Chapter 1

I’m the CEO of a tech company—and the creator of our bionic human project.  

Three years ago, my wife was dying after a car crash. She begged me to “save” her with my technology. I said yes.  

I poured over a hundred million into R&D and built her a bionic body that could last for decades. I covered every checkup, every calibration, every outrageous repair bill.  

What I got back was her contempt, her affair, and her reckless abuse of the body I gave her.  

I warned her again and again to protect it. She called it control—and called another man freedom.  

She even slammed my head into a coffee table to shield him.  

That was the moment I decided: no more repairs, no more payments.  

She chose her path. She pays for it.

————

Late-night Manhattan was quiet. The lights outside the glass curtain wall were still on, but the traffic below had thinned to almost nothing.

Inside the office, there was only the low hum of the air-conditioning and the cold, pale glow of the screens.

I sat at my desk with the main light off. Two folders lay open beside my hands like twin stones set side by side—too heavy to ignore.

The one on the left was Victoria Kane’s itinerary with Blake Walker.

The one on the right was Victoria Kane’s chassis inspection report from a week ago. The title was ordinary. The content wasn’t: abnormal wear in the core joints; repeated coolant-system warnings; urgent maintenance recommended within forty-eight hours.

I pulled the left folder closer.

What was inside couldn’t be summed up in a single sentence.

In the photos, the two of them were pressed close—hugging, kissing. Behind them: the patterned carpet of a hotel corridor, neon from a club entrance.

There were screenshots of messages too. The timestamps were packed tight. The words themselves were simple; the tone was what made them hard to read—casual, entitled, like none of it mattered.

“He’s telling me to go for another checkup again. Is he ever not annoying?”

“Ignore him. He’s the type who schedules everything.”

“Exactly. He’s so boring it’s like living with a project manager. Being with him feels like prison.”

Blake’s reply was even lighter: “Then come out. I’ll let you breathe.”

Victoria sent a location pin and added, “Don’t worry. He’ll just be in his office writing reports.”

I stared at the word “prison” for two seconds, my fingers resting on the edge of the paper, forcing myself not to turn the page too fast.

There were other slips tucked inside: bookings for extreme sports, hotel check-in records, screenshots of party invitations…

If this were only cheating, I wouldn’t still be sitting here at this hour.

I could handle PR. I could handle contracts. I could handle every restless face on my board.

What really stabbed at my eyes were the words “extreme sports” in that file—rock climbing, wingsuit training, off-road rappel drops.

In an ordinary life, those were thrills. For her, they were risk.

I closed the folder, pressed my thumb against the cover, and shifted my gaze to the report on the right.

Its layout resembled a medical chart, except “organs” and “tissues” had been replaced with “modules” and “interfaces.”

I didn’t need to read it line by line. The red-highlighted conclusion was enough: the wear rate had risen abnormally; under high load, the cooling system had a measurable probability of failure; immediate maintenance advised, or the damage could become irreversible—up to and including a full system crash.

I flipped further down. Costs and procedure tiers were listed like a harsh checklist: joint component replacement, neural-signal remapping recalibration, coolant circulation inspection, core power safety tests.

Each item had an estimated cost and a time window.

I knew those numbers too well, because almost all of them had come out of my accounts.

I flattened the report on the desk. My fingertip stopped on the line that read “maintenance recommended within forty-eight hours.” No dramatic words formed in my mind—only a clear judgment: if she kept delaying, something would go wrong.

Because she wasn’t human.

Or rather—she wasn’t entirely human.

My name is Leon Grayson. I’m the CEO of Whiteglow Technologies, and the lead researcher on the biomimetic carrier program.

Victoria is my wife. We were together for two years. My home life was steady, my career was rising, everything was moving in the right direction—until the car crash three years ago.

It was my birthday. She was on her way to pick up my cake. A three-car collision. By the time I reached the hospital, Victoria could no longer form full sentences.

She held my hand and cried silently, as if she couldn’t afford to waste the last of her breath, repeating only one thing: she didn’t want to die.

She said she still had too much unfinished. She didn’t want all that was left of her to be a death certificate.

She knew what I was working on. She begged me to let her live—live in another form. I told her I couldn’t do that. She kept pleading through tears anyway.

Instinct told me to refuse.

In the end, I said yes.

I spent nearly a year copying her consciousness and embedding it into a biomimetic carrier.

The day the first successful boot completed, she opened her eyes and said my name. Her voice sounded the same as before. I stood in the lab with sweat in my palms and didn’t cry.

I just checked her response latency, verified her visual tracking, confirmed her muscle-simulation output—only then did I allow myself to believe it.

She was back.

But that kind of return isn’t permanent. Her body has limits, and wear that can’t be ignored.

Like a human body can get sick, this one needs regular inspection. If an accident happens, parts must be replaced; if certain thresholds are crossed, she has to be pulled back into a safe range.

The cost, the risk, the procedures—I carried them all myself.

I didn’t want her to feel like a burden.

For the first year, she cooperated.

We ate together. We took walks. She could still be moved by a surprise, still fall silent at the end of a film.

Back then, I even believed technology could restore what had been lost.

Then, about a year ago, things started to change.

She grew tired of the schedules I set, tired of me reminding her to be careful. Even when I explained the risks, she did what she wanted anyway.

She said she wanted a freer life, stronger experiences.

She began skipping appointments, pushing checkups back.

And then Blake appeared.

Blake was the kind of man who knew exactly how to please people. He didn’t talk about risk. He didn’t talk about cost. He talked about thrills. He talked about the moment.

Over the past year, she delayed her scheduled checkups at least three times—first to the next week, then to the next month. Twice, she simply disappeared.

Yesterday, I received her inspection report. Under normal conditions, if she protected her body and avoided major accidents, this chassis could have functioned smoothly for decades—far longer than her original lifespan. There was no reason for damage on this scale.

So I had someone investigate her movements, and learned that over the past year, she’d been following Blake into one extreme sport after another, getting injured repeatedly.

For the past year I didn’t understand why her wear was accelerating. I replaced parts more than once. I told her, again and again, to treat her body carefully.

All it earned me was her irritation.

I kept thinking it was a problem with the chassis, or the components themselves—until this report made it clear what she’d been doing.

I opened my desk drawer and took out another folder: maintenance costs and authorization records.

Every single payment line had my name on it.

And to her, it all might as well have been air.

I closed the folder, tapped the desktop once, and my thoughts narrowed into a single, clean route: tonight, I had to take her to the maintenance center. First, we’d do the urgent repairs. Then, we’d talk about the affair face to face.

As for Blake—what she thought I was to her—I needed an answer.

I picked up my phone and sent a directive to the maintenance center: prepare an emergency slot, pre-stage replacement parts and cooling modules at the highest priority, ready for immediate intake.

I stood, slid the documents into my briefcase, and headed out.

At the door, my screen lit up. A message from Victoria—short, blunt, almost like a notice:

“I’m going out tonight. Don’t wait up.”

I stared at it for three seconds, then replied:

“We need to talk. Don’t go out yet.”