Silas is the head of communications of the Las Vegas Pirates, the team Vinny plays for, and he also happens to be Vinny’s best friend since they were in matching cribs. They had a bit of a hiccup for a few years, but they’re better than ever now that they’re official.
I find Austin staring down at his phone in the front living room of the house where he always is, and less than two minutes later we’re headed downtown.
I’m back to checking the comments on my last post, and I can see that people are just laughing and generally confused, so I decide that I’ve done enough for today.
Two messages come in at the same time then.
Lex, letting me know he’s home, and one from Kraken13, asking for a call.
I chat quickly with Lex, and he agrees to catch up later tonight, and then I look up at Austin.
“Gonna make a call,” I tell him. It’s our signal for “please remember you can never ever share what I say with anyone in the whole wide world,” and though his eyes narrow for a moment in the rearview mirror, he nods.
So I call Kraken13 for the first time.
“Hey, Angelwings66,” he says significantly. My handle always sounds weird when people actually say it out loud.
Only Dad, Baron Alton—our lawyer—Lex, a few higher-ups of the FBI and CIA, and Carla, my head programmer, know I’m Angelwings66, and they very rarely say it out loud because of... reasons.
Kraken13 obviously doesn’t know I’m alsoEli Ellsworth, but I do know his legal name and have already sent him instructions on how to make sure no one else finds out.
“Hey, Kraken.” I don’t bother with the number and I hope he does the same for me.
“So, I know you’re probably going to say no, but I gotta ask. I have no clue what strings Eian had to pull to get you to help me out, but I’m hoping you can come take a look at my setup if you’re in—in the area.”
I smile, finding his way of keeping his location a secret adorable, even though it’s a good practice to have.
“I don’t have anything strictly against going to see you,” I tell him honestly. “But I’m going to need to discuss it with Eian.” And my father, but I’m not gonna tellhimthat.
“Great. Thanks for even considering it. I just think it’d be more productive than me trying to get a good video for you to check it out.”
I know why he’s saying that, but he doesn’t know I know he’s in a wheelchair, so I simply hum in vague agreement.
“I’ll let you know soon. I gotta get to work now.”
We sign off and then I’m on the move, checking in with Carla and everyone else at ECS, making sure everything’s ready for Rachel’s visit in two hours.
Austin brings us all food at noon, and the day passes relatively uneventfully after.
After a tour and a semi-detailed explanation of my firewall and the way we protect clients’ servers, Rachel understands why we do things the way we do, and she seems impressed with our systems. We decide on scheduling data dumps more often—a compromise we’re both happy with—and after she leaves I let the team know I got a tip about us getting two more big clients.
“I’ll have a meeting with them on Monday, to figure out if they’re a good fit, but I wanted to discuss it with all of you first.”
“You know we’ve got the capacity for twenty clients the size of our current five,” Dario, our engineer, tells me with a careless shrug. Carla, Colin our other programmer, and Franco our sales guy, all nod in agreement.
“And we’ve been very cautious with expanding, but doing it one or two at a time would mean more stable growth,” Stella, our CFO, adds with a calm, competent smile. “We can handle two more clients no problem, Eli, don’t worry.”
“I never thought you guys couldn’t handle it, I promise.”
“We know,” Colin says, and it makes me stupidly happy when he rolls his eyes at me.
I don’t know how far ECS will get in the future, but I hope we never lose this family feel that has the employee who’s technically at the bottom of the chain giving the CEO attitude.
“You’re busy with the development of the everyday firewall,” he continues. “We’ve got things covered here.” He nods once.
I look at Stella, who is more CEO than me these days since I’ve been working so hard on developing something the general public can use which we’re hoping to launch in two years.
“If you need more people, you know we can hire more, right?”
