The Outlands were quiet, empty. For kilometers, the sharp mountains echoed with the wind, snowdrifts playing in the downcycle's stillness. It was a stark contrast to just across the bay, where all that could be seen was the still smoking wreck of Argon's now empty hills. Wind playing with his hair, Beck stared across the ocean. For his entire runtime, Argon had been all he'd known. It had been his home, stifling and small but home all the same.

Now, it was gone. The lurch in his core that left him with was an achy one, a lingering sort of ache he knew wouldn't fade with energy or a sleep cycle. It was the same ache that lingered with his memories of Able, and of Bodhi. Something that could not be replaced was gone. Even if it was restored, it wouldn't be the same. Taking a steadying breath, Beck frowned.

"Have you seen this happen before?" He asked Tron quietly. Standing beside him, the old program shook his head.

"Not to this scale, even on the old system." He frowned. "Something big must have happened to set Clu off into doing this. I just don't know what."

Beck could guess. He watched as a plume of burning energy reached high into former Argon airspace from where a refueling tower had once been, thoughts whirling a kilometer per second. The order had come only after Pavel's deresolution, only after Paige had gone back and likely spun some kind of story to explain that. The reformat had probably been Clu's last ditch effort to drive them out of hiding, and it had worked.

It had just taken Argon and Grid only knew how many programs with it.

With a proverbial kick to his core, Beck turned back to the others. After their boat had been driven across the bay by the waves, they'd all managed to crawl out onto the rough Outlands stone to take stock. Zed was recovering from his near crash, sitting with his back to a boulder as Paige, her steady Medic Green circuitry covered by a large patch across her torso, coded a cap onto the stump of his leg. Mara, much like Beck and Tron, was more shaken than actually hurt. Scattered burns and gashes from their escape through the Harbor was all that remained on her frame, and she held Zed's hand as Paige worked. Beck watched, core spinning up faster. He didn't want to think about it, didn't want to even consider it, but maybe…maybe Paige had had something to do with the order. But that didn't explain why, after saying that she could do nothing else for them, she'd come and joined them at the Harbor. There was something he was missing, and it was beginning to worry him.

Shoving the thought into his low priority queue he turned back to Tron, the old program's eyes still on Argon, and shook his head.

"Does it matter?" He asked, clearing his throat a moment later, "It's done. We should get moving."

Tron glanced at him sideways. Beck swallowed hard but said nothing, and Tron sighed. Doubtlessly, Beck thought to himself, they were having similar thought processes. Sooner or later, Beck was going to have to deal with that.

He just wanted it to be a little later, that was all.

"You're right," Tron said after a moment had passed, turning his back on Argon's remains to walk back to the others. "It's a long way to Lithium from here."

"Lithium…" Beck frowned. "You and Ruby mentioned that before. What's so important all the way out there?"

"According to Ruby," Tron said, "There's a sizable resistance in the city's underground. It's our best chance right now."

Their best chance of finding allies, their best chance of survival, their best chance of somehow making all of this work. With a deep breath, Beck followed in Tron's footsteps. The Outlands stretched for kilometers all around them, and unless they found some sort of recycling dump on the way, they'd have to go the entire way on foot. Which was just great. Glancing upwards, Beck heaved a sigh.

Could things get any worse?

"Is he mobile?" Tron asked Paige, dragging Beck from his thoughts. Paige didn't look up from her codework, turning several strings in on themselves to make sure the cap would hold. After a moment, she shrugged.

"Sure," She replied, "But if we don't get him to an actual medical facility soon, he will lose what's left of that leg."

"How soon is soon?" Mara asked quietly.

Paige frowned a moment, pensive, then shook her head. "Within the next triple. Preferably within the next milli, but there's no chance of that now."

Zed groaned, burying his face in his free hand. Mara and Beck exchanged a worried glance, while Tron nodded and looked off to the horizon as Paige tweaked a few final strings.

"Lithium is a hundred kilometers north from here." Tron said, more to himself than to them even as all four young faces turned in his direction. "If we don't stop, we can make it before the triple is over." He looked down at Zed. "Are you ready?"

"If I say no," Zed groaned through the palm of his hand, "Will you leave me here to sleep?"

"No, Zed," Mara and Beck said in unison, rising to haul their injured friend to his foot between them. He yelped, nearly tumbling onto Beck before they could steady him, one arm slung around each of their shoulders. When his head lolled towards Mara, she thunked their temples together and tightened her grip around his wrist. Tron watched the trio for a moment, then turned away.

"Paige, you're up front with me. Keep your disk out."

Having stood in a smooth motion that belied the pain she must have been in, Paige set a hand on her hip and cocked her head to the side.

"What," She started, "Don't trust me behind you?"

"Not at all," Tron replied, causing Beck to groan softly and Zed to give a pained snicker, "But we'll all need your skills with that disk if we're going to make it to Lithium without losing another limb."

That got Zed to stop snickering, and Mara to raise her head. Beck frowned.

"Are you expecting trouble?" He asked

"Worse," Tron said with a narrow eyed glare into the mountains around them. "I'm expecting Grid-bugs."

Of course. Beck grimaced. Of course it would be Grid-bugs.

"Right, right," Zed nodded as they began to walk, only to stop and stare at Tron's back with wide, fearful eyes. "WHAT?!"

Beck and Mara flinched at his volume. Tron's mouth twisted into something that was more grimace than smile.

"Just keep moving," Paige said before he could speak, tone dry as the stone around them. "The sooner we get there, the better."

There was nothing any of them could say to that. With a final look back over his shoulder at Argon's smoldering wreckage, Beck turned his face forward and kept walking. Zed's hopping step was hard to keep pace with at first, nearly toppling the three of them more than once before they were able to find a proper rhythm.

Which was good, since they had so much ground to get across!

The nanos walked into micros, the micros crawled into an eighth, and an eighth dragged itself out into the featureless stone of the Outlands all around them. No one bothered to speak even as they slowly plodded along, leaving snow capped peaks and abyssal canyons in their wake. Tron and Paige walked with military efficiency just ahead, disks in their hands and tapping at their hips as both kept a sharp eye, and sharp ear, out for any sign of a threat.

Neither looked back, and neither noticed Beck watching them as they all plodded along. Now that there was relative peace and quiet, he couldn't get his processor to slow down. Paige had said she couldn't—wouldn't—come with him, wouldn't side with him, and yet here she was. Injured, marked with a burn much like the one across his chest, and barely willing to meet his eyes. Her circuits blazed green all the way down her frame, without even a secondary designation color, and there was not a pixel of red to be seen on her. Green was a very good look for her, he decided; it suited her. Better than Occupation red had, at least.

And then there was Tron. Cyrus' words were still caught in Beck's processor: to have come from the same source code, to be offshoots of a single program…things like that hadn't happened since the days of Flynn. Even Able hadn't known much about that sort of thing, mentioning it only when Link had once asked why bike and tank code was so similar. Of course, Beck thought to himself, there was a pretty big difference between vehicles sharing code and programs sharing code. And it would be a big deal for the two of them, if Cyrus had been telling the truth, to be offshoots of Tron's code. It would explain a lot of things.

If, and this was the really big if chimed in Beck's logic unit, Cyrus hadn't been lying. Tron had flinched, startled or unsure or even alarmed, but he'd barely reacted otherwise. He almost hadn't cared. Did it mean nothing to him? Tron was from the Old System. Maybe offshoots were just more common there? Beck sighed quietly, core lurching sideways a little. Why was this bothering him? It wasn't like it really changed anything. And they still had more important things to deal with so-

"Hey—" Zed's voice pulled him from his thoughts. Beck snapped his head to the side, blinking as Mara and Zed's worried faces came into focus, both watching him with concerned eyes. "You okay?"

"Yeah—" Beck shook his head, "Yeah. Just…thinking too hard." He forced the thoughts down, deeper in his queue for another time, before looking at Zed again. "How's the leg?"

"Oh, you know," he sighed, "doing okay, considering it's just the one now."

"Zed…." Mara groaned. She drew a deep breath in and opened her mouth-

Then she clicked it shut as Tron held up a clenched fist, forcing everyone to a halt.

Zed grumbled, "What's the big idea—" Only to be cut off as Beck slapped his free hand over his friend's mouth when Paige went completely still. Even the wind had stopped, the area around them quiet as a city in a blackout. For a few nanos, no one dared to move for fear of attracting the attention of whatever had stalled their escort, but then Beck heard what had caught their attention.

Skittering, clicking, drawing ever closer. There was only one thing on the Grid that would ever make that sound.

Grid-bugs.

"Where are they coming from?" Beck swiveled his head back, looking over each shoulder in turn, but he could see nothing but stone, no sign of their encroachers. Zed's eyes widened as the sound registered, and Mara looked around as well. Ahead of them, Tron shook his head.

"I don't know," He said quietly, a hissing whisper they could barely hear, "But keep watch. We can't afford an ambush."

Paige scoffed quietly, gesturing the trio of mechanics forward without a word, her eyes back on the stone before Beck could try to catch her gaze. Despite the clicking, things were quiet. Slowly, not daring to speak any more, the five of them marched forward. All of them kept their eyes on the stone and mountains around them, waiting, watching for any sign of the Grid-bugs. Circuits flared overload bright as every one of them poured every ounce of power they could spare into visuals or audio, trying to sight the threat before it came.

In the end, it barely mattered.

Mara caught sight of them first, letting loose a warning cry as, in the distance, pouring down the mountainside like rain were thousands of Grid-bugs, just itching to swarm over the five of them and devour them bit by excruciating bit. Zed shouted, shifting his weight as Mara and Beck both scrambled for their disks, kicking them on nearly in the same instant. Up ahead, Paige's disk was a beacon of green-edged white while she slipped into a her old military stance beside Tron. For half a nano, Tron held his position, one arm spread wide as if to defend the three mechanics behind him and the other ahead to ward off the swarm with his disk alone.

Then the swarm was on them, throwing itself upon the two like a wave of red. Paige shouted, lashing out with wide, forceful movements. Dozens of Grid-bugs fell to her every slash, and dozens more to Tron's as the pair of them began to fall back to the three behind, but the swarm just kept coming! Like a wave on the shore it rushed them, unstoppable and just as dangerous as the Viral code-water they'd left behind. Dozens of the little things launched themselves at Paige and Tron, but the rest parted, trying to reach the three Mechanics and their larger energy source. Mara scrambled to grab the last of her free code grenades, throwing it at a knot of Grid-bugs. They went up in a cloud of pink and blue smoke, the graphic spreading across the Outlands stone, but for the fifty or so that had been destroyed another eighty took their place!

Lashing out with his disk, Beck snarled. They'd sooner be devoured than escape this with their limbs intact. Beck shifted his stance, trying to pull Zed and Mara in closer as Tron nearly disappeared beneath the swarm. He reappeared before Beck's core could do more than lurch, swatting a pair of Grid-bugs off his arm as the knot of programs closed in on themselves. Zed looked around wildly, eyes wide.

"We're trapped!"

Surrounded on all sides by swarming Grid-bugs, just waiting for a chance to slip in past four revving disks and destroy them. One arm still supporting Zed, Beck glared at the bugs. There was no way out of this mess.

Suddenly, a sound echoed down the stone around them. There was the throaty roar of an engine, and then—

A four-wheeler burst over the rise of the nearest hill, cleared their heads as they all ducked, and landed on the heart of the swarm. A hundred Grid-bugs went up into shards of code, followed by hundreds more of their fellows as the driver spun their vehicle so fast it nearly went onto its side. The white-blue circuits blurred as they gunned the engine, driving tight circles around the five programs like they were driving a bike and not a four-wheeler big enough to carry them all to safety. Hundreds more Grid-bugs were crushed beneath the wheels, until the swarm broke ranks and retreated, too much of its code lost to keep working.

The four-wheeler jerked to a halt, and for a few nanos no one moved. Disks kept revving, circuits flickered between overload and normalcy as they all drew deep breaths and tried to calm overworking processors, but each of them looked up as the clear hatch above the seats popped open and a program stood up. White-blue circuits marked them as neutral, their asymmetrical tunic and long gloves marking them as female-designate, and not of Argon assignment. Beck tilted his head as both Tron and Paige went stiff, but his eyes went back to the driver as she retracted her helmet to reveal a pale face with icy blue eyes and dark hair in an asymmetric bob around her ears. She turned to them and smiled warmly.

"That was fun, wasn't it?" She asked lightly, jumping down from the driver's seat to the ground. She hopped over a pile of Grid-bug remains and strode over to them, smile only widening as she stopped in front of Tron and put both hands on her hips. "Just like old times."

Tron seemed to shake himself off. "Old times," he said, "Didn't involve you rescuing me, Quorra."

Quorra beamed. She shifted her weight, peering over Tron's shoulder to peer at the three mechanics. Her eyes lingered on Mara, took in Zed's missing leg, looked at Beck, then looked back to Tron. She opened her mouth.

"Quorra?" Paige broke in suddenly. They all looked at her, and Beck's core lurched. Her circuits were flickering, her disk dull in her hand. She stared, unmoving, at Quorra's face. "You're—how are you—?"

Quorra blinked, before her eyes went wide with something like recognition.

"Paige?" She asked quietly, "Is that…is that you?"

Paige didn't answer. Her circuits went dark, and without a hint of fanfare she crumpled to the stone before anyone could catch her. Quorra lunged forward towards her as Beck's eyes went wide.

"Paige!"

Even so, he couldn't bring himself to rest. He trusted Quorra, had offered her some training in their younger cycles, but she was still just one program. Clu no doubt wanted her derezzed as much as he wanted Beck and Tron captured. If they were found, he wouldn't leave her to fight the army alone just because he needed a sleep cycle. Taking in a deep breath, he looked sideways at her.

"Asleep, all of them." When she smiled knowingly, he turned away. Mara had chosen a spot closest to the entrance, curled around Zed as he lay on his side and hid his face in the crook of her neck. The cap on his ruined leg glowed a soft green-blue, lighting up Beck's sleeping face where he rested sitting against the cold stone wall. Paige had been laid on her side at the back of the small cave, and Beck held her hand as they waited for her to rise. Of course, he'd drifted off into sleep mode before that happened, but Tron wouldn't begrudge him that small comfort.

Users knew he'd be doing the same, had it been him and Yori in their position.

Yori. He was so close he could taste it, feel her. He knew it was just his memory bank, but…he shook his head again to clear it of the thought and turned to Quorra. She didn't take her eyes off the sleeping quartet, hands clasped around her crossed elbows.

"You know Paige?" He asked quietly. She nodded.

"A long time ago," She began, "After the Purge, a friend of mine and I ended up in Gallium. Paige ran a Medical Center there, and our paths crossed." She shrugged, looking down at the ground with a frown. "But someone called the army on us and we had to leave. I…haven't seen her since then."

Which meant she'd missed the fact that Paige had spent that same long time being Occupation. Tron huffed out a near silent sigh, looking back at dim green circuits. He'd never known a program to recover from repurposing like that before, but then, there weren't many programs like Paige. Strong-willed, stubborn, desperate for something to believe in…he closed his eyes.

"How bad was it?" When Quorra made a confused noise, he continued, "The Purge. I was…in Clu's custody for most of it."

Quorra made a soft sound of sympathy, her hair whispering over her glove as she tucked an errant behind her ear.

"It was…bad," She whispered, age old hurt deepening her voice, "There's less than a dozen of us left now, and every single city that even harbored an ISO for a milli was quarantined or reformatted. Arjia was wiped off the map, Bostrum went viral, and whatever's left of Helix is still under lock and key." She sighed. "Clu was…very thorough."

"Anon couldn't stop him."

Quorra barked out a laugh. He opened his eyes to see her grimace as the knot that was Mara-and-Zed shifted, before her voice lowered and her brow furrowed.

"Anon couldn't even slow him down," She said with a surprising amount of viral hatred in her hiss, "After Clu came at you and Flynn, he found me. We worked together and took out the virus, but Clu…" She shook her head, clenching her fists at her sides. "He got lucky. When the Regulator came down, Anon…he…" She took in a deep breath, circuits flickering for just a moment before she regained enough calm to continue, "He saved me, but…he…"

"It's alright," Tron said, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder. She looked at him with wavering eyes as he pinged [calm] down her circuits. "You don't have to finish."

She didn't really need to. Though his last order to Anon had been to keep an eye on the virus, the changing situation would have meant a change in directive. If the virus was gone and Quorra was here, but Anon was not…he sighed quietly to himself as Quorra took another deep breath to grab hold of her composure. One more good program, lost in the war against Clu.

How many more would it take to end it? He just couldn't say.

Quorra dashed a hand across her eyes, then shook her head.

"After Anon derezzed, Flynn found me." She looked up at him, oblivious to Tron's core having ground to a screeching halt. "We hid out in the Outlands for a while, but…" She frowned. "We had different ideas about how to handle the situation."

Her words became static. Circuits flickering, Tron had to force himself to take several deep breaths to keep himself functional. With a quick access to recent memory storage, he came to a stark, cold realization:

Flynn had never gotten off the Grid. He was still here.

"Flynn is," He distantly heard himself gasp, cutting Quorra off mid-sentence, "Still here?"

Quorra blinked. "Of course he is. He couldn't reach the Portal in time." She reached towards him. "You didn't know?"

Tron stumbled back, circuits flickering rapidly. The wall of stone was cold against his port as he landed against it and slid to the ground. His frame shook, his breath trembled. Flynn had never made it back to the Portal. He was still on the Grid.

He hadn't done a thing to stop Clu.

"I told him to run," Tron whispered as Quorra came to her knees in front of him, placing both hands on his knees and staring at his face with wide eyes. "Clu and his guard, they came for Flynn and I—I held them off, but it wasn't—I wasn't—"

He'd given everything to buy Flynn time to escape, and the User had squandered it. Wasted the only chance he had left to stop it, to save the Grid, every program on it, like it meant nothing. Tron's core spun up, growing heated.

"I told him to go!" He almost shouted, slamming a fist hard against the stone beside him. Quorra jumped, though none of the betas in the other room stirred. Tron groaned, muffling the sound into the palm of his other hand as his fist dragged down the rough stone. Quorra's face fell. She leaned forward, taking his wrist into both her hands. He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Why didn't he go?"

"…I don't know," She whispered, "You'd have to ask him that question, if you really want to know."

Did he? Did he really want the answer to that question? No. It had been easier thinking that Flynn had abandoned them, easier nursing the old hurt of his User and Flynn both turning their backs on him. Now? To know that Flynn had simply never managed to escape? That was a fresh wound. He'd failed his directive, both self-given and programmed. If Alan-One could see him now, he would be so ashamed of his program. Tron's core lurched at the thought, and he forced himself to breathe before he could shut down. Once again, he shook his head.

"No," He said softly at first, then again with more firmness, "No. I don't." He opened his eyes, trying not to think about the understanding he could see in the furrow of Quorra's brow. "I need to get us to Lithium. Can you help me?"

For a moment, Quorra was silent. Then, slowly, still holding his wrist between her gloved hands, she nodded.

"Sure. Just—" She cocked her head, "Do something for me first." When he raised a brow at her she smiled. "The last any program had heard, you'd been derezzed. Then, all of a sudden, we start getting hints that Tron is active on the southern edge of the Grid? There's a story there."

Tron turned his head, looking at the four sleeping programs. One corner of his mouth quirked upwards.

"…It's a very long story."

It was raining again. Beck sat, port cooling against the stone of the cave they rested in, elbow on his knee, and turned his head towards the sound. It was outside, near where Tron and Quorra had gone to speak without waking any of them.

Any more of them, at least.

Beck scrubbed his hand over his face. It would be a long time before he could erase the sheer pain he'd heard in Tron's voice from his memory storage, if he ever could at all. He'd kept silent, unsure what to do or even what to think. Flynn had always been a myth to his generation of programs, known but not. Now, not only was Flynn likely still functional, he was still on the Grid. And he'd had to have had a hand in Beck's rezzing all those cycles ago if he really did share source code with Tron.

Unless Tron's User was involved with that, at least. There was just no way to know, and thinking about it too hard was making his processor ache. Beside him, Zed and Mara slept on, undisturbed. On his other side, Paige slowly opened her eyes. He looked down as she stirred, hand slipping from his grasp as she began to try and rise off her side where they'd laid her down.

"Take it slow," He whispered, startling her into looking up. "You crashed hard back there."

She looked at him for a long moment, then sighed quietly. It said a lot that she let him help her to sit up, back against the wall, rather than fight to do it herself. Once she was upright, he pulled his knees up and rested his chin on them, watching as she tried to comb rain-damp tangles out of her hair. Her eyes were dark, her brow furrowed, her circuits dim.

He knew an overthinking program when he saw one.

"Tesler?" She looked at him again as he gestured at her sides, still marked with broad blue patches to hide red-green burns, much like the ones he still carried. She nodded, raking both hands through her wild hair.

"He's not going to be a problem anymore," She said quietly, then finished more firmly, "I derezzed him myself."

Beck's eyes widened. Paige, of all programs, had fought Tesler? Her own commanding officer? He raised his head, reaching out with one hand.

"What happened?" He asked, "I thought you were on his side."

"So did I," She sighed, giving up on the tangles in her hair and lowering her hands to her lap. "But it turns out he wasn't who I thought he was, either. At all." She shook her head. "You were right. I should have listened to you."

"Paige…" He reached out, putting a hand on her knee. She looked up, peering at him through her hair. "You did what you thought was right. What matters is you got out intact. The rest…" He shrugged, offering her a tiny smile. "We can deal with the rest."

For a long micro, she said nothing. She watched him, searched his face, searching for something he just couldn't name. But she did seem to find it, because she returned his smile.

"How did you stay so optimistic with a program like him for a mentor?" She asked ruefully, "He's not exactly energy bubbles and auroras."

Beck couldn't help it: he laughed. Energy bubbles and auroras was definitely not the way to describe Tron with any degree of accuracy, and the milli it turned out to be true would be the milli he finally ran for the hills. Stretching out his legs, Beck grinned.

"Comes with the territory, I guess. Someone's got to balance him out or we'd both have gone a little…"

"Off-directive?" She raised a brow at him, but her smile was still there. Rather than deny it he shrugged, then raised his head.

"Back there," He gestured out to the mouth of the cave with one hand, the rain growing louder, "You recognized Quorra, didn't you?"

"I did." Paige nodded. She gazed down at her hands still in her lap, idly tracing the circuits on her arms as she spoke. "A long time ago, I…I was a Medic in Gallium. Quorra ended up there, somehow." Her voice grew quiet, distant. "She's the one who first taught me how to fight. Which was really stupid for a Medic program, but it saved me when Tesler came to…clean things up."

That needed no further explanation. Beck grimaced, able to paint a picture of what she must have seen. Tesler's crew hadn't exactly been known for their light touch. Beside him, Paige sighed.

"And I couldn't even keep my friends safe, or my patients functional. Couldn't heal, couldn't be a good soldier…Grid." She leaned her head back, thunking it against the wall. "What good is a program who can't keep either of her directives?"

Beck's core lurched. Slowly, cautiously, he scooted over until they sat arm to arm, his shoulders just a little taller than hers.

"A good one," He whispered, "One who means well and does her best to take care of others." He reached for her hand, wrapping his fingers around hers to transmit [comfort] down the circuits on her arm. "Even if it doesn't work out the way she planned."

She looked at him with soft eyes for a long moment, then, slowly, leaned her cheek against his shoulder. In his grip, her hand turned to rub her thumb over his knuckles. She laughed quietly as one of the circuits on his wrist flickered violet in the dim light, but didn't move.

"Careful," She whispered, "That soft core'll get you derezzed if you don't watch out."

Beck just smiled.

"Then it's a good thing we've got a Medic around—ah—" He hissed as she reached over with her other hand, poking the edge of a patch. She quirked a brow at him as he pouted down at her.

"You're held together by bits and strings, Beck," She shook her head. "I'm good, but I'm not that good."

"I don't know," He tilted his head away, "If you heal half as good as you fought me? We're in really good hands." When she didn't seem too convinced, he squeezed her hand. "Seriously, though. I'm glad you're with us."

She snorted. "You're just saying that because I can reset your patches."

"Maybe. Well, okay, kind of," He snickered, smiling as the corners of her mouth turned upwards. "But, honestly? I was kind of worried about you back there."

"Only kind of?"

"You could knock anybody straight on their port, so yeah." He closed his eyes, leaning his head against hers. When she didn't move, he relaxed. "Only kind of."

"Lucky me." She snorted quietly, amusement coloring her tone. With nothing left to say, both went silent. Outside, the rain continued its hissing downpour as inside, Zed and Mara slept on. Beck himself fell into a light doze against Paige's side, just listening to her breathing and the sound of the rain. Sooner or later, they'd have to get up and move on. Zed needed actual medical care, and none of them could do anything from in here. He didn't think he or Tron could sit idly by in a cave for very long, either. But for right now, at that moment, he didn't mind the quiet.

"So," Paige said suddenly, bringing him back to wake mode, "Your mentor. Is he…" She paused for a couple of nanos, then rolled her head to meet his eyes. "What does Tron think about all this?"

Beck opened his mouth, then stopped as bootsteps echoed in the cave. He turned his head.

"Why don't you ask him yourself?"

Paige turned. There, at the mouth of the cave, was Tron. He didn't look happy.

"It's time to go."

Rain beat against the outer shell of the four-wheeler as Quorra drove the five of them across the Outlands. The four betas were squished together shoulder to shoulder in the backseat, Paige by one window and Zed smushed between Beck and Mara on either side to keep him upright. They all looked tired, worn, circuits dim by the lack of energy.

Not that, Tron knew, he looked much better. All that was keeping him upright was the need to keep the four of them safe, and the knowledge that soon, he'd see Yori again.

Yori. Leading the resistance in Lithium, barely a kilometer away as Quorra's steady driving left Outlands stone far behind.

"You never explained who Yori is," Beck said as he leaned forward, hands on the driver and passenger seats to hold steady as Quorra went over a hill, "Is she from the Old System?"

"She is," Tron nodded, arms crossed over his chest. "She's my partner program. Flynn brought us both over when he established the Grid." He frowned. The last time he'd seen Yori had been before the Coup. All this time, he'd mourned her, thought her derezzed when the Capitol had fallen to Clu's forces, but now… "She kept the Portal in working order on this side so he could come and go. When it went dark, I thought she had too, but…"

"She's definitely functional," Quorra said with a glance at him. In the distance, Lithium's glowing high-rises drew nearer and nearer with each passing micro. "She's been running a pretty sizable resistance out of Lithium's Dark Side for a while now. The Sirens are helping her, last I knew."

"Sirens—" Mara leaned over, her head of cyan hair just visible in Tron's peripheral vision, "Does that mean that Ruby was working with her?"

Yori lives, Ruby had said just a triple ago. Giving his processor a sharp internal shove, Tron nodded.

"It does," He said, choosing to ignore the odd look that came over Beck's face at that, "But they kept it quiet. Nothing like what we did."

"That wouldn't take much," Paige chimed in dryly as Beck and Mara sat back, "Considering some of the soldiers bet energy rations on what bit of Argon you'd blow up next."

Zed burst out laughing, and kept laughing even as Mara whacked his arm with the back of her hand and Beck groaned. Quorra grinned, eyes on the road ahead as they reached Lithium's lower gate. Unlike Argon, there wasn't much of an Occupation presence here, down in the Dark Side. Tron peered out the window as they drove, the sights unfamiliar. He'd been to Lithium once before, as Flynn had been getting it and the highway to it set up, but that had been a long time ago. It was a different city now, Quorra had explained, cut into two sides by it's Occupation General, Ion. On the Light Side as Quorra had called it were the high-rises and programs that had backed Clu in any way possible and were rewarded with luxurious apartments and high energy rations to play around with. On the other, the Dark Side that was named for it's dark streets and scant lights, lived working programs, programs that had not agreed with Clu but not sided against him, either. Tron watched as dimly lit faces flashed by on the side of the road, programs just trying to get through their run-times without trouble, paying little heed to the four-wheeler that Quorra drove into an unassuming building deep within the mazelike streets of the Dark Side.

Once they were inside, she killed the engine and popped the hatch. Tron hopped down first, taking in the building as Mara and Beck helped Zed to get down; the building was a warehouse of some kind, completely empty but for a small hatch in the corner. Quorra walked over to the hatch and pried it open, revealing a set of stairs that led below. She looked up as Tron and Paige walked closer.

"This leads down into the Undercity," She said, "Where Lithium's Resistance is based. We can find a Medic for Zed there." She looked at the three Mechanics as she said that, all of them sighing in relief. She smiled at them, then looked to Tron. "And I'll take you to Yori. Come on."

She led them down the stairs, down into brightly lit corridors that turned at sharp angles. Programs in black suits with varying assignment markings greeted Quorra like an old friend but paid little heed to Tron and his faceless helmet, or to the three hobbling Mechanics and Paige just beside them. Sirens in gleaming white milled among themselves, and they all noticed as Tron walked past, staring with wide eyes and silent mouths. Zed yelped as he nearly ended up dragged when he spent too long looking after a Siren instead of keeping pace, Mara humphing quietly as they came to a door marked with the green lines of a Medic. Quorra knocked once, then stepped inside.

Like the rest of the Undercity, the large room here was well lit, medical equipment gleaming under the bright lights. A black suited male-designate looked up as they entered, but when he caught sight of Zed he stood up so quickly his chair almost clattered to the ground.

"What on the Grid happened to you?" The Medic shouted, coming around a medical table to help get Zed on-board. Paige spoke up to explain, Medic to Medic, but Tron turned away as Quorra touched his elbow.

"Yori's probably in the command center. This way," She walked off down the hall. Tron made to follow, only to stop as Beck came up beside him. The young program shook his head.

"If you want to do this alone, just tell me," Beck said, "but I don't like the idea of you going off without back-up."

Back-up that Beck knew, he meant. Tron knew the feeling, and even though he was fully capable of taking care of himself and Quorra was there, had their positions been reversed he'd have done the same thing. Wordlessly, he nodded. Beck returned the gesture and the two of them were off down the hall after Quorra, following her back through the sharp turns and winding corridors of the Undercity. It lived up to its name: they walked so far it must have gone under the entire city of Lithium, storage units and connecting tunnels serving as the perfect place for a growing resistance so long as they kept quiet.

And, Tron thought, the perfect place to get trapped if they weren't careful. There were so many turns it would take a User-given miracle not to get lost down here. The nano he could, he'd put the Mechanics and Paige through their paces to learn at least a half dozen escape routes, whether or not Yori was actually here. He tried not to think about that, tried not to rush ahead of Quorra as she guided them through rapidly thickening knots of programs, but each passing nano dragged on his processor like nails down his back.

He just wanted to see her. Know she was still functional. That would be enough.

He tried to convince himself of that as Quorra led them through a set of open double doors and into a massive room filled with programs. Tron caught sight of a table inside before the doorway was blocked, and Quorra huffed around a frown.

"Just wait a nano," she grumbled, shouldering her way through two programs at the entrance. They parted for her to pass, and that was when Tron saw her.

"Yori." Tron whispered. He watched, barely feeling Beck's hand on his arm. All around them, programs lined in blue-white were talking amongst themselves, some consulting data panels, others reading off of tablets around a large table in the center of the room. The holo-display beamed the schematic of some building, but Tron didn't bother paying attention to it. His eyes were only on the program clear across from him.

There she was. Her hair was different now, cropped shorter around her ears instead of her long braid of the cycles before, the color of her suit darker than he remembered, but he would know her anywhere. It took everything he had not to rush over to her. Quorra slipped through the crowd around her like a shadow until she came to Yori's side, bending to whisper in Yori's ear. Half listening to Quorra and half listening to the male-designate reading off a tablet, Yori inclined her head before she snapped it up as Quorra's words sunk in. She looked at Quorra first, eyes wide as Quorra smiled and nodded, gesturing back to the doorway. Slowly, as if she dared not hope, Yori looked to him.

Across the room, their eyes met. Like the first time they'd ever met, a connection took root. He took a step forward as she stood up so fast her chair clattered to the floor. Everyone besides Beck and Quorra jumped, staring with widening eyes as Yori took a step around the table, then another, and another after that until the pair of them met by the doorway. The programs around became a murmur as the entirety of the Grid shrunk to just the two of them. She stared, eyes searching his face for something, or perhaps just taking him in.

"Tron..." she breathed after a moment, reaching up to put a hand on his cheek. He sighed shakily and leaned into her touch, knowing that his healing meant he was just as she remembered him.

Well, no. They'd both changed. But not enough that she couldn't recognize him. Her eyes softened.

"Users...it is you."

She pulled him down, wrapping her arms around him. With another shaky sigh, Tron wrapped both arms around her and held on.

Finally, after so many cycles, he was home.

Definitely a much quieter chapter, but after the shitty triple they all had? They could use a bit of quiet. :3 not that it'll last, I'm sure.

Also yes, Lithium-Ion. I went there and I am not sorry.