Veneer (33 page)

Ilya rolled onto her back, amused by the numbness in her arm. Although she wanted to look at Rosalia, wanted to watch her come down off her high, the energy just wasn’t there. Everything began to drift away and she felt reality slipping through her fingers.

And still she wanted more time: enough to enjoy Rosalia’s body fully, enough to reach that elusive orgasm of her own.

Eventually, her body stopped listening to her trifling desires and shut out all external input. Ilya drifted in and out of sleep, awaking sometime later to find Rosalia breathing softly beside her.

The room was as she remembered it, clearer now that the drug had moved on. Moonlight shone from the wall, but when she turned to look at it, she noticed something askew in its design. It was in the center of a crater, a rectangular cutout with a flashing window. Ilya moved her hand to the floor and expanded the box until she could read its text. The sender’s name made her heart skip a beat.

Ilya sighed and shook her head at Deron’s pathetic efforts to reunite with the girlfriend he had ostensibly given up on. Rosalia was hers now; that much was evident from the way she slept under a blanket of satisfaction. Ilya could only imagine what Rosalia would think when she woke up and found her pants in a heap on the floor and her shirt and bra undone. It’d be far more emotional than any message from Deron.

She had to sit up to get Rosalia’s bra clasped; there was just too much of her to handle with one hand. The shirt she buttoned slowly, reconciling each inch of flesh in her mind before covering it up. For a moment, she stared at Rosalia’s pants, but decided against trying to get them back on. It would be too much movement, too much opportunity for Rosalia to wake up and discover someone dressing her.

Ilya resumed her position next to Rosalia and shut her eyes. This she would remember, even if she wouldn’t be able to talk about it for a while. All she could do was hope that one day Rosalia would come around. Until then, it was just an exercise in patience—that and keeping Deron at a distance.

With a single tap on the floor, she reconciled the box away, leaving no trace of Deron’s message on the moon’s barren surface.

In the quiet moments, Russo was plagued by a lingering sense of dread, by the thought that maybe he wasn’t working towards his goal with the necessary speed and determination. He’d concocted an excuse for each step, an explanation why something was required before he could take the next leap. He had to reconcile with Jalay because someone had to hold a gun to the surgeon’s head while they operated on Russo’s eyes. Now, with that prospect gone and the realization that he had no one to rely on, he was stuck between a paralyzing frustration and a resolution to get things done. All of this ate at him, turned his dreams into nonsensical sequences of pursuit and persecution. He tossed and turned all night, waking long enough to catch his breath before delving back into the nightmare.

The J. Perion Tower was ill-suited for a sleepover. Even though construction had resumed and some furniture now dotted the barren offices, Russo found it difficult to sleep in the high-backed chairs. Instead, he chose one of the longer desks, reclined flat on his back, and stared at the dark ceiling, wondering what kind of stiff-shirted asshole would someday occupy the office, reconciling throwaway memos and filing injunctions and whatever else those corporate types did. Picturing them, seeing them move and interact, was an easy way to take his mind off of his current problems. But that was his conscious mind trying to protect him from the pain. When he slept, his subconscious took over, and it had no qualms about broaching the sensitive subjects.

In the dream, the gift of sight was a tangible object, a glowing red orb that floated in a dark construct. Russo saw it, reached out for it, only to have it move away just beyond his grasp. Again, he moved, again denied. Without a landscape, there was no concept of speed, but Russo felt himself moving quickly, trying to latch on. He made progress, got close a few times, but was ultimately stopped dead by the imposing shadow of Agent...

What was his name again?

The longer the chase went on, the more despondent and angry he became. Finally, with one last summoning of energy, Russo shot forward and touched the orb.

Only, it wasn’t solid. It wasn’t anything, just motes in the air.

With the orb’s dust disturbed, Russo faced the possibility of living with the knowledge of a power without the means to attain it. The prospect was so grim, so horrifying, that it shocked him out of his shallow sleep.

Russo opened his eyes and for a bewildered moment thought himself still dreaming. The voice he heard was slightly digitized, but that could have just been his ears adjusting to reality.

“Good morning, Mr. Rivera,” said the deep voice.

The name popped into his head: Agent Ruiz. A flight reflex shuddered through his body, but a night spent on the hard desk had left him unprepared for sudden action. Russo let out a deep breath to signify his resignation. He wasn’t going to put up a fight.

“For a while there, I thought you were some kind of intelligent. You managed to tail an agent, overpower him, and remove his eyes. That kind of skill and fortitude is something your generation typically lacks. But then you go and return to the scene of a crime and make me think this has all been about a little case of trespassing. I’m afraid I don’t understand your motives.”

“What do you want?” mumbled Russo, closing his eyes.

“Why did you kill Agent Tavarez?”

“Who said I did?”

Sounds of a struggle filled the room, followed by a desperate voice that yelled, “I want your fucking sight!” The scene replayed on the back of Russo’s eyelids. In recollection, there was more blood, more bits and pieces hanging from the knife. It made him shiver.

“What did you mean about his sight?”

Russo folded his hands on his stomach, sensing an incoming body blow. “He saw through my veneer,” he explained. “I wanted that power.”

The agent moved around the room. “He didn’t have the means to give it to you. It can only be activated with the proper paperwork and years of training. To even get into the program, you’d have to display a pattern of high aptitude. And you’re too old for Dahlstrom Academy at this point.”

Russo laughed, felt the twinge in his spine as his body adjusted. “Like I need that shit. I already figured it out.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep,” said Russo, taking another deep breath. If he could keep Ruiz talking for just a little while longer, he might be able to make a break for it. “He had something on the back of his eyes, something metal. It let him see through veneers. And if seeing through veneers isn’t magic...”

There was silence in the room. Beyond its walls, cars were moving in the streets and trams were announcing their stations. The world was getting on with the day, leaving Russo behind.

Ruiz cleared his throat. “Did you know people were reconciling as early as the nineteen-hundreds? A man named Fleischer invented a process called rotoscoping that allowed people to trace over live-action movies, basically creating a veneer. That was even before computers. Then later, they digitized the process and over time the technology improved until we have our modern equivalent. It’s technological evolution, the only kind we have left.”

“People think they can change the world,” countered Russo. “But it’s just a smokescreen. You give everybody the illusion of privacy and you get to see right through it.” Angered, he sat up to confront Ruiz. “You sons of bitches...” His words lost their strength as he took in the empty room. A tipped chair still held the door to the office closed.

“Over here,” said Ruiz.

When Russo turned, he found a portal on the wall near the window. In it, he saw the agent smiling back.

“Where are you?”

“At the office. Enjoying some coffee.” A steaming cup entered the frame briefly. “This job demands a lot of my time.”

Russo slipped off the desk and walked over to the wall. As he reached out to touch the portal, it slid to the left, rounded the corner, and came to rest near the window.

“How?” asked Russo.

This time, Ruiz laughed. “Why does it surprise you that I can reconcile remotely?”

Russo’s body went numb. “I just...”

“Never considered it,” finished Ruiz. “Of course you didn’t. Why would you? Why would anyone living in this city even imagine the possibility? Young people think it’s magic. Older people think it’s just an innate ability. But me? The people I work for? We know the truth.”

The knowledge that they had been lying to him his entire life made Russo frown. He reconciled an empty veneer to cover it.

“Why the long face, Mr. Rivera?”

“Stop it!” he yelled, turning away from the portal only to find it reproduced on the opposite wall. No matter which direction he turned, the agent’s smirking face was there. “Fuck!”

Russo ran out of the room and down the hallway, flanked on all sides by the agent. Even the floor changed so that his frantic steps fell on Ruiz’ eyes. In his haste, he found himself in a large conference room at the end of the hallway with a large rectangular window that gave him a view of South Easton.

“There’s nowhere I can’t follow you.”

It was true. Russo saw it plainly as the nearby skyscrapers lost their luster and became a fragmented image of Agent Ruiz. His smug smile was four blocks wide. He turned around, unable to stomach the bastardized world. Moving to the table, he slapped his hand down and tried to reconcile a portal, but the agent’s face appeared instead. It raised an eyebrow at him.

“We can do this all day,” said Ruiz.

“What do you want from me?” asked Russo, backing away. He felt short of breath, as if his lungs were collapsing.

“I don’t know yet.” He shifted in his chair. “Like I said, I’m not sure what to think about you. You have an interesting set of skills. With a lot of training, you could make something of yourself.”

“So what? You want to hire me?” It was a scenario that suddenly begged for consideration, but Russo resisted.

Ruiz grumbled something unintelligible. “I’m not convinced you’re right for the job. My boss wants me to bring you in on charges.”

“Then why don’t you?”

He shrugged in reply. “Tavarez is dead because he got sloppy. And right now the number of people that know about him is limited. I can cover that up no problem. What I can’t make disappear is this.” The walls of the conference room shimmered and then displayed various shops of Russo standing over a fallen Deron.

To think it would all come back to that little shithead. “What the fuck do you care about him?” demanded Russo.

“Personally? Not much. But this whole situation shows a lack of restraint on your part. It makes me wonder what kind of monster you’ll become if you ever learned a fraction of what I know.”

So fucking superior, thought Russo, so confident in his own power that he doesn’t even realize how ridiculous he looks. What kind of game was this guy playing? Why didn’t he just come and get him?

“You know where I am, don’t you?”

“Obviously.”

Russo walked calmly to the door and stepped into the hall, followed by the agent’s floating head. “And there are no pigs here yet.”

“I haven’t called for them. Would you like me to?”

Ignoring the question, Russo walked to the stairwell door and opened it. It was quiet. “You know what I think?” he asked, starting down the steps. “I think you
can’t
bring me in.” At a landing, he faced the portal. “You don’t have the power. Or the balls.”

That wiped the smile off his face.

“Power,” he repeated. “We all have power. Power to think and reason and feel. And to
see
.”

Russo stumbled backwards as the portal disappeared. Normally, it wouldn’t have been so traumatic, but when it faded out, it took the entire wall with it. The stairwell flickered to evercrete; the red stripe that had been guiding him down was gone, along with all other colors. Breaking out onto a random floor, Russo looked down the empty hallway, expecting to see the wood-panel veneers lining the sides. Instead, there was nothing, just blankness, emptiness. He returned to the stairs and started spiraling down again.

“Where are you going? Isn’t this what you wanted? To see under the veneer?”

“Fuck you!” he screamed, taking the steps two at a time.

“Look at you,” said the voice from everywhere, “scampering around like a lost child. You’re no man, Rivera. You’re just a punk. A punk with no power and no future.”

“I’ll show you how much power I have! The next time I see you, I’m going to cut out your fucking heart!” His shoes pounded the evercrete, still needed three more flights before the ground floor.

“The next time you
see
me?” asked the agent. “Well, I guess I can take care of that right now.”

Russo thought about pausing, had heard the words and wondered if he should slow down a little. Maybe the agent was waiting for him outside. Maybe he was running into a trap. Before he could stop himself, he was out of the stairwell and running into the main lobby. The glass doors were glowing in the morning sun. Beyond them, he saw no one. No cops. No agents.

“Mr. Rivera,” said Agent Ruiz, calmly. “Say goodbye to the world.”

With those words, the bland foyer faded out, as did the gray figures walking by outside. Russo pumped his legs, tried to outrun the cloud, but it was intangible, just a little red orb of concept locked away in his brain, inside him. It was supposed to be a place only he could go, where no one else could ever hope to intrude. But the agent had done it, had reached out from miles away and ripped out Russo’s eyes.

As the world went black, he stumbled and fell to the hard floor. It was too deep, he thought. He just wanted to see under the veneer, not under reality itself.

43 - Rosalia

On the way downstairs, Rosalia tried to shake off the disorientation of having woken up next to Ilya. It took a minute to spin up the memories, to pull the images out of the blur and remember that her friend had come over to console her, to sit with her as she cried, and ultimately, provide her with enough drugs to forget any problem. She remembered that clearly.