[Ilium] When handed an offer you can't refuse

To Mason Barnette, Illium's skyline always looked beautiful in its own bizarre way. It was picturesque, warm, and yet also so nervously jarring it couldn't help but force you onto your toes. The particular angle of it the planet's star and the city's lights made everything a somewhat red-violet streak across the sky.


Red Sky at Night, Sailor take fright. He thought to himself, standing in silent reflection on the balcony. Just like all of his presentations, tonight was a night to sell himself to just another crowd. He would go and give his speech, they would listen, and hopefully buckets of money would be passed to him. Or they would all rip him limb from limb in the most painful way possible.


My father mourns my position right now.


Of course, he had other ways of convincing them to play nice as well. Deals had been made, negotiations were in place...


Zaydovitch entered and simply offered him a nod that things were ready. In the back of his head, Mason feared that he was crossing
a line that he couldn't retreat too anymore after this.


Of course, that wouldn't be the first time with him.

There were roughly twenty three people in the room that day, at least twenty three that mattered anyway. They all represented the various different parties who had initially given funding to Mason's projects. If anything, the collection was a bit of a menagerie of the new order of the galaxy: Terminus warlords enjoying their new found wealth and influence form the increase in trade, Citadel investors hoping to be the ones who picked the next big product boom, bankers more than willing to spend some of their war profits, and weapons developers hoping to find an edge in the next war. Normally, all of these individual would be strained to keep the most basic levels of civility with one another, but on the particular occasion all focus was instead on who could get the largest piece of the soon to be carcass once known as Mason Barnette.

Or so they thought. As everything stood, Mr. Barnette had not arrived, nor had any of his assistants. In fact, other than the tall, silver suits of armor that lined the silver walls of the officer tower, there wasn't anything in the boardroom other than those twenty three people. And a single drone, which projected itself from the center of the conference table and began to float towards the front of the room.

As it came over open floor, the holographic display for the drone fizzled and expanded to show Mason himself, calmly adjusting his suit as he turned back towards the frustrated mob.

"These more of your flash and powder theatrics, Barnette? Such tricks aren't going to work on us anymore." A Turian said, slamming his fist onto the table.

"I do apologies ladies and gentlemen for not being present but I had some other business that needed attending to. I understand that certain recent bits of news have been rather frustrating for you, no doubt they are to me, but I want to make things as clear as possible that I am in negotiations with the proper authorities on gaining my research back. We should be back on schedule by the end of the month, everyone." The hologram said, calmly looking over the assembly.

"Except there is no 'we' anymore, Mr. Barnette. Sicne you took so long to arrive, you missed our vote to strip you of all ownership on the project and distribute the research to everyone. We felt as though this would be the fairest debt you could pay to us as a whole..." Said one, a human with connections to one of the older Bekenstein families. He always claimed that Mason wasn't a proper Barnette.

"But that doesn't *hsst* limit us on our *hsst* actions for individual dues." Said the only Volus in the room, Ando'Gorn. Most famously known for getting a Hierarchy legion to call one of his debts in before.

The hologram shook his head.

"I had a feeling we'd run into this conundrum. You see, everyone, there's the rather simple matter that not a single one of you are allowed anywhere near the knowledge that has allowed me to create Petrarch. It is a certain kind of inspiration, granted by the holiest of wisdom that allows me to do it. Or am I simply preaching?" The hologram lit a cigarette and placed it in his mouth, as the silver suits of armor sprung onto the assembly. Biotic energy held seemingly everyone down, as the figures communicated in a language which sent everyone's personal translators into a frenzy.

"That document stripping me of my ownership actually had several features in the fine print I now realize none of you read. It actually gave me legal control of double your original funding, plus several assets spread throughout space of my choosing. But that's unimportant, unless some of you are literally now coming to the realization that your little games have been outplayed. Someone asked me why I seemingly approached the most unseemly individuals in the galaxy for my support. The answer is fairly simple, really." Mason paused, now looking back over the scene with a loose smirk as he brought the cigarette to his side.

"No one really bats an eyelash when you disappear." The massacre would only last for a minute, as the silver warriors efficiently worked to ensure that no one knew anything had happened in that room at all on this day. After all, this meeting was off the books.


In a Penthouse some distance away Mason smiled as he stepped away from the portable QEC device. Sloppy, foolish, and probably over ambitious it nonetheless would give him enough funding to fully support any expanded operations and costs at least until he could get Petrarch release. Now all he had to do was deal with his more reputable associates: a far simpler tasks.


"Sobel, can you do me a favor and contact Miss Adler and her associates. I'll be glad to see them now."


And it seemed that, for the time being, the Subverse Relic would live on.