Orly Locke

In a city where every kid grows up with a mech, Orly Warner is the one who couldn't afford one. So he built his own - from scrap pulled out of the sprawling junkyard called The Breaks that everyone else avoids.

The machines there aren't as dead as people think. Some of them watch him. Some of them follow. And the one he built from nothing is becoming something no one expected.

When a school mech attacks students and another destroys itself to stop it - looking straight at Orly before it dies - his secret life crashes into his real one. A corporate heir wants answers. A best friend feels betrayed. And the wrong kind of attention is closing in from every direction.

Orly Warner fixes things. But some things can't stay fixed and hidden at the same time.

From the Prologue

The man in the lab coat had twelve minutes to bury thirty years of secrets.

His workshop smelled of ozone and old paper, decades layered into the walls. Late evening light filtered through tall windows, casting amber rectangles across cluttered workbenches. Outside, the city hummed. Inside, only silence.

His hands were steady as he unlocked a cabinet with a key worn smooth from years of use.

"He is coming," Carl said. "But he will not find it there."

From Chapter 1

Orly ran his fingers along a row of old motor casings, feeling for the good ones. You could tell by weight, by the way they sat in your palm. His dad had taught him that. Some things you learned from books. Some things you learned from hands.

The grime. The silence. The way his flashlight beam caught on metal and made it wink at him like a secret. Every shelf was a question. Every shadow could be hiding something nobody had touched in decades.

Kids at school bragged about the mechs their families bought from Locke Industries, sleek protector units that followed them everywhere. Orly had the right parts and the ability to make something special.

About the Author

E. Carl Johnson is a systems analyst and CTO based in Houston, Texas. His decades-long career in technology has given him a front-row seat to the evolution of artificial intelligence and the profound questions it raises about consciousness, identity, and what it means to be alive.

Orly Locke began as a children's story years ago and evolved over decades into the novel you hold today. The themes of close family, building together, and long discussions about how to turn ideas into a novel have stayed with Johnson through countless revisions, shaped by his experiences watching technology transform from tool to something approaching partner.

When not writing or working, Johnson can be found travelling with his wife, playing drums in his band, visiting with his children or watching movies and shows with his sons. He lives in Houston with his family.

Orly Locke is his debut novel and the first book in a planned series.

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