Chapter 4: Doom
At first, the faint blue lights looked like a grid, slowly bleeding through the cracks in the air. It was subtle but annoyingly persistent, like a tiny print smudged on a pair of eyeglasses. Only this was ten times worse because he couldn't wipe it away like he could a lens.
He complained about it to the surgeon who performed the operation, but even when the man finally listened to Mikel and examined his eye, all the tests came back clear. Since it wasn't interfering with his recovery, Mikel was simply told to report if it got worse.
For a while, the blue light disappeared — only to reappear today. This time, however, it wasn't just faint, blurry lines. It had become a clear screen outline — like those seen in first-person perspective games. The thing was, it might have looked like one, but it wasn't.
Blink... blink...
[SHAMAN PROTOCOL...]
Mikel reached out slightly, trying to touch the mysterious screen in front of him. But all he could see through his still-blurred vision was his own hand in the background.
I can't touch it.
He squinted his right eye, then his left.
"I can only see it through this left one," he whispered, furrowing his brows at the blinking ellipses after the words [SHAMAN PROTOCOL...].
"Am I dreaming?"
Mikel blinked once, slowly, then twice. On the third blink, more text appeared: