Chapter 5 - Relocation (part 2)

When we landed in Thailand, we went straight to the condo we all share in between the campus and the main company. Greeting the door man we made our way to the 8th floor, the top level of the building, we had a few security team members following us. There's a condo across the hall from ours that they stay in, they can never be too far from the kids.

Walking in to the condo, it looked the same way we left it. Even Ryder's magazine was face down on the wooden coffee table open to the last page he was reading when we were packing to head home. The wrap around sectional still had the abundance of pillows and blankets folded on it from our last movie night here. I loved this condo and building, it looked and felt like a cabin, even the tub was giant carved stone. Standing in the living room, the kitchen was to the left with a hallway next to it, down that hallway was my room and Leo's room, with a bathroom between. To the right on the living room was a hallway that had Leon and Ryders room and bathroom, a guest room, and a storage closet. Across from the entry way of the condo, the living room wall was a giant bay window, with bench seats on top of bookshelves. The shelves were so full the books started stacking up in the corners of the living room. The boys made a new rule that i could only get so many new books a year, and they bought me a kindle to help. The flat screen hung on the wall to the right so it could be seen from the couch and the reading seats, under that was the entertainment stand that held the consoles and DVDs and games.

I took a left after Leo and headed to my room to change, as we had to head straight to a meeting at A-Company. Unpacking I heard a knock on my door, and a head popped in.

"Are you using the boys bathroom, ill go ahead and freshen up in ours and we can head over." Leo asked.

"Yea, thats fine. Let's make it quick, the meeting starts in 2 hours, and traffic is heavy right now."

Fifteen minutes later we were heading to the elevator, Leo with his briefcase and me with my bag. Here to be the trusty assistant. A-Company, along with the tech company on the other side of Bangkok are the main branches I have been running for the last 3 years, waiting for Leon to take over one of them. Here we have a meeting to begin the transfer for A-Company into Leon's control.

"You are right, looking at this traffic we might still be late" Leo said as we got into the SUV, the driver and security lead climbed in the front.

"Gives us time to go over our side of the paperwork. We won't be here when Leon comes back, so P'Sun will be in charge until he gets back. We need to make sure all our stuff for P'Sun is set." I pulled out papers to look over, not that we hadn't already done this before hand. I like to be thorough.

When arrived at the company with 10 minutes to spare before the meeting. We walked into the building, being greeted by reception.

"Sawadee ka! Welcome back Baby, Mr.Chen!" The receptionist was a short, round, but really sweet woman. Her name was P'May, and it took several times meeting before she agreed to just call me Baby and not "BossBaby".

"Wadee P'May! We will head right to the conference room, send everyone else up when they arrive." I said, I dont think she heard me over her heart eyes at Leo.

The conference room was on the 3rd floor, so we headed to the room. Greeting those that were there already, we had to wait on some members from the board to get started.

We sat at the half circle table, Leo on my right and P'Sun on my left. P'Sun was about 5'11", and built like he never skipped gym day. But he was very smart, and very loyal. His family was part of Orchid, as well as members of our companies here. So he will be Leon's second in command, but until then he will make this transition as smooth as possible.

Sitting at the table i could feel his dark brown almost black eyes looking at me.

"What, P'Sun." I said without looking.

"Just wondering when the wedding is" he smirked.

"I will literally throw you out that window P'Sun." He giggled under his breath at me. "traitor, you are"

"You can't blame me. You leave for a month vacation, and next we hear you're leaving us for good, and following Leo around wherever he goes." He pretended to pout, the thing about P'Sun was he flirted with anyone, anywhere. He was harmless, and never meant it, it was built into his personality. "You'll be breaking all our hearts when you go."

I hit him with my notebook, since the doors opened al the board members we were waiting on walked in. Everyone stood to greet them, "Alright, not that we are all here, lets get started" I said.

The meeting went on for three hours. Mainly from the uproar of transitioning power to other department heads as well as P'Sun . But finally the board and the team members understood, and were preparing to start the process. We walked through the car park to our car with our driver and SecTeam lead, thankful to be out of the office.

"Ouf, if i never have to sit through one of these again it'll be too soon" Leo said as he stretched his back.

"You're a CEO and COO of several, you'll do this every day now. Good luck" I laughed at him.

"Okay but you only gave up your CEO seat to one, and you'll be in all of mine so, who really loses here" he mocked back.

He wasnt wrong, I had no response to him other than change the subject. "Yea yea. It's later than expected, the orchid meeting with your father and the committee is tonight, so we need to go prepare for that one now."

Leo groaned as we climbed in the car, heading to the condo.

Two more hours later we were standing in the living room, waiting to leave. I looked at Leo dressed in black jeans and boots, black button up with his sleeves rolled up. A very different look that his usual business attire.

"Don't ever let P'May see you in this outfit, you'll be married for real."

"At least I dont have to wear a mask and hood to tonight." He stuck his tongue out at me. My outfit was very different than his. I had on black pants, black combat boots. I wore a grey long sleeve bodysuit under my pants, that thankfully were shorts not full pants under my pants. Over that i had to wear the jacket, Lee thought he was cool when he designed it. It was long, almost like a dress, tight across my upper body and arms, and flared out at my waist. It was made of soft breathable material that doesn't rip or tear easily. But he designed slots and holes that you cannot see, that i can slide my hands into to reach my weapons that are inside the jacket. Yea, he was pretty cool, i had to talk him out of the high heel boots though. Thankfully Yuma came to my rescue there.

On top of that I had my weapons harnesses. A specially designed holster for my handguns and short swords went on my back. So i had a gun under each arm, and two short swords crossed my upper back. A baton in the middle. My belt held a knife at the base of my spine. I had a thigh holster on each side, the right was another gun the left held more ammo. I had a few hidden knives in other places. I was literally crafted into Lee's perfect weapon, a walking arsenal.

We were set to meet Yuma and Lee here, then head to the meeting place together. When we get there, i will have a hood pulled up and a mask that covers my whole face to put on, it was another Leo design. You couldn't see through the mask but i could see out even with no eye holes. It wasnt the most comfortable to wear in a fight but it wasn't the worst.

The door opened as i finished tying my boots, lee and Yuma had arrived.

"Let's go over this quick so we are alll on the same page when we get there" Lee said as he motioned us all to sit down. "This is just the first meeting with this branch of Orchid, and its committee, there will also be some of our ally rebel group leaders here tonight. Now that most of the unrest has been settled here, we figured it would be easier to announce the Epsolon program. It will help in our favor that they do know of you from the last Campaign here, they just dont know what Epsolon really is. So Yuma will be with the scientists tonight, you will be with Leo, I will do most of the meeting. When we plan to introduce you, Leo will tell you when you move and we will go into that. You dont need to do much of anything yet. Eventually, you will reveal your identity, being that you have helped this country win against their government openly, we are hoping that it will go over smoothly." He clasped his hands together. "Any questions?"

"Wait, so. Hold on a minute. Your plan is to tell these people, some that are not TRULY our ally, that you have this nano-tech operate AI system that fights this war for you, and shes a white American woman with ZERO background because I have no idea wher I'm from or who i am, and you expect these people that have been dying in this war to just be okay with that? Lee, come on. These people are not going to sit by. You know this, you already kno that there are some trying to steal your research, thats how you met me in the first place. Do you have a plan for this whole thing going south?" I didn't mean to sound like an ass, but this was my skin on the line. I was already considered an outsider to these people, as a random American woman the family kinda sort of adopted yet didnt. I couldn't help but feel like my life was about to get really really hard.

"We have security in place 24/7, you yourself don't need it but we have it on you too. We have to have faith that they will see past your face and see Epsolon for the savior program it really could be. We have he ability to end this war finally, shouldn't we give that to them? Shouldn't we let orchid know that the end really is near now?" Lee said.

"I know i dont really have much of a say in orchid. I know I'm a body in this army. I promised you when i stayed that i would follow you. Just try not to get me assassinated quite yet." Yuma scoffed at Lee and muttered "he better not, no one else is gonna marry my crazy stubborn son if she goes"

"Ma, we heard that." Leo said. We all stood up and gathered to the elevator.

"Well, here goes nothing, huh" I said to leo as we drove to the meeting.

Orchid had its own residential building here in Thailand now, now that we freed this country and settled a better government in place, we built a base here for Orchid. It's in the middle of a forest, on the outskirts on Bangkok, because we are still technically an underground guild of sorts. Pulling up to the office, there was a dirt lot to the left, already filled with cars and people walking around.

"Alright, hood up. We head straight in to the main hall, that's where the meeting will be." Lee said with a nod in my direction. Stepping out the SUV, we heard a few peopl grouped around outside start to wonder about the masked person, a few even mentioned Epsolon's name. We just kept walking into the building, up to the 2nd floor and into what looked like a giant banquet hall.

The hall was set up with a small foot high stage at the front where the leaders would stand to address the masses, and there were tables set about the room for each committee member, leader, or scientist to sit. All in all, this meeting was much bigger than Lee let on. I estimate that there were at least 50 people here, including security. When we walked in, Yuma split off to the scientists, Lee went to the stage, and leo and i went to the right side of the stage. I was standing back in the shadow corner, you could see me if you were looking for me but if you glanced quickly you would miss me.

Lee spent time greeting the Thailand Committee, the other Rebel leaders, and the group of scientists here. There were about 5 different rebel groups across the world, all trying to overturn the shit government that took over 50+ years ago. Though, most are small and have not been able to make as much traction as orchid has, mainly because of the monetary backing that orchid has. Out of the 5 groups, 3 other leaders were here tonight, the other 2 would be in Europe next week.

The first part of the meeting was the introduction of the next Campaign, to begin in Europe. After the fall of Thailand, many smaller countries fell quickly. So we now turn our focus to a bigger picture. That plan took over an hour to discuss and bring the allies into it. i wanted to yawn, by the time Lee said that he had another reason for bringing all the leaders together.

I couldn't help but think, "here it comes" as Lee started talking about his research.

"As we all know, the Chen family has been building research and development into Nano Technology and other adventures. Over the years, very very small advances had been made. A few years back my son Leo, joined us as a head researcher. Within the last 5 years, we managed to build a working prototype that could house a nanobyte core, and we slowly started working into an Artificial Intelligence to place into the prototype, so it would operate as if it were human. Eventually we realized that a weaponize robot might not be the way to go, so my son began more research. Eventually we figured out how to build the nano core into an already live specimen. And how to integrate an AI system into the living specimens brain. Effectively making this specimen, an integrated artificial intelligence weapon." At this point the faces of the room began to get curious and wonder where this was headed. Lee turned and nodded at Leo, who began to walk to the stage. That was my cue to follow him.

When we got to the stage, Leo began talking. "It took years to form the idea nad the research to support it, and it took almost a freak accident to make it possible. But 5 years ago, we came across a situation and a person that gave us the perfect opportunity. Through this we created Epsolon." Leo stepped aside and motioned to me, so i stepped forward one time. "This, is Epsolon. It's still not perfect, but over the years we have managed to stabilize Epsolon, and as you may have realized from the last Campaign here, Epsolon does exactly what it was meant to do. This Epsolon Program, is the ultimate weapon, the ultimate end to this war. Epsolon's nanobyte core, allows for them to be incredibly strong, and fast, almost indestructible , yet still human. Epsolon also has a partially computer ran brain. Think of it like a living google, they have access to most of the internet through this artificial chip."

Lee walked over to stand on the other side of me and started talking again.

"I know you have questions and we will get to them eventually. But you have all met Epsolon, some of you even faught the last campaign with them. You've seen only a small portion of what Epsolon can truly do, so we;re here now, now that we have stabilized the technology within the specimen, to introduce this Program to Orchid. "

There were a lot of voices talking back and forth and yelling out questions, one Leader stood up and asked "how have you had this kind of research for this long and never shared with the rest of the rebellion? Don't you think we all could use an Epsolon in our part of the world too?!?" There were murmurs of agreement, but Yuma stood up to speak and the hall went silent. Yuma came from a very old, very powerful family , and she had an air that demanded respect wherever she went. And she got it.

"As they have stated, the science and the tech only recently stabilized. Why bring forth a faulty experiment that isnt going to get any of us anywhere? How mad would you all be then huh?" She looked around the room and sat back down.

Another leader stood up and said "Why cant we see who Epsolon is then? Since we are in the spirit of full transparency now?" In that moment I wanted to hate her, Amy from the US rebels, but I couldn't. Because they were all right. They all had a right to be curious and to be angry.

Leo looked at me and almost looked sorry, Lee nodded at me and motioned me forward.

"This is it then" i thought. I stepped forward, pushing my hood back, and pulled the mask up over my head.

Ive never seen so many confused adults in one room before.