Veneer by Daniel Verastiqui

few weeks. Blending in with the crowd was easy, especially when he could just copy their veneers on a whim, be anyone he wanted for that five block march through obscurity. The mission he had undertaken called for the utmost security, a constantly shifting veneer, a changing of color and texture so that his presence would go unnoticed. Walking amongst the very people he wished to subjugate was a necessary annoyance; they were, after all, giving him cover as he made his approach to the TNC Bank building.
    They were old and young, rich and poor, yet all had the same stench of consumerism on them, coming to The Drag in the evenings to check out the recently erected booths, to see what junk the local artisan community was selling. There were necklaces, rings, and little pieces of stone—all useless, but all haggled over and bought up. Even Russo wasn’t immune to the conditioned desire to acquire junk. He passed a table full of multi-colored stones shaped like eggs that caught his attention. Most were vibrant and flashy, but one egg on the corner had an understated veneer of black obsidian with a streak of red running through it. The edges of its crimson lightning bolt sparkled with electricity.
    Emerging on the other side of The Drag, Russo ducked along the scaffolding in front of the TNC Bank and slipped inside. They had an expansive atrium along the front of their building, extending six floors up. The first floor opened to elevators and stairs that led up one level to a food court. There, ample seating dotted the outer windows, giving patrons a clear view of the intersection and the buildings on its corners. One of them was a tram station, and the other had the green and white color scheme of Notacorp Investments. The last building, in plain view from where Russo sat down, was the Easton Police Department.
    It looked different at night, with large spotlights along its steps that shone up into the dark sky, a beacon to uniforms and criminals alike. Saturdays seemed to be particularly busy; the flow of Easton’s oppressed citizens into the jail had already begun. It would continue until around four in the morning, but Russo had no intention of waiting that long again.
    He had started observing the police department only a few days after his arrest and subsequent encounter with Agent Eric Tavarez, or as Russo called him, the Seer. His dreams had centered on the man’s piercing eyes, seeking an explanation for how a veneer could be undone. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to understand the Seer, to know where he had learned to harness such an amazing power, and ultimately, to wield that power himself. At one point, he even entertained the idea of committing a misdemeanor so they would arrest him again, just to meet with Eric face to face. Unfortunately, there was no guarantee that he would even get a complete sentence out before they socked him in the gut with a baton.
    The only way to learn about the agent was to bump into him outside of his daily job. But so far, Russo had not seen him enter or leave the building once. The possibility of Eric being a machine, some kind of advanced cyborg, began to take shape, as far-fetched as it was.
    Russo spun the black egg on the glass table and waited for its energy to dissipate. The individual sparks flew away from it, creating a barrier that encircled the already protected contents. When it came to a stop, Russo picked up the egg and examined it closely. Somewhere beneath the fancy exterior was its original color. But how could he get at that color? Looking around at the chairs and tables and large banners hanging on the tall beams, he wondered what they all looked like on the zero level. Did they even have a true color?
    A casual glance backwards revealed a lumbering Jalay coming up the steps to the food court. His veneer resembled a young entrepreneur that had dropped out of college to start his own business. There was black in his hair and on his shoes, making him