"Go on... I'm listening," Juliana closed out of her spreadsheet and turned around on the bench to face Max. 

"Oh, dear," Max's expression grew grave as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Alright. What I'm about to tell you is not a pretty tale, and I can't claim that I was always on the right side of it. You have to promise not to judge." 

"You know I'm in no position to do that," Juliana chuckled humorlessly. 

"Mm," Max nodded. "Well, it all started in grad school when I first met Maddie. I remember seeing her and immediately being blown away by how intelligent and put-together she was. She was one of those rare people who knew how to talk to people and knew what she was talking about- the kind of smart person who could make you feel smart. When she got her job at Thornton Tech and I realized we were going to be working together, I knew I wanted to be with her. My dad liked her too, and he doesn't like anyone. It was all going perfectly - I was going to ask her out, and then... Adam showed up." 

"Adam... wasn't that the cyborg Thornton built?" 

"Yeah, there's a part of that story we don't tell," Max sighed. "The human brain Maddie's team used to build Adam... it wasn't donated to science." 

"Oh," Juliana grew pale. "I'm not an American, but I know that must break all kinds of laws." 

"That wasn't how we planned it - I swear," Max shook his head. "Adam was the last person I'd expect Maddie to end up with, but their relationship took off so fast. One day at lunch, Maddie was telling me about the cute new guy in HR, and before I could blink, they were spending every weekend together and I was...back in the friendzone, as they say these days."

"And Adam was... human at this point, correct?" Juliana clarified. 

"Yep. He was as mortal as they come," Max replied with a touch of distaste. "Skinny, awkward kid who looked like he lived in his mom's basement. There wasn't anyone at Tech that didn't love him, though - I didn't personally know him very well, but I hear he was one of those people who tipped well, paid for everyone's drinks, stayed late at the office to cover for his coworkers with sick kids. You know, an all around do-gooder kind of guy." 

Juliana nodded with understanding, thinking back to all the times Chase had flown over to Arcana City just to crash some lucky kid's Project PROB-themed birthday party. It's hard to compete with an all around do-gooder kind of guy. 

"A few months passed, and I was actually beginning to reconcile myself to the fact that I would never get my chance with Maddie. That was when it happened. It was around dinner time and I had just gotten home from work when Maddie called me. I remember picking up the phone and immediately knowing that something was terribly wrong - I'd never heard her sound so terrified. She was sobbing and struggling to speak, but no matter how many times I asked, she refused to tell me what was wrong over the phone. She insisted that I meet her in her lab at Tech headquarters, so I got in my car and drove over as fast as I could. I'll never forget what I saw when I got there." 

Max paused to collect himself and Juliana stood up from her bench, trying her best to show her support. Though he maintained a stoic expression, she could see the vivid memories dancing behind his eyes. This was obviously an incredibly painful story for him to tell. 

"Maddie was standing right over there." Max pointed at a long, steel table a few feet away from the workstation Juliana was at. "Her lab coat was splattered with blood, and her gloves were drenched in it up to the elbows. On the floor was a bag of... human remains, and on the table was something her team had been working on for years: an artificial body made entirely out of metal. She'd unscrewed the forehead plate and was staring into the empty head cavity. I called out her name, but she didn't respond. She kept looking from the android body to a glass box in front of her, as if she was in some kind of horrible trance." 

"When I got closer, I saw what was in the box: a human brain, floating in some kind of nutrient solution that was probably keeping it alive. Of course, I flipped out at her - the artificial body wasn't scheduled for testing for months, and there was the question of where she'd gotten the brain. She immediately started crying and begging me to hear her out, so I did. Apparently, Adam was taking her to meet his parents when his truck got a flat tire. He pulled over to the side of the highway and stepped out to see if he could get better reception. While he was dialing the number for his car insurance, a semi drifted out of its lane and knocked him into the pavement. Maddie said his entire lower body was crushed - she could call 911, but she knew there was nothing they could do. He was dead on impact. That was when she had the single most insane idea I've ever heard: she dragged Adam back into his truck and drove him down to Tech. His body was dead, but his brain could be saved. At least, that's what she told me." 

"She put Adam's brain in the android body," Juliana shook her head in disbelief. "She brought him back from the dead." 

"No," Max shook his head. "The guy - the thing that woke up on that table over there - it wasn't Adam. At least not completely. Man, I should've stopped her. Any sane person would've stopped her, but I loved that woman and she was in so much pain... "

"It's easy to make stupid decisions when you're afraid for someone you love," Juliana said softly. 

"This was beyond stupid," Max huffed. "I watched her put Adam's slimy, pulsating brain inside that artificial head. I watched her screw his forehead back into place and give his artificial heart the pulse of electricity it needed to start beating. You know, there was a reason the team planned to use a long-dead brain - a brain so far removed from life that it might as well never have been human. Because a human brain with human feelings and memories inside a metal body... that raises questions. Uncomfortable questions."

"I can't imagine Thornton Tech's leadership was very happy about a valuable prototype being used for something other than its intended purpose," Juliana commented. 

"I managed to convince my father not to fire Maddie on the premise that we were planning to go forward with the cyborg project anyway, and Adam could be a good case study on how a human brain copes with being placed in an artificial body. I also said he would create good publicity for Tech. As you know, I was very wrong... "

"Didn't he go rogue? I remember reading about the American government having to send in Winterbird and the marines to take him down." 

"Well, he didn't go rogue in the sense that he threatened to wipe out humanity or anything, though I know it was portrayed that way. He was still the same Adam in a lot of ways, but everything about him was exaggerated. His sense of righteousness, his work ethic, and most pertinently, his love for Maddie. I thought it was a given that their relationship would be over now that he, you know, no longer had a human body, but that proved not to be the case. It was beyond unsettling, but they kept on as if nothing had happened!" 

"So you believe it's our bodies that make us human?" 

"I don't know! That's exactly the point. Maddie's relationship with Adam raised questions that we as a species weren't prepared to answer, and it made a lot of people uncomfortable- including important Tech customers. People around the country were amazed by Adam - his strength, his speed, his human brain's ability to interface with a metal body - but they didn't consider him totally human. Our competitors took advantage of that and framed the fact that he was with a human woman in a disgusting light. My dad finally confronted Maddie about it - he said she had to break it off with Adam or she would be dismissed. She didn't give him the chance to follow through on that, of course, because she quit her job the next day and disappeared without a trace. It didn't take long for us to realize that Adam had done the same." 

"What?" Juliana's eyes flew wide open. 

"Yep. Maddie Faye - the smartest, most level-headed woman I know - quit her management level tech job and ran away with a glorified robot," Max shook his head. "She was furious with Tech - she called us heartless capitalist pigs and said we were treating Adam like he was our property." 

"Was she right?" Juliana asked in an effort to be objective. 

"We weren't treating him like our property- he was our property!" Max exclaimed. "We invested millions in building that body. It belonged to the company, whether its brain came from Maddie's dead boyfriend or the local morgue. Adam's disappearance wasn't just a financial loss for Tech - with his superhuman strength, he became a threat to national security. I will always stand by my dad and the government's decision to find him and take him down." Max sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than Juliana. 

"And after the love of her life was murdered... Maddie got with the son of the guy who helped kill him?" Juliana raised an eyebrow. 

"The whole Adam ordeal ruined my dad. It was part of the reason he stepped down as CEO," Max sighed. "Adam's body was worth a fortune. We didn't want him killed - we just wanted him recovered. It was Winterbird who decided to punt him off a bridge. Maddie finally began to understand what a horrible mistake she made with Adam, and I happened to be around to support her during one of the worst moments of her life. We were already good friends, so it didn't really take much for things to fall into place." 

"Did you recover it?" 

"What?" 

"Adam's body - was it recovered?" 

"See, that's the most embarrassing part. It wasn't," Max shook his head. "All that effort, all that digging in the riverbed, and they found absolutely nothing. Tech's stock took a colossal dive... for a while, I was sure I was going to go broke." 

"Mmhm," Juliana nodded. She finally understood what Max had been so on edge about for the past few days. "You're not convinced he's dead, are you?" 

"What? Of course he's dead," Max chuckled uncomfortably. "Winterbird's the best America's got. If she killed him, he's dead." 

"But you're not convinced," Juliana reiterated. "One thing you learn in the Order is that your gut is smarter than you give it credit for. If this Adam is really out there, that adds a variable to our equation. You understand that, right?" 

"Of course," Max squeezed his eyes shut. "Gosh, I'm so selfish. I say I tried to keep Maddie and Adam apart to protect the company's image but it would be dishonest to say that was my only reason for doing so. I told you the Adam that woke up in this lab wasn't the same Adam that died earlier that night. The new Adam was bolder... stronger. The new Adam held grudges. If my gut is right and there's an angry cyborg out there who's still in love with my wife and sees me as the villain of his story... my life might be in just as much danger as yours."