The 6 Greatest Errors of All Time | ✓

XXII. project pleiades

L01 intervened. "How does he—"

"I'm your leader." Pierce quickly shut him down as he angled his head to the man. "If I don't know, then who does?"

L01 quieted down and Pierce resumed his conversation with K2. "What do we need to do? We can't keep going on like this. Something needs to change, otherwise we'd just keep going in circles."

K2 listened on with sincere eyes and after looking down at the ground for a second, his head rose back up with a sympathetic side-smile.

"Then take off your masks."

That simple, short sentence caused a silent uproar. Pierce had shifted on his crate and M&M froze from swinging her legs into the tires. Pooh's hands flew up to his mask protectively and Arsomis' hands clenched together. L01 turned dead silent, and I flicked the helmet's face shield down with a loud click.

"You're kidding?" Arsomis was the first to speak up again. "After all these years, now when nothing's going on, we break a rule that we established ourselves? This isn't right. Commander, tell him we're not doing it."

The man spun his head to Pierce, but was let down when the other man seemed to be contemplating it. M&M pointed her dagger at Pierce and got his attention. "We should go for it," She thinned her lips. "We need to be able to communicate our sides of the story. We've all seen and experienced different things. We can't share it and still be strangers."

L01 coughed and we turned our heads to him. "I second that. What were the aliases for? To keep us safe. Now we're in danger because we don't know who we are."

Pooh did a little motion to his mask that showed the mask being ripped off. He then gestured to everyone, and we knew he was in agreement with exposing our identities today. The boy turned his body and placed his hand reassuringly on Arsomis' lap, trying to get the man on board.

Pierce seemed torn on figuring out the right decision and remained silent as he watched each of us from the sidelines. I noticed and set my jaw firm, turning to the rest of the team. "Arsomis, you've just met your team today. Are you not happy?"

The buff man raised his head until his eyes locked on me. "Of course I'm happy."

"Do you trust us?" I proceeded.

"I have to."

"But do you?"

"I do." He nodded.

"Then will you stop trusting us after seeing our faces?"

Arsomis sighed and glanced at Pierce, realizing a bit late that he was putting our leader in a difficult position. "Never." He confirmed.

I nodded. "At the moment, some of us are being pursued, some of us are being impersonated by foes, and some of us have gotten attacked. It's time we clarified amongst ourselves who we are so that we can focus on ourselves. Inside of six brains, let's have one and tie the knot on our teamwork."

After a moment, and after he had glanced down at Pooh with a soft smile, he looked at Pierce and stated, "Our girls grew up well." When Pierce flashed him an amused smile, Arsomis let out a soft laugh and announced, "Count me the fuck in, Commander. Whatever my team decides, I'm not missing it."

"Hey," M&M suddenly jerked her head in his direction. "Watch your mouth, you big piece of computer shit. There's children here."