Oculus (Oculus #1)

by J. L. Mac

  “Assault. He was assaulted.” I correct her, feeling rage against Ingram bubble up within.

  “Yes. Just this way,” she says, seemingly indifferent to my anger. She escorts me through halls one turn at a time. “Here we are. Doctor Tierney, another visitor for you.”

  I hear the gasp of surprise before I can make out the scent of my father over the heavy scent of our mostly sterilized surroundings.

  “Call if you need anything, Doctor Tierney,” the nurse instructs gently then squeaks away, her rubber-soled shoes trotting across the tile floor.

  “Iris,” he sighs, clearly relieved. “What has happened to you?”

  “I came to ask you the same thing, but I think we have matching answers. That’s what a ghost told me, anyway.”

  “I’m just a little banged up. Come here,” he says, followed by the familiar sound of his hand patting against the mattress. “Let me look at you.”

  “Let me look at you,” I say, bringing my hands up to touch his face. He grasps my wrists firmly with strength belying the severity of his injuries. It’s easy to deduce that it must be bad. He’d let me “see” if he was merely bumped and bruised.

  “Dad,” I question.

  “Oh, don’t fuss over it. It’s nothing. Just don’t want you fumbling around on my sore head.”

  I take a deep breath and let my shoulders slouch forward. “Dad, what’s going on?” I want to know, but I know that I’m asking for information that could very well change the landscape of my life.

  “Iris, oh where to start,” he squeezes my hand in his and takes a deep breath. “You’ve always known that you were adopted. But you don’t know where you came from. You don’t know who exactly you came from and quite frankly, neither do I. You weren’t orphaned. I’ve been with you since the moment you were conceived.” In spite of the anxiety knotted in my chest, a smile forces its way across my lips as I hear the pride in his voice.

  “I can’t explain everything. Not here. Not now. But, Iris, if something happens, you need to know there’s a box for you. It’s in my closet under a floorboard. I carved a mark. Feel for the letter I.” All pride vanishes only to be replaced by the clearest sound of regret that I’ve ever heard in his voice.

  “No. You’re fine. You said you just got a little banged up. What are you implying? How bad are you hurt?” Panic surges through me as I scoot closer to him, feeling helpless to make him better or to even understand his injuries.

  “I told you. I’m only a little banged up. Shush. It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay,” he rasps as he pulls me close. I rest my ear against this chest and I know that the rapid pounding of his heart is far more telling than the nonchalance he’s trying to exude.

  “I’m so sorry for everything dad,” I whisper against his chest wanting to say so much more, but feeling as if saying more would mean that I’m saying goodbye, something for which I can never be prepared for. He has been my only family, my only tie. Until Sic.

  He shushes me and despite his battered condition, his hand brushes against my hair like he did so many times throughout my life. My fingers find the pendant on the leather twine that he has always worn around his neck. I roll the cylindrical pendant between my fingers and allow myself to linger there in his embrace, though I know he has to be uncomfortable with my weight against him.

  “If he’s out there, if he’s still alive, you belong with him,” my father whispers so quietly that only my sharp ears can make out the words he just uttered against the top of my head.

  The moment I walk up the steps to Unit 13, our Unit, our home, I can feel Sic. I can sense him here like I sense my father, even when he’s silently having a glass of pure fire in our living room.

  I close the door behind me and collapse my stick, leaving it on the table. Without a word, I look to where I know he’s standing—where I feel him standing.

  “There’s a box.” I declare as I move past him and up the stairs to my father’s room. I skirt the edge of his bed, past his writing desk, lift my arm to avoid hitting the lamp beside the closet door, and step into the small space. Sic has light footsteps, but I can hear him follow me into the room and over to the closet. I get to my knees, ignoring the painful reminders riddled all over my aching body of my nightmare at the security building. The closet smells like my father, but I shut that off. I turn off everything except my fingertips. I vaguely hear Sic’s voice, no doubt asking me what I’m doing.

  With my feet tucked beneath me, I rub my clammy hands against my thighs and set them lightly against the wood planks of the closet floor. Scrapes and scratches from years of use mar the surface, and I’m careful to make certain that each knick and natural pockmark in the grain isn’t the mark that he said I’d find. I know my father well enough that before he’d even said it, I knew that if he’d marked the floor, it was with the first letter of my name.

  I.

  In braille.

  I can recall him hounding me as a child to take the time to learn braille. Despite the fact that it is considered antiquated in the world we live in today and he had to go great lengths to find the book, he’d said that it was important.

  As a little girl it baffled me that he wanted me to learn to read it when everything was audible through scanners and computers. The only braille book that I have is worn, but not from use. It’s simply old. I practiced enough to satiate him and pass his quizzes, but in truth I guess I could be considered quite illiterate. I’m not even certain that I could read it now.

  My fingers drift lightly, skimming the floor hoping that something will stand out to me because quite frankly, I can recall that the letter I has two dots but I don’t remember their orientation.

  My fingers brush against my father’s winter boots as I move in a thorough pattern, crossing the surface of the floor. Sic has stopped questioning me, but I can feel his gaze upon me. It takes some effort to shut it off, to focus on only the pads of my fingers. To ignore the tingling in my feet, the ache in my abused knees, the soreness in every muscle.

  I scoot along the floor feeling antsy. Beneath my fathers hanging clothes, against the base board, I feel the smallest of indentations. I nearly passed right over the spot. I drop my hands and press my palms against the floorboard, afraid to lose my mark.

  “Sic, we need something to lift this floorboard,” without missing a beat, Sic folds his large frame into the bottom of the closet with me and pries the floorboard up. The musty scent of dust floats around us as he sets the board aside and reaches into the floor with me.

  The box is no bigger than the boxes that boots come in. And thinking better of it, I think that the flimsy cardboard is exactly that. Sic and I set the box before me, butting against my aching knees. Sic says nothing, but then again, he doesn’t have to. Not with me. I can feel strength and support and comfort radiating from him just as I always have in my dreams.

  Tentatively, my fingers run along the edge of the box and with a deep breath, I lift the top off wondering what in the world my father could have left here and of what use it could be to a blind person like me. Self-pity rears its ugly head and I feel that longing for sight that I have taught myself to ignore over the years.

  “Zeus gave the newlyweds a gift. Some say it was a jar. Some say it was a box. Whatever it was, it was locked. It came with a note. The note said: "DO NOT OPEN." Attached to the note was a key. It was all very curious.” - Pandora’s Box

  IRIS SITS WITH THE BOX in front of her for a full minute, unmoving. I can feel the fear radiating off of her in waves. It’s strange, for someone to look at the small rectangle of heavy paper, and be afraid. But I know it’s not the box that scares her it’s what’s inside. Until she ‘d spoken with her adoptive father, part of her had been trying to deny me, to deny us. Now, she’s about to cross the line from knowing who she’s been to who she’s meant to be.

  “Maybe I should put it back.” I roll my eyes. A wasted gesture on a blind girl, to be sure, but somehow she picks up on my exasperation. “I’m seri
ous. Father told me to open it only if something happened to him. Whatever is in here, he didn’t want me to have it unless…” She trails off, but both of us know what the rest of the sentence is.

  Unless he was dead.

  “Open it. You can’t hide from your past forever.” My words are meant as encouragement, but all I sense from her is more anger.

  “Easy enough for you to say. You can take care of yourself. No one expects you to leave your home.” I sigh, hating the fact that we are fighting. I want to take her in my arms, comfort her physically until she is too tired to argue. Instead, I sit there while she berates me for pushing her. When she begins to spin down in her tirade, I choose my moment to speak.

  “I never had a home.” The statement halts her emotional filibuster and for a moment, quiet rang out in the room. It is, sadly, quite brief.

  “What? What do you mean you never had a home?” Her lip is trembling, as if she can feel the anguish that the admission sends through me.

  “Just that. When I was in the lab, it was a place of torture. When I escaped with Anna, we had to move quiet often. Sometimes we only stayed in one place for a day. For years we lived off the land, moved constantly. I would say in the more recent years, we came close to having a home. Anna always was trying to put something away for the future. I think she hoped that one day I might be able to stop killing. That I might find peace in some remote location. It was foolishness on her part, but it was what she needed to think to be happy. Or at least not entirely unhappy.”

  The admission, saying the words out loud, is shockingly revealing. I had never truly thought about it or verbalized it to anyone. But all of Anna’s attempts to build a nest egg for us were more comforting to her than to me. I know that I can take care of myself until the day that I die. Be that in a few hours or a few decades. Eventually, I will slip up and someone will kill me. That is how life works. You live right up until the moment that you die.

  “That’s terrible. But it’s also why you can’t understand what you are asking me to do. When you tell me that I should go off into the world with you, leave my father behind, my friends, the safety of the compound,” I interrupt her before she can get any further.

  “You’re afraid.” It is the wrong thing to say. It’s true, but I’m beginning to realize that unlike with Anna, being bluntly honest with Iris is not appreciated.

  “Wow! Thanks for stating the obvious. Would you like to also explain to me how I cannot see?” I know I shouldn’t say it, but she’s starting to anger me with her petulance.

  “You are physically blind. But you seem to be able to see quite well. How did you know to back away from the blood?” The question seems to take her off guard.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “With Ingram,” I say. “You’re blind, but when his blood spread across the ground, you retreated from it. Not randomly either, but directly away from it. Explain that to me.” She sits there, without saying anything for a while. Her hands unconsciously run over the surface of the box.

  “I can just tell things, sometimes.” She says it quietly, almost meekly. As if she is telling me a horrible truth about herself. It’s as if she is embarrassed by it.

  “I know a little of what you were meant to do Iris,” I say. “Anna told me a bit about the other half of my genetic team. But it was painful for her to talk about, and we did not discuss it in detail. If your father wanted you to have that box if he died, I expect you will find the answers you seek inside. So it becomes a question of bravery.”

  Her face comes up and turns slightly to regard me head on. The rage in her features is reflected through the bond. This close to her, I can almost hear what she is going to say before she says it out loud.

  “After everything that I’ve been through, being blind my entire life, at the mercy of the sighted, how can you question my bravery?” The flush in her cheeks is appealing. I find her agitated state quite distracting; it reminds me of other activities that put roses on her cheeks.

  “Bravery, Iris. Courage in the face of fear. You could put the box back. When your father comes home you could pretend like none of this ever happened. That I never appeared, that I don’t exist. If you want me to, I will leave.” My voice breaks when I say this, but I push on before she can say anything. “Things would go back to the way they were. Ordinary Iris, the blind girl, could go on with her safe, simple, life. Either spend your life wondering what could have been, or open the box. Knowledge is a funny thing. Once you know something, it changes you. In this case, I suspect whatever is in that box is going to remove the doubt that has been preventing you from trusting your instincts. So tell me Pandora, what shall you do?”

  “Who the hell is Pandora?” I wince, realizing that as a Corp citizen, she had never heard the story. It is a black list book, much like anything The Corp had not produced itself.

  “Sorry, old story in mythology about a girl that gets a box from the gods. She opens it and lets all the misery out into the world.”

  “And you thought that would be a good reference for our current situation? That me opening this box will release all the world’s evils?”

  “In the end, she also let hope out of the box. And from what Anna has taught me over the years, hope is a very important emotion.”

  Her hand absently traces the outside of the box and I feel the turmoil of emotions playing out inside of her. Then, without any warning at all, she pulls the top off of the box. Inside is a silver cylinder about an inch thick, a horde of gold squares, and a rectangular photograph.

  “What’s inside,” Iris asks, her voice quaking. I tell her and help guide her hands inside. She leaves the gold where it is, opting instead to pick up the cylinder. As soon as her hands touch it an artificial voice speaks.

  “Subject being scanned. Please remain still during the scanning process.” Iris drops the cylinder to the floor and the slight hum it had begun to emit stops.

  “What the hell was it doing?” I lower myself to the floor to examine the device more closely. I see the metal has minute seams, something I have not seen on even the most advanced Corp machinery.

  “Scanning you. Other than the hum and the voice, nothing else happened that I could see.” I had trouble keeping the wonder out of my voice. “This is old world technology. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Neither have I,” she jokes. “Do you think I should pick it back up?”

  “If your father left it for you it should be safe.” Nodding, more to herself, I think, than to me, she reaches down and picks up the cylinder.

  “Subject being scanned. Please remain still during the scanning process.” The same hum emanates from the device. After a minute the hum disappears. “Scan complete. Subject Iris. This unit is preprogrammed with reversal procedure. Voice scan identification required. If you would like to proceed, please state the word ”Yes” at this time.”

  “What should I do? Should I say yes?” The moment the word comes out of her mouth, the cylinder responds. The top transforms, small panels folding and reconfiguring until they form a half circle. The device changes to look very much like a mask on a stick.

  “Thank you. Please place device to face and hold in place. Reversal procedure will commence once a solid contact has been made.” Before I can say a word, she draws the device up to her face. There is a flash of light and the smell of ozone fills the room. Iris stiffens, and then collapses. Rolling her onto her back I try to remove the mask, but it is being held in place.

  The humming intensifies from the device and then it goes silent. As I watch, it reconfigures itself back to cylinder form, falling to the floor. Iris’s face appears undamaged and her eyes flutter open. She shuts them quickly and groans.

  “Iris? Are you okay? What did it do to you?” She pulls an arm up over her eyes.

  “Sic, can you help me over to the bed? It was doing something to my eyes and now when I open them I feel shooting pain. I need to lie down.” Helping her to the bed, I go over an
d close the curtains, then dim the lights.

  It takes hours for her to feel better. When she finally does, I help her get up. Her eyes stay mostly shut. Sitting on the side of the bed, I hold her hand with a feeling of helplessness. After a few minutes she rises from the bed, turning to face me.

  She stands there, facing me, and it suddenly strikes me. She’s looking at me. Not just facing where I am, her eyes are shifting back and forth as she studies my face.

  “Sic. I can see.”

  I CAN’T DESCRIBE IT. I can’t explain it. I can’t even understand it. My dreams have always been so vivid with colors and objects that I could never truly understand. I simply made assumptions and best guesses while doing my best to shake the feeling that I knew quite well what I had been seeing all those years. I knew that what resided behind my eyes, in my mind, were memories of things that at some point or another were very real for me.

  I had seen them. Too afraid to admit this to myself, I shut down speculation that brewed deep within. I chalked up my dreams to imagination. I dismissed my dreams as insanity before I would ever entertain the idea that I had once had, and then lost, one of the most basic and fundamental parts of me. Vision.

  Despite the throbbing headache from what my father’s device did to me, I am overwhelmed with feelings.

  What was that thing? Why do my eyes feel tingly? How is this possible? Why am I not blind anymore? If my father had the tools to reverse my condition, why in the hell has he kept it a secret hidden in a box stowed under a dusty floorboard in his fucking closet?

  Anger wins out over the mix of elation and confusion and relief. Uninhibited rage against my father sinks its claws in deep and climbs up my throat like the demon that it is, and I feel as though I could very well choke on it. Or… choke someone else.

  My lips part, but the cascade of questions and feelings won’t pour. “Sic. I can see,” is all I can manage and I think it has rendered my phantom truly confused. And exposed.