The Parrs looked around cautiously. They didn't want to loiter in the halls in plain sight because sooner or later someone who had seen the morning newspaper might notice them and call the police. They couldn't just run away now that their mother and father were being treated here. There was a new half of the building under construction, but they couldn't hide there now because it was full of construction workers.
"We need someplace quiet and out-of-the-way," said Violet.
"Biblio!" said Jack-Jack, which meant "Look at that sign over there!"
Violet and Dash looked and saw a sign pointing down a flight of stairs, "This way to the Library of Records."
"That seems perfect," said Violet. "Maybe we could hide there and pretend to be doing research for school."
"Unless the librarian has read the paper," said Dash.
"Jancit," said Jack-Jack, which meant "We'll have to take that risk."
The Hemoglobin Hospital was a large and confusing place, but the Library of Records was easy to find. They just kept going down the stairs until they reached the basement.
They knocked on the door of the Library of Records, and it was almost immediately opened by an odd little old lady. She wore a tiny pair of spectacles with pea-sized lenses she had to squint through to look at them.
"My eyesight isn't what it used to be," said the woman. "You appear to be three children. You must be the volunteers I asked Babs to send me this morning."
Dash thought fast. He knew from the intercom announcement that Babs had retired, and she probably hadn't passed on the message to her successor Mattathias.
"Yes," he said. "We're volunteers and Babs asked us to help you... umm... what do you need help with again?"
"I need assistance with filing records," said the woman. "My eyesight isn't what it used to be. My insurance company, Insuricare, was supposed to give me full coverage for eye treatments but now they won't. I wish that nice young man who helped me was still there."
"What was his name?" asked Violet curiously. Her father had worked at that company until a couple of months ago.
"You wouldn't know him. His name was Bob Parr. He had to pretend not to be helpful in order to keep his job, but he gave me directions to get form WS2475. I guess he was too helpful, because he doesn't work there any more and now they say I haven't filled out the form correctly."
"I'm sorry to hear that," said Violet. She decided to ask her father if there was some way he could help with more inside information.
"But enough about my troubles. I'm Halley Hogenson, and I've worked here in the Library of Records for more years than I'd like to count. And you?"
"We're Volunteers Fighting Disease, so we don't use names," said Dash quickly. "Just call us brother, sister, and, um, little brother." It would be easier than giving fake names and having to remember them.
"The most important task in Hemoglobin Hospital is taking care of the paperwork," said Halley. "That's what you'll be helping me do."
She led the way through a small room with a bowl of fruit. "This is the antechamber. Feel free to eat some fruit if you get hungry during the day."
The next room was huge, low-ceilinged, and full of filing cabinets.
"We have historical information about everything, not just from Hemoglobin Hospital but from the whole area. Authorities drop information down a chute, and I file it."
"You must know an awful lot from reading all that," said Dash.
"Oh, I never read it. I just scan enough to decide on a keyword to file it under. For example, a while ago I received a file of snippets of information about supers and their secret weaknesses. I could have filed it under 'W' for weaknesses, or 'V' for vulnerabilities, or maybe 'S' for Snippet File."
"How would people ever find it again?" asked Violet.
"The authorities are coming tomorrow to get that file to use against the supervillains who are running loose," said Halley. "I'll just use this bunch of keys to unlock all the cabinets for the words it could be under until they find it."
She led them to the chute, which had a stack of papers under it already.
"I have been getting behind since I can't see well. I need one of you to take off the paper clips and put them in this bin, one of you to scan the papers and find keywords, and a third to help me open cabinets I've lost the keys for."
"Yo!" said Jack-Jack. He could morph his fingers to fit any lock.
They spent all morning helping Halley file. At the noon lunch break, Violet asked Dash to run up and ask their father about the insurance form.
After a fruit lunch they pretended to find a new note in the chute. "Mrs. Halley, this is information about how to fill in form WS2475 for Insuricare. You need to fill in parts A, C, and D, but not part B. How should we file it?"
"I'll take care of that one myself and file it under 'W'," said Halley, but they saw her stick it into her pocket instead, and they smiled.
Late in the day, just as they were going to close up, Violet whispered to Dash, "We need to get those keys and come back here tonight. I want to get that file on supers' weaknesses before the authorities use it against us."
"Halley will know if the keys are gone," said Dash.
"Not if we replace them with something," Violet said. "Jack-Jack, you've been handling locks and forming keys all day. Do you think you could mash bunches of paper clips into fake keys? Using real keys tonight will be faster than you having to morph keys."
"Greeble!" said Jack-Jack, which meant "No sweat!"
Things that are easy to do can be done without sweating, so this phrase here means, "It'll be very easy." In this case Jack-Jack was right.
Holding a few paper clips at a time in his hands, Jack-Jack morphed his hands into metal locks. The clips were crushed together into the form of fake keys. The Incredibles slid the keys onto a loop of twine that had come in around a bundle of papers.
"Good night, Halley," Violet said to the librarian. "We'll come back and help you again tomorrow."
As Violet shook her hand, Dash replaced the ring of keys on Halley's belt with the fake one, working at super-speed so she didn't notice a thing.
"Where to we go from here?" said Dash.
"We'll hide in the new half of of the building that's under construction," said Violet. "The workers will have gone home by now. Then, when things are quiet, we'll sneak down to the library and get into the files."
"Glomph!" said Jack-Jack, which meant "It'll be a piece of cake."
Cake is normally good and easy to eat, so this phrase here means "It'll be very easy." But cake is not always easy. I once encountered a piece of birthday cake that was poisoned and had a dynamite bomb inside. I'm afraid their mission was going to prove to be more like that piece of cake.