Author's note: (This may or may not be a long one, we'll see)

This is a new story that I've had the idea floating around in my head for a while now so I decided to start it now during the summer seeing as I have loads of free time now. (I'll still be updating The Best Of You and Innocent Illusions, don't worry - they're my main priorities) It's kind of a mixture of ideas I got from Finding Sky/Finding Carter/Throne of Glass, but I haven't put it in a crossover category because it only has F.S. characters in it, plus original characters.

This is just the prologue to set the world and stuff, but I'd still appreciate follows/favourites/reviews because I'm not sure whether or not it's a good enough idea to continue so let me know whether or not you'd like me to! Obviously I'll only continue if people are actually interested in reading it. I can't promise when I'll update because TBOY and II are my main priorities like I said, but with it being the holidays I have quite a lot of time to write because I have no life :)))

Obviously I don't own the Finding Sky characters, nor any similarities in this and Finding Carter/Throne of Glass. But I own my original characters, which you'll meet soon, yay! And the photo isn't mine either, I got it from google image search.

Oh and last thing: It is a story about the Benedict family! All will be revealed soon, although if you've seen Finding Carter you might be able to guess where I'm going to go with it. Also, it is no way connected to any of my other stories.

So yeah, let me know what you think and whether you're interested in me continuing it! The style of it is very different to my usual style so I'm a little unsure at the moment :)

Striker

It's been ten years since world war three ended. I was only two when it started; seven when it ended. Officially ended, anyway. In my opinion the world is still at war, just maybe not at such a great scale as it had been.

Although I was only young when the great war went down, I know enough about my history to know what happened. What happened was this: a Savant, some mentally unstable man that authorities never revealed the name of, revealed the existence of Savants to the rest of the world, to the ordinary humans.

We call the ordinary humans Standards now. As in, they're just standard, normal humans without any powers that come from the genetic anomaly found in Savants.

The Standards went crazy when they found out about us. They felt threatened, probably jealous too that they had no powers, and all the important people decided that Savants could not be allowed to exist in this world any longer. We were just far too dangerous in their eyes. So they hunted us down. And those that they found, they executed. Mass executions all over the world, people killed just for being different, just for being the way that they were born. Standards got hurt along the way of course, due to Savants simply trying to protect themselves. It was just death, death, death everywhere you looked.

That was when people started taking matters into their own hands, ignoring the demands of the Standard government and the Savant net telling them to stay out of it. Savants hunted and killed Standards; Standards hunted and killed Savants. People were killed just walking down the street, houses burned to the ground in broad daylight. It was worldwide pandemonium.

The sane people went into hiding, in abandoned buildings, underground, anywhere they could get to. But those sane people were far and few between. So many people got caught up in the idea that their world could be destroyed because of the announced existence of Savants.

Nobody was really surprised when the government and the net declared that Standards and Savants were officially at war with one another. The third world war had begun and it was just as terrible as the first two, if not more so. There was nowhere that was safe.

After about a year or two, a lot of the world was a wreck. Savant powers had caused destruction, both sides had used bombs and explosives, and people were living rough like scavenges. Safe houses were built, both sides protected by their military members. I remember hearing that the whole of New York belonged to Savants and any Standards that tried to enter were killed on sight.

There were uncountable losses on both sides, billions of deaths.

The war lasted for five years before the net and the government finally came into agreement about a peace treaty. Civilization started to be rebuilt, but it's a different world now. The Savants and the Standards are living together again, but it isn't the same as it was before the war. At schools and workplaces, the two kinds are segregated and kept apart. It is frowned upon for the two to socialize at all – this is the government's and the net's way of trying to stop further conflict, by just keeping us apart entirely.

All Savants have to be registered in a worldwide database accessible to anybody. All they have to do is go to their local library or visit a website online, and they get a list of Savant names. Apparently it's safer that way because then Standards get to know if there are any Savants living near them that may possibly be a danger to them. But even that isn't enough for the Standards to 'feel safe'. All Savants now have to have their registration number branded onto our wrists as if we're farm animals. It's disgraceful.

Has the world moved on from the war, even now, ten years after it ended? Hell no. The majority of both kinds are bitter about the peace treaty. They don't want peace; they don't want equality or segregation. They want a mass genocide. They want their human kind to be the only one left on Earth.

There is still plenty of conflict around the world. There are still fights and illegal murders occurring, still hate crimes and destruction of property. There's still death everywhere.

I contribute to that death. It's my job, a job that's technically illegal although the government and the net pretend not to know about it. They only punish us if we're caught, which is justifiable. It's a well known fact amongst us that if we get caught, it's our own fault and we have to get ourselves out of the mess. It's a good system most of the time.

Then again, can you really have any kind of a system amongst heartless assassins? Our group is fairly civilized, somewhat controlled by our leader Medea, but we aren't perfect that's for sure. Most of us don't have families, don't let ourselves get too attached to people – it's never clever getting attached in this line of work. None of us are even called by our real names – most of us, including me, don't even know our real name – and are named after what we're good at. For example, they call me Striker because I am ruthless and have never hesitated, not once in my entire life, to strike at somebody and deliver a blow or inflict an injury on them that will kill them. A lot of the time I even enjoy striking out at people.

Like I said, Medea leads us assassins well. But she can't stop our true nature from coming out from time to time. Nobody can. We fight, we always put ourselves first, and we'll take on each other's jobs if it means getting more money for ourselves.

And even now, years after the war, when we should be united and work together and not the let the world get the best of us again, the thing we do most to other members of the Assassin's Guild?

We betray each other.

Even those we might be considerably close to.

Even those who would never see our betrayal coming.