The alleyway was dark. At this time of the night, the only source of light came only from the moon itself. Though the streetlamps were fully operational, most of the energy provided to them from the nuclear plants were usually whisked away, illegally of course, by energy users for their own private use. Many of the Einstein followers could control the flow of energy, and they exploited it thus.

I sat down on the hard and cold road, sweaty back lying against the alleyway walls. The road was damp from the rain in the afternoon, and only a slight drizzle remained.

A sharp pain on my left arm caught my attention. I looked down at the bloody gash I had gotten earlier from the assassination attempt. The slightly acidic rain had eaten into the wound and I winced at the pain. I heaved heavily, clutching over the wound to prevent the rainwater from entering it. 

Brilliant, Ciel. Your first C grade mission in 5 years, and you can still fuck it up. Just brilliant.

Yes, this was my first mission ever since I had entered the Institute. Being Unattuned, the training I had gotten was harsher, and it wasn't just because of the training difficulty.

Everyone despised me. No one would ever recognise an Unattuned as a member of the Institute. Even the instructors, who were supposed to be impartial, had treated me like some waste matter not worth spending time on except to hurl abuses or vent their frustrations on.

But life wasn't as bad as it sounds. True, while most of the Institute treated me very badly, I still had a couple of friends who were very nice to me.

The sound of fast splashes of water indicated footsteps, and my internal warning signs blared at me because I knew that those weren't footsteps coming to help me; they were the ones to take me down.

I quickly got up, ignoring the burning sensation in my arm again and looked around me. But there didn't seemed to be any useful hiding places. However, there was a large trash bin nearby, and it gave me an idea.

I pounced up lightly onto the lid of the bin, and looked up. There was actually a streetlamp directly above me, and it towered over the wall to the other side of the alleyway, and that wall was currently a dead end on my side. My insane plan was to jump up, latch onto the streetlamp with my only functional hand, and then jump over to the other side.

Any normal human being, Unattuned or not, would have challenged the audacity of my plan at that time, but as the footsteps drew nearer, I only had one choice. To do, or to die.

And I still had not fulfilled my dream of setting up a House for the Unattuned.

Closing my eyes, I recalled the various physical lessons that I had taken with my instructors. I had to squat down, letting out as much air as I could, and I channeled all the strength I could gather in my body into my feet. Think like a spring, the Hooke instructor had yelled into my face countless of times.

And with a burst, I pushed myself upwards with all the built-up energy I had stored, sucking in as much air as I could so that the air stream could function as an invisble rope that pulled me upwards.

Despair, however, soon set in when I no longer felt the peak of my velocity propelling me upwards. I had only covered about 80% of the streetlamp's height. Even with my outstretched arm, there was no way for me to latch onto the streetlamp.

Fortunately, my wits had not abandoned me and I recalled the toggle rope in my utility pouch. Whilst in mid air, I deftly brandished the rope like a whip in my hand and swung it upwards with all my might. Just as I started to fall, I closed my eyes, waiting for the impact that would soon break my spine and kill me off as I crash onto the ground.

It never came. Instead, there was a metallic clang and I could feel a tension in the rope. Without another moment to waste, I yanked myself up with my non-injured hand and I had no choice but to grab the streetlamp with my other arm and push myself up with it; the sheer force and adrenaline the only pushing factor that kept me going. Otherwise, I would have long given up with the level of pain going past unbearable thresholds.

But it wasn't over yet. I quickly swung down to the wall and landed deftly on my feet. From there, it was a simple matter of jumping to a nearby balcony and then I landed softly onto the road from there. I paused and held my back up against the wall. Moments passed, and I heard foodsteps coming from the side where I had just came from.

They stopped. My heart was beating so fast that I was so sure that they could heard it. Luckily, none of them seemed to have the ability to walk through walls or see through it. These were not Schrodinger's followers anyway.

When I heard footsteps going away, I heaved a sigh of relief and I felt my heart beat slow down to its original pace. I took my mobile phone out, and called up the Institute. They congratulated me on completing the objective and they would send over a car soon.

As soon as I heard that they were sending help, I could finally rest. With all the adrenaline gone, I let my body slump downwards against the wall behind me, slowly losing consciousness as the pain in my left arm became too overwhelming to bear...

It was already the next morning when I woke up. Though the windows were drawn, the sunlight managed to seep in through the cracks  of the walls, giving the room a gentle glow.

If sunlight could come in through the walls, then I must have been in the old medical wing, where most of the lower ranking cadets would go to if they needed medical attention.

I checked my left arm and while the pain was gone, I could still the weakness in my arm from the loss of blood earlier. Nothing the Karl Landsteiner followers could not fix though, with their craze in blood science.

There was a noise that had been constantly bugging me ever since I woke up, though familiar it was. And I turned my head to my left and found out what it was.

A girl, near my age, was furiously tapping on a transparent screen that she was holding. A wide array of visual images were appearing and disappearing with each tap of hers. I smiled when I saw how serious she looked.

'Case.' I called weakly. She did not respond.

'Case. Casey.' I repeated again.

Still no response from Planet Casey.

I shook my right hand off the blanket that was wrapped around my entire torso, and poked her. She yelped out in fright, and in her excitement, she accidentally threw her glass screen upwards. Case screamed as she jumped up and caught her device, which was fortunate, but then she crashed heavily onto the floor. I peered over the railings of my bed, and instantly regretted it. I saw her head shoot up too late, and we both collided, head-first, as we both tried to get a look of each other.

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I cursed angrily in pain as I sat back on my bed, rubbing the bruise that was slowly forming on my forehead. Casey rubbed hers as she pouted and sat back on her stool. But her excitement came back again and she jumped directly onto my bed, her glasses still askew from the fall earlier.

'Ciel! Oh my god, Ciel, you're awake! Tell me, are you hurt? Are you still bleeding? Internally or externally? You know that it's-' Casey blabbled on and on as I looked at her, a small smile creeping up my face.

Caselyn, or Case for short, was an Alan Turing follower, and naturally she was an expert when it came to computer science. She even admitted before that she felt more comfortable speaking in computer queries than in English. Though she was a computer genius, she sucked at pretty much everything else. Her ability to be a klutz was top-notch, and the number of times she had to be sent to the medical wing went up to about 2 times a week.

She pursed up her lips when she saw the expression on my face. She knew that look I always gave her when she was talking too much. She sighed, and stood up, peering deep into the display monitor on the heartrate monitor next to me. Though the display merely showed my vital signs, I knew that a Turing follower like her could see and read more.

'Machine says you're fine. Just a little thirsty and your blood sugar is running low.' She said after talking to herself. It was amazing how technology was like an open source of information for her no matter where she went. There was even one tine she alerted the management of a shopping mall nearby of an incoming cyber virus attack just by looking at an advertisement board.

I sat up and a sharp pain in my chest forced me down again. Case looked at me in concern.

'I'm fine,' I said before lying down again slowly, 'just didn't know they had also operated on my torso. Where's Jax and Valera?' I asked before Case could go into another bout of scoldings. She sighed as she took out her glass screen again and checked her messages. 

'Jax had to be deployed today. So you'll probably only see him tomorrow. He tells you to get yourself up and running soon. And if you die somehow, he'll come and electrocute you back to health, and then murder you again himself. Valera's on the way to the wing, so you'll probably see her soon.' 

Jax and Valera were also friends of mine. Jax was the senior out of our little motley gang, and he was a NIkola Tesla follower, so his scientific power was wielding electricity. His ability was top-notch as well, and many in the Institute were afraid of picking a fight with him because of his ability to literally zap people with electricity. In our world today, the scientific ability that humans wielded are divided into three main categories, which are namely Combat, Defence and Support. Jax's scientific ability was considered to be an extremely strong Combat ability, and hence he was one of the higher ranking officers in the Institute. Case's computer skills were considered to be of a Support class.

As for Valera... I only knew that she had disclosed herself as an Alfred Nobel follower, but none of us had actually witnessed her power first-hand yet. Nobel followers were extremely rare because Alfred Nobel was one of the few scientists mentioned in the First Disappearance, and their Houses were mostly disbanded or crushed a long time ago. Nobel's House was strong, owing to the fact that Nobel  himself had a lot of powers, but they had been quiet for the last decade. 

Every Attuned human being could pick up more than 1 ability, but because we were all still fresh officers (except Jax), most of us only had 1 Attuned ability at the moment. 

Well, most of us because I had no scientific ability. 

Unattuned ones like myself were considered to be the dregs of society. Because we had no ability to draw upon, we were deemed to be failures. No one had any use for us as there were many things that we could not do. Most of the Unattuned could only work as food servers or just drivers, and often we would not be paid as well. 

Well, there's still a chance that I just have not found my own power yet but... 

But somehow, even though I was just an Unattuned, somehow I had managed to pass the entrance test into the Institute 7 years ago, and nobody had told me why I was admitted. Even the instructors themselves had no clue, or they just did not wanted to tell me. Of course, with my lack of scientific power.  I was made to train double as hard, and many a time I felt that they were just brutally trying to force out a scientific power in me.

I knew myself well, and that was just going to shit. 

'Ciel. Are you imagining things again? You haven't said a word for 5 minutes.' 

I blinked, and was brought back to reality. I turned to look at Case, her affixed stare at me gave me an uneasy feeling, as though she was trying to read my thoughts. I gave her a reassuring smile and shook my head. Case looked down at her watch, and said without looking up, 'Valera's late. Probably caught up with something along the way.' 

'Says who? Dumbass.' A firm voice from my right came into the room.' Case and I both looked and Case squealed in delight, running around my bed towards the ward doors. 

A girl, with shocking pink hair that was completely shaven on her left side while whatever's left was braided, stood near the door decked in a biker jacket and jeans, her shoulders slumped onto the doorway. But she lost all her coolness the moment Case collided into her and forced her into a bear hug, which she struggled against. 

'Geroff me, you crazy lass. I'm here to see our darling boy, not you.' Laughing, Case let go of Valera and the two of them came over to my bed. Valera's expression said nothing much, but I knew she was angry inside. I punched her stomach weakly, and came into contact with her solid rock-hard abs. 

'You call that a punch, dozo? Even a baby could have hurt me more.' She replied, pulling a chair to sit down. Case went back to her original seat, and the annoying tapping sound resumed. 

'I wasn't planning on hurting you.' 

'Yeah, and you sure as hell did plan to die in that mission. What the hell were you thinking bringing metal knives onto that mission. I specifically told you to bring the carbon ones now, didn't I?'

'You did.' I replied sheepishly, 'but what would be the fun in that?'

'Fun? You brought metallic knives to assassinate a person from the Fleming House. What the hell were you thinking? Even now, I still can't fathom how you even managed to achieve the objective and come back alive.' Valera's arms were folded now, and the expression on her face was murderous. 

'I'm good, that's why.' I replied cheekily. I knew Valera wasn't really angry, but I loved to poke her when she got all flustered up like this. 

She was not amused. She sighed and her arms loosened a little. 'I know why you're doing this, and I wish you would stop it.' 

I knew what she was pointing at, but I said nothing. 

'You gotta stop trying to prove to the whole world how damn good you are. So what if you're Unattuned? It doesn't mean you have to risk your life every now and then.' Valera's words were loaded with genuine concern, but her words still pricked. The tapping sound had slowed down, and I knew Case was listening too. 

'Ciel, listen to me,' she continued, 'you're good, everyone can see that. But it's pointless to try and change what people think of you if you're gonna end up dying because of it.' 

'It's not pointless if I can do something about my birthright. And it's high time somebody does it too. I can't let them continue to look down people like us. People like me.' I didn't really wanted to pick a fight with Valera, but I wasn't about to change my ideals too. 

'So you would rather die trying to prove a point, rather than to try to stay alive, keep a good head and strive out together with us? With me, that dumb lass over there, and Jax? You would rather leave us behind?' There was an air of finality in her voice as she said that. Case had stopped typing entirely. 

I did not reply her, but she knew the answer that she had gathered from my face. Valera sighed again and stood up. She kicked the chair aside, and it slid across the floor with a loud bang. She walked out of the ward angrily. Case was mortified, and she ran out too, calling for Valera. Before she left the ward, she stopped to look back at me, and I could see the glister of tears already rolling down her cheek. She shook her head in disbelief and ran out too, calling for Valera again. 

I looked down at my bare hands, and clutched my fists tightly. I was sorry for doing that to Valera and Case, I truly was. The three of them were my only friends in the Institute and I would do anything in the world for them, but even they were not able to relate to my feelings. Valera loved all of us like how a mother would, and it pained her to see me risking my life like that just to try and change people's perceptions towards me in the Institute. 

But I had no choice. It was why I came to this Institute anyway.