Rae had been the runt. She had been born small and was ill favored among her family, and by the time she was thirteen, she was still small and ill favored. When Rae went missing, no one really noticed except for the fact that there was suddenly one less mouth to feed. A boy, the only person who seemed to pay any attention to her, seemed to be the only one that noticed that she, was in fact, not home. He searched for her, but she was not found. When he contacted her family to question her whereabouts, he got no response.

He had later gone back to work late at night to inform his boss, the great Leader, that she was missing and that she must be found. This disappearance must have had something to do with the Scarlet Hand, but nothing could be proved. The Leader had agreed to look for her, but after this night, she had not been mentioned again.
After this, the boy had never thought of her in the several years that she had been missing, however. Not until today. He had been called to the Leaders office. Supposedly, it was something important, why else would the Leader talk to him?

This could be about Rae, he thought. The boy walked along a hallway on a high floor in the Headquarters in a daze. The floor to ceiling windows were on either side of him, with cold metal lining their edges. The golden moonlight and sheen of the deep lilac sky shimmered through to him. He could see the glowing city lights, and they reminded him of her. She loved the city lights at night. This girl could stare at the twinkling skyline for hours, just listening and seeing and thinking. He thought of her questions now. They were ones like ‘When no one sees you suffering, you do you really suffer? Much like, when a tree falls in the forest and nobody's around to hear it, does it really make a sound?’ No, he hadn't thought so.

She would not come out of his mind tonight, the boy realized listening to his feet as they made a steady rhythm along the hardwood floor. He focused on his face so that it showed no emotion, no evidence of what he was thinking. He almost smiled at the memory of her - but that's all she was now. A memory.

The boy looked up, realizing that had reached his destination now. A thick wooden door guarded by two army men lay in front of him. He had started to pull an identification slip from his pocket, but the two just waved him on to go inside. They shouldn’t be so easy to let me in, considering this is is our Leader, he thought this to himself before taking a deep breath before knocking on the door and pushing it open.

The white haired man sat in front of a desk. Windows surrounded him, letting in a better view of lively city in than from the hallway. He could see the whole skyline from here. She would love this. Now is not the time for her, he thinks to himself. The boy straightened his already straight suit and ran a hand through his slicked back hair. The boy looked at the man. The old man looked up at the boy.

“Sit.” The man said this simply, his eyes flicking over the boy. The boy did as he was told, sitting in the tan leather chair that was pointed to. Then, the old man stated simply what he wanted to be heard. “A group was found.” The boy squints, surprised that the Leader is sharing this information with him. “It seems they are being tested; to see how much they can take. How far they can go,” he pauses. “It seems as if the girl we wanted to capture is in this group.”

The boy now slowly lifted his head to look directly at the Leader. Shadow covered the boys face, but so did surprise. She had been found. I was right. A sliver of long white blonde hair falls into the boy's eyes, but he doesn't seem to notice. A group had been found, she had. The girl, Rae. It was time to kick-start the effects.
The danger of the girl. The danger of her thoughts, her questioning; it needed to be ended.  It was going to be ended.

“When would you like it to happen, sir?” The boy asks.

“Now,” is all the boy gets before being dismissed by a flick of a hand from the room.