New Elysium: Breakout

Prologue *

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.