Veil (55 page)

The man appeared to be speaking some more and
after a few moments pushed the cart out of the elevator and the
doors shut behind him.

Ken closed the video, moved the cursor to
another file
,
and highlighted it.

“Before I play this, you must know that Jin
was gone. His body might not have died, but he was gone. There was
no Jin anymore.”

“I understand,” Suren whispered. She took a
water bottle from the desk. She twisted it open and took a
drink
.
Ken pushed the box of tissues
toward her. She replaced the cap on the bottle, set it on the
ground next to her
,
and took a tissue.

“There was no reason for you to see this
before. It didn’t help solve anything. It would’ve only hurt you. I
hope you know what I did … I did … I…” Ken struggled.

Suren put up her left hand to stop him, with
her palm facing out. At the same time
,
she
placed her right hand over her heart. She closed her eyes and
nodded. She knew. She couldn’t speak, but she knew.

When Suren opened her eyes, everyone took a
deep breath and Ken pressed play on that video
.
They all watched the doors to the elevator open on
the 13
^th
floor and what appeared to be a hospital bed
was pushed inside. On the bed lay Jin, with the top of his head
wrapped in gauze a pole stuck through his head. The piece of metal
entered from near his brow and traveled through the top of his head
at an angle. Ken paused the video.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Suren gasped and put
her hand over her mouth. Tears immediately poured from her eyes and
her chin trembled. She leaned forward and used her other hand to
touch the image of her Jin
.

“The rod, I think,” Ken started. He was
trying to keep his voice steady. He never spoke about it out loud
and found it more difficult than he would’ve assumed.

Suren sobbed and bowed her head.

“The rod was what saved him. Well … not what
saved him but what kept him from dying for those two days before
the guy came back. Hooked up to life support like he is and with
the rod in the bullet’s path, it was feasible, though slightly,
that he could survive that long.”

Through tears, Suren tried to ask, “Wh … Wh …
why…”

“I don’t know, I really don’t. But I have a
theory.”

Suren nodded.

“I think the guy was expecting Jin to be
dead. I think he came back with that cart to finish the job. The
cart could be empty. He could’ve been planning to use it to get
Jin’s body out of the hospital. I see no other reason for him to
have it. When he leaves, he doesn’t take it with him. If I were to
guess, and it’s only a guess, I think he did all of that to Jin,
bandaged him up like that, to keep him alive long enough so when he
came back to finish the job, Jin wouldn’t be in such a horrible
state of …. of …. decay.”

Suren shot him an angry look. Ken held up his
hand.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. That’s just my theory.
I don’t think he was expecting to come back and find Jin alive. I
think he expected to come back and find him dead but not dead long
enough to really decay.

“Then why not kill him and do what he planned
on doing in coming there that day?” Hunter asked.

“Honestly, I don’t know. I think I know but
only he could tell you.”

“What do you think you know?” Suren asked,
still heated
.

“I think … well I think it’s harder to kill
someone who looks like that.” He motioned at Jin. “I think this guy
kills people rather quickly and then cleans up the mess. I think it
was harder for him to look at Jin and put another bullet in his
head.” Ken thought for a moment and then continued
,
“It’s like the phenomenon where it’s more difficult
for some people to kill an animal than it is for them to kill a
person, or how we can react strongly to an animal being killed in a
movie, although ten people might’ve already been gruesomely killed
off earlier in the same movie. It would be like that. That’s the
only explanation I can come up with. For whatever reason, he
couldn’t shoot Jin again or kill him off. Put him out of his misery
… like a poor animal.”

“Ken!” Suren yelped.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m truly not trying
to be insensitive. There’s so much to go over, and I’ll never be
able to if I don’t say it all. Get it all out.”

“I know,” she leaned back on the couch and
retracted her claws. “It’s just…”

“I know,” Ken assured her. “You don’t have to
say it.”

Hunter added, “Maybe it was simply easier
that way. If Jin were still alive, but damaged beyond repair, then
that guy,” he thumbed at the monitor, “didn’t have to deal with it.
He didn’t have a body to dispose of.”

“Could be,” Ken agreed but thought it didn’t
much matter because none of them would likely ever know.

He pressed play on the video and they watched
as life-support equipment was pushed into the elevator and the
doors closed. They watched the elevator make its way to the
lobby
,
where the doors opened. Someone
started to enter the elevator and stopped. There were a few moments
of stillness and then suddenly commotion. Some hospital staff,
which looked to be two nurses and a security guard, rushed into the
elevator and pulled out the bed
,
dragging
the life-support equipment with them. The elevator doors
closed.

“The last video of any importance that I’ve
been able to find is Jin’s killer leaving the hospital. When he
leaves, shortly after Jin is removed from the elevator, he has left
behind the large cart he brought with him and his hat.”

The three sat quietly. Ken knew he needed to
give them time to let all of it sink in. He had nearly six years to
mull over everything. Unfortunately, and they would learn it over
time, it didn’t lead anywhere. None of what was in the videos led
anywhere.

Suren turned the laptop to her and scrolled
the open video back to when Jin was first pushed into the elevator.
She paused the video there and resumed touching the image of
Jin.

Ken gave Suren a moment and then continued
reporting.

“So now that you know that, yes, Jin lived, I
can tell you what I learned.”

They talked for over three hours. Emotions
cycled from anger to pain to sadness. Mostly sadness. By the time
they were done, all the tissues were used and were scattered around
the floor in front of them. All the bottles of water were
empty.

Ken talked them all the way up to his dead
end.

He explained how he learned, from several
trips to the hospital, that Jin, who was to the hospital simply a
John Doe, was taken straight to the ICU. The rod was removed from
his head and he was treated. Staff estimated he remained in the ICU
for over six months. He developed a fungal infection in his brain
and that brought him close to death several times.

After he left the ICU, he was transferred to
a floor that was usually a transition ward for comatose or
vegetative patients who were placed there prior to being
transferred to long-term care. The hospital told Ken they weren’t
set up for long-term care of comatose patients. But, for some
reason, Jin never left. Maybe it was because he was a John Doe.
Maybe it was because of how he was discovered. Sitting in the
elevator like that. The hospital staff was kind of sketchy when
they talked, Ken told them, so they might’ve been trying to cover
for what they thought was some kind of hospital oversight or
mistake. Maybe, Ken suggested, they were trying to avoid a
lawsuit.

Nonetheless, despite what happened, and how
hard Jin fought, Jin did die. He consoled Suren by telling her how
the hospital staff reported Jin died in the ward after being there
for over three years. He lived for over three years in the
hospital, no one knowing who he was or what happened. All the
while, the three of them were unaware and searched for Jin’s
killer. Ken figured the day Jin died was a normal day to
them
.
Nothing spectacular happened and
they were none the wiser. Jin simply passed peacefully in his
sleep, or so the hospital told him.

Suren took it much better than he imagined.
By then she was drained and exhausted; her mind was trying to
absorb all the new information. She told Ken and Hunter that, no
matter what she heard in the office that day, it didn’t change
anything. She understood that if it were going to change anything,
it would’ve already happened by then. Jin’s killer would’ve been
caught. Ken would’ve seen to it. Ken wholeheartedly agreed.
However, she finished, it was good to know finally. To know
something at least. Although it did raise a thousand more
questions, it was more than she knew before. And she got to see her
Jin one last time. That, she assured Ken, made it worth it.

After the worst of it was over and the
emotional roller coaster encircling the room for hours finally
docked, Ken broke the silence.

“Now here,” he said as he lifted his left
index finger and with his right hand turned his laptop toward him,
“is where it gets a little interesting.” He slid his finger around
the track pad some and when he turned the screen back toward them,
it displayed a spreadsheet with two names, their VSN
numbers
,
and two other numbers in a third
column.

“You see those numbers?” he asked as he
pointed to the last column of numbers, which Suren noticed were
identical. “Those are bank account numbers
,
and they are the same bank account. Now, these are
the two people who bought Jin’s memory. The two people who Veiled
me for the memory. I was able to decrypt the key generated by my
host when it authenticated the connection, so I used the decrypted
key to determine their VSN. After all, Hunter and I wrote the
algorithm that produces each key based on a person’s VSN. So it
wasn’t too hard. With their VSNs, I was able to find out who they
were. After I had their names and VSNs, I hacked into Mariano’s
files,” he smiled, “and got their transaction information. Now,
what’s interesting is that these two transactions were paid for by
the same person, but that person is neither of those two,” he waved
his finger at the screen. “As a matter of fact, those two,” he
waved his finger again, “are dead.”

“They’re dead?” Suren asked.

“Yep, dead. Which is no surprise, considering
the memory I sent over to them. It nearly kills me every time I
have to Unvault it.”

“What does that mean?”

“What I think it means,” Ken said
enthusiastically, “is that someone is using the memory, Jin’s
memory, to kill people. Using it like a vFlatline memory. To
assassinate them.”

Suren jolted. She couldn’t believe what she
heard and worse yet, she couldn’t believe Ken said it with a
smile.

“Using it to kill people? They’re using …
someone’s using … Jin’s last memory to kill people?” she asked.

“Yep, I think so,” he beamed.

“Ken,” she growled through a clenched jaw,
“maybe you can tell me how that’s a good thing?”

“Oh … oh—” He realized what she was thinking
and leaned forward. “No, I mean. Let me explain.”

“Please,” she replied through her still
clenched jaw.

“You see, when I first got the memory and
realized what it was
,
I thought there was
no way I could be the Vault for it. I didn’t know what to do. It’s
not that I didn’t want it, but I knew what it would do to people. I
realized that anyone who bought it was probably assuming they were
buying the murderer’s memory and not Jin’s. They would have no idea
what was in store for them.”

“Yes,” she acknowledged.

“Then I started thinking. I figured, you
know, what kind of person would want to buy the memory of Jin’s
murder anyway? What kind of sick fuck would do that? So, hell,
maybe they deserved what they got. Maybe what I had in store for
them was some kind sweet karma.”

That made Suren smile.

“Well, almost a year went by and no one
bought the memory. A whole year. Suddenly, I get this strange call
from Mariano, the store owner, and he’s babbling about how he got
some phone call from some man who claimed to be the one who sold
him the memory. He told Mariano he shouldn’t sell it to anyone
because it could kill someone. The man said that it was a mistake.
That he never should have sold the memory. Mariano figured the guy
was nuts or from a competitor or something. You know, trying to
keep him from making a sale. He said he was calling me to make sure
I wasn’t dead and since I wasn’t, the guy was obviously lying.”

“Ummm ok
,
” Hunter
sounded unsure where Ken was headed.

“So, I got to thinking. There’s only one
person who would know what the memory contained. Only one possible
person. I was the only other one who had the memory, and it was
never sold. Only one person could’ve made that call.”