Supplemental Truth

The lightning strike wasn't what woke me—that had flashed hours ago, leaving the apartment charged with that heavy, ozone-heavy silence that follows summer storms. What woke me was the sound of Marcus's phone vibrating against the nightstand, again and again, like some desperate insect trapped in amber.

I watched him sleep, his breathing even, undisturbed. The phone lit up with each silent notification: ORANGE PROJECT. The words glowed in the darkness like radioactive embers.

I'd suspected for months. The late nights. The sudden business trips to cities where his company had no offices. The way he'd started taking vitamin D supplements in secret, as if sunlight itself had become something to be managed rather than experienced.

Fox, he called his assistant. "Just checking with Fox," he'd say, ducking into the other room. I'd imagined a bright-eyed graduate student, someone organized and efficient. Not what I found when I finally got drunk enough to hack his cloud backup.

Fox wasn't a person. Fox was a file. A spreadsheet of dates, names, encrypted payment channels. Corporate espionage, maybe. Or something worse. Marcus wasn't cheating on me with a woman—he was cheating on everything. On principles, on the non-compete clause he'd signed, on the basic decency that makes civilization possible.

The last message on his phone, the one that had come through at 3:14 AM: "Orange alert. Protocol initiated."

I slipped out of bed and packed my bag. I'd always suspected Marcus's loyalty was conditional, like a vitamin supplement you take because someone told you it might prevent something bad someday. But loyalty isn't a supplement. It's the meal itself.

The lightning had passed, leaving the sky that bruised purple that comes before dawn. I walked out into the wet streets, leaving my spy's life behind, carrying nothing but the knowledge that some oranges, once peeled, can never be put back together again.