John Chen was a tall handsome man, coming in at 6'2", with dark hair and soft brown eyes. His family has been in Country M for 3 generations already, leaving Country C to establish their own company overseas. The Chen family was at their very core an organized family. They were phenomenal at coming in and managing other people's business for a certain amount of time to succeed before leaving with a big paycheck.

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Melanie Shu met Joseph Chen when she applied for a position at his father's company. She was an intern and worked her way up to managing accounts of her own in less than 5 years. During that time she collaborated on several projects with Joseph who was the CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) at the time.

Melanie fell in love with Joseph, who was completely clueless, and after some deep thoughts, Melanie decided to leave the company to work somewhere else. Her leaving caused Joseph to notice how invaluable she was to the company. He sent people to sway her back with higher pay and a ton of benefits. She refused repeatedly and he gave up. 2 years later, they bumped into one another at a convention in Country HL and hit it off. At this time she was a Director at her new company.

Joseph had some ideas of wooing her back to the company but the moment he looked into her eyes, his chest tightened and he realized how beautiful her smile was. He was confused by his feelings and they left Country HL on good terms, promising to meet up again for drinks. Melanie smiled bitterly to herself at that off handed promise thinking she'll never see him again.

Surprisingly, Joseph actually called her for drinks. Then dinner. Then movies. Over the course of 6 months, he courted her with flowers and sweet romance. He finally asked her to be his girlfriend. She agreed. 2 years later they got married and had John then David.

Joseph's father stepped down as the CEO of the company to retire and Joseph stepped up. Melanie returned as the CRO and their family business expanded under her leadership. John and David also worked for the family business, though John did a 4 year stint in the military after finishing his studies. This led to military contracts for the family which John exclusively dealt with. The company had over 1000 employees all managing different types of businesses across Country M with around 200 employees located in City LA.

When the ZA broke out, John was stuck in Country C. He awakened a powerful black ability that can slow down time where he can move quickly out of danger. To others, it looked like he was a speed ability. Aria met him during a battle in the 4th year when she was surrounded by a horde of zombies and her energy was almost depleted using her wind blades. John happened to pass by while separated with his group and saved her. He was impressed by her skills and froze time, reaching her and bringing her out, thereby exposing his ability to her.

She traveled with him for a few months before they separated and she got captured by Lily.

She met him again inside Edward's lab. He was brought in right before she was injected with something Edward was working on. With John's help, she was able to kill the scientists in the facility and release the prisoners before she died right outside the lab in John's arms.

Even though she owed John nothing in the last life since she saved him at the very end, their encounters left a big impression in Aria's mind. She knew he had always regretted not knowing what happened to his family. If they were in the same country, there's always a chance to search and find what happened to them. But families separated by a large ocean will never be able to reunite in this life ever again.

So this time around, she decided to contact him due to his management skills and to keep him and his family safe in one country.

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John was notified by his secretary that the new client has arrived. He seldom knows who he's meeting with since the business's reputation is good enough for them to choose their clients instead of the other way around.

He went out to greet the client. A young man with long hair sat leisurely in the waiting area, sipping water from a bottle and browsing his phone on the other hand. His face was half covered by a face mask and he was dressed in clean casual clothes of a high end brand.

John: "Mr. Aries Wang? Hi, my name is John Chen."

Aria: "Nice to meet you, Mister Chen."

John: "You can call me John. Mister Chen reminds me of my father. Haha. Let's talk in the meeting room."

Aria followed John through the office and was quite impressed. Settling into a big meeting room, Aria got right down to business.

Aria: "I have a highly confidential job I need your help on. I need a group to manage building me something in Country C. I want all the contractors working on the project to come from overseas and I need the project to be completed in 1.5 years."

John: "Of course, we specialize in high confidentiality for all our clients. We at the Chen Management Group will have the best person to manage your project, although overseas contractors will cost a lot more than using local contractors."

Aria: "No. I want 4 different groups of contractors to work on different parts of the projects then sent back. As I mentioned, this is a highly confidential project so I only request the highest level personnels of your company to know 100% of the project details. Specifically all your family members."

John: "Err- this is a highly unusual request. My family members are all working on various projects across Country M and I might not be able to pull them away from our clients."

Aria: "Then please discuss this with your family tonight and let's regroup when you're ready."

John: "Can you share some details of the project so I can have an idea of what to expect in terms of workload and budget."

Aria: "I can definitely share all the details once we all sit down... but in short, the project is divided into 2 parts. The 1st one is to upgrade 3 large spaceships defensive and offensive capabilities with the top of the line technology. The 2nd part is to build housings for these spaceships in a large piece of land in a location of my choice. There will be more details of how I want things to be.

The project has a budget of $5B-$10B. I've slotted the construction time to be at least 1.5 years but if you finish earlier, then there will be a sizable bonus. You are my first choice for this project since you are a family owned company and I don't want outsiders to know the details of the project at all.

Obviously an NDA will be signed and each individual will be paid evenly. Needless to say, I will be very generous with each person's salary. This is not a military contract. You are building this all for me. I can go into more exact details once a contract is signed."

John: "Okay, let me discuss with my family and get back to you ASAP."

Aria: "Thank you."

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John called his whole family to have a meeting at the family estate that evening. After eating dinner everyone went into the study before John activated the sound shield inside.

Joseph sitting next to Melanie raised one eyebrow in interest. The sound shield only goes up whenever there is a top secret project that needs to be discussed by their son. David, who was 3 years younger than John, also straightened in surprise when the shield went up. David's projects mostly involve celebrities, which he is good at handling, but he was getting bored with all the glitz and glamour of the superficial world. He was considering asking his parents for projects that focus on different types of businesses.

John: "I have a potential client today that wants us to enhance 3 spaceships' defensive and offensive capabilities to the top of the line tech available. And build a housing unit for it in a specific location of their choice. The project is estimated to be $5B-$10B."

David: "$10B?! Is this a military project?"

John: "No, it's not. The client said this is built just for him. And we are his first choice for this project. If we don't take it, then he will find someone else."

Melanie: "What's the catch?"

John: "That only our 4 members of the family are managing this project 100%. All the contractors will be outsourced from different countries and the total work will be divided into 4 stages with different contractors taking care of each stage for confidentiality sakes. The project is estimated to take 1-1.5 years of our time. More details will be shared once we confirm all of us are free to work on only this project. Since confidentiality is the main objective, we cannot use our current employees to help with this project."

Joseph: "So we cannot use our current team for support?"

John: "No, he stressed that he will only pay us 4 and no one else on our company's payroll. It sounds like we'll get this deal if all of us are available to take on the project and clear everything on our list or this project will go to another company. What are your thoughts?"

Melanie: "With a budget larger than some of our military contracts combined, it seems like the pay will not be too little."

Joseph: "David, check how much our family's combined projects are worth for the next year."

David took out his computer from his space button and tinkered around the company's internal dashboard and responded to his father.

David: "$2B combined, Sir."

Joseph: "Do we have available people to take over those projects if we offload them tomorrow?"

David: "We should. There are a few interns that we can hire on full time to take care of the easier projects of the more experienced folks. We then can hand off our projects to the senior members of our team to take over. The transition shouldn't take more than a week to complete since those team members should already know most of the details we handle."

Joseph: "John, since this is your client, what are your thoughts? Should we take on this project?"

John: "It's a lot of money. The client is very to the point and money seems to be not an issue for him. He sounded like a very generous person, just very secretive. I didn't discuss compensation with him but I believe he would be very generous to us."

The Chen family was locked inside their study for hours, planning and discussing the offer. At 10pm that night, John emailed Aria back with a meeting time to follow up on her project offer.

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Aria rented a hotel room nearby the Chen's company since she couldn't bring her car out in a different country. Laying down on the bed tiredly, she told S3 to bring up the NDA and contract to continue editing.

She trusted John since he was an upstanding character, but she wasn't sure about the rest of his family. She hoped that she could get them to handle the construction of the City J and City P locations. Thinking of the Space Button technology she had in her E Space, she jumped in and put all of the parts together. The parts were originally stored in 6x6 containers which includes an instruction booklet. Aria assumed this setup was prepared for Sara just in case something happened to the parents.

After everything was set up, she connected it to a power source and turned it on.

Aria: S3, please identify how to work this machine. Is it possible to create a second space button for someone who already has an existing space button? If yes, how do we operate it?

S3 quickly shared the information and details Aria requested. It was possible to attach a second space button to an individual or a piece of jewelry. There is also an option to affix an item to the space ring just like the EOS technology. This was made possible by the fact that Sara mom's machine was the original machine she created and continued to upgrade herself that the other machines were based off of.

Thinking about how much Aria would have to explain if she did a procedure to add a second space button to the Chens' bodies, she opted with the space ring option. Searching around her inventory and not seeing anything fitting for male fingers, she headed out to a jewelry store nearby and purchased a few simple bands of a few sizes.

Going back to her hotel room, she jumped into the G Space and placed the ring one by one inside the holder and set the space to be 300x300 cubic feet.

After that, she had S3 pasted 300 tons of the tank's defensive solar materials as well as 300 energy packs. She planned to have the ship be outfitted with the EOS's defensive solar materials and each "room" inside the ship be equipped with 2 solar packs and the rest stored as backup energy.

Checking off what was needed to upgrade the spaceships, she checked defense off the list, then energy. As for water, she would need to go out and get a water recycling system as well as solar lighting for the internal farm she wanted to set up on one whole floor of the ship. Doing a quick search online, she headed out to the other side of the city to check out a well known farming wholesale company.

She browsed around and copied everything they had in their warehouse from vertical gardens, to livestock fencing, to different types of robots that took care of all farming related tasks. Of course she also copied the solar lighting and water recycling system as well as all the repair robots. Aria even copied all the digital booklets and how-tos that came with them, luckily was translated to all languages.

Now the only thing missing would be the weapons and security technology she wants to add to the ships. She'll leave this for John to figure out later with his contacts.

Although she wanted to continue to purchase seeds and livestock, she had nowhere to ship them currently. Perhaps she can get the Chens to help out on that too if they decided to work together. If not then she'll hire a temporary warehouse to have everything shipped there before she leaves Country M.

Feeling exhausted and hungry, she ordered a few popular foods on the way back to her hotel and copied them. After getting back to the hotel she immediately ate and got ready for bed. Before fully falling asleep, she received an email from John for a meeting the next morning. Aria confirmed the appointment before jumping into her G Space and knocked out.

---------------------- Author's Notes -----------------------

Sorry- a bit of a long chapter. Country M is where we meet a new character, John Chen and his family. John has a military background so he knows how to follow orders, is trained to adapt in high stress situations, and is not easily swayed by what others say. Since he is used to taking point on a lot of the military or more confidential projects, he is trustworthy and has a sharp sense of what to say and do in many situations. Military personnels are a complicated lot with a somewhat archaic hierarchy. He knows how to navigate the many minefields of that environment when necessary. He served his time but he would prefer not to be under the military's thumbs again.

David Chen, the younger brother is a bit of a freer spirit working with celebrities on projects like their many business ventures and custom abode. He is in constant contact with beautiful people and are thus immune to the flashy and glitzy lifestyle. He found that the people who chose to live under the limelight are not simple folks. And working for them exposed him to many ugly sides to their supposedly upright and otherwise demeanor.

As for Melanie and Joseph, they have been in the business for over 30 years and have managed thousands of projects for all types of people. They are able to gauge pretty quickly on which clients will be an issue and which will not. At the beginning they weren't able to choose their clients but throughout the many decades of hard work, they've built such a great reputation for themselves that they are able to pick and choose their clients and projects.

Overall, I believe this family are solid folks. Working in the field they do, managing projects for different types of people exposed them to many types of people. To be successful, they need to be attune to their clients and their needs. They are able to also quickly access who they shouldn't work with either- which will be a great benefit to them in the future during the ZA when deceitful and greedy people are everywhere.