A/N: Hey! I've been trying to dust off the rust building on my writing skills, since all these work and editorial stuff has been somewhat limiting to my writing style. Please read, rate and review!
Disclaimer: The Tron franchise isn't mine, but I wish it were so.
SMOKE AND MIRRORS
The startling sound of breaking glass made Sam Flynn jump out of his bed.
The bluish-white lines of his armor began to glow as he walked towards the main living area of his father's retreat on the outlands beyond TRON City. The lights remained subdued and even if there was no wind in the house, the area was as cold as a meat locker.
He used the illumination from his hands to search the dining room, looking for the gleam of the broken shards. Nothing. He slid his hand across the smooth wall, the barrier disappearing to reveal all the glassware and cutlery for the dining area. Nothing. He slid the surface again to reveal a receptacle for prepared food on one side and bottled vials of energy in another. He took two black vials, knowing that despite the hangover, overenergizing would be the only way for him to be able to sleep soundly after being awoken in the middle of the night.
Swiping again to close the cupboard, he made his way to the living room. The ornate clocks, the statues and the legs of the chairs were all intact. The go board, the vases and the books were untouched as well.
Even before he approached, he knew Quorra was knocked out, her snoring reverberating through the corridors leading to the rooms. This unusual, even quirky behavior rivaled that of his roommate in his college dorm. Sam remembered mentally remarking that one of the reasons why he dropped was because of the freight train sleeping above him.
He turned the other way around. This was supposed to be his room, but it was empty. Wait.
He ran back and opened the door.
The sight that welcomed Sam was a perfectly neat bedroom. Everything was as Sam left it, the books, the lightcycle models beneath the lampshade, was pristine and untouched.
Except for the full-length mirror.
The mirror was shattered, pieces of it scattered on the floor, turning into droplets of quicksilver and merging with the translucent flooring. Suffusing those droplets with white light were bits, scattered in small amounts. An unusual saying of Quorra came back to him: "If there's bits, there's deresolution." Somebody was there.
Sam found him eventually. The minimal glow on the program's armor made it hard for him to be visible, but Sam did see him, against the floorboard of the bead, his feet prone with his arms on his laps. The glow on the right hand confirmed Sam's suspicions, bits slowly falling to the ground like condensation from a container of cold water.
His childhood hero's head slumped, and Sam caught it, slowly assisting it while he pulled out the identity disk of the program. Putting it on top of the study table, he lifted the heavy, muscular body and rolled it onto the bed. Sam sat by the study table, activating the holodisplay on the disk.
It was easier to fix programs instead of ISOs. Compared to the triple-stranded DNAesque code composed of coalesced information within ISOs, the code of programs was represented in a form akin to a shuffling deck of glassy cards. It was theoretically easier to find damaged code and debug it in programs, but half a millicycle passed and Sam Flynn was lying half-awake, staring at a broken glass card twirling, and as Sam's vision doubled from insomnia, mocking him. Removing the card caused the healthy white of the disk to turn purple and elicited some unwelcome grunts from his patient. Sam slid the cards aside. He accessed the memory storage of the disk, looking for inspiration.
Sitting in front of the now-blazing fireplace that wasn't burning fire at all, Sam watched the opaque force field dissolve into the orderly row of dots that defined it when he first came to this place. The city was also starting to light up in the distance, the equivalent of morning in the eternal night of the Grid. Sam's adrenaline rush was starting to taper off. His eyes were already starting to shutter when a rough voice made his eyelids shutter open.
"My User was your mentor, was he not?"
Sam replied, "Not really. He's more like my stepfather. Somewhat like you and my dad."
Tron showed a faint hint of a frown. "Where's Flynn?" Sam cracked a smile. "Over here." The comment was intended to be sarcastic, but as Tron's expression turned into a worried one, Sam decided to tell him the truth.
"He reintegrated with Clu."
"But that means…" Tron wasn't able to finish the thought. Sam stared at the intensifying glow in the distance, knowing that his guest was aware of the side effects of Clu's reintegration. Predicting the emotions that he might elicit should he confirm that train of thought, he decided to derail it instead and go up and away from that.
"You didn't fail. I saw what happened through his disk. He chose to reintegrate. Maybe, I guess that it was my fault." Tron raised an eyebrow, and Sam noticed that his cool expression was morphing into something else, a combination of regret, pain and hate. Fortunately, as Sam was about to speak, Tron changed the conversation.
"How did you find me?"
"You washed up over there," Sam said, pointing in the general direction of the Portal. "I found you sprawled and coughing, so I took a recognizer and flew you back. Why did you punch the mirror?" The words flew out of Sam's mouth before he was able to stop them. He braced himself for the answers.
"Flynn was my friend, you know. And now, I don't have anyone left."
Sam knew that he was just a poor substitute for his father's genius, a juvenile delinquent instead of a visionary. He didn't know why but those words from Tron stung.
"You said that Alan was your User?" Sam decided to skip the conversation, an idea in his mind coalescing, something to inspire the mighty warrior in front of him, bring back his fight…
Sam took Tron, placing his arms across his broad and sculpted shoulders, leading him to the lightjet. His companion's posture straightened to ramrod hardness, as if remembering old times.
"Together, we are going to change the world."
FIN
A/N: So, whaddya think?
I would like to thank the author of Tron: Adagio and Restitution from the Tron-verse, Greg Bear from Halo: Cryptum, Daft Punk, U2 and Bruno Mars for inspiration. I'm going to continue this story but please don't be too demanding, since I'm in the last quarter of my senior year and there are a lot of things to finish, a newspaper included. Thanks for reading and PLEASE REVIEW!