Veil

by Aaron Overfield

  They all watched as the elevator opened at the 13th floor and he started to push the cart out. Then he stopped. He appeared to be talking to someone. After a few moments, he went to reach into a pocket and then stopped again. He put his other hand out and appeared to be speaking again. Slowly, he resumed reaching into his pocket, pulled out a set of keys, and tossed them to someone standing out of the view of the camera. Ken paused the video.

  “You both remember Gary Austen, of course?”

  “Yes,” Suren replied and stared at the paused video, confused.

  “The soldier who set himself on fire outside of the temple,” Hunter finished.

  “That’s who I think he just threw the keys to,” Ken nodded toward the monitor.

  “Oh!” Suren exclaimed as it dawned on her that Ken was probably correct.

  “Now, what’s interesting is that he never shows up on video. I have no idea how. Somehow he got to and exited the 13th floor without riding the elevator, or at least without ever showing up on the video feed. That is still a mystery to me,” Ken informed them and resumed playing the video.

  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 13th 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 wa
s 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.”

  “The seller!” Suren blurted out. “The actual seller!”

  “Precisely.” Ken snapped his fingers. “Only that person could know the memory came from Jin and was potentially—hell, probably—lethal. I asked Mariano to try to remember carefully if the caller said ‘my’ memory or ‘the’ memory and Mariano said he was specific, he said over and over ‘the’ memory.”

  “The person knew the memory didn’t actually belong to the seller.” Hunter was beginning to catch up with the other two.

  “Yep,” Ken smiled. “The only person who could possibly know that was the seller. Other than myself, the only person who could know the memory was Jin’s and that it was lethal was the person responsible for it being out there. Maybe they had a change of heart or something. I don’t know. But what I was willing to bet was that the seller and Jin’s killer weren’t the same person. I always assumed that was the case but I suddenly needed to rethink it. There’s no way the man we’ve come to know, as little as we do know, as Jin’s killer would have a sudden change of heart like that. No way he would decide after a year that he didn’t want anyone to get hurt. Whoever sold the memory was not Jin’s killer. I was damn sure of it.”

  “So? What does that mean?” Suren asked, genuinely lost.

  “It meant that Jin’s murderer was eventually going to get wind of the fact that the memory was floating around out there, like I did. And, knowing that type of person, knowing how their ego operates, he’d come looking for it. Eventually. Like you did, Suren. Certain people, simply because of who they were, would go looking for that memory. I knew that.”

  Suren nodded. Now she understood.

  “It would be too much for him to resist. Hell, if only to make sure the memory didn’t implicate him somehow. So, what I told Mariano was that there actually was something wrong with the memory and that it put me in the hospital. I told him it didn’t kill me but there was definitely something wrong with it. I told him maybe, to protect both our asses, he should at least warn people it was a vFlatline memory before they bought it. Of course, he didn’t like hearing that but being the businessman he is, he knew it was better than someone winding up crazy or dead and it coming back to him.”

  Suren nodded again, “Even when that little man was faced with me, all he cared about was his bottom line. That little rodent is all business, from top to bottom.”

  Ken smiled and went on, “Right? I knew the business angle would get him. So, I told him from then on he was to inform everyone who inquired about the memory what risk it involved and then to let me know every time it happened. He was to let me know every time someone inquired.
For the next three months, maybe ten or fifteen people inquired about the memory but after being told it was a vFlatline, they naturally passed on it. Then, a few months later I got another call from Mariano about some guy who called and asked about the memory. He wanted to buy it over the phone and have it delivered through his vHost at home. Mariano told him it was possible but then explained the risks of it. He said the guy was kind of fishy and asked a lot of questions and then hung up. After he told me about that call my ears were all kinds of perked up.”

  “Ok, ok, so what happened? You’re starting to drive me crazy,” Suren blurted.

  “I’m getting to it, lady!” he jokingly snapped. “So, the guy calls back a few days later, right? Same guy, Mariano was sure of it. Said he wanted to buy the memory. But wanted to do it over the phone and do the Veil through his own vHost. He requested to schedule an appointment with the Vault, so there was an exact time when it could take place. Mariano contacted me and we scheduled it. The time came and the guy networked-in. My host generated a key for authentication and as soon as Mariano notified me the payment went through, the guy uploaded his Witness, shadowed me, and got the memory.”

  “And?” Hunter asked, beating Suren to it. They both looked ready to crawl out of their skin.

  “Calm down, you already know this doesn’t lead anywhere. But, yeah, I let the person Veil me and I delivered the memory to them. I figured it had to be Jin’s killer, because only he would want it that badly. I sent it and then after I recovered … after I was nursed back to health,” he nodded at Hunter, “I looked the guy up by his VSN.”

  “And?” Suren asked.

  Ken pointed to the first name on the list, “Don’t you recognize it?”