
Using information from Cutter, a barber in the game Lifeblood, Michael and his friends hack their way into the high-end Black and Blue club. The VNS wants Michael and his friends to find out about the Mortality Doctrine, a program created by Kaine. The gamers who are trapped often commit suicide in real life by coding out their Cores, the virtual objects that differentiate between their Auras, or their virtual bodies, and their real-life bodies. Michael and his two friends Bryson and Sarah are three talented hackers who can use the game code to manipulate items, and they are employed by VirtNet Security (VNS) to track down a cyber-terrorist known as Kaine, who has been trapping people inside the VirtNet.


In the future, humankind has developed a new interpretation of gaming in the form of a virtual reality system known as the VirtNet, which contains various games, including "Lifeblood", a re-creation of real life. Of the novel, Dashner has stated that he did not view it as a " dystopian or post-apocalyptic tale" akin to his Maze Runner series, but he did view it as having "similarities in tone and feel and spirit to The Maze Runner".

The book was first published on Octoby Delacorte Press and is set in a futuristic world where a young gamer must help stop a rogue hacker named Kaine intent on causing mass destruction. The Eye of Minds is a 2013 young adult science fiction novel written by American author James Dashner, and the first book in The Mortality Doctrine series.
