Free Web NovelChapter 12: Who are you?
K adjusted the balaclava over his face and pulled the collar of his borrowed uniform higher, the he totally didn’t strip one of the soldiers he had knocked out.
The cloth covering his right eye was beginning to itch. The material was frizzy but he had no choice. The sooner he found the mimic the earlier he got the cloth out.
Good.
At least that meant he was still focused on something other than the fact that the entire command base was looking for him.
The corridors were busier the closer he got to the central sectors. Soldiers moved in groups, security personnel rushed between checkpoints and officers barked orders through their comms. Every screen he passed carried his face somewhere on it.
Or rather the face of the man they believed was him.
It was strange watching people hunt you while you were standing right in front of them.
A group of soldiers jogged past.
K lowered his head and kept moving. Mimicking a soldier on patrol.
Nobody stopped him.
Nobody paid him any attention.
Most personnel were too busy worrying about the clone to care about another soldier walking through the halls.
"Three checkpoints ahead," Kagu whispered.
Her voice echoed softly inside his head.
"Then take a left."
"You know, if I take a wrong turn and get caught, I’m blaming you."
"That’s funny because if we get caught, I’m deleting my tracks."
"Hm."
"That’s all you have to say?"
"It’s a good decision, you’ll be traced back to Thira and that would make matters even worse...Bak probably thinks I’m a clone made by the doctor and that he’s planning something"
"You care about my master a lot, don’t you?"
"He practically raised me when I lost it all"
The corridor opened into a larger section of Command. He was getting closer to Surv.
Several supply crates had been dragged into the middle of the hall. Soldiers stood gathered around them while technicians unpacked equipment.
K was about to walk past when a voice caught his attention.
"Listen carefully. Every checkpoint receives one scanner. Scan the eyes first. If the feedback data matches the Matyr K-0-0-1, report it immediately."
K glanced over.
A woman stood beside an open crate. She was handing small devices to the soldiers one by one while explaining how they worked.
A logistics officer by the look of her uniform and just another officer trying to manage the chaos.
One of the soldiers raised a hand.
"Miss Petra, what if the person covers their eyes?"
"Tell them to take it off, Jeff"
Another soldier laughed.
"What if he just punches me in the face?"
"Then try not to get punched."
A few chuckles spread through the group.
The woman smiled politely and continued passing out scanners.
K only spared her a brief glance before continuing down the hallway.
"Keep moving," Kagu urged.
"I’m moving." K hissed under his breath.
"At the speed of a dying turtle!"
K rolled his eyes and kept walking. "If you don’t want us to get caught or rouse suspicion you better be okay with my pace"
Several minutes later he arrived outside Surveillance.
His back tingled.
Something felt wrong.
The doors were open.
Which shouldn’t be because they had automatic sensors that only opened the door when someone stepped in the sensors’ range.
The lights were on.
Yet there was almost no noise.
K stopped.
Surveillance was the eyes of Command.
The place never slept.
Someone was always talking. Someone was always arguing or throwing orders mixed with curses.
Reports constantly flowed in and out.
Even during quiet periods there should have been dozens of personnel monitoring cameras, reviewing data and coordinating with security.
Instead there was silence.
Not complete silence though.
The low hum of machinery still filled the air. But the human element was gone.
K slowly stepped inside. He should have brought a better weapon, he took a defense stance holding the MTR-9 "Wasp" pistol he had robbed off Lex.
Rows upon rows of workstations stretched across the room.
Holographic screens floated above empty desks.
Several chairs sat pushed back as though their occupants had only just stood up. Half-finished cups of coffee remained on tables. Data pads were scattered everywhere.
It looked less like people had left and more like they had simply vanished.
"What happened here?" K muttered.
"I don’t know," Kagu replied.
For once she sounded genuinely uneasy.
K moved deeper into the room.
His eyes swept over the abandoned stations.
No signs of a struggle.
No blood or bodies.
Nothing.
Then he noticed movement.
A woman sat near the far side of the room.
She was working quietly at one of the terminals.The soft glow of the monitors illuminated her face. She looked completely normal. Another personnel simply doing their job.
The woman glanced up when she noticed him approaching.
Her fingers paused over the keyboard.
Only briefly.
Then she offered a small smile.
"Restricted area."
K didn’t respond for a while, "where is everybody?"
"Do you have permit card to come in here?"
The man cursed under his breathe, he should have had Kagu print him one before coming here.
"Yes"
"Hm, okay"
The woman closed several files and began gathering the paperwork scattered across her desk.Nothing about her movements seemed rushed. If anything she looked remarkably calm considering the current situation.She stacked her datapads neatly.
Picked up a folder.
Then stood.
"If you’d excuse me then," she said casually.
"Didn’t realize security had changed shifts."
K remained silent.
The woman walked toward him.
The closer she got, the more familiar she seemed.
He couldn’t place why.
The woman passed by him and he grabbed her by her elbow,
"If security changes shifts, shouldn’t you be aware of it?"
"Huh?"
"You’re part of the surveillance team, are you not?"
"I am...unhand me"
"Then how do you not know that there was a change in the shifts"
"I was busy and didn’t see the message"
His eyes narrowed.
"I just met you working at your terminal"
"Like I said, I was busy!"
She snatched her arm away and marched towards the exit.
K turned slightly to watch her leave.
His brow furrowed.
Where had he seen her before?
"Wait, didn’t we just see her at sharing scanners to soldiers outside?"
K cursed under his breathe and bolted after her.
He had seen her less than some minutes ago. Handing equipment to soldiers.
There was no possible way she could have finished there, packed everything up, crossed multiple sectors and arrived here before him.
That could only mean two things.
A clone or a spy.
Slowly, the woman turned her head.
Their eyes met.
The polite smile morphed into a wide smile,
"Ah~it seems I’ve been caught."
She dropped the documents in her hand, before hitting our own chest. Suddenly the once feminine body warped into a male’s and hit the floor,
"Your disguise is very poor, your soul is like a beacon. It’s not so hard to identify you"
"W-what the hell was that? She suddenly turned into a man and collapsed! K! We might have a Miwa on our hands! We have to tell Bak!"
K growled.
It was her.
The woman from the white void.
"What a shame, he was the most durable body I could find"
"What are you doing here? Kagu do you see her?"
"To get information from the source and see how far you’ve come...Kagu? Your little friend in your head?"
"What do you mean how far I’ve come?You’ve put a fucking bounty on my head!"
"See who? Uh...K? Who are you talking to?"
"Your name dances on the tongues of both humans and Vashki, surely you walk freely amongst these walls, so why can’t I do so in your image?"
"You accessed restricted files using my face! Everyone thinks I’m a fucking clone!"
"K?"
Kagu attempted accessing K’s chip implant that reported his vitals but each time she tried all she received was a failure feed. She couldn’t contact her master because he had strictly ordered her to not report back to him until the whole ordeal was over.
What to do?
"You whine about being wanted by your people, ugh, fine I’ll fix your little problem for you," The woman from the void leaned closer to the unconscious man on the floor, "he was quite the mannerless one, getting rid of him wouldn’t be a problem...right?"
"What are you doing?"
"See for yourself, demon child."
The body began to convulse, bones cracking amd flesh squelching disgustingly. The once human man suddenly transformed into a Vashki. A Miwa.
"It’s a temporary gimmick, once the right people find his body, he’ll disintegrate into nothing, his pathetic soul bound to me"
"K-K?"
The Ai stuttered, her circuits trying to process what she had just witnessed, "we need to report back! It was a Miwa all along!"
"Get to it"
The moment Kagu reports the Miwa body, Command went into overdrive.
Within minutes soldiers flooded Surveillance. Security teams secured the room while medics examined the unconscious Miwa. The body is immediately taken into custody before for further examination.
K stayed disguised and hanging back while everything unfolded.
Moments later, Bak marched into the room.
His hands clutching a glass data pad and the other in pocket, walking into the room with that terrifying calm he gets when he’s furious.
The first thing he sees is the Miwa.
The second thing he sees is a masked soldier standing in the corner.
He didn’t need a fortune teller to tell him who it was.
"Take off the fucking mask."
K slowly pulled the balaclava over his head.
The entire room went silent.
A few soldiers exchange nervous looks.
"...oh stars." Someone muttered. K surely was one terrifying Matyr.
Bak glared daggers at him.
K simply shrugged, waiting for the man to burst.
And by the popping vein lining his forehead, he was very close.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Finally Bak broke the uncomfortable silence:
"You escaped military detention."
"After you illegally detained me."
That gets everybody’s attention.
Bak’s eyebrow twitched.
"Excuse me?"
"You threw me in a cell."
"You were under investigation."
"You had no evidence."
"I had footage."
"You had footage of someone that looked like me."
Bak folds his arms.
"And you expect me to ignore that?"
"I expected you to investigate it."
The room somehow becomes quieter.
K takes a step forward.
"You arrested me before questioning witnesses."
Another step.
"You detained me before confirming whether the person in the footage was actually me."
Another.
"You detained me while I was recovering from combat injuries and insisted I was clone"
Bak’s jaw tightens.
"You ignored evidence proving I was unconscious. You ignored reports from my cryotube feedback"
The officers nearby suddenly become very interested in the floor.
Because unfortunately...
K isn’t wrong. Besides the Admiral barely gave them a debrief of why they were detaining K...clone K?
Bak had acted and without enough evidence.But now that the Mimic has been caught?
It looks bad.
Really bad.
Especially in front of quarter of Command.
"Which brings me to this question, why would you assume I’m a clone? Or that Thira had a hand in this as well?"
One of the intelligence officers finally clears his throat.
"Technically speaking, Admiral..."
Bak slowly turns toward him.
The man immediately regrets existing.
"...the detainee does have a point."
"Hear that Admiral, I have a point"
"It was a security measure. K-0-0-1 has been on quite the rebellious streak these days... I wasn’t going to let this slide"
K shrugs.
Here comes the killing blow.
"Run my blood.
Bak narrows his eyes.
"What?"
"You still think I’m a clone."
"I think it’s possible."
"Then run my blood."
Silence.
K points toward the Miwa being loaded onto a transport stretcher.
"Compare my DNA to every sample you’ve got of me."
Bak says nothing.
K keeps going.
"Compare it to the cryotube records."
"..."
"Compare it to Matyr induction records."
A pause.
"Or are you afraid you’ll prove me right?"
Now everyone in the room is trying not to look at either of them.
Because K has essentially challenged the Admiral in front of witnesses.
"Fine."
A medic is called.
Blood is drawn.
Minutes later the results return.
No clone markers.
No replication degradation of cells is found.
No genetic abnormalities associated with flash-grown copies.
Every sample matched K-0-0-1.
Perfectly.
"Admiral, a-all the results r-return clean"
Bak snatches the medic’s pad, reading each line.
Then tosses it aside.
"Well."
Finch, who was absolutely enjoying this, the drama, leaned against the wall.
"Looks like you are at fault admiral"
Bak glares at him.
"Get out of my sight before I change my mind." He spat at K.
"Let Thira go"
"...tch...release the doctor from lockdown and get me the footage from an hour ago on this area"
"I can’t actually believe you bested the Admiral!" Kagu clapped her hands excitedly as they both watched Bak march out.
"Quite the performance I must say"
The woman from the void appeared next to him, pushing herself into him.
"You"
"Meeee"
K irritatedly tried to swing her off himself but she clung onto him determinedly.
...
[[QUEST]]
Mission completed!
Reward has been awarded to host!
...
"Khae’el!"
Thira rushed into the room, arms open as he enveloped K in a hug,
"Did they hurt you, I heard what happened?"
"I’m fine"
"Oh, look at you, let’s take you back to the lab!"
"Not so fast"
Finch pulled the two apart,
"Sorry kid but you’re going to have to be away from your mommy for a while"
"Shouldn’t you be at the ring?"
"Oh now you ask? After beating the shit out of Lex? And attacking your own units? We were all supposed to go then we got message of you going batshit and accessing archives...well that Vashki was"
"..."
"You know what that calls for?"
"Protocol Z"
"Exactly, I doubt Bak would want to follow through since your actions were basically a product of his misjudgments but you’re still going to have to pay your misdeeds as long as you’re under my command"
"..."
"Is your silence a no?"
"No sir"
"So what is the answer I expect?"
"Sir, Yes Sir"
"Good boy, now get your ass to Sect Z, I better meet your ass doing corporal"
"Doctor!"
Kagu wailed as she hovered to her master,
"I can’t believe you made me spend almost half a day with that brute!"
"Brute?" Thira chuckled as he held out his palm for her to sit,
"It was horrible, pure torture"
"You say that when you like something"
"T-that’s not true...I hate him! He’s...he’s a knucklehead"
"Mhm, you better start liking him, you’ll soon be fully assimilated with him. Today was like a small test run"
"Huh? Noooo! I don’t wannaaa, just give me to Matyr Lex, she’s more fun"
"Heh, nah, you’ll gain more by being with K"
"Ugh"
"It will be fun, I promise"
"By the way doctor,"
"Hm?"
"Is there a chance K might be a Schizo?"
"What?"
