I figured someone needed a blood sibling since Kevin's got a cousin.

And yeah, if anyone's questioning who Tec is, you'll know when I get further down the line.

I own nothing of Tron except my OCs.

Read, review, but no flames allowed.


Chapter 2: Trouble at ENCOM

Elsewhere, after an urgent ride to the company building, a man in a stiff business suit – who appears to be no older than his late thirties – entered the ENCOM building and arrived at his executive office with an air of foolish superiority. As soon as he was alone, he began typing away at his panel in order to get in contact with what brought him back sooner than he usually would. After typing down the password, he was greeted by none other than the Master Control Program.

"Hello, Mr. Dillinger. Thank you for coming back early." the MCP greeted without emotion.

"No problem, Master C. If you've seen one Consumer Electronics Show, you've seen them all," Dillinger replied as he got comfortable in his seat, "What's up?"

"It's your friends, the kid detectives," the MCP explained with a hint of annoyance. "They're nosing around again."

That raised the snooty businessman's eyebrow. "Flynn and Kelly?"

"Yes. It felt like Flynn. And if he's involved, so is she."

Dillinger groaned in displeasure at this. "They're still looking for that old file. Can't you just appropriate it?"

"I have. I've put in my memory, which they haven't located," the MCP answered.

"But they might find it," Dillinger said skeptically.

"I'm afraid so. I've spotted them this time and kept them out," the MCP agreed, "but they're getting trickier all the time."

Feeling twinges of displeasure and trouble against himself, Dillinger twirled his chair to face the window while contemplating what to do next.

"I think we should shut down all access until we find those Flynns, just to be safe," Dillinger proposed.

"There's a 68.71 percent chance you're right," the MCP calculated.

"Cute," Dillinger replied sarcastically.


Later on, in another part of the ENCOM building, a young man in his late twenties found himself having a problem the moment he got onto his computer.

The young man, Alex Bradley, is a brilliant programmer with light brown, straight hair with wide circular glasses to help his vision, and was dressed casually in a knitted vest over a long sleeved turtleneck shirt, gray khakis, and short leather boots. He works at ENCOM alongside his older brother Alan as the best programmers in the industry, often helping him out in various projects and even making programs of his own to support the promotion of benefitting the people across the states.

He was alarmed to discover a message saying: TEC PROGRAM UNAVAILABLE. He couldn't help but get the feeling that something wasn't right.

"What on earth is going on here…?" Alex murmured suspiciously.

Immediately, he began to type his request – as much as he didn't want to do so – to the MCP in the hopes of retrieving his program as quickly as he could. Fluidly, he wrote: RELEASE TEC: I HAVE PRIORITY ACCESS. But things didn't go his way when he received a message that told him he was denied his request, and that he had to report to Dillinger.

"That's not pleasant," he sighed in disbelief.

Just then, he heard footsteps leaving the area, and peeked out from his working spot to find his older brother, Alan Bradley, about to depart out the office door; he could tell that something didn't go well for him either since he seemed to be in a rather sour mood. I guess that means he couldn't get to Tron as I couldn't get to Tec, he thought. And as far as he's concerned, what are the odds that he's been told to report to Dillinger as well? If that's the case, he'd better go along as well, if only to keep any bad enough problems from going out of control.

"Hey, Al, hold up, will ya?" he called out as he hurried to catch up.

Alan turned his head around and noticed his younger sibling coming along with him. "What, were you told to report to him, too?"

"Oh, yeah…I've lost contact with Tec, and where I'm standing, that's not a good sign," Alex replied.

His brother groaned irritably, "Great…and I thought not having contact with Tron was a pain enough. What is ENCOM sliding into these days, especially with that MCP running the show? That's what I would like to know."

"Well, let's just get our affairs with that wolf Dillinger over with, and then we'll decide what to do about the problem," Alex suggested, trying to ease the tension, "Hey, maybe we can talk to Lora about it? At least you've been willing to trust her for the most part, and she's a smart lady in her own right. That'd be a good stress reliever."

Alan simply rolled his eyes at the answer being given to him. Sometimes he just couldn't understand why the both of them got themselves involved with computers in the first place, let alone how Alex was able to deal with the problems that come with it. But to be fair, they've been very close – especially since they did share a common interest in technology and computers, and were both the brightest minds in the company. Or at least were the only ones, until others joined in on the nerdy party: in particular, when a guy called Kevin Flynn and his cousin Kelly became part of the employees with Group-7 access. It was hard to believe that later on, the both of them would not be at ENCOM anymore, and no one had the foggiest why that was the case.

However, once they reached the office of Dillinger, the mood quickly shifted from slightly light-hearted to instant intensity as they approached the desk of the man in charge. They were greeted by their exec's falsely welcoming face and tedium, which subtly told the brothers that confronting him was not going to be a walk in the park.

"Ah, the Bradley brothers," he said expectantly, "Sit down, both of you."

"Thank you," the brothers answered, carefully hiding the fact that they're far from happy.

"Would you mind telling us what's going on here?" Alex asked first.

That was Dillinger's cue to explain the affairs. "We've had to shut down all Group-7 personnel, just briefly. Security, you see. Someone with that access has been tampering."

Alan, rather perplexed at this, said, "I hope you don't think it's me or Alex. My brother knows better with handling technology responsibly, and I don't even balance my checkbook on downtime. I have an abacus at home for that."

"Yeah, and I have been telling you that you need to update on your math tools," Alex reminded him. "Seriously: just once trying using a pocket calculator for a change."

Alan gave his younger brother a 'not now' glare, making Alex roll his eyes dismissively.

"I'm sure you understand, both of you. It'll only be a couple of days," Dillinger reassured them before changing the subject, "What's the name of the project you're both working on?"

Alan explained his business first. "It's called Tron, actually. It's a security program. It finds anything that isn't scheduled, it shuts it down."

"And mine is a partner security program called Tec. It also doubles as a backup unit, in case anything happens to my brother's program," Alex added, "It's created to help Tron monitor the system, and even perform similar objectives to its 'brother', if you want to refer to it that way. We sent you a memo on it."

Dillinger raised a brow on that ad asked, "Part of the Master Control Program?"

"No. They'll run independently, and watchdog the MCP as well," Alan replied.

Alex watched as Dillinger had a rather uneasy look on his face for a moment after hearing about the purpose of the program his older brother mentioned about, but then changed it to a false smile of interest to hide his fears.

"Sounds good," the manager said with false ease, "Well, we should have you both up and running in a few days, I hope."

Alan and Alex looked at each other for a moment, knowing that they weren't going to get any more out of him. But as far as the younger sibling was concerned, he suspected that Dillinger is not as pleased to know what his and his brother's programs were capable of doing; if anything, he was sure that the rat wanted nothing to do with them. He could tell on Alan's face that he wasn't buying it either, but there was nothing more they can do.

"In that case, we'll just be going," Alex said as he began to walk away.

"Yeah, sure, thanks," Alan agreed with hidden sarcasm.

However, as soon as the both of them were far enough away from Dillinger's sight, Alex decided to let loose what he really thought.

"He's not going to give up our programs," he said bluntly.

Alan turned to his brother. "Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. And I'm pretty sure that MCP has something to do with it."

"So…are you going to consider talking to the nerdy Lora?" Alex asked, trying to lighten the mood.

Alan sighed deeply as they stepped in the elevator before replying, "Y'know what? For once, I'm going to follow your idea. We should let her know what's up."

"I knew you'd come around," Alex agreed.

The next thing he knew was that his older brother gave him a brief smack upside the head, making him bend over a bit from the impact while Alan gave off a dry chuckle as he pressed the button to travel down to the laser bay. This is going to be a long day, Alex thought.


The laser bay was one of those places that doesn't get noticed too often, and that was something the Bradley brothers know about mainly through their friend Lora; she works down there with Walter Gibbs, doing experiments on…what was it called? Disintegrating? Dispersing? Whatever it was, it was supposed to be something quite extraordinary.

In fact, when Alan and Alex got down there, they were just in time to see Lora and Walter at work with an orange for a test subject for the laser experiment. Alex couldn't help but be amazed at how one laser was able to meddle with the poor little fruit and make it disappear from reality until it appeared on the screen like it became a part of the computer world. Of course, Alan just had to break the scientific atmosphere with a clap of approval as they made their way down to meet their coworkers.

"Beautiful, guys!" he called out.

"Hi, Alan, Alex," Gibbs answered from below.

"So have you guys been having fun…uh, was it disintegrating? I don't know," Alex asked while fumbling with his words, "I'm not too familiar with whatever you're doing."

Gibbs just chuckled a bit before making a correction. "It's not disintegrating, it's digitizing. A laser dismantles the molecular structure of the object, and molecules remain suspended in the laser beam. Then, when the computer plays out the model, the molecules fall back into place and, voila!"

"Great. Can it send me to Hawaii?" Alan asked sarcastically.

"Yeah, but you've got to purchase your program thirty days in advance," Lora replied with equal sarcasm as she was getting out of her lab materials.

"Tough luck…" Alex said with a sigh.

Lora chuckled a bit before she asked, "So, how's it going upstairs, you two?"

Alan shook his head in frustration. "Frustrating. I had Tron almost ready when Dillinger cut off everyone with Group-7 access out of the system."

"And if you think that's bad, I'm pretty much in the same problem as my brother is," Alex added, "I was getting Tec all set up, but I was also cut off. I swear, ever since he got that MCP running the place, the system's got more bugs than a bait store."

Alan looked over toward Alex. "You took the words right out of my mouth, you know that?"

When Gibbs went over to speak to them, Alex just chose to step out of the conversation since he knows that the old man was going to ramble on about his opinions with computers and all that whatnot. Personally, he didn't mind Gibbs since he was one of the people who established ENCOM, but there are times where he would say technobabble that felt way over his head since he was more focused on programming than mad science stuff.

"Did you say Group-7 access?"

The instant he heard Lora asking that question, Alex shifted back into reality again.

"Yeah, we did say that," he answered quickly.

Alan sighed dismally. "What a hassle…I was all set."

"Did he say why?" Lora questioned, pressing for answers.

"He said something about tampering," Alan replied.

Lora was silent for a moment when she processed the information. "Tampering…You know, Flynn has been thinking about breaking into the system ever since Dillinger canned him. And I'm pretty sure that Kelly's been doing the same thing, even though she quit the company herself. They had access to Group-7."

"Flynn had access to you, too," Alan pointed out sourly.

"C'mon, Alan, you may not like Kevin all that much, but it wouldn't hurt you to tolerate his cousin," Alex said with an exasperated sigh.

"Hey, hey, let's just get to the van and discuss this along the way," Lora insisted, "I think I know what would be the best choice at this point."

Alex, rather curious about this, had to ask his brother quietly, "What do you suppose she's talking about?"

"Whatever it is, I'm not going to like it," Alan replied with a groan.


But once the three of them were in the van, and began driving down towards another part of the city, Lora finally brought up to the brothers what her plan was right from the start.

"I want to go to Flynn's," she told them.

Alan turned toward her with a shocked look. "What for?"

"To warn them," Lora replied.

It was Alex's turn to be confused about this. "Of what exactly are we warning them of?"

"That Dillinger's on to them. It's one thing for Kevin to cause trouble, but I'd rather not see Kelly get dragged into it even though she's his cousin," Lora explained.

Alan shook his head in disbelief. "I don't see why I have to do that guy any favors. What did you see in him anyway?"

Lora chuckled as she started to slow the vehicle for parking. "I loved him for his brains."

"With the way you talk about Flynn, you sound as though you know Kelly as well," Alex pointed out, "How long have you known her?"

"I've known her since high school. Kelly was younger than me by two years. Even though she was still a young teen, she was ahead of all our classmates," Lora explained to Alex, "especially when learning how to use computers and the like. Actually, it was Flynn who taught her the basics while she learned the rest in school. We just clicked with our interest in tech, and then we became close friends." She paused for a moment. "It's kinda funny: even after I've stopped my business with Flynn, I still kept in touch with her like nothing's wrong. She's just one of those people you just can't help but enjoy being around."

"I wish I was in your shoes on that…" Alex mused dreamily.

Alan rolled his eyes at his brother's last quote. "And away goes the programmer, and in comes the lovesick little boy."

As Alex snapped out of his daydream, he made an attempt to smack his brother on the head; but Lora intervened just long enough to pull the both of them into the arcade building to locate those wayward cousins and warn them of the trouble that has come up with the company.