Veil (63 page)

“He was right … or, well, he bet the right
bet. I don’t remember a dang thing. The whole day, waking up in the
morning, going to bed later that night, nothing.”

“Yeah, I don’t think he realized it would
work that effectively. But anyway, that’s not the good stuff.”

“Get to the good stuff, mister.” Hunter put
his feet up and rolled his eyes, although Ken couldn’t see it.

Ken opened one eye and squinted at him. “Do
you want me to make you leave, baby boy?”

Hunter raised both hands in surrender and
shook his head.

Ken closed his eye and continued.

“By that point Jin had told you he was
working on a top-secret project for the government. He told you he
didn’t think it would be safe for you if you remembered any of it
so that’s why he wanted to erase your memory. He wanted to feel
like he was protecting you.”

“I figured,” she nodded.

“But that still wasn’t enough for him.
Without being able to tell you how, because it would tell you too
much about the project itself, he said he designed your test so
that the first person who ever tried to perform the procedure on
you again would be killed instantly. The process would train your
brain—permanently and irreversibly alter its electrochemical
structure—so that Veil would never work on you again. No one would
ever be able to use it on you.”

“What?!” Suren and Hunter asked
simultaneously. They both took their feet down and bolted
upright.

Ken opened his eyes and sat up. He knew that
one was going to take a minute for everyone to digest.

“Yep, that’s what he said. Jin’s test Veil of
you was designed to implant a method that would literally train
your brain to kill the next person who tried to shadow you, which
would then also trigger your brain to restructure itself so that it
could never be shadowed again.”

“Why … why in the world—” Suren began to
ask.

Ken held up his hand to stop her. “Think
about it. Look at it from Jin’s perspective. He worked for the
government on some top-secret spy initiative. Not only were you his
first test subject, but you were also his wife. And, we’re talking
Jin here. You were his
Suren
.”

Suren nodded as Ken kept talking.

“Someone could come for you one day. To find
out what you knew. Someone from another government or something. It
was a logical assumption. To keep that from happening, especially
against your will or without your knowledge, he had to put some
safeguards in place. Because he was the one doing it—and this is me
speculating—he probably figured he could disarm the time bomb in
the future, when things were safe. But no one else would know about
it or be able to disarm it.”

“But you Veiled her and you didn’t die. You
didn’t die.”

Ken looked at Hunter and smiled, “Right! And
the only thing I can figure is that it’s because of the memory I’m
Vaulting.”

“I’m not following,” Suren responded.

Not breaking eye contact with Ken, Hunter
spoke out his thoughts at the same time he processed what Ken
said.

“Since Ken had gone through the trauma of
Jin’s memory so many times … training his brain to where he could
experience the memory but then block the horror of it out to
prevent any more damage, he built up kind of a tolerance. His brain
built up a tolerance to the same kind of damage that the method Jin
implanted in you was intended to cause.” Hunter finished by
snapping his fingers, looking at Suren, and pointing a finger at
her.

“Precisely,” Ken agreed, and also broke gaze
with Hunter to look at Suren. “I might be the only person who
could’ve shadowed you and not be killed by it. And it was only by
chance that I happened to be the one who did it. If things hadn’t
happened exactly the way they did, if I hadn’t gotten Jin’s memory,
dealt with it for six years
,
and built up
this tolerance, I probably would be dead right now.”

Suren put her hand over her mouth in horror
and threw herself back into the chair. She sat there motionless.
Ken scooted along the couch to get closer to her and put his hand
on her knee.

“But it didn’t happen like that,” he
reassured her. “So, it’s ok. Everyone is ok. And now we know. We
know what he did, why he did it, and how. Better yet, we know he
didn’t do it behind your back.”

Suren lowered her hand from her mouth and
shook her head, “I know, I know … it’s just, could you imagine?
Could you imagine what would’ve happened if it killed you? It
would’ve been … it would’ve been—”

“Horrible, a nightmare,” Hunter finished for
her. “But, it probably would've never happened if everything else
before it hadn’t happened, so who’s to say if Ken ever would’ve
Veiled you if everything hadn’t happened exactly the way it
did?”

That did soothe her somewhat, and her hand
instinctually went to the top of her head as she asked, “So that
means that I can never use Veil again? Ever?”

“Well,” Ken began as he returned to his
horizontal position on the couch, “it means that no one can Veil
you, no one can shadow you. If I understand what Jin did, there’s
no reason you shouldn’t be able to Veil someone else. All he did, I
presume, was train your brain only to communicate, in either
direction, with its own Witness. Except for you, everyone’s brain
will communicate one-way with a foreign Witness. Everyone’s brain
will provide information to someone else’s Witness, although it
won’t receive information from a Witness it did not create.
However, now
your
brain will only provide information to a
Witness it created. So, in theory, you should be able to Veil
people—to shadow people—but no one can Veil you. No one can shadow
you. Your brain is a one-Witness kinda brain now.”

“Ok … I—I think I get it,” she sighed, still
unconsciously rubbing her head.

“Will it kill whoever tries, though? Whoever
tries to Veil her?” Hunter asked.

Ken raised his head off the couch and looked
at Hunter. “No, it shouldn’t. That was part of the process of
training her brain to begin with. It was like a trigger that set
off the dominos. Because no one’s Witness can receive information
from her brain, if they tried to Veil her it simply wouldn’t work.
So, no, It wouldn’t kill them.”

“Gotcha ok.”

Ken closed his eyes and asked, “So should I
continue?”

Having set Suren and Hunter’s mind ablaze
with the news of the last ten minutes, he told them the remainder
was probably going to be less exciting and more disappointing. He
described how Jin and Suren made their way to Jin’s lab
.
Jin hooked them both up to his Veil prototype and
started the procedure. Jin then sent Suren on her way and
instructed her to return around 8pm
.
Jin
told her he should be done with all his work in the lab by
then
.

Ken recalled as Suren left the lab, rode the
elevator down to the lobby
,
and headed for
the exit. He distinctly remembered as the man known as Jin’s killer
intercepted Suren while she headed for the door
.

“All he said was, ‘You’re Jin’s wife,
right?’, to which you simply replied ‘Yes’,” Ken told her.

Ken reported how the man claimed Jin once
showed him a picture of her and that he and Jin were acquaintances
from the military project in the lab. Since Jin told her about the
project that morning, Suren accepted that and greeted him. Ken said
the man told Suren it was nice to meet her in person, shook her
hand, and then walked off. That was it.

Suren shuddered at the thought of having
touched that man. After the disgust subsided, she found herself
disappointed. She hoped there was something she could use.
Something, anything. The smallest, slightest bit of information she
could latch onto. If it went somewhere, at least it would be
something she could use. Something she could focus on since every
other lead was fleshed out … since every other path ended up being
a dead end.

“I know you’re disappointed,” Ken said as he
opened his eyes, sat up
,
and looked at
Suren. “I’ve gone over that moment again and again, trying to delve
as deeply as I could into that moment, using every Veilological
trick I’ve heard about to try to uncover any clues or details that
might be buried in your subconscious, but I’ve come up with
nothing. I’m sorry, Suren. I know you were banking on finding
something. Some sliver. I know that’s why you wanted me to Veil you
in the first place. But I didn’t find anything. I just didn’t. Not
about that. Not about him.”

Suren sat speechless for a moment and then
sighed and looked through the windows on the far wall.

“It’s ok. It really is. I won’t
lie
.
I am disappointed. It was like this
was the last hope. Looking for that memory for two years, well, it
kept me busy, gave me something to focus on. But,” she took a deep
breath and exhaled loudly while she looked at the two men, “maybe
it’s time. Maybe it’s time to let it go. Move on. You know, accept
it.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. Suren
looked down and realized she was fidgeting with her wedding ring.
She turned it and saw the dent along the bottom, from when she
smacked Ken so hard. She laughed to herself and looked at Ken, who
still didn’t know how relentless she was on his face that night.
She placed her hand on Ken’s knee.

“It’s ok, really,” she repeated herself.

Ken finished describing the rest of his Veil
with Suren. He outlined her day and noted it was pretty typical.
She went grocery shopping, headed back to their home, and got
things ready for a late dinner while she prepared and ate lunch.
She had her hair done. Jin told her she should do something she
enjoyed that day, so she went to the
First Ladies at the
Smithsonian
exhibition. Her day wound down and she headed back
to Jin’s lab.

When she returned to the lab, Jin was
waiting. He downloaded his Witness from Suren and then put her
under a heavy anesthesia to, according to what he told her, conduct
the wipe of her memory. Jin told her she’d be groggy when she came
out of the anesthesia and wouldn’t remember much
,
so they’d go straight home. When they got
home
,
he’d give her the pill that would
provide the rest of the buffer he sought. The one that would keep
her from remembering most of the day and all the events leading up
to and following the Veil.

“Jin didn’t have to put you under,” Ken
stopped himself. “You didn’t need to be unconscious. I’m guessing
he did it that way so he’d be uninterrupted when he uploaded his
Witness back onto himself to finish the Veil. So he could
experience you …
alone
.”

Ken said they left, went home
,
and Jin gave her the pill. They ate dinner and then
Suren went to sleep. That was it. After a moment of silence, Ken
added how, in the elevator back down to the hospital lobby after
they left the lab, when Jin was so ecstatic, Suren thought Jin was
so happy because his experiment had been successful. She remembered
enough to recall why they went there that day, so she assumed the
test was a success. She was also rather groggy.

When the elevator doors opened, she wasn’t
paying attention to Jin. She didn’t notice him being so happy that
he skipped, because she was shocked by the fact that it was already
dark outside. She was taken aback by how much time had gone by. She
noticed the dark sky through the windows, the vacant
lobby
,
and empty security
station
.
She was simply surprised it was
so late in the evening.

“Roy!” Suren yelped. Ken reminded her.

“Well yeah, Roy. It would’ve been Roy sitting
there when you went up to the lab that morning.”

“No, silly, I just remembered …
Roy
.”

“What do you mean?” Hunter asked.

“Roy! Roy! Roy! Roy and Jin,” she giggled and
slapped her knees with each word. The two men looked at each other,
equally confused and lost.

They gave her the same look.

Suren crinkled her nose, wiggled her
shoulders, and offered up a seemingly sinister request. “I want you
two to help me. I want you to help me use Roy
.
”