and did you observe the probe before the military arrived on the scene? Before you answer, we have genetic data from three dead people found on the scene and I personally tracked someone's footprints that morning to Lambdanville who managed at the time to evade detection by other means. If it makes you feel any better, the three individuals whose corpses we found are known violent gangsters from the town of Gabri about forty kilometers south of Lambdanville. It is very believable that you may have killed them in a self defense situation. However, we found blood with DNA that doesn't correspond to either of these three subjects. After over a month of meticulous testing, we finally matched the DNA to someone in Lambdanville, the same town we tracked the mysterious subject to. The DNA, coincidentally, happened to match up with you."
Melbourne considered the situation deeply for a few seconds. At the time, he was worried that full biological testing by the military would reveal him to be a cyborg. However, given recent developments and failed testing by Victoria Gambria, he felt more comfortable gambling that the military wouldn't be able to detect him. That didn't mean he'd want to tell the military that he was at the scene that night, but he was now backed up into a corner.
"Yes, I was at the scene taking a hike." confessed Melbourne reluctantly. "I was celebrating my graduation and saw a meteor strike the ground a few klicks south. I decided to go check it out. Meteor fragments can be worth a little money when they're heat treated by the Martian thermosphere, you know. Little did I expect to find that artifact lying there. When I was about to leave and head back home, a group of three people in hoods did attack me and I defended myself with the martial arts training I've been undergoing. When helicopters appeared, I was a bit scared and decided it would be easier not to make my presence known. I guess I thought it would never come back to haunt me given that I didn't commit any crimes. Of course, the self defense issue does merit some investigation under Martian Federal law, but it wasn't a crime."
Lieutenant Lavender stroked her chin, staring into Melbourne's eyes with skepticism.
"As I said, I don't suspect you of any violence other than self defense. This isn't a murder investigation, it is something else. What I want to know is whether or not you interacted with the artifact and whether it did anything to you, your brain or your body." She began to look more deeply into his eyes as though she were staring directly into his soul.
"It didn't." lied Melbourne, his heart tightening in fear. "Do you fear it made me an illegal cyborg or something?"
"Stranger things have happened." said Lieutenant Lavender. "Sergeant Jacobs, please take Cadet Acliate into the testing room. I'll want blood samples and a full body X-Ray done. If he tries to escape, you are to assume guilt and restrain him as necessary. If killing becomes necessary, you have permission to do so. Mr. Acliate, please go quietly. If it is as you say and you possess no illegal augmentations, you have nothing to fear."
Melbourne reluctantly got up and followed the sergeant as he was trailed by the other sergeant and Lieutenant Lavender.
In the testing room, Melbourne was forced to undress before he was put into a number of testing apparatuses including the full body X-Ray and CAT Scan machine. Many other unpleasant testing procedures happened over the course of about two hours before they finally ended.
Finally, Melbourne was taken back to Lieutenant Lavender's office who had a barely masked look of disappointment.
"What's wrong?" asked Melbourne. "Was my body contaminated with criminal cybernetics?"
"Inconclusive." said Lieutenant Lavender. "Unfortunately, all of our tests say that you are a pure flesh and blood human. I suppose I was mistaken. Sorry to waste your time, Cadet Acliate. Oh, by the way, since you are joining the military, you should get used to needles. Soldiers almost always have to undergo a litany of vaccinations before deployment. If I've ruffled your feathers a little bit here, I do apologize. Consider this your first training session in dealing with something that all soldiers have to deal with at some point or another. You may return to your dorm now."
Melbourne grunted in disapproval and walked off in reluctant silence. He wanted to flip her off and say some ugly words, but he knew that would give her an excuse to get him court marshaled or expelled, so he walked out without a word.
"By the way, cadet, when an officer tells you to do something, you don't walk off in silence." called Lieutenant Lavender. "You say 'Yes ma'am' or 'Yes sir' depending on the gender designation. If it is a superior non commissioned officer, you address them by their rank. Even Army privates or Naval seamen are above you in rank as long as you are a cadet even though you will be a Lieutenant upon your graduation in two years."
Melbourne stiffened in frustration before forcing out the bitter words. "Yes… ma'am."
"Good. By the way, tell no one about what has happened here. It is classified information. If you speak of it, I will have you both expelled and arrested. Do you understand me, Cadet?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Melbourne walked away feeling disgustingly like a sheered sheep before heading back to his dorm. As he finally returned to his bed though, he breathed an intense sigh of relief. He had bypassed the biological scanning process and managed to deceive the military into thinking he was a pure human. He could blend into Martian society as a normal human being after all, at least for now.
"Hey, what did that Lieutenant want?" asked Jeremy curiously.
"Oh, nothing much." lied Melbourne. "She was just trying to see if she could extract any useful information from me about the Jovian frigate that attacked us. Such knowledge is apparently valuable to the military."
"She kept you quite a while." remarked Jeremy.
"Oh, you know, she wanted to drill me a little bit and repeated several questions several hundred times." said Melbourne, yawning. "I'm tired, man. Let's go to sleep. We gotta be at homeroom at 8 in the morning, right?"
"Good night." responded Jeremy.
***
"How did the testing go?" asked Colonel Vargarade.
"Negative, just like the family." said Lieutenant Lavender in disappointment. "I thought for sure we'd find something in him, but there were no signs of cybernetics."
"How about genetic enhancements? That possibility has not been ruled out."
"Perhaps not." said Lavender. "How's the family? Still have them under surveillance?"
"Of course, but there's only so much we can do now that they've been proven innocent of any cybernetics or willing collaboration with a cyborg. They said they were innocent on truth serum which is enough for the courts from a pure human. I suppose the family is innocent and it was a simple self defense and fear of complications case."
"Sir, my gut is telling me otherwise." demanded Lieutenant Lavender. "I want to keep the boy under surveillance. Did you read the report from Arian Horizons? Not only did this teenager kill those three wanted criminals single handed, but he also reportedly killed a large number of space pirates in zero gravity combat and evaded a whole squad of Jovian marines to launch a nuke into the frigate and save the mission of the Seeker. These aren't the deeds of a high school graduate or even an untrained civilian. It takes a soldier who has endured years of training unless some sort of neural enhancement is given. I don't believe this Melbourne Acliate is as innocent as our current tests say. I want permission to stay on the school staff and keep an eye on this person. I especially want to see him in action when the students are given field exercises out in the Tharsis Mountains. There, I could arrange to put Melbourne in a desperate situation to see if he adapts."
"Alright, Lieutenant, you have my permission. I will pull some strings and have you replace his homeroom teacher tomorrow morning. Now, I'm going to sleep. Have a good night."
"Good night, sir." said Lieutenant Lavender.