Chapter 10:
The Termination Command
“IS THIS TALKING ABOUT YOU?” A-Ka asked Heishi. “Why does it sound like it isn’t?”
Heishi’s expression darkened.
Professor Callan continued, “The Son of God is the only one who can shut Father down. After finding him, you must listen to the truths he speaks and carry out his orders. My time is almost up. I’ve extracted the essence of my genes and put them into this vaccine vial.
“I hope that when you find it, the power of the Eye of Truth can be of use to you. The person who receives this injection will be able to analyze the internal structures of anything, aiding the Son of God in entering the Nucleus of the Astrolabe…”
A-Ka came to a startling realization. “That was the injection he gave me!”
“This is something they stole from the Primeval Heart,” Heishi said. “A power that never belonged to him in the first place.”
“But he’s having me bring you into the Nucleus of the Astrolabe. This works out great! Now you can’t leave me behind.”
Heishi was shocked into silence for a moment. Gripping A-Ka’s shirt collar, Heishi stared intensely, but A-Ka only smiled back. He wasn’t sure why, but he had a sense that under Heishi’s standoffish facade, he was a good person with a warm heart.
Suddenly, Huixiong’s deep voice came through the door. “There’s been a new development.”
Heishi pulled the chip from the decoder and handed both items to A-Ka, who stashed them into his tool bag. Heishi was silent for a moment more, as if he was thinking about the current situation.
Once again, Huixiong knocked on the door. “Can you hear me? What happened? If you don’t open the door, I’m going to break it down.”
Heishi indicated that A-Ka should go open the door, so A-Ka let Huixiong in.
He really towered over everyone, even Heishi, and as he looked down at him from above, he said, “Your friend isn’t willing to come.”
“The reason?”
“He believes that you lied to him, because you only told him to retrieve a chip that would fall from Macksie’s person in the chaos. However, you didn’t say that you were planning on murdering General Macksie, which led him to shoulder the crime of betraying his people.”
“I’m only using the fastest and most straightforward method to accomplish this mission,” Heishi said.
“Then you have to persuade him.”
“Fine. Connect me with him.”
“We can’t find him. After telling our mercenaries about this, he disappeared.”
“I have a method,” A-Ka interjected. “Where’s Percy? I’ll bring Percy along to find him.”
Heishi gave A-Ka a look, hesitating a little.
“Why don’t I go with you two?” Huixiong said.
Percy was sitting in a small room, entering something into his transmitter. As soon as A-Ka pushed the door open, Percy stopped—but only briefly. When he realized it was A-Ka, he once again began to tap in encoded messages.
“Are you able to contact your dad?” A-Ka asked.
“I can, yeah.” Percy said. “A-Ka, did you get hurt?” When A-Ka replied affirmatively, Percy asked, “Where? Was it serious?”
A-Ka sat down by Percy’s side and pressed down against his shoulder, then lifted Percy’s hand, placing it against his own abdomen. The wound had already healed, leaving behind a bullet-shaped scar.
“Feiluo’s very angry,” Percy said. “He says he’ll find a way to save me, but he thinks Heishi lied to him.”
“Can you persuade him?”
Percy nodded. “I’ll try.”
“We need to find someplace to speak with him face-to-face,” A-Ka said. “Let’s first agree on a location to meet. It’ll just be the two of us and the president of the Mercenary Association.”
Percy sent that information over. This time, there was a long pause before the reply came.
A-Ka, Percy, and Huixiong left the Mercenary Association and headed toward the meeting location.
“You haven’t told me yet,” Percy piped up. “What exactly happened?”
A-Ka didn’t dare tell him about Heishi’s mission, so he only spoke of the part involving Macksie being controlled. Percy nodded and didn’t pass any judgments.
Feiluo was standing in a pile of rubble when they arrived. When he saw A-Ka, his brows creased deeply. “Percy, come to me.”
But Heishi appeared behind them, silent as a shadow. Seeing that, Feiluo immediately flew into a rage. He came forward, fully intending to fight Heishi. “Friend, is this how you repay me?!”
“He was already being controlled, so he needed to be eliminated as quickly as possible,” Heishi replied. “I didn’t know how many of your people had their chips activated by Father. To prevent the news from spreading, I couldn’t tell you anything.”
“You…” Feiluo walked over and pressed Heishi against the wall, raising his fist.
“Please, don’t fight!” A-Ka hurried forward. He still really liked Feiluo as a friend, especially since they’d escaped the City of Steel and had fought to survive on that journey together.
Feiluo gave A-Ka a hard stare before looking at Heishi. He wanted to say something more, but he quashed his urge to do so.
“Give me the chip and you can have your son back,” Heishi said.
Feiluo pulled out the chip that was still stained with blood, throwing it at Heishi’s face. “You only came to help the humans,” Feiluo said furiously. “You’ll kill all of the clones. I should never have trusted you in the beginning!”
After saying this, Feiluo slammed one fist into Heishi’s handsome face, and Heishi staggered backward.
“Feiluo!” A-Ka moved forward to stop him.
“See you again—never.” Feiluo took Percy’s hand and left.
Hurrying to Heishi’s side, A-Ka tried to examine him, but he waved his hand, indicating that he was fine. When A-Ka looked at his expression, he seemed a little crestfallen.
“Feiluo’s not a bad person…” A-Ka said, trying to intervene.
“There’s nothing to say,” Heishi said quietly. “Let’s go.”
Back within the conference room of the Mercenary Association, a silence hung over the group as they stared at the transceiver in the middle of the table. Heishi sat at the table’s head, and A-Ka sat in a corner, intently studying Heishi’s knife.
The transceiver suddenly sounded with a man’s voice. “He’s agreed to the negotiations! He’s willing to come in person!”
The gathered people let out a collective sigh of relief. Huixiong’s was the most exhausted. It was pretty clear that the pressure on him had been the greatest.
“Have him come alone,” Heishi said.
The messenger on the other end of the transceiver left to pass the message, and a moment later, A-Ka heard them beginning to sing the marching song “The Black Plains” outside the Mercenary Association skyscraper.
He hurried in front of the window. Nightfall was approaching over Phoenix City, and the sky darkened as the fires of battle swelled around them. The streets had been blasted into a blackened mess. Still-burning embers were scattered everywhere. As they crowded along both side of the road, the mercenaries rushed to the end of the street, still singing “The Black Plains.”
Someone was walking toward them over the blackened streets, and the mercenaries began to open a path for him unprompted. The person wore a military cap—General Angus was here.
Downstairs, someone passed on the message, and Huixiong went forth, opening the great doors to the conference room. A clone came in, plucking his military cap off his head before sweeping his gaze over the people gathered in the room.
“Please sit,” Heishi said.
The atmosphere seemed to ice over. Angus replied, “You must first prove your identity.”
“I want to show you a message before we discuss the matter of my identity,” Heishi said.
A-Ka pulled out the decoder and the chip from his bag and turned it on. Professor Callan’s form and voice appeared on the holographic projection.
“… Clone commanders, my descendants…”
The conference room was silent as a graveyard for a while, until the full contents of the chip finished broadcasting. Heishi then flicked his finger, and the small implant chip that could control a clone that had been retrieved from Macksie’s head spun along the length of the table, slowly coming to a stop in front of Angus.
“I am the Eliminator, the child of the Creator,” Heishi said calmly. “I am here to pass judgment upon you all.”
That moment seemed superimposed over another in A-Ka’s vision: Heishi taking on the form of a deity, his voice filled with menace and rage that made the listeners flinch at his intimidating aura.
Angus picked up the chip and glanced at it.
“Those sitting here include representatives of both the humans and the clones,” Heishi said. “May the judgment begin.”
Everyone held their breaths.
“In the past twenty thousand years, you, the life-forms that were nurtured on this Astrolabe, have changed this world. You’ve consumed the energy within the Nucleus of the Astrolabe and have killed each other. This is mutual slaughter between members of the same species—choices caused by warped emotions. As experiments, you are failures.”