Signal Loss

The red goldfish circled its bowl in endless loops, much like Marcus's thoughts. He watched its orange flash against the glass, transfixed, while his iPhone vibrated with the stolen data stream.

Marcus was a cable guy, or at least that's what he told the neighbors. In truth, he was an intelligence contractor, contracted to monitor the fiberoptic lines beneath a corporate office park. But lately, he'd been rerouting the equipment for personal reasons.

His dog, a aging mutt named Barnaby, watched him with liquid eyes from the carpet. Dogs knew things. They sensed the weight of secrets.

The iPhone displayed another intercepted message: *Dinner at 8. Don't be late.* Marcus's chest hollowed out. He knew exactly where she was eating—Le Petit Bistro, their place. Or rather, the place that had been theirs before Marcus had been deployed for eight months, before the distance had festered into something neither could name.

He'd told himself it was just curiosity. Just checking in. Somewhere along the way, checking in had become surveillance. He was spying on his own wife.

The worst part wasn't that she was seeing someone else. It was that she was happier. The texts he intercepted—they were lighter than anything she'd sent him in years. jokes, emojis, plans for the weekend. She'd sent him a message just this morning: *Can you pick up dog food?* Functional. Necessary. Completely devoid of joy.

Marcus had become a ghost in his own marriage, haunting the digital margins of her life. The cable tapped into the building's network gave him access to everything—her emails, her texts, her location data. He'd told himself it was for her protection. Corporate espionage was real. He needed to keep her safe.

But sitting there, watching the goldfish swim its endless circles, Marcus understood the truth: he was the danger now. He was the one violating her trust, poisoning what remained of their connection with his desperate need to know.

His finger hovered over the delete key. The program that had become his obsession, his window into a life that was slipping away—gone. No more intercepted messages. No more tracking her movements through the city like a predator.

Barnaby lifted his head, sensing the shift.

Marcus's hands trembled as he typed out a message to her—not intercepted, not stolen, but honest: *I'm coming home early. Can we talk?*

The goldfish continued its circles, but Marcus finally stood up, crossed to the window, and looked out at the city instead of the screen. For the first time in months, he wanted to see her face to face, not through the lens of something he'd stolen.