Backdate Required: Mitch Lamb

He hunts rogue robots for a living. She hacked the most powerful company in the world. They have until Independence Day to expose the truth, or die trying.

Jon "Colt" Colter lives off the grid in near-future Utah, collecting bounties on rogue Synths while most of humanity spends its days submerged in NeuVerse, a virtual reality universe run by the tech giant MindChip. No AI implant. No electronic signature. Just a horse named Jake, a lever-action rifle packed with electrified rounds, and one hard rule: no hunting humans.

Then he shoots one.

Kori Bates was not a robot. She was a whistleblower coder who smuggled encrypted proof out of MindChip headquarters before her boss could bury it, along with her. Deep inside NeuVerse's code, she found algorithms engineered to addict users, harvest their data, and push voters toward the technocrats running the country. Now the CEO of the most powerful corporation in North America wants her dead before Independence Day.

With a bounty on Kori's head and a sniper already tracking them across the mountains, Colt and Kori face a brutal cross-country ride through wilderness crawling with de-extinct dire wolves, killer drones, and an AI-operated police force. Their destination: MindChip's fortified Salt Lake City server building. Their deadline: the moment the update goes live for every chipped mind in America.

Backdate Required combines the grit of a Western protagonist with the high stakes of near-future science fiction. It is the story of a man who still believes in real food, real stars, and real freedom, forced to ride straight into the digital heart of a world that has forgotten what living actually feels like.

Readers who love the following will not want to put this one down.

• Rugged, off-grid heroes dropped into sci-fi settings
• Fast-paced action with sharp humor and genuine heart
• Near-future dystopian thrillers built around corporate conspiracy
• Stories that ask what humanity loses when it trades the real for the virtual

The update is coming. The question is whether anyone will be awake enough to stop it.