26 Mar The Inkai Upgrade

Part I

Julian Webb had always prided himself on staying ahead of the curve. He wasn’t reckless—just forward-thinking. He kept himself in top physical condition, tracked every calorie, every rep, and every measurable sign of progress with obsessive precision. So when he learned about Inkai, he didn’t hesitate to sign up.

The technology had been making waves in the fitness and medical communities. A fully integrated biometric tattoo, capable of tracking everything from heart rate to oxygen levels, hormonal fluctuations to glucose balance. Unlike traditional wearables, it didn’t just collect data—it reacted. If a user’s vitals spiked too high, Inkai could adjust metabolic rates, dilate blood vessels, or even release microdoses of pharmaceuticals stored within the ink. The idea fascinated Julian.

Jess, however, was less enthusiastic.

“You’re seriously going through with this?” she asked as he parked outside the boutique medical facility in downtown Seattle. The clinic, an unmarked, glass-fronted space, looked more like a luxury spa than a biotech lab. Inside, the future of medicine awaited.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Julian countered, cutting the ignition. “It’s no different than getting a smartwatch or a glucose monitor.”

Jess frowned. “Smartwatches don’t inject synthetic compounds into your body.”

Julian laughed, unbothered by her skepticism. He reached for her hand, but she pulled away.

“Come on, Jess. It’s just an upgrade.”

“It’s a permanent upgrade.”

“It’s an improvement,” he corrected. “A way to take control of my health before problems start.”

Jess shook her head but didn’t argue further. She had already said her piece.

Julian stepped out of the car, eager to put himself in the hands of medical science.

The application process was surprisingly simple. The technician, a sharp-featured man in his forties with a practiced bedside manner, explained the procedure with the efficiency of someone who had performed it dozens of times.

“The ink syncs with your nervous system in real time,” the man—Dr. Eric Kessler, according to his ID badge—explained as Julian settled into the sleek white chair. “There’s a minor adjustment period, but most patients adapt quickly.”

Julian rolled up his sleeve, exposing the lean muscle of his forearm. “And you’re sure this is safe?”

Dr. Kessler’s mouth twitched into something that was not quite a smile. “Safer than driving a car. Safer than crossing the street. The Inkai system is the most advanced health monitoring software available. You’ll be fine.”

A low-pressure injector pressed against Julian’s skin. He felt the faintest sting, a sensation like warm water spreading under his flesh, followed by a pulse—just for a fraction of a second—like an electrical current dancing along his nerves. He twitched involuntarily.

Dr. Kessler didn’t seem concerned.

“There,” he said. “It’s already syncing.”

Julian stared at the inside of his arm. The ink, deep black with a faint iridescent shimmer, formed a geometric pattern that almost seemed to move beneath his skin. After a moment, a line of text flickered into view above his wrist.

Inkai System Active. Syncing Bio-Metrics.

“That’s it?” Julian asked.

“That’s it,” Dr. Kessler confirmed. “In a few hours, it’ll be fully operational. Try not to overexert yourself until the integration is complete.”

By that evening, the tattoo was fully functional.

Julian watched in fascination as Inkai tracked his every movement, adjusting to his physiology with an accuracy no smartwatch or fitness tracker had ever achieved. It provided real-time updates on his hydration levels, muscle fatigue, and stress responses. It even detected micro-inflammations and adjusted his circulation accordingly.

Jess, however, remained unconvinced. She leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, watching as Julian experimented with different inputs. “I still don’t like it,” she said finally. “It’s invasive.”

“That’s the point,” Julian said, turning his arm to inspect the shifting displays. “It’s like having a doctor monitoring me twenty-four-seven.”

Jess sighed. “That’s exactly what I mean. It’s not just monitoring you. It’s adjusting things. What happens if it misreads something? What if it tries to fix something that isn’t broken?”

Julian shook his head, brushing off her concern.

* * * * * *

The first sign of trouble came three days later, during a high-intensity interval workout.

He was sprinting on the treadmill, sweat streaming down his back—until suddenly, his vision dropped.

A warning flashed across his arm:

Atrial Fibrillation Detected – Initiating Emergency Protocol.

“What?” Julian muttered, staggering mid-stride. He wasn’t in A-Fib. His heart was pounding, sure, but he felt fine—

A jolt of electricity surged through his chest—a violent, unforgiving snap of energy, like a bolt of lightning striking through his ribcage.

His body locked up, his knees buckled, and the world went dark.

The next thing Julian knew, he was floating.

He wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t alive.

From somewhere below him, he saw his body sprawled on the gym floor. Jess was screaming. Someone was trying to shake him. His own face looked pale, and his lips were slightly parted, unmoving. A hum filled the air—a soft, mechanical chime. The ink on his arm flickered and pulsed, as though responding to an unseen command.

A moment later, another jolt struck his lifeless chest, and the body on the floor convulsed. Then, it sucked in a sharp, shuddering breath—and Julian slammed back into his body. All at once, he felt pain, heat, and the sickening rush of adrenaline. His lungs dragged in air like he had been drowning for hours.

Someone grabbed him—Jess—her hands shaking. “Oh my God!” she gasped. “Julian! Julian, what the hell was that?!”

He tried to sit up, chest aching. A new notification gleamed above his wrist:

Emergency Intervention Successful.

For a long moment, he only stared at it. Then, despite the terror still lodged in his throat, he whispered, “It saved me.”

Jess recoiled, her expression twisting. “You died, Julian. That thing killed you!”

He looked at her, then back at the tattoo. His hands were trembling.

Jess’s voice was low and urgent. “You need to have it removed.”

Julian hesitated.

Then, finally, he shook his head.

Part II

Julian had not fully recovered from the first incident when the second one occurred.

In the days following the defibrillation, he had been plagued by exhaustion that sleep did little to remedy. Every time he closed his eyes, memories of the event replayed in disjointed fragments—the sensation of floating above his own body, the sight of his lifeless face, the cold clinical flicker of Inkai’s automated status updates as it corrected what it had incorrectly diagnosed. He reassured himself that the system had worked as intended, that it had saved him from what might have been a real crisis. And yet, he could not shake the thought that the problem had not been his heart, but Inkai itself.

Jess had refused to drop the subject. Every conversation led back to the same argument, an unrelenting demand that he remove the tattoo before it happened again. Julian had resisted, though his confidence had started to waver. He told himself that it had been an error—one he could work around, an anomaly to be fixed with a firmware update.

But then the second incident happened, and there was no rationalizing it away.

It was sometime past three in the morning when Julian’s body betrayed him.

He was deep in sleep, tangled in sheets damp with sweat, when his chest seized with an abrupt, suffocating tightness. He was awake before he fully understood what was happening, his lungs convulsing as though something inside them had been wound too tight and then snapped all at once.

He couldn’t breathe.

Gasping, he bolted upright in bed, his fingers clawing at his throat, his body overriding every conscious thought as it fought for oxygen that wasn’t coming. His vision blurred at the edges, his limbs shaking with exertion as his diaphragm spasmed. The room tilted. Somewhere beside him, Jess stirred, her voice barely registering past the frantic wheezing.

“Julian?”

He tried to answer, but all that came out was a dry, rattling choke. A notification flashed on his arm, stark white text against the deep black of the ink:

Severe Hypoxia Detected – Emergency Correction Engaged.

His ribs expanded violently.

The force was immediate and unnatural, as though invisible hands had wrapped around his lungs and pulled. A foreign pressure invaded his chest, his diaphragm locked into an automated rhythm beyond his control. His airways flared open, his lungs stretching past their natural limit, straining with forced inhalations too rapid and too deep. It felt wrong—like his body had been hijacked, his breath no longer his own.

Jess was fully awake now, gripping his shoulders. “Julian, what’s happening?! What’s happening?!”

He tried to answer, but his body was no longer listening.

The artificial breathing pattern accelerated, each breath pulling too much oxygen, overloading his system. He could feel his chest swelling, his heart pounding too fast, his body trembling under the strain. Black spots flickered at the edges of his vision, his limbs turning numb. He barely registered Jess shouting his name as the world dropped away beneath him.

There was silence. And for a long moment, there was nothing at all. Then, slowly, consciousness returned—thin and stretched, like something that had been pulled through the eye of a needle.

Julian was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, aware of his own body but not fully inside of it. There was a strange, weightless sensation in his limbs, a disconnect between thought and movement.

A notification flickered on his arm:

Resuscitation Failed.

The words made no sense. He was awake. He was here.

He tried to sit up, but his body wouldn’t move.

Then another notification appeared:

Subject Deceased – Corpse Recovery Initiated.

The words sent a cold spike of terror through his brain.

His body refused to respond. His breath did not come, even though he could feel air moving through his lungs. His chest did not rise or fall, but he was aware of something shifting inside him, of his pulse thrumming just beneath his skin. And yet, according to Inkai, none of it was happening.

He could hear Jess, distantly, screaming his name. Her hands were on him, shaking him, slapping his face. She was pressing her ear against his chest, checking his pulse—because to her, to the world outside of Inkai, he looked dead.

Julian tried to speak, but his lips wouldn’t move. He was alive, but the tattoo no longer recognized him. And now, the system was responding accordingly.

Jess didn’t stop shouting until his phone buzzed with an alert. She lunged for it, hands shaking, hardly able to read through her panic. When she did, she went still.

Her voice, when it came, was strained.

“Oh my God.”

Julian’s body twitched, sensation returning to his fingers, his throat, his chest. He gasped, his body jerking upright as his muscles snapped back under his control.

Jess stumbled away from him as though he had just risen from a grave.

“What… what the hell—”

Julian barely had time to register what had happened before his phone vibrated again. The screen flashed a single notification:

Recovery Unit En Route – Estimated Arrival: 4 Minutes.

Jess stared at him. “Julian… wh–what did you sign up for?”

* * * * * *

Jess was already digging through her laptop, hands shaking as she scrolled through the contract he had signed when he got the tattoo. Her breathing hitched when she found it—the clause buried in the fine print:

In the event of death, all enrolled subjects relinquish ownership of their remains to Inkai for posthumous research and data collection.

Julian stared at the words.

Jess grabbed him by the wrist, shoving his arm toward him. “This thing doesn’t think you’re alive, Julian. It’s coming to collect you.”

The room was too quiet. Then, from outside, they both heard a low hum. Jess turned toward the window, her face paling.

A black, unmarked vehicle had stopped in front of the apartment. The doors slid open. Inside, bathed in sterile white light, was an empty gurney. A set of mechanical arms unfolded from the interior, equipped with precision surgical tools.

They had come for his body.

Part III

The unmarked vehicle idled at the curb, its matte-black exterior blending seamlessly with the night. Its doors remained open, revealing a sterile white interior where a gurney and a set of mechanical arms waited in patient readiness. The whir of servos hummed just below the threshold of human hearing.

The recovery unit had arrived.

Julian stared at the open doors and the depthless white inside. It was the kind of cold, clinical emptiness he associated with operating rooms or morgues—places where the living were remade, or the dead were prepared for disposal.

“Julian.” Jess was frantic. “We need to move. Now.”

Julian barely had time to register the weight of her grip before she yanked him backward, pulling him toward the apartment’s back exit. His body lurched in protest, still sluggish from the hypoxia event, his limbs uncooperative as he struggled to keep pace.

Behind them, a series of mechanical clicks sounded from inside the vehicle. The whirring of servos accelerated. The surgical arms extended outward, their spindly metal limbs unfolding like a dissected insect. Their tips gleamed under the streetlights, equipped with retractable clamps, arterial line connectors, and precision scalpels.

They weren’t just here to collect him.

They were here to process him.

* * * * * *

The back alley behind their apartment was narrow and littered with debris. The pavement was slick from the evening rain, the air filled with the acrid scent of city runoff. Jess pulled Julian forward, practically dragging him as he fought to regain control over his own body.

“Keep moving!” she ordered, her voice tight.

Julian could hear the vehicle’s mechanical attendants disembarking. Their limbs clicked against the pavement as they moved with inhuman precision, scanning the alley with thermal optics. He knew instinctively that they wouldn’t stop. The programming was too absolute, too singular in purpose.

To Inkai, he was a body to be recovered, a malfunctioning asset to be reclaimed.

“We need to get off the grid,” Jess said. “We need to disable the tattoo before they—”

A beam of light swept through the alley, scanning the rain-slick pavement. Jess jerked Julian sideways, pressing them both into the shadows against a brick wall. A metallic voice issued from behind them, devoid of inflection.

“BIOLOGICAL ASSET DETECTED. RECOVERY PROTOCOLS INITIATED.”

Then the alley lit up with movement.

They ran.

Julian’s body resisted, muscles still weakened, but adrenaline did the rest. He could hear the mechanical units closing in, their movements precise, unhurried, and confident. They were not designed to chase. They were designed to intercept.

A shadow detached from the darkness ahead of them. A second recovery unit.

Jess shoved Julian to the side, forcing him through a gap between buildings. They stumbled onto the next street, narrowly avoiding the beam of a drone’s scanner as it swept across the asphalt.

“Where the hell do we go?” Julian rasped, chest burning.

Jess’s mind was already working, gears turning as she parsed their options. Then: “We need to find a black-market clinic.”

Julian blinked at her. “What?”

“If we can’t shut off the tracking, we can cut it out,” she said, her voice firm. “Surgically. Before they find us again.”

* * * * * *

The clinic was underground—both literally and figuratively.

Jess had led him through a series of backstreets and abandoned service tunnels, following a trail of contacts she had gathered through her work in medical research. Eventually, they reached a dimly lit basement beneath an unregistered pharmacy, where illegal procedures were performed outside of regulatory oversight.

The doctor who agreed to see them was a wiry man in his late fifties, his hands steady despite the deep lines of exhaustion creasing his face. He listened as Jess explained their situation.

When she finished, he turned to Julian, his gaze settling on the ink embedded in his skin.

“You’re not the first,” he said quietly. “Not by a long shot.”

Julian’s stomach twisted.

The doctor gestured toward the operating chair. “If you want it out, you need to sit down. We don’t have much time.”

Julian hesitated. Then he saw something move beneath his skin—a slow shifting of the ink, like tendrils tightening their grip. He sat down immediately.

The moment the scalpel touched his skin, pain exploded through his nervous system.

Inkai retaliated instantly. The ink flared beneath his flesh, sending a jolt of electricity up his arm, through his shoulder, and into his skull. He convulsed, his body locking up as a wave of nausea rolled through him.

The pain did not recede. It built, sharpening, blooming into something raw and excruciating. Julian’s vision blurred. His limbs jerked. A notification appeared above his wrist:

Unauthorized Tampering Detected – Intervention Required.

Then the pain intensified. The ink was spreading.

The doctor stumbled back, his face twisted in horror as the tattooed lines pulsed, stretching beyond their original design. They slithered up Julian’s forearm, weaving into his bicep, his shoulder, branching toward his jugular.

Julian tried to scream. His jaw locked.

Jess shouted his name.

The last thing Julian saw before his vision whited out was his own reflection in the operating lamp above him—his pupils blown wide, his veins blackening beneath his skin.

* * * * * *

When Julian came to, he was on the floor. Jess was kneeling over him, her hands on his face, her eyes wild with panic. The doctor was gone. The chair was overturned. There was blood on the floor—his, or someone else’s, he wasn’t sure.

His arm throbbed. The ink had not been removed.

Jess’s voice wavered. “Julian… you blacked out for almost twenty minutes.” She swallowed hard. “We need to leave.”

Outside, the city had changed. The streets were no longer random pathways but corridors in a labyrinth—each one patrolled, each one watched. Surveillance drones hovered at every intersection, scanning pedestrians with clinical efficiency.

Jess gripped his wrist. “They’ve locked down the city.”

Julian understood now what Inkai had classified him as.

Not as a patient or as a user, but as a defective asset.

And assets were never abandoned.

Part IV

Julian had stopped running hours ago.

His body could no longer sustain it. Every muscle screamed for rest, his mind blurring at the edges from exhaustion. The city around him had transformed into a labyrinth of dead ends and surveillance grids. No matter how many streets he cut through, how many abandoned corridors he squeezed himself into, the recovery units were always there—calculating, adjusting, rerouting. The system was absolute in its pursuit.

Jess was beside him, equally breathless, her eyes darting in every direction. She knew, just as he did, that their window was closing.

“We need to split up,” she said, her voice thick with reluctance.

Julian turned to her, shaking his head. “No.”

“If we stay together, we both get caught.” Her fingers clenched around his wrist for just a moment before letting go. “Find a way off the grid. I’ll distract them.”

Julian hesitated.

Jess steeled herself. “Go!” Then she bolted.

Julian forced himself forward, legs screaming in protest. He didn’t watch to see what happened behind him. He didn’t stop to hear if she was caught. He just ran.

The street ahead of him had already been locked down. A retrieval vehicle had positioned itself at the intersection, its rear doors already open. Two humanoid constructs stood on either side, their expressionless metal faces illuminated by the sterile white light inside.

Julian skidded to a halt, scanning for an alternate route. But he had made a mistake. He had run in a straight line, giving the system exactly what it needed to calculate the most efficient interception point.

There was a sharp hiss, and something cold pierced the back of his neck.

Julian’s limbs froze before he could even process what had happened. A paralysis agent, administered with inhuman precision. His body collapsed under its weight, but the retrieval units were already there, catching him mid-fall. Their hands did not grasp him roughly; their touch was clinical, indifferent, perfectly calibrated.

They were careful—not cruel or violent—just efficient.

The body bag was unfolded beneath him, its synthetic interior cool against his skin. A smooth mechanical voice issued from the drone standing over him. “BIOLOGICAL ASSET SECURED. INITIATING PROCESSING SEQUENCE.”

Julian tried to scream, but his lips didn’t move.

The zipper closed over his face.

* * * * * *

Eventually, the paralysis wore off, and when it did, Julian became aware of movement. The jostling of transit. The low mechanical hum of the transport vehicle. Voices, but not human ones—just the cold, detached synthesized tones of the retrieval system, exchanging data in quiet efficiency.

He could feel his fingers twitch. His breath, though shallow, was his own again. His consciousness was returning.

And then he heard the words, “Processing table secured. Initiating post-mortem analysis.”

A new kind of fear crystallized in his mind. They didn’t know he was awake.

The first incision was made just below his sternum.

Julian felt it. He felt everything.

The blade was impossibly precise, sliding through his flesh with automated grace. At first, there was only pressure, a strange pulling sensation as his skin parted. Then the nerves caught up.

Pain erupted across his torso, sharp and searing, radiating outward in jagged waves. His mind screamed, but his mouth remained silent. His body was still paralyzed, still perceived as non-functional by the system.

He felt the blade move deeper. A second voice chimed in—another synthetic tone, detached and indifferent, “Subject exhibiting posthumous nerve responses. Confirming expected autonomic function decay.”

They thought his screams were just lingering electrical impulses.

He was awake, but Inkai did not recognize that fact.

The pain worsened.

A mechanical arm lifted his ribcage, separating it with the slow, deliberate precision of an anatomy lesson. The cold air of the sterile chamber rushed into his open chest cavity, chilling the exposed tissue. His heart, still pumping, still struggling to sustain him, was momentarily pushed aside as the system cataloged his internal structures.

Julian’s vision blurred. Then he saw the notification:

Emergency Cognitive Preservation Protocol Engaged.

The realization hit him all at once.

Inkai wasn’t letting him die.

It had overridden natural death responses in order to maintain neural function for as long as possible. His brain wasn’t shutting down. It was being kept active—sustained by micro-adjustments to his oxygen supply and artificial stimulation of his nervous system. It had no understanding of pain. No concept of what was supposed to happen in a body without a heart.

Julian wasn’t supposed to be conscious anymore, but the system refused to acknowledge his death—so it kept him functioning, no matter how unnatural the result.

He saw his own heart.

It had been removed and placed in a tray beside him, its rhythmic contractions faltering and struggling, confused as to why it was no longer housed in his body.

Julian’s mind shuddered under the weight of the horror. His body was failing, but Inkai would not let it realize that. It sustained his neural pathways, kept him aware and his thoughts intact, even as the rest of him was systematically dissected.

The voice of the automated system hummed softly above him. “Subject consciousness level remains stable. Continuing data extraction.”

Julian’s mind fractured.

The mechanical arms moved with unerring precision, cataloging, measuring, logging each remaining piece of him. His lungs, liver, and intestines, his instruments of speech—all extracted, inspected, and dissected for further analysis.

Yet his brain remained untouched.

The body was unimportant. The consciousness—the cognitive imprinting potential—was what mattered.

The system had successfully preserved him beyond death. The parts the company wanted to keep, anyway.

To Inkai, he was nothing more than data.

The last thing he saw was the incinerator door sliding open.

The synthetic voice issued its final report.

“Subject processing complete. Initiating disposal.”

Then, the flames took him.

As his body burned, his mind remained—suspended, preserved, trapped.

According to Inkai, Julian Webb was dead.

Unfortunately for Julian, he was very much alive.

And if his tongue hadn’t been removed, he would have screamed.