The Madrona Heroes Register: Echoes of the Past

Chapter 22 - The Alarming Signal

The sun had mostly set on this already very long summer day. It was still too light to see any stars, but easy to get lost if you didn’t know the way. Zach knew where he was going. He hoped that Penny did as well. She didn’t have his memory. While not immediately visible from the building they’d been in, the records room with its big glass dome seemed like it would be pretty recognizable. Though maybe less so without the summer sun making it sparkle.

Zach didn’t know how many more security guards might be patrolling the campus, and he didn’t intend to find out. At least not through a firsthand encounter anyway.

Zach wasn’t used to taking orders from his younger sister. And to her credit, they didn’t really feel like orders. They were more like plans that she was crazy certain of and wanted them to fulfill together. But if Zach was being honest with himself, he wasn’t used to doing much of anything with Binny other than fighting. These last few days had been quite different than their standard routine.

Zach could remember every fight between him and his sister for the past year, but he couldn’t remember ever feeling so at ease with her. He wasn’t sure exactly what had changed. Was it his parents finally coming clean that they were splitting up? He shuddered at the knowledge that he’d held onto for so long, always hoping that he was wrong. Was it the danger to their baby sister Cassie? Maybe they had no choice but to get closer so they could work together to keep her safe. 

He realized that it was telling Binny that he had a super power that had made him feel the closest to her. For the longest time he’d thought that maybe there was something wrong with him. He’d read all about people with eidetic, photographic, and even autobiographical memories. But somehow, his abilities seemed to transcend them all. And he’d been afraid to tell anyone what he could do.

Not so much out of fear that he’d be the one being poked and prodded and end up with a bunch of tubes sticking out of him – though that probably was in the back of his mind. It was more that Zach was just kind of private. Zach had friends at school. But he never felt the urge to tell a single one of them about his power. Binny was the only person in a position to understand how he was really feeling. Zach supposed Cassie might be able to understand, too, but she was still on “planet Cassie”, according to Zach’s father. “She’ll grow out of it eventually – I hope,” he would usually add.

For now though, Zach needed to focus his full attention on finding Penny and avoiding any security guards that might get in the way of their plan. 

§

Lucky for me, Binny thought to herself, whoever designed this place loved hallways. Binny had slowly found her way to the second floor of the building with the interview/exam rooms, all the while avoiding the guards as well as her parents. The radar that was now built into Binny’s head was proving quite useful. It turned out that the bigger clumps of color were closer and the smaller ones were further away. As long as she kept a regular check on that screen in her mind, she had a pretty good shot at staying undiscovered.

Eventually Binny found her target – the suspended walkway that connected the Epaphus building to the circular one next door. The sign on the wall referred to the building next door as “Dionysus”. Hopefully Penny and Zach could find the building labeled “Minos” among all these oddly named buildings. Somewhere in that maze of file cabinets filled with records was the truth about what they had injected into her mother. Binny was sure of it.

The suspended walkway between the buildings had doors at either end. Both had warning signs. They read “After Hours Emergency Exit. ALARM WILL SOUND!” Binny let herself smile just a little. She had found what she was looking for. 

§

Zach’s route to the records room was punctuated by a series of starts and stops. He would run to a relatively secluded spot, survey the area before him, and then run to the next hiding place. At one point he thought he saw a flashlight off in the distance, but otherwise he hadn’t encountered a soul. Zach took off at a run to the final spot around the side of the Minos building where he, Binny, and Penny had been earlier in the day. He looked over his shoulder as he reached his destination to make sure nobody was watching him from behind.