The lights danced over the blackness behind his eyelids, and a constant buzzing tickled his ears bringing him back to awareness.

Spasms wracked his body as he fought against the agony convulsing through his limbs.

How did I get here? He tried recalling his last moments even as his augments flickered to life and cooled the nerves that were screaming in pain. The nanites locked to his DNA worked feverishly to restore his body to peak performance.

<server overload: reboot> Jack Dawson's augments whirred through a systems restart that he hadn't used in years. It was an odd sensation, he couldn't remember exactly why he would have shut them down in the first place.

Jack stared at the ceiling trying to place the pattern he saw. A swirling pattern of black and white chasing itself in swirling waves across the room. Why did I have that installed? It's hideous.

You never bother to look up, he answered himself. Caedus picked that out, not me.

His arms twitched and he wiggled his fingers, noting for the first time outside of the electric buzzing of the lights there was an absolute silence. No music playing in the background, the distant hum of voices from the few lab assistants he had working for him was absent.

Groaning he rolled over onto his side and pulled his right hand over to the floor to hoist himself up. His hand touched something sticky and wet. Jerking it back he stared uncomprehendingly at the red that now coated the palm of his hand.

Blood.

"Hello?" His voice shook and he hated the weakness he heard there. His father would never approve. All he got in return was an echo, his own voice coming back to him.

He wiped his hand on his white lab coat and then for the first time looked down at his chest. His coat was no longer white but splattered with the same red streaks...

He inhaled and noticed the surrounding pungent metallic smell of spilled blood invading his nostrils. Adrenaline surged through him and he broke out of the haze and started to gag. His eyes darted wildly around him as he observed the destroyed room. Chairs were flipped to the side, screens were smashed in, wires hung askew, yanked from their servers. There was blood everywhere, on the floor, on the walls... And... All over me.

Gagging, he rolled up to his knees as all five of his senses invaded his mind at once.

"What..." He looked around. The worst part was the bodies everywhere, his assistants, all in various poses tossed against the walls. They must have been attacked, but it didn't make sense to his addled mind.

He slowly pulled himself to his feet, he'd lost any ability to function. He put one foot in front of the other to find a terminal that he could interface with, something that could tell him what was going on. It was disturbingly quiet disconnected as he was when he was used to being able tap into information at the speed of thought.

Had something happened? Was someone coming to check on them? What was going on?

He still couldn't remember as he pushed through both his organic memories and the ones stored in his augments.

There was one sound above the rest that stopped him cold.

Someone was sobbing. Surprised he hadn't noticed it before, he moved towards the sound slowly, faltering as a sense of dread overtook him.

He glanced over at the wall clock. What was he doing in his lab so late? The clock showed it was past midnight.

Whatever had happened... He pushed forward and sank to his knees in silent stupor at the sight before him.

His father, Darius Dawson, the patriarch of the powerful Dawson house was reduced to a weeping wailing old man. He'd aged a dozen years in a single moment.

Jack's heart sank. On his father's lap rested the head of his brother, Caedus, heir to their family seat and his father's position in the Senate. He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes glassy, never to see again, never to take his place on his father's throne in the Senate. His body sprawled out on the floor, hand restless...

Jack froze at the sight of his proud and normally emotionless father, broken down over his brother's body.

Raw grief welled up at the sight of him.

Again he struggled for answers. What had happened here?

He started to go to his Father when the memories he'd been seeking earlier surged into his pre-frontal cortex and he froze.

He'd been interfaced into the system and his brother was next to him. The conversation seemed meaningless now, it was his brother's actions that caught his attention. 

The virus they'd both worked on, Jack's beautiful masterpiece to put their house into the superior position. Caedus had been more than thrilled with the idea of finally getting a head. Each Neo-Tokyan House played a deadly game of thrones against the others, what had once been a hundred person strong elected senate had been reduced to twelve hereditary houses. And he and Jack had just figured out how to wrest that power for themselves. Jack watched as his brother looked at him, triumph written across his handsome features. It was about control...

Caedus had with a few commands sent the virus straight into his brother's interface, and from there straight into his primary motor cortex. There was one command.

<Kill>

There should have been more testing, more controls set in place. More specifications done.

He watched in horror as his own limbs, no longer under his control, turned on his brother with his augments he was stronger than his brother ever would become. His fingers which had only ever created cyber tech destroyed his organic brother's body and tossed him aside. His brother who'd proudly never received any augments of his own outside of his nanites...

With nanites, it was simple. You killed the brain and they succumbed along with the body.

He had turned on his lab assistants next.

Jack shook in place. He couldn't stop the trembling as he watched the memory.

He knew exactly why it was only his father sitting there with Caedus and not a slew of bodyguards with him. This was supposed to be a secret, no one was supposed to know about this. Not even his father was supposed to know, they were supposed to show him together. Jack's hand made a fist as he realized how badly he'd been betrayed.

He chanced a glance at the glass tubes where their subjects had been stored, augments from the lower classes taken, their families paid off. Blood splattered the inside of the tubes. He knew without a doubt the inhabitants were dead.

There was one more memory, Jack watched as his father entered the lab, an EMP gun in his hand as he took in the carnage. His father stared at him coldly before pulling the trigger zapping his systems and dropping him to the floor to lay twitching.

He backed up a step, his father never looked up.

Jack understood then, the pity, the grief he'd felt evaporated in a flash. He'd always thought that he meant something to his family. His work meant something to his brother, they'd spent hours together working on it, making plans.

All of that was a lie. Why Caedus?

While everyone would take up the game of thrones between houses, elder children were known for dying young so an uncle could take their place or even a younger sibling killing their eldest so they could have the seat. Darius Dawson himself had taken his seat this way.

Caedus, I never wanted to take that from you... He allowed himself to feel real grief, not over the fact that Caedus had died at his hand but the fact that his brother had never understood that he was happy where he was.

It made sense that his father should fear him, but Caedus? Surely he'd known him better than that?

His father looked up and made eye contact with Jack.

"You happy now? You got what you wanted..." Darius picked up the EMP and pointed it at Jack and fired just as Jacked rolled to the side, the shot blasting by him.

"I never wanted this Father..." His voice was calm, in sharp contrast to the rage he was now feeling.

In the flickering light, he saw a crazed look blaze up into his father's eyes.

"We were going to purge ourselves of you... The organization worked hard, you were never meant to have so much control..."

"The organization?"

He backed up as his father staggered to his feet, unceremoniously dropping his brother. Jack turned and ran through the exit door. He heard the EMP go off a second later. It was wild shot, not even close.

Slapping the panel the door closed and Jack locked it up, dropping his lab coat on the floor. There was blood all over it but not much on his shirt.

He hesitated as he listened to the pounding on the other side of the door. He waited for the guilt to come but it didn't. It was replaced by the cold hard reality that both his brother and his father tried to use him and kill him. He'd thought they'd been in this together, but he'd been wrong. So wrong...

But they were past that now. There was no going back.

He tore his eyes off the door and took a deep breath. This was the last time he was going to look at this place. He was never coming back. Someone would come looking for his father.

Eventually. He hesitated. It would be better to kill him but he wasn't sure he could in his current state. Closing his eyes he made a decision his mind already leaping to make plans for a hurried departure.

It would take a good code breaker hours to get through the layers of his encryption to the lab. He and Caedus were both thorough and good at their jobs. They'd had to be to stay on top.

He would only need a few hours to get to Outlands Space Station and off of Neo-Tokyo for good.