My Wife Robot Lover

The Final Rehearsal

Tobias arrived at the testing bay the next night with a bag full of foam padding, wrapping it carefully around the inside of the old shell's shoulders and neck before Julian stepped inside.

"Better?" Tobias asked, once Julian had settled into place, arms held straight at his sides, breathing slow through the narrow viewing slit.

"Better," Julian admitted, his voice muffled but steadier than it had been the last two times. "Feels tighter, but at least it doesn't dig in the same way."

"Good. Two hours tonight. Full run, just like launch night. I want to know you can hold this the whole way through without needing to shift or crack the seal for air."

Julian nodded inside the shell, and Tobias stepped back, checking his watch, starting the timer on his phone.

For the first forty minutes, everything went smoothly. Julian stood quietly in the corner of the room, the padding doing its job, the warmth that had bothered him so much the last two times staying mild and manageable, more like standing too close to a heater than anything dangerous. He almost let himself believe Tobias had solved the problem completely.

Then, a little past the fifty-minute mark, the warmth returned, stronger this time, cutting through the new padding in a way Julian had not expected at all.

It started at his shoulders again, then spread quickly down his arms, sharp enough that he gasped out loud before he could stop himself, his whole body flinching hard enough to rock the shell slightly on its feet.

"Julian?" Tobias's voice, sharp with alarm, came from somewhere close by.

"It's back," Julian managed, his voice tight with pain now, no longer able to hide it the way he had the first two times. "Worse than before. Tobias, get me out."

Tobias moved fast, working the release straps Julian could not reach on his own, pulling the shell's chest plate open enough for Julian to stumble out, sweat pouring down his face, his shirt soaked through completely.

"Let me see," Tobias said, pulling Julian's collar aside.

The marks this time were worse. Deeper red, already beginning to blister slightly at the edges, spreading further across both shoulders than they had before. Julian sat down hard on an old crate nearby, breathing heavily, staring at his own trembling hands.

"That's not old wiring," Julian said, once he had caught his breath enough to speak clearly. "Tobias, that's not just bad insulation. Something is actively heating up in there. I felt it build. It didn't just sit there being warm, it got worse the longer I stood still."

Tobias frowned, crouching down to examine the shell's open chest cavity, running his fingers carefully along the old wiring inside. "I don't see anything obvious. Could be a short somewhere deeper in the frame."

"Or it's something else," Julian said quietly.

"Like what?"

Julian did not answer right away, staring at the shell standing silent and unfinished a few feet away, its hollow chest open, its faceless front giving nothing away at all. A cold, uncertain thought had begun forming somewhere in the back of his mind, one he did not fully want to look at directly, not yet.

"I don't know," he said finally. "I just know I'm not doing another two-hour test in that thing until someone figures out exactly what's happening in there."

Tobias straightened up, closing the chest panel carefully. "Fine. I'll have someone look at the wiring properly before launch night. We've got two days. Plenty of time to sort it out."

"Two days," Julian repeated, rubbing at his blistered shoulder, wincing at the touch. "Tobias, if this happens on launch night, in front of everyone, I can't just gasp and stumble out of a robot costume in the middle of a crowded building. It'll ruin everything."

"It won't happen," Tobias said, though his voice had lost some of its usual certainty. "I'll fix it. Trust me."

Julian did not answer, because he was no longer entirely sure he did.

Two floors above, in a locked office with the lights dimmed low, Daniel watched the whole rehearsal end through his hidden camera feed, his hand still resting near the small control panel he had built weeks earlier, the one that let him adjust exactly how much current ran through those old wires at exactly the moment it would do the most damage without leaving obvious proof behind.

He had pushed it further tonight than the last two times, watching the numbers climb carefully on his own private display, stopping just short of anything that would require a hospital visit or leave marks too severe to explain away as an accident with old equipment. It was a careful, precise kind of cruelty, and some part of Daniel still recoiled from it, even now, even knowing everything he knew.

But watching Julian gasp and stumble out of that shell, watching the real fear finally crack through his usual charm, Daniel felt something harden further inside him rather than soften. This was the man who had planned, calmly and carefully, exactly how Daniel's own death should look on the night of his greatest achievement. A little heat, carefully measured, was a small price to make him understand, even briefly, what fear actually felt like.

Daniel closed the feed and opened his notebook one more time, adding a final note beside tomorrow's date. Two days. Recordings complete. Second unit ready. Pressure applied. Watch for cracks.

He thought about Julian's words, replayed clearly through the hidden microphone. I don't know. I just know I'm not doing another two-hour test in that thing until someone figures out exactly what's happening in there.

Good, Daniel thought. Let him wonder. Let both of them spend their last two days before launch night looking over their shoulders, unsure exactly what was wrong, unsure exactly who to trust, while Daniel finished building the one thing that would make sure none of it mattered anyway.

He closed his laptop, turned off the office lights, and drove home one more time through quiet, empty streets, two days now standing between him and the moment he had spent three long weeks preparing for.

Elaine was still awake when he got home, sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark, her phone in her lap, the screen lighting her face in a pale, worried glow.

"You're up late," Daniel said, keeping his voice easy as he came in and set his bag down.

"Couldn't sleep," Elaine said, setting the phone face-down beside her. "Two days left. I think it's finally hitting me how big this is."

"It's a big night," Daniel agreed, sitting down beside her, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. He looked at her for a moment in the dim light, at the tired lines around her eyes, the tension in her shoulders that had nothing to do with launch logistics and everything to do with a text from Julian she had just read and not answered.

"Are we okay?" she asked suddenly, and something in her voice sounded almost like the woman from ten years ago, uncertain and searching in a way she rarely let herself be anymore. "You and me, I mean. Lately it feels like we're both somewhere else, even when we're in the same room."

Daniel looked at her for a long moment, choosing his words as carefully as he chose every line of code he had written over the last three weeks. "We're fine," he said finally, and reached out to take her hand, the same gesture he had given her a hundred times over ten years of marriage. "Two more days, and then we can both breathe again."

Elaine nodded, and let him hold her hand, and neither of them said anything else, both of them lying in the dark a few minutes later, thinking about a night neither one truly understood the other was preparing for.