"Then you would have been part of the underground, or thought to be, and I wouldn't have been able to have anything to do with you without risking retirement." It's not that K has never been aware that the system was rigged and counterproductive, it's not that it never occurred to him that he is more alive than Wallace wanted anyone to believe.

It's that it didn't matter - except K is discovering that he really, really wants to trust that it does matter now.

"I don't know," he answers, not recalcitrant, not modest, but literal. He has no idea what he is now except - "Miles from baseline," he quotes, lips quirking briefly, wryly. "A Submissive."