Almost Human

Robots have become a modern staple.
The Big Three, three mega-robotics companies, have set up a monopolistic control of the worldwide robotics market, selling everything from the most basic, task-oriented units to androids, the humanlike metallic jacks-of-all-trades.
And then there is Veda.
She's young and the most gifted robotics engineer the world has ever seen. And the only thing about her equal to her intelligence with robotics is her reclusiveness. Unwilling to be recruited by the underhanded Big Three and turned into a researching and developing slave, Veda has hidden herself from the world since she could learn how to build a circuit. In her home, she has tinkered and built robots that the world has never known.....
But when a good friend of hers and a Head Roboticist at one of the Big Three goes missing and foul-play is suspected, a detective named Andrew comes to her door, hoping to get some information about this disappearance. What he finds is not the solution to a mystery, but a world of mechanical engineering that delves into the realms of taboo so deeply that he is caught up in the conspiracy of it all.
And more important than the task he originally set out to complete, Andrew meets a miraculous creation, something so new and different that it could change the world, or even the course of human history.
His name is Sam.