Image in header: Main character of the first scene, though your imagination is always the best version.

"Verily,after every difficulty there is relief."[Qur'an, 94:1]

"Lavender's blue, dilly, dilly, Lavender's green,

When these papers are given, they won't even be seen."

The boy whispered to himself. Then he shook his head. That wasn't comforting at all.

He liked rhymes, because they had a familiar, placating rhythm that soothed him. When the words were alright.

He tried again.

"Riddle me, Riddle me, rote-tote-tote!

A decent size teen in a school blazer coat

An application form in his hand and a stone in his throat

If you guarantee his admission, he'll give you a £100 note!"

Yup, that seemed to sum it up.

Thing is, he really wanted this placement. Experience in law was just the thing he needed to cement it as his future career (not to mention it would really embellish his university applications). And it was paid! Decently too; he could really help mum out.

Standing before the prefect office (strangely enough he'd have to run it through with the Head Enrichment Prefect first, who also happened to be biggest gossip in school; what was up with that?), he took a deep breath in, and let out a long sigh. 

There was a sign on the window that said 'The Emergency Office admin is Helen Waite. If you think your paperwork must be processed immediately, go to Helen Waite'. 

He rolled his eyes.

Then he knocked on the door. Eventually, a bored, spotty kid opened it, looked first at the boy's papers and then at the boy, before holding his hand out for them.

"Placement? Trip?"

"Placement. At-at DLA Cipher, that big Law firm. Biggest in the UB." He wasn't usually a nervous kid, but now, suddenly, when his hidden dreams had been uncovered and seemed to be looked at as if nothing more than more paperwork for the office boy, he felt a fierce need to justify himself.

"I've always wanted to do law. Well, ever since that big attorney in New Zealand, Justin Strauss, sued and got the Prime Minister removed from office. Who ever stands up to the highest authority? Well, he did. And won. The law is powerful, and, and starting today, I want to be a part of that. I want to stand up for people who can't stand up for themselves." 'And help fix this awful, xenophobic mess of an archaic democracy we call New Britain.' He thought to himself. But he'd keep that bit to himself. Wouldn't do to be outspoken in this climate.

"Yeah, and I'm King George the Fifth of England. You forgot to say Your Majesty. Now beat it." The kid swiftly plucked the application form from the boy and retreating, shut the office door in a heartbeat.

Frank sighed. He walked off, hands in his pockets, whistling to the tune of 'Demons'.*

By giving in the form, he felt like he'd unloaded a huge burden behind him too.

He just hoped the weight was worth it.

Syeda's fingertips dug into the side of her head as her face held a severely pensive look.

It was no use trying to back-track an unaddressed letter; no matter what branch of the probability tree she mentally followed, all ends gave a zero probability of finding the sender. Her current technology just wasn't adequate for that kind of venture.

Syeda huffed and glanced at the sidelong mirror to her left; her usually immaculate hair was starting to enter disarray, and her eyes, with her brows knitted, looked determined but tired.

She shifted her eyes back towards her list of possibilities, and its zero positive outcomes. She knew statistics were cruel, but this was just...

Deciding it was time to switch her method of thinking, she folded her piece of paper and neatly filed it away into a newly-labelled folder: Investigation #1.

Taking a deep breath and releasing it, she squinted her eyes shut, and begun her 'meditation moment'. It was what she called a period of time when she would concentrate every mental faculty on every pattern of logic that could produce a solution. It never failed. 'Yet', a supercilious part of her mind whispered.

And so she was silent.

Silent...

Quiet...

Still...

Time passed, hours, days, months, years it seemed. She had lost track; her mental meter rule that measured time had been thrown to the winds. Time had no value now. As she sat still, eyes closed in the vast depths of space, eons could have passed. Eternity was the epithet to describe her life, her life that was now just a moment, with no past, no future. The moment felt like forever, but forever, was just for a moment.

Until.

Snap. Her eyes flicked open with the speed of a gun's draw in a showdown, and she looked at the time. It had been thirty seven minutes. Not bad. The longest she had gone was three hours and seven minutes (whilst trying to mentally use Hamiltonian equations to calculate the force on a charged particle, while she was rather young).

But yes. That would work.

It must. For if it didn't, it was back to eternity. And till she returned with an answer, there she would stay.

"If you want to know, I don't mind attending."

The addressed, Elyka, turned around in the school corridor in surprise. That voice... Was that... No. It couldn't be. Pigs were guaranteed to fly first before this happened.

"Syeda?!" Elyka squeaked in surprise. "You're talking to me?"

'Of my own free will, yes.' Syeda thought begrudgingly, as she looked at her plaintively. 'Surprise.'

"So... You actually want to come?"

Elyka suddenly coughed and straightened her features to look serious.

"I mean, I knew you would. Who wouldn't. It's an amazing opportunity." She couldn't keep off the huge grin that sprung onto her face as she said those words.

"The opening's tomorrow, so you're just in time really! Master De Courcy (otherwise known as the Bratty Son) will come to do the honours." Elyka's eyes narrowed conspiratorially. "And then I can grill him about his father's dud policies that are going to get voted out of Parliament as soon as they enter. If my online petition works, at least."

Syeda frowned. "It's hard to imagine what you could have said to get such a prominent Government Minister's son come running to open a high school club."

Elyka shrugged, her face betraying her smugness. "He, like most of these rich dudes, does a lot of 'apparent' charity work, to show all the money, eh-hem" she continued in a whisper, "doesn't just go on drugs and canape parties." She continued normally. "Sure his secretary picked up after the 12th phone call, but our school is in a deprived area, and along with that, I made a bit of a case about how his family could do with some positive publicity, after all his father's antics. Honestly, some politicians should know when to shut up."

With that, Elyka cheerily bounced away. Syeda turned her eyes heavenwards. But, she'd turn up tomorrow. Interesting to see what isanghan pyobon* of clowns would turn up to this 'cabinet' of curiousities.

Back at home, Syeda put her plan into motion. Having made a list of all the possible 'suspects': people who had been close to her father, around the time the photo was taken (soon before he disappeared, maybe a year, Syeda deduced), her search had begun. She had taken the time to look them up; who was working in the Brynnish Defence Department's Head office that year. Who its major scientists were. She'd emailed every one (their contact details sadly had to be found by infiltrating their intranet) asking if they had contacted her for any reason, and whether they'd heard from her father. Perhaps, after all, Syeda thought as she bit her lip, one of them might have heard from him, and this was their cryptic way of communicating the fact to her.

Syeda was a realist. In the past, whenever a time had come for her to rely on a choice of different outcomes, she never favoured the one she wanted. Never wished with all her heart for it to happen.

She'd once watched a very old movie called Cinderella; her father liked antiques, and had suggested it.

On watching it, the young Syeda had thought that the lies it showcased to its plebeian public were quite tragic. If you kept on believing, the wish of your heart didn't come true. It never would. Normal girls, undercover girls, hopeful girls, hopeless girls, didn't marry princes. A girl would be lucky if she ever saw one. Everyone knew Higher Uppers didn't mingle with Mids, or Lowers.

So since a young age, with a grim face and a ready heart, she accepted that the unwanted outcomes were possible, if not more or most so.

For example, she knew her mother wasn't coming back. The chance of her not returning was 82%, of her returning and then leaving again was 17.1%, and of her returning for good was 0.9%. She'd used all her known past to calculate the probabilities. And even though the degrees of freedom had a large value, indicating that her data and percentages had a wide error margin, or in other words, that the chances of her mother returning could be much higher, she never gave into what she knew was a foolish, childish hope.

She also knew that Grandma Sophie was going to die soon. For that, she didn't need any calculations. It was almost certain; feeble eighty year olds didn't often recover from their second stroke while also coping with a heart problem.

Through all this, she never held on to the 'positive' hope: truth must be accepted.

But there was one person who she was willing to forgoe this belief for, one person whose presence and essence was so desirable to her that she was willing to forget logic and reason, to be able to cling to and believe in even a small percentage of hope that he might one day step in through the front door.

For all her achievements, for all her skills and talent, her life was an empty shell without him.

After the initial depression she had fallen into on his absence, Halima had often come round to her house to speak with her, to let her know that no matter what, Allah was always there for her, to lay her trust in him. Though initially unresponsive, the thought eventually soothed Syeda; Allah had always been there for her father, or so he'd said, so perhaps if He was with her, then in a way she was closer to her father too. Perhaps He might even bring him home.

Islam was still relatively new to Syeda, who, unless impassioned with her latest academic discovery, was a quiet and distant person. It took some time for her to open up even a little and speak to other muslims on her and her father's trips to the mosque, and for it all, bit by bit, to sink, slowly, into her heart.

Halima said that people belonged to Allah, and He gave and took them away at will; they were his belongings. Syeda wondered when He would take her away from her loved ones, her aunt and family, too. There were moments, in the depths of loneliness post-disappearance, when she wanted to be taken, just like him.

Syeda understood life a lot more since then, but was still on a learning curve, still discovering. But what was always clear to her was that she wanted to be 100% committed to something that meant so much to her clearly wise father, and to cling to the religion that he adored. To that end, she took the veil, thirteen-year old Syeda carefully watching tutorials and adopting the least fashionable (meaning least frivolous, to her mind), and most practical one, simply placing it on her head and bringing the excess over her shoulder, with a few discreet pins to put her mind at ease. Her father had neither approved nor disapproved, but Syeda had always felt he was on her side.

Syeda sighed. It would be nice to remember what that felt like.

But she was on her own now, and on her own she must plough on, no matter how long, dark or lonely her journey.

Jack picked up his coat and backpack, looked in the mirror, and quickly unpacked a comb to put his hair to sorts, before preparing himself to leave.

He was going to disappear, just like his brother had three years ago. The memory cast a shadow on Jack's mind whenever he remembered.

But he wasn't going anywhere, or simply escaping. He was going to find the one, the only one, who had the answers to his family's cryptic past. The more he had read up about the De Alba family, from which he was descended, the more he had cause to worry. Apparently they were involved in severel un-sanguine ventures in the past, namely plotting against the crown and staging a few military coups in the 20th and early 21st century, so about 80 years ago. Jack knew his father revered lineage more than anything, but still spoke unflatteringly of the Higher Uppers; i.e: the landed gentry.

His father had never been the most cheerful of people, but it seemed he had gotten worse since Alexis had disappeared. He spoke unflatteringly of all things, but in the last few years, especially of the Higher Uppers (though mostly only in his presence, he noted). Jack didn't know what he had against them, but every conversation with his father decreased his estimation, and ultimately, respect for the man who had reared him.

More than anything, he didn't want to be in his power anymore. Which was why it was time to find Alexis. Whose location he of course had no idea of.

But there was one person who might. Admittedly there was no guarantee they would agree. None at all.

But there had never been any sort of guarantee in his life. Events had always occurred as if his wishes didn't exist; his brother, the only one who had given a sod about him, had left. His father made sure he was isolated from other students in breaks, and carried on having the toughest work given to him.

His life had been chosen for him. His activities designed. Every hour's work, written. So many times, like a rubber band stretched, he had wanted to break free, to leave, to throw in the towel and tell the Academy and his father that he'd had enough.

But then time would pass, his anger and subsequent bravado would subside, and the emotion he hated to admit, the fear, would overcome him again.

Most students at the Academy, including him, had been born into their role, born as the progeny of some high ranking Government Official, who wanted to make sure their role stayed in their family. Jack's dad was the Minister of Defence, having spent most of his life as an overseas general in wars and pursuits to supposedly 'advance' his country.

'Enough thought on the past' Jack told himself, doing a 360 check in his room to make sure nothing crucial was left. He was ready. He had his things, his account had enough savings (he was now glad he had decided to pass on most of those designer clothes and trainers his classmates had), and was ready to go. He even had cheesy nachos with him. Nothing like having your favourite comfort food to console you for making severely questionable decisions

He had wanted to say goodbye to a few friends, but he had suspicions that most places in the Academy were bugged, and if he disappeared, they would be the first ones asked. Knowing the faculty' 'techniques' and blackmail, it wouldn't take long for them spill. Better to keep them somewhat safe.

He had enjoyed a life of comfort and privilege here, and with his father being one of the Directors, was often given special treatment. Others revered him, and sometimes, just sometimes, he could excuse himself from any lesson and 'softly' blackmail his teachers into pretending it never happened.

But he didn't want this life anymore. His brother had always understood. He'd promised to break him out of Hell – another word for this tyrannical school, with its 5am starts, four-hour fitness drills and cruel punishments dished out at teacher's whims. Its teachings that foreigners were the enemy, that they had caused the last few wars, sounded like absolute baloney.

So it was time to go. To the one who possibly, just possibly, might be able to find his brother. Jack smiled. One person it would be nice to see again, after so long.

Isanghan Pyobon– 'Strange specimen' in Korean 

* 'Demons' is a song by Imagine Dragons (with a remix by Khalid Siddique may I add, eh-hem eh-hem listen to it eh-hem eh-hem)