I absently heard my name.

          “Finn… Finn!” I snapped out of my reverie, my mom’s face coming into focus before me. She sighed, exasperated.

          “Honey, really,” my mom said, setting a plate of grilled chicken and vegetables in front of me. Her brows were knit and she frowned at me.

          “What?” I muttered.

          She sighed. “You’re all jittery. You’ve been acting weird all week,” she said. “I’m just worried about you.”

          I shook my head, raising a hand to run a hand through the flop of hair that always fell over my forehead. “I’m fine,” I said, surprised at how steady my voice sounded.

          My mom gave me the look she always gave when she knew I was lying. Both her sons had always been terrible at it, even when Aiden and I had been little and we’d claimed to know nothing about how that vase broke.

          I knew I was acting weird. I’d been foggy all week since I was almost mugged. Class had been useless; I couldn’t focus. Every thought was consumed by Null, by the fear that a truck bearing its logo would follow me home one day or that someone would throw a bag over my head or something. I feared that damn logo wherever I went, certain it was watching me.

          “Finn,” she warned, though her voice was so gentle it made my heart tighten.

          “Mom,” I said quietly. “I’m okay, I just… haven’t felt great.”

          “For a week straight?” she pressed. She reached for me, setting a hand on my forehead. I grumbled and wriggled away from her touch. The action teased a smile from me and a laugh from her.

          I didn’t want to worry her. I knew if I told her what had happened a week ago, it would only plant the nagging, prickly seed in her head that Null would come for her other son. She had screamed herself hoarse as her eldest was dragged away, and we never saw him again. It took years to pull each other out of that dark place.

          “I’m okay,” I said as my mom plopped into the chair across the table from me. “Really.” I heard the faint rumble of trucks driving past: the routine police sweep that occurred every night after curfew. The lights from the searches swept past the house, the seams between the windows and the blinds leaking light. My mom and I began eating as the sound of the trucks’ engines faded, disappearing down the street. For a moment, my nerves eased.

          And then the front door exploded inward, knocked off its hinges, spotlights pouring into the house.

          Screams erupted from my mom, and I stood so fast my chair clattered to the floor. Men in black armored suits flooded the foyer of our house, shouting at us to get down, pointing dark barrels of automatic rifles at us. On the chest plates that crossed their fronts—the Null Enterprises logo, with the beams of white marking a curved slash. My heart leaped up into my throat as I put my hands up, palms out. The guns pointed at me, and I realized I was trembling.

          “Finn?” my mom called, her voice choked with sobs. My eyes found hers, and my vision blurred with tears.

          “Mom—” I whispered, and two of the men shouldered their rifles and grabbed me, wrenching my arms behind my back. They dragged me toward the collapsed front door, the remaining men holding back my mom as she screamed for me.

          “Finn!” she wailed. “Finn, no!”

          I jostled in the men’s grasps, turning to look at her. Memorizing her face. “Mom, I—“ the men gripped me tighter, using their bulk to anchor my tall frame between them. “I’m sorry!” I shouted to her over the cacophony. “I’ll find a way back! I will!”

          She screamed my name, again and again, and I turned away, not wanting to memorize her face the way it was, twisted in agony, tears streaming down her cheeks. I blinked against the bright spotlights pointed at the front of the house, and glimpsed a black truck, Null Enterprise’s logo painted large on its side.

          Something hit me hard in the back of the head, and the world went dark.