Written For: tlaxyz
Era: Pre-Legacy
Genre: Gen, worldbuilding/flashback
Rating: G
Warnings: No warnings apply.
Summary: Gem and Zuse could either die fighting for what they believed in or abandon everything they cared for. (Prompt: Gem's back story and how she came to know Zuse.)
Title: Assimilated by Choice
"Don't fight it. Just take a deep breath and relax. It's going to hurt."
The disk clicked into place, and Zuse was proven correct. It did hurt. She clenched her jaw and took it stoically. Her sisters watched, apprehensive. She'd gone first to show them that it was okay, that this idea would work. The new code quickly adhered, overwriting all of her tags and designations in a flash of agony, replacing her name and face with a new one. The new designation flashed through her consciousness, burning itself a place in her mind, scorching away who she had been. Gem. She felt the mark on her arm fading, sinking down to hide with the rest of what she really was.
She felt the rest of the ISOs flicker out of her consciousness as her faint connection to them was severed. All but her sisters. They remained, her only connection to the world she'd just left behind.
She wasn't masking herself with a Basic's code any longer. She was becoming one of her persecutors. She was a monstrosity, a hybrid, a coward. She hated that this was how she had to live. She hated the programs that had forced her hand, but she wanted to live more than she wanted to put a disk in CLU or his subordinates. This would have to do.
She opened her eyes. Zuse was looking at her, concerned, hopeful. He was a modification program, designed to make minor changes as needed, mostly to infrastructure. Flynn had tired of dealing with details, so he'd created a program to do it for him. Zuse had learned how to forge identification from blank Games disks using that skills set shortly after the coup, but this was different. This was a new level of deception.
His eyes flickered over her, sad but relieved. It worked, she realized. They'd almost hoped it would all fail. That the code grafts would simply drip and melt off of her, that her natural state would blaze through, bright and brave.
But no, there was no place for light and bravery in this hard new world, still being purged and reborn. She was a Basic now, at least until you scratched very, very deep. Her hair had lost its deep silvery-gold luster, and her eyes were too stark and brutally cold. Everything seemed sharp and opaque- the world had lost all of its subtle nuances. So this is what they see, she thought. How simple. How easy to understand.
They really did know nothing of living. They only knew how to function, following their damn little predetermined tracks through the Grid. Even Zuse was only fixing something that needed editing.
Within moments, her sisters were transformed as well. They glowed white, both from their rewritten circuitry and their crisp white Siren armor. They had always been beautiful, but now it was symmetrical, controlled, linear. She felt the gravity of what they had done sink in. There were four less ISOs on the Grid. She'd destroyed them.
They were registered as four repurposed Basics that Zuse had requisitioned for the End of Line, and the forgery was never detected. Just like that, they were part of the immense and pointless machine known as the Grid. They designed armor for the Games. They listened and measure the pulse of the system, and they reported to Zuse. And Zuse…
Zuse reported to CLU. He'd tried, briefly, to survive without bending to the Admin, but eventually he'd broken, unable to fight any longer on his own. She'd been there as he'd stood alone by the empty elevator shaft, still sinking down with the Admin and his Guard inside it. They'd come and made threats and left a mark on his forehead with the hot tip of a light staff.
He'd stood rigid and unflinching, though he'd clenched his fists until fractures appeared on his wrists. They'd left him with their ultimatum hanging in the air and as soon as they'd gone, he'd seemed to sag and shrink down, as if an invisible force was crushing him. He was such a brilliant actor, but she couldn't remember the last time he'd had a chance to stop acting.
He'd turned and looked at her, her with her false face and him with a brand he'd never be totally able to delete and they'd both wondered then if living like this was worth the cost. Then he'd straightened his shoulders and his eyes had gone cold.
"I can't help the rebels," he told her. And she knew that he was right. The rebels were hopeless and powerless. There was nothing to help.
"And I can't save the ISOs." She did not flinch; she'd gone a long time since she'd last shown emotion without intending to. And once again, she knew he was right.
"But, I can save four of them." And that was her choice. She could leave this life of betrayal and go die fighting for a doomed people, or she could watch them die, and serve their executioner alongside the program who had just given up everything he'd believed in with the right amount of pressure.
She looked out the wide window, to the blank, dark sky were a portal was once lit. There was no hope and there was no higher meaning.
And she was not an ISO, and she did not care if they lived or died.