Does anyone know the title and author of this book where a boy/young man goes into a routine operation and the surgeons discover that he's a robot?

Question

I read this book many years ago, but I can't remember the title or author. It starts with a boy/young man, the protagonist, who undergoes routine surgery, but the surgeons discover advanced electronics inside his stomach. So, he's some kind of disguised robot or cyborg; the protagonist was unaware of that.

He wakes up during the discovery, gets paranoid, and escapes. He quickly becomes a fugitive after the doctors contact some government agency that wants to hunt him down and figure out what he is, going so far as to frame him for killing one of the hospital staff (who was still alive when the protagonist left and before the agents turned up at the hospital). In the end, the protagonist flees somewhere else with a woman he barely knew before that night.

The book has a really downer ending, with no answers provided to what the protagonist really is. The protagonist might have been named Robert, but I'm not entirely sure. As a whole, the book focuses as much on the philosophical questions about the protagonist's artificial nature as to the fugitive plot.

Answer 1

Being by Kevin Brooks.

It was just supposed to be a routine exam. But when the doctors snake the fiber-optic tube down Robert Smith's throat, what they discover doesn't make medical sense. Plastic casings. Silver filaments. Moving metal parts. In his naked, anesthetized state on the operating table, Robert hears the surgeons' shocked comments: "What the hell is that?"

"It's me," Robert thinks, "and I've got to get out of here." Armed with a stolen automatic and the videotape of his strange organs, he manages to escape, and to embark on an orphan's violent odyssey to find out exactly who--exactly what--he is.

The girl is Eddi, but Robert doesn't escape with her. Instead he goes to her after he escapes as she makes fake IDs and can help him hide.

Robert is framed for his murder of the surgeon who operated on him, Professor Casing. The "big bad" is Ryan (I don't think we ever learn his surname). The ending is indeed downbeat:

Robert is captured by Ryan but rescued by Eddi, but in the fight Eddi is shot and killed by Ryan. Robert uses his robot strength to hit and seriously injure Ryan but leaves him alive. At the end Robert rides off alone into the night on Eddi's motorcycle.