CHAPTER PREFACE (please see the author's note at the end of the page for more info on this new preface formatting):
The admins plus Rinzler and minus Yori, who's still off manning the fort, are in hot pursuit of a program who's speech before murdering a civilian who refused to pay protection money had just clued them into the possibility that the simulation gangs may be more organized than they thought, and may even have one mastermind leading them-identity unknown. So they set off after this rogue gangster program to try and bring him in and see if they can get a name out of him. They track him to the edge of the outlands, where he leads them on a wild chase on foot to the top of an under-construction building from which he takes off on an evidently modded jet the rest of them can't keep up with . . . especially Rinzler, since he's been given a baton that's not equipped with a jet until he can prove himself a functional and at least semi-trustworthy member of the team. (Not that Tron would ever actually say "member of the team".)
Rinzler, however, is undeterred, and leaps off the building after the rogue despite this whole doesn't-have-a-jet issue.
Tron
They peel away from the roof, and I'm torn—error—between relief as Rinzler crashes to the ground and the Simulation leader explodes into the sky, out of reach for the moment. We have good jets: we don't have whatever he's done to his. I don't understand why I bother hoping, though. As the rogue screams away into the dark, a glimmer of red and orange sparking like something I once knew the name for drops from the tail with a cable at the ready. It locks on the wing, and Rinzlers weight sends the both of them spiraling while the cable draws him up to the wing and out of the line of fire from a newly generated ribbon. Rinzler grasps the tip of the wing as it spirals, drawing a pattern Flynn once called a corkscrew into the sky as the jet plummets towards the ground.
"Go get them!" my voice rings in my ears, reverberating in my helmet. "Before they break something important."
Like a person. Or the infrastructure Yori's been designing from scratch—she's mad enough with me as it is.
Before any of us can even reach the rooftop's edge, however, Rinzler releases his grip on the jet. He slides along its spinning surface, colliding with the rebel pilot and driving a hand over his shoulder into the controls, his helmet digging into the green-clad basic's shoulder. What are you telling him, you monster?
The jet rights itself and careens into the distance, arcing between buildings. In the distance a civilian screams.
"Track him," I order, and pull my baton, diving into empty air and pursuit.
Rinzler
I have a foot on either wing, my hand dug into the armor on the gangster's gridsuit. Gangster. I don't understand where the word came from. If I invented it or not. I don't care. It's what he is. A defect bent on chaos while I am the order drawn from it. Certified. Approved. With the administrators' blessing.
I'd tear their circuits out just as readily today.
But toying with them is better. Watching Radi eye me like an ugly memory, Mav trying not to laugh with a hand ready at his disc, expressionless Greshim holding his posture erect while fear and memory flicker in his eyes. You knew me, once. Sentry.
He also knew Tron.
Tron, who'd denied me flight in my baton. You're getting unimaginative, old program. Who must be spitting mad in the dust I've left him, cut to pixels by out ribbon if I'm fortunate.
Cut down the center of his skull.
The criminal beneath me thrashes. I pull him backwards against my body, smash my helmet against his, trapped against the heat of my own circuits' spark.
"Fly or die, program."
"I'll derez you right here," he screams, my hands still on his jets controls. I laugh, and knock his spare baton from his hand.
He lets me drive us between two near buildings, skimming along a window, ribbon drowning out an office's lights. Someone screams. Somewhere behind us, blue lights take over the sky. We dive towards the ground.
Tron
Their jet leaves shrapnel behind. A few pixels here, a few more dashed against a rock. They've managed to make it as far as the city limits. I lean into my controls, pushing an engine that can take no more than its pilot: old, strained, and ready to stall, with its most dependable mechanic, its most trusted garage, closed door-ed at home.
You should see him now, Yori. He's going to derezz himself and the evidence, leaving us with nothing. Some pixels. A disc, if he doesn't decide he needs three.
The largest trail of pixels is spilt across a long, thin patch of relatively even terrain ending in a cliff. He's destroyed it all. That I should be so lucky and unlucky all at once. I lean into the jet, to the baton at its heart, and careen towards the edge, pulling up and rolling over to survey Rinzler's orange and red leftovers. He is, however, perfectly intact except for his helmet, the jagged remnants of which are shedding as he circles the rogue with a disc to his throat, and a gash in his arm. His sea colored eyes are as impassive as the alloys of a buildings base code. A smirk is playing with the corner of his mouth.
"You're impossible," the rogue is saying as I drop to the ground.
"You have no idea," Rinzler sneers, "Just ask him." He jerks his head in my direction. The rogue's eyes slide sideways in his head, towards me in my helmet, me without a face while Rinzler wears a cheap mimicry of it. The rogue doesn't know that, and I don't care for revealing it.
"What do you want?" the rogue screeches.
Rinzler digs the disc into the back of his neck, but the program doesn't scream, only winces from the heat. He's yet to be cut. Give it a nanocycle, he'll tear your head off. Rinzler makes a sharp sound in his nose. What do you want? The rogue demands again. Rinzler digs his disc in, evidently out of words. He seems to have a limited capacity for them, a threshold he won't cross. A maximum. A pixel flakes free from his victim's neck.
"Rnzler!"
He glances at me without looking up, his eyes sliding sideways in his head, and tilts his arm towards me. His left index finger is missing. A last casualty of the crash, dripping pixels. Can you repair that?
The program on his knees hears the name and cackles.
"Yeah, right," he says. Rinzler drives a knee into his back and sends him sprawling. While he scrambles, the red-orange abomination circles him again, one foot placed directly in front of the other. He was never that delicate with my body. Never that in control of it, for all of his skills. It protested every move he ever made. I can still feel the ache of it.
I step in the way of his circle, in front of the rogue. Greshim and Radi take his arms. Mav stands back, muttering for someone to send a chopper or a recognizer, repeatedly, as if he can't get an answer.
"Who is your ringleader?" I demand, and the rogue program smirks. There's a scar on his face like one that I once had.
"Doesn't matter who," he says, "You'll find out when she takes this system right out from under you."
"She?" Radi says behind me. None of us gets the chance to follow up: the rogue dives forward, driving his head into my stomach and pulling his arms forward so that Radi's head collides with mine and Greshim slams into me with his shoulder. I feel him lift my baton away from my thigh, but can't reach for him with my subordinates dragging me t the ground. A cloud of dust rises on all sides of us as we fall together in a heap of once competent programs. Why did you stand so close, bit brain?
I lift my head, trying to throw the others off of me. Rinzler has the program stalled, engaging him disc to disc with a familiar whir and clang. The look on his face is furious, a grimace or war cry trapped in the crinkling of his nose, but his mouth is set and his eyes are focused on nothing but the program's next move.
"Don't kill him!" I shout. Rinzler cuts a chunk out of the program's side.
"I'll try."
Author's note: I've decided that I'm going to try to finish this fic after all, but I'm going to do it as a series of vignettes and a limited number of multi-chapter sequences, more similar to what I did in Through Broken Eyes, except less structured than that. Basically my goal this year is to write at least 3-5,000 words a week, even if that means resorting to fic while I get back in the swing of things. So from here on out I'll be adding a preface to explain what the context on any given chapter is so that I don't have to write all that world building and nuance and . . . yeah. So, essentially the rest of it will look like the fragments, but with the ultimate goal of still telling a story even if it is somewhat of a skeleton. A minimally edited skeleton, if we're being totally honest, because right now I've got all my betta readers tasked with my original manuscript and I will not be asking anyone to take additional time out of their days to edit this, too.
So . . . that's the deal and I realize there's a certain egomaniacal silliness about it. But so long as even one or two people get any entertainment out of this, it's worth it to me to at least try, even if it means cutting some narrative corners, and so that's the plan going forward. This way you guys still get to read all the interesting plot-thickens-y scenes, too. Yay! Or I hope "yay," anyway.
For those of you who don't want to deal with that, thanks for having a look at all. For those of you that want to give it a go in this new format, thank you, thank you, thank you, you honor me . . . and I'm actually really excited to see what you think of the rest of this fic. :)
-StellarR
