Image Above: The trio meet, though our hijabi is still a hijabi and is sat down. Appearance and behaviour (apart from girl) is correct (le squee). 

Jack held his red-silver blade in his hands while he sat in his rented apartment (courtesy of Air-Pro BnB), and pondered. Everything he now owned was still packed up in his hiking style bag.

He had a problem; he didn't have a garden. Not something most teenage boys lost sleep over, but he literally was; it was 12:11am now. And he hadn't sorted out a training space.

The best soldiers were paranoid (he was told), which was why, as a soldier-in-training, he'd already checked his whole new accommodation for any cameras or recording devices, aiming his astrapy around as it scanned the premises. Luckily, nothing.

"Slifer... I don't know if I'll ever find him." He whispered quietly.

There was a long silence. But then came what he was waiting for.

"Alexis is untraceable, but so was Odysseus's home after the Trojan war, Jack." came a warm, comforting male voice, probably around his dad's age. "Worry not. We will find him. Syeda will help you."

"Her name is Sarah." he growled.

"Officially, her certificate names her as Sarah Syeda Sukie Jo-" Along with the audio, Slifer started to project a photo of her birth certificate, before Jack hurriedly stopped him.

"Uh, I don't need her life story! She wouldn't be happy if she thought I was stalking her. Plus, she'll find out." Jack looked fearfully sideways at Slifer. "You know she's a crazy hacker too, probably keeps tabs on her docs."

"Why do you fear her, Jack?" Slifer asked interestedly.

"I'm not scared of her," Jack replied uncomfortably, rubbing his neck with one hand. "I'm just scared of... offending or disrespecting her in any way. Syeda's more proud than my dad (and that's saying something), if I breach her trust in any way," Jack looked at Slifer, than back at the carpeted floor.

"I know she'd never forgive me." He said quietly.

'And then I'll really have no one left.' he thought quietly, eyes staring up at the roof, that he wished was the night sky instead. One day soon, as soon as he'd got his own place, he'd have the roof painted to look like a sky full of stars, or just have it as glass so he could see the real night sky. He hated feeling trapped. 

He'd always wondered what it was like to feel free. Completely free. That's why he'd left, wasn't it?

When he was a kid, Jack used to pretend, and even wish sometimes, that he was a wolf or tiger of some sort, that lived its life in a lush green forest where the air smelt of dew and sunshine, of nectar and pollen, of exotic mammals, reptiles, even insects, of a world where the four colours were mainly yellow, brown, blue, and green. With not a care in the world about pressuring fathers, absent brothers (even when Alexis had been still been around, he'd be studying at university most of the time), without mothers who mysteriously were never there and no one told you why.

Of course, The Wolf was indeed what his fellow Stealth Soldiers now (had) called him, while they'd all worn their depressingly dead-blue Defence issue uniforms, living in their managed prison –eh-hem – Institute.

But a wolf was free. None of them had been. The name now sounded like a taunt.

Maybe soon he'd leave it all behind, and go live on a mountain peak in Afghanistan or Nepal. He'd always wanted to see the Himalayas. He'd finally turn eighteen in two weeks as well.

So it was set. He'd do it. Right after Alexis was found, he'd leave Brynnland, a land full of nothing but stress and sorrows for him, and live his dreams. Maybe Alexis would then come with him.

'But do I ever want a family?', he'd sometimes ask himself. Did he want to spend his life with someone? But he was his father's son, with his father's blood thick in him; if he had a family, how did he know he wouldn't simply re-enact his current one, and have children he'd only make miserable and want to escape him? A wife who'd only leave, like his mother had his father.

He was his father's son.

And anyway, who'd want to stay with him, he thought glumly.

And there was the matter of their family's dastardly reputation.

But for now, to stop himself falling into a depressing abyss it was hard to crawl out of, he just answered his question by telling himself he wasn't sure.

Slifer was silent all the while. Jack smiled; his astra always knew when he needed time to think.

"I need to train, Slifer. I need to find a good spot soon." He looked down at the silver-scarlet blade in his hands, the one friend he would always have. "To win against father's forces, I have to be strong."

He smiled up at the mirror in front of him. "I'll become a better swordsman than even uncle Haziq. One day I'll even win the King's Championships Duels more times in a row than he has! But first-

He looked down at his weapon again and gripped it tightly. "To find a place to train." 

∞

'This text, this message...' Syeda rapidly pondered.

She could trace the number, if the phone was still on and the sim was still in use, but she severely doubted the sender was that easy to catch out.

And it wasn't like she had a StingRay tracking device (that cost the same as her house) at her disposal like the police. Nor would it be of much use; she was confident the sender would have got rid of their sim if not their phone by now.

Freaking stalkers...

Her phone started ringing suddenly, and cast a floating hologram of Jack's name and a grinning Jack to accompany it.

She looked at the hologram, brow contorted. Jack? She'd call him back later.

But it could be important. Indecisive, Syeda chose to take the safer option.

She picked up.

"Hey Sarah, how's it going? Wanna meet up and discuss facts that'll help us find a starting point? I was gonna call you in the daytime but figured you were still at school. Guess who grew up and graduated? M-" He was cut off by Syeda.

"Is it okay if I bring someone along? I've employed an aid." Syeda interrupted swiftly.

'An aid?', thought Jack curiously, suspicion lacing his thoughts. Sarah was the most cynical and un-trusting person he'd met; the fact that she'd involved someone in a search that would reveal quite intimate facts meant that they really must be a best buddy of hers.

Sarah had a best buddy? He knew for a fact that Sarah would rather run for Dumbest Person of the Year than have a best buddy. She'd always called her playmates 'acquaintances', even him.

'Ah well. She's certainly replaced me.' Jack thought morosely, but he was happy to accept the fact. They had been missing from each others lives for a gazillion years after all. And Sarah wasn't known for getting attached either. They'd once cut open a stuffed bunny for an experiment, that Jack had later learned Sarah's mother had given her when she was three, and from Sarah's reaction you wouldn't have known it'd belonged to her.

"Oh well." Mused Jack. "You've found people to trust huh. Can't wait to meet 'em."

He could almost hear Sarah's eye-roll on the other side, and he grinned. She then told him the meeting time and location, and he memorised it in a heartbeat, ready to input into his electric motorbike's GPS system.

If there was one thing he was good at, it was not forgetting things. Especially those he wanted to remember.

That was why he came back, after all.

∞

"So." Syeda announced to the boys sat in her gathering. "I got a text recently, from a number I've tried to track, but to no avail."

They'd been thinking about meeting in a library ('They' meant Syeda, to Syeda), but Francis had quite wanted a café , and Jack just ate that stuff up, so in the end, majority ruled (as Frank proudly reminded her). They now had a group chat called 'Task A' (that Jack and Frank were both individually planning to rename when Syeda was asleep).

So in the end, it was two against one, and the café had prevailed over the library. 'Capitalism over Socialism' Syeda had grumbled to herself as she'd entered the plush, pastel-pink instagrammable monstrosity and waited at a table. Fifteen minutes early of course, to get her thoughts and meeting plan all aligned.

Syeda and Jack had agreed that the first meeting would discuss her father. Jack had mentioned that since Dr Johansson could probably help find Alex De Alba, he was happy to emphasise on helping Syeda find her father first.

At the moment most of the leads he'd followed for finding his brother had lead to a dead end; Syeda's father was the only one left to help him.

And so Syeda waited. Frank arrived three minutes before, and was content to read a classic while they waited for Jack in companionable silence. Much earlier than expected (Jack wasn't known for punctuality; must've been hungry), an electric motorbike's vooshing sound stopped and parked outside the café, and a smiling Jack entered. Then they began.

And got to this moment.

"Well I'm not a techy so I wouldn't know about tracking." Francis responded serenely, shrugging his shoulders with a carelessly cheerful smile. He turned to Jack. "Yourself?"

"Uhh, yeah, not my expertise." Jack replied, who was leaning as far backwards as his pushed-back chair would allow him (contrasting to Frank who was leaning significantly forward to hear every word with clarity, eyes piercing).

Syeda continued unperturbed. "It said, 'He is with me'. He, I obviously suspect, is my father."

"What if 'He' is just... no one? What if someone's pulling your leg, calling your bluff? Messing with you, cause they read in the papers that you're papa's missing?"

Syeda would've known, even if the voice was disguised and the boy (man? She was pretty sure he was eighteen now) in front of her was hidden, that it could only be Frank who spoke. Frank, the unrelenting, universal cynic. The eternal doubter. Of all things, it seemed, from past experience.

But that was why she had him here, she mused. Doubters are powerful people, because they make you root out your every mistake. Every misjudgement. Genuine, good-willed doubters, anyway.

And that was what she had. If he succeeded as a lawyer (when, actually), she'd hire him.

"Yes, it could be anyone. But I believe that, since I've received this recently too," she placed the photo of her father she'd received on the first day of this mystery onto the table; Francis and Jack both peered at it closely, Jack picking it up and Frank looking over his shoulder. "I have reason to think they do mean him." she finished.

"When was this photo taken?" Frank queried.

Syeda was silent. "... Probably a few years before he disappeared. Maybe a year before. It has been around five years, so my memory is a bit hazy." She thought aloud, for the first time sounding unsure.

"How could you forget what your own dad looked like?" Jack interrupted, some lettuce falling from his mouth as he chewed on his sandwich. "My brother went missing like three years ago, but I remember what he looked like in 2074, 2075, 2076 and 2077. It's 2080 now. I remember him the day before he disappeared, the shirt he was wearing, and the day before that, even the cap he wore." He informed them.

He continued more quietly. "I remember how the cap felt. Even his smell."

Everyone was quiet.

Syeda, mostly because she was annoyed.

"No one cares, Jack. People are different. Some people remember, some don't. You've always had a permanent, photographic memory (we never got to complete our genealogy test to see where you'd inherited it from, did we?). You don't need to flex about it."

Jack spluttered a reply, as Frank watched interestedly. Syeda's words might have sounded harsh, but she scolded him in much like a big-sister way. And she seemed comfortable doing it. As if used to it.

He was still somewhat amazed at the fact that so far, Syeda had said more than he'd ever heard her say in his life.

She continued. "Anyway. The photo looked like one of my father's official ones, so it could easily have been got off his employers if the Suspect knows people." She looked closely at her audience of two. "I've deduced that there is a high likelihood, 81%, that They work in the government, like papa did."

She was silent for a few moments as she allowed that fact to rest in all their minds. Even the waitress was listening. Syeda gave her a dirty look and she scurried off to the other end of the café.

"The boy who sent the photo said he received this as a reward." Syeda placed the pink-gold bracelet on the table, and the boys eyed it as well, Jack returning his gaze to the photo while Frank emitted a "May I?" before receiving approval and picking the bracelet up, fingering the crystals lightly, mental cogs whirring.

"I've deduced that the bracelet is of a style typical to the small Malaysian island of Tiki-Pu, which gained its independence a few decades ago, in 2053." She narrowed her eyes at the boys, and was silent for a while, until Jack began to think she was waiting for either of them to say something. He opened his mouth-

"The island sells knick-knacks to many places. But this bracelet? It's only exported to one place." She narrowed her eyes. "To a small market fair. In Llandudno."

"Llandudno?" Jack sputtered. "Where the hell's that?"

"North Wales." Frank responded quietly.

"So..." Jack mused, thoughtfully. "You think your dad could be there?" He leaned forward.

"No." Syeda responded resolutely. "It's too obvious. But the location itself is a clue. I think there's something about it that I ought to know... something that will solve this, or give us our next hint." She absentmindedly rubbed her forehead in worried thought.

"Maybe you just need some time?" Frank suggested, leaning back a little himself, fingers interlaced, looking at her with a calmness that seemed unperturbed by anything he'd heard.

"I do too... To finish this." Jack butted in, taking a large bite of his sandwich and chewing cheerfully."Y'all should eat."

"I ate prior." Frank smiled.

"I've eaten, plus, everything here's an inefficient use of resources. Honestly, what here isn't overpriced and excessively sugary or salty." Syeda retorted annoyedly.

'She's one of those.' Frank mused, grinning widely. Jack met his eyes and gave him a look that said 'this-is-what-I-have-to-go-through'.

A nearby waitress in pigtails (same as before) gave Syeda a dirty look before taking out her ire on a close by a table, scrubbing it harder than any table deserved.

'Look what you did' Jack mouthed, but Syeda was already half out the door. 'When did she pack her things?' he thought. Wait, Frank had followed!

"Guys wait!" Jack stuffed his sandwich back into its container and, picking up his coat and bag in both arms, raced after them. "I can't eat in the library!" 

"And by the way guys, I actually have something really important to tell you!"

Frank and Syeda were a bit far ahead now, but they slowed down a little and turned to look behind them on hearing Jack's racket (Well, Frank did).

Jack continued sprinting behind them, au luggage (and somehow caught up). "You guys need to listen!"

He beamed at both of them, both rows of teeth visible. "A few days ago I was ringing a buncha places, doing all this paperwork, asking a mate or two to pretend to be my parents, and guess what!

"I've joined your school!"

He held up both his hands (in his great ignorance) for a high five. 

A/S:

RATTATTATTA - You're in the ghetto! If you don't let me know your thoughts! :D 

... I actually hate that meme. Why am I saying it. :(