White Space Season 2

Stephen knew there was no note. What he didn’t know was whether Sal had actually killed himself, or if someone at Paladin acted at Conway Industries’ behest and put the man down.
    Stephen felt a chill thinking of Sal, then turned his attention back to the present and the screen in front of him.
    He watched as Patient 0514 sat in her kitchen sipping coffee while reading the morning news on the table monitor. She bypassed the real news, heading straight to the latest celebrity gossip. Stephen yawned, and decided he’d like some coffee, too.
    He hit a button on his table’s screen, and waited for someone upstairs to respond.
    “Yes, Mr. Anderson?” It was Felicia, one of the new girls, whose heart-shaped face lit his monitor. She smiled, and Stephen couldn’t help but smile back. She was young, kind, and pretty, and her smile brightened an otherwise dull workday.
    “Can you send down a coffee? Black, two sugars, please?”
    “Yes, sir. Anything else?”
    “No, that’ll be all for now. Thank you.”
    “You’re welcome,” she said, disconnecting. Her face disappeared from the screen, and he let out a small sigh.
    Stephen tried thinking of a reason to call her again, if only to see her face and talk to her for another few seconds, a small break from his mostly lonely job. So many lives, so little contact. The bosses, who monitored his movements via the cameras behind him, wouldn’t take kindly to him diverting his attention from the feeds to sit and chat with a co-worker. At least not until his lunch break, when he would be relieved by Harrison, who worked remotely, from his house, covering Watchers as they took breaks or in the minutes between their shift changes.
    A few long minutes later, a bell behind him pinged. He stood, went to the door, then stepped through it into the hallway where Felicia was standing. Her perfume reminded him of vanilla, and he wanted to inhale its scent deeply, but resisted the urge.
    “Here you go, sir,” she said, her green eyes peeking out from behind auburn bangs.
    Stephen tried to hide his swelling fascination. “Thank you,” he said, allowing himself only a flicker of eye contact.
    In that moment — that one fleeting second where their eyes met — Stephen felt alive and energized. He wanted to get up, leave the bunker, and take a long drive up the coast with Felicia at his side; salty wind in their hair and warm Washington sun on their skin.
    “Will there be anything else, sir?” she asked politely, interrupting Stephen’s fantasy and highlighting his awkward pause as he stood there like a foolish schoolboy, lost in thought for far longer than the socially appropriate moment.
    Oh, God, she must think I’m an idiot.
    “No; thank you again,” he said, then turned and returned to his room, hot coffee in hand.
    Stephen sat, sipping his coffee, still slightly too hot. He set it on his desk and pushed it a few feet away, thinking about Felicia and wondering why he had started allowing himself to think such silly thoughts. Stephen didn’t know the first thing about her, and yet here he was fantasizing about running off with her and living some sort of ridiculous happily ever after — all while Bea was still locked in the mental ward.
    Stephen turned his attention back to the feeds. If he allowed himself to wallow in could-have-beens or maybes, he would likely find himself lost down the same, dark hole of despair where he had fallen so many times before. His bosses would order another psych evaluation, and again question his fitness for the job. He couldn’t allow that, couldn’t put himself in a position where he might be fired.
    Stephen knew too much, or at least enough, and was reasonably certain that if — when — the time came that Conway Industries no longer recognized his value, they wouldn’t simply hand him a pink slip and escort him from the island. They would order him locked up somewhere, or killed — anything to avoid exposing The Program. The only way he could keep himself, and Milo, safe was to keep doing exactly what he was doing, day after endless day.
    Stephen was watching the screen and falling into another lull when he noticed a new square light up — a 30 th square on his board. The square was dark, save for yellow text at the top of the square which read, “Patient 0719.”
    He perked with unexpected excitement. It had been a while since he’d had a new patient’s feed to view. He wondered who the patient was. Male or female? Young or