The Last Good Vitamin

Sarah swallowed the vitamin D pill with tap water, her hands trembling. Three hours of sleep again. She'd become a zombie in her own life, shuffling through corporate hallways, stealing secrets for clients who wouldn't remember her name next week.

The cables behind her television set had tangled into a hopeless knot—much like her marriage. Frank had been distant lately, coming home late, his phone always face-down. Last week, she'd found a cheap burner phone in his coat pocket. Spy stuff. She'd recognize the signs. After all, she was the professional.

She'd done the obvious thing: installed a keylogger on his laptop. The irony tasted like ash. Now she watched his encrypted messages scroll across her screen—fragments about "the bear" and "vitamin deliveries" and "cutting the cable."

Frank walked in now, looking exhausted. "Hey. Rough day?"

"Always," she said, minimizing the surveillance window. "You?"

"Can't talk about it." He rubbed his temples. "Client confidentiality."

She almost laughed. They were both spies now, playing the same game in the same house, neither knowing whose side the other was on. Or maybe they were on the same side, and neither could admit it.

The vitamin bottle on her counter was nearly empty. She'd been taking three daily instead of one, trying to replace something the insomnia and paranoia had drained away. Her father had kept a similar bottle before his heart gave out. Another corporate man, another stress casualty.

"Sarah," Frank said suddenly. "We need to talk."

"About what?"

"About everything." He gestured at the mess of their life—the tangled cables, the unopened mail, the vitamins scattered like hope across the counter. "I know you've been monitoring my communications."

She froze. "How?"

"I'm not an idiot. I taught you half the tricks you're using." He sat beside her. "The bear—it's a secure server farm in Siberia. My client's data center. That's what I've been protecting. The vitamin deliveries were encrypted payloads. Cutting the cable meant severing their network access."

"You're protecting Russian servers now?"

"They paid. Like everyone else pays us." He took her hand. "The question is whether we keep protecting secrets for people who'd sell us out in a heartbeat, or whether we finally stop being zombies and start living."

She looked at the empty vitamin bottle, the cables snaking across their floor, the man she'd married but never truly known. Somewhere outside, a car alarm pierced the evening quiet—modern urban wildlife howling at nothing.

"I quit," she said. "Both jobs."

"Good," said Frank. "Me too."

They sat there as night fell, two exhausted spies, finally on the same side.