The room smelled of antiseptic, metal, and something faintly sweet—like fruit starting to sour. Ethan Roarke snapped on his gloves and nodded to the machine before him. It hummed in readiness, its sleek chrome exterior glowing faintly beneath the sterile lab lights. To his left, a holographic display floated midair, showing the intricate web of veins and sinews of the organ he was about to print—a human heart, tailored perfectly for a man whose own was failing fast on the thirty-fourth floor of Arcadia Memorial Hospital.
Ethan adjusted his tie—a small habit he never shook, even in a lab. It was bright red, the same color as the organ coming to life in the bioprinter, its fibers weaving together strand by strand. Ethan's bespoke outfit—a retro-modern fusion of 1930s elegance and 2040s utility—made him stand out. Pinstripe trousers swayed as he moved, a lab coat sleekly tailored over his broad shoulders. The vermillion tie was a nod to the heirloom pocket square his father had once worn. It was a quirky affectation, one he clung to in this era where appearances often felt as synthetic as the tech surrounding him.
“Organ ninety-four percent complete,” chirped the Robo-Medic’s AI in tones soothing and unhurried. “Estimation: two minutes.”
Two more minutes to save a life. Two minutes to endanger another.
Ethan glanced at the locked drawer near his station. Inside was the drive containing the day's final task—not approved by the hospital board, certainly not authorized by any government body. The request had come encrypted, carrying the weight of wealth and coercion. And Ethan, brilliant inventor and deeply flawed man, had made a dangerous habit of saying yes.
His small lab at Archai Biogenics was celebrated worldwide—a beacon of hope in a crumbling society plagued by inequality. Ethan had revolutionized 3D bioprinting with AI algorithms that could anticipate cellular deviations and correct them mid-fabrication. He had eliminated rejection rates. He had given families their loved ones back. Somewhere in him, there had been a desire for heroism once.
Now, the foundation of it all rested on lies he told himself.
“Dr. Roarke,” came a voice from the glass-encased corridor, rough with authority.
Ethan whirled, startled. The voice belonged to Jessa Lin, compliance officer for Archai. Jessa, always in dark green suits that seemed to absorb light like a black hole. Jessa, with twin obsidian earrings and a gaze that could burn through titanium. She stepped into the lab, her heels echoing on the tiled floor.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” Ethan said carefully, exuding calm though his pulse slammed in his ears. He turned his back, letting the holographic heart float between him and Jessa, its glowing red a theatrical distraction.
“Your approval logs don’t match last week’s metrics,” she said, straightforward as ever. “You’re producing something off-record.”
Ethan’s throat tightened. “Sometimes adjustments are necessary mid-development. Bioprinting isn’t—"
“Spare me the lecture,” Jessa interrupted. “This isn’t my first day touring the miracles or the skeletons in your lab.”
The Robo-Medic chirped again. “Organ complete. Ready for extraction.”
“Perfect timing,” Ethan said, reaching for the bioprinter’s sterilized chamber. He removed the pulsating heart, a miracle born of human ingenuity, and held it up. “Another life saved.”
“Or traded,” Jessa shot back, stepping closer. Her understated perfume—citrus with a sharp edge—floated between them. “Listen, Ethan. Someone’s watching. Too many anomalies in your system logs. The kind even I can’t bury anymore.”
Ethan sighed and placed the heart gently into its preservation chamber, a bizarrely tender curator of the artificial. “You don’t understand the pressure,” he said finally, his voice low. “The expectations from Arcadia, from the benefactors. They don’t just want medical progress—they want miracles. On demand. Within the quarter.”
“Miracles? Or designer deaths?”
The weight of her words hit him with a gut-punch he wasn’t ready for. He looked at her, really looked at her: the sharp intelligence, the righteous fire. He once thought she admired him. Maybe she had. Right now, all Ethan could see was her conviction to bring something crashing down—either him or the systems slowly bleeding them all dry.
“You think I’m trading lives,” he said, his tone sliding toward the defensive. “That’s not who I am.”
“Maybe not,” she said softly. Then: “You’re infected, Ethan.”
The words stunned him. “Excuse me?”
“I’ve seen the signs,” she continued. “The rumors about Arcadia and the bio-enhanced intelligence quotas. That tech your genius devised doesn’t just patch organs, does it? It lives inside you too, doesn’t it? Modulating, rewriting code in real-time.”
“Stop,” Ethan muttered. His hand went reflexively to the back of his neck, where a faint pulsing chip rested beneath his skin. Something not even the hospital's surgeons knew about.
“There’s a reason you don’t sleep anymore,” Jessa pressed, her words low but deliberate. “Your mind is running biweekly updates from software you probably can’t even control. That’s who’s making these decisions to bend rules. Not Ethan Roarke, the innovator. Not you.”
Ethan swallowed. His entire world felt ready to fracture. Jessa was still watching him, searching for cracks, waiting, it seemed, for a confession she could take upstairs—to annihilate him or, perhaps, save him.
But before he could say anything else, the lab's lights went dark.
A surge of alarm filled the air as the bioprinter screeched. Red emergency markers blinked overhead, and the holographic heart disappeared. Backup power kicked on a moment later, a dim blue hue washing over the lab.
“Lockdown,” Ethan murmured. His chest tightened further. “Someone’s breached us.”
Jessa immediately snapped into action, her hand already on her communicator. “Compliance Office Lin—lockdown inside Sector-4 Bioprinting Lab. Initiate protocols.”
The shadows shifted behind her. A sound, barely audible, like fabric against glass.
“Jessa, MOVE!” Ethan shouted.
The slight lifting of a laser blade caught the faint glow of emergency light as it swung through the air.
This wasn’t about compliance anymore.
The Source...check out the great article that inspired this amazing short story: The Robo-Medic: How AI and 3D Bioprinting Could End the Organ Shortage Crisis Forever
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