Hunter shook his head. Either Trey was lying, or he missed something.

“I get it. Really, I do. You asked me how you can trust me. Here,” he said, pointing to a small picture frame on his desk. He turned it around so that Hunter could see it. It was a picture of Trey and his father, when they were both much younger. They were both holding a necklace. Hunter recognized his fathers, and Trey’s was similar. Trey let go of the frame and reached under the collar of his shirt, pulling out the same necklace.

“You can probably guess, but we modeled the them after Asutnahem words. As far as we could tell, they aren’t glyphs, and we only have a rough translation, but it was enough for us to want to take with us. Mine means either ‘self knowledge,’ or ‘seeing beneath the surface’ depending on who you ask. His necklace meant either ‘truth’ or ‘power’, again, depending on who you ask. To us, the uncertainty was exactly what made them so meaningful,” he said. He took the necklace off and studied it with a fond look.

“We’d had a good year. Miserable for business, but we’d made a lot of friends, and discovered a lot about ourselves. The necklaces were your fathers idea. We were drunk, and he said something about the mysteries of the world meaning different things depending on your point of view. It was one of the most profound things i’d ever heard at the time. He always was a bit more inclined towards philosophy than I was, and it was a meaningful trophy of our time together. That was something that he and I both understood. Symbols, and a shared vision. I’ve kept the necklace with me ever since.”

Hunter studied the picture in the frame. It was definitely his father. He seemed so young, there was a lightness and humor in his eyes that Hunter had never seen there before. His fathers eyes had always seemed either sad, focused, or impassioned whenever he was around him. His father had his arm around Trey’s shoulder in the picture, both of them were smiling.

“Did you ever find the necklace?” Hunter asked. He’d held it once, his fathers necklace. It was one of his first memories. Trey shook his head.

“No. I assumed it was lost in the explosion that took his life. I’m sorry, Hunter. If I'd found it I would have had it delivered to you as soon as I could.”

Hunter sighed away the faint trace of hope that had bloomed for a beautiful moment.

“What about the briefcase?” Hunter asked, suddenly remembering the final unanswered question he had about his time in Seckina.

Trey raised an eyebrow.

“Briefcase?” He asked.

“You didn’t have someone leave a briefcase at my door?” Hunter asked.

Trey seemed genuinely confused.

“Apart from the ID and the house, I don’t recall having sent you anything. Something from a neighbor, perhaps? What did the briefcase look like? What was inside it?”

Hunter shrugged. Trey didn’t seem to know. Hunter decided to follow his gut and bend the truth a bit. Trey didn’t have to know everything.

“It was nothing. I’d just always wondered who’d left it there.”

“Alright,” Trey said, his eyes slightly narrowed. Then he shrugged, “anymore questions?”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? About my father, about all of this?” Hunter asked, “Why wait until now?”

Trey sighed and considered his hands for a moment.

“A man in my position expects a certain degree of visibility. There are only so many degrees of privacy that I can enjoy without spending a lot of money on covering my tracks, and even then, there is always the risk of someone noticing all those credits moving. I wanted to get you out of sight without the the rest of the Council catching wind of my involvement. I’m not exactly proud of this, but we Council Seats hold a certain understanding in how we conduct business with each other. I had the option to take part in the confiscation of your fathers estate, you understand? I declined, but that refusal came with implications. Are you following me?” Trey asked.

Hunter shook his head. Trey bit his bottom lip and tilted his head, maybe considering how to word his elaboration.

“Three Council Seats split your family’s estate amongst themselves. The moment the emergency policies were invoked, your family’s estate became their business. That includes, in their view, any information you had about your father, and any of the work he might have left behind after his passing. The moment I took you away from them, I was directly interfering in their business,” Trey explained.

That was enough for Hunter to understand the implication. If they caught wind that Trey had hidden Hunter, he’d be at odds with the rest of the Council.

“So it would have made your relationship with the rest of the Council difficult.”

Trey snorted.

“There’s a lot going on behind scenes that the public will probably never know about, but I think its enough to say that the relationship between the Council Seats is already difficult. In fact,” he paused, “ah, never mind. That’s not anything you need to worry about. You’ve had enough on your plate, haven’t you? And I realize I haven’t fully answered your question. The rest of the answer is that, to be quite honest— and I hope you’ll forgive me, I had absolutely no idea what to do with you.”

Honestly, it wasn’t what Hunter had expected to hear. That’s it?

“You didn’t know what to do with me?” Hunter asked.

“Yeah,” Trey said, “I know, I know, it’s not a great answer. I had people check up on you a couple of times, and you seemed like you were working to support yourself. You were still outwardly identifying as Jonathan, and I figured that you’d started moving on with your life.”

Hunter wanted to throw something at him.

“Moving on with my life,” Hunter repeated. He almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The great political game, the pressure of being a pawn, a piece on a board, the paranoia he’d silently suffered for years— and it was all just a misunderstanding? A snap judgement? A convenient delusion?

Hunter realized he was shaking his head as he thought. Trey raised a hand to forestall any objection to what he’d said.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Look, this all brings me to the second reason why I brought you here today,” Trey said, standing up from his seat and turning to take in the view behind him.

“Jimmy told me a bit about what you went through while you were living there. I heard about the gang— I’m sorry about that, too. I should have taken more of an interest in what was going on around that neighborhood. I dropped the ball, and I’d like to make it up to you.”

Again, Hunter didn’t trust himself to speak, so he let Trey continue.

“When Jimmy first told me that you had signed up for the competition under your real name, I was shocked. I’d never forgotten about you, but as I said, over the years I’d found reasons to expect that you were able to take care of yourself. Naturally, I had other priorities.”

Hunter wished he didn’t understand where Trey was coming from. He wanted to disagree with Trey, and say that a man with his resources can and should do better. But couldn’t he relate to Trey? When he had to focus on survival, on having enough food, on paying rent, on getting through tough jobs, he wasn’t worried about the Council, conspiracies, or even the rising gang violence in the neighborhood. He understood that there was only so much that a person could focus on at once.

Hunter wanted to be mad at Trey, but he found that he couldn’t be. At least, not completely. He was annoyed at having spent so much time paranoid and angry at absolutely nothing. But there was a whisper at the back of his mind— what would he have done differently if he wasn’t worried? Would he have been as motivated to push himself, to leverage his sensitivity, to distract himself with the depths of etherium, if he hadn’t felt like there was a world that he needed to hide from, or a dark fate to fight against?

“Announcing yourself to the world has naturally raised a problem,” Trey said, interrupting Hunter’s thoughts, “I’ve received memos from all the interested parties, politely inquiring about your identity and status. Of course, I've held off from answering them over the last few days, but I expect that very soon those inquiries will not be anywhere near as polite as they have been. So we are on a very strict timetable to find and deploy a solution. I’ve thought of one, of course, but I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.”

He turned slightly away from the view as he spoke, glancing at Hunter.

“I doubt you were unaware about the dangers of revealing yourself, so what changed, and what do you want?”

Hunter took a few second to think about what he wanted to say. This whole conversation had felt overwhelming. He needed a second to remember why he was here, and what led him here in the first place. He almost laughed when he considered that choice he’d made a few days prior. It already felt like it was a month ago. Maybe etherium strain, or whatever he was suffering at the moment, could mess with his sense of time.

“It was an accident, during the preliminary test,” he said, thinking back to that critical moment when he was faced with the choice of continuing on, or running away, “as I handed in the test, I realized i’d written my real name instead of my fake name. I had considered the consequences, but I was tired of being Jonathan. I figured joining the competition as Hunter would be worth whatever problems arose— better than being forced to join the Comics,” Hunter said. He’d had a lot of time to consider how this conversation would go, and what he’d need in order to shape the future in the direction he wanted it to go, and how to sell that vision to a man who didn’t need anything from him.

But so far, Trey had defied Hunter’s expectations. Hunter felt like his expectations were constantly off the mark over the last few days, but that was a problem for another time.

“I think I did pretty well in the competition. Well enough to prove that I’d be an asset,” he said, not quite sure how to word what he was thinking. He wanted find a way to leverage his potential for an optimal contract. That had been his goal with this meeting, more so than finding answers.

He took another moment to consider what he’d learned during this conversation, and what it meant. As far as he’d been concerned, his father was innocent. He didn’t care about what Trey’s investigation turned up, as far as he knew, that was still the case. An absence of evidence is not evidence of an absence. Just because a conspiracy couldn’t be seen, doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. Trey’s answer about why he’d kept him in the dark for all the years he’d lived in Seckina felt a bit anticlimactic, but seemed pretty reasonable. He understood where Trey was coming from, and Hunter took it for what it was:

A peace offering, a sign of vulnerability. He’d built up Trey to be a very intimidating figure, a Council Seat who manipulated a thousand strings a day, carefully controlling the fate of his corporation's domain, and the fates of all of those who lived their lives within it. And maybe that was still true. However, the fact that Hunter had been left alone all those years because Trey had felt, what, awkward about the situation? It felt so shallow compared to what he’d expected. On one hand, it turned out that Trey was just a human being after all. On the other hand, he was willing to be honest about that, and was now apologizing for it.

He didn’t like the fact that he wanted to trust Trey Oberon. He wanted to be able to see him as nothing more than a means to an end, a tool of his own ambition.

In a way, he almost wished that Trey would see him the same way. It would have been so much easier. Now, he had to sit here and consider the fact that maybe there was a chance that Trey wasn’t a cold, calculating monarch. Maybe Mrs. Verilion was right about Trey being different from the rest of the Council Seats.

Hunter considered Trey’s question.

What did he want? The answer was simple— he hadn’t been planning on revealing his endgame, but why not? Since Trey had been so open with Hunter, maybe he could expedite the process for Hunter.

“I want to leave Sanctuary,” he said.

“Outworld?” Trey exlaimed, his eyes wide, “Huh. That’s not what I was expecting.”

Trey rubbed his chin as he thought. Hunter took that as a good sign, he wasn’t rejecting the prospect outright.

“Do you know what it takes to get a spot on a ship?” Trey asked. Hunter shook his head. Trey seemed to have a thought, one that pleased him. He smiled.

“It takes accreditation. It takes a high level of accreditation for a company to assume liability for your presence on their ships. Ships are expensive, as is operating them. Letting anyone aboard a ship means taking a risk— it means making an investment” Trey said.

Hunter nodded, slightly deflating. So he probably wasn’t going to have his wish granted all at once. However…

“I’m not hearing ‘no’,” Hunter said, still hopeful. Trey laughed.

“No, you’re definitely not. Look, the reason why I mentioned the attention you got during the competition wasn’t to make you feel like you owe me something— it’s so that you understand the position that you and I are in. I feel we might be able to make a compromise.”

He had hunters full attention.

“Placing 5th during the Youth Artisan competition isn’t a big deal, but doing it alone with an AR of 5 is a big deal. I’m sure that’s not lost on you, correct?” Trey asked.

Hunter nodded, and Trey smiled.

“Of course not. Joyce was right to give you a chance. I gave her a promotion, by the way, so her bet paid off,” Trey said. “You’re a smart kid, you’ve got to be smart to pull off the kind of performance you made. I had some of my people analyze and explain to me your submissions and your results. You impressed a lot of very capable artisans, Hunter. Apparently, the crisscross channels you used on the batteries are something revolutionary. Some of your design choices, and these aren’t my words, ‘shouldn’t work as well as they do, yet somehow they do.’”

Hunter felt like he’d heard similar words before, in a similar meeting, where it felt like his fate was being decided by forces outside of his control.

Trey crossed his hands and placed them on his desk, smiling at Hunter.

“You, young man, present an incredible opportunity that I, as a very successful businessman, would be incredibly irresponsible— nay, completely derelict in my duties as a leader of the Oberon Enterprises’ domain— to let slip by. An opportunity, might I add, that is made necessary by your choice to announce your identity to the world.”

Hunter asked the obvious question.

“What kind of opportunity?”

“The opportunity to foster and protect an incredible young talent. And that’s just from my point of view as a businessman. As your father was one of my oldest friends, and as I feel that I owe you a debt, it is my personal duty, and honor, to offer the possibility of extending the Oberon name to you. I know, it’s a big deal, but there is a pragmatic element to it,” Trey said, studying Hunter’s reaction, “you do know what I'm offering you, right?”

Hunter’s confusion must have shown on his face.

“I'm offering to extend to you not only the benefit of the protection that comes from joining this corporation, but the protection and privileges that comes being a part of the family that owns the corporation.”