In the early evening, James shut himself in his office-bedroom. When Aurelia barged in through the window after hearing about his odd behavior from Michael, James tossed her out through the window, shouting “Go away! I’m doubting my ability to do basic trigonometry here!”

He finally calculated a reasonable result after an hour. The coordinates the Bio-Police had provided pointed to the city’s Memorial Circle, two kilometers west of Diliman.

A night’s rest passed. James picked Dianne and Karlson for the excursion. They got dressed in their usual wear, equipping themselves with short spears and handguns, while Karlson brought his shotgun.

Walking down the steps of the Library, they went around to the back, which was the side facing the Sunken Garden. There, there was a small garage, just large enough for a sedan to fit inside. Karlson and James raised the tarpaulin that was covering the accordion-like fence gate while Dianne went under and removed the padlock.

From the scouts’ storeroom—dubbed the “Cage” for the accordion-like iron fence gate—they pulled out a few bicycles and signed them out of the logbook.

—Come to think of it, I gotta hand the records to the kids by next week…

James thought that making graphs and charts did not constitute child labor. The kids even liked decorating the things, which led to Dianne sometimes teaching them a little bit about graphics design principles.

After locking up, they biked out of Diliman, through the University Road that stretched westwards out of the campus grounds. To the left and right, oblique angular monuments pointed into the horizon.

Once they were within sight of the edge of the Memorial Circle, which was nothing more than a sparse outline of trees, they dismounted, hiding their bicycles in a nearby prepared spot, scrambling the numbers to the shackles’ combination locks.

Aurelia dropped in from the sky.

Dianne had to stop and blink ten times in two seconds before she finally lowered her spear and spoke.

“… Aurelia? Is that you?”

“Sup.”

“When James said there was an intelligent Unkillable that was willing to be friendly with us, I already didn’t believe it. I didn’t think it’d be you…”

“Intelligent?” Aurelia turned to James. “Was that a compliment? How rare.”

“Sorry, maybe ‘intelligent’ was too strong of a word after all.”

“You want a thrashing?”

“Spare me.”

Dianne was surprised, but at the same time, moved that the two interacted like normal. Within a second, she feared losing Aurelia a second time. They weren’t so close, but ripples made waves—losing her was as much as losing any.

They started moving again. No tears fell. They walked alongside each other.

The Memorial Circle, about the size of Diliman’s Oval Road, spanned nearly a kilometer in diameter. Where there weren’t trees, there were paved footpaths and recreational areas. In the very middle was a plaza with a tall, sculpted fountain. Overlooking the plaza was a mausoleum, a great monument of three women raising up the resting place of the person after whom Quezon City was named.

He was not the only one resting here. The army tents and hastily-deployed fortifications around the plaza were still there, bits of brown cloth still stuck to razor wire strung between trees. The remains of those soldiers and volunteers who fought to the end were likely to be unmoved.

The scouts skirted around the plaza, thinking that the Bio-Police at least had the decency to avoid choosing a massacre site as a meeting spot.

Though, they couldn’t find them.

As they were about to give up, Karlson found a set of tire tracks leading in the direction of the plaza.

“Eh…”

Dianne’s exasperation resonated with the others. Nevertheless, James started walking in that direction.

Coronel inspected the perimeter cordon—absolutely nothing must interrupt today’s meeting. Losing Diliman’s cooperation could prove tantamount to losing this area, or maybe even the sector.

That said, Cain had been busy with last night’s sweep of the area. Today, he was taking it easy in one of the vehicles, letting the rest of his men deal with maintaining the 2km-radius surveillance net, and locking down the whole perimeter of the hundred-hectare plaza.

By around 0800H, surveillance identified an active Gamma signal accompanying three human survivors. For some reason, they were skirting around the meeting location. He was sure he indicated the exact coordinates within an error of 10 meters.

By 0917H, Coronel made visual contact with James’ group.

Waving in their direction, he noticed James’ frown. All the scouts had a frown.

“Mr. Castellano, what’s wrong?” he asked as soon as they came within talking range.

“I don’t know if you know, but having a meeting in a place filled with scattered bones—”

James stopped talking, noticing that the area was not as expected.

“Ah, don’t be concerned. We conducted a cleaning operation here some time ago. Any remains have been cremated, and those identified have been stored with their names and personel affects.”

Not only that, but the army camp that was here was cleaned up. In one tent, other tents had been neatly folded up and stored. Destroyed tents and equipment were piled up off somewhere. The fallen’s ashes had been stored in canisters arranged by the fountain.

“That’s… oddly considerate.”

“What’s so odd, Mr. Castellano?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

Not just James, but the other scouts’ eyes also variously squinted or widened. Coronel raised an eyebrow—an expression he had just learned about last night.

“It seems that you have a misconception about me.”

“Maybe less of a misconception, and more of a theory.”

“Then, let’s speak more of your theory in-depth, in a more comfortable setting, perhaps?”

Coronel led them to a cleared-out area where a delivery van was parked. A small set of stairs led up its side, where an ATM terminal and a vending machine beep-booped in a shallow egress in the truck.

Though, Dianne couldn’t help but to pause at the image of two commandos guarding stubby stairs to a vending machine.

“What, never seen an ATM under guard before?” James quipped.

Dianne cranked her neck towards him—That’s not what’s wrong, idiot! He snapped his head away with a mischievous smile.

“You should’ve seen how casual he was when I woke up. It was like me still being me was the most obvious thing in the world,” Aurelia remarked.

“That’s… You gotta tell me about that sometime.”

“Sure thing. After the drug deal here, that is.”

“Wait, a drug deal?”

Dianne hadn’t been told the details.

“Yeah.”

“Oreo’s just bullshitting you, Dianne…”

“Ah… So there’s two of you, now…”

Settling in, James and Coronel sat across each other around a small picnic table. The other scouts grouped around a bunch of ammuniton crates, which may or may not still actually have live munitions in them.

The nearby commandos couldn’t help but send periodic glances at Aurelia, whom their comrades—those who had faced her—had started calling Mercy. The image of Dianne and Aurelia chatting away betrayed their expectations, though Karlson prowling about and hyper-analyzing them was a good substitute for keeping them on edge.

“So then, Mr. Castellano, what would your theory be?”

“Wait, first, thank you for receiving us—”

“I hoped for a more productive topic—”

“…without opening fire at a certain person who by the way still hasn’t received a proper apology from you. I hope you can extend some sort of concrete apology as your first volley of goodwill.”

[No, yeah, he has a point.]

Cain remarked through an earpiece. Though he was not a negotiator, he was more familiar with social situations than Coronel; it wasn’t the man’s fault that he was born a Cyberian. They were all just strange.

Coronel looked to James, then to Aurelia. The girl was looking towards the vending machine.

Although the senses of value between the locals and themselves deviated by a wide margin, there was one language in common that they had.

“Originally, I was to offer refreshments to each of you here—for example, a frappucino?” Coronel started. James’ breathing changed. “Because of our occupation, we of the Bio-Police have little allowance for pleasures. That machine over there represents what little ‘fun’ we could possibly have, and, as you suspect, certain elements would fight to the death to protect it.”

Those two commandos sacrificed some of their pay for the sake of the vending machine. If ever it were to be lost or destroyed, a replacement would cost an arm, a limb, and a one-year waiting period.

James nodded in understanding.

“Thus, in consideration of your comrade, I estimate that apt compenstion for our inconsideration would be ‘100 frappes,’ with one free add-on per order, of course.”

Aurelia’s ears perked up. She shot a look towards James. He was already looking at her, knowing that she would hear such sweet cream-topped words from 20 meters away. All he needed was confirmation.

She nodded.

“100 frappes can work,” James replied, “I don’t think a lump sum of 100 frappes would be ideal, though, so maybe we can have it on record? Who would unironically debit 100 frappes, though…”

“Of course.”

“Huh?”

“Actually, this would be a perfect demonstration of what I wish us to establish.”

Saying this, Coronel pulled out a contract form and several biometric data collection devices. James cocked an eyebrow.

“And this is…?”

“An interface to the Contract System. The Bio-Police may trade mundane and critical resources, but our superiors require a ledger to enforce transparency.”

“This is neat and all, but why? What’s your objective?”

“This is a more fundamental question of our nature, I take it?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then there’s no problem. Our objective is to advise and support local forces to counteract existential threats. You are simply such a local force, and, seeing that we are equipped to advise and support, all that is missing is a corridor of trust and cooperation.”

—Eh, this sort of sounds like a proxy war for some reason…

“Is there any reason why you can’t just do it on your own?” James asked.

“We cannot open fire on a food shortage, Mr. Castellano.”

—So… not a proxy war? I can still feel sphere-of-influence vibes coming off this guy, but if I can squeeze something else out of him…

“So… You can open fire on anything else? You can guarantee defense, is what you’re saying?”

“We can guarantee access to defense, but such a thing comes at certain abstract costs.”

“Such as?”

Coronel tilted his head and closed his eyes, keeping silent for a few moments. He finally opened his eyes.

“For example, in the near term, if the Diliman population demonstrates exemplary craftsmanship, an allotment of tools and related supplies may be provided. Alternatively, such tools may be provided on the promise of future exemplary craftsmanship, though on the premise of good historical performance on the delivery of such promises.”

“…The heck is this, a credit system? No, wait, okay so—talents are rewarded, and there’s a credit score?”

“Not only talents. Achievements and similar milestones are also considered.”

“Wait, so who decides what’s considered an achievement?”

“Me.”

“…Simple but heavy, huh.”

“Rest assured, Mr. Castellano, as it is also within my personal interest to see to it that your achievements are considered fairly.”

“Wait, to be clear, a while ago you sounded like you were talking about Diliman as a whole. Can it only be Diliman as a whole?”

“There is a Contract System for indviduals and for institutions. I personally administer the earlier case, while I am merely an observer and reporter for the latter.”

“Okay, but just to be sure, there’s no compulsion to use this Contract System, is there?”

“None.”

James took a moment to take all of it in. So far, the advantages were overwhelming. As long as some idiot didn’t abuse the credit system, they could get… something at least, and also practically for free. Though, he was painfully aware that it was possible to influence the future direction of Diliman using the system, but as things stood, they had little leeway to refuse. Their situation was precarious at best.

In his eyes, they could only do this one step at a time.

“Oreo!”

Which was why he forced Aurelia to take the first plunge for them all and registered her to the suspicious Contract System.

She had little room to complain. It was the first step to claiming her 100 rightful frappes.

Coronel had Aurelia go over a few documents with James. It was written in simplified legalese, so even Aurelia understood it.

“Stop calling me dumb.”

“I’m sure that headshot shaved off a few IQ points, though.”

There were no clauses as to enforcement. It simply described the framework of the Contract System and how they could interact with it. The only significance of their signature on it was that they understood the framework.

The bottom line, though, was that nothing got past Coronel. They needed a good relationship with him to get anywhere with the Contract System, but at the same time, Coronel did not dictate its prices, and he only had indirect influence on how much reward can be assigned to an achievement.

It was some sort of contextual calculation based on the history and analyses of Coronel’s reports. On that note, their unit had a mandatory reporting AI whose reports could not be tampered with, so Coronel could only add, and not subtract.

After a bout of fingerprint and DNA collection, Coronel led them to the ATM terminal in the truck. Of course, James stayed well behind while Aurelia punched in a new PIN. Afterwards, all three were huddled around the terminal. There was a full keyboard and some other buttons, though the whole thing mostly operated like a self-order touchscreen. There weren’t any prepared menu items, however, as, Coronel explained, “The system can take any query and dynamically calculate an equivalent exchange in terms of your talents and achievements,” which was to say that almost anything could be requested, though the price was not something that Coronel decided on.

For now, Coronel did some technical gymnastics and managed to debit 100 frappes to Aurelia’s individual account, in exchange for “20 same-day incidents of friendly fire.”

How that 1:5 ratio was calculated, no one knew.

Anyway, he already filed the incident report, so even if this transaction was flagged down by one of the accountants, the investigating case officer would let it go.

Little did he know that high command would incessantly call him about this for the next two weeks straight.

Anyway, everyone got their frappes. Aurelia got two for herself. Coronel and James agreed to meet once more about signing Diliman into the Contract System, though he would have to consult with the other Group Leaders within the day.