Chapter 1
The man knew all about savants.
He knew they were evil. They were born from the devil. They would result in the end of the human race – non-savant humans, anyway. No doubt they would eventually destroy each other too.
For centuries now, his people had been attempting to rid the world of the evil that was savants, but it was hard considering they were just ordinary humans and had no powers like the devil's children did. His people had lost their own along the way, but those lost people were worthy sacrifices – dying for the cause was a dream for them all, second only to actually winning this damn war.
Twenty-two years ago their leader had died, and much to the man's delight he himself had been elected as the new leader.
With him in charge, he decided that things were going to change. He was going to take measures his predecessors had never even considered. He would make his organization stronger than ever.
After a long wait, things were finally coming together and he was ready.
Ready to take things further.
Ready to send his men out.
Ready to save the world.
Ready to destroy the savant race.
The world could be a very disconcerting place for people like Scarlett Thorne. She could quite clearly see groups of people pass her by, talking and laughing with each other, could see food trays being slammed onto the top of the pile, could see the cafeteria staff shouting over the noise of the students as they took orders.
She could see all of this happening. But she couldn't hear it.
To be honest, she wasn't quite sure if what she imagined the world's sounds being like were what it all actually did sound like.
When she was alone at busy times like these, she often felt quite isolated. She had been deaf her whole life, she didn't know any different, so isolation was a feeling she was used to, especially at school. She couldn't interact with her peers like she wanted to, with the exception of a small few. Her classmates didn't know her language, couldn't understand her. It was easier on them if they just ignored her as much as they could.
She knew that things could be worse. Plenty of deaf children had to go to specialized schools for the deaf, to avoid being bullied and to get an education that was good for them. Scarlett knew that she had it easy in this sense – she was never outright bullied and she had a few good friends in her life that took the isolated feeling away, and classes were never difficult for her because she always had a learner support by her side to be her interpretor. A woman named Julie was with her twice a week, and a young man named Lucien three times a week.
She liked Julie and Lucien. Julie had been working with her since she was seven, Lucien had started working with her last year. Both understood that although she often needed their help understanding the teacher, she still wanted to remain independent and they were glad that they gave her this freedom. Scarlett insisted on being without them during breaks and lunchtime, and they had gone along with it.
Still though, looking around the cafeteria and seeing all these people taking their hearing for granted… it did make her wish that she was a hearing person, even if it was only for a day. It was like an enigma to her, she just wished to know what it felt like to be able to hear all the clutter of a school cafeteria.
The days she thought like this, feeling sorry for herself, she called her 'bad days'. She didn't want to mope around like this. The truth was, she was happy with her life. She had family and friends that loved her, and being deaf was a part of who she was. Most days it didn't bother her, but on her bad days it did. But everybody had bad days no matter what their situation was, right?
Taking another bite of her home-made BLT sandwich, Scarlett finally spotted one of her friends. Her best friend. Zed Benedict. He was slowly making his way across the room and towards their usual table that she was sat at, but it was taking him a while because of all the people stopping him for a conversation. Zed was very popular at school and fit in with a lot of the different cliques: the sports group, the band geeks, and the bikers were just the main ones that he got along with. He was even in with the science geeks, but that was mainly because his older brother Yves was one of them.
And of course, Zed's good looks certainly contributed to him being so well-liked. With his tall, lean build, his light brown skin, and that gorgeous thick dark hair, he stood out in a crowd that was for sure. But boy did he know it.
Scarlett made an attempt to smooth down her unruly, short, chestnut-coloured hair as Zed took the seat across from her with a relaxed smile on his face. Her hair was cut short to her head but was thick and frizzy, so there was still plenty of it there. Giving up on the impossible task of controlling it, she smiled back at her friend.
"Sorry I'm late." Zed spoke out loud, knowing that Scarlett was a genius at reading lips, a talent she'd had to master over the years so that she could get by in the world. However Zed also knew that she had to concentrate to read lips and it could be tiring for her to do it all, so his hands spoke for him too using American Sign Language. ASL made life so much easier for Scarlett; it made it so that she could actually have a conversation with somebody. "Ash needed me to look at his bike."
"Is he ditching again?" Scarlett signed, referring to Zed's other best friend who was hardly ever at school these days.
Zed nodded. "Is that a surprise really? I don't blame him though, this place is a shit-hole."
Scarlett rolled her eyes. It was only recently that Zed had stopped cutting class himself, and that was only because his parents threatened to send him away to boarding school if he didn't get himself sorted out. Changing the subject, she started to sign a question to him but stopped halfway through when she realised he wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention to her.
Instead, he was looking over at Mia Wilson, the queen bitch of the school. She was twirling her bleach blonde hair around a finger and flashing Zed a flirty smile. Their eyes were locked across the room to each other, and Scarlett's heart sank at the sight of it. Zed and Mia had briefly dated two years ago, briefly meaning it lasted for eight months but in Zed's own words was never serious. Why would he ever be interested in Mia again? Mia had slept with practically all the attractive guys at school, plus she was a total cow to literally everybody.
The answer to that question was pretty obvious: Mia was hot. Scarlett may have been Zed's best friend, but she seriously hated his morals when it came to choosing a girl.
Angry at losing his attention, she banged on the table until he broke eye contact with Mia and turned in his seat to face Scarlett again. "I said," she signed, "that my brother's back next week and mom's throwing a party for him. Will you come?"
Zed, who had still been checking Mia out out of the corner of his eye, nodded distractedly. "Sure," he replied. "Look, I'll see you in Maths later, okay?" Without even glancing at his friend again, he pushed his chair back and strode towards Mia. He left his lunch on the table, untouched.
Scarlett ate the rest of her lunch alone, repeatedly glancing over at Zed and Mia, seeing them flirt. Mia had her hands all over Zed, as if making a point to all the other girls that Zed was hers and always would be.
Scarlett knew that wasn't the case. When they were thirteen, Zed had confided in her about what he and his family were: savants. He'd told her that they were just like ordinary people, except they had powers and had their own secret little world. They even had their own authorities, the savant net.
He'd also told her about soulfinders. All savants had a soulmate, conceived around the same time as them. Their perfect match. Some never met their soulfinder seeing as they could be anywhere in the world, but those that did… well they lived happily ever after, basically. Zed had told her that when he found his soulfinder, he just knew that he would never look at another girl again.
Watching him with Mia, Scarlett hated herself for how it made her feel. It's just a stupid crush, she told herself. It's not like you're in love with him or anything.
She was lying to herself and bloody well knew it too.
She just wished that she was telling herself the truth. She didn't want to be in love with her best friend, a guy who had never thought of her in that way and never would. God, if it hurt her seeing him with girls like Mia what would it feel like when his soulfinder came along?
Pathetic. She was being pathetic. These thoughts were another thing to blame her bad day for. She always disliked girls who just sulked about boys all the time, yet here she was doing just that. What a hypocrite.
Annoyed at herself, she left the cafeteria, trying to resist but not being able to stop herself from looking back and seeing if Zed had noticed she'd left. It wasn't the first time she'd walked away while he was chatting some girl up, and every time she looked back. She wished that for just once, he would be watching her leave, showing that he was thinking about her. Notice me.
He never did.
Aaron Benedict was only in Wrickenridge, Colorado for the week. At twenty-five years old, he had a stable job as an accountant and had a nice apartment in New York. This wasn't his first time in Wrickenridge however, he had visited on numerous occasions and made sure to come by at least for a weekend every month to visit his uncle Saul and his wife, plus their seven sons.
In fact he'd only planned on staying for the weekend this time too but had extended his time here after remembering his cousin's twenty-seventh birthday was coming up. He still had no idea what to get Trace, but he doubted that his cousin would even care because of the state he was currently in.
Aaron was staying in his cousin Victor's apartment, the two of them being pretty close seeing as they were the same age and had grown up around each other, and as he left the apartment on Tuesday morning he was in a good mood. The sun was shining, reflecting his cheeriness, and he smiled at strangers as he passed them.
He was happy with his life. He was single and waiting for the right man to come along – who would ideally be his soulfinder, but he knew not to set his hopes on that too much – and his family wholeheartedly accepted him for who he was. He had a job he loved, a dog that he doted on, his first niece or nephew on the way. He didn't have any complaints about life, really.
As Aaron stepped around a child's bike that had been left on the path, he thought he heard a low moan that sounded like somebody crying for help. Looking around in alarm, Aaron didn't see anyone else on the street and at first thought he must have been imagining it until he heard it again.
It was coming from the alleyway across the street so Aaron quickly hurried over to it. He wasn't the kind of person to ignore something like that.
The alleyway was small and had a large garbage bin crammed into it. The stench was horrific, smelling of rotten food and God knows what else.
"Hello?" he called out, stepping over a lone ragged shoe. "Is anyone here?"
"Help..." the call was soft and pained, a man's voice.
Squeezing his body between the wall and the garbage bin, Aaron found a man slumped to the floor. His hand was clutching at his stomach and his dark eyes were looking up at Aaron. "Please help," he gasped. "Please... He hurt me... It hurts so much..." He looked down, not meeting Aaron's gaze again.
Crouching down, Aaron reached a hand out to hold the man's shoulder. He was concerned obviously, and wanted to help him however he could. With his other hand, he pulled his cell out of his pocket so he could call 911. Before dialling he asked the man, "what happened to you? Where are you hurt?" When there was no response, he asked another question in a gentle tone, hoping that he could get past the man's pain so he could help him. "Can you tell me your name?"
"It… It doesn't matter. My name doesn't matter." The man looked up, a smile on his face. Aaron registered that the man's voice was no longer stilted. Instead, it was confident and bold. No stammer to it at all. And the man wasn't holding himself in pain anymore.
Aaron's breathing became heavier as a natural instinct told him that this was dangerous and he should run. But before he could tell his body to move, the man struck.
The arm that had been held tightly to the man's body lifted up, revealing a sharp knife. He moved too quick for Aaron to even shout in alarm, the knife disappearing into Aaron's neck.
As Aaron fell so he was kneeling, blood quickly leaving the wound, he dropped his cell to the ground. All he could do was clutch at his neck and look up at the man in alarm. He didn't understand. He had come into the alleyway to help this man, why he repay that by stabbing Aaron? What did he ever do to deserve this?
The man pulled the knife out of Aaron's neck, and Aaron knew he was a goner. The blood was endless, his heart was slowing down, his life was slowly leaving him.
He fell backwards, laying down on the grimy, dirt-ridden ground. His hands fell away from his neck and the last thing he saw was the man's face as he got close up to Aaron and whispered, "that's for turning down the A.O.M."
As the savant finally died, Theo Collins let out a long breath. His people had been stalking the guy for days, noticing that he always went for a walk every morning, taking the same route each time. Theo had insisted on being the one to make the kill.
He knew that the savant was a Benedict. An extended family member, but still a Benedict nevertheless. Almost everybody in the savant world knew about the Benedicts and knew how often they betrayed their people for their own gain. It was disgraceful. Theo was glad that he was able to say he'd taken one of them out.
The guy had deserved it for not joining the A.O.M. He had been told there would be repercussions for that decision, had he seriously thought nobody would come for him?
Having been tense whilst waiting for his victim to arrive, Theo was now totally relaxed. He wiped his blade clean on the already bloody shirt the dead savant was wearing, before he rose to his feet and left the alleyway.
He was whistling a happy tune to himself, without a care in the world about the crime he had just committed.