Veil (4 page)

He strolled through the hospital’s eastern
entrance and felt superiorly cunning for how effortlessly he took
advantage of such predictability. He sauntered across the lobby and
entered the open elevator on the right. Recalling the exact
instructions provided, he pushed the button for the 14
^th
floor and waited for the doors to close. He inserted the key into
the slot and turned it all the way to the right. When instructed to
do so, he entered the security code he memorized and was
transported directly to the 13
^th
floor.

It was 3:17 am. He had a little over an hour
to conduct approximately twenty minutes worth of preparations.
Great. An empty room and nothing to look at other than a
monitor
,
which displayed vacant elevators.
He never brought any unnecessary items, so he didn’t have an iPod
or anything. At least something to distract him from thinking. Or
at least something he could use to look at porn. Same
difference.

The only thing he hated more than waiting was
being on a job and getting stuck without a distraction or anything
to do other than think. He didn’t like to think anymore, although
he used to like thinking, and he used to think all the time. He
especially didn’t like to think while he was on a job.

However, outside of work, he never got bored.
He couldn’t stand people who got “bored
.
”
It seemed boredom was rooted in stupidity and a mindless need to be
constantly entertained. People who let themselves get bored were
pussies. He didn’t identify himself with those kinds of people; he
simply saw himself as anxious in work situations.

Anxious to do a job: to get it over with, and
resume his real life. Anxious to do a line and fuck some stupid
slut inside out and backwards. He never allowed himself to rail up,
line up, or even bump up when he was working or prepping for a job.
It was too risky; his mind wouldn’t be clear enough and there were
too many mistakes to be made. Besides, if he was tweaked and didn’t
have anyone to talk to, he’d
really
start to think.

Anyway, if he thought about himself and/or
his career too long—even if he wasn’t coked to the balls—he might
start to care about those things. Or if he thought about them too
long, he risked the realization that he actually didn’t care about
anything at all. There was simply no reason for him to think. Thus,
he didn’t want to know details; the less he knew, the better.

In order to perform an efficient elimination,
the target would have to be immediately incapacitated. Sure, he
could wait for the doors to open and hope he caught the target off
guard long enough to shoot him right away. However, he was provided
a picture of Tsay, and he wasn’t willing to risk the dude didn’t
know Jujutsu or some shit. Or what if the little Asian twat could
simply move really fast?

Who knows
?

What he did know was that it was in his best
interest to avoid a struggle. Although he had nowhere to hide in
that empty space, he needed to get the upper hand, nonetheless. The
target needed to be incapacitated. Thus the wire.

He fastened each end of the wire onto
opposite sides of the elevator doorframe. He pried back the
elevator’s metal framing enough to catch a knot he made on both
ends. He did that to each elevator, because he couldn’t be
absolutely certain which one the target would use. Although, his
information and recon indicated it was almost always the elevator
that was on the right when one faced them in the lobby. He made
sure the wire was taut and figured it would throw the target off
his game long enough to gain the upper hand. He took the folded-up
plastic sheeting out of his pocket and placed it on the side of the
elevator, so it was out of the target’s immediate sight when the
doors opened.

The wait wasn’t nearly as bad as he expected.
He passed the time by checking and rechecking the wire to ensure it
was fastened securely enough, so it wouldn’t snap off when the
target’s shin made contact. He pondered what the lab contained;
what the lab’s purpose was versus what it might’ve been when the
hospital was built; the organization required in order to build an
entire floor and keep it completely unknown. That last part was
mind-boggling. Not only the fact of the lab’s existence but the
idea that the people required for its planning and construction
could keep it secret for so long.

That was one thing that always bothered him
about major conspiracy theories: people keeping their damn mouths
shut. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that all the people
necessary to pull off a huge, complicated conspiracy would keep
their jaws from flapping. People simply weren’t like that. Someone
would’ve talked. Probably more than one someone. He wondered how
many people knew about the lab, living and dead. It made him feel
plugged into something greater when he considered how he was part
of a number that small.

Shit, it wasn’t that bad to think about.

Go fucking figure.

He intended to observe the target’s arrival.
However, since the monitor was embedded in the wall between the two
elevators, he’d be unable to view the entire approach. The plan was
to be on the side of the elevator during the target’s ride up.
After the doors slid open, he’d assume his position: he would
situate himself approximately ten feet from the elevator, between
the target and the lab door, well out of the target’s reach. As he
moved into position, the target would step out, trip over the wire,
and become disoriented. The target would be precisely where he
intended by the time he planted his stance, so he’d take his shot
to complete the elimination.

At 4:15 am, he closely watched the monitor
until he saw the target quickly enter the elevator on the right,
push the button for the 14
^th
floor, and stare intently
as the doors closed. The target then seemed to sigh, after which he
performed the procedure to access the 13
^th
floor. He
continued to watch the target for a few seconds during the
approach, and then he positioned himself as planned.

He waited—it was the thrilling kind of
wait.

It was the
I just did a bump
kind of
wait.

He detected the vibration and heard the drone
as the elevator made its way up from below. He felt his heart rate
quicken and the inevitable surge of adrenaline. They were feelings
he was quite familiar with; therefore he remained quite undisturbed
by them. He simply took notice.

The elevator dinged; its doors opened.

With the same agility and thoughtlessness he
used to pick up and toss the rock earlier, he moved directly in
front of the target, who just fell and caught himself.

His arm was already outstretched and aimed at
the head as he positioned himself to tower over the target. With a
precision that lacked any effort or hesitation, he pulled the
trigger to complete the elimination. The target toppled over and
landed on his briefcase. His hand was still latched onto its
handle. Brain matter, bone, and blood spattered the inside of the
elevator and landed with chunky, meaty splats.

He remained quite undisturbed by
them
.

He didn’t even take notice.

If nothing else, Jin Tsay would’ve been
relieved that still, in his last moments, no one ever witnessed him
in all his sheer, absolute giddiness. From where he was positioned,
the gunman could not view the monitor and didn’t witness Jin’s
childlike anticipation.

“What is this bullshit?” the General spat. He
threw a heavy, coil-bound book onto the mahogany desk between him
and the two visibly nervous men. “We commissioned you whitecoats to
get this shit up and running so we can start using it, not to write
some damned textbook. What am I even looking at?”

“It’s Veil, sir. That’s what you asked us
for. Veil,” the braver of the two whitecoats answered cautiously.
He and his colleague walked into the General’s office with all the
confidence of two major league athletes, but they were immediately
reduced to confused schoolboys being reprimanded by their
coach.

“That,” the General pointed at the
impressively thick book, “is not Veil. That is a
book
. Veil
is a machine or a piece of electronics or something. Something I
can put my hands on. That,
you fuckholes
,” he pointed at the
book again, how an angry dog owner would point at an indoor mess,
“is a
fucking book
!”

The less brave but more competent of the
whitecoats spoke up. “Sir, this is only the beginning phase. First
we had to extrapolate … uh, uh, figure out … Dr. Tsay’s raw data to
piece everything together
,
so we could
start building Veil the way we—the way the military—wants it.”

“I know what extrapolate means, jackass. I
haven’t the slightest clue what anything in that book says or
means, and it’s not my job to know formulas and diagrams. I’m not
about to sit here and sift through that crap. You’re wasting my
time even bringing it to me. I don’t need you to show off. What,
you two want congratulations? Do you expect me to be happy you
compiled a bunch of shit like my wife’s Reader’s Digest that I read
when I’m taking a shit? Well, woopty-goddamn-doo, fellas. Jin
fucking Tsay would still be working on this project if that’s all
we needed.”

The two shot glances at each other from the
corners of their eyes.

“What I need is for you two cockjockeys to
tell me exactly what the hell Tsay’s shit is going to do. In terms
of what intel we can expect to gain from it. Then I need you to
build it, like you were supposed to.”

“Can we sit down, sir?” the more competent
whitecoat requested.

The General picked up the book and tossed it
across his desk. It made a heavy thud when it landed on the ground
between to the two men, who were in fact wearing white lab
coats.

The General ordered them to sit the fuck
down.

“I don’t know how much you know about Veil,
sir.”

“I know it’s a spying technique—I mean
technology—that uses the brain. I know it puts someone’s mind into
someone else, and we can extract everything the person knows. We
can dig out everything in their mind. I know Tsay figured out a way
to do it, and it worked. That’s what I know.”

“Roughly, yes,” the increasingly
competent-sounding one replied. He cleared his throat to hide his
condescension. “But it’s a lot more ummm … complicated, yet
brilliant than that.”

“Then explain,” the General growled. He hated
talking to whitecoats. They were everything the military programmed
their soldiers not to be: weak, mousey, and downright effeminate.
Their voices always sounded shriller than his wife’s, and he
thought Lynn Coffman had a godforsaken voice that was shrill enough
to be classified as sonar. To the General, whitecoats were merely a
necessary annoyance he had to put up with if he wanted to build a
more advanced and capable military than any other military
throughout the world.

Although, they already were.

That was, they already were a more advanced
and capable military. The General simply wanted them to be even
more so, and he wouldn’t mind if it was all because of him.

“Imagine a field of electricity…” the
whitecoat started.

The General was already annoyed by the sound
of the man’s voice. He imagined, thanks to that voice, some
disoriented and confused little brown cave bats would soon start
crashing into the windows of his office.

Goddamn sonofabitch, this better not take
long. I already want to take his face and murder your face with
it.

“…that covers the entire brain and also
reaches all the way down inside it. Like a hairnet—or ummm—like a
veil, you could say. Yeah, that works. Imagine a veil.”

Did this moron really just now make that
connection? It’s called Veil for a reason, jacksack.

“Imagine the brain being covered by an
electrical veil, with electric roots that go down deep inside the
brain. That neuroelectrical network is measured in brainwaves, as
Dr. Tsay postulated in his thesis, and is responsible for tying
together the different functions within the brain and absorbing,
combining, and translating it all into what we call awareness.”

“Or, more accurately,
experience
,” his
colleague interrupted. He didn’t want to be completely overshadowed
by his counterpart.

“Yes, or experience.” The whitecoat rolled
his eyes and didn’t look at his partner. He wanted to avoid having
the conversation turn to a friggen roundtable between the three of
them. All they needed to accomplish was to get the facts across.
“Dr. Tsay called that network of neuroelectrical currents ‘The
Witness.’ From what we can ascertain, Dr. Tsay believed its
neuroelectrical current stimulates the brain to create literally
everything about a person—what they see, smell, hear, think, feel,
taste, remember—everything.