The Edge

Adoette: Part Seven

"How do you know you can trust this guy?" Helen asked.

"I don't. But y'know, that's life." Adoette had expected this line of questioning. She didn't disagree with the suspicion, and she wasn't thrilled about any of this, either. But it was a solid potential lead, and at this point they couldn't afford to let it go to waste. "That's why we're bringing Gideon."

Helen still didn't look convinced. "I think you overestimate how much he's actually capable of."

"And I think you underestimate it. He'll be going up against a bunch of nerds. Most of them won't be able to fight back. Even the ones that could won't be able to 1v1 him." Adoette kept staring at her clothes. Having a put-together look made a good impression—the kind of impression she needed to make at a meet up like this. She'd decided to go for pastel purples and yellows this time. She'd been wearing too much pink lately. "Hey, can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"How was Cassandra acting before she left?"

Helen didn't reply immediately. There was something heavy about the pause, and not just a thoughtful kind of heaviness. It almost felt like the pause that preceded a lie.

Weird; Adoette didn't remember Helen being so weird and secretive before. Maybe she was remembering things through rose-colored glasses, or maybe Helen had just been better had hiding it back when the stakes weren't so high.

"What do you mean, specifically?" Helen asked finally.

"The guy I ran into suggested maybe she'd gone star crazy. I figured you'd know better than anyone."

"That's not an official diagnosis."

"That's what I told him."

"And I don't know how I feel about taking a diagnosis from a complete stranger."

"Usually I'd completely agree with you, but he does kind of have a point? She's going out to the deepest reaches of space, without us, for no conceivable reason." Adoette finally looked away from her outfit and at her sister. "I can't think of any reason she'd want to go out that way. Unless you know something I don't?"

"...no. I can't think of anything, either."

Okay, that was a lie, or at least not the full truth. Even Helen's newfound sneakiness couldn't mask that. She'd been on the ship the whole time. She must've known something. Should I be accusatory? Let her know all this secrecy is really getting to me? She thought about it, but she didn't want to be confrontational. Especially when they were going to be hanging out that night. This was already going to be a weird situation. She didn't want the cloud of a full-tilt argument hanging over them.

"So, maybe she was star crazy?" Adoette tried instead. "Again, I know, not a real diagnosis, but it's a thing that happens. We probably shouldn't keep it off the table."

"You're right." Helen rubbed her eyes. "I hadn't noticed, but she could've been keeping it from me? She's never minded long trips...and then there were those dreams she had back in the day."

"The ones that might've been her projecting?" Cassandra talked a lot about them when they were younger. She'd stopped as everyone got older. Adoette had always assumed she stopped having them, or maybe had gotten bored of them. "Do you think that has something to do with it?"

"It might? I don't know. I wish I remembered more of them."

That wasn't a casual, aw, beans, it sure would be nice if I could remember this fact, but oh well way of saying it. Helen seemed genuinely mad at herself for not remembering, as if it were a personal failing. "If it makes you feel any better, I don't really remember, either," Adoette said, trying to comfort her sister without being too obvious about it. "Just that it all seemed kind of weird and implausible. She could always only project so far, and definitely not out into the void of space. Can she even go to places she hasn't seen?"

"I don't think so. She's only ever gone places she's seen or near someone she knew. Then again...we don't really know how any of this works, do we?"

That was true. Science couldn't fully explain how Adoette's brain held all the information it did, and she had the simplest abilities of all of them. Who the hell knew if the rules they thought governed anyone's abilities applied, let along for abilities as crazy as Cassandra's?

"So, let's just...assume it wasn't all a dream and she was able to go out there somehow," Adoette said. "Maybe one night she saw something and she's trying to find it again? Are you sure you don't have any of her diaries?"

"I looked. I dug through her entire room, but I think she got rid of the older ones and took her most recent ones with her. I can keep looking, but I don't know all her hiding places, so it could take a while."

"...huh."

Helen smiled bitterly. "Just because we're twins doesn't mean we share everything. We had some secrets." The smile faded. "I just wish we didn't have so many."

There she went again. "It's not your fault." Adoette turned back to the outfit, trying to make the conversation a touch less intense. Giving her sister so much of her attention had one benefit: it gave her slightly fresher eyes on the outfit. Yeah, I think this will do. "It's really not, okay? There's eight of us. We split responsibility equally for stuff like this."

Helen didn't reply, but the silence was its own reply. It said, I don't believe that and you can't convince me otherwise. As much as Adoette wanted to argue that—and she really did—she knew she wouldn't get anywhere. Trying would just bring her back to the I don't want things to be weird when we have to spend a lot of time together tonight conundrum, so she decided to shut up about it.

"Just give me a second to get changed and I'll be ready to go, okay? Though we shouldn't leave too soon. Stuff like this doesn't go down until after dark and I don't want to look too eager by showing up early."

"You're the expert." Helen had a slightly judgey tone when she said that, but she left it at that. She probably recognized that Adoette's knowledge of the Weird Hacker Underground might be saving their bacon right now, and also that the Weird Hacker Underground was the least sketchy thing anyone in their family was involved in. Arian still reigned supreme in terms of weirdest and sketchiest associates, though Tola and Gideon were a fair close second. "I'll let the others know."

Helen left Adoette to put on her outfit and consider if she wanted to do anything special with her makeup. Really, she was worried about other things—lots of other things. But pretending that her look was the biggest worry in her life right now helped take her mind off things.

Kind of. A little bit.

For now.