Sam took a deep breath and looked down at the terminal in front of him. Someone had cleaned his father's old computer. Zuse had been right. What a fool he had been to think that the arcade was some impenetrable fortress. He hadn't even bothered to put a lock on the steam tunnels leading to the portal terminal. He'd thought that no one would notice that tiny little semi-circular track that signified that the Tron arcade machine moved. Apparently he'd thought wrong.

Sam ran his fingers over the smooth, clean terminal. Someone had spent the time to wipe it completely clean. A small slap in his face, displaying just how long the intruder had been here. But his eyes noticed something. Something tiny. The screws on the side of one of the panels weren't rotated correctly. He had used this terminal over thirty times since his father's death, and for some reason he always caught a certain screw in his vision that was rotated to one o'clock. This time, it was more toward seven.

"Shit." He breathed, running his fingers over the screw. He checked the others. Some were tight, others were sticking out slightly, the panels loose, like they'd been twisted in a hurry. "Someone took it apart." He whispered. How long was he in the Grid? Quorra had told him time was subjective in the Grid. Someone could speed up or slow down cycles, make time as fast as a blink or as slow as a hundred years to a day. It was why they had no formal measurement of time, because time did not exist in the Grid. There were no seconds when there was no concrete definition of what a second could be.

So how long was that cat approaching him? How long had it taken the light train to get there? How long, how long, how long.

"God fucking dammit!" Sam swore, seizing an old screwdriver and irritably fastening the loose screws until the metal squeaked in protest.

"…Sam?"

Sam turned around to see Quorra looking at him, concerned. "…You didn't come home. I got worried. What happened?" she asked, approaching him and touching her fingers to his cheek. Sam put his hand against hers, sighing and leaning into her palm. Quorra always felt like Zuse's touches, cool and mechanical but never warm.

"Someone's invaded the Grid. He resurrected Zuse and he….his pet…attacked me." Sam said quietly, sitting down at the computer chair and rolling up his pant leg. The cat's bite had turned a nasty purple black colour, and the half-circle where the metal had clamped down was swollen up.

"What the…" Quorra knelt and touched the bruises. Sam hissed and jerked his leg out of the way. "..sorry!" she apologized and gently reached out toward his leg. "I've never seen a wound like that, even in the Grid."

"It's not important." Sam growled, rolling his pant leg down. "Someone took apart the portal terminal and put it back together. All in the time I was driving toward the portal."

Quorra frowned. "If he had time to make a completely new program from scratch, slow down the cycle, resurrect Zuse, and hunt you…he's been on the Grid a lot longer than the few hours it took for you to drive to the portal." She said.

Sam realized she was right. Even for him it had taken weeks just to learn how to create and destroy within the Grid. "How can Zuse be alive?" Quorra frowned. "Your father could repair me but he always warned me never to get killed. He tried to help the isos after they were derezzed, but the programming degraded too quickly. It rotted, just like things do here. To bring him back, he would have had to appear on the Grid less than a day after Zuse was killed by Clu." Quorra stood and looked at the terminal. "Can you get back in?"

"I'm not sure. He was toying with me. He sent that animal after me, then he opened the Grid right when it could have killed me. He was messing with me Quorra….I need to fight back." Sam said. "Listen, I need you to guard the portal. I need to go see Alan. He'll know what's going on." He grabbed his coat from its usual spot on an old countertop.

Quorra frowned. "I can try and get in, do something-"

"No. I don't want you in there with that fucking cat. I barely got away from it. If he knows what you are, he'll either kill you or…. I don't know. But it won't be good." Sam said. He leaned in and kissed her cheek. "Please, do this for me. Guard the terminal."

The iso sighed and nodded, but she clearly wasn't happy about it. Sam tried to smile reassuringly at her. He would fix this, he had to fix this.

He ran out of the arcade and swung his leg over the back of his bike. It was a respectable thing, a Kawasaki, but not nearly the beauty or grace of his father's light cycle. He turned on the engine and swung out into the street, gunning the engine. He knew where Alan would be, working late as usual. He headed toward the skyscraper, sighing, his mind buzzing with questions.

It was the longest elevator ride he'd ever taken, heading up to the top, to Alan's office. Even though he had taken over the position of CEO at ENCOM, Alan had promised to stay on as his CFO, and thus was in the office next to his own. Sam's office was empty most of the time, hell, the maintenance crew probably knew his office better than Sam did. Sam headed down the hallway to the corner office of Alan Bradley. He smiled when he saw the older man's face reflected in the light of the computer screen. He rapped his knuckles on the open doorway. "Knock, knock." He said softly.

Alan looked up. "Sam?" he smirked and shook his head. "You've not been in the office for months. You know, Dillinger hasn't stopped appealing for your resignation. If you don't start showing up here, the board is going to start seeing things his way." He said sharply.

"Thanks, dad." Sam said wryly. "Listen….Alan…" he looked down at his feet. "…I've got a problem."

"Of course you do. You're on the Fortune 500 list and you don't even bother to toss the press a word. You missed a press conference this afternoon." Alan said irritably, shutting off his terminal and pulling his glasses off his face. He ran his fingers over his eyes.

"No, that's not what I mean Alan. It's…the Grid." Sam said, and he saw from the change in his old friend that he had immediately gotten Alan's attention.

"Jesus Christ Sam…" Alan hissed, getting up from his desk and herding Sam into his office. He shut the door and locked it. "What?"

"…There's someone in the Grid. You know how Clu killed the only other iso other than Quorra?" Sam said quietly.

Alan nodded. "Zuse. The owner of the club. Your father and I found him as a trader among the isos. We always thought he'd get himself killed one way or another." He said, drawing the shades. "What about him?"

"He's alive. This other User…he resurrected him. He also sent some sort of program after me. Nearly tore my leg off." Sam said, running his fingers through his hair.

He saw Alan's face pale. Sam knew he hadn't exactly been keeping the old man in the loop. He'd explained everything when he'd come back the first time, but since then Alan had preferred being a desk jockey to running around the wilds of the Grid. Someone had to keep the company from sinking itself. "Well how the hell did he get in? The only portal is in the arcade and I gave you the key almost a year ago." Alan demanded.

Sam felt his throat constrict. "I….uh.." he scrambled for an excuse, but there wasn't one. He'd fucked up.

Alan's face darkened. "I trusted you. That was your father's greatest creation, his life's work. If people knew about it he would go down in the history books as the greatest programmer, the greatest inventor of the age. Putting the biological into the digital. And you just…." He threw up his hands. "Sam. I've watched you grow up. I've cleaned up your messes with the company, I really have and I'm not going to fix your messes with the Grid too. You have to take responsibility sooner or later, god dammit, and I thought you would when I gave you the key to the arcade. This is your problem. You find a solution." he said angrily.

"I really need your help here Alan! You helped my Dad program it, I'm still learning the-"

"All you've done in the Grid is drink with Zuse and hang around moping." Alan said coldly. "You had plenty of time to learn the ropes. If you'd spent time learning from Zuse instead of drinking you might have done more security. There were no guards after Clu, I checked myself. You have let the Grid run wild and it's no one's fault but your own."

Sam felt completely and utterly silenced. Alan was right. He hadn't made any effort to learn the Grid's programming, and apparently this other User had. He'd always skated through life, he knew the programming of the real world like nothing else. He could manually debug thousands of lines of code, he could pull a virus prank on an international company meeting, but his father had proved that the Grid was a lot different than just logging in.

"Sam. Listen to me." Alan said, a bit more gently. "If you truly want to take over this company…then prove it to me with the Grid. You have to grow up sometime. You can't just run around with Quorra, sleep in a shipping crate no matter how nice it is, feed your dog takeout…you're better than that. But you're a lot like your father." he sighed. "Go fix your mistake."

Sam nodded quietly, turning to leave.

"Sam?"

He looked back at Alan's tone.

"Find Tron."

Zuse shivered as he let the train take him over the ocean. That black, endless sea that had consumed Tron and the bodies of the isos after Clu had simply dumped them in. Zuse had left the management of the club go for the day, and shut it down. The programs could use with a little sobering up anyway, and Zuse didn't want to be worrying about someone breaking into his personal rooms.

He stood up when they approached the portal. Dillinger had given him very specific instructions. Reach where the portal hit the ocean…and go downward from there. Down past the ocean into the depths of programming. To the halls of the dead.

Programs were never fully eliminated, they could always be recovered. It was a security that the elder Flynn had put in to prevent himself from doing something silly. It had saved Zuse, but he was still frightened as to what he would find down there. He had no memory of his time there, he had woken up in his bed with Dillinger staring down at him.

He stepped off the train, cane in hand, and looked down to see the panther. "I hope you can swim….or fly." Zuse said doubtfully. The program rumbled a snarl at him. Clearly, it shared its masters opinion of the club owner. "Well don't get pissy at me. I don't want to be here any more than you do."

The cat sniffed at him and walked down the narrow pathway, suspended above the ocean. Here was a programming gray area. A hole in the solidarity of the Grid where programs could not go. But Zuse was more than a simple program. He just needed to get down there. He looked down at the edge of the platform, standing next to the panther. "What the hell does he want me to do….jump?" Zuse mused.

He didn't get time to answer the question, the cat did it for him. He felt the creature slam into the back of his knees with its powerful shoulders, and his legs buckled. Then he was falling down into nothingness, the mist rushing up to meet him.