Their weapons were confiscated early on. Thankfully, there was a window that had a view of the building where Joseph was waiting in. Chances were that he could see both James and Tali, and maybe even Aurelia, too.

The only thing James could do now was to gather information. The person in front of him, Coronel, was smiling. He looked friendly, but amidst the occasional gunshot, he looked more irritated than friendly. There was another person behind him who, despite being in the same uniform, stood apart from the rest of the soldiers by the way he simply stood around, as if waiting for something to happen.

"Mr. Castellano?"

"Ah… Coronel?"

"Yes, thank you."

Even as James scratched his head in apparent embarrassment, he was also scratching his head in fright.

Thinking back, Coronel also addressed him as "Mr. Castellano", whereas he hadn't even introduced himself. Of course, they had both originally, though passingly, met in awkward circumstances, but in that case, he should have only heard Karlson call him "James" rather than "Castellano".

So how did Coronel know James' last name without introduction?

"Rather than that… How did you know my name?"

A direct attack. There was a good chance that the Bio-Police actually had agents planted amongst the survivors of Diliman, or otherwise had a covert surveillance capability to the order of remotely planting bugs in several rooms. Those should be the only ways in which the Bio-Police could know of him.

"The Medical Mafia."

"So you really just answered that with no hesitation whatsoever, huh?"

"We have nothing to hide."

Amadeus showed another white flag. Aurelia promptly shot it down.

"Straight to the point, we request that you order a ceasefire with your members."

"My members?"

There was a chance that they were confirming his connection with Aurelia. It was best to feign ignorance here.

"Try not to lie, Mr. Castellano. A nonlethal attack on our personnel is an attack nonetheless, and we retain the discretion to deal with attackers as we see fit."

"Attack? My hand slipped."

"Your hand slipped three times?"

"Yes."

"Precisely obstructing our crew's visuals?"

"Coincidence."

"Coincidentally, it was paint?"

"They were eggs."

"Eggs filled yellow paint?"

"They were rotten."

"You eat rotten eggs?"

"It's for obstructing zombies' sense of smell."

In truth, James had run out of maneuver room.

It can't be said that the plan had failed, since the plan was to simply "See what happens and go from there."

Therefore, that they had ended up in this position was simply all part of the plan. Clearly.

Even in this tight corner, however, James deduced that they weren't entirely backed into it. The fact that he was asked to order a ceasefire meant that the Bio-Police ideally wanted to, at most, capture all of the scouts here. If they were to be captured, the other scouts outside might be able to launch an ambush and rescue at least some of their comrades. Such a thing would be preferable to launching a suicide mission in such close quarters, and where the Bio-Police had a defensive, technological, and numerical advantage.

Ah, well, perhaps both options would be suicide missions. If the others didn't try anything stupid, perhaps they could track the Bio-Police to their base and stage an organized rescue later on.

In the first place, however, he didn't understand the nature of the Bio-Police. They sought cooperation through dubious means, and were otherwise openly hostile to anything related to the zombies. If they were some sort of U*brella Corp-style paramilitary outfit, then it would be preferable to die trying to escape rather to allow themselves to be captured. On the other hand, if they had more noble goals…

"Your deceit is transparent, Mr. Castellano."

"Then, what would you do?"

"Is that a threat? Is it not obvious that you do not have any cards to play against me?"

"No, Coronel, my guy, in the first place, I don't even know if those are my people."

By asking James to order a ceasefire, Coronel had insinuated that those were, indeed, his subordinates. However, it was impossible for James to actually know that. The Bio-Police's electronic warfare operators didn't even detect any radio communications in the general area.

On one hand, James figured that the Bio-Police must have concluded by now that the two were related. Because of Coronel's insinuation, he now knew that it really was Aurelia and Tristan on the other end of the corridor. Meanwhile, Coronel himself realized that he had potentially given away information for free in the case that James actually took a gamble to come here.

However, this didn't change the fact that the Bio-Police were in the possession of overwhelming force. If Coronel and Cain teamed up, they could take on Aurelia in hand-to-hand combat and win about 80% of the time.

All Coronel had to do was force the facts.

"Those are your people."

"Ah? Who?"

At this point, James had no plan. He was genuinely bullshitting Coronel as a hobby.

Unexpectedly, Coronel had a holographic display, and projected a still image of Aurelia and Tristan right before the shock troopers' initial engagement with them.

"That's quite strange," James said, putting on exaggerated wrinkles on his forehead.

"What is?"

"One died several months ago, while the other attempted a coup several days ago."

"Do not lie, Mr. Castellano."

"Am I lying?"

Part of Coronel's negotiation suite included heart rate and temperature monitors, as well as linguistic analysis AI, allowing him to determine whether a human was being deceitful or not. What confused him here was that James was not lying.

"Is that the entire truth?"

"Very plainly."

Coronel's negotiation suite flagged his statement: "Very plainly" was a strange way to say yes. All he had to do now was to pursue the matter.

Unfortunately for him, James' infamy in Diliman was not as the one who told the best lies, but as the one who told the worst truths—the ones you can't believe. The more you dig into it, the less you want to actually know.

"How?"

"Headshot."

"Come again?"

"She was shot in the head."

"… And the other one?"

"A little bit of childishness."

"I doubt childishness starts a coup."

"He was upset that I killed her."

"What?"

"The other one—she was infected."

"Understandable, but, those aren't grounds for a coup."

"Look, I don't know the guy's mind as much as I want to, okay?"

"There must've been something wrong with your governance style…"

"Huh? I'm only a squad leader by army standards, you know?"

"What?"

"I've got less than 10 guys. That's it."

There weren't any lies. Coronel didn't know what James was hiding. More importantly—He's only a squad leader? Then Diliman… Who controls Diliman?

Coronel's surprise at the fact wasn't left uncaught from James. Somehow, a great deal of the Bio-Police's intentions revolved around him being not a squad leader, which was confusing, since that meant that they had a specific interest in him.

Though he successfully put Coronel in a daze, he still needed to somehow confirm the intentions of the Bio-Police, or they'd be in a stalemate, otherwise.

"So, what now?"

Such an innocent question, but it grounded Coronel's mind. It was still a fact that James had attacked their vehicle. They also needed to somehow capture the Gamma, whether or not she was one of James' scouts—better if she were, since they could then use their possession of James as leverage. For legal reasons, he still needed to formally charge James with something, along with formally stating the reasoning. Everything's on-camera, of course.

"I will have to arrest you for assaulting a police vehicle."

"I did not make such an assault."

"You still lie?"

"No, really—if you think about it, it's just not humanly possible to accurately throw eggs like that while sprinting."

"Are you not just that much skilled? Also, again with the eggs?"

"They really were eggs, though."

Strange—the negotiation suite isn't going off. Coronel opted for a more classical method of investigation, and contacted the stranded vehicle crew. Their reply was astounding—James had, indeed, been sprinting far too fast, and it was as if all of his projectiles were launched simultaneously, as if his hand had slipped. Secondly, the smell of rotten eggs circulated inside the crew compartment.

Coronel stared incredulously at James. Even if his negotiation suite had been going off at some points, it seemed that James really had been speaking truthfully. Coronel still strongly opined that James had, in fact, assaulted their vehicle somehow, but the nature of the attack seemed almost accidentally intentional—which, arguably, couldn't even be considered intentional at all!

He couldn't formally charge him. The truth swirled in his face, teasing him with its metaphysics that could so be easily bent. He could informally charge him, yes, but such a thing required far more paperwork later on, which he didn't want to bother with.

Even as James wrangled the negotiator at his own game, James knew that Aurelia couldn't possibly have enough ammunition to last another hour, or maybe even 5 minutes.

Basically, he only had 5 minutes to get the negotiator dancing to his tune.

"By the way, was that drone yours?"

"We should be the only drone operators in the area. Why?"

"I should say 'thank you' for allowing me in from the street and out of the way of the horde—but I don't appreciate being fired upon."

Coronel realized that he was referring to the rifle drones. He had ordered the rifle drones to corral the survivors from running away down the street, effectively sandwiching them between a horde and a bunch of hostile drones. That was before he confirmed that it was James and another scout, so he had no choice but to give them a hard time.

"Ah, then, for that, I apologize."

"Just that? Come on, shooting at someone is serious enough for some reparation. At least tell me what you're doing here!"

James raised his voice, enough that Aurelia heard him. She had a lot to say about the fact that he was just casually entreating with the enemy while she was pinned down by two squads of commandos with much more firepower than her. Why they hadn't rushed her yet, she didn't know.

Wait, if James is here—Aurelia looked out of a window, scanning the face of the building across the street. Her eyes, sharpened to their maximum, crossed eyes with a curtain and blinked. The curtain blinked back—Ah, that's good.

James' demand raised alarms in Coronel's negotiation suite. It seemed that James really, really wanted to know what the Bio-Police were doing in the area, his question having been aimed more towards confirmation rather than curiosity. At the same time, James had really only been bullshitting everyone involved. Coronel had had enough—*Let the paperwork come! *He gripped James' arms and easily hoisted the whole human over his shoulder.

The answer of the Bio-Police was the same as any police: they would sort this out at the station.