Melsf44
The update was mandatory. Quick, painless, two minutes tops. The whole school went through it one Tuesday morning as if it were normal-because it was. The chips were being updated. Systems were being maintained. Life went on. Aylin had found the procedure odd. Not enough to mention it, just enough to note it mentally, as she noted everything. Two days later, she wished she had spoken up.
There are six of them who weren't in class that morning. Six students stuck on the third floor of a white-and-green glass building, looking through the tinted windows at something none of them really knows how to name. People are still walking. They're breathing. Their eyes are moving in the right direction. But the silence in the courtyard-that silence... It didn't exist before Tuesday. It would never exist in any reality.
Aylin watches. Selena draws what she can't put into words. Kaïla looks for something to do with her hands. Kaël checks the doors. Naïl stands with his back to the group and looks out at the city. Bào makes a joke, and no one holds it against him because everyone understands why he tried.
This isn't a novel about the end of the world. The world is still here. It turns, it pulses, it flickers, it lives. It's a novel about six people learning to survive in a place they once knew by heart, and no longer recognize at all.
And about what you see when you look long enough into the eyes of someone who is no longer supposed to be able to see.
What if those who have disappeared weren't really gone?