Letting out a low sigh, Calvus reached a careful arm out, motioning the pristine white doors to part with a gentle whir. He continued through the hall, replacing his arm under the tray in his hands. Although the robust scent of roasted meat wafted from the plate, the reek of cheap disinfectants flooded his nostrils. He grumbled something beneath his breath as he rounded the corner, plodding down a small set of stairs as he advanced into a small lounge.
He softly set the platter onto a small table, removing the cover from the plate, steam streaming up towards him. Flinching, he waved the steam away and glanced over to the human boy seated on the sofa before the table, eyes fixed on a screen set in front of him. Noticeably irritated by the child's disregard of him, Calvus brought a clawed hand up to his mouth and cleared his throat.
"Just one more minute, Cal," the boy said quietly, his fingers gliding expertly along the keypad of his omni-tool.
Calvus sighed and circled around the back of the sofa, crossing his arms and leaning down, observing the screen. The sounds of gunfire and the sight of soldiers fleeing across the screen gave the turian a good idea of just what sort of game the child was playing, and he gave a dissatisfied groan.
"You've been playing this game for months," Calvus said. "Didn't your father buy you one of those new war games? Alliance Corsair, something like that?"
"Mhm," the boy answered with a nod, "but he didn't buy any expansion packs or anything. Besides, the only player characters in that one are human. Sounds boring."
A light shower of holographic confetti showered down the display, and the word victory flashed across it. As the display returned to the game's main menu, Calvus eyed the child's character carefully and asked, "Why did you choose a character like that, Isaac?"
"I liked the turian soldiers better than the human ones," he responded plainly, then pointed a finger up to the character's head. "He has purple markings on his face, like yours. I thought they looked really cool."
"Well," Calvus said with a sheepish chuckle, "I suppose I'm honored. Now eat your meal."
Isaac nodded and closed his screen, settling back into the sofa and reaching a hand up to the table, pulling the napkin down into his lap before picking his silverware up from the table. As Isaac began to cut his meal into pieces, Calvus seated himself on the other end of the table, watching the human intently.
Isaac glanced up to the turian, asking, "Would you like some, Cal?"
"No," Calvus replied, shaking his head, "it'd probably make me sick. I just worry about you, Isaac. Children your age should be making friends in schools, not wasting their lives away playing video games as violent as yours."
"I can read, Cal," Isaac said, nibbling at a small portion of his steak. "Turians just a couple of years older than me can join the turian army." He set his fork down on the platter, his face creasing into a frown. "Father says I shouldn't go outside with everyone else, anyway."
"You're human, though, so it's different for you. Can you at least play something more... suited for your age? You and I could play chess like we used to. The set's still in the closet. I know you liked how the real pieces felt in your hands."
Isaac sighed and nodded, returning to idly playing with his food. "Father stopped paying for my game's membership a while ago, anyway. He said there isn't enough money to go around. He said there will be soon, though, I hope he's right."
"What, playing with this old codger isn't enough for you?" Calvus joked with a grin.
Isaac smiled back to the turian, correcting, "If we don't have money, we can't pay you to help with the house, Cal."
Giving a contented chuckle, Calvus picked himself up from his seat. He bid Isaac goodbye, though the boy protested, and returned to the corridor outside of the room.
As soon as the doors whirred shut behind him, Calvus let out a pained grunt, slamming a gloved fist into the wall. A picture of a human family fell from its perch on the wall, the sound of shattering glass echoing through the hall. He pulled his arm back, his throbbing fist falling to his side.
"He's just a kid," the turian muttered, "he's too young for this."
He stormed off down the hall, each of his steps accompanied by a dull click against the tiled floor. Rounding a corner, he bumped into a young quarian maid, one of the family's indentured servants. Calvus gave a halfhearted apology before continuing down the passage.
For ten years, he had worked under the Limbrette family as their head of security. The father had dabbled in rather dark affairs, even for a businessman of Ilium. After his wife died and left him with their son, he retreated from his work. Instead of living the high life that he could have had, the man began to waste his money on gambling and drink. His accounts only recently became depleted enough to warrant attention.
Of course, Isaac was a part of the problem. The child had been purposely exposed to element zero before birth, as many humans had begun to do to their children in hopes of siring biotic soldiers. Isaac's power had manifested early, and when attempts at training the boy to safely use his biotic abilities ended with no success, the child lost any hope at all for joining the Alliance's military. The Limbrettes decided that the best course of action to take would be keeping Isaac in the family home until training seemed a viable option.
The door to the family office opened quickly, almost as if to escape Calvus's path. Seated in a chair before a table covered in empty bottles was a rather unkempt man, his hair noticeably uncombed. The stench of alcohol permeated through the room, and as was made obvious by the stains across his otherwise pristine clothing, not all of the drinks had made it past the man's lips.
Disgusted by both the sight and smell of the man, Calvus raised his sleeve to his face as though to block out the reek.
"Magnus, it's been an entire week since you left the office to see your son," he growled, "how long are you going to do this to him? Don't you want to see your son for even a day or two before you sentence him to living with those batarians? If you can even call it living, I-"
"No one will lecture me on what to do with my child, especially not you, Calvus," Magnus barked back, idly tossing an empty bottle aside. "We all know how good you are with children, turian."
Quieted by the comment, Calvus let out a deep breath, settling down and dropping his accusatory stance. He shuffled over to an armchair and rested his arms along the back of it, glaring at the human seated across the room.
"You're selling your own child to support your addiction, Magnus," he said, drumming his fingers along the furniture. "You could sell the servants whose contracts permit you to. You could let some of your employees go to conserve money. There are better ways than this to support this lifestyle."
"There was something I wanted to discuss with you on that subject, actually," Magnus said, rising from his seat, though he almost lost his balance. As Magnus staggered over to his desk, the turian couldn't help but wonder as to how many bottles had piled up within the week. There were too many to count. Although the human's speech was slurred and he could hardly walk, he seemed otherwise unimpaired.
"I need you to take the skycar to the trading center, tell Isaac you're there for a meeting on my behalf, some excuse like that. Take him with you." The man brought a datapad to the turian, displaying the face of a scarred, rather ugly individual, even by batarian standards. "In the parking lot, a batarian by the name of Greck will be waiting for you. Make an exchange for the money, leave as soon as possible." Magnus turned from Calvus, then stopped mid-stride, looking back over his shoulder. "Afterward, you are permanently relieved of duty here."
Shocked, the turian stepped towards the man, growling, "You can't do this, Magnus. I promise you, if I leave this building with Isaac, you will see neither your son nor that money."
"Did my translator malfunction for a moment there?" Magnus asked, turning on a heel, glaring daggers at the turian. "You have worked here for ten years, Calvus, and considering your track record, you would be living in the streets if I hadn't hired you." He took a threatening step towards Calvus, muttering, "You owe me your life."
"But not my morals," Calvus spat, turning his back to the human. "I won't let you take what little I have left, Magnus."
"Morals! Hah!" The man threw back his head and laughed, crossing his arms before continuing, "How delightfully ironic that you of all people lecture me on 'morals.' Calvus, if the reason that you were dismissed from C-Sec were to reach the extranet, you would never be able to find a job again. Within seconds, I could ruin your chances at employment even out here in the Terminus systems!" A wicked grin crossed Magnus's face, and he asked, "Do you know how many people want to hire a man who would shoot his own child?"
"It was an accident!" Calvus roared, swiping a vase off of a nearby table. It clattered to the floor, shattering into several porcelain fragments. Unsatisfied, the turian swept a set of pictures off of the adjacent table, turning back to glare savagely at the human.
"I'll have one of those quarians clean that up," Magnus said with a disgruntled frown, "after I put the valuables away, you know how they are." He strode over to the door, seemingly no longer affected by the alcohol. "This is my last offer, Calvus. Tomorrow, you will bring me my money, or all of your dirty little secrets are aired out for public view."
With that, Magnus left the room, his boots clicking at the floor as he disappeared down the hall.
Calvus let out a deep breath, letting his clawed hands relax. He had very little choice, he realized. It would be no help to sit and sulk about the situation. All he could do was make the most of the situation. And make the most is exactly what he would do.
Isaac had finally settled into his bed, but he still looked up to Calvus as if expecting something. The turian cocked his head at the child, confused.
"Is there something that you'd like, Isaac?" he asked, "Something to drink?"
"I want you to tell me a story," Isaac said, sitting up in his bed and pulling his sheets down, his fingers curled up tightly into the fabric.
Calvus chuckled, seating himself on the mattress and tousling the boy's blond hair playfully. "You're twelve, not six. Aren't you a little bit too old to be asking for stories?"
"I don't want a fairy tale," Isaac protested, "I want you to tell me about your adventures. You used to be C-Sec, right? I bet you were in space at least a few times. You must have been a hero, Cal." The boy was clearly enthusiastic about the subject, and he went on, his words blurring together, "Tell me about space! About the Citadel. About the people. About your work. About—"
"Hold on, kid," Calvus laughed, "that's a lot to tell you about. Tell you what, I'm going into town for a meeting tomorrow." He felt his stomach twist into knots as he asked, "Why don't you come along? On the drive home, I'll answer all of the questions you can think up."
"That sounds good to me," Isaac said with a grin, ducking back down under the covers.
Calvus gave Isaac a reassuring smile, then picked himself off of the mattress, although on the inside he was hesitant about leaving the room. Plodding out into the hall, the turian cursed himself for taking this job in the first place.
"All situated, Isaac?" Calvus asked, the top of the skycar closing above the two of them.
"I don't know, you'd have to define 'situated' for me."
Isaac had been so excited about joining Calvus on the way to his "meeting." Even when his father made his first appearance in an entire week, the only thing the two discussed was Isaac's trip into the city. Even within the confines of a skycar, it had been years since Isaac had seen Ilium past the windows of the Limbrette home.
"So, when're you going to tell me about C-Sec, Cal?"
"Soon, Isaac, just wait until the meeting's over."
As they descended off of the Limbrette building and down into the traffic, Isaac pressed himself against the window of the skycar, murmuring to himself as he scanned over every inch of the city that he could. Calvus smiled wistfully as he kept his eyes locked on the boy, a deep pang of guilt creeping into the back of his mind. He felt his heart sink as he realized that this would likely be the last time Isaac ever would see the bright lights of a city, or rather any part of his home planet at all.
He had heard horrible stories about the batarian slavers, and his time in C-Sec had confirmed every one of those rumors. He couldn't imagine what they would do with a biotic, but there was no way Isaac would end up much happier than any other child in his situation. Calvus knew that the child could end up forced into hard labor, in a dangerous environment among ruthless alien foremen, with absolutely no one to protect him. And this was the best-case scenario.
As the skycar came to a stop at an intersection, the turian looked over to the boy and asked, "Isaac, can your omni-tool access the console back home?"
"Yep, why?" Isaac looked back up to him, his blue eyes shimmering.
"Well, I have a question, then," Calvus said. "How would you like to be up in space personally? Have some adventures of your own?"
Wide-eyed, the boy let out a light squeal of excitement, "Do you mean that, Cal? Do you have a ship?"
"I do," Calvus said with a nod, and he reminded himself that it wasn't a complete lie. The Catharsis belonged to the Limbrette family, but he knew the right people if he wanted to fudge the ownership data a little. "But we need to skip the meeting, then. Your father won't have to know we skipped it if you pull a factory reset on his console."
"That would get rid of all the stuff on it, though," Isaac said with a frown, shrinking back into his seat. "Father would be mad if he lost his files, Cal." He pulled up the screen on his omni-tool.
"But then we can't get on the ship, Isaac," Calvus said, "and your father will never even have to know we did it. Just hit the right buttons and-"
"It's already resetting," Isaac said, setting his omni-tool to his side as the display faded away, "now let's go, let's go, I wanna see your ship!"
The turian turned the skycar towards the spaceport and slammed his foot on the pedal.
Calvus felt his heart flutter inside of his chest. He had just made a mistake. A huge mistake. He was kidnapping the child of a former business magnate. This was illegal, this was wrong, but damn, did it feel good.
As he pulled into the transportation bay, he let out a long sigh. He had done the right thing. Isaac wasn't safe with him on a stolen ship, but it was better than leaving him to the slavers. If Isaac had deleted all of the files on Magnus's console, then he no longer had substantial evidence with which blackmail the turian.
"You're sure you hit the right buttons?" Calvus asked as he exited the skycar, pulling Isaac up out of it as well. The child offered him his omni-tool as proof, and the turian quickly cycled through the options until he pulled up data on the connected console. When the words "no data found" were displayed across the screen, Calvus let out a long sigh, then smiled.
"Come on, Isaac," he said, taking one of the boy's hands as he strode off towards the docking bay, "I'll show you how Ilium looks from space..."