TEN YEARS LATER

          The newsfeed flickered with static, a few staccato bursts of distortion across the screen propped up in front of me as I ate my cereal. I tapped the translucent screen with a long finger and the feed focused again, the sound coming in clear.

          “Authorities raided another resistance base outside East City late last night,” the newsfeed said. It showed helicopter footage of a burnt-out warehouse. “The raid left no survivors.” I frowned and went back to my cereal. There were rarely any survivors when resistance bases were raided, and the police found one almost every week. The resistance fighters supposedly had superhuman abilities: super strength, controlling the elements, moving stuff with their minds, all sorts of things like that. You’d think their forces would be stronger. But I supposed those sorts of things weren’t bulletproof. Or bombproof. The burnt-out lairs were a blight on the landscape all across the country.

          I let the newsfeed fade into background noise as I stood and dumped my now-empty bowl in the sink. I snatched the screen up from the table and scrolled through the different channels. I leaned back against the counter as an advertisement flashed across the screen. I paused my scrolling, frowning at the ad under my hand.

          Null Enterprises was supposed to be a pharmaceutical company. They started out after the end of the Second Civil War selling medicine and all kinds of advanced tech along those lines: machines that could get rid of cancerous tumors in just one painless session, injections to completely eradicate arthritis, stuff like that. The screen I held advertised a fast-acting pill that could boost one’s mood for days at a time. In big letters next to an image of a colorful bottle was the company’s logo, NULL with streaks of light making a curved slash behind the word.

          It was the same logo that had been on the side of the truck that had stolen away my brother ten years ago. The image made my heart pound every time I saw it emblazoned on a billboard or brochure. Sure, to some people it might have meant medical ingenuity, but to me it meant trouble. Fear.

          I frowned at the ad for a moment before clicking off the screen and setting it on the table. I slung a backpack over one shoulder and called to my mom, “See ya!”

          “Have a good day, Finn!” she called back from upstairs, still dressing after her shower. I left the house, hopping down the stairs of the front stoop with my long legs and bounding off along the sidewalk. I took classes during the week at East City’s community college. I ducked into an alley that I sometimes took as a shortcut; it wound through the slums of East, but it was the straightest shot downtown.

          The Second Civil War had begun and ended long before I was born. It had started as political disputes, cleaving the world in two. From the history textbooks, it quickly escalated into all-out nuclear war within what used to be called North America. Now, the region was known as Serendipity. It stretched for thousands of miles, taking over what had been most of the United States and parts of Canada to the north. Following the war, what wasn’t decimated was divided up into four large regions all orbiting a central capital city.

          Mom and I lived in East City, where the gently sloping mountains surrounding us turned orange like fire in the fall. Brick buildings lined the narrow, pot-holed streets crisscrossing East City, their white-painted shutters chipping. Large newsfeed screens were embedded in the brick in places, flashing PSAs and warnings of police sweeps. Security cameras dotted each corner, watching for any whispers of dissent among the people.

          There was no one else around that I could see in the alley as I walked through the slums, so I slowed my pace. No need to look suspicious, right?

          Suddenly, someone shoved me hard from behind. I whirled, grasping the strap of my pack, and came face to face with the barrel of a handgun. I froze and put my hands up, palms out.

          “Back up,” said the guy pointing the gun at me. He herded me backward so my spine banged against the brick side of the building. Two more guys approached, one from each side of the alley through which I’d been walking. They all wore ill-fitting hoodies, their noses and mouths covered with kerchiefs.

          “Listen, if it’s money you want, I have it,” I stammered. I lowered one hand just enough to gesture to my pocket. One of the guys patted me down, yanking my wallet out of my pocket and rifling through it for the meager twenty dollars in the pouch. He tossed it aside.

          “What’s in the backpack?”

          “Nothing. Notebooks for school,” I said warily. There were notebooks, but also an expensive laptop, and some old pictures of Aiden when he and I were little. I didn’t want thugs rooting through my stuff. They were known to do that in the slums, willing to report anything for a little extra cash or rations. I pressed my back against the wall, trapping the pack between the building and me. The photos I had were the only ones I had of my big brother—I’d taken them out of our family albums, as if carrying them with me everywhere meant Aiden was still with me. Cold sweat gathered in the small of my back, and I could feel my heart in my throat.

          “What’s in the fucking backpack?” the guy with the gun growled.

          I stood against the wall for a moment longer, and shoved the guy in front of me with the gun away. I sprinted, my strides long, down the alley. The guys shouted after me, and I heard the slap slap slap of footsteps against the asphalt. My backpack slammed against my spine, and I felt a cold trickle of sweat on the back of my neck as I ran.

          I heard yelling, my own frantic breaths, and from behind me, the pop of gunfire.