The Edge

Arian: Part Four

He had a whole speech prepared, and he was absolutely going to drop it once they were inside the ship. But, of course, something had to go wrong before they'd even boarded. In a weirdly fortunate twist of events, though, it had nothing to do with Arian.

"If you're looking to take off..." said one of the station attendants.

"Oh, what now?" Adoette groaned.

"There's a storm coming through. You won't be getting anywhere any time soon."

"This place has storms?!"

"Yeah, that threw me off guard, too." The station attendant shrugged. "It shouldn't last too long, but it won't be safe to fly until it blows over."

Considering their luck, it would probably last longer than usual. Arian should've been as distressed as the others were, but instead, he felt thrilled. Excellent! Time to hide in my room and research obsessively. Having real evidence could give his argument some weight. Thanks for the weird save, God.

Arian tried his hardest not to let his relief/excitement show as he followed everyone else onto the ship. The piece of paper in his pocket suddenly felt a lot heavier and more important.

Now, to casually make my exit.

That was easier than anticipated. Helen immediately stalked off, saying something about checking the radar as she went. The others hovered awkwardly, but not for long. "I'm going to...look into the leads on the other planets," Matteo said. "See if I can find anything."

"Yeah, I'll help," Adoette said with a sigh. "Stupid moon storms..."

The others dispersed slowly after that, giving Arian the chance to grab a few bags of chips and an energy drink and run off to his room. No one asked him what he was doing; it seemed like they were all wrapped up in their own problems.

Fine by me. Makes my life a lot easier.

Once in his room, he connected to the local net and went to the forum. He had to make an account to view or post, which was pretty annoying, but he knew a thing or two about making burner accounts at this point. It looked like a pretty standard forum, the kind of thing any random could throw together in their spare time with the right hosting service. Not too many members were active, though that could've been because they were in the middle of a work day. He went looking for Cassandra's profile once he was in: truthseeker53. It wasn't too hard to find, and while he couldn't confirm it was her, the alias used—Athena—was one she used a lot online, and the writing style of her posts was pretty familiar.

She'd made her last post two weeks ago, to the day. On the plus side, he felt better knowing none of their previous delays had put them behind too much. On the other hand, knowing they were comparatively close kinda hurt. If she'd only started bilocating into Helen's room sooner...

Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Focus, Arian.

As he scanned through her posts, two things stuck out. One: She was really intent on finding this radio station. Two: It was impossible to tell if she had. She asked a lot of questions, revealed nothing about her own discoveries, and then vanished one day. Annoying.

Maybe the juicy details had been discussed privately? He noticed a few people she spoke to frequently. Arian private messaged them each the same thing: This is out of the blue, but I'm truthseeker53's brother. She might've called me Hermes. No one in our family has heard of her for a while and we're worried about her. Do you know where she's gone? Alistair Black sent me here, BTW. I don't know his user name, but I assume he's legit.