The Files

“Ugh, no, why’d she do that?” I groaned as I watched young Madi rip the bar off the jungle gym. She was clearly angry, and, of course, it was at Jenny who had just called her a nervous freak. I didn’t blame her really; Jenny always was infuriating.

The thing was, I also knew that Madi knew better than to use her super strength in public. The constant watching to make sure she didn’t exhibit publicly was what had made her such a nervous child. Many people these days had superpowers, but public use of them had gradually died out after people began being captured by the government. Most of those people were never seen or heard from again, so the superpower community had learned to only exhibit in private settings, if even then, or in the direst emergencies. Knowing all this, here Madi was, exhibiting in public due to an outburst of anger. I knew she’d been warned against this; I’d seen her parents warn her countless times.

And I couldn’t do anything about it. I had to sit and watch. And I could count the seconds between each event and tell you what would happen next. Jenny stared at her in horror and cried, drawing the attention of every adult within earshot. 67 seconds. As the police were called. 8 minutes and 42 seconds. As the police arrived. 1 minute 37 seconds. As the police took young Madi away from that small playground, marking the point from which her life seemed to have spun out of control. And fully knowing every event that would follow also down to the second, I was powerless to stop them. How did I know all that would happen if I was only just now seeing the event? Well, it wasn’t the first time, because I am Madi. I’ve just grown up. I’ve already lived that event and every moment after. I’d only now returned to this event now to study it and ensure it never happened to another power-ridden child again. They should be allowed to use their powers, right?

So, using the time-traveling powers of my best friend, Lila, I was going back to the key parts of our lives before and after our time in the government facility. We had eventually escaped the facility and found our own apartment where no one could find us again. I returned to that day I was taken from the playground by policemen and the day she was kidnapped from her home by women in dark masks, and I tried everything I could to figure out how they’d found us. It seemed they found me through my own uncontrolled burst of anger. They had found her due to an accident when she was a teenager, and then they forced her to transport them back in time so they could capture her when she was younger. Both incidents involved a young girl named Jenny who was around to witness the event. Or in my case provoke the incident.

I studied the day they first tested us, hooked to large machines. I went back and re-lived the first time they killed a friend for refusing to use his powers. I watched as they forced us to use our powers again and again. Yet, I could never change what had happened. But I did find the answers I was looking for. It just wasn’t really in the way I was expecting. And they didn’t end up being the answers I thought they would be.

One day, while I was sneaking around the facility sometime back in my childhood, I found a room full of files. In the files were documentation of every child who had powers. Further reading revealed that all children were tested for powers at birth, but the results were kept a secret from everyone but the parents and the people who worked at this facility.

The files oddly even indicated whether the child was hidden, retrieved, or captured—whatever that meant. It probably had something to do with whether they’d stolen us from our parents or not. I was feeling both extremely successful and terribly confused, with those feelings increasing every moment. Even worse, I became unaware of the noise I was making and time as it was passing.

I jumped when the door opened. A tall woman in a clean uniform with a nametag that read “Jenny” smiled at me unsettlingly. I knew I was lost, and I tried to go back to my own time immediately before she could say anything. But something stopped me.

“Trying to get out?” she asked calmly. “Unfortunately for you, Madi, this room is specifically built to not let you get out until you’ve heard what I have to say. Also, yes, I know your name. I also know everything you’ve been doing. But maybe we’ll talk about that later.” Ignoring my shocked face, she continued. “My name is Jenny, and we have met before in other time-periods and in other places. You just didn’t know about it at the time. I know you think I’m against you and every other person with powers, but, I swear, I’m not. I’m actually here to protect you.

“After the Remakers started targeting power children, I helped found this facility to protect you and others like you. The Remakers have wanted to genetically reproduce your powers ever since their efforts with the Watelrey children failed. Most often, they take the power children and then operate on them; the children often die which is why they never return home. Ever since the first few incidents were uncovered, we’ve been keeping tabs on the uncaptured children, the hidden ones, only bringing them to the facility when they made their powers publicly known. They become the retrieved ones. We are still trying to retrieve the captured ones from the Remakers, because sometimes we don’t get to the exposed children fast enough. But, after the children are retrieved, they never leave the facility, and they can’t leave until the threat of the Remakers is eliminated entirely.”

I just sat and listened to her talk, my head reeling with information, trying to decide what to believe. I could only come up with one question. “How did Lila and I get out then?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice even.

“We let you out to test your field resilience. To see how long it would take you to figure this all out. You see, you’ve both always wanted to protect the others like you from us, but we need your help to protect them from the Remakers. To save those who have already been taken. I guess you could say it was a test,” she laughed. “We always had our eyes on you. Nothing would have happened.” She quickly returned to serious face, she informed me that whether I chose to believe her or not, I would soon be returning to my own time beside Lila in our apartment. She told me that I would end up listening to the directions that would follow, or that I would be taken back into the facility for my own safety. As soon as she finished speaking, I found myself back at home.

Before I could even open my mouth to tell Lila what had just happened, I heard a knock at the door. I opened it casually only to be greeted by Jenny, this time in street clothes. She winked ominously as she handed each of us a closed enveloped, simply saying, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”