“No, I do not,” Heishi said.
“You do,” A-Ka insisted. “You really seem to. Besides, you were designed with humans as the model.”
“When the Creator made me, you humans didn’t exist and neither did the clones. You still think that’s how it is?”
When Heishi put it like that, A-Ka saw the contradiction, but he still replied, “What you said is true, sure, but the Creator was also an intelligent being. How would you know that he wasn’t like humans?”
“Because that’s impossible.” Heishi responded without needing to consider it. “Logic, communication, identification, and judgment are all part of reason. But joy, grief, sorrow, and contentment? Those are emotions.”
“You also get angry and impatient.”
A-Ka was trying to explain the essence of being a human to Heishi, but he didn’t even look at A-Ka. Instead, Heishi’s eyes were focused somewhere far away.
“Basic reasoning skills are observation and judgment, while high-level reasoning skills are perception and analysis,” Heishi said. “By the same principle, basic emotional skills are reactions caused by external stimuli, encompassing all kinds of simple feelings. These are the basic skills for any living being. I am not equipped with high-level emotional skills.”
“What are high-level emotional skills?” A-Ka asked.
“High-level emotional skills…” Heishi thought for a moment. “They’re the ones that only you humans have. Understanding body language, instincts, grudges, and the thing that you call love.”
“But when Feiluo attacked you, why didn’t you dodge him or return the blow?” Heishi paused for a moment, and A-Ka observed his expression with a smile. “You’re really the same as us humans. You have complicated emotions and even feel loneliness and unease.”
Heishi was only pensive for a short while before his cold demeanor resumed. “No, it was because I knew that he was only venting his anger and not trying to kill me.”
“And why did you accept his anger?”
This time, Heishi deeply thought that over. When he answered, it wasn’t aloud—he just shook his head.
“After parting ways with Feiluo, did you feel that something was wrong in your heart?” A-Ka asked.
Heishi continued to maintain his silence, but A-Ka knew that he was searching the depths of his heart, thinking about some things that even he hadn’t realized.
At this point, a muffled explosion sounded in the distance, and Heishi roused abruptly, squinting his eyes in the general direction it came from.
“Infrared telescope,” Heishi muttered.
A-Ka went back to his room to find it, but at that moment, the transceiver in the bag began to beep with the chime of an incoming message. A-Ka turned on the transceiver, only to hear Percy’s anxious voice on the other end.
“A-Ka, their army is moving out,” Percy said. “I don’t know why, but they’re going to fight again. You need to leave that skyscraper right away.”
“Is Feiluo there?”
“He’s gone to persuade the army not to attack for now. Why is this happening? Wasn’t there a ceasefire?”
“The people from the Mercenary Association have detained Commander Angus. Listen to me, Percy, keep yourself safe, and no matter what, don’t go outside…”
“This is really unreasonable,” Percy said. “Can’t they send him back? Feiluo and the temporary leader were arguing loudly, it nearly scared me to death—”
“This brat’s sending messages to the enemy!”
“Kill him!”
A frenzy of sounds issued from the transceiver, and A-Ka’s eyes widened with shock. “Percy!”
As if Percy had been caught by someone, he let out a shrill cry. The transmission cut off. A-Ka knelt in front of the bed, breathing rapidly.
Heishi was standing behind A-Ka. He had heard the entire exchange.
“I’ll go notify Huixiong.”
Another battle broke out unexpectedly, and this time the fighting was fiercer than before. The fires of battle once again baptized Phoenix City in catastrophe over a long, sleepless night. Six magnetic aircraft swept toward the humans’ district from the tall tower in the north, and the entire Western Quarter awoke within moments.
The tower of the Mercenary Association was filled with furor. Heishi ran down the stairs, asking, “Is Angus willing to hand over the code?”
“Not yet!” Huixiong said. “He won’t agree no matter what we say. We must first fight off their attack. Mercenaries, pick up your weapons and prepare for battle!”
With a huge boom, the entire building shook as thousands of bullets made of light shot out of the aircraft, shattering the glass that made up the facade of the building. The clones were bombarding the skyscraper as they began their efforts to rescue the captured Commander Angus. In the disorder, Heishi shielded A-Ka as the two of them escaped the skyscraper.
The dark night continued, the fires of battle igniting all around. Huixiong’s voice issued forth from speakers around the city: “My human brothers, please support us! We have found the machines’ weakness, and we are counting down the days until our victory! We are in our darkest hour. Macksie had turned against us and the Rebel Alliance…”
The humans and the clones had long struggled over resources; when the humans heard that they’d been betrayed, they snarled in fury and raised the guns in their hands, throwing themselves into battle. But the humans’ firepower was weaker than the clones’, and they suppressed the human troops with just three rounds of sweeping bullets.
A-Ka equipped his mechanical arm, and Heishi’s wristband turned into a heavy machine gun that accurately gunned down the aircraft coming right for them.
The ships of both humans and clones turned into fireballs as they spiraled in twos and threes to the earth below, where they erupted with loud explosions.
For a while, there was nowhere to hide. Just as A-Ka was about to flee somewhere with fewer people, someone rushed him from the side and covered his mouth, dragging him toward the skyscraper that was going to collapse.
Heishi’s expression tensed, only to settle when he realized that it was Feiluo.
“What the hell is your side doing?!” Feiluo yelled.
Under the hazy sky, A-Ka explained what had happened. Feiluo let out an anxious breath as Heishi rushed to his side.
“Where’s your son?” Heishi asked.
“He’s been detained by the Rebellion soldiers because he was passing messages to you,” Feiluo said. “Come with me. We have to go.”
Even now, Feiluo’s face was dark with anger as he brought Heishi and A-Ka around the defensive line, close to the base of the Rebellion. They came to a stop in front of a vent, and Feiluo spoke. “A-Ka, I know you can open this entrance to this pipe. If we crawl up along the vent, we’ll be able to reach the command center.”
A-Ka lifted his head, looking toward the tall building shrouded in the velvet of the night, where he saw the flash of lights from surveillance machines patrolling above. Without a word, he put on his pair of infrared mechanic’s goggles and began extracting a few tools from his pack to unlock the security system. Heishi and Feiluo stood silently to one side.
Eventually, Heishi asked, “Why did you come back?”
“Because Percy got captured, of course! He’s being held in the command center, so I have to go in to rescue him.”
“The termination command is on a magnetic chip that can be wiped,” Heishi said. “If nothing’s gone wrong, there should be thirty megabytes of code in there.”
Feiluo thought deeply for a moment before answering, “I’m not sure where Commander Angus put it. In theory, since Liber also received it, there should be at least one backup. I’ll take the two of you into the building, where you can search through the deceased’s belongings. Perhaps you’ll find something there.”
“Why would this chip be in the hands of the clones?” A-Ka asked.
“You think that launching an assault on the machines on all fronts is a joke?” Feiluo said. “If Heishi hadn’t brought up the shutdown codes, then you humans wouldn’t even know about this secret weapon.”
A-Ka flashed back to when he had just discovered Heishi. Liber had made secretive but extremely thorough arrangements, mobilizing all of their forces in the City of Steel. Perhaps he had been relying on the shutdown codes he had.
“I get it,” A-Ka said. “The headquarters of the Rebellion must have that backup. Thank you, Feiluo!”
“I’m not planning on helping Heishi,” Feiluo said without warmth. “But, the way things are, the fighting will only stop if we retrieve the termination codes. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have to wait for the Iron and Steel Corps to attack us—we would die at the hands of our own.”
“This was your original sin,” Heishi said.
When Feiluo heard these words, he immediately flew into a rage. Grabbing Heishi, he shouted, “Say that again!”
“Stop fighting!” A-Ka called as he squatted in front of the vent.
Feiluo let out a vicious snarl as he pushed Heishi aside.
“Liber still died in the end,” Heishi said.