The Supplement Regimen

Elara had been running for forty-five minutes on the treadmill when she saw it again—the same gray sedan parked across the street, its tinted windows reflecting the morning sun. She'd noticed it three times this week. Always different spots, always the same car.

She wasn't paranoid. She knew what paranoia felt like. This was something else—the cold clarity of certainty that she was being watched. That someone knew about the vitamins. The supplements. The careful measured doses she'd been leaving in Marcus's morning protein shake for six months.

The first few times, she'd told herself it was for his own good. He'd been so tired, so listless after the layoffs at the firm. The vitamins were supposed to help. Then came the supplements—first for focus, then for energy, then for sleep when the energy pills kept him awake. It became an experiment in optimization. In control.

Now Marcus was sharper than ever. More productive. More distant. He'd received a promotion last week. He'd barely looked at her when he told her.

Elara slowed to a walk, her breath ragged in the cold air. The gray sedan remained. She thought about the hat she'd found in Marcus's coat pocket yesterday—a baseball cap from a company she didn't recognize, tucked away like a secret. When she'd asked him about it, he'd said it was from a client. A golf outing. But he didn't golf.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Marcus: 'Meeting with corporate security today. Some concerns about internal protocols. Don't wait up.'

Elara's hands shook as she stepped off the treadmill. Corporate security. The gray sedan. The hat she'd shoved to the back of the closet, forgetting that its brim had borne a small embroidered logo: 'Obsidian Biotech.'

The same name printed on the vitamin bottles in her pantry.

She hadn't been optimizing Marcus. She'd been field-testing their products. And somewhere, someone had been watching, collecting data, running their own experiment—with both of them as subjects.

The vitamins on the counter seemed to smile at her in the fluorescent light. Elara's fingers hovered over her phone, then pulled away. What could she say? That she'd been drugging her husband with unlabeled supplements she'd ordered from a website that no longer existed?

She put on her running shoes and stepped out into the cold morning air. The gray sedan's engine didn't start, but the driver's side window rolled down just an inch. Just enough.

Elara began to run.