The Edge

Adoette: Part Six

They left the ship nice and early so they could arrive at Solo Industries' local office as soon as the place opened. They ended up getting there five minutes early. It was nice in theory, but in practice, Arian started getting bored and antsy within a minute of inactivity. "So, when do we get to do the sneaking?" he asked.

He was, of course, immediately shushed by the entire family. "Not yet. Give it a minute," Matteo said. "I'm going with, for the record. If you think I'm just letting you wander around unaccompanied..."

"I'm going, too," Adoette threw in. "Y'all know I don't handle being given the runaround well." No one could argue with that. They'd all seen what happened when she was. Going full-tilt entitled housewife didn't make her feel good, but it just happened. "Besides, I'm sure there's some way I can be useful."

Mostly because she could get them past key card readers but she wasn't going to say that aloud. Especially not when she wasn't 100% sure they'd need that particular talent of hers.

"Fine. Just stay out of trouble," Helen said.

"You got it, Mom." The comment flew out of Adoette's mouth without her thinking. She regretted it almost immediately. She called Helen mom all the time, had since they were kids, but now that mom was actually gone... "Sorry," she added sheepishly.

Helen shook her head. "Don't worry about it." Before Adoette had time to tell if she meant it, someone came to the door and opened it. "Hi, is there someone we can speak to about - ?"

"Do you have an appointment?" the worker asked.

"...ah, no?"

The worker pointed to one of the desks—not the one directly in front of the door, but on eoff to the side. "You'll want to go over there. But good luck, everyone is pretty much slammed for the day."

That boded well.

Still, everyone kept their cool. The main group went to the front desk while Adoette, Matteo, and Arian wandered off under the guise of "trying to find a bathroom." Fortunately, an opportunity to snoop presented itself fairly quickly.

Potential Hire Tour Starts Here.

"...Damn, what prayer did Tola say to get that to happen?" Arian asked.

"No idea, but I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth." Adoette started walking briskly towards the sign. "Come on. Just act natural."

Good news: the ragtag group that joined them at the sign wasn't entirely dressed in business casual. There were just as many people dressed in casual-casual clothes as well. Granted, most of those people looked like they were only there because they half-heartedly needed a job and figured this was as good a place as any, but it still gave them some cover.

"As soon as we find a good place to duck out, we do it," Adoette signed to the boys. They nodded in agreement. "Or maybe we'll get lucky and get to talk to employees."

She was mostly throwing that out there in the hopes that God might throw them another bone. She wasn't usually so...was superstitious the right word? Maybe not. She wasn't usually so casual about dropping hints to God, but she figured it couldn't hurt. And as it turned out...

"...we also have a selection of our engineers here today to answer any questions you might have..."

Oh, aces. Guess Tola isn't the only one with a direct line to heaven. Thanks, God! Arian couldn't resist glancing back at the boys and raising her eyebrows. Matteo looked taken aback, but he was rolling with it. Arian, meanwhile, was visibly already plotting what he was going to ask. He had even changed his face, causing her to perceive him as someone with an appearance roughly between hers and Matteo's. Appearance aside, hopefully he wouldn't draw too much attention to himself or to their group. Arian could be good at being sneaky—except when he was overconfident. Overconfident Arian was really, really bad at being sneaky.