Aftermath 3

The next day, Priscilla received a message to meet up with K9. She agreed since she had been given a few days to rest after what had happened at Base 52. It was a much appreciated break.

She walked along the road—their agreed upon sign—and kept an eye out for any blue car that would pass by her. It only took a few minutes before a blue car that matched K9's description pulled over beside her and the window rolled down.

"Code of the day, please?" the lady in front stuck out her head to ask.

Priscilla rolled her eyes at this silly precaution. They should at least recognise her and if they worried that she was compromised then asking her something she already knew wouldn't help at all. She still nodded and said, "Military exoskeleton."

The lady nodded and she got in. the car sped away shortly after. They arrived at another random location and entered the house. This was where K9 had scheduled the meeting. 'Of course,' she thought. 'He's so paranoid.'

Inside the meeting room, which wasn't as large as the previous one, she met all the members of K9 who had participated in the heist the previous day. They were already seated at the table. Her eyes moved from one member to the other. K10 had gotten a stitch and his hand was now wrapped and kept in a sling. She nodded at them with a smile.

"You're always late," K10 said with a snort.

"Thank you K10, I have a life unlike you." she said with a wide grin. The statement made K11 to snicker and K1 to roll his eyes. "Besides, I love making an entry."

"Just take a seat." K9 pointed her to a seat. He observed her face carefully before asking, "What happened to your face?"

Priscilla sighed and pointed at K1. "He must have choked me too hard."

K9 turned and gave K1 an annoyed look. "You didn't mention this in the report. You told me you grabbed her as your hostage."

K1 shrugged lightly. He didn't think it was necessary to give a very detailed explanation of what went down during the operation. "I didn't know it left a bruise."

Priscilla glared at him intensely before her eyes travelled towards the table and the metallic human-like suit that lay on it. It was the exoskeleton suit they had stolen the previous day. It had been assembled again.

She took a seat and waited for the meeting to start. K9 cleared his throat. "I have to thank all of you for risking your lives just to make sure that we had our hands on this weapon and go a step further in ruining the plans of the military.

"I understand that there were some inconveniences but I'm happy to see that everyone in this group has proven—not once nor twice—that they can die for what we believe in."

He paused and glanced at exoskeleton suit and then at the members. "However we have a problem. The power core is missing."

The room became silent as they stared earnestly at the metallic suit that lay motionless on the table each wondering how they could have missed such a detail.

"How?" K1 asked finally.

"I personally disassembled the suit and I placed the power reactor to the side." K3 frowned.

"And we made sure that we stuffed everything into the bags…" K10 scratched his head a bit.

K9's gaze fell on Priscilla. "K7?"

She shifted a bit on her chair before saying, "maybe we left it behind? After we hurriedly put everything together we had heard footsteps and we had to rush out to check and we saw the soldiers we came up with a plan to take me as a hostage…"

"Indeed…"K3 sounded regretful. He still, however, tried to recall every detail of the process to see if he had left it as K7 said or not.

K9 nodded. "That could've been the case though I must say that this monstrosity will be useless to us without the nuclear power core."

"Can't we make a new one?" K4 asked.

K6 scoffed. "The power core wasn't just made by any nuclear material. The blueprint itself doesn't contain the production process and it's very delicate. At most it will take us about eight months give or take to figure it out."

"And that is too long a time for our plans to work." K11 agreed.

"What should we do now?" Priscilla asked.

"Nothing," K9 sighed. "We have to find another but I'll try and see if we can replicate something similar to the power core.

"We also have great news." He gestured at K11.

She smiled brightly and said, "I found the Monitor and its blueprint."

Priscilla's eyes widened in interest and amazement. "Weren't we more focussed on taking the suit?"

"Oh, we were but I had other plans," K9 smiled wickedly. "With that blueprint we can reverse engineer the Monitor and produce an anti-Monitor that can counter the effects. This should be an effective move in the future."

Priscilla nodded in thought. An anti-Monitor meant no control over the soldiers. She nodded again and listened as the meeting went on to discuss future missions. After a while Priscilla asked, "Can I take part in the process to study the Monitor?"

K9 laughed a bit and waved her off. "Of course not. Just focus on your task in the military HQ and the others will do the rest."

Priscilla nodded without a word.

K11 looked around the table and since no one was speaking she smiled. "You know this exoskeleton looks like you, K10—ugly."

K10 raised an eyebrow at her remark. "Is that your way of getting my attention?"

"Do I need your attention?"

"Oh, now I remember. You owe me a night!" he said rubbing the bullet wound on his arm with a maniacal smile.

K11 shook her head. "You know what I owe you? A punch in the balls."

K1 tapped the table and when they stopped to look at him he smiled and said, "Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt a couple's fight."

"We're not couples!" they said as one.