Veil (30 page)

“What do you mean? Of course there’s—” she
started.

“No,” Ken stopped her. “There’s not. We never
got to finish our conversation the other night. Remember? The phone
rang. Remember what we were talking about before then?”

She thought for a moment. “Kind of … oh yeah,
how you won’t use Veil. You don’t believe in it.”

“Before that. What we first started talking
about. About how big Veil could be.”

“Oh. Yeah, that. Ok.”

Ken placed his glass of wine on the counter.
He turned toward her, grabbed her by the shoulders
,
and turned her toward him so they stood
face-to-face. He held onto her shoulders.

“Suren, Veil will change everything.
Everything
. I’m certain of it. Absolutely certain. From the
very first moment Veil hits, it will change absolutely everything
and everyone. There will be no going back, and your life is going
to become something you can’t begin to prepare for right now. To
the entire world, you’re going to be the wife of this amazing Jin
Tsay guy. Trust me, you’re going to wish you could be alone. Good
or bad, you’re about to become a part of history.”

“I hope so,” she sighed and tried to force a
smile.

“Hope floats … Veil is going to
fly
.
It’s going to fly.” Ken beamed.

She stood in the kitchen and stared at Ken,
trying to force out a smile that would equal his. He’d let go of
her shoulders when tears filled her eyes—as soon as he said Jin’s
name. She wasn’t sad; she was torn and didn’t know what to say or
how to feel.

Part of her wanted to believe him and mostly
because she wanted the entire world to know about her Jin. She
didn’t want him to be forgotten. She wanted everyone to see how
great he was. If she couldn’t get justice for him
,
at least she could get him remembered. Really
remembered.

She also wanted to believe Ken because she
knew she had no life after Veil. She had no Jin. She had a house,
but she had no home. She had no career. Good or bad, being a part
of history was at least a life she could start to live. Good or
bad, being a part of history
because of Veil
was a way she
could go on living in the only way she knew how and in the only way
she wanted: as the wife of Jin Tsay.

She smiled at Ken—a genuine smile—and told
him he was right. Veil would fly. She glanced down at the sauce and
noticed it cooled and quickly thickened.

“Damnit,” she growled.

Ken laughed and shuffled back over to the
iPod. He pressed ‘play’ and Nina wailed at them, fittingly of
course.

I won’t be blue always
.

“The fucker was thorough,” he said, almost in
disbelief.

No response.

He looked up at Brock and finally noticed
that he fell asleep in his wheelchair. Brock sat there for so long
while he watched Hunter go through all the files, that he dozed
off. Hunter kicked the side of Brock’s chair and raised his
voice.

“I said—the fucker was thorough.”

Brock barely opened his eyes, looked at
Hunter, and grunted.

“Oh, you pussy. Fine. Here. I’ll get you into
bed. You big fucking baby.”

He positioned the wheelchair parallel to
Brock’s bed, pulled the covers down, and lifted him up enough to
plop him onto the mattress. He shuffled Brock until he was able to
pull the covers over him. Brock gave him a dirty look and moved his
head and shoulders around—the only parts he could move—and got
comfortable. He quickly fell back asleep.

Hunter leaned down and kissed his friend’s
forehead. He kept the position for a few seconds and slid his face
down the side of Brock’s until their heads were pressed together,
facing opposite directions, pressed temple to temple.

In that position, he pushed his head up
against his friend’s in a sort of head-hug and whispered, “Get some
sleep, bud. We’ve got a lot coming and I need you.” Hunter kissed
his friend’s cheek, turned around, and pushed the wheelchair into
the middle of the room.

Before he plunked into the seat he loudly
proclaimed, “And now I get to sit in ya chair, bitch!”

He plopped down and intentionally wiggled his
butt around a few times and ground it into the seat. Brock groaned;
Hunter smiled.

He didn’t want to risk getting Ken’s files
anywhere near his own computer so he used Brock’s to read through
everything. Unfortunately for Brock, that left him without much to
do except sit and watch Hunter look at documents that Brock
couldn’t come close to understanding. Over a thousand pages of
documents. Hundreds of thousands of words, hundreds of diagrams,
and countless equations. It was all there, though
.
From beginning to end
,
from
theory to an operational device. And, Ken was right: his version
contained functionality far beyond the research in the military’s
possession.

Hunter understood why that would be the case.
While the additions certainly were things for which the military
could find a use somewhere down the road, they didn’t add anything
to their initial intended purpose for Veil. The Veil device the
military had in their possession was all the weapon they
needed.

That was exactly how Hunter thought of such a
device in the military’s hands: it was a very powerful weapon. A
weapon whose efficacy rested almost entirely in its secrecy. Take
away that secrecy and you essentially disarmed it; you disarmed
them.

“Good,” Hunter mumbled out loud without
realizing.

The additional programming was easy to spot,
and not simply because Hunter hadn’t encountered it before. The
coding was rough and sloppy. All of Jin’s other work was polished
and meticulously precise. The additions were more theoretical, if
computer coding could reflect a theory. If anything, the rough
language was an indication the coding never actually took place; it
was only a first draft of basic syntax that would be cleaned up
during the process of programming.

It made sense because Tsay’s partner didn’t
have a device to experiment on, so he worked purely from
documentation, notes, and speculation. Considering that, Hunter
thought it was an impressive job and, despite being rough, he could
work with it. After only one night of reading the new source
material, Hunter was certain he could have it all memorized and
ready to be coded. He was sure he could get it coded in two days.
That was, if everything went according to plan and if the two
knuckle
-
draggers stayed the hell away from
the lab.

The days went by like a blur for Hunter and
Ken but seemed like the longest days of Suren and Brock’s lives.
Hunter and Ken felt alive with fire-like intensity and were barely
able to slow down, especially long enough to sleep. They felt a
clock ticking against them while they worked toward the same goal,
albeit from different directions. Hunter, in the military lab, had
to finalize and document all the coding and schematics for the
perfected and complete Veil device; Ken, in his lab, had to
construct another prototype of the device Hunter designed, and
ensure the device would be ready and waiting for Hunter in case it
was needed when he arrived. Neither man knew what kind of progress
the other was making and neither man knew what awaited him come
Monday morning.

Since he bought himself an entire day by
requesting Monday off, Hunter could’ve changed their rendezvous
with Ken and Suren to anytime Sunday evening after his work in the
military lab was finished for the night. Hunter tried to plan ahead
and buy them all as much time as possible. He realized there was no
way they could get through everything that needed to be done in
order to get Veil market-ready by Tuesday. Because he knew Tuesday
might be the first day the military started to look for him, he
figured it best to have a few things in place that could throw the
military off track or, at the very least, delay suspicion.

Hunter already decided not to take the
prototype from the military’s lab when he made his break. That was
a no-brainer for him. With the device still in their possession,
the military might not scrutinize his disappearance as anything
more than irresponsible unaccountability. The favor he won over
from the General would provide him some benefit of the doubt,
perhaps enough to carry over through Tuesday all the way into
Wednesday.

He figured Schaffer and Pollock, having been
off Monday as well, would spend Tuesday debriefing and finalizing
the summary reports for the Veils they conducted on each other over
the weekend. Knowing them, they’d sit around most of the day
Tuesday and talk incessantly about what they experienced, although
they’d know neither of them would be listening to the other. That
still wouldn’t stop either of them from talking. Hell, maybe
experiencing the contents of each other’s minds and how they really
felt about each other would cause enough animosity that they’d both
stay in their offices and avoid each other for most of the day. For
all they knew, Hunter requested off from work on Tuesday as
well.

That could bring them all the way to
Wednesday before Hunter’s disappearance was actually noticed. Even
then, with the device in their possession and the General’s favor
working to his benefit, they still might not suspect anything. They
might not suspect anything until they went to use Veil again and
discovered that, despite two very successful test runs on Saturday
and Sunday, the device didn’t work. At all.

Then, and perhaps only then, they might start
to suspect that maybe Hunter had been a Judas in their midst. Shit,
that could bring them all the way to Friday. He and Ken could
definitely have a market-ready Veil device by Friday. He could
guaran-fucking-tee it.

As he worked through the additional
programming, Hunter came across a new line of code that seemed to
serve no purpose and made no practical sense, especially when he
considered the feature into which the line of code was written. One
of the features provided by Ken’s additions was the ability to mute
or enhance signals from The Witness.
Any
signals, not simply
physical responses but even thoughts, emotions, sights, and sounds.
Any signals at all.

If used correctly, Hunter thought the feature
could definitely be something of value
,
although it if used incorrectly it might also make some rather
concerning uses of Veil possible. However, the way the code was
written, by default all signals from The Witness would be muted
unless the trigger were manually overridden. Essentially, Veil was
locked in the “off” position through its very programming.

At first, the small bit of code didn’t make
any sense to Hunter. It wasn’t simply erroneous coding; it was
specifically written to work in that manner. Trying to think like
Ken, he quickly realized the necessity of it, and if Ken was
dealing with anyone other than Hunter, he might’ve actually pulled
it off. It was a good one.

It was a kill switch: a small, practically
invisible bit of coding to render the entire device useless.
Finding the bit of code, unless someone was familiar enough to know
where to look, would be like tracking down one single cell in an
entire body. Hunter couldn’t blame Ken for that tactic one bit; Ken
had no idea if he could trust him and Brock, so the kill switch was
at least an attempt to neutralize the device until they all met up
as planned. Without intending to, Ken gave Hunter the perfect way
to disarm the military’s prototype so Hunter could leave it in
their possession but have it be absolutely useless to them. By the
time those knuckle
-
draggers figured it
out, he laughed, there’d be a Veil device in every single
household.

That did leave one more open end, however,
and it was one that was going to be frustratingly crucial to tie
up: Brock. Not simply Brock, though: Brock and General Coffman or,
more accurately, Brock and Lynn Coffman. Lynn The Insufferable
Bitch Coffman. One of the last things the General said was he’d
give his wife a call and let her know Hunter and Brock would be
over for dinner Monday night.

Hunter didn’t want to leave that hanging in
the air
,
and there was no way the two were
going to mosey on over to the Coffman house Monday night after
Hunter just stole the full schematics of Veil right from under the
General’s nose. Hunter prided himself on being a ballsy son of a
bitch, but he wasn’t ballsy to the point of being stupid.

That left Hunter with only one option as far
as he could see it.

Sunday morning he reluctantly confessed, “I’m
going to have to use you again, bud.”

Brock looked at him and didn’t saying
anything, but also didn’t indicate displeasure with a grunt or
groan or rolled eyes. Hunter hoped that was a good sign.