Veil (2 page)

That morning—like every morning—Suren Tsay
quickly fell back into a peaceful sleep once she heard her Jin
leave and shut the front door. (After she rolled onto Jin’s side of
the bed to bask in his lingering warmth and scent, of course.)
Although she could
never
tell him, Jin woke her every
morning when he kissed her cheek, or her forehead, or her neck, or
whatever patch of skin he hoped he could press a kiss onto without
waking her.

After he left their bed and shut the bedroom
door without so much as a click, Suren wouldn’t hear another sound
from Jin during his morning routine. She wouldn’t hear another
sound until Jin shut the front door and locked it, and she could
tell he even did that as quietly as he could. He was always so
mindful of her.

Suren could never tell Jin how his kiss woke
her every morning, nor did she want him to suspect it. So, she
pretended to be asleep until she was certain he left for work. If
Jin had the slightest inkling he ever woke her with that kiss, he
would stop giving it to her. He would never want to disturb his
Suren’s sleep…

…and Suren never wanted her Jin to stop
stealing that kiss.

She was in deep sleep by the time Jin reached
the entrance of the Metro station. As he approached the tunnel, Jin
was already prepared to gauge the probability of him reaching the
elevator before anyone else.

Jin used the echoes of his footsteps in the
tunnels of the D.C. Metro to calculate the potential for him to
arrive at the elevator
first
. No matter how long he and
Suren lived in the District, those magnificent honeycombed tunnels
impressed him every time he arrived. However, what struck Jin more
were the echoes of his dress shoes as they clicked against the
hexagonal tile floors of a completely empty station. It wasn’t
merely the sight of a vacant station that eased his elevator
anxiety but much more so the degree in which those honeycombs
resounded his footsteps.

Jin desperately wanted to believe the steps
he produced sounded sharp, prestigious, and authoritative, such as
those made by a colonel’s high gloss, black Oxfords. To Jin’s
dismay, no matter how forcefully he walked or how wide his stride,
his echoes distinctly matched those of a woman’s high-heels. He
arbitrarily blamed that sound on his short stature and small feet.
If not for the fact that the echoes were only so prominent because
the station was so empty, their pitch would have likely embarrassed
Jin.

As he stepped off the dizzyingly long and
frustratingly slow escalator and onto the Metro platform that day,
Jin was somewhat relieved by the emptiness of the station and the
echoes of his footsteps.

tsk-chk tsk-chk tsk-chk tsk-chk (… tsk-chk …
tsk-chk …)

Just the right echoes. No one in sight.

Relentlessly fastidious, Jin gently dropped
his paper coffee cup into a recycle bin, so as to avoid an
embarrassing stain caused by the jerky, jolty Metro. He then
boarded the waiting train. Its cars were all dark and doors all
closed, except for the first car, which remained lit and open as
the train idled. Essentially, it was Jin’s own personal train, and
although he would never let himself think it, he felt it. As soon
as he boarded, the doors closed behind him and the loudspeaker
dinged to alert passengers of departure. Or in that case, to alert
Jin.

Elevator
.

He sat in the front of the car and faced
forward. He placed his briefcase on the floor of the Metro;
although the train was completely empty, it eased Jin’s mind if he
could feel that no one walked off with it, so he made certain it
touched his calf. He looked straight ahead. He did not read a
newspaper, flip through a magazine, review work documents, or
listen to music. Just like every other day, he sat motionless and
stared straight ahead until the train reached his destination and
the voice from the loudspeaker announced the arrival at the
station.

He grabbed his briefcase, exited the train,
and rode the long, slow escalator up and out of the underground
tunnel. As the escalator approached the top, Jin made a mental note
to buy flowers for Suren from the vendor who’d be positioned near
the entrance of the Metro when he left his lab at the hospital
later that evening. He brought home flowers with enough regularity
for Suren to appreciate the thought but without it being so common
it seemed contrived or a habit. He hoped it didn’t rain that day
since, if that were the case, the flower vendor would be replaced
by one selling umbrellas.

Jin stepped off the escalator, walked
approximately twenty feet from the station, and entered the
hospital. He gave his daily nod and smile to the familiar security
guard stationed at his right
,
and he
rushed directly ahead to the elevators. The emptiness of the lobby
didn't go unnoticed, but as he learned long ago, he couldn't relax
until the doors shut completely, with him inside—
alone
.

The elevator on the right was open and
awaited passengers; the elevator on the left was strategically
placed on a higher floor, where it also waited for passengers.
Neither of those details went unnoticed either, although years ago
Jin stopped noticing that he ever noticed those details at all. He
knew an open, empty elevator on the right side
,
plus a lit tenth-floor indicator above the elevator
on the left side
,
meant one thing: he was
definitely first. First to arrive for the day.

All those signals slightly alleviated Jin’s
anxiety.

Very slightly.

He swiftly entered the open elevator, turned
around, and pushed the button for the 14
^th
floor. He
then repeatedly pushed the ‘Close Doors’ button. Jin wasn't sure if
pushing that button actually decreased the delay for the doors to
close, but the satisfaction he felt as he pushed it outweighed any
wasted effort.

The elevator doors slid shut, although they
did so torturously slow. After the doors finally met, Jin released
his daily, audible sigh of relief. If anyone else were in the
elevator at that moment, it would've sounded like Jin held his
breath for quite some time and finally exhaled; the immense relief
he experienced wasn't much different than that.

Whooooooooooooooooooouh

The relief wasn’t much different at all.

He inserted a key into the slot above the
floor button panel and turned it to the right. All the buttons lit
up, and the woman's voice that usually announced the elevator's
arrival at each floor instead directed Jin to enter his security
code. He entered the code, and all but the 12
^th
and
14
^th
buttons went dark. There was no 13
^th
button and, for all anyone knew, no 13
^th
floor. An
unbelievably small number of people knew about the existence of
that 13
^th
floor at the hospital.

That was the whole elevator problem: no one
knew about the 13
^th
floor. It was completely hidden, but
it was in plain sight and unquestioned. Out of quirky superstition,
plenty of buildings around the city labeled the 13
^th
floor as the 14
^th
, so the practice was commonly accepted
to the point of being ignored by everyone except those who weren't
raised in a city. Even in those people, it only caused mild
curiosity, usually quelled by a few moments of common sense.

If anyone inquired as to why, when one rode
the elevator or climbed the stairs, the distance seemed greater
between the 12
^th
and 14
^th
floors than between
other floors, they all received the same answer: the ceilings of
the 12
^th
floor were higher than on any other floor. If
anyone ever questioned that explanation, they never spoke up in
doubt. Most people simply shrugged it off and resumed caring about
something else.

Instead of some movie set quality, well-lit,
heavily guarded and technologically secure lab with opaquely
frosted windows and solid steel doors that hissed when they opened,
Jin was provided an entire hospital floor. And not just an entire
floor but also a lab whose very existence remained remarkably
hidden and top secret. As sci-fi, stealthy, and James Bond-ish as
that might’ve made most people feel, for Dr. Jin Tsay it only
served to make the first forty minutes of his day nearly
unbearable.

When the project started, there were
countless times that Jin had to ride the elevator up and down, up
and down, up and down. He had to continue the ride and wait for the
moment when he was the only person inside the elevator and
therefore, could use his key to access the 13
^th
floor
covertly. Once, he spent nearly an hour waiting for the elevator to
empty
,
and on more than one occasion he
was reported to security for seeming suspicious.

For someone of Jin’s disposition, the
attention and embarrassment, not to mention the wasted time, were
unbearable. After the atrocious attacks of 9/11, when
people—especially in the District—became paranoid and suspicious of
absolutely everyone and everything, Jin decided he had enough.
Although completely out of character for him, he submitted an
official request for a meeting to resolve the issue.

Jin’s request resulted in no such meeting.
Instead of a meeting, what Jin received was a written response that
the Metro line between his home and the hospital would make one
train available an hour prior to the scheduled start time. The
notice stated that the early train would not be announced publicly;
it would only travel between those two stations; and only Jin’s
personal Metro pass would allow early entry into the station near
his home.

The plan was practical, since he was barred
from commuting to or from the hospital in his own vehicle—or any
vehicle, for that matter—in order to remain totally inconspicuous.
For the most part, the new protocol worked. Only twice was Jin
faced with another elevator passenger after the Metro started to
run early for him. Luckily, those passengers exited before they
reached the 10
^th
floor.

While the arrangement did nothing to
alleviate Jin’s anxiety, even as he arrived at a Metro station he
already
knew
would be empty, it did come close enough to a
resolution for him. Plus, what he learned in the process was more
valuable: he was alone in the Veil project. There were to be no
face-to-face meetings, no regular communications, no occasional
updates or debriefings. Jin was contracted by the military to do a
job, and all they were interested in was the end product of his
work.

Just as he preferred—Jin was
alone
.

The elevator moved; Jin relaxed.

His mind, rather than suffocated by anxiety
and stress, was free to focus on Veil. He had test data he needed
to analyze in order to finalize and submit the development report
that was required of him, all before he could proceed to the
implementation phase. With one successful, seamless test run of
Veil behind him, Jin's brain clocked overtime on the next step. The
step that would take Veil all the way from theory to a final
device.

While he wasn't yet sure what his role would
be since he’d developed and perfected the technology and
methodology, he was certain of one thing: they would need him. No
one but Jin could extrapolate the data into usable instructions on
how to transform the theory of Veil into a technological reality: a
Veil device. That was what tickled Jin the most about the upcoming
phase. It was the chance to turn all his years of theory, research,
experimentation, development, and design into a device.

His theory. His device. His creation:
Veil.