The King’s Relentless Desire

"River, your dynamic anthropomorphic design is pure genius. We’re taking first place at the robotics championship for sure this time!"

Zane Ward’s excited voice dragged me out of my thoughts. I stared at the towering, human-height robot in front of me and shivered.

"I’m submitting the data now. Then, all we have to do is wait for tomorrow’s live showcase!" Zane grinned as he worked the keyboard.

"Wait!" My shout stopped him mid-click. "I’ve got a better idea."

Hands trembling, I opened my laptop and pulled up the latest post from Adrian Cross. His robot specs and demo video stared back at me. It was identical to mine.

I knew it.

"What the hell? This afternoon, I checked Adrian’s robot. It was nothing like ours!"

"That snake! Where the hell did he copy this from?" Zane leaned over my shoulder, eyes wide in shock.

My jaw clenched hard. In my previous life, I’d also looked at Adrian’s robot earlier in the day and seen nothing suspicious, so I hadn’t paid it any attention. It wasn’t until the last thirty minutes before the submission deadline that I discovered his robot was a carbon copy of mine.

I had scrambled to report it to the organizers and even posted the entire assembly process online. However, the organizers didn’t believe me, and Adrian’s rabid fans tore into me.

"River, the copycat! Always stealing from our genius, and now you’re trying to frame him? Shameless!"

"Adrian posted his data first. How dare you fake evidence to make it yours?"

They humiliated me, and I swallowed it all, channeling my fury into an overnight rebuild of my robot, determined to prove myself at the competition.

However, when I rolled out my new design the next day, Adrian’s robot was once again identical.

I became a public joke. They jeered at me in the arena, and even threw water bottles at my feet.

Still, I refused to back down. I powered up my bot, ready to showcase my dynamic anthropomorphic design…

And it exploded.

The blast tore through me, leaving me critically injured, and I was rushed to the ICU.

With me out of the picture, Adrian sailed to victory with two million in prize money, a personal mentorship under a legendary scientist, and a golden future laid out before him.

Meanwhile, I lay in a hospital bed, clinging to life.

Then came the final blow: the competition staff announced that my robot contained large amounts of flammable and explosive materials, implying I had planned to sabotage the event and had blown myself up in the process.

I knew every wire and bolt of that machine. I hadn’t put anything like that inside.

The statement destroyed me. As I was expelled from school and vilified online, my parents were doxxed. Strangers sent funeral wreaths to their home, splashed paint on their door, and screamed that they deserved to die for raising a monster like me.