Veil (77 page)

As Hunter rose and rushed forward to meet
Ken, Suren stood and addressed the judge.

“In Dr. Wise’s place, I request to watch the
Accused undergo his Atonement.”

“Of—of course,” Judge Jacobsen stammered.
“Widow Tsay, by all means,” she continued and gestured toward the
chair. “It’s your right.”

While Hunter assisted Ken and helped him
stagger from the courtroom, Suren headed in the opposite direction
and took her rightful place in the vAtoner’s chair. The courtroom
doors closed behind the couple and Ken could be heard—from inside
the courtroom and outside the courthouse—as he began to scream. The
remaining members of the court and everyone else who could hear Ken
assumed he was grief-stricken; their pity and sympathy for the poor
man only increased their disgust and disdain for the Accused.

Trying to ignore Ken’s screams as best she
could, Suren stared directly at the side of Lundy’s head. He was
craning to look over his shoulder and see what was going on, to see
what all the screaming was about, but he couldn’t see anything. The
screams quickly faded off into the distance, so Lundy gave up and
swung his head back around. He was startled as Suren, whose
determined glare was trained right on him, instantly locked onto
his eyes.

“Ready, Ms … umm, Widow Tsay?” a guard
asked.

Suren nodded and listened closely for the
beep as the guard pressed the button on Lundy’s unit. When she
heard the beep, she adjusted herself in her chair, twisting her
body a little to get comfortable. She wanted Lundy to know she was
going to enjoy the show.

Suren’s gaze stayed fixed on Lundy, and she
watched as his eyes instantly became wide and watery—precisely two
seconds after she heard his vPort beep. She counted. His mouth fell
open, he pressed his head against the tall back of the wheelchair,
and all of his limbs pulled against the restraints with enough
force to cause the straps to cut deeply into his skin and
immediately draw blood. Every muscle in his body remained tensed,
and his jaw was forced open so widely that it caused the skin at
the corners of his mouth to tear.

The sound Lundy produced at that point was a
deafening, thundering, blood-curdling scream, which no one present
in that room would ever be able to forget. No one Veiling the trial
would be able to forget it, either. Lundy screamed so loudly and so
forcefully the pressure on his vocal cords became intense enough
that he stopped producing any easily detectable sound. His throat
created a dry crack of a hiss that reminded Suren of a dog whistle.
The two guards were startled, and both took a large step
backwards.

Lundy’s entire body remained completely
stiff, with his mouth opened all the way, and his head pressed
against the back of the wheelchair so hard that his forehead turned
white. His eyes rolled back into his head. He had the look of
someone who coincidentally suffered from an epileptic seizure right
as they were being electrocuted.

His body shook violently in the wheelchair,
and one of the guards lunged forward to grab the chair’s handles
and stabilize it. Lundy’s throat relaxed and began to emit a deep
gargling sound as his body convulsed. Suren leaned forward, placed
one of her elbows on her knees, and rested her chin on her fist.
She wanted to get a really, really good look.

As Suren witnessed Lundy being slowly
tortured to death by the experience of Jin’s memory—the memory of
his own murder—she was filled with a particular satisfaction. It
was the satisfaction one could only obtain from such a flawless act
of poetic retribution. Although it didn’t bring Jin back to her in
any meaningful way, watching his murderer get traumatized to death
was thoroughly satiating. The revenge sealed a wound inside her and
finally silenced a disquieting nag. It was a constant nagging moan
from her heart, fueled by the knowledge that Jin’s murderer was
still out there somewhere; Jin’s murderer was still walking around
unpunished, untouched, unscathed.

The revenge healed that part of her, and she
didn’t give one good goddamn that people often claimed
otherwise—that people claimed an act of revenge would ultimately
provide no such satisfaction or relief. For Suren, it did. Oh, how
it fucking did. Her only complaint was that the punishment couldn’t
last longer; she wished the pain could follow Lundy beyond death,
so he experienced it
forever
.

And she meant real foreverness, not merely
until the pain completely crushed his spirit down
,
so he disintegrated into nothingness. No, a vacuum
of nothingness and emptiness purer than that of outer space was too
good for him. She wanted Lundy’s existence to be entirely reduced
to a pinpoint of agony inflicted upon him by Jin’s memory, and she
wanted that agony delivered unto him—
forfuckingever
.

Suren beamed into Lundy’s face as she
witnessed his jaw continue to force itself open, tearing the
corners of his mouth deeper and deeper. Blood steadily poured from
the gashes like drool. To Suren’s amusement—and the horror of the
rest of the court—Lundy’s jaw dislocated from the pressure, which
created an audible snap, not unlike a hundred knuckles cracking in
unison. His mouth continued to force itself open, until both cheeks
tore by approximately an inch. Suren wished she could measure, just
to be sure.

Although she desired to watch the show
closely, Suren scooted the vAtoner chair back a smidge when Lundy
urinated and shat himself. She wouldn’t discover it until she read
the coroner’s report weeks later, but Lundy shat himself so
forcefully he produced and burst out multiple hemorrhoids on the
spot. When he did soil himself, he emptied the entire contents of
his stomach. The stench of Lundy’s filth would’ve been enough to
clear most courtrooms, if not for the fact that it was
Lundy
.
No one present would miss
out on watching him suffer.

Not to be outdone by his mandible, both of
Lundy’s clavicles snapped when his torso struggled to lunge
forward. Since the straps on the wheelchair restrained his arms and
legs, his shoulders had no choice but to dislocate themselves
mercilessly. So, they did. And they did so to damn near complete
detachment.

It seemed Suren’s amusement simply would not
end. Her only disappointment was that Lundy was eerily quiet.
Again, unbeknownst to Suren and the court at the time, Lundy’s
vocal cords hemorrhaged from the earlier pressure and coated his
throat with sickly, gelatinous blood, whose shade of crimson was
tinted with dark streams of pansy.

As Lundy finally neared the end of the memory
and what Suren was pretty sure would be the end of his life, his
body stopped lunging forward and appeared to relax. His mouth
closed halfway, and his eyes returned to somewhat normal. Suren
couldn’t tell if he was looking at her—if he could look at
anything—but when Lundy’s eyes landed in her direction, Suren
placed both hands on her knees and leaned in closer to sweetly
whisper to him.

“Die already, you unloved demon.” Before she
was finished with him, she sneered, shook her head
,
and sighed, “Such a little bitch.”

Suren leaned back in her chair, all smiles.
She did not blink again until she witnessed the life leave Lundy’s
eyes and heard with her own ears as he exhaled his very last
excruciated breath. Lundy’s entire body slouched, his head tilted
to one side
,
and his eyes remained opened
and transfixed straight ahead. Lundy’s eyes were dead, empty, and
stared at nothing. Foamy drool ribboned with blood spilled from the
ripped corner of his mouth and dripped from his chin.

Still in full grin, Suren stood, smoothed her
dress, and turned her head to the judge, making sure to erase the
smile as she did so.

She tilted her head slightly and furrowed her
brow, all sufficiently enough to emote a convincing mixture of
shock and bewilderment.

The Great Widow Suren Tsay gasped, and with
an increasingly high-pitched, confused tone, she delivered her
line.

“I think he’s—
dead
.
”

"the veil apocalypse will come
and drown."

“G
ood evening and
thank you for watching. We’re live in Washington for a special
broadcast tonight and for the closing of a story over a decade in
the making. I’d like to thank you for joining us this
evening
.
As the journalist lucky and
honored enough to announce the technology that eventually became
our New Veil World, it seemed fitting I be the one to bring you
this breaking news to you tonight. I’m joined in the studio by Dr.
Ivan Goss, whom many of you may remember. Dr. Goss, you were here
with me on that fateful night, over ten years ago, isn’t that
correct?”

“Yes Anderson, but please, please, call me
Ivan. And yes, that’s definitely correct. You and I, along with the
rest of the world, know now what happened after the news of Veil
broke that night on your program. We all know how quickly things
progressed.”

“That we do, Ivan. Veil took over the
world.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes, it certainly
did. It changed lives. It changed the economical and political
landscapes of the world. It changed every aspect of life you can
imagine from law to religion to sports to music to movies to
medicine and even to sex. There hasn’t been a part of life Veil
didn’t eventually touch and transform.”

“But there was one thing, Ivan, one thing it
took Veil this long to accomplish, one person it took Veil ten
years to weed out.”

“Yes, Anderson.”

“And that person was introduced to us in part
some ten years ago, on this show. We all became aware of that
person right as very the news of Veil broke.”

“True.”

“Let’s play a clip from that night, shall we?
Here’s Dr. Hunter Kennerly.”

Let me take this moment to also state that
this remarkable, life-changing technology, wouldn’t have been
possible without the genius of Dr. Jin Tsay, who cannot be here
with us today because, unfortunately, he was murdered in an attempt
by the government to steal the technology from him.

“Now Ivan, that story has an ending
tonight.”

“Yes it does. There is finally an
ending.”

“Yes, as almost all of you know, as almost
each one of you out there Veiled the trial earlier today, the
murderer of the Great Dr. Jin Tsay was tried and sentenced this
afternoon. As almost the entire world knows, that murderer’s name
was Lundy, and after one hundred convictions, all convictions for
murder, well, today that monster found the ultimate justice when
the Veil Atonement for the murder of Dr. Tsay ended with his death.
Today’s trial ended with the surprising, brutal death of
Lundy.”

“It did, Anderson. Nearly the entire world
witnessed as Lundy perished right before the Great Widow Tsay’s
eyes. The court doctor speculates the final vAtonement was too much
for Lundy to handle. His heart and mind couldn’t take any
more.”

“I bet, I bet. Now after ten years, that
story has an end. After ten long years, the murderer of the Great
Jin Tsay has been brought to justice.”

“Yes, Anderson.”

“Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, that is
not why we’re here tonight.”

“No.”

“Though the entire world is aware of the
death of Dr. Tsay’s murderer, it is with heavy, deeply saddened
hearts that we inform you that Dr. Kenneth Wise, friend and
colleague of Jin Tsay, passed away today, immediately following the
trial of Dr. Tsay’s murderer.”

“From what the court doctor speculated,
Anderson, Dr. Wise succumbed to a heart attack shortly after acting
as the vAtoner for Dr. Tsay’s murder. The Widow Tsay requested Dr.
Wise take her place as vAtoner
,
and the
court doctor speculated the stress exacerbated a preexisting
condition that lead to Dr. Wise’s untimely death. It is
unfortunate.”