Far above their heads, explosions resounded in twos and threes on the mother ship, and debris began to fall from on high. A-Ka’s breathing quickened.
Just as a fireball was about to engulf Heishi, a shabby, tattered robot rushed out from the glow of the fire. A-Ka’s eyes widened; he couldn’t believe it. The shabby robot in front of him was K! How was K here? That was his robot!
K dashed through the flames, slamming into Father’s outer wall, then reached out to grab Heishi. Immediately, Heishi came back to himself, his face filled with astonishment as K lifted him with one arm. Together, K and Heishi flew toward the small fighter.
In the next instant, before A-Ka could process all of the irrational things that had happened in this short span of time, K tossed Heishi into the cabin.
“Leave quickly!” K said.
That robot turned and stepped onto the roof of the small ship, which wobbled gently. A-Ka felt a shiver go up his spine. He could not just accept this reality where K stood in front of him, alive.
“You… K, how are you…?”
“Hurry and go!” The voice that came out of K’s body was worried, and with another solid kick, K helped the ship detach from where it had been stuck. The robot then turned and flew toward the mother ship.
Just as the airship was about to fall, A-Ka pulled up on the joystick. There was another sky-shattering detonation, and the mother ship broke through the Central Computer’s defensive layer, smashing into Father’s tall computer tower. Piercing blue light spewed out like an energy tsunami, overturning all the flying robots in the air.
That wave of energy radiated outward, starting a chain reaction. It first sent the battered mother ship flying before it cracked open the ground of the entire City of Steel. As more explosions sang in a chorus, the cracks widened.
A-Ka had not realized that he was witnessing history being made right before his eyes—the first time in three thousand years that the tides had turned against the might of the robots. His only thought was that they had already come this far, so they had to stay alive no matter what.
All of the navigational systems were useless in this firefight, and he couldn’t tell which way was up. He could only rely on his own instincts and place his trust in Heishi’s steering.
The huge energy wave washed over the ship, turning it into a grain of sand caught by the tide as it was swept far away. Finally, all of the blue light disappeared, and in front of them was the ground, spiraling up to meet them.
The airship trailed smoke behind it as it fell toward a desolate plain. Before it could crash, it skimmed a mountain, toppled over a cliff, and sank into a large river with a series of violent shudders.
A huge boom sounded as water wildly rushed in through any available crack. A-Ka unsteadily made it to his feet, grabbed Heishi’s hand, and flipped the escape pod switch—but the escape hatch was stuck.
“Heishi,” A-Ka shouted, but he remained unconscious.
“Damn it!” A-Ka kicked at the hatch a few more times, but the water flow grew heavier and heavier. He pulled Heishi onto his back, searching for an exit, but Heishi was heavy and dense as a piece of steel. The two of them were trapped in the fighter as the water level rose higher and higher.
As the water lapped at Heishi, his eyes popped open. He grabbed A-Ka’s waist and then kicked forward with his foot. With a leap and a dull thud, an entire section of the metal sheet flew loose under the water.
The two of them were swept like foam on the ocean, this way and that, as they rushed to the surface. Though they completely lost their sense of direction, they managed to crawl onto the shore with great difficulty.
Bedraggled, A-Ka coughed out a few mouthfuls of water before meeting Heishi’s gaze. Then, the two of them began to laugh and laugh.
“Ha ha ha!” A-Ka didn’t know why, but he kept laughing until he was completely out of breath.
Even Heishi couldn’t resist a smile, after which he wiped the water off his face and sat down on a rock.
The area they had crashed into was a barren one, but A-Ka and Heishi were still within the borders of the Country of Machines. A-Ka checked the direction of the sun and confirmed their position. The two of them climbed to a higher spot and saw the main road in the distance.
To the eastern side of the plains, plumes of thick smoke rose from where Father and the clones’ mother ship had fought their final confrontation. That blast had twisted time and space for an instant, sending them some 250 miles away from the City of Steel. It had also brought along quite a few robot weapons that had burst through like meteorites, each embedding itself in the rocky earth.
A-Ka picked through the debris of the robots to find a few useful scraps, and after melting them with a nuclear furnace, he turned them into a new small wrench. Holding the tool in his hand suddenly reminded him of his robot, K, and he found himself with so many questions that his brain almost exploded.
Why was K in the mother ship? There had been a person inside K! A-Ka recalled the few sentences it had said—there was definitely a person steering it. But how did this person know them? Or was it because of the battle? Had someone unknowingly stumbled across K in that cave before climbing inside it and directing it into battle, unknowingly saving A-Ka and Heishi?
No matter how A-Ka thought about it, he couldn’t figure it out, so he had to put the matter aside for now. Before, the only desire in his mind had been to find a fusion engine for K, but now, when there were fusion engines scattered about everywhere, he no longer had a need for one.
“I’m leaving,” Heishi announced.
“Where are you going?” A-Ka asked.
Heishi’s reply came exactly as A-Ka predicted it would: “It has nothing to do with you.”
One of these days, Heishi was going to make A-Ka burst like a furious firecracker. He never should have saved him in the first place.
“I rescued you from the ocean!” A-Ka said. “And I saved your life again in the living quarters. Can’t you be a little nicer to me?!”
“I’ve also saved you quite a few times. Now we’re even,” Heishi said.
“Excuse me, when did you do that? If I hadn’t brought you out of the Ant Nest…”
Heishi and A-Ka stood there, the tension thick in the air, before A-Ka realized that there was no point in arguing. Truthfully, he would never have survived the journey here if Heishi hadn’t been there. Likewise, without him, Heishi wouldn’t have been able to find the path to the surface.
“Whatever, let’s not talk about this any longer,” A-Ka said helplessly. “Where are you going?”
“I have a mission.”
A-Ka was taken aback by that. “What mission? You’ve remembered your identity?”
Heishi stared off into the distance before finally shaking his head slightly.
“Okay, then what did you remember?” A-Ka asked.
“Nothing. I only know that I have a mission.”
“Well, fine. You also don’t know what the mission is, so where are you going?”
Heishi seemed annoyed by the question, and when A-Ka went over and reached for Heishi’s shoulder, he turned away to avoid it.
A-Ka was too tired to continue talking with this maniac. Hopping off the rocks, he returned to picking through the fallen scraps of robots on the plains. After a while, he saw that Heishi had also come down and was wandering around without a purpose.
“You’re not even remotely familiar with this world,” A-Ka shouted, “and you don’t have a destination in mind, so don’t just mill around! If you get lost, you’ll have no way back!”