Chapter 3

By the third day, Marcus had reached three unsettling conclusions.

Something was wrong with the world, whatever it was had been hidden from humanity, someone else knew at least part of the truth and might already be searching for him, and the strange symbols weren't meaningless because the artificial retinas didn't simply hide them, they seemed to interpret them. He couldn't stop thinking about that.

His nephew had once shown him a game on a handheld console where the camera could recognize printed codes and make images appear on the screen. Maybe these symbols worked the same way.

Perhaps the artificial retinas weren't simple visual replacements at all. Maybe they were miniature computers capable of recognizing the patterns and replacing them with whatever humanity was supposed to see.

The thought was unsettling.

Marcus had been taught that artificial retinas simply bypassed damaged parts of the eye and transmitted visual information directly to the optic nerves, with no processing, storage, or sophistication that should have allowed them to understand or hide the symbols, yet somehow they did, leaving him with one question he couldn't ignore.

Why had his imperfect tracing worked?

The symbols on people's foreheads were complicated enough to make his head hurt if he stared at them for too long. If the artificial retina needed a perfect copy to recognize one, then the crude symbol he'd drawn in the library shouldn't have done anything.

Marcus wondered if the system had been designed to recognize damaged or incomplete patterns, which made sense because people wore hats, hair covered their foreheads, and makeup could obscure parts of a symbol, meaning there had to be a way to experiment with them without fully understanding them, so he reached for his phone, only to stop when his left eye caught something strange on the screen, the entire display was covered by another pattern.

Through his right eye, Marcus saw his usual home screen, complete with colorful icons and a photograph of his girlfriend, Ava, but through his left, the display was covered by a dark, complicated maze that made him stare for several seconds, realizing even the technology in his pocket was hiding something.

He tried taking a photograph of himself, hoping the strange symbol on his forehead would appear in the image, but the printed photo looked completely ordinary through both eyes, so he crushed it and tossed it away, frustrated that whatever was happening was far more complicated than simply photographing the hidden patterns.

Needing air and a chance to think, Marcus left his phone on the bed and eventually wandered toward the café district, stopping along the way to crouch beside his lawn and pull several blades of grass free, only to find each tiny blade covered in minuscule symbols through his left eye, leaving him with more questions than answers as he finally reached the café, ordered his usual oversized mocha and a donut, and took a seat outside.

The familiar routine helped, and for a few minutes, Marcus could almost pretend he was normal until he slowly opened his left eye and began scanning the street, cars, buildings, people, plants, and signs.

The hidden symbols appeared in different places, some simple and others impossibly intricate. Certain cars had them printed across their panels. Some objects seemed completely untouched.

He wondered if they were connected to color, maybe helping the artificial retinas correct something about the light reaching the damaged eyes.

Then he saw something that made his stomach tighten.

Across the street, two restaurants appeared to stand directly against each other through his right eye, but through his left, Marcus saw a narrow alley that shouldn't have existed, with a small sign hanging inside it bearing one of the simpler symbols, and after staring at it for a moment, he reached for his pen, grabbed a napkin, and began copying the pattern.

The shape reminded him of the symbol he'd found on the blank pages at the library. It wasn't particularly complicated, but his hand shook as he traced each line.

A waitress approached his table.

"Everything okay?"

Marcus quickly covered part of the napkin with his hand when a waitress approached, and she glanced down at it with a flicker of confusion before apparently deciding there was nothing worth asking about and walking away with an awkward smile.

He waited until she was out of sight before finishing the final line, and the moment the shape closed, the symbol remained beneath his left eye, but when he switched to his right, the napkin was completely blank, making his breath catch as he stared at it in disbelief. It hadn't faded or changed. It was simply gone.

Marcus stared at the empty napkin, suddenly aware of how strangely normal the café around him remained, with people talking, cups clinking, and music playing as though nothing had happened.

Whatever he'd just done, no one else had seen it, and for the first time, a more frightening possibility entered his mind.

Maybe the symbols weren't merely hiding things. Maybe they could make things disappear.