The next day, the Chen family received an email with the list of approved names on them. Of the 12, 8 were approved. The family looked at the list with a complicated feeling in their chest. They were thinking of the missing 4 names. Melanie rubbed Joseph's back comfortingly. The cousin he listed was not approved. And it's not like they can be upset at the result since everyone knew the attitude of the cousin's wife and sister. Bringing them would be a lot more trouble than it's worth. The only thing they can do now is to hope that it will not be as bad as Aries predicted and that everyone survives.

Looking at the 8 names on the list, the Chens executed their plan. The morning of the flight, all the 'winners' were required to check in at a hotel near the airport to sign NDAs. Aria had a list of all the winner's homes and went to each location and stored them before replacing the empty property with a copy of itself, without anything inside. She felt bad that these people would lose everything after they leave Country M so she stored away all their things to feel less guilty. She collected the Chen's parents' location too just in case they left something behind.

Everyone left Country M in a happy mood, feeling lucky to leave for a vacation. After arriving in Country C, City S, they booked into a nice hotel and started to tour the country. Everyone had fun exploring the different cities for the next 7 days. But they were all required to return to City S's hotel on October 18th. The weather got colder quickly.

Meanwhile, Aria spent the week after she came back racing through different cities collecting the energy stones. Within 7 days, she marked off 42 locations. Finally heading back after the last location, S3 made her presence known.

S3: Aria, there is a small town ahead that was mentioned in Edward's records. There is a small blacksmith here that is well known during the ZA for making cold weapons and accessories that are special. Rumor has it that when people used his weapons, there were different attributes to the weapons that made fighting zombies easier and more efficient.

Oh? That sounds interesting.

Aria veered left into the town and parked the car. Since S3 doesn't know where the person was, Aria had to slow down to hunt for that person. The town was small and dusty. A worn up town in an out of way location. It's hard to live here.

Not wanting to waste more time, Aria asked someone inside the store for the blacksmith's location and was directed to the back of the barn.

After turning the corner, she saw 2 figures sitting on a bench. They were both dirty and thin. One was a 40 year-old man and the other was a 18 year-old young man.

Young male: "Dad, should I go and borrow some money -"

Older male: "No. We still have some money and food left. We have a cup of rice left which should last for a few days. I'll go buy us some CFP later after the cobbler pays me for the metal detailing job I did for him."

Young male: "It's been 4 days and he hasn't paid you back yet. What did I tell you about taking on 'jobs' for people who are notorious for not paying on time?"

Older male: "Okay, okay. Maybe I'll head to the city next week to see if there are any jobs. Then I'll send for you to join me?"

Young male: "Haha, you always say that. Anyway, we can go together. I'm old enough now to help out."

Aria raised her eyebrows at the heartwarming and wholesome words between father and son. Looking around to make sure she didn't step into a cliche shooting scene, Aria coughed to catch their attention.

Aria: "Hello, I can't help but hear that you're looking for a job. I happen to be looking for a blacksmith for my food plantation. If you're interested, do you mind showing me some of your work?"

Young male: "We are interested! A food plantation? Wow. Where is it located? What's your company name? How big is it and how many people are working there?"

Older male: "Don't mind my son. I am very interested. Here are my works. Can you tell me more?"

Aria: "The job is located in City S at a food plantation. Here, we make these. The pay is $50,000 a year starting and will be higher if you work hard. I've been searching for a blacksmith for the last few days and am leaving in a few hours to the airport."

Young male: $50,000?! Must not let dad miss out on this opportunity!

Older male: "Would I be able to bring my family with me if I take this job?"

Aria: "I don't see why not. I like your work a lot. I would like to offer you the job if you're interested."

Older male: "I'm interested!"

Aria: "Okay, would you be able to leave within the hour? I can't delay any more than that since my flight is leaving soon."

Older male: "Leave?"

Aria: "Yes, you and your family will be flying back to City S with me. If not then I don't think we would be able to meet again since I won't be going to this part of the country for a long time."

Young male: "Yes! We can pack and leave within 30 minutes! Please wait for us at the front of the village. Uh, we have 4 members of the family..."

Aria: "That's fine. I just need everyone's legal names to book the flight."

It was evening and Aria sat on the airplane looking outside, nodding on and off. It was now October 11th. October 12th is when the first batch of new security employees and their family arrives. So when she gets back to the plant tonight, she has to make sure everything is hooked up and ready to go.

After landing, Aria flagged down a car service and the group of 5 settled inside the cab. The older male is called Jacob Shin, his wife is called Trish Shin, the young man is called Josh Shin, and the sleeping 3 year old girl is called Iris Shin. The family didn't have much to pack so Aria stored everything in her E Space for them.

Aria temporarily housed them in a room in the front house of the plant. They will be relocated the next day. Aria went to the bunker and went down to the lower levels. She then spent 2 hours setting up the vertical garden with lights in 5 of the floors underneath 4 living floors and the bottom floor housed the CFP machines and materials. She even ordered a few CMFP machines to process meat.

Hundreds of tons of meat was ordered in Country M by the Chen family and collected by Aria before they left. They are all stored in Aria's G Space for fresh keeping purposes.

Coming up to the main living areas, Aria had S3 confirm each room had all the necessary amenities. There were 2 floors of apartments in various sized families, with over 500 rooms. Each room has a small bathroom, a kitchenette, a family room, and bed pods. To conserve heat, the sleeping location is not inside a big bedroom but inside a high tech cabinet-like sleeping pod. Each pod is 3-4 feet high, stacked on top of one another to conserve space. Each pod can fit 2 large men, and has a middle divider for privacy. Inside the pod there are slots to place clothes to keep them warm at the same "room temperature" as the pod so one is not too cold when waking up. The majority of heating is mainly focused on the bed pods.

Each room comes with a large screen near the door that tracks the room's energy and water usage with the corresponding amount spent.

On the top floor, the rooms were larger, set up similar to a military barracks style. Each room has 3 layers of sleep pods, sized to the same dimension as a military bed. Only those living in the room can access the room using their access badge. And each sleep pod is tied to the same badge. So there is no chance anyone can sneak into anyone else's rooms or sleep in someone else's bed.

Then she went to the 4th floor and set up everything for higher living conditions. There was a large theater that fits 400 people at a time, 3 large gyms, classrooms with multiple teaching robots, a playground, a shop, a grocery store, shops, cafeterias, offices, town hall, lounges, libraries, arts and crafts, pools, green house, etc. security is on the upper most floor, sleeping pods in a well insulated room in the center of the floor.

Aria's living area is the most unique. It covers all 4 floors in one corner of the base. It is the only room that can access the top security floor and also the bottom CFP facilities. To get to the bottom floors, you need to access it through Aria's office under her large desk. She borrowed that idea from Harvey Li when she robbed the Li family blind. (Hehe)

Suddenly she received a text message from Apollo through the MTM app.

[Apollo] Where are you? Have you heard?

[Artemis] Safe. Yes.

There was a slight pause on Alex's side as he looked at the word "safe". It's strange that the other person would answer his question with exactly what he wanted to ask. He doesn't know why but when he was in a meeting today with some scientists panicking about global warming and they went on and on about the duration of this event, he thought of his mech student. Since she is wealthy enough to have all of those training machines, he figured she or her family is high enough up in the totem pole to know what's going on. News have been shared all over the world about the drastic temperature, one scientist proclaiming an ice age level event.

[Apollo] Stay inside and keep warm.

[Artemis] Okay. I understand.

[Artemis] Do you have a SRM (Shipping and Receiving Machine)?

[Apollo] Yes. #470331255

[Artemis] Sent. If in 1 week it gets worse, lock down everything and come to this location. Don't share, tickets are limited. The strict requirements evaluation is here

[Apollo] How many tickets do you have left?

[Artemis] 4,800.

[Apollo] Do you have enough resources to feed that many people?

[Artemis] Yes. But nothing is free.

[Apollo] What do you want in exchange?

[Artemis] Military security in exchange for lodging. Food will need to be purchased. Family members will need to pay rent and cannot be housed with military personnel for obvious reasons.

[Apollo] Fine. Do you have space to store mechs?

[Artemis] I have over 20 acres of land. We can bury them out of sight. How many do you have?

[Apollo] 582.

[Artemis] Confirm if you're coming or not and I'll prepare the land. I don't want to waste my time.

Alex shook his head helplessly at her harsh words. He has been training her for a month now and at first she was terrible. But he's been tracking her training while at work and she has been training every day on everything. He finds that she is a gem for piloting a mech. Their communication started out one sided, he mostly told her what to do and what to adjust.

Then as the simulation got harder, she started discussing strategies. He finds her mind to be sharp and to the point. Similar to her body movements. Although she's still rough at handling the mech, he noticed that some of her moves were very quick and vicious. Like killing moves. And always to the head too.

He stressed the importance of targeting the chest cavity since that's where a pilot would be housed, but she refused. Saying she only wanted to target the head. All the time. And would not change. So he let it go since she is more stubborn than him.

[Apollo] I will move all the personnel and mechs over tomorrow night. I will take your offer of 2800 tickets.

[Artemis] Please be low key. I do not want people to know there is a military base here. People will be expecting things that I cannot deliver.

[Apollo] The Mech Division is not required to protect civilian lives in times of peace. We are responsible for the protection of the mechs in our possession and to fight other mechs in time of war to lessen the loss of civilian lives caused by other mechs.

[Artemis] Okay. Let me know your ETA. You have the evaluation threshold requirements. I don't want any trouble.

[Apollo] Got it.

-- Author's Notes --

Vote when you can! TY everyone who did!

(づ￣ ³￣)づ @1998GA12 @ejclever

Ahh! So this chapter was SUPPOSED to be the ending of the first part of the 'book' but it was too long so I had to break it out to a few parts. I think we have 2-3 more to go to before October 20th! So here you go.

The news finally broke out about the temperature issue and ppl are starting to freak out. Especially the government, who of course are always the one insisting it's all a conspiracy to undermine their authority. Well, that's how I imagined it but it's not told here.

Alex knows Aria has the money and the means to know this type of news. He has been training her for a month now so he kind of have an idea of who she is. Especially the things she unconsciously would mentioned in their discussions.

When she sent him the gold card with the location attached, he immediately did a search and found out it was purchased 6 months ago and the landscape changed drastically. So he knew she was already prepared. I glossed over some of the internal monologues they both have since they are pretty much on the same wave length and makes decisions that is most optimal and beneficial for both parties. So anyways, their interaction is short with none of the warmness one should have to be all PC about things, so you'll just have to read between the lines.

Anyways- I guess he's joining her for the next part of the story.