A/N: I've been writing this for a couple of days, and I'm excited to see where it goes, and I hope you guys are too. It's going to be somewhat slow so I'm expecting this to get rather long!

          It hadn't been long since the world was shattered. 

         The streets, cloaked in ashes and dust left behind a bleek reminder of what once was. Cathedrals, monuments, school houses, all stood, weathered and decayed, to remind those who remained of the long forgotten past. A cross, pushed up against an old industrial building, a can, housing the smell of a long put out flame, a tent, with only a small, well-cared for cardboard box inside, filled with blankets and one dry, dust covered baby's bottle: small signs that the people who lived, still had hope, or at least some semblance of it. The weather was searing most days now, and buildings were quickly bleached of all color, and roads soon distorted and melted. Nature had only begun to overgrow, vines and other greenery taking their slow assent up the buildings around traffic posts, and through decaying walls. While the sight was empty, horrifying, and startling; it was beautiful.

         He came wreathed in fire and ash.

         No one knew who He was, but He was soon the most well known figure across the land. Fathers and mothers attempted to hide and protect their children, but the youngest and weakest were the first to fall, followed quickly by the elderly and the sick. Parents watched as their children were ripped from their arms, screaming and crying, by men in black suits with the promise that "they'll be safe" only to die without ever seeing them again. Children watched through dingy glass walls in isolated buildings as the world fell apart hundreds of meters below them, as structures collapsed under His might and as fires seemingly ignited with no help. He was powerful. Thats all anyone knew. And He was most certainly to be feared. 
         Children were corralled into the top floors of tall concrete government buildings that seemed to go unscathed throughout the entire tragedy. Children were lined up, picked apart, analyzed, and tested. Children were met with smiling faces, good meals, a mix of study and play, and one-on-one counceling. They were taught to fear everything on the outside walls. They were taught to fear each other, to never lie, and to tell everything they knew to the men in the black suits. The men were powerful. Thats all the children knew, but they were most certainly to never be feared.

         Sometimes, they were told that some of them were special. 

         Sometimes a man would come in and remove some of the children from their classrooms, and those children were forced to listen to the quiet whispers of their classmates. 
         "So it's them"
         "Glad it wasn't me"
         "I always knew there was something wrong with him."
         Getting the news wasn't something they wanted to hear. Being sat down in a white room with one large mirror on the wall wasn't where they wanted to end up. Men would come in, one at a time, and ask them questions.
         "What were your parents like?"
         "Who were your friends?"
         "What do you know about Him?"
         But, they were kind men, powerful men, and they were never to be feared, so they children told them all that they wanted to know. The children told them about what they remembered when they were at home, they told them about their parents and how they grew up. They would tell them about who their friends were on the outside and who they were now. The special ones mostly hung around their own, they were more likely to drift to each other even in the begining, in the earlier classes and ages, they seemed to know their own kind.
         After age 10, the classes were split up, and the special students never knew what happened with the others, and the others never knew what happened with the special students. The special ones were branded Cinos and called by new names, leaving all trace of the outside life behind when they were segregated. The Cinos varied widely in several aspects, but were all connected by an invisible bond that none of them were able to understand. They were put through test after test to determine why they were considered different, testing physical and mental ability: problem solving, musical ability, strength, and endurance being a few of the areas that were tested. Sometimes a Cinos student vanished, and the men told the children nothing. Sometimes Cinos students never vanished though, leaving them to be tested and taught and trained into their early twenties until they were let outside, or so it was told.

         Today, the men are acting a bit stranger than was usual.

         Today, two Cinos students vanished.

         Today, two Cinos students feared the men more than they feared Him.