He followed the path he had taken to get back to the living quarters. As he went, he shot a look down at the ground underneath the garbage chute. This time, he saw footprints—two lines of messy ones! That meant they were the footprints of a human. After he’d first exited the garbage chute, someone had come by and entered it. Also, after doing that, they hadn’t left again.
How could this have happened? A-Ka almost couldn’t believe it. He wanted to go back and check for clues, but he had no time left, so he could only leave quickly with his heart in his throat. Now that he knew a human had found this exit, he could no longer use it as often.
As he climbed up the ladder to the safety tunnel, A-Ka was nearly caught on camera. Getting on the next ladder, he thought, That was too close. I could have died right then.
The laser-equipped surveillance camera turned to an empty spot, and A-Ka slowly went up, his back pressed against the wall as he peered out.
Inside the living area, nothing was out of the ordinary. Several clones stood in the hallway chatting. A-Ka passed by them, returned to the sleeping hall, climbed into his sleeping chamber, and closed his eyes.
His mind was still filled with overwhelming excitement for the coming riot, but his body had no more energy to fight off his exhaustion, and he eventually fell asleep.
Suddenly, a huge roar echoed from the Central Reactor Chamber, and the resulting explosion was like a blazing sun that dispersed its light over the entirety of the City of Steel. All the constructs, humans, clones, androids, were turned into ash in the high heat and bright light…
“The sleeping period has ended,” an electronic voice announced. “Concluding sleep mode.”
The hatch to the chamber automatically opened, and A-Ka startled out of his dreams, forehead covered with sweat.
“Are you all right, A-Ka?” one of the humans asked.
A-Ka barely managed to nod, and his head spun as he used the wall of the chamber to prop himself up. His feet caught as he tried to stand, and he almost fell over before several people came over to lift him up.
“Did you have a nightmare?” someone asked in concern.
A-Ka responded, “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”
He almost couldn’t tell what had been dream and what had been reality. He now felt that everything that had happened over the past six hours was only a fantasy. People came and went, and A-Ka stood outside the sleeping area for a long while as he mulled his dream over again and again. Then the bell rang, reminding him that he had two hours to get ready. When those two hours were up, he would have to go to work.
A-Ka went to the cafeteria to eat. A different group of people were present from the last time he’d eaten here. Just as he sat down with a myriad of things on his mind, a robot rolled over and said to him, “Designation 470023A, your guest is currently in the waiting room. Please arrive there within the next five minutes.”
A guest? A-Ka randomly shoveled a few bites of breakfast into his mouth.
When he went into the hallway, he saw two clones standing outside the door to the waiting room. All clones had the same face and the same physique, and they each wore the requisite uniform their duties required, but as soon as A-Ka saw this one, his heart began to hammer in his chest.
“You stole my navigation chip.” The clone strode toward him. “If you return it to me immediately, I’ll forget about your past mistakes.”
“Wh-what chip?” A-Ka subconsciously reached a hand into his shirt pocket, but his hand closed around empty air, and he remembered that he had installed the chip in K’s body and forgotten to bring it back.
Another clone came over, snarling quietly at him. “Don’t play dumb. You have no reason to keep that thing around. You’ll only end up burdening all of the humans here with disposal.”
“You don’t have the authority to do this!” A-Ka responded angrily. In just a few seconds, he had cleared his mind, and he realized that this clone didn’t dare to raise his voice—which meant the chip with the treacherous secret was real and not a dream. “I-I didn’t take your chip,” he insisted, though he was so nervous he almost couldn’t breathe.
“You switched it out!” That clone gritted his teeth and his hand spasmed, then he grabbed A-Ka around the neck. “Where is it? Give it back!”
A-Ka’s face flushed bright red, and he saw the surveillance cameras in the hallway turn toward their direction, but the clone’s emotions were already out of control. His fingers squeezed A-Ka’s throat until the cartilage of his airway made crunching sounds. Little by little, his vision went black.
“Stop!”
The clone’s companion just barely stopped him from choking A-Ka to death. When the clone loosened his grip, A-Ka fell to his knees and gasped for air.
Through coughs, he said again, “I didn’t take the chip!”
“The guards are coming!” another clone warned. “They’ve already spotted us. You can’t keep talking with him any longer. Think of another way to get him away.”
“Just you wait,” the clone said, his expression dark.
The two clones left. A-Ka knew there was no getting out of it this time. He knelt in the hallway as he thought about his next move. It was too late now to go out and retrieve the chip, and even if he handed it over, it would be useless. Could he switch it for a new chip and hand that over? Maybe.
A-Ka leaned against the wall for support, his mouth filled with the taste of blood. He then went to find water so he could gulp some down and wet his hair. Right as he started in that direction, the bell sounded a signal to gather. When it rang, all humans were to report to the conference hall as fast as possible.
Damn, things were moving too fast and too suddenly! A-Ka knew that the clones had definitely alerted the robotic guards in this area, who then sent the signal to gather up all the humans. Perhaps they had given some false pretense to the guards to select some of the humans so that they could forcefully take him away.