Chapter 1

Everyone around him was blind. They just didn't know it.

The failure of an artificial eye was hardly unusual. Nothing built by humans lasted forever, and everyone knew that the ocular devices implanted at birth would eventually need repairs or replacement. People lost their sight before they were born, and the technology had become so advanced that most never thought of themselves as blind at all.

Marcus had never given much thought to his own artificial eyes. At thirty-two, he had lived with them for most of his life and trusted them as naturally as he trusted his own heartbeat.

The devices gave them sight, but they weren't supposed to know the difference until his left artificial retina began malfunctioning.

The world through his left eye became slightly duller than what he saw through his right. Sometimes a faint flicker crossed his vision, like a light struggling to stay on. It was annoying, but not frightening. He had heard of people needing replacements before. The procedure was routine. They would sedate him, remove the damaged device, install a new one, and send him home with functioning vision.

He had meant to make the appointment, he really had, but every morning, Marcus told himself he would call the clinic that afternoon, and every afternoon became tomorrow, then tomorrow became the next day.

Work kept piling up. There were bills, errands, messages, and Ava, Marcus’s girlfriend, constantly asking when he was finally going to make time for her. Life had a way of making something important feel less urgent simply because there was always something else demanding attention.

So he ignored the problem until one morning, when Marcus woke up and half the world was gone.

He bolted upright, unable to understand what he was seeing as his right eye showed him his bedroom, the furniture, and the pale morning light slipping through the curtains, while the left side of his vision was simply empty.

He immediately wondered whether the nerves beneath the artificial retina had been damaged. Maybe the device had failed completely. Maybe he'd waited too long. Every warning he'd ever heard about neglecting an ocular malfunction suddenly came rushing back.

He stumbled into the bathroom.

Checking an eye with that same eye was almost impossible, so he fumbled around until he found a small hand mirror Ava had apparently left there months ago. He angled it toward his face and examined his left eye.

It looked normal. Almost. Where his iris should have been, there was only blackness, and Marcus stared at it, then at his reflection, then back at the eye as the warnings he'd heard all his life suddenly seemed much less theoretical.

The artificial retinas were designed to bond directly to the surface of the eye. They were made from a breathable synthetic membrane and connected to the optic nerves through microscopic interfaces. People were told never to remove them themselves. Doing so could damage the living tissue underneath.

He knew that, and he also knew he was terrified, wondering if the device had burned out or if something underneath it was dying, but before he could talk himself out of it, he reached toward his eye, found the edge of the artificial retina, hesitated, and then very carefully peeled it away, feeling an uncomfortable tug followed by a sudden release.

And then he could see, his left eye filled with blurry, distorted, pale vision as though he were looking through fogged glass, but it was unmistakably sight, real sight, and Marcus froze before stumbling backward onto the edge of his bed, relief overwhelming everything else.

Maybe the device hadn't been doing what he thought it was doing. Maybe removing it had somehow reset something. Maybe the doctors had discovered a way to repair damaged eyes and simply hadn't announced it yet.

Marcus blinked once, then twice, as the blur began to clear, and when he squinted, relaxed his eye, and blinked again, the room sharpened until he could actually see, a strange laugh escaping him.

Marcus stayed there for several minutes, testing the eye, looking at his hands, the walls, the curtains, and his own reflection in the bedroom mirror, and everything appeared normal, or at least, he thought it did.

He returned to the bathroom to find his phone, but that was when he noticed the mark, something at the edge of his vision that looked like a blemish on his forehead, and when he turned toward the mirror, only a faint smudge remained, disappearing completely when he closed his left eye, making his heart sink as he realized so much for the miracle.

His left eye was damaged. That had to be it. Perhaps removing the artificial retina had exposed some kind of visual defect that the device normally concealed.

Marcus sighed and switched eyes, closing his right eye and opening his left, only to nearly fall backward when he realized the mark wasn't a blemish but a pattern.

A huge, intricate symbol stretched across his forehead, composed of lines that twisted and connected like a maze. It reminded him of the QR codes printed on advertisements and products, except this was far more complicated. There were no recognizable letters or numbers, only endless curves, intersections, and tiny dots.

Marcus stared, then opened his right eye again, making the pattern vanish, and when he switched back, it was there again as his breathing slowed and he realized something was terribly wrong.

When both eyes were open, his brain seemed to struggle with the conflicting images. The normal image from his right artificial retina overwhelmed whatever his left eye was seeing, smoothing the strange pattern into an insignificant blur.

But alone, his left eye showed it clearly, and Marcus backed away from the mirror, realizing the device wasn't repairing his vision but hiding something, before grabbing his phone and keys because he needed answers.

Outside, the first thing Marcus noticed was the sky. He stopped on the doorstep.

Through his right eye, the sky was exactly as it had always appeared, bright blue, with a golden sun and soft white clouds.

Through his left, it was completely different.

Brownish smears stretched across the sky like stains spreading through dirty water. The sunlight was weak and reddish, barely cutting through the murky haze.

Marcus switched between his eyes several times, blue, grey, blue, grey, as a chill traveled down his spine and he realized the colors he'd trusted his entire life weren't necessarily real.

He started walking toward his neighbor's house, stopping beside a flower bed on the way, where the flowers looked beautiful through his right eye, with bright petals, green leaves, and healthy stems, but through his left, every single one was covered in those strange symbols, tiny patterns crawling across the petals and leaves, making him stare until his eyes began to ache before wondering what the hell was happening.

He hurried to his neighbor's door and knocked. Sean answered, looking exactly as Marcus remembered at first, until his left eye showed him something else, Sean's skin was paler than it should have been, he looked strangely unhealthy, and an enormous version of the same symbol covered his forehead.

The pattern was unmistakable. Sean didn't react to it. Of course he didn't. He couldn't see it.

"Have you noticed anything strange today?" he asked.

Sean frowned.

"Strange?"

"Anything different?"

His neighbor looked him over. "Are you okay? You look shaken."

He suddenly realized how ridiculous he must appear, repeatedly squinting one eye shut while staring at Sean.

"I'm fine," he lied.

He left before Sean could ask anything else, deciding the library was the obvious place to look for answers, especially since his internet connection had stopped working that morning.

The drive there was unsettling. Symbols appeared everywhere, covering walls, signs, buildings, parked cars, and even the fur of a dog, while traffic signs were particularly difficult because the familiar words disappeared through his left eye, forcing Marcus to rely on his artificial right eye to read the road. By the time he reached the library, his hands were sweating.

He went straight to the computers. The screen looked normal through his right eye, but through his left, it was covered in shifting symbols that stretched and contracted as he moved the mouse and twisted into different shapes whenever he typed something.

He stepped away.

"Nope."

Books, then. Books had to be real. Marcus pulled one from the shelf, Psychology, but while the pages were filled with text through his right eye, his left showed only lines, squiggles, and patterns, even on the blank pages.

He tried Optometry, then another, and another, but nothing changed until he finally found a book about the history of artificial retinas and sat down.

For the next hour, he read almost entirely with his right eye, occasionally checking the pages with his left.

The technology had been developed decades earlier, after widespread environmental pollution caused severe damage to the human eye and resulted in a generation of children being born blind.

The artificial retinas had changed everything.

They didn't restore the eyes themselves. Instead, they bypassed damaged visual receptors and transmitted artificial signals directly to the optic nerves.

According to the book, the artificial retinas allowed people to perceive the world as it truly was, but Marcus stopped when he read that, realizing the devices were supposed to reproduce natural vision and had worked perfectly in trials before becoming universal.

If that was true, what was his left eye seeing, why were the symbols everywhere, why did the sky look polluted, why did Sean look sick, and why did every flower carry the same impossible pattern? He reached the final page.

His right eye was tired from doing almost all the work. He was exhausted, confused, and beginning to wonder whether he was experiencing some elaborate neurological breakdown.

Then he turned the page, and the final sheet was blank, or it should have been, until something caught his attention, a line of ink that appeared when Marcus opened his left eye.

The symbol normally hidden beneath his artificial retina was visible on the page, and beneath it, written by hand, was a message that made him lean closer as his heart began pounding. He read it once, then again.

"If you're reading this, then you are the one-eyed man in the world of the blind."

His fingers tightened around the book as he read the message, but the rest of it was even worse.

"Open your eye and see. We will do our best to find you, but for now you are alone."

He stopped breathing for a moment as the weight of the words sank in. Then came the final warning.

"Do not wake the sleepers."

His gaze remained fixed on the page. One last sentence waited just under it.

"Do not stare into the abyss, for the abyss stares back."

Marcus slowly lowered the book, wishing for the first time since removing the artificial retina that he could put it back, because suddenly, seeing didn't feel like a gift. It felt like being exposed, and somewhere beyond the walls of the library, in a world everyone else believed they could see.