The Madrona Heroes Register: Echoes of the Past (30 page)

Cassie smiled a little despite herself
and slowly walked towards the table.

“
That’s it dear. Just have
a seat. Now tell me, how have you been feeling lately?”

§

“
ALARM WILL SOUND!” Binny
read the warning several times. It was a security door and not a
fire alarm so she didn’t feel too bad. At least she wouldn’t be
distracting the fire department from an actual fire. But still, she
was more scared than she’d ever been.

Binny didn’t believe in breaking
rules. They existed for a reason. It made her uncomfortable when
other people broke them. But to break the rules herself? This
wasn’t sneaking a cookie after bed, or staying up late talking at a
slumber party. Binny was breaking adult rules. Maybe even
committing a crime.

But wasn’t conducting secretive
experiments on pregnant women and their children a crime as well?
Binny didn’t really know. But she did know that at that very
moment, her baby sister was doing her best not to reveal her super
power to that thin woman. Binny could only imagine the satisfaction
that lady would feel if she got to experiment on Cassie and find
out what made her tick.

That image was all Binny needed to
spring into action. She gave the emergency door a sharp shove and
the alarm started to blare.

§

“
That’s the signal!” Penny
and Zach exclaimed in unison.

“
She wasn’t kidding about
us ‘knowing it’ when it happened.” Penny joked.

“
No, she wasn’t. And it’s
pretty smart, because any security guards around here will now be
heading over to where the alarm is going off while we hunt for the
records.”

“
She’s the
distraction.”

“
Yeah. She’s the
distraction.” Zach confirmed with a look of concern.

“
You’re worried about
her.” Penny put her hand on Zach’s shoulder. She tried to console
him, “Don’t worry. She’s pretty good at this whole leading a
superhero team thing.”

“
Yeah. I suppose she is.”
Zach agreed. “But don’t tell her I said that. We wouldn’t want her
head to get too big. Then she’ll be impossible!”

On the count of three, Zach and Penny
swung the ladder into several glass panes at the base of the dome,
making enough space for them to fit through comfortably. The
tinkling of the broken glass could barely be heard over the droning
of the alarm Binny had set off in the distance.

§

“
What the hell is going on
here?” Jay stood bolt upright, marching towards Grater with Julie
and Huitre in tow, demanding answers. The head of security already
had his hand out as if to keep Jay from getting too close. Grater’s
other hand pulled at the communication device on his shoulder – it
appeared to be some combination phone and a
walkie-talkie.

“
We’ve got security doors
lighting up in the walkway between Epaphus and Dionysus.” A voice
crackled over the walkie-talkie.

“
What visual are you
getting from the cameras. I need to know now!” Grater barked into
the device.

“
We’re working on it,
sir.” Came the response.

“
I’ll ask again. What is
going on here?” Jay demanded.

Grater tore himself away from his
walkie-talkie. “I assure you it’s probably just an alarm
malfunction. Please sir, folks, just give me a moment to talk to my
people.” Grater stepped into the hallway and closed the door firmly
in the faces of the Jordans and Huitre. “I’m waiting!” He snapped
at the person on the other end.

“
Sir, it looks like – ”
the speaker paused.

“
Yesss?” Grater demanded
trying to keep his voice from being heard through the
door.

“
It looks like a little
girl just ran into Dionysus through the skybridge.”

§

“
Oh, now what?!” Despite
the relative isolation of the interview room, the sirens
interrupted Dr. Trace’s questioning of Cassie. “Gore, would you
like to tell me what is going on?” she demanded of the head of
security into her cell phone.

Dr. Trace tried to give Cassie a
reassuring smile as she listened to the guard’s explanation over
the handset. But the smile came out more like a grimace. As such it
didn’t do much to reassure the already nervous seven-year-old
sitting across the table.

“
Where else would I be?”
she barked into the phone incredulously. “If it’s a malfunction,
then just turn it off and let the repair people deal with it
tomorrow.” Dr. Trace paused as the voice on the other end tried to
respond. “My job is to collect information. I do my job best when I
have no distractions. YOUR job is to ensure that I have no
distractions. Please do your job, Mr. Grater so that I can do
mine.” And with that she hung up.

Dr. Trace returned her laser-like
attention to the curly headed little girl in front of her, and said
in her best approximation of a sweet voice, “Now where were we,
dear?”

§

Gore Grater, head of physical security
for Luce Laboratories had just lied. Probably. And while Dr. Trace
wasn’t his direct boss, she was not someone you wanted to get on
your bad side.

Grater was used to running a very
tight ship. His security men – and they were all men – followed
orders. Exactly. Or they no longer worked for him. People did as
they were told. But these children had caused him problems. Not
just once, but twice today. What were the chances that the very
same children who’d trespassed earlier in the day were the ones
that Dr. Trace had called in to be examined after hours?

Grater had long ago stopped
questioning some of the coincidences he’d seen at Luce
Laboratories. He’d never actually been in the military, but he
thought he had a pretty good idea of what it felt like. And at Luce
Laboratories he was a loyal soldier. But loyal soldier or not, he
did not enjoy being the target of one of Dr. Trace’s withering
criticisms. If what the guard watching the cameras said was true –
that a little girl had crossed into the Dionysus building over the
skybridge – withering criticism from Dr. Trace would be just the
beginning of his pain.

More importantly, how was it even
possible that someone had opened the doors on the skybridge? It
wasn’t. That little girl was locked up in one of the exam rooms
under the personal supervision of one of his men. It wasn’t like
there were multiple little girls running around the campus late at
night. Therefore, it must be a malfunction. Grater hit the button
on his phone to speak with Barrios for confirmation.

“
This is Barrios. What’s
going on sir?”

“
Never mind that for a
moment. The two older kids are in their exam rooms,
correct?”

“
They were a few minutes
ago. I’ve been making the rounds in the outer hallway.”

“
You don’t have eyes on
them now?”

“
I’ll go do that right now
sir.”

Grater was shaking his head in
disgust. A pit had started to form in his stomach.

Ten seconds later Barrios’ voice
crackled over the walkie-talkie. “Sir?”

“
Yessss.” Grater
hissed.

“
They’re gone.”

23

“
What?!?” Grater stopped
himself from screaming in the nick of time, remembering that the
children’s parents were still huddled on the other side of the
door. He repeated himself, only slightly more calmly, “What did you
say?”

“
I don’t understand. The
doors were locked from the outside. There’s no way they could have
gotten out. I don’t know where they could have gone.” Barrios’
voice was strained and more than a little nervous.

Grater responded through
gritted teeth, “
I
do.”

§

As best as Binny could tell in the dim
lighting, the Dionysus building was like a big spiral waterslide. A
ramp led from the bottom all the way to the top of the building,
with a huge empty space in the middle. It looked like it was used
as some combination of art gallery and auditorium space. The
skybridge deposited Binny somewhere between the second and third
floors of the building, leaving her with only two real choices – up
or down. It looked like there were more floors above than below, so
‘up’ seemed like the choice to make.

Binny wasn’t sure how long it would
take for Penny and Zach to find what they were looking for. She
would need to keep the guards busy for as long as she could without
getting caught. She tried not to think about the fact that every
minute it took was a minute where Cassie had to keep her composure
with that awful woman.

Binny broke into a run, circling
inside the building on the ascending ramp. Periodically there would
be small stretches where the floor flattened out for a bit, but in
general she was going up. After three loops, Binny still hadn’t
gotten to the top. She didn’t think anyone was in the building, but
she hugged the outer wall to keep from being seen from below just
in case.

Finally the ramp opened into a
sweeping balcony that looked down over the auditorium space several
floors below. What looked like fancy art hung on the walls. Wooden
benches where you could sit and look at the paintings and
photographs were placed here and there. Binny continued on her
trajectory to the very end of the balcony, trying to collect her
thoughts. She had thought she would lead the guards on a wild goose
chase. In reality, she had walked right into a dead end.

§

“
NOW can you tell us
what’s happening?” If Jay’s eyebrows had been raised any further
they would have crawled over his scalp and onto the back of his
head.

“
It looks like there’s
been some kind of a malfunction in the door alarms in the next
building, sir.” That was the second time he’d told that lie in the
span of a couple of minutes, Grater noted silently to
himself.

“
So this has nothing to do
with my children?” Julie asked, her voice betraying the worry she
felt.

“
No ma’am. Dr. Trace is
interviewing one of them right now.” Well, at least that was true,
Grater thought to himself. “My men and I are going to go
investigate. I’m sure it will only take a few minutes. Please stay
here.”

Jay, Julie, and Dr. Huitre watched as
the guard took off at a trot towards the stairs. He was muttering
into his walkie-talkie as he went. And just like that, the three of
them were alone.

§

Zach pulled the folded up papers with
Cassie’s coloring from his pocket. “You see this symbol here that’s
on each of the pages?”

Penny nodded.

“
It’s like a bar code that
represents a particular clinical study. They use scanners on their
phones to find the matching symbol. We don’t have their scanner, so
we’ve got to manually find the matching one on the file cabinets.
We’ll do it systematically.” Zach pushed the pages into Penny’s
hands.

“
Wait, don’t you need a
copy?”

Zach smiled. “I memorized
it.”

“
This?” Penny pointed to
the symbol, her eyes wide. “It’s so complicated. All these little
squares. They all look the same.” Penny held up the page to the
nearest file cabinet label.

“
Don’t you see? There are
small differences. Look closely.” Zach traced his finger across the
two symbols showing Penny the parts where they differed.

“
And you can see that in
your head?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Okaaaaaay.” Penny was
stunned.

“
You do this row. I’ll
start the next one over. We’ve got to hurry. The more time we take,
the bigger chance there is that Binny will get caught or that
Cassie will show these people what she can really do.”

§

“
So you’re feeling just
fine? Nothing strange happening to you.”

“
Uh-huh.” Cassie responded
to Dr. Trace’s repeated question.

“
But I heard that you can
do something.”

“
Huh?”

“
Something special.” Dr.
Trace leaned in towards her patient. She meant it to be reassuring
and intimate, trying to put Cassie at ease.