Adam left the lab at precisely 4 pm, his shoulders heavy under the weight of another failure. A week of relentless effort—countless hours staring at encrypted signals—and he was still no closer to unmasking the operator behind the robot mugger. Layers of VPNs mocked his every attempt, each dead end deepening his frustration. The image of his sister’s broken fingers haunted him. He clenched his fists. The operator wasn’t just a criminal—they were a coward, hiding behind technology while their machine inflicted real harm.

  The next afternoon, Adam returned to work after a much-needed marathon sleep session. His alarm clock lay defeated on the floor, silenced at 7 am, but he didn’t stir until 1 pm. Begrudgingly, he admitted to himself that he’d needed the rest.

  Inside, Sophia was hunched over her workbench, surrounded by an array of tools and components meticulously arranged like an artist’s palette. She was perfecting her synthetic skin prototype—an invention so lifelike it could fool even the sharpest eyes. Her hands moved with mechanical precision, her focus unwavering—until Adam stepped through the door.

  “Late night?” she asked without looking up, though the answer was obvious.

  “Yeah,” he muttered, the weight of the past week thick in his voice. “Sorry about that.”

  “No problem.” She glanced up with a brief smile, then turned her gaze toward the far corner of the room, where Stevie Chen was wrestling with a coding issue. The eccentric programmer muttered to an AI assistant, gesturing animatedly at his monitor. Sophia shot Adam a mischievous look and motioned for him to follow her lead.

  Adam raised an eyebrow but obliged, tiptoeing exaggeratedly across the room. Sophia stifled a laugh, pointing insistently at the side of Stevie’s head. Adam leaned closer and froze.

  At first glance, Stevie looked normal—frazzled, maybe—but when he shifted, Adam’s breath caught. Above his temple, a circular opening revealed a sleek microchip embedded in his skull. Its transparent cover gleamed under the lab’s fluorescent lights. Tiny electric arcs danced across its surface, pulsating with mesmerising precision. It wasn’t just functional; it was a statement—a fusion of technology and audacity.

  “Is that—” Adam began, his voice faltering.

  “A Stipe Industries AI-to-human interface chip,” Sophia whispered, a mix of disbelief and amusement in her tone.

  “What the hell—” Adam blurted, louder this time.

  Startled, Stevie spun in his chair, his expression caught between annoyance and amusement. Clearly, he was used to reactions like this.

  “Relax, boss,” Stevie said with a grin. “It’s cutting-edge. You should try it.”

  Adam stared, struggling to process what he was seeing. “Try it? Stevie, you drilled a hole in your skull!”

  Stevie tapped the chip lightly, his grin widening. “And you’ve got your phone glued to your hand 24/7. Think of this as the next step.”

  Sophia, smirking behind her hand, leaned in. “Told you he’d freak out.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Adam pointed at the chip, incredulous. “What does it even do?”

  Stevie’s eyes lit up. “What can’t it do? Built-in AI, language translation, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, health monitoring—it’s like having an assistant in your head. I’m now smarter than both of you combined.” He winked. “No offence, bosses.”

  “Stevie,” Adam said flatly, “you’re already smart—maybe smarter than us. But no chip’s going to fix your lack of common sense.”

  “Hey, maybe the AI will help with that too,” Stevie replied with a grin.

  Adam crossed his arms. “You’ve got the equivalent of an expensive Rolex embedded in your skull. You’re a walking target. Someone’s going to rip it out of your head—and they won’t be gentle about it.”

  Stevie winced at the thought. “Yeah, okay, I’ll get it covered. But imagine the possibilities! Sophia, this could revolutionise your child welfare project.”

  The mention of her work sobered Sophia. She glanced at her workbench, where tiny biometric monitors lay next to her synthetic skin prototype. These devices, designed for children in at-risk households, tracked anxiety and pain levels, transmitting the data to central human and AI monitoring centres. Parents under suspicion wore their own monitors, which measured spikes in anger and adrenaline. Algorithms cross-referenced emotional and pain data from both parents and children, along with location and timestamps, creating an early-warning system to alert authorities if abuse was occurring.

  “No thanks,” Sophia said firmly, her voice light but decisive. “I’ll stick to watches for now.”

  Stevie shrugged and turned back to his monitor, leaving Adam and Sophia to exchange a look.

  Sophia sighed, her thoughts clouded. What was wrong with being entirely human? She glanced at her workbench again. Beside the synthetic skin prototype lay the tiny biometric monitor watches she’d designed to safeguard children, even from their own parents. In that moment, she reluctantly changed her answer to her own question. Sometimes, there was a lot wrong with being entirely human.

  By 7 pm, Sophia was heading home with the other employees. Stevie, now wearing a cap to obscure his chip, seemed distracted—probably replaying Adam’s warning in his head.

  Sophia spotted Adam still hunched over his desk, leaning forward, one arm propping up his head. His brow was furrowed with deep lines, a clear sign of intense focus. He was probably still thinking about how to make their empathy-driven robots actually work—something that had proven elusive.

  “Adam,” she said, “I don’t think we can create the kind of robots we want with the amount of brain tissue we’re using. We have to increase the biological brain size. It’s the only way.”

  Adam’s concentration broke. It took a moment for him to register her words.

  “What? Oh. Yeah... well, I don’t want to go down that route. We’d need medical licenses, and they’ll block us anyway. It’s too controversial. And besides, it’s probably already being done in some dictator-run tin-pot country. Cloned brains, bio-brains—some lunatic’s probably used his own. Dangerous stuff.”

  “All the more reason for us to do it. And we don’t need a full brain—I think slightly less than half the human brain mass could be enough. We just need a denser neural network. The rest can still be digital AI. But Adam, we need a prototype to work on soon. Have you seen our bank balance?”

  Adam sighed and gave a reluctant nod. “Sophia, can we talk about this tomorrow, please?”

  “Okay. Just... don’t work too late. You look stressed,” she said gently, tossing her coat over her arm and heading for the stairs.

  “I won’t,” Adam lied, waiting for her footsteps to fade before sinking back into his chair.

  Sophia thought he spent his nights trying to code empathy and love into their robots, rather than using biology. And during the day, that was true. He had cooled recently on using stem cells.

  But when night fell, Adam became something else.

  Tonight—like every night that week—he was a keyboard vigilante, hunting the operator behind the robot mugger who had attacked his sister. That person wasn’t just a target. They were a monster. And Adam would find them. The police might handle justice, but vengeance?

  That was his.

  He returned to his desk, coffee steaming beside him. The VPN protecting the operator’s identity was a fortress—a product of Stipe Industries. Adam scowled. Did Ethan Stipe care how many criminals used his tools to erase their digital fingerprints? Did he even know?

  His fingers flew across the keyboard.

  The puzzle was almost complete.

  He could feel it.