White Space Season 2

using people, but why?
    Kaiser reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny, black square that looked like the smallest phone Houser had ever seen. Kaiser held it up for Houser — there was a small, digital screen on it with a blue circle. In that circle was the number 789. “This is you, Mr. Houser. Number 789. When I press this button, I can command the slave nanobots in you to do whatever I wish. Or more accurately, to have you do whatever I wish.”
    Houser stared at the circle, unwilling to believe his life had been reduced to a number, that he could possibly be a slave to these fuckers’ plans. This had to be another fear tactic — another attempt to break him, to get him to talk and divulge whatever he knew.
    “I want my lawyer,” Houser said, now shouting loud enough for anyone watching on the other side of the mirrors to hear — maybe someone with the authority to yank Kaiser from the room.
    Kaiser continued, ignoring Houser. He pressed the button on the device and spoke.
    “What I want from you right now, Mr. Houser, is for you to tell me everything. Every little thing you’ve done since arriving on the island.”
    Something shifted in Houser’s brain. He could feel it, as if someone shoved him from the driver’s seat and took his steering wheel away. He tried to resist the directive.
    No, don’t say shit!
    Houser’s body ignored his mind and did as instructed, telling Kaiser everything.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 2 — Chief Kevin Brady

    Chief Kevin Brady sat at his office computer, tethering his mind to the mundane, avoiding thoughts of the body — which may or may not have been his daughter — fished from the sea.
    Brady hadn’t said a word to his wife, or anyone, since calling the medical examiner Holstrum to come in from Bennet County to pick her up and bring her back to his office for an autopsy.
    His hopes were up, that was enough. He didn’t dare raise Molly’s, too. He didn’t think she could handle the news. If their daughter was found dead, she would crumple like foil. If the body wasn’t Christina’s, she’d see her lifeline of hope renewed and somehow strengthened. If it’s not her, that must mean she’s still alive.
    A few months ago, Molly swore up and down she’d seen Christina in a dream, saying she’d be home soon. Molly wanted to believe the dream, desperately, enough to go out and buy a dress for when her little girl returned.
    She sprawled the pink-and-white dress out on Christina’s bed, as if preparing for First Communion, then visited the girl’s bedroom each morning, expecting to see Christina trying it on while smiling into the mirror. Brady couldn’t bear to see Molly, standing over the dress, planting seeds beneath a dead sun. So, he took the dress and threw it away.
    Molly lost it.
    She screamed and cried and hit him, slamming her fists into his chest, before she got so wound up she smacked him straight across the face, then another dozen wallops back at his chest as he stood rooted, until Molly finally collapsed into a mess against him, empty but for her sobbing. Brady hugged her for two hours without stopping, wishing he could take away her pain. Hell, he would absorb it and endure it himself, if it meant she wouldn’t have to be subject to prolonged agony.
    But he couldn’t.
    Best he could do was keep her from getting too hopeful.
    So whenever any leads on Christina came in Brady held them close — waiting for them to pan out before daring to whisper a word. He alone would bear this latest discovery’s hope. Brady waited for Holstrum to get back to him, burying himself in busywork and steering an occupied mind from his missing child.
    Or at least he tried to.
    Mundane as the expense reports were, Brady’s mind wandered and flashed to the corpse on Jackson’s boat in a loop.
    Christina had been gone for more than six months, yet the body wasn’t badly decomposed. In order for the body to be his daughter’s, it meant the girl was recently killed and dumped at sea, or in the caves, or maybe she’d been killed months earlier, but wrapped in something, like carpet, and had somehow come free from the shroud, floated to the surface, well-preserved in the cold waters, then wound up in the caves. There was also a third option — that the vic wasn’t his child.
    And if it wasn’t his child, whose was it? How did she die?
    Hamilton Island was home to misfortune, especially lately with too many missing people. Fourteen total, three kids. Could this be