Yori


"Yori, Tron, you're going to want to see this."

Radi rushes in, a blur of red hair and black clothing and circuits so dark you can hardly see them. Paige, who is the newest addition to our little group of rebels-turned-administrators, is behind her. I know nothing about the girl beyond the fact that she has proven useful because of her extensive medical and military experience, and a doggedness to rival even Tron's. She's changed her circuits from orange to green since coming to us, and it suits her.

At this moment, she is carrying a handheld view screen, a worried look dragging on her usually pretty features. Radi is beside her, looking the same way, her arms crossed over her chest. If the situation weren't so obviously something to be alarmed about, the similarity between the two would be truly amusing. Their hair falls in identical swoops over their eyes, and both have a way of looking their angriest when they are concerned: Radi's usual scowl verges on a grimace, and Paige looks as if she would like to stab the nearest program with something sharp.

Tron steps forward from beside me, and takes the tablet from her hand. His brow furrows as he examines it. "What am I looking at?"

Radi looks to Paige to explain, and the younger program inhales deeply before she speaks. Being around Tron makes her feel guilty, I suspect; she was certainly no help to him in the earliest days of Clu's rule, way back before something (what happened exactly she refuses to discuss with anyone,) turned her against him. I don't know a great deal about what she did in the cycles between then and now, but she's been aid enough to us that I really don't mind. We all have stories here… Even Tron is no exception.

He is looking at Paige expectantly, and she clears her throat to speak while I take the tablet from Tron's hands.

"We received a report earlier," she begins, "about a rogue program in the beta sector. Witnesses say he derezzed someone in a bar south of the line."

The line in this case refers to the theoretical border between the rebuilt, restored parts of the city and the western outskirts which are still degrading without Clu's oversight.

"Why'd he derezz the program?"

Violence past the line isn't unheard of—it's certainly no reason for them to look as troubled as they do. I glance at the tablet in my hands to see if it will tell me anything, and I can't help but gasp a little over the familiarity of the image, shock and alarm increasing the heat in my circuits. I'm looking at a reconstruction of the perpetrator from the shoulders up, (probably copied from someone's memory directly), and there is something disturbingly similar to the appearance of Clu's enforcers in the program's dress and posture. It's male, wearing a heavily tinted helmet. Three lines of circuitry are visible on its surface. One runs down the center of the forehead, and on either side over his temples. What's unusual about it, however, is the sharp angle of the helmet… rather like the one I made for Tron eight cycles ago, after we found each other again. It's pointed around the chin, but not so much as to limit its streamlined style, and it's less garish than what Rinzler used to wear.

Still stranger is the color of the circuits; I can't quite make up my mind as to whether what I'm seeing is dark orange or red. It's not a color I have ever seen before in a circuit, and since I tamper with color and structural code as my primary function, that's saying something. I can see why it alarmed Tron… The truth is, the program in the picture looks kind of like, like… well, I'd rather not think of who he reminds me of. That's ancient history now, and better left untouched, though the resemblance is troubling nonetheless.

As I mull over this, Paige continues relaying the witness accounts to Tron.

"Apparently the victim had a problem with Oranges." To me, this word still refers to those funny little round things Lora used to send me in the old system, but to everyone else it's the popular term for Clu's old enforcers because of the color of their circuits. Paige continues:

"He approached the program and began to antagonize him. The perpetrator ignored him, until the victim touched him. Then he turned around, pulled his disc, and derezzed the victim before anybody knew what had happened. The witnesses say they've never seen a program attack so quickly."

Tron looks troubled, but only nods. "Anything else?"

Paige shifts uncomfortably and glances at Radi, apparently hoping the veteran program will come to her aid. Radi looks away from Tron's face, towards the wall.

"Radi," he says sternly, and she grimaces but concedes, turning her head back towards us slowly as she begins to speak.

"Yeah, there's something. After he derezzed the program, he took an item from the leftovers."

Tron's expression darkens exponentially, and I can't help glancing back and forth between him, Paige, and Radi with what I'm sure must be a deeply concerned expression. This must be what has them so shaken—violence beyond the line is typical, but thieving from the derezzed is anything but.

"What did he take?" asks Tron, his voice heavier than I've heard in a long time.

Radi looks him squarely in the eye as she replies.

"His disc."


Rinzler

-One milicycle earlier-


I need a baton.

The walk from the sea to this blackened, decompiling corner of the city took longer than it was worth. I need a cycle. I don't think I like slow journeys. They're a waste.

. . . And I don't like having that much time to think.

I have too many old memories for that, memories that are easy to get lost in. There is no context surrounding them, but the images are enough.

I'm beginning to understand myself. Being is more complicated than it seemed at birth. That much I'm starting to understand.

RINZLER.

I shake my head once, trying to bring my attention back to the drink in my hand. I'm sitting at the bar in some half decimated service facility. It might have been a club once, but there is no knowing now. Either way, I'm here: a drink in hand and my helmet retracted halfway up my face. It looks ridiculous, but it makes no difference to me. Better this than the uproar there will be if the basics I'm surrounded by see my face.

Never let them see your circuits. Not if they're on your skin.

The sea warned me of that.

So the helmet stays over the upper half of my face, where I do indeed have circuits. Revealing circuits. Circuits only ISOs bear. The insignia on my arm is masked, too, hidden beneath a solid band of orange-red circuitry that wraps around my forearm.

That color is going to cause trouble.

I can see that much in the eyes of the other programs in the bar. The basics around me are leaning around each other to have a look at me. They think they're subtle. They're not. But it makes no difference to me.

Go ahead and stare.

Just so long as they leave me alone.

. . . Still, their eagerness is distracting. And pathetic.

I have to tune them out.

Drink, Rinzler.

I do. I'm so thirsty I can hardly stand it. I down the remainder of the energy in my glass in one shot. The bartender gives me a strange look, like he doesn't trust me, as if this is somehow alarming behavior.

Just fill it.

He doesn't have to see my eyes to get the message. Glowering, he takes the glass and refills it, then slams it down on the table harder than necessary.

Watch yourself, program.

I think it but don't say it. I crawled my way into existence less than a milicycle ago. I dragged myself out of the sea, and then walked here. I want to sit here, and recharge, and leave. I'm not in the mood to be confrontational. Or be confronted. Something the program behind me is clearly too dense to understand.

He's big for a basic, blue circuits. Ugly scar under his chin, visibly shattered silver pixels standing out against his skin.

"Hey, Orange."

Don't talk to me.

"I don't like your attitude."

I drink.

"You had better look at me when I'm talking to you, Orange. You shouldn't be here."

He steps closer. I can feel the heat of his circuits from here; feel the change in the air. I don't have to look behind me to know how he's moving, how he stands, where he'll go next… that he's going to do something stupid.

I finish my drink.

I don't look at him.

Still, I know that he's reaching for his baton, can sense it activating behind me. Lightblade, probably; maybe a short staff.

But threatening me is not his mistake.

The mistake is touching me.

He reaches out with his free hand, as if to spin me around on the barstool, and when his palm hits my shoulder, something in my head lights up. A hot, hot orange light, it comes hand in hand with a surging in my circuits like a bolt of electricity.

My helmet snaps down over my chin, and I twist out from under his hand. I tear his baton from his grip and draw my disc all in the same motion.

I don't give myself time to blink.

By the time I do, he's already dead.

There is a sort of broken, hollow shout as he derezzes, and then his body shatters across the floor, tumbling in every direction; little pale blue leftovers and a spinning, abandoned disc and nothing more. The pixels smell like burnt circuits.

Elsewhere in the bar, a program screams.

. . . Time to go.

Still holding the baton, which is now glowing with my own red in my hand, I step down from the barstool. No one stops me from leaving.

They're just smart enough not to try.

Something bumps against my foot as I step over the basic's remains, and I glance down. It's his disc.

There's a part of me that hates to leave it lying there.

It's not a small part.

. . . That bunch of circuits I used to run around in had two of them, didn't he?

That's reason enough for me.

I pick up the disc almost as an afterthought, and walk out of the bar.