Veil

by Aaron Overfield

  Hunter perked up upon hearing those words but immediately cursed himself for doing so. It was too late; his posture had already straightened slightly and his arms had come from behind his back. As soon as he heard the words “Veil project” for the first time, Hunter felt his overwhelming curiosity become visible to the other men in the room. He hated when anything real about him was made visible. Hunter focused so intently on how to transition back to seeming casual that he almost missed the rest of what Schaffer said.

  “With the two subjects ready, using the device, we downloaded the neuroelectricity from Subject One and uploaded it into Subject Two,” Schaffer continued.

  “You did what?” Hunter blurted out and turned his entire body to face Schaffer. He repeated himself, the second time much louder, “You did what!”

  “Dr. K.,” the General hushed Hunter with a quick bark and glare. He then resumed eye contact with Schaffer to signal that he was to continue.

  Hunter relaxed and resumed his position. He leaned backwards to casually support himself using the eraser ledge on the bottom of the whiteboard.

  You know what? Screw these assholes, he decided. He did what they asked him to do. What they did with it was their fault.

  The General directed Schaffer to finish.

  “Subject Two was then released from the lab and instructed to return in four hours, which he did. Subject One remained hooked up to life support in the lab while his neuroelectricity was inside Subject Two. When Subject Two returned, we prepared to download Subject One’s neuroelectricity from Subject Two in order to return it to Subject One and complete the process.”

  “What in the hell?” Hunter mumbled and shook his head back and forth while he stared down at his shoes.

  Schaffer ignored Hunter and continued.

  “When we used the device to download Subject One’s neuroelectricity from Subject Two, the device must have malfunctioned or something because Subject Two instantly collapsed. Despite all resuscitation efforts, Subject Two was determined to be deceased. Subject Two had been immediately terminated, due to the device’s apparent malfunction.”

  Unable to contain himself, Hunter spoke up again in utterly disgusted disbelief.

  “Malfunctioned? What the fuck did you think was going to happen?”

  5

  BETRAY

  Hunter sat in the conference room and waited for the three men to return. At first he could hear a lot of shouting and although he couldn’t make out what was being said, most of the shouting seemed to come from General Coffman. After a while the shouting ended and he couldn’t hear anything. Over an hour later, the three men still hadn’t returned.

  He didn’t enjoy the show. Not one damn bit. It was all fun and games until he ended up personally involved in something that led directly to another man’s death. He struggled to hide how deeply it affected him. He would have to wait and process it later, most likely over a few thousand drinks. Right then however, he needed to focus on making good on what led him to accept the job in the first place: the chance to screw over, in any way, shape, or form, the Department of goddamn motherfucking Defense.

  Out of laziness, stupidity, or impatience, the military neglected to notice how all of Dr. Hunter Kennerly’s work was directed at helping people. Helping people, not hurting people or killing them or torturing them or interrogating them. Maybe they didn’t know what the word “neuroprosthetics” meant. Still, all the General ever needed to do was pick up the phone and call his father to get a never ending earful about what an ungrateful little faggoty shit Hunter was and how he had no respect for the uniform or the so-called “real” men who wore it.

  If they simply did their work, he wouldn’t have stepped foot inside that lab, and in that case perhaps someone wouldn’t have ended up dead. Although the outcome made Hunter wish they had done their fancy footwork, since they hadn’t and since someone was in fact dead, Hunter Kennerly was more intent than ever on fucking shit up for them; he simply didn’t know how he was going to accomplish that feat … yet.

  After an hour-and-a-half, the three men returned to the conference room. Schaffer was carrying a coil-bound book, about as thick as two New York City phone books.

  Do they still have phone books? Hunter wondered.

  The General was the first to enter, followed by Pollock and then Schaffer. Schaffer and Pollock looked exhausted and distraught. As Schaffer walked through the door, the General snatched the book from him and threw it on the table. The powder blue card stock cover was stamped “VEIL” in black and below that, “TOP SECRET,” in red.

  Oh, how cute, Hunter smirked.

  “That,” the General pointed at the book, “is what these two cocksucking faces with assholes for mouths thought your device would do.”

  “O—Ok,” Hunter responded. He sounded so sheepish it surprised himself.

  He also wondered how an asshole mouth could suck cock, since it was an asshole and all. His asshole couldn’t suck things. Perhaps the General’s could? He figured there was probably a fetish for that kind of thing—people who had assholes for mouths, not the General’s ability to suck things with his ass—so he decided he needed to Google it later. It could prove quite interesting.

  “So now,” General Coffman resumed as his eyes bore into Hunter, “you’re going to help them build something capable of doing exactly what’s described in the book. When you’re finished maybe I won’t need to have you killed like I did the guy who wrote it. I kinda like you.”

  The General exited the lab. The hateful stomp of his shoes against the linoleum echoed in the ears of everyone present. The three scientists stood silently and stared at the book on the table. Hunter felt as though suddenly all the games were over and everything was real. He couldn’t remember a time when he ever felt like things were so real.

  “Technically, we wrote that book,” Pollock eventually half-joked.

  Without the slightest hesitation, Schaffer turned, punched Pollock in the face, left the room and closed himself in his office.

  Pollock laughed nervously and wiped blood from his nose with the side of his hand. His eyes were watering. Hunter felt dizzy and sick. He sat down in one of the chairs the General threw aside a few hours earlier. Where the hell was he and who the fuck were those people?

  Hunter Kennerly always had a knack for reducing the most serious of situations to a joke. For the first time in his life he had a thought that, while anyone else would’ve considered it funny, couldn’t have been more serious.

  No wonder my father drank.

  Ken played and replayed the video of Suren and Jin riding the elevator to the 13th floor. She must have watched it at least ten times. She’d taken a seat beside Ken and stared at his computer screen. She barely blinked.

  “I really don’t understand what I’m looking at. This never happened,” she finally claimed.

  “It did happen, Suren.”

  “I know it happened. I … I … you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah.” Ken wanted to console her and paused the video before he continued. “You know he would never—you know Jin would never.”

  “I know,” she sighed. She did know, but it didn’t make sense and they still hadn’t looked to see what happened later in the footage. “But he did something. He had to have done something.”

  “Whatever he did, Suren, he had to do. He wouldn’t do anything—anything to you, unless it was something he had to do,” Ken continued to console her. He wasn’t sure if he believed the words himself; he merely hoped Suren was desperate enough to believe them so she wouldn’t detect the uncertainty and doubt in his voice.

  “Find the rest,” she told him. “Crop them out and save them. I want to see all the clips. I want to see what happened. I can’t sit here and watch while you do it. I already feel like I’m going to throw up.”

  “I understand,” Ken nodded. His attention was already on the computer, doing what she asked.

  She wanted to leave. She wanted to walk the streets of her a
nd Jin’s neighborhood to clear her mind. However, she knew that wouldn’t happen. No, instead she would walk the streets and obsess over what happened or what might’ve happened and then she would start to cry. Either out of anger or out of anguish, she would start to cry and she hated to cry in public. God she hated it.

  Suren preferred baths, but the immediacy of the situation didn’t call for one. She couldn’t imagine stewing in a bathtub full of hot water while she pretended to relax; she took a shower instead. She let the scathing hot water nearly scald her scalp. It streamed down her face. Suren was overcome by the enormity of everything that happened and how blindsided she was by what she saw.

  The streams of water mimicked tears and almost egged her to cry. She raised the showerhead slightly and pushed all the products off the tub’s back edge. She listened as each hit the ground with different degrees of thuds. Suren rested against the edge of the tub and let the water patter her redden breasts. It flowed down between her legs and drained into the tub. She started to cry. It was an angry cry.

  Ken heard sounds of crashing come from the bathroom, but he didn’t react. It wasn’t the sound of breaking glass, which would’ve been a concern, and he could only imagine how Suren felt. He knew she needed some space and concern over worrying him would only make her situation worse. So, he noticed the sounds but ignored them. He kept scanning through the elevator video feeds from the day Jin took Suren to his lab. He found two by then: the first of Jin and Suren riding up in the elevator together and, about an hour later, one in which Suren entered the elevator alone. She rode down to the lobby and exited the building.

  Alone.

  Maybe somehow she totally forgot about it. Jin took her to see the lab, to show her where he worked and some of the things he was working on, and then sent Suren on her way. No, Ken knew, that wasn’t Jin. He wouldn’t have brought Suren to his lab, and he wouldn’t have shown her his work. More than that, if she went to the hospital for any reason, Jin would have never let her leave the building without escorting her to the very entrance of the Metro. Jin would’ve escorted Suren as far as he could before he left her side.

  As perpetually lost as the man was in his own thoughts, when it came to his Suren, Jin Tsay was so consistently chivalrous it would have made everyone else in the world nauseous. Ken never saw a man love a woman the way he witnessed Jin love Suren. Jin never once spoke to Ken about his relationship; Jin didn’t speak about a lot of things. But, Ken saw it. It showed Ken how love looked from the outside and set the bar, perhaps far too high, for what Ken searched for in a lover.

  Ken had yet to find his Suren.

  The image of Suren returned to the screen and jolted Ken’s attention back to where it belonged. According to the video it was 8:20 pm, well past the time Jin usually stayed at the lab. He hadn’t seen Jin leave yet. Suren entered an empty elevator, pushed the button for the 14th floor and used the key, which she removed from the front pocket of her typically stylish jacket. She proceeded to the 13th floor, where she exited and moved out of the camera’s sight.

  Ken’s mind raced with possibilities. What in the hell was going on? Surely Suren would remember not only going to Jin’s lab but also taking the steps necessary to access it herself. That wasn’t something someone would simply forget. Ken’s mind furiously worked to hone in on the most logical, realistic explanation for what he saw.

  He continued to scan the video feed. At 9:27 pm, more movement. The elevator was called to the 13th floor, the doors opened and Jin and Suren stepped inside. Everything looked intact; no cause for alarm, nothing to indicate anything out of the ordinary happened or was happening. If anything, Jin looked happy. Visibly happy. Way happy. To the point where he was being publicly affectionate with Suren. He kissed Suren’s cheek and held her hand. In public, no less. And, Jin was smiling.

  The oddity of Jin’s behavior slowly weighed on Ken. He watched until the elevator reached the lobby, and the couple stepped out. When they exited the elevator, Jin continued to hold his wife’s hand—again, in public no less—and, as Ken witnessed with awestruck realization, Jin Tsay skipped a little. He actually stepped off the elevator and took a little skip while still holding on to his wife’s hand. A skip.

  “No fucking way!” Ken yelped. He pushed his chair back and jumped up. He ran to the bathroom and threw open the door. Suren was still seated on the rear edge of the tub. The shower curtain was open enough to where she could see Ken and Ken could see her. Ken didn’t notice. “I need Jin’s notebooks!” he yelled at the same volume he had moments earlier. “His pocket notebooks—where did he keep them?”

  “Ken!” Suren shouted and yanked the curtain closed.

  Ken didn’t seem fazed in the slightest. “His notebooks!”

  “They’re in the bottom of our bedroom closet. In a stack of shoeboxes,” she cawed. She was annoyed but found Ken’s excitement infectious.

  “Thanks,” Ken squawked.

  Suren could hear him head toward the bedroom. “Oh my God! Close the door!” she screeched after him.

  “Sorry!” he croaked and rushed back to slam the bathroom door shut.

  It was the first time Suren heard any of the doors in her house make such a loud noise. It startled her. She decided she had to find out what had Ken so worked up.

  Suren got out of the shower, somewhat dried her hair, and finished it off by winding it up in a towel. By the time she put on a long robe and made her way to the bedroom, Ken was already on the floor, surrounded by dozens of Jin’s little notebooks. Most were open and scattered face-up. Suren knew if Jin saw that, he would’ve had a stroke. It almost made her laugh.

  “What … what are you looking for? What’s—” she tried to ask.

  “Hold on a second,” Ken dismissed her. He thumbed through the notebooks, pulled one more out of the box, checked the date on the cover, got up and said, “Come.” Ken rushed by her and held the notebook in the air, so she could see it over his shoulder as she followed.

  “It was you, Suren. It was you!”

  “It was me what? Ken … wait,” she pleaded as she followed him down the hall.

  Ken got to the dining room table and pulled the two chairs in front of his computer apart. He sat down in one and patted the seat of the other.

  “Sit.”

  When Suren took her seat, Ken held up the little notebook, shook it, and pointed at the date in the upper left-hand corner of the video, which was paused on the screen. There was a date in the upper left-hand corner of the little notebook as well. The two dates matched. Ken opened the notebook and frantically searched through the pages.

  “As I was going through his research bit by bit it never dawned on me … and I wouldn’t have thought to question it because it wouldn’t have been relevant. Most of it would’ve never been included,” Ken babbled.

  He wasn’t making sense to Suren, and he was doing nothing to alleviate her frustration.

  “Ken—what? What?” she yelped.

  When he arrived at the right page, he held up the notebook.

  “It was you. You were Jin’s first and only Veil, Suren … you.”

  Suren stared at the notebook, which rested on her lap. It was open to the pages that detailed how Jin shadowed her, how he Veiled her. Suren didn’t read the pages; she wasn’t focused. She wasn’t able to think. She simply sat there; she sat and stared at the notebook while she let the last words Ken uttered sink into her. She let her mind piece them all together until she understood their message and what they meant. Ken knew she was in shock, understandably, and he was already prepared for what he knew was about to come.

  After about four minutes, Suren stood, pulled the towel off her head and freed her long, damp hair. It cascaded down her neck and shoulders.

  “I was his first?” she asked.

  “Yes. Without a doubt. You were.”

  “Jin … Veil … ummm, Veiled me?”

  “He did. Yeah, he did,” Ken nodded emphatically.

  Suren instinctually place
d her hand on top of her head while she paced around the dining room. She didn’t speak. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead but weren’t looking at anything.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Suren, but don’t. Remember, you know him. He’s Jin.”

  She snapped out of it and shot Ken a sharp stare. In her anger, she pieced it together. Of course it was her. Jin didn’t have partners. He didn’t work with anyone. He wouldn’t want test subjects. He was private. He was shy. He didn’t trust anyone. He was secretive. Of course it was her. How stupid was she?

  “He’s Jin? He’s Jin?!” she raised her voice, one hand still on her head. “Jin wouldn’t fucking do that to me!” She pointed at the computer and by the end she was screaming.

  Ken grabbed Suren by her hand and led her back to her chair. She sat down.

  “He couldn’t have done it to … done it with anyone else. Don’t you see? He chose you because you’re you. He didn’t choose you so he could do something to you. He did it so he could do it with you. But he couldn’t tell you about it. You couldn’t know, but there was no other way. Not for Jin. Deep down, you know that. This was a good thing, Suren. This was a beautiful thing.”

  Suren glared at the computer. Tears welled up and threatened to fall. Conflicted tears: anger and anguish. Her head felt like it was being ripped apart, as if there were seams along her scalp; the threads were stretched beyond their limits and tore her flesh.