"This isn't happening," she muttered. She tried to run but the ground around her disappeared a vehicle of some kind sat down next to her. "Oh, man, this is happening." Two men stepped off and grabbed her arms. "Wait."

"This program has no disk," one of the men said. "Another stray."

"Hey, wait," Jim said again. "Wait. I'm not a program!"

It was no use, they locked her feet into this vehicle and took off again. Jim looked around the massive city. A thought hit her, maybe Chris was right all these years, maybe her dad was just in here somewhere. It would be nice to know why he never came home but living in the Grid wasn't out of the realm of possibility. She was gonna have to ask Chris why he never checked when she got back to the real world, if she got back.

"Hey, does the name George Kirk mean anything to you?" she asked the guy next to her.

"Be quiet if you want to live!"

"Not the games, not the games, not the games, not the games..." a girl a few people away from her kept muttering.

"What's her problem?" Jim asked the guy between them, she was rewarded with a growl. "Don't talk to you either, got it."

"Rectify," a man said as he evaluated them after they landed. "Rectify." He moved to the next guy. "Games. Rectify."

"You probably get this a lot, but there's been a big mistake," she tried to get him to listen to her.

"Games."

Great. Jim had a feeling that games was bad. Her dad told her about two, only ever described one and she had no idea if that's what was going on. Considering that the girl who was mumbling decided that she'd rather die than go to the games and jumped off a ledge as soon as she got herself free, Jim was worried that the crappy feeling she had right now was well worth it. She made an attempt to get the men to let her go but they locked her feet into this elevator thing and she was sent somewhere else.

"What is all this?" she asked herself. There was some buzzing, then four people in white stepped towards her. "Er, can somebody tell me what the..." They started cutting off her clothes. "Hey, I usually get dinner or drinks first."

Like the others, they didn't listen to her. Instead, they affixed pieces of what she could only call armor onto her body, the gaps knitted themselves closed. Jim looked down at herself with a shrug, the suit was pretty cool. Some stretchy, yet sturdy, black fabric with a lit white trim. They even pulled her long blonde hair back, apparently, that's important.

"Attention, program. You will receive an identity disk. Everything you do or learn will be imprinted on this disk. If you lose your disk or fail to follow commands, you will be subject to immediate de-resolution," the computer said one of the guys attached the disk to the back of her suit.

"Mirroring complete," the first woman in white said as a tingle went through Jim's body.

"Disk activated and synchronized," the guy on her other side added.

"Proceed to games," the second woman told her.

"That's not good. Any advice?" Jim asked.

The first woman looked at Jim, "Survive."


"Disk wars! Disk wars! Disk wars! Disk wars!" the crowd chanted. Jim groaned, this was not what she expected from all the stories her dad told her about the Grid and she was starting to realize that something really bad happened in here.

"Platform Eight," the computer said. "Combatants three and eleven."

"I guess one of those is me," she muttered to herself as the program across from her pulled his disk off his back. "Not good."

Not good was an understatement. The guy launched the disk at her and Jim ducked just in time not to get her head chopped off. The crowd let out a cheer and Jim decided to play along. She pulled her own disk off just as program in another duel was shredded into a bunch of tiny little pieces. That was not happening to her.

Jim threw her disk as hard as she could, the other guy ducked but Jim managed to get a good feeling about what she was doing. Hooray for all those stunts she pulled messing with Enterprise, they were finally gonna be useful for something.

The other combatant took out the glass under her feet and Jim barely managed to catch herself on the ledge and pull herself up before he took out more of her floor. She rolled out of the way and launched her disk. He knocked it out of the way and ran towards her. Jim caught her disk, when the other combatant launched himself at her, Jim hit a panel out of the ground in front of her with her disk. It shattered and he fell through.

"Combatant eleven, de-resolution," the computer said.

"I won. Now let me out!" Jim ordered.

"Combatant three, round one, victory."

"Round one?" she looked around to figure out an escape from this place.

"Combatants three and seven, initiate." This guy was scarier than the last one.

"Screw this," she said. Jim slammed her disk into the other guy as hard and as fast as she could muster, taking him out before he even got a chance to do anything. Then, she took out the ground under her feet and jumped to the platform below her. Breaking into a sprint, she was trying to come up with the best way to get herself out of this thing. She made a leap to another platform but before she could jump again, she found herself enclosed again.

"Initiate final round. Combatant three versus Rinzler."

"Rinzler! Rinzler! Rinzler! Rinzler!" the crowd was going nuts over this guy.

"You gotta be kidding me," Jim muttered.

"Rinzler! Rinzler! Rinzler!" they kept chanting his name.

Jim had a feeling that shit just hit the fan, especially since this Rinzler guy had a disk that could split into two. She pulled her own disk off her back and didn't have too much time to think about anything other than staying alive as the man came after her. He was fast, strong and giving Jim a run for her money.

She ducked and dodged as best she could until the gravity in the room switched and found herself on the ceiling. Jim attempted the same trick as earlier when she broke out the floor but it didn't work, he landed with his feet on the edges. He tried to take her head off again but Jim was actually pretty good a dodging. It didn't help when he cut her arm but she'll live.

"Not again," Jim groaned when the gravity flipped again. You would think she'd be ready for it but she couldn't get her footing. Then there was a disk at her throat.

"De-rez! De-rez! De-rez!" the crowd chanted.

Rinzler stared at her before he growled, "User."

He stood up and dragged Jim along with him to the boos of the idiots who wanted her dead. The pair faced an observation area that Jim didn't notice before. A new voice came up in the arena, "Identify yourself, program."

"I'm not a program," she said. The crowd booed at her some more.

"Identify."

"My name is Jim Kirk."

The whole room went silent. So her family name does mean something in this place.

After a few seconds, Rinzler led her away from the platform to a pair of waiting guards. Together, the four of them stepped into an elevator. Jim stopped herself from asking them anything or fighting them since neither really worked for her so far. She was taken into a room with a bunch of people with orange and yellow lights on their suits.

"There aren't a lot of people who could last that long in a fight with Rinzler," a voice that she hasn't heard in two decades said. The man turned around and looked at her.

"Dad?"