Silas stood over the fallen Kiera, his victory absolute. His claws of black energy hummed, ready for the final, triumphant strike.
"This is how it ends, Dragon," he snarled, savoring the moment of his long-awaited revenge.
"No tricks. No anomaly to save you. Just you, me, and the beautiful, undeniable truth of superior power."
As he raised his hand for the killing blow, a new voice echoed in the sterile silence of the laboratory.
It was quiet, hoarse, and yet it carried an unnatural, electronic authority that cut through the air like a razor.
"That's enough." Silas froze, his head snapping around.
Jax was on his feet. He was unsteady, his eyes still holding a distant, haunted look, but he was standing.
The complex neuro-link halo was still attached to his head, a thick cable snaking from it to a port in the lab's main server console.
The vacant look in his eyes was being rapidly replaced by a cold, calculating, digital fire. A ghost was waking up inside the shell.
"Impossible," Silas whispered, taking an involuntary step back.
His confidence, for the first time, wavered.
"You were wiped! A blank slate! There's nothing left of you!"
"They took my name," Jax said, his voice growing stronger, colder, and overlaid with a faint, electronic resonance.
"They took my memories. They took my life." He looked down at his own hands, which were no longer trembling with a neurological disorder, but were now unnervingly still.
"But the fools left the technician connected to his terminal."
Jax had been a master technologist, a prodigy with data systems and network architecture.
His physical affliction had been a prison for a brilliant mind. The Vanguard had seen the value of that mind, but in their arrogance, they had made a fatal error.
They had wiped the personality, but they had left the core operating system intact.
Ryu's empathic call, that spark of a shared human memory, had been the reboot command.
And that system was now connected to the entire Correction Center's network.
With a mere thought, a silent command pulse sent back through the neuro-link, Jax seized control.
The laboratory's primary lights flickered and died, plunging the room into the blood-red glow of the emergency lighting.
The energy shields on the walls sizzled and vanished. The automated defense turrets hidden in the ceiling swiveled, their targeting lasers now locking onto the single, non-authorized combatant in the room: Silas.
Vex's own security system had turned on its master's creation.
"The ghost in the machine is awake," Jax said, his voice now a chorus of digital echoes, a symphony of the network's own voice.
"And he is very, very angry."