Precisely as the door slides open in front of us, the User looks out over Jarvis's shoulder, and locks eyes with the ISO at my side.
I can feel the rush of energy this sends through her circuits, hot against my palm.
There is an urgency to it. A desperate urgency. She leans against my grip as if to be closer to him as she speaks.
She cares for him.
"Sam," she says, and her voice almost pleading for a moment before it turns into a shout, into a command:
"GO!"
System failure: memory filters—file breach detected—
For a moment another voice echoes in my head, speaking disturbingly similar words. A nano's worth of imagery –another flashback I shouldn't see- appears before my eyes before it is gone again: advancing guards, a fleeing figure in the dark. A raised disc.
But then it is gone again, leaving only the echo of the words.
. . . 'Flynn, go!'
I feel a sort of lurch in my stomach, as if something is pulling me forward sharply from the inside. I try to ignore it, but the words and the feeling stay with me even as I throw down my captive, even as I draw my discs.
But I will prevail. I refuse to be distracted now. Not now that I have a user so close, ready for the taking.
I found one, Clu.
I've done it.
You are all mine.
A disc ignites at the Sam-User's side, and he raises it with defiance in every line of his expression, running at me for a few steps before releasing the weapon. It is too direct a shot to be difficult to avoid, and it is fueled by fury and vengefulness for my presumed treatment of that walking virus on the floor at my feet.
It is such a petty motivation.
And such an easy shot.
I could almost, almost laugh.
A single turn, a single rotation and a leap is all it takes. The disc flies beneath me, soaring out into the open air. It will take its time in arcing back to its owner after a throw like that.
And I have all the time I could ask for.
Which is exactly how I like it.
The depth of my hatred for my opponent makes this all almost gratifying. It is all the more satisfying that I can take my time enjoying it. I can raise my head slowly, give him a pause, make him wonder why I am reacting so casually. He'll be all mine in a moment, a captive or a casualty.
And I will make him fear me first.
I am going to make you crawl.
I will show him how easy this is, look at him so levelly, so un-phased. The perfect, perfect soldier . . .
But then my own systems betray me.
Go!—
Error….
The words echo again in my head, an unwelcome distraction.
FLYNN-!
The voice shouting the words is so familiar. . .
I know that voice . . .
-RINZLER! Focus!
I look up again, pull myself away from my micro of reverie, only to be met with the sight of the Sam-user's disc flying headlong towards me. It is another excessively direct shot, albeit better aimed than the first one, but it should be easy enough to avoid.
Except that it isn't.
For a moment I can't even process where this second disc is coming from.
The creator's disc….
No, no, he must have thrown that first. This is his disc…
And drawn so quickly…
Too quickly.
You're not supposed to be that good…
But he is. In one fluid motion he has sent one weapon after another to claim me, and the strangeness of that idea has me reeling.
Which is enough to let the memory through yet again.
GO!
I can't tell if the disc which is rushing towards me is white or orange. All at once the memory is mixing with reality; a sudden, ugly collision. I see the User's disc, but then I don't. I am watching a guard's disc instead, coming at me, and then landing in my hand… and then there is a flicker of yellow somewhere ahead, and a sense of animosity, and then another disc, hurtling towards my head while someone's footsteps fade away…
But then reality breaks through again, and it is a user's disc, not a guard's, which is coming for me. And it is closing fast.
How did it get so close…?
I can't process it. I can't make myself understand its rate of approach or how I should deflect it, or if I should avoid it.
All I can think are those words.
'Flynn—'
WARING: SYSTEM FAILURE—
The edges of my vision are suddenly hazy. All I can see is that disc…
'- go!'
The fallout from exchange with the ISO is all flooding in at once.
No, no no no NOT NOW!
OVERLOAD IMPENDING—
In an instant, all of my bravado, all of my elation, all of my relief and assurance, has been negated.
Two words have made me useless.
I can barely raise my arms to deflect the incoming weapon, can barely think straight, can barely process the look on his face or the sensation of movement below me. All I can see is that disc coming straight for me, and all I can hear is that roughened voice in my head, shouting after his companion, preparing for the end…
When I do look down, at last, when I am able to process the fact that something is coming for me in addition to the disc, it's not enough. I can see that the ISO is rocking back, legs tucked up in the air, and I know on some level that she is going to kick me, but I can't make enough sense of it to prevent it from happening. Her boots meet my chest with a resounding thud, and all at once the ground goes out from beneath me.
She has knocked me backwards.
Me, Rinzler.
Disengaged by a kick.
As I scramble for my balance, she rolls up onto her feet. I move to catch her, to turn her motion against her, but my own discs are suddenly more than I can handle, and I mix offensive and defensive in what is, in the end, a useless bravado of discs that saves me nothing. She kicks me again, harder now.
More than simply knocking me down, this time she sends me flying.
The Sam-user's disc rushes away over my head as I slide backwards across the elevator pad, and as if its passing in reality has some bearing on the passing of the chaos in my head, all at once I am aware of the fact that I am going over the edge of the pad.
ALERT ALERT ALERT—
I am NOT supposed to let go of my discs. Not ever.
. . . But I am not dying with the knowledge that I let the users get away so easily.
I refuse.
Not again.
And so I drop my discs.
I drop them just in time tumble over the edge, and then I fall into empty space.
oOoOoOo
I don't know what I grab onto.
I don't know how I find it.
All I know is that my fall ends abruptly, my weight threatening to pull the pixels in my shoulder apart as I settle. It takes my vision a moment to clear, my mind to focus, but when it does it appears that I've managed to latch onto a support beam on the underside of the pad.
I look down, and can see my discs tumbling away from me, fading into the distance somewhere beyond where my feet are dangling.
I look away before they hit the deck of the carrier. I don't want to see as the code which holds me together shatters. I know it's over without having to watch it happen.
I feel woozy. I feel detached. With no disc to fall back on, my internal systems are already scrambling to patch the breaks, the failures, all on their own. I am aware of some exchange of white orange, white orange, that doesn't make any sense. Already, the parts of me which are never supposed to have control are making themselves into the only thing holding me together, are forming the impetus which drives me to kick away from the platform and try to return to the surface.
The parts of me I'm not supposed to listen to are saving my life.
With one hand clutching the edge of the elevator pad above me, I kick away. My body swings wide, threatening to pull my hand off of the platform altogether. It takes all of the strength I have just to keep my fingers closed around the elevator's edge, and still more that I didn't know I had to kick my feet enough to keep swinging, to keep going until I am inverted.
Up and over I rise, and for a moment I am upside down, looking over the side of the pad at the straight drop below, balancing on one hand which is very, very near collapsing underneath me.
But then it is over.
One foot hits the ground, then the other, then my knee. My own cycling has reached a roaring pitch in my ears, and my chest is heaving, but I am upright once again. I feel as if I might collapse, and lines of code are running through my vision so that I can barely see, but I am upright. I can fight…
In another instant I am on my feet.
I pelt after my prey, ready to follow them to the edge of the system if necessary. . .
. . . but then I falter.
I watch them go instead.
This should be a sign of a problem. But nothing happens.
There is no disc, no code, no protocol to tell me that the way I am handling this is wrong. I know better. I know I should be swaying on my feet, should be collapsing under the weight of this failure, but I'm not. There is nothing to make me.
My system won't let me.
Instead, I feel steady, steady for the first time in… in too long. And I can process. I can understand. Spinning through space with no disc to guide me, the word seeming to re-write itself on all sides of me, it occurs to me that I have no one to blame but myself.
I am the reason they got away.
I have fought under worse conditions. Not 30 micros ago I electrocuted a program with my bare hand. I can sense motion as it happens, draw hour old footprints from the barren floor. I can do what no one else, not even Clu, can do.
I am the perfect predator, and that was a fight I could have won.
Even compromised, that should have been easy. If it wasn't, then that is my own fault.
You let them go.
This realization should be met with a bout of agonizing punishment…. But it isn't. That function is, apparently, written into my discs and not to me. So I feel nothing. There is no wound, no shock, no sense that I am being torn to shreds for thinking those words.
Or for knowing that they are true.
SoWhyDdYouLetThemLive?
. . . Because I'm not done with them.
Clu may kill them if he wants to, but I have questions I want answered.
I will know the truth.
That name, from the memory. I want to know why I heard it, why it was directed at me. I want to know the reason a voice -which I am sure now was my long forgotten voice- is in one of my memories shouting for Kevin Flynn to run, saving his life at the exact moment that he might have been terminated forever. I want to know who the ISO saw when she looked at me.
I have to understand…
And I know who I must find to do so: The creator.
He has hidden for a long time, but now he will have to pay for what he has done. He will answer me.
I will make you see me, Kevin Flynn.
I will make you see who I am. . . .
That thought spins away from me as quickly as it comes, disappearing before I can ask myself what I mean by it. It does not go because I'm not allowed to keep it, but because I can't pin it down and make it stay.
No disc: no anchor.
I am drifting…
I'm not seeing what's in front of me anymore.
I hardly notice when Clu arrives beside me, looking at me with that smile that can only ever mean that someone is going to end up dead. He looks to me, expecting me to explain with no voice why the users are gone yet again. I can't be sure that I am doing it, but I think maybe I nod to him. But maybe I don't.
Reality is fluctuating.
And there is no emotional filter to protect me from it.
From one nano to the next I am in agony, and then I am elated, and then there is a terrible sense of loss, of a need for retribution, to take what is mine from the ones who stole it from me. And as always, the hate for the users. That alarmingly obsessive kind of hate, all mixed together in some horrendous concoction with the debilitating need, the unmet desire, to be seen.
I'm hardly certain I'm even here.
Maybe I'm a figment.
Maybe I'm a lie.
It's like I'm watching myself from somewhere far, far above where I'm really standing, watching myself with my cruel gestures and un-phased response to Jarvis's final, gratifying deresolution. Watching as I follow Clu, but do not follow, knowing as well as he does what he will do, how we will catch them.
Knowing what he'll do before he does it.
I am watching from above as I fall, fall, fall before rezzing up my jet and taking off, off after the users, off after the truth, and off after the blood and satisfaction of killing that I will enjoy if that truth is not given.
I am spinning.
I am free.
And I have no identity. Not really.
Someone took that from me.
. . .They took everything from me . . .
My mind is lost inside of itself, and Clu hasn't even noticed that anything is wrong.
LOOK AT ME.
But he doesn't. He flies on ahead without a backwards glance.
I am broken, Clu.
I am broken and now, there is no way for you to fix me.
They took that, too.
Took my mind from me.
Took it like everything else.
It is time to take it back.
Author's note: I don't want to interrupt the flow of the rest of this with comments from me, so this will be my last author's note. My thanks to my best friend, Rachel, for editing this, and thanks in advance to everyone who I will pester with the next two or three chapters.
Most of all, though, thank you to everyone who has been reading this. It makes me so happy to know that someone is enjoying the final product as much as I have enjoyed creating it. Thank you so much for spending your time on so many chapter's worth of my headcanon. I am honored, and you guys are awesome.
Here's hoping you enjoy the rest of the story.
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