Flynn leaned over the touchscreen, heartbeat pounding in his ears as the clock display flickered above the lines of code.
Twenty-two seconds.
He was numb, mind hazy with shock and despair even as his hands flitted over the glowing keys. Twenty-two seconds to seize the open interface, delve into the code with commands he wasn't used to typing, functions he itched to grab by hand and expand. He was too slow, too unfamiliar. But he had done it, selected, identified, frozen all ongoing processes localized to the Portal and its surroundings. He hadn't found Clu yet, which made a painful sense—his double had how long to prepare for this—but the Rectifier was an easily identified structure. He'd trapped it in a loop, paused all associated programs.
He hadn't found Quorra.
Flynn shook his head, clumsy fingers furiously pulling up data as he breathed, trying to guide the panic out. He couldn't find Quorra, not so easily. Her sequencing was enormously complex; there was no easy identifier to latch on to—and centuries of viewing her structure in the Grid prepared him not at all for trying to formulate the lines onscreen. If he had more time, more focus…
But he had taken too long already. Twenty-two seconds. What, a quarter hour in there? More. Far too long, far too slow to be of any help. He had faced this problem decades ago, showing up after a week at Encom to find some new issue with his fledgling system, Tron and Shaddox overwhelmed after nearly a cycle of constant struggles. He had known it wasn't working; that was why he'd designed Clu…
Clu, standing above Flynn's defender, striking down in vengeful fury. Clu had destroyed Tron, so long ago. And now Quorra… no. He couldn't lose her too, he wouldn't.
Conviction won't change the truth. A lot could have happened in fifteen minutes.
And he couldn't help her now.
Sam.
A list of data scrolled across the screen, and Flynn focused, willing the lines to memory—more than memory, to concepts he could use. It looked so alien, so strange after all this time, and puzzling the rows and symbols into the same instinctive structure and meaning that the Grid provided… it was like hearing a familiar tongue through a heavy accent. The understanding was there, but so much was frustratingly unintelligible.
For this task in particular. Flynn refined the list, staring again as he tried to place things. Locational parallels between the Grid and the system code had always been a nightmare—one he had usually avoided by going in to work on projects. But sometimes he had needed to develop larger areas while still receiving feedback from inside.
The information scrolled out: search vectors, implanted paths he could work from. Scanning the entire Grid would take hours—days or weeks in there. The new list all showed faint glitches in the data buffers when selected. Good. He was looking at the Sea of Simulation.
Flynn copied over the markers he'd pulled from the digitizer records, then hesitated. Mass of uncompiled, shifting code that it was, the Sea distorted local data—and interfered with scans. Even if Sam's there, even if he's picked up, it might not identify him. Maybe he should try a different technique, break into Clu's command network, find something more effective…
The blinking numbers above the array flared in his brain with a shock and he rushed to complete the line, furious at himself for delaying even as he activated the scan. If this failed, he would find another implementation; if he had thought of a better method, he could have switched to it immediately. But to sit there thinking of "maybes" and "ifs" while his pounding heart counted out minutes and hours for Sam… that was inexcusable. Unforgivable.
And even that perspective was wrong, because it didn't matter if he could forgive himself. It mattered that Sam was in danger, and Flynn wouldn't fail him again.
Search initialized. Flynn blinked as the display wavered in his vision, the rapid pace of his breaths contrasting with the dull shock and fear still creeping through his mind. His fingers twitched, the urge to do something, anything overwhelming. He stopped, exhaled deeply, pushed himself away. Anything he tried now would slow the scan, delay finding Sam. If this even works. He didn't know.
He stared at the screen, then shoved himself up with a frustrated groan as he turned to pace the small room. It was funny. For hundreds of cycles he'd dreamed of blue sky, crowded streets of crazy, imperfect humans, the complex touch and smells of real wind on his face. He'd missed the world so much it hurt. Over time, he'd learned to be still, to wait, to get past wants and needs with calm discipline. But the ache was still there.
And here he was, alone in a small, dusty room. No sky, no wind, no people. His discipline hung in tattered shards of grief and panicked desperation. And his son was gone. Flynn closed his eyes.
Sam.
He stumbled—on the chair, he'd thought—and a small object skidded across the hard floor. Flynn frowned, picked it up. The flat rectangular shape fit easily but unfamiliarly in his grasp. This didn't belong here. Had Sam left it behind?
He turned it cautiously in his hand and almost dropped it as one side lit under his grasp, screen flickering and changing. It was… a display? So small. And touchscreen, too. The image that now showed was of a weird little dog, eyes bulging out and ears straight up. Flynn marveled at the resolution and focus of the picture even as Sam's words echoed back to him. "Dog. A rescue." A faint smile came to his face, even as his eyes flicked anxiously back to the still-searching computer.
Flynn sighed and sat down again, turning Sam's device over in his hands as he gazed distantly ahead, breath settling into familiar patterns. Then his focus shattered, his patterns broke, and he did drop the display as it burst with movement and noise, the little dog jumping forward, giving sharp barks—looping again, and again.
He grabbed it from his lap in disbelief. Wait, video? On something this size? How did they even… Fascination and joy budded in his mind, ideas spinning wildly. Flynn grinned, shook his head in amazement as the image paused at his touch. Man, if the future had this kind of tech…
The desk beeped loudly.
"Match found."
Nothing else mattered. Attention narrowed, all Flynn's hopes and need surged to the front, homing in on the lines onscreen. Each second again a priceless waste. There was active user code in the system, Sam's code—localized by a data collection unit near the edge of the Sea. Flynn had added a swath of them shortly before becoming trapped, part of his efforts to study and remove the infection in the Sea. But the why was unimportant; what mattered was that Sam was there.
Moisture gathered in Flynn's eyes, and he blinked the tears away, unwilling to let anything obstruct the vital, beautiful data in front of him. He's alive.
No time. Status. Was Sam all right? He jabbed in a query, glared at the rejection, tried again. Annoyed, he called up the entirety of Sam's detected code—and stared in bewilderment at the torrent of noise. His heart sank in despair. If he was unfamiliar with external views and regular system commands… Flynn had never dealt with another user's code. He'd only barely handled his own, copying elements to use in Clu's creation. This was a mess, unfamiliar and useless to him. And he didn't have time to learn.
What can I use? He tapped into the data collector, requested local anomalies—and frantically aborted the streaming list that followed. He scowled. The Sea was all anomaly, and the repeated lines of VIRUS DETECTED didn't help. He knew what Clu had done to the Sea. He needed to know about Sam.
He tried again, running a more generalized search from the same vector for nearby structures, programs—anything in proximity to Sam that could pose a threat. Background data flickered by as the scan ran, and Flynn stared at it, frustrated. He knew that stream of information had everything he needed. If he could only format it to comprehension, make it useful in some way…
"Match found."
His gaze sharpened on the window. And Flynn froze in shock. Horror. Loss. And desperate, painful terror. 'Program detected.'
'System designation: Rinzler'.
"…Tron."
The word echoed hollowly in Flynn's ears as he stared at the screen numbly. No, he wished he were numb, wished the grief and nausea and urgent spiking panic would fade away to dullness. To calm. But his heartbeat pounded in his ears, and a wordless tension clutched at his throat as the dread, the understanding, came back in full force.
It had been so long. So much time spent mourning, raging, simply missing Tron. He had never gotten past it, he knew—never forgotten the scream of pain as his creation, his double, his twisted, frustrated copy had killed his friend. While he hid. Ran away.
But it was worse than that.
Clu hadn't just destroyed Tron, hadn't just taken him from Flynn. He had taken him, claimed Tron and warped him into a monster. Flynn had heard of Clu's killer from the occasional reports, from Quorra's stories of her trips to the city. Clu's assassin, Clu's murderer, the graceful perfect tool of death that hunted down hidden ISOs, derezzed rebel cells to the last program. The unbeatable champion of the Games. Flynn had never made the connection—never even considered it. Rinzler was everything Tron would never have allowed.
And he was there, in the Grid. Now. With his son. Sam. Who could be hurt or fighting or dying for all Flynn knew. And the sorrow, the horror, the fear sharpened to a painful focus as it hit him.
He had failed Tron. Failed Clu. Left Quorra behind, been too slow, too useless to help her. But in this instant, in this single moment, he could be fast enough for Sam.
…No.
The command was short, so easily typed, white cursor slowly flashing on and off at the end of the line. No time to debug, to override Tr—Rinzler's complex systems. Not when Sam was at risk.
No.
It wasn't Tron anymore. Flynn could see code scrolling past in a side window as the scan continued to output. Alan's familiar structure lay underneath, a touch of Flynn's own upgrades—but mired in numerous patches, protocols, directives overlaid again and again in a way Flynn didn't have time to understand. Not now. Besides, he did understand, had seen Clu's work in action, seen… Rinzler as he lunged to strike with familiar, devastating grace. He shook his head, breath sharp as the cursor flashed again. Not Sam. Flynn had to protect him, had to do one thing right. Just hit the damn key already!
"No."
His voice was hoarse. Broken. Flynn pulled back from the computer, head falling as he shook with revulsion, fear, frustration. Hopeless, hopeless failure. He had to do it, had to keep Sam safe, had to cease the pitiful, terrifying echo of his mistakes. Tron would have preferred to derezz—must have wanted to end, time and time again, over the hundreds and hundreds of cycles. I left him to this.
He couldn't do it.
Not without knowing, without trying, without certainty that Alan's program, his program, was really gone. Useless hope lurched at the thought—with enough time, he could fix Tron, could remove whatever Clu had done and make it right again.
But there wasn't time, and his hopes meant nothing to the very real threat. Now. To Sam.
I need to know.
Flynn stared at the code as it streamed past. Clu's work, his work, structural code, the Sea's glitches and errors permeating it all. Virus. Flashes of something even more confusing that had to be Sam. All raw data, jumbled and useless to him. But it described everything. He looked, watched, glared with desperate need as he willed the output to comprehension. His eyes burned, his breath came in short harsh bursts, and his hand… ached sharply. He glanced down, realized he was gripping Sam's little display, fist rigid with painful force. He loosened the grasp, tried to slow his breathing, to close his eyes, to think, find a solution, a way to know what was happening, to see—
He stopped. Froze. His eyes focused on the screen, jerked down to the device in his hand. His head turned slightly, the computer's light reflecting off narrowed eyes.
Time blinked past in glowing numbers as Flynn got to work.