He slammed the laptop shut and threw it on the couch. It bounced off the back cushion and settled precariously over the edge. He put his hand back on his chin and fumed into his knuckles.

“Whoa.” Cindy walked up to him and massaged his shoulder with one hand. “Why so melodramatic?” she joked.

“Melodramatic?” he gave her a confused look and went back to scowling on his hand. “You know what, Michael just told me?”

“When did you talk to Michael?”

“While you were in the shower, I was instant messaging with him.”

“What did he say?”

He slipped out of Cindy’s hand and waved her off. “Nothing. Nothing.” He leaned forward and rested his head on his hands. “I can’t deal with this right now.”

Cindy wasn’t sure what to make of his atypical behavior. Jonas was always the calm and levelheaded one, in contrast to herself. It suited his nature for tinkering and building things. To see him in such a random fury, so suddenly, so extreme, it could have only meant one thing.

“Let me put some clothes on and we’ll talk. Okay?” Cindy said.

“I don’t want to talk.”

Cindy ignored his response and walked over to the bedroom. A sudden panic gripped her chest and squeezed tight. It couldn’t be what she thought it was, but what else could Michael have said? He had been Jonas’s best friend and co-worker for many years, until the incident at Lucent Labs (the R&D company Jonas owns) ended their friendship. If Michael said what she thinks he said, it wouldn’t be long before Jonas would come looking for her.

She threw on an old v-neck and whatever jeans she could find then walked back to the living room. The recliner was empty; Jonas had moved to the kitchen. He held a pitcher with lemon wedges in it and poured himself a glass of water. He quickly downed the glass and refilled it again.

“That’s my workout water, buddy,” she said with a grin.

“It’s good.” He stared at her and drank the water down to half.

Jonas seemed fine, but over time the slouched posture and defeated gaze in his eyes settled back in. It was as if an invisible weight were pressing down on his shoulders. She knew this, because her shoulders had become huge from carrying that same weight.

Cindy walked up to Jonas and scratched his cheek. The prickly stubble jabbed her fingers like petting a hedgehog.

“You need to shave.”

He let out an empty chuckle. “I know, I know.”

She pulled him into a hug. “What’s the matter?”

“I feel heavy. Like, something bad is going to happen.”

“What do you mean?”

He set his half empty glass and pitcher on the granite counter. A small robot appeared with little claw arms and took the pitcher away. Another invention, one that Cindy hated. Every time she would cut up carrots or cucumbers for dinner, the robot would come out and steal all the ingredients behind her back. The counter would be left spotless and Cindy would be left fuming.

“It bothers me that my inventions were used when Raymond attacked the city. It bothers me that the CIA is spying on us and we don’t know why. But what bothers me the most is what Michael just told me. What he said brought back all the bad memories that I’m trying to forget.”

Jonas pulled away and Cindy’s gaze followed him. A sharp sting radiated from the back of her throat like someone snapping her neck with a rubber band. “What did he say?”

“He apologized to me.” Jonas stood by the kitchen entryway with his back turned to Cindy. “He told me that Raymond had promised him my job. All he had to do was finish programming project: Sapphire. I just, I thought I could trust him. Michael’s gone behind my back so many times now. He didn’t even have the guts to talk to me in person.”

Cindy deeply sighed. It wasn’t what she thought after all. “Well, that’s not too bad. At least he apologized.”

“Don’t try to distract me—” he stared off into a corner. “—you know what you did.”

A morbid chill sent pins and needles down her spine. She dropped her head and twisted her toe into the linoleum floor.

“You mean when I kissed, Michael?”

“Yeah.” He turned to his side and looked at her. The light of the room illuminated one half of Jonas’s face and brought out the gold flecks in his brown eyes. The other half lived in shadow. “I love you more than anything in the whole world, but you broke our trust.”

She was tired of discussing this issue. It always led to them sleeping in separate rooms at the end of the night.

“I don’t know how many times I can say I’m sorry. I understand why you’re still upset, but you know the suit affected my ability to make rational decisions. You’re the one who built it,” Cindy said.

“The suit only affected inhibitions, Cindy.” He pointed to his temple. “Subliminally, you wanted to do it. That’s the way the suit worked. Just because you wouldn’t have done it without the suit doesn’t make me feel better.”

A heavy silence sat between them and made itself comfortable. The kiss with Michael was burned into her memories and resurfaced in the ethereal form of nightmares every time she went to bed. She remembered Michael’s hand on her chest, their lips locked, the feeling of having dominance over him. At the end of the nightmare, Jonas bursts through the door and throws a glass beaker at her head. She wakes up before it hits her, but the feeling of shame and disgust never leaves.

The nanosuit brought out the worst in her: an assassin, a cheater, a person she didn’t recognize. That’s why Cindy hasn’t worn the suit since after the First Continental uprising. She didn’t know if she could trust herself.

“I don’t know how to cope with it,” Jonas said. “How would you feel if I kissed your sister and told you that I wasn’t in control because I was drunk? Wouldn’t that make you wonder if I had feelings for Jadie?”

His words lit the fuse to her explosive temper, but it wasn’t directed towards her husband. All he did was peel back the skin, in order to reveal the raw underbelly of the truth. She was angry at herself and her own inability to resist the influences of the suit.

“You know, I didn’t ask to become super powered. I was quite content being a gymnastics teacher and running my gym,” she said.

“What are you saying? It’s my fault that you fused with my top secret military project?”

“No, I’m saying you never should have created it in the first place.”

“You had no business being in the lab!” Jonas pointed at the door. “It’s because of you someone planted that camera outside.”

Jonas’s phone rang from the couch and defused the ticking time bomb that was about to blow up between them. Cindy swallowed her temper, which went down with the grace of a spiked ball. She grabbed his phone and accidentally caught a glimpse of the caller ID.