Veil (90 page)

During the battle of the “big thing,” Hunter
considered threatening to leave Ken if he went through with being
the vAtoner, but he selfishly couldn’t bring himself to do that
either. Hunter was never that kind of person before, and he didn’t
want to be that person. It felt like putting on the skin of some
nagging, shrew bitch of a woman, and he didn’t want to do it.
Hunter didn’t want to change the few good things about him simply
to keep the person he loved. After Ken died however, Hunter
tortured himself by wishing he had been strong enough in that
moment to be a nagging bitch of a woman.

Still, being able to see Suren
for
Suren was what shone a big-ass Hunter of a light onto Suren’s role
in Ken’s death and illuminated all the blame.

Seeing Suren for Suren, Hunter knew
she
knew
Ken would’ve backed down if she told him not to be the
vAtoner. Suren knew Ken, and Suren knew why he was compelled to be
the vAtoner: Ken was compelled to do the good and noble thing. All
Suren had to do was say she didn’t want it to happen, and Ken
would’ve honored her wishes. It was who Ken was. As far as Hunter
was concerned, all Suren had to do was stop caring about her dead
husband more than she cared about Hunter’s alive husband. That was
all she had to do. Ken had no choice; Suren did.

Hunter knew beyond any doubt what he would’ve
done if someone came to him and told him that if he stopped hating
Suren, Brock would live. Hunter knew he would’ve stopped hating
Suren so quickly that it would’ve spun Brock’s neck fast enough to
unparalyze the man somehow. Hunter would’ve instantly stopped
hating Suren for one more minute with Brock, for one more moment.
That was all Suren had to do. All she had to do was care about Ken.
Because she
knew
Ken would’ve conceded if that was her
wish—like she knew Roy would always do whatever the hell she
wanted—all Suren had to do was care about Ken. All she had to do
was say, “no.” Instead, she chose to kill Ken.

Thus, once again, the troubling, troubling
epiphany of Suren’s last words: since they were so alike, if Jin
would’ve gone Hunter-crazy had someone killed Suren, how crazy
would Hunter have gone if someone
actually
killed
Ken?

Oh
God, if someone had done that to
him…
Hunter wasn’t able to make himself finish the thought.

However, the thought spoke the epiphany for
itself: no one actually killed Ken. Had someone killed Ken, Hunter
would’ve been the first to go all Hunter-crazy.

After Suren closed the office door behind
her, Hunter supposed perhaps maybe possibly it was actually Lundy
who killed Ken. For the first time in twenty-five years, Hunter
blamed Lundy. Lundy set the ball in motion and created the memory
whose existence was not only a product of Jin’s murder, but led
directly to Ken’s death. If he was going to be completely honest,
Suren wasn’t Hunter’s Lundy. Lundy was Hunter’s Lundy.

Damn Suren, and damn her getting the final
word like that. It didn’t really change anything as far as he was
concerned and/or was prepared to admit. True, Ken decided to be and
insisted on being vAtoner. True, Hunter decided not to deliver the
ultimatum that he’d leave Ken if he went through with it. Even so,
neither of those decisions would’ve been necessary or possible if
Suren simply cared about Ken more than her dead corpse of a
husband. Hell, the man wasn’t a corpse anymore. All Suren ever had
to do was stop caring about a pile of dust more than Ken.
Thankfully, the she-devil didn’t go all Hunter-crazy. Hunter
couldn’t begin to imagine the Great Hunter-crazy Black Widow
Tsay.

Still, damn Suren, and damn her for getting
the final word. Nah, he’d show her. Hunter would get the last word.
That was a given, though. He was undoubtedly going to live longer
than that old bitch. Perhaps she was right; perhaps Ken wouldn’t
have wanted him to give up streaming, and perhaps he and Jin were a
lot alike. Hunter couldn’t see how those two things mattered as
Suren’s argument was rendered invalid because Hunter hated her.

I loathe you; therefore your argument is
invalid.

None of them were prepared for what happened
when
Veil: The Veillusion
was presented to the masses. Not
even Ken could’ve predicted how it was going to affect the world.
It became too confusing for people to call Peyton’s Veillusion
“Veil,” so the Industry decided on
Veil: The Veillusion
.
They even gave it the tagline: “The Story of Jin and the Legendary
Tsay Trustees.” It made Suren, Hunter, and Roy feel a little fancy.
They couldn’t deny it.

Roy was the one who put it all into
perspective for them. As somewhat of a Tsay Trustee outsider, it
made sense coming from him.

“It was unbelievable you all stayed these
famous celebrities as long as you all did, if you consider
everything else that was going on in the world. You all were so
outside Veil, which is what the whole wide world was focused on,
but you all still stayed in that limelight. Every other PreVeil
celebrity in the whole world got themselves replaced by
Velebrities. That money got pulled out of Hollywood so fast
PostVeil that when Old Time Veillusions did finally come along,
they started coming from like these amateur writers who were living
with their parents. In the basement.”

Since when was Roy so insightful?

Suren and Hunter gawked at each other, which
was saying something since they tended to avoid looking at each
other at all.

Overnight, they once again became the
revered, extolled, legendary Tsay Trustees. Hunter had to hire
security and keep all his gates secured. The District dispatched
officers to ensure Suren’s property was patrolled at all times.
Their privacy was gone again, although at their age, there wasn’t
much to keep private. That was especially true since the world was
suddenly given direct access to every bit of personal information
about them and their story. More than anything, they found that
people simply longed to see them.

Through
Veil: The Veillusion
, people
found a connection to those ghostly icons they grew up hearing
about. They were mysterious icons who didn’t seem like any part of
the real world. They were fabled relics many people assumed were
already long dead. Ironically, the most fervent and devoted of
their new fan base were born into the New Veil World. The older
generations, who were accustomed to the secrecy and unattainability
of the Tsay Trustees, were satisfied enough with the Veillusion.
They assumed access to the Trustees would not be forthcoming, just
as things were in the old days.

Peyton was hit hardest by the fame and
attention. Although they weren’t prepared for those things, the
other three were at least familiar with them. Peyton, like Roy, had
to learn how to deal with the change in her own way, but she found
the other three to be much less helpful than back in Roy’s day.
They didn’t have the time or energy to hold her hand. Plus, Suren
was less than happy with Peyton’s obvious ploy and play on
Hunter.

The three Trustees actually found themselves
relishing in their reclaimed fame. In the years following Lundy’s
trial and Ken’s death, they led very separate but connected lives.
As much as possible, Hunter’s focus went back to technological
improvements for Brock’s quality of life. That remained his focus
until Brock died. However, before he passed away, Hunter developed
the best thing Brock could’ve dreamed up, and Hunter wished Brock
lived long enough to enjoy it more.

Hunter devised a system that could read
Brock’s brainwaves accurately enough to allow him to communicate
and write without an onscreen keyboard. All Brock needed to do was
think of words, and his computer would recognize and speak or
record them. After reciting and recording long pieces of work with
his mind, he could go back and edit them for accuracy, because the
technology was of course not without its faults. Brock continued to
use the keyboard for conversing one-on-one; he found that less
confusing, and although it was slower, it was more accurate. Still,
Hunter gave Brock the tool to write. To really, really write. Brock
took it, ran with it, and went apeshit. However, less than seven
years after Hunter lost Ken, Brock was dead. A doctor claimed it
was natural causes. Hunter didn’t buy it: Brock wasn’t into nature
or dying.

Throughout those first years following Ken’s
death, Hunter and Suren remained connected through Brock and Roy.
In the unpublicized split of the Trustees after Ken’s death, Brock
naturally gravitated toward Hunter and Roy toward Suren. Brock and
Roy joked that they became the pets that would get split up during
a divorce. Funny but true, Brock noted. For seven years, Brock and
Roy spent time together when they could, mostly through trips to
attractions in the District. Brock really enjoyed the Air and Space
Smithsonian and the World War II memorial. Roy loved the Spy Museum
and the Tsay Temple.

During their outings, they would talk about
Hunter and Suren and afterwards would relay the information to
their respective housemates. Suren was always concerned with how
Hunter was doing, so she was glad to get the regular updates from
Brock, which were mostly delivered to her through Roy. She would
listen intently, and as the years went by she wondered what he
looked like. Did he still look like a big, beefy, angry, gay Vin
Diesel? Or had he started to get all skinny and gray and old?

Hmmm … if I ever see Hunter again, I need to
ask him if Vin Diesel was a gay.

Hunter, on the other hand, would listen to
Brock’s reports about Suren and then proceed to rant incessantly.
For hours, Hunter would scream how he didn’t care about the bitch
and about how much of a bitch the bitch was. He told Brock to never
speak her name in his presence again but then, when Brock got home
from his next outing with Roy, Hunter would immediately ask what
the old bitch was up to. Brock knew Hunter well enough to
understand the complicated dynamic and cared enough to suffer
through the nearly weekly rants.

Following Brock’s death, Roy became the sole
messenger and, not having such a deep familiarity with the
neuroticism that was Hunter and Suren, relay of updates and
statuses became a monthly occurrence at best. Roy came to believe
that Hunter truly hated Suren and could not see Hunter’s hate for
what it was. Suren could see it; Brock saw it; Hunter himself knew
in a very, very small way and somewhere deep in a very, very dark
cavernous recess. Somewhere. Maybe.

Hmmm…if I ever see that bitch again, I
wonder what will be the fastest way to kill her?

After losing Brock, what Peyton would’ve
considered the budding signs of Hunter becoming a vGriever began to
bubble up. Hunter became obsessed with isolating and extracting all
of his memories of Ken. Every day for thirteen years, Hunter
extracted his memories of Ken and stored them on a small, shiny
white drive. He used the drive to stream the memories back to
himself through an artificial brain he molded.

When he wasn’t conjuring up more memories to
extract from himself, Hunter was Veiling his own memories of Ken.
He attempted to relive them by amplifying each one through the Veil
process. When Peyton divulged her algorithm, Hunter immediately
knew he could use it on those memories to select the very best
ones: the strongest, deepest, most powerful ones.

Hunter figured he must’ve become weak in his
old age. That could be the only explanation for it. He was weak and
senile. That was what it was: he was going senile. He had to be,
because after
Veil, The Veillusion
jumpstarted all their
lives, he let Roy convince him that it didn’t make sense for the
three of them to live separately. There was too much going on, and
they were too old to deal with it all spread out like that. Roy
argued that because Suren’s home was larger, it made more sense for
Hunter to move in with the two of them. Hunter would have an entire
floor of Roy’s wing of the palace all to himself.