IV.
Minutes crept by with an agonizing slowness. Quorra felt each second like it was a marble moving slowly through her veins.
This painful hyperawareness didn't keep her from struggling against her bondages… but CLU was not the kind of villain she often read about in Flynn's books: he was as ruthless as he was thorough. If the systematic genocide of the ISOs wasn't evidence enough, then the careful, intricate knots he had tied behind her definitely were.
Her Creator, the one that she expected was now facing the likes of CLU without even an identity disk to defend himself, was just as detail-obsessed. The perfectly white walls and floors of their off-Grid hideout and the meticulously arranged knick-knacks were only the start this… quality of his.
After all, what could one expect of a man who constructed a world out of 0's and 1's?
Quorra shrugged off the notion that the two clones were more similar than met the eye, and leaned her head back against her chair, squeezing her eyes shut to prevent their watery sheen from leaking out.
Everything was going horribly wrong because of her; she didn't listen when the Creator had told Sam and her to avoid taking CLU's bait, and now…
Footsteps interrupted her reverie, causing her head to snap up and lock gazes with someone she would have usually recognized without a doubt.
"Rinzler?" she said softly, eyebrows tensing together when she realized that there was something amiss. Minute aspects of his figure were somehow just off. She didn't know why, but it made her stomach churn.
His dark shape was closing in on her fast, identity disk gripped in his steady palm.
"Leave me alone, I won't – " a small scream of surprise escaped her, just before the disk came crashing down in front of her, slicing through her bondages. In the span of a heartbeat, however, the person who had freed her ensnared her upper arm in its gloved hand and led her towards the exit.
"What are you doing!" she hollered as the doors parted automatically, a gust of cold air making the hairs on the back of her neck rise. Standing a few yards away were the Creator and CLU. The latter one turned and raised his arms at her approach… or so she thought.
"Finally! A son I can be proud of." he smiled cruelly at her expression of utter terror. Wide-eyed, Quorra looked shakily up at the tinted helmet of her captor.
"S-Sam?" she looked from him to CLU, her eyes taking on a possessed gleam. "You monster!"
"I found an interesting little fact in his data files before I reconfigured him…" CLU continued, ignoring the ISO and facing the equally livid Creator. "Evidently, I would die if you were to die while on the Grid. So while my intention had been to eradicate you the moment I next saw you, my improved plan involves me disappearing off into the flawed reality you called home while you, Creator ..." he stepped backwards so that he was now side-by-side with Sam.
"I'm going to watch you and that ISO chase what's left of your son into oblivion." He proclaimed. For a long moment, creator and creation locked eyes in a sort of hellish psychological spar that ended with CLU's arm rising swiftly to strike the helmet off the head of the figure still holding her, revealing that it was indeed the son of Flynn.
"Starting now." The sneer had scarcely left CLU's lips before Sam instantly released Quorra and race forward. His father immediately made part of CLU's desires a reality, shedding his coat and sprinting as fast as his aged legs could. Quorra lunged forward to follow them on instinct, but upon catching sight of CLU's delighted smirk, she pulled back her knee and did something completely reckless.
"Asshole!" she bellowed, her first use of colorful language making her tongue sizzle as she kicked out at him without inhibition. For the second time in a millicycle, a mere program had managed to catch him off-guard with irrationality more often than the Users he was forced to deal with. Maybe he had been right in disposing of them… ISOs were formidably unpredictable beings.
Whether or not he realized any of that was, however, inconsequential – what mattered was that he now clung to the edge of the platform, and an ISO was staring down at him with pure enmity before her eyes darted towards Flynn's identity disk, which had been knocked from CLU's grip and slid closer to the portal.
"Don't you dare…" seethed CLU, but she was already sprinting towards her final opportunity at saving Sam, Kevin, and even the entire Grid. Just as she knelt down to scoop up the disk, she heard CLU pull himself back onto the platform, causing her heart to beat with renewed vigor as she ran desperately towards the portal.
As she stepped into the all-consuming light, she heard malicious words and rapidly approaching footfalls. Breathless, she held the disk above her head.
Take me away, take me away, TAKE ME AWAY! Quorra mentally pleaded, comforted by the sensation of her data fragments being analyzed and pulled apart. She dared think for a moment that she had gotten away… until strong arms wrapping themselves around her waist informed her otherwise.