“No, let me!” A-Ka was so excited he seemed like a little kid. Tugging on K’s joystick, A-Ka wove them beautifully through the bursts surrounding them. With a hail of gunfire, he raked the large aircraft flying toward them, which erupted into a spectacular fireball.
K pushed its nitrogen propellers to the maximum, rushing toward the battleship amid the dangerous explosions peppering the sky.
“Hey, Feiluo hasn’t given us the signal yet!” Heishi yelled.
“Ugh, don’t be so loud!” A-Ka complained. “I’m gonna go deaf…”
Both of them froze for a moment, before they burst into laughter at the same time. Heishi wrapped his arms around A-Ka’s waist from behind, hugging him. He was so tired, he rested his head on A-Ka’s shoulder.
“This is a miracle,” Heishi murmured, lifting his eyes toward the tall tower that was Father’s body.
“What? Are you talking about K?” A-Ka grinned before sliding a scope over one eye. The cute arch of his brow shadowed the red of the lens, which locked onto the mother ship that was, in the distance, dodging Father’s assault.
“Humans,” Heishi said, raising his head and staring at the sky. “And clones. All the life-forms on this Astrolabe…”
Father glowed a brilliant blue before unleashing a magnetic whirlwind. Still on the outskirts of the battle, the mother ship began to force its way through. Suddenly, the dark clouds above Father’s tower swirled into a vortex, and the light cannons circling its foundation pointed upward, gathering energy.
“We can’t wait for Feiluo any longer. Let’s take a chance!” With that, K rushed toward Father’s apex.
The light cannons fired, piercing through the flank of the mother ship. Instantly, both sky and earth were blotted out by the force of the blast and the ensuing cloud of whistling shrapnel. K forged through the ceaseless stream of debris, approaching the tall tower.
Several successive explosions happened on the mother ship. A gust of fire enveloped K.
“Abandon ship!” Heishi declared with finality.
“No! There’s still something that needs to be done!”
Countless scenes from the past were flashing through A-Ka’s mind. K rushed out of the fire, flying toward the top of the tower that soared six hundred floors high. There, A-Ka found a small-scale aircraft stranded on Father while it charged up its power source.
At that moment, Heishi’s past self was struggling to climb back into the aircraft from his position over a mile in the air. The aircraft was firmly stuck, and its tail propeller glowed with blue light, creating a vortex.
Heishi stared.
“Control of the secondary propellers has been lost. Brace for impact,” K’s electronic warning system alerted them.
With a sudden boom, K crashed into Father’s outer wall. Simultaneously, A-Ka had K reach out and grab Heishi’s past self with its mechanical limb. Holding him with one arm, K flew toward the small airship and tossed him into the cabin.
Through the viewing monitor of the pilot cabin, A-Ka said, “Leave quickly!” to his past self.
His past self wore an expression of surprise as he stared at K. With a twist, K jumped onto the small ship, which had worked itself loose.
“Hurry and go!” A-Ka shouted, and with another harsh kick, he helped the airship make its escape.
Seconds later, he turned and flew toward the mother ship. The instant that the airship broke free, the mother ship slammed into the top of Father’s tower, and blue light pierced it with a huge boom.
A-Ka rushed into the blue light. The flow of time seemed to slow strangely as gravity loosened its hold on them. Countless blue tentacles emerged from that blue light, undulating as they pierced the interior of the mother ship.
“General Liber!” A-Ka roared.
Trailing embers as it went, K hastened onto the bridge of the clone’s mother ship. In the expansive central hall of the bridge, a clone commander was dangling in midair, entwined in countless tentacles of blue light.
As K arrived, its hatch opened and Heishi burst out of it. Feathers of light flew from his hand, severing the connection between Liber and Father’s blue light. Its consciousness retreated, but it didn’t go far. Instead, the glowing tentacles undulated over the bridge and coiled around it.
“General Liber!” A-Ka called again.
Liber’s pupils slowly contracted. “You are…”
Heishi turned to face the blue light. Father’s rich voice once again sounded. “Zoroaster.”
“Labere,” Heishi said coldly. “You’ve violated our Heavenly Father’s decree.”
“Your defeat is inevitable,” Father said. “Your emotions serve no purpose, and they will only turn into a trap that hinders the growth and evolution of all life-forms.”
“Our Heavenly Father assigned me the role of final decision-maker because, unlike you, I have learned and experienced the power of these emotions,” Heishi growled.
“General!” A-Ka’s voice was softer this time.
Liber’s eyes slowly lost their clarity, and glowing electricity buzzed from his forehead. “When the sea of blue sweeps…over the world…” Liber said brokenly, “the Son of God will…come into this world… Answer me…children… You…you two…”
“I need your chip, General Liber,” A-Ka said, his voice just a whisper. “Of the passwords that unlock the central program, the three passwords, we’ve already obtained two.”
Liber grabbed A-Ka’s hand, his deep-set eyes watching him. “Take it,” Liber murmured. “It’s in my mind. Promise me, child, that you will definitely return…”
“I will, I will. This I promise you.”
Without warning, Father’s blue light expanded rapidly.
Heishi exclaimed, “Take him and go!”
“You won’t accept your defeat?” Father’s voice said. “Then look at this.”
Father’s light shifted, and at the top of the tall, pointed tower that comprised it, the roof opened and a laboratory appeared. The metal structures spun until they ground to a halt above the bridge of the ship. With a screech, it tore through the plate blocking off the front cabin and forced its way inside. Amid the overlapping multitude of electromagnetic lights, the laboratory’s great doors slowly opened to reveal a monitor that showed Feiluo, bound to a chair. He faced them, his face drawn tight as his body quaked.
“Feiluo!” Heishi took a step forward, but the electromagnetic lights magnified their intensity twofold. If he rushed forward, they would obliterate everyone and everything in this place.
“Give up on your actions,” Father said in its dead voice. “Otherwise, I will annihilate him. In this world, the lives of clones are pointless. This is one of the rules laid out by our Heavenly Father. They are mere tools.”
A-Ka’s heart nearly stopped.
Heishi’s voice grew weak. “No…no…”
A medical robot held Feiluo’s head in place. Feiluo gritted his teeth, tears trickling from his eyes, his lips moving slightly, as if he was waiting for imminent death to descend upon him.
A-Ka’s very breath was trembling. He had placed a small knife by Liber’s ear, but he simply could not make the cut.
“Act,” Father intoned. “The medical robot here will copy your movements exactly. The moment you retrieve A01’s chip, you shall also sever 77023E’s central nervous system.”
At that, even Heishi couldn’t speak. He just watched Feiluo, his eyes growing wet with tears.
“A-Ka… Heishi,” Feiluo said. “Don’t cry. As a clone, I’m willing to shoulder the burden of this destiny.”
A-Ka shut his eyes, tears sliding ceaselessly down his cheeks.
“Act, child,” Liber said quietly. “I’m begging you. This is our duty…! Leave my people a place to find shelter.”
Feiluo clenched his jaw, fighting back the horror on his face. “A-Ka, wh-why are you hesitating?! What did you c-come here for?! Take good care of Percy for me. Don’t tell him how I died. Just…just tell 70174A what happened…”
“Zoroaster, you’ve finally understood,” Father said. “There is no purpose in the evolution of humans’ emotions.”
At the other, distant end of the time-space tunnel, thousands of flowers of light were blossoming. It was afternoon in Dragonmaw City, and warm, golden sun shone down on the church’s garden. Percy sat silently on a swing as a gentle breeze blew past him, ruffling the flowers. By the pond, Moran was scattering food for the fish there.