Some investors favored a revised transaction.
Others believed Jade Passage should remain independent and seek capital from a different source.
There was no immediate answer.
Wei Tan insisted on a fair process.
Grace Chen pressed for detailed operational planning.
The employee-benefit trust's representatives sought clarity about obligations and future funding.
And Nia, through the stewardship process, required that any proposed treatment of the protected technology be evaluated on its actual terms.
She didn't reject every possibility simply because Victor had behaved badly.
The company wasn't one man.
Its workers needed jobs.
Its customers needed dependable services.
And its investors were entitled to honest information about the options available.
The next proposal had to be judged on what it actually did.
Not on whether its negotiators were charming, arrogant, young, old, rich, or poor.
That was the principle Lorraine would have recognized.
Months of negotiations followed.
Asterion's revised proposal reduced its planned control over the original monitoring technology and created a framework for continued licensing under agreed conditions.
Separate provisions addressed employee benefits, technical support, and service obligations.
Independent reviewers examined whether the arrangements met the relevant governance requirements.
Jade Passage's board also considered competing financing alternatives.
In the end, the company did not complete the original two-billion-dollar acquisition as Victor envisioned it.
Instead, it pursued a more limited capital and commercial partnership while retaining independent control over the protected technology.
The resulting structure was less dramatic than a giant takeover.
It didn't produce the enormous licensing gains Victor had projected.
But it allowed Jade Passage to fund necessary upgrades while preserving the core obligations that mattered to its founders.
The stewardship representatives evaluated the revised terms through the required process.
Nia participated with independent advice and proper documentation.
She asked difficult questions.
Sometimes she disagreed with the company.
Sometimes the company's engineers persuaded her that a proposed change was reasonable.
She learned that protecting a legacy didn't mean refusing every compromise.
It meant understanding which commitments were essential and which arrangements could change without betraying them.
After a long review, the necessary approvals were completed for a structure that satisfied the relevant requirements.
No forged waiver was needed.
And nobody had to pretend Lorraine signed a document from her hospital bed.
The new arrangement brought another kind of change to Nia's life.
The independent governance process had taken almost two years from the time she first began examining Lorraine's papers. During that period, she learned far more about corporate law, fiduciary duties, document preservation, and financial modeling than she ever expected.
She also learned how exhausting prolonged uncertainty could become.