fic: Le Disko - Weather Girl
Story: Le Disko
Chapter: Weather Girl
Fandom: TRON & Legacy
Verse: Pilots & Poison
Characters/Pairing: OFC - Azeri, Sam, Tron, Quorra, OFC - Enyo, Ed Dillinger Jr, OCs; Sam/Tron
Rating: T+
Word Count: 6659
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Summary: She was not compiled to weather these storms, but the Grid is a dangerous world and she needs to perform above and beyond to survive.
Author's Note: And now for something completely different, plot. This took several months to write but finally the weight's off my shoulder and I'll have one less thing to worry about.
This time stamp is about a character who was mentioned once in another time stamp called Dragon Tattoo. I wanted to write about her in order to flesh her out and determine her place in this 'verse. Then things...spiraled out of control. You'll know where it happened.
The plot development here makes this one of the very last chapters of Le Disko.
They had to build a brand new I/O port for this task. Compatibility issues, one of the main obstacles to achieving a functioning Grid. What Flynn designated the TRON System has twenty years of massive technological advances to catch up on.
The problem, Sam thought sourly, was that while it was easy enough upgrading some of the hardware it was ridiculously difficult getting the Grid's code to behave and accept the changes. Progress was crawling at a snail's pace and it didn't care that several days' worth on the Grid was supposed to show itself impressively in an hour's worth in his world.
"So did Dad write all the program here or did he port you guys in from somewhere else?" he asked as he successfully wrestled a segment of new code into a part of a semi-transparent wall. Inner wall. According to the data pad Nyx held out for him this one was part of a set of double walls meant to separate the lobby/adaptation rooms from the interfaces and the portal.
"He ported very few programs from other systems," the Siren said. "Acclimation is, Enyo tells me, 'trying'. You can ask Tron about it."
Sam frowned, then remembered that Tron was Alan's program, written for ENCOM's network back in '82. He definitely wasn't around when Flynn first set up the system underneath the arcade. Sam made a mental note to ask both programs later and glanced at the data pad to see what was next.
Given the program he and Quorra were writing, this shouldn't be a problem.
* * *
Alive is the rush of white heat flooding outward from the disk dock. Alive is the sets of directives and subroutines coming online simultaneously, flooding circuits and code with purpose. Alive is the first deep breath that breaks the barrier and allows her to feel the system.
Until her sensors crash into a barrier, an impenetrable wall giving off an oddly familiar signature. They try again but it doesn't let her pass. Her directives are denied permission and she remains in suspension, waiting for her Users to give it so that the system can cut her loose.
"...hang on-oh. Knock it off, she's not hostile. Let her in."
And suddenly she's alive.
Her eyes open and start scanning her surroundings. This is the inner sanctum of an I/O port, and surrounding her are several of the system's security programs. She takes a good look at the two standing in front of her and-one of them is not a program.
"Identify yourself," the other says, leveling stern gray eyes at her.
They both feel familiar to her. She feels a camaraderie with the one who is a program, feels a tug towards him and the other programs surrounding her as if they're meant to be one functioning unit. The signature of the other one-the signature of the User runs deep in her code but someone else is missing and she looks around the inner sanctum.
"Relax, man. Don't scare her," the User-SamFlynn says and gives her a warm smile. "So, what's your name?"
Her name comes to mind and tips out of her lips into the humming atmosphere.
"My name is Azeri."
* * *
“He wants another Anon,” Quorra said after a long moment. “Makes sense; Tron can’t be everywhere all the time.”
“Anon?” Sam echoed. “What, you mean ‘Anonymous’?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. That’s what Flynn designated him. He was a system monitor program specifically written to help Tron maintain peace between ISOs and Basics. He died helping me get out of the city.”
Sam paused the game and set the controller down before turning to her. She continued to stare straight at the mounted TV, unblinking and fingers clutching her controller a little too tightly. Marvin continued to sleep next to her, head in her lap, oblivious to the sudden change in mood.
“Q-” Sam began but she shook her head, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Sorry. It’s been so long, and living here it all seemed so far away. Sometimes I forget what it used to be like before everything went to-went to hell, right? That’s what you say?”
He reached over and placed his hand on her shoulder, squeezed it once to get her to look at him. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe now.”
“I know.” She gave him a shaky but brilliant smile, and then held up her controller. “Keep playing?”
After fifteen more minutes they took a break and he ordered pizza while she poked at the prototype Slate. After he hung up she said, “I can help you write the program. I know what he’s looking for.”
* * *
“Show me what you can do.”
She stands in the center of the Training Grid, facing Tron. The ground hums of malleable code that's ready to generate whatever simulated scenario Tron wishes. She’s seen the sims, watched his team move through the artificial landscapes and fend off gridbugs and hostile programs. Is that why she was written? Was this system so unstable that programs performed processes and accessed resources as they pleased, preventing the Grid from functioning and creating destructive gridbug swarms?
She wonders if he intends to set a simulated gridbug swarm on her and is surprised when he instead reaches behind him to remove his disk. She raises an eyebrow at this unexpected turn, and then takes an involuntary step back when Tron shifts his stance and rezzes a glossy black helmet over his head.
He intends to fight her. Fine. Azeri unlatches her disk from its dock and mimics his pose, crouching low and gathering herself for the first move, the first strike. Her helmet unfolds from the back of her neck, around her high ponytail, and downward in a cascade, shielding her face. As soon as data starts streaming across the helmet's surface he strikes.
Tron takes the role of the aggressor, flinging his disk at her and-wait, where'd he get the second one from? She twists away from the streaking blue disk, then drops low to let the second whizz by her head. They ricochet off the clear walls rising out of the ground and closing around them like a cage, and return to their owner.
My turn. She darts forward, throws her disk at the ground next to his left foot, and darts to his right. Her eyes never leave her disk, tracks its movements as she slams her forearm into Tron's exposed side and meets space. He's already twisting away, sliding back across the floor; she spins around to face him, her disk almost within reach, and stares at the blazing blue disk headed for her head.
She jerks away but the disk's white-hot edge grazes her helmet as it spins by. A few pieces of hot code fall to the ground and she sweeps them away with her foot, shivering.
"Trying to kill me already?" she demands as she hefts her disk in her hand and hears Tron's bounce off the angled wall behind her.
"I hope not," Tron says and throws his other disk at her.
She blocks it easily and then drops to her knees to let the first disk pass over her left shoulder. Her eyes sweep over the angles of their cage, tracing pathways, and settles on a viable one; she turns her wrist as she rises to her feet and slings her disk at a slanted wall behind Tron. The ricochet is perfect and the disk bounces off the prerequisite walls, barely avoids Tron's second disk, and streaks towards the Basic's chest. Tron flings himself back to avoid it and lands in an ungraceful heap on the floor.
Her upper hand lasts less than a second. Tron leaps to his feet and deflects her disk on its way back to her. Swearing, she takes off after it, watching Tron run...at the nearest wall.
"What the-"
Their cage lurches and she suddenly realizes what's about to happen. She snatches her disk out of the air and slams its edge into the wall. The code protests, trying to repair itself and force the disk out; she puts her weight behind it and the disk sinks in. The cage shifts violently and starts flipping over; she grips her disk tightly as her feet lose contact with the floor and hang in the air. She watches Tron on the other side, running up the wall and then down to the new designated floor towards her.
As soon as her feet touch the floor Azeri wrenches her disk out of the wall and uses the force as a momentum, lets it carry her around to block Tron's blow. She uses her forearm to block his other arm, then tries to hook her foot around his ankle and knock him off his feet. He shifts his weight to his other foot and quickly takes advantage of her brief loss of balance; he slams his elbow into her chest, right under one of her main circuits, and then kicks her across the arena.
Her helmet cracks as she hits the floor; the stream of data disappears as bits of code chip off. Her sensors and subroutines stutter and try to access the damage as she pushes herself up on trembling arms. Where's Tron-
Overhead. She throws herself out of the way and rolls right over her disk; she swipes it off the floor and leaps back to her feet right before he can kick her back down.
"Good," she thinks he says. Then the vibrant hum of activated disks crashing against each other drown the half-formed memories.
It doesn't take an upgrade to know that Tron is superior to her, though that could be attributed to his part-sysadmin status. She feels that vibration of power as she counters his every blow with her disk, her forearm, her elbow; it's a bit jarring, a bit intimidating, and it starts to wear her down. She pushes back against him as best as she can - her Users didn't write her on a whim, she's supposed to be able to hold her ground against unauthorized programs and system failures - but she blocks more than she strikes and she starts backing up, step by step, across the floor. The wall is coming up behind her and if he corners her, pins her down so that she can't fight back, he wins their match.
Not yet. She ducks a blow, twists away from the second, and drives her elbow into his side. Her foot catches on something, though, and she tumbles to the floor, losing her grip on her disk. It's within reach and she scrambles for it.
Tron's foot comes down on it and she looks up at the black helmet. It collapses away, revealing his face.
"Not bad," he says and nudges her disk to her. He waits for her to sit up and then extends his hand. She takes it and he hauls her back onto her feet. "You started slowing down towards the end. Why's that?"
The cage collapses around them and the walls meld back into the floor. A cold wave washes in, soothing her heated circuits, and she sighs in relief. She opens her eyes to see Tron walking towards the activated lift at the far end of the Training Grid and jogs after him.
"I'm meant to assist you, not challenge you," she says as she matches him stride for stride. "Will that be a problem?"
"Not yet," he replies. He turns sharply on his heels and folds his arms behind his back, looks straight ahead. She looks at his stance curiously as the lift sinks under the Grid's surface.
"Don't worry," she says while seeing if she can mimic him without being obvious. "I won't trip over my feet while monitoring the sectors."
Tron smirks as the lift stops at the Armory. Cyrus and Yssandra are waiting for them. "Cyrus?"
"Three weapon caches in Eta. Caix and Zaller are on their way to extract them. Enyo wants you to see her. It's about Zuse; she traced him back to the Library."
Tron frowns. "How'd he get in?"
"That's why Enyo wants to see you." Cyrus flicks at something on his data pad. "Activity at the border of Tau and Upsilon. Don't know if it's hostile."
"Azeri?"
She nods. "On it."
"Don't overstep your directive," Tron says as she steps off the lift and Cyrus takes her place. "Ixion should be on his way to assist."
She watches them leave and turns to Yssandra. "I need a baton."
The Siren motions to one of the walls; the panels retract, revealing seven batons and three beam katanas. Azeri takes one of each and attaches the katana's handle to the holster on her thigh.
"Good luck," Yssandra says as she leaves the Armory.
* * *
Writing a program for Tron wasn't the hard part. He could code blindfolded while hanging upside down off the top of ENCOM Tower if it didn't give Alan, the board, and all of the shareholders heart attacks. This code did require a bit of tweaking since the system Sam inherited was quite different from the system Flynn created which was quite different from UNIX. Actually, judging by how often Quorra shoved his chair away to review the code and do the tweaking, the program's code required a lot of it.
"Definitely not in Kansas anymore," he muttered as he soaked up the latest changes Quorra made.
"In what?"
"Kansas. Wizard of Oz. Swore I showed you the movie; it's a classic."
At the end of the day - the second day; he's going back to the Grid tomorrow, and why did tomorrow have to be a Friday and not a Saturday? - he joined Quorra and they walked down the hall to the elevator. He'd been entertaining an idea that almost made him miss his meeting with Legal but something about it just didn't feel right. He wanted her opinion on it.
"Say this works," he started.
"Of course it'll work," she said. "You wrote it."
"We wrote it. It's your program, too." Quorra smiled at the reminder, eyes bright and pleased. "Say this works, spectacularly. Would you add the program to our lineup?"
Her expression turned thoughtful. "It's a companion firewall; it's meant to coordinate with Tron, and we don't have the equivalent of Tron here."
"We can-tweaking it isn't hard."
She looked at him curiously and he wondered if he'd given himself away. He kept expecting her to rephrase herself - "You wrote it for him." - even though she never would because that's not who she was. It's what she kept saying in his head, though.
He used to not give a second thought to what he did for the Grid. The system was outdated and outclassed by the modern operating systems; he didn't have to worry himself with writing experimental code and not sharing any of it with the company. There was nothing particularly glamorous or innovative about repairing a broken twenty-year-old system. But now he and Quorra had written a brand new program, a firewall that could work in conjunction with and independently of the main security monitor program. It wouldn't be hard to modify some of the code, toss it to the programmers, and say, "What would you do with it?"
But the doubt in his head, wrapped up in Quorra's bright but wary tones, wouldn't stop pointing out that, "You wrote it for him." This was something he did for Tron, only because Tron asked. Was it right to take something he created as a gift and use it to help ENCOM? Tron wouldn't know. Tron wouldn't care, but Sam would.
"Besides," Quorra suddenly said, "there's Ixion.
Ed's pet project. The antivirus suite that's going on the market next month, compatible with all operating systems. It wouldn't look good if Quorra introduced a newer, better firewall program than the one in the suite within weeks of its launch. Sam shuddered at the idea of annoyed emails and phone calls flooding his inbox and overwhelming his phone.
"Alan said the only reason why the shareholders hadn't complained the past few months was because of Ixion," Quorra added. "Remember? They were worried about you. Thought you might do what Flynn did."
"I remember," he said with a heavy sigh. "Fine. Let Ed get all the glory. Have to test the program out anyway. Need to see if it works exactly as he wants it to."
He couldn't help but wonder how Tron would greet him tomorrow. Would he be all businesslike and ask about the status of the monitor program, or would he drag Sam off to a secured, secluded part of the sector? He shivered at the thought of the latter option and disguised it poorly with a not-too-casual roll of his sore shoulders. Next time, he told himself, he was taking Roy's advice and walking around his office every thirty minutes when he's programming and not juggling several meetings, phone calls, a hefty volume of passive-aggressive email, and people who keep walking in and acting all surprised when they see him there.
Six and a half months and they still couldn't get over him being large and in charge of ENCOM.
"So what are we doing tonight?" Quorra asked when they were somewhere between the fifth and fourth floor.
"Dunno. Wanna grab something at Philippe's?"
* * *
"Could've been worse," Enyo says, frowning at the crisscrossing footwork under the piles of cold broken code. She nudges a deactivated disk and Sen snaps it up.
"Could've gone a lot better," Cyrus replies. "There's just no way they could've gotten this far into the city without tripping something.'
The problem, Azeri thinks as she watches Enyo follows the general direction of the programs' trail down the street and left over the sidewalk and between two towers, is that this wasn't a random act of sabotage. They got this far because they knew where they were going and what they were targeting. Who, rather.
"Take these back to headquarters and trace them," Tron says, handing Cyrus three disks and Sen two. "Caix, Zaller, you're with me. Azeri, follow Enyo."
The footsteps lead them to the border of a defunct sector. Azeri looks up at the sky-high silhouettes while Enyo tuts quietly. She wonders when SamFlynn will bring this one back to life.
"How many times is it now?" Enyo asks as she steps over the distinct boundary between an active and an inactive sector.
Azeri takes a deep breath before following suit; there's no physical barrier she has to pass through, but she can feel the shift deep in her code. A distinct chill settles in and she becomes acutely aware of the emptiness, the lack of activity and life that usually throbs through the streets and hums underfoot. She rubs at a blue circuit on the inside of her arm as she follows Enyo deeper into the sector.
"The third," Azeri answers. The only hum she can feel comes from Enyo. They're the only distinct sources of light on this wide street, they and the footprints leading them deeper into the sector. "Different location, different programs, different tactics, but the goal is the same."
"Does he know?"
She thinks back, recalls the grim line of his mouth and the sudden stiffness in his stance and his words as he ordered the others to do a sweep of the sector. "He doesn't talk about it."
"Of course he won't," Enyo says. "Oh. This could be a problem."
"What?"
Enyo points at her feet and Azeri realizes that the trail they'd been following has ended at a pile of code. She steps forward and crouches down, sifting through the bits and pieces, but the disks are missing.
"There has to be another trail."
"Except I can't find it," Enyo says crossly. "It should be-" She lifts her hand and slides her fingers through the air. Her circuits briefly intensify and then they see it, a faint green trace making a straight line for a sector beyond this one. "Upsilon."
Upsilon is the sector infested with faulty programs. If one was looking for a seedy place to hide from the likes of Tron and Ixion, Upsilon would be it. Shaddox's best efforts to clear the clutter and make it functional only made a bigger mess of things, and it's been earmarked for SamFlynn to take on when he returns.
"Do we try," Azeri asks, "or do we make a note and return to Alpha?"
Enyo doesn't answer but she starts tracing the faint green path. Azeri sweeps around the immediate area - empty buildings, empty streets, a search program and a monitor tracking a light jet's trail - and follows her through the sector. Several minutes in, Azeri notices a tower partially destroyed by what looks like gridbugs. Then another appears, the jagged edges of the walls in sharp relief to the smooth and seamless rise of the others around it. Soon they're walking through a field of destruction, the ground littered with code and deactivated disks. Azeri moves to pick one up.
"Leave it," Enyo says tightly. "These are cycles old."
The search program sidesteps the debris with incredible precision, her feet landing here and there and nowhere else. Azeri follows her to the other side and they continue following the wispy trail. She wonders how Enyo can make it reveal itself if the program they're following reaches a higher altitude while making its escape to Upsilon but somehow the green line remains within reach of her fingertips.
Minutes pass as they weave through the sector. Then Enyo breaks the silence with, "Ever wonder what a program's User was thinking during the compilation process?"
Azeri blinks and the focused intent on Enyo's face shifts to open curiosity at her. "Compilation process?"
"Until I met Flynn," Enyo begins, "I never thought much of Users other than my own. Thanks to him I sometimes wonder what Julia-59 was thinking while she was compiling me. Anyone tell you what happened on the Grid?"
Flynn, Flynn, Flynn, not SamFlynn, not her User, but- "Cyrus told me."
Enyo nods. "A Codified Likeness Utility in the image of Flynn, but in the image of Flynn when he wrote CLU."
Azeri has no idea where Enyo's train of thought is headed. "I don't understand."
"Users are the most fascinating things," Enyo says. "They're not like us-"
"Of course they're not."
"They change, all the time. The Sam we talked with two centicycles isn't the same as the Sam who helped us deal with that massive gridbug swarm six centicycles ago. Which Sam do you think compiled you?"
Azeri shifts uneasily at the thought. She only knows one SamFlynn and that's her User, the one who flashes her a grin and a thumbs-up whenever she sees him. And there's the other User, Qu0rra. Azeri never met her, has no idea what she's like, but she can feel her guiding touch deep in her subroutines.
"I have two Users," she finally says.
"So which Sam and which Quorra," Enyo amends. She stops in her tracks and turns on the heels of her feet to tilt her head up to Azeri. "What do you think they wanted when they compiled you?"
"What they wanted - me. Why's this suddenly relevant?" Azeri asks.
"How a program's written affects her ability to function."
Azeri clenches her fists until her circuits throb in protest. Is Enyo questioning her competence? "I think I followed my directive to the code back there."
"Hey, hey, I'm not saying that," Enyo says quickly. "Everyone did great. Everyone did what they were supposed to do."
"So what are you getting at?"
"Just an observation," Enyo says. She turns around and picks up the trail again. "I just wonder why you took such care to protect Tron."
Azeri stares after her as she walks down the street to an intersection and makes a right, following the light jet trail towards Upsilon.
* * *
A massive code push, a gridbug attack, and a sweep of a section of the Outlands for any sign of a particularly troublesome group of Sentries devoured most of his time. Half a millicycle ago the rain started falling, the digital equivalent of water washing away the mess they made resurrecting half of a sector. It would be another two hours before the rain let up, and Sam didn't feel like heading back to the portal in this Grid weather.
"Not one for the rain, then," he said as Tron dragged him off the balcony. He grinned at the disapproving look Tron gave the sky and leaned in to lick the water off the program's lips.
Sometime between Tron pushing him down on the bed to suck rainwater out of his mouth and Sam straddling him to draw a long low sound out of his throat, the rain stopped falling. Sam paused at the sudden silence outside of his heavy breathing and Tron's loud thrumming, and then Tron growled and dragged purple-laced fingers down his chest.
"Just..." Sam mumbled a long while later, too blissed to move his arms the way he wanted them to, "it won't hurt..."
"No." Tron pressed his mouth to Sam's neck, to the curve of his jaw, closed teeth on his earlobe.
"You sai-" Sam hissed, writhed under the program, dragged fingertips down Tron's back. Tron shuddered and pressed his forehead to Sam's. It takes him a long time to say something.
"...not yet."
"I can't...port you out without it, you know."
Tron made a noise at the back of his throat and slowly sat up. Sam's hands slid down his sides and settled on his hips, thumbs pressing against the edges of the thin bluish purple nodes low on his front.
"I can't leave the Grid without someone to take my place in my absence," Tron said. He shivered when Sam curved his thumb and pressed it against the circuit. "Don't distract me, Sam."
"Hypocrite," Sam muttered.
Tron smiled, bent down, and kissed him. Sam stroked the curve of his hipbone and then lifted his hand to bury his fingers in the program's damp hair. Time slipped away as Tron slid up Sam's body to take full control of the kiss, as Sam relearned the shape and slick feel of Tron's mouth.
The first warning pulsed in the air and they reluctantly broke the kiss.
"Fine," Sam said. He stared up at the faint violet glow on the ceiling and then tilted his head to the right to look at the bright star over the cityscape.
"Next time I'm here, I'll have that security monitor."
* * *
Programs that don't have permission to perform certain actions and access resources will often simply be denied, and those that break through leave behind angry imprints, tracks that can be traced back to them. Most programs can't tell, but that's what security monitors and firewalls are for.
Azeri sits back on her lightcycle, helmet retracting from around her head. She stares up at the great citadel that houses the Grid's Library, tracing the sweeping cyan lines with her eyes. She then drops her gaze to the faint red traces around the Library's perimeter.
"Interesting," she says as she dismounts. The lightcycle collapses and she slides the baton into her thigh holster. She hops up onto the sidewalk and follows the circuit-lined walkway to the Library's entrance.
Only one of the Guardians is at the lobby when she enters. The trail abruptly disappears at the entrance and reappears at the edge of the chasm separating the lobby from the library deep inside. She frowns as she peers down at the bottom, glowing faintly with raw code, and then looks up at the long rows of resources.
"Is there something you need?" the attending Guardian asks.
"A log of programs that accessed the library in the last two millicycles would be nice," she says. "You should report unauthorized access to data."
"There wasn't any," the Guardian says as she holds out a data pad. "The only programs accessing the Library are utilities and ones granted permission by the User."
Azeri nods once as she scans the log. The list is short - understandable, since the Grid isn't capable of running complicated processes requiring several programs yet - and the names recognizable. Ixion was the last program to access the Library, and before him Enyo, Shaddox, Io, Nyx, Tron...
Of course the unauthorized access won't show up here. She sighs inwardly and hands the data pad back to the Guardian. The faint trail is unmistakable, though.
"I ask permission to cross the bridge, Guardian," she asks, "for I wish to obtain the resources necessary to my task."
"What do you need?"
"I need a new copy of the list of security and infrastructure risks SamFlynn and Qu0rra want me to monitor." She pauses, but the Guardian makes no move to grant her permission to access the Library. Another inward sigh. "Mine was damaged during the fight in Gamma."
A program did hack at her disk in a way that would've shattered it, but Caix's beam katana blocked the blow just in time. Afterward Azeri almost hugged her disk but managed to refrain from doing so. Thankfully there was no actual damage to it, but it was too close for comfort and it made her a little anxious about turning her back to unfamiliar programs. Not acceptable behavior for security programs, though, so she takes better care to wipe out the threats before they get to her or the others.
"Permission granted," the Guardian says and presses something on her control panel.
Behind her a bridge unfolds and extends across the chasm between the lobby and the library. Azeri watches it closely, and her circuits flare when she spies faint red footprints on the white surface.
"You have point oh three millicycles to get what you need," the Guardian says.
Oddly, the first thing on Azeri's mind as she slowly crosses the bridge is, Where's the other Guardian? She makes a show of walking down the nearest aisle and turning right towards the section of the Library holding infrastructure and security resources and data. Her eyes scan the environment as she moves, seeking out the faint but distinct trail. Wrongness hums in the air around her and intensify as her subroutines kick in. There was a definite intrusive presence in the Library, even if she can't find its route through this dizzy maze of shelves and code.
Red flickers at the edge of her periphery and she whips her head around. There's a glowing red mark on the side of a shelf; she tilts her head up and sees another at the very top. She glances around her to see if that Guardian is somehow monitoring her movements, and then quickly, quietly, pulls herself up until she's standing on top of a very long row of shelves among rows of shelves. Now she can see the footprints running down the row and hopping over to the next.
Three things immediately come to mind.
One, this program is extremely athletic and resourceful.
Two, this program was anticipating someone like her.
Three, this program knew what it's doing.
Something like a heady energy cocktail of anticipation and apprehension fill her as she follows the trail. Next to the ambush on Tron and the others during a routine scan of the Grid, this is the most coordinated security breach she's seen. Others might have something to say about that but she's new to the system; anything out of the ordinary is going to intrigue her, pique her interest and-
The trail stops here, in the infrastructure archives of the Library. She peers over the edge and stares at the maddening circle of red footprints under a deactivated disk. She straightens her back and scans the immediate area; there isn't another trail veering off into the maze of shelves, so this disk has to belong to the intruder. She hops down to the ground level and picks up the disk, holds it up and peers at its darkened circuits. She activates it to identify its owner.
Nothing happens. Access denied.
She sighs and hefts the disk, thinking of her next step. Take this back to Alpha, where either Tron or Shaddox can access its data and identify the owner. The only thing keeping her from leaving the Library immediately is the trail - it ends here and unless the intruder took extra care to retrace its steps precisely there should be a second path heading back out of the Library. Why did it leave its disk behind?
Azeri pulls herself back up on top of the shelves and follows the trail back to the bridge. The Guardian doesn't look up as she steps back on the lobby with a deactivated disk in tow and kneels down to bring up the Library's recent history. Luckily most of the programs on the Grid have no reason to use the Library, at least until the system becomes fully functional; it doesn't take long for her to figure out which program left the unauthorized trail. It circles around the other Guardian's panel...and runs alongside the glowing red trail on the bridge as its own action.
This makes no sense. Azeri stares at the Library's history for a second longer, then turns to the present Guardian.
"Where's the other Guardian?"
"Recharging, most likely," the Guardian says. "Did you retrieve what you need?"
Azeri glances down at the disk in hand. "For now. Goodbye, Guardian."
* * *
"What have you been doing with my project?"
Sam almost choked on his mocha latte but recovered admirably in front of Ed. He set his cup down and took a deep breath. "What project?"
Ed rolled his eyes. "I sent everyone a copy of the updated suite last week. You really have nothing to say about it?"
Sam very slowly and very deliberately picked up his coffee and took a sip. He did have a couple things to say about it, mainly how cocky it was and how infatuated it seemed to be with Enyo but that would questions of a different nature. Instead he said, "Do you really need that repair utility? Just seems like a waste of space and memory-"
"Did someone say something about it? It was Tom, wasn't it?"
His train of thought tripped over itself. "What?"
"Never mind." Ed pushed his glasses up his nose and dismissed the question with a gesture. "Anything else?"
"Yeah. Why's Ixion so closely linked to the system file manager? Don't think someone searching for a file is inviting security breaches." A thought crossed Sam's mind. "Unless it's also a key logger."
Ed flinched, and then crossed his arms, offended. "Of course not. It's for root kits. Anything else?"
"Get back to you on that. Bit busy answering mail right now."
He grimaced, then sighed heavily and stared down at the floor. "Did you even look at it?"
"Not as much as I want to," he replied. It was partially true; he wanted to compare and use the updated code on Ixion and his team at the Grid, but he did fly in late last night from the East Coast.
"Right, the new investors. Did they buy in?"
"That's why I'm answering email," Sam said with a pointed look at his table. There's a screensaver masking Azeri's updated code and the lack of a window of his stuffed inbox. Langley, he figured, could afford to wait a couple hours for his response.
"What did you pitch to them? That firewall program you've been writing?"
He stopped himself from flinching and giving himself away. There was no way Ed could find out; he kept quiet about it to avoid more of the suspicious questions about his commitment to ENCOM that just won't go away.
"If you must know," Ed said, "I overheard you and Quorra talking about writing one while heading to a meeting with Sales."
He mentally kicked himself. "It's about the attacks on our servers. People really wanna take your suite out for a spin."
Ed didn't look convinced but didn't pry into the gaps in his story. "Hey, I'm not saying anything about your personal projects. Just saying that you seem a bit distracted lately."
"You care?"
"For you? Hell no. The company, on the other hand..." He gestured emptily. "You know how ENCOM feels about scatterbrained CEOs. You figure it out."
Sam sat up and leaned on the desk, minimizing the screensaver and bringing up the shell with unfinished command lines. "That a threat?"
"No, a reminder." He gave Sam a mocking salute and turned to leave.
Sam felt that there was something else lurking underneath Ed's words and blurted out, "What's that supposed to mean?"
The sigh and look Ed sent him didn't reassure of him of the programmer's motive for this conversation. "I mean a lot of people here have long memories and you shouldn't give them reason to throw you out."
"It's been over seven months. You can't be serious."
"You're talking to the guy whose dad screwed yours over and created some really bad press. I had to get this high up the chain of command the hard way." Ed started sidling out of the room. "Do what you need to do, okay? I don't need to live through another shit storm, and neither do you."
* * *
She bursts into the club to find Enyo and Yssandra talking to a shaken green-lit program. Others huddle in a corner of the establishment, all looking terrified. Frowning she kneels down and presses her fingertips to the floor to pull up the-
"Azeri," Enyo calls out and she immediately stands up. The search program gestures for her to follow her to the other end of the club. Once they're far enough from the others Enyo turns sharply on her heels and says, "I need you to perform beyond your directive."
Her tone is sharp and cold, demanding cooperation. Azeri itches to touch the floor and see who was involved but Enyo beats her to the punch. "You need to mislead and disperse these programs."
"That's not my-"
"We can't afford a system failure. Something that shouldn't happen just happened, and in front of others." Enyo scrubs at her short hair in frustration. "I don't get it. He said he fixed it."
"Why would there be a system failure? What happened?"
Enyo looks up at Azeri and her pupils flash yellow. "You know what happened to Tron."
In a second Azeri pulls up the Grid's long and tumultuous history from her memories. "The rectification. Rinzler."
"Tron overcame the corrupt code near the end of Clu's reign but it didn't disappear. Only Users and sysadmins can add and remove code. Tron said Sam got rid of it...why's he lying? He knows how dangerous it is."
The dots connect so easily afterwards, but it's no less horrifying. "He reverted back to Rinzler."
"No, but the corruption was visible. They kept saying he was brutal when apprehending those troublesome glitches over there," Enyo says, pointing at two very shaken programs standing a little ways from the others. "He left after Yssandra stopped everything. I'm going after him. Reassign them, find Shaddox, and wait for us at Alpha."
The program darts away and slips out of the club, leaving Azeri to scan the wary programs and the anxious Yssandra. She then kneels down and touches fingertips to the floor to see the history of the programs involved.
She wishes she didn't. Watching the telltale blue footprints turn corrosive red, Azeri feels is the overpowering need to shut Tron down and that's the last thing she wants to do.
One step at a time, she reassures herself as she moves towards Yssandra. SamFlynn can fix this.
Chapter: Weather Girl
Fandom: TRON & Legacy
Verse: Pilots & Poison
Characters/Pairing: OFC - Azeri, Sam, Tron, Quorra, OFC - Enyo, Ed Dillinger Jr, OCs; Sam/Tron
Rating: T+
Word Count: 6659
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Summary: She was not compiled to weather these storms, but the Grid is a dangerous world and she needs to perform above and beyond to survive.
Author's Note: And now for something completely different, plot. This took several months to write but finally the weight's off my shoulder and I'll have one less thing to worry about.
This time stamp is about a character who was mentioned once in another time stamp called Dragon Tattoo. I wanted to write about her in order to flesh her out and determine her place in this 'verse. Then things...spiraled out of control. You'll know where it happened.
The plot development here makes this one of the very last chapters of Le Disko.
They had to build a brand new I/O port for this task. Compatibility issues, one of the main obstacles to achieving a functioning Grid. What Flynn designated the TRON System has twenty years of massive technological advances to catch up on.
The problem, Sam thought sourly, was that while it was easy enough upgrading some of the hardware it was ridiculously difficult getting the Grid's code to behave and accept the changes. Progress was crawling at a snail's pace and it didn't care that several days' worth on the Grid was supposed to show itself impressively in an hour's worth in his world.
"So did Dad write all the program here or did he port you guys in from somewhere else?" he asked as he successfully wrestled a segment of new code into a part of a semi-transparent wall. Inner wall. According to the data pad Nyx held out for him this one was part of a set of double walls meant to separate the lobby/adaptation rooms from the interfaces and the portal.
"He ported very few programs from other systems," the Siren said. "Acclimation is, Enyo tells me, 'trying'. You can ask Tron about it."
Sam frowned, then remembered that Tron was Alan's program, written for ENCOM's network back in '82. He definitely wasn't around when Flynn first set up the system underneath the arcade. Sam made a mental note to ask both programs later and glanced at the data pad to see what was next.
Given the program he and Quorra were writing, this shouldn't be a problem.
* * *
Alive is the rush of white heat flooding outward from the disk dock. Alive is the sets of directives and subroutines coming online simultaneously, flooding circuits and code with purpose. Alive is the first deep breath that breaks the barrier and allows her to feel the system.
Until her sensors crash into a barrier, an impenetrable wall giving off an oddly familiar signature. They try again but it doesn't let her pass. Her directives are denied permission and she remains in suspension, waiting for her Users to give it so that the system can cut her loose.
"...hang on-oh. Knock it off, she's not hostile. Let her in."
And suddenly she's alive.
Her eyes open and start scanning her surroundings. This is the inner sanctum of an I/O port, and surrounding her are several of the system's security programs. She takes a good look at the two standing in front of her and-one of them is not a program.
"Identify yourself," the other says, leveling stern gray eyes at her.
They both feel familiar to her. She feels a camaraderie with the one who is a program, feels a tug towards him and the other programs surrounding her as if they're meant to be one functioning unit. The signature of the other one-the signature of the User runs deep in her code but someone else is missing and she looks around the inner sanctum.
"Relax, man. Don't scare her," the User-SamFlynn says and gives her a warm smile. "So, what's your name?"
Her name comes to mind and tips out of her lips into the humming atmosphere.
"My name is Azeri."
* * *
“He wants another Anon,” Quorra said after a long moment. “Makes sense; Tron can’t be everywhere all the time.”
“Anon?” Sam echoed. “What, you mean ‘Anonymous’?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. That’s what Flynn designated him. He was a system monitor program specifically written to help Tron maintain peace between ISOs and Basics. He died helping me get out of the city.”
Sam paused the game and set the controller down before turning to her. She continued to stare straight at the mounted TV, unblinking and fingers clutching her controller a little too tightly. Marvin continued to sleep next to her, head in her lap, oblivious to the sudden change in mood.
“Q-” Sam began but she shook her head, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Sorry. It’s been so long, and living here it all seemed so far away. Sometimes I forget what it used to be like before everything went to-went to hell, right? That’s what you say?”
He reached over and placed his hand on her shoulder, squeezed it once to get her to look at him. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe now.”
“I know.” She gave him a shaky but brilliant smile, and then held up her controller. “Keep playing?”
After fifteen more minutes they took a break and he ordered pizza while she poked at the prototype Slate. After he hung up she said, “I can help you write the program. I know what he’s looking for.”
* * *
“Show me what you can do.”
She stands in the center of the Training Grid, facing Tron. The ground hums of malleable code that's ready to generate whatever simulated scenario Tron wishes. She’s seen the sims, watched his team move through the artificial landscapes and fend off gridbugs and hostile programs. Is that why she was written? Was this system so unstable that programs performed processes and accessed resources as they pleased, preventing the Grid from functioning and creating destructive gridbug swarms?
She wonders if he intends to set a simulated gridbug swarm on her and is surprised when he instead reaches behind him to remove his disk. She raises an eyebrow at this unexpected turn, and then takes an involuntary step back when Tron shifts his stance and rezzes a glossy black helmet over his head.
He intends to fight her. Fine. Azeri unlatches her disk from its dock and mimics his pose, crouching low and gathering herself for the first move, the first strike. Her helmet unfolds from the back of her neck, around her high ponytail, and downward in a cascade, shielding her face. As soon as data starts streaming across the helmet's surface he strikes.
Tron takes the role of the aggressor, flinging his disk at her and-wait, where'd he get the second one from? She twists away from the streaking blue disk, then drops low to let the second whizz by her head. They ricochet off the clear walls rising out of the ground and closing around them like a cage, and return to their owner.
My turn. She darts forward, throws her disk at the ground next to his left foot, and darts to his right. Her eyes never leave her disk, tracks its movements as she slams her forearm into Tron's exposed side and meets space. He's already twisting away, sliding back across the floor; she spins around to face him, her disk almost within reach, and stares at the blazing blue disk headed for her head.
She jerks away but the disk's white-hot edge grazes her helmet as it spins by. A few pieces of hot code fall to the ground and she sweeps them away with her foot, shivering.
"Trying to kill me already?" she demands as she hefts her disk in her hand and hears Tron's bounce off the angled wall behind her.
"I hope not," Tron says and throws his other disk at her.
She blocks it easily and then drops to her knees to let the first disk pass over her left shoulder. Her eyes sweep over the angles of their cage, tracing pathways, and settles on a viable one; she turns her wrist as she rises to her feet and slings her disk at a slanted wall behind Tron. The ricochet is perfect and the disk bounces off the prerequisite walls, barely avoids Tron's second disk, and streaks towards the Basic's chest. Tron flings himself back to avoid it and lands in an ungraceful heap on the floor.
Her upper hand lasts less than a second. Tron leaps to his feet and deflects her disk on its way back to her. Swearing, she takes off after it, watching Tron run...at the nearest wall.
"What the-"
Their cage lurches and she suddenly realizes what's about to happen. She snatches her disk out of the air and slams its edge into the wall. The code protests, trying to repair itself and force the disk out; she puts her weight behind it and the disk sinks in. The cage shifts violently and starts flipping over; she grips her disk tightly as her feet lose contact with the floor and hang in the air. She watches Tron on the other side, running up the wall and then down to the new designated floor towards her.
As soon as her feet touch the floor Azeri wrenches her disk out of the wall and uses the force as a momentum, lets it carry her around to block Tron's blow. She uses her forearm to block his other arm, then tries to hook her foot around his ankle and knock him off his feet. He shifts his weight to his other foot and quickly takes advantage of her brief loss of balance; he slams his elbow into her chest, right under one of her main circuits, and then kicks her across the arena.
Her helmet cracks as she hits the floor; the stream of data disappears as bits of code chip off. Her sensors and subroutines stutter and try to access the damage as she pushes herself up on trembling arms. Where's Tron-
Overhead. She throws herself out of the way and rolls right over her disk; she swipes it off the floor and leaps back to her feet right before he can kick her back down.
"Good," she thinks he says. Then the vibrant hum of activated disks crashing against each other drown the half-formed memories.
It doesn't take an upgrade to know that Tron is superior to her, though that could be attributed to his part-sysadmin status. She feels that vibration of power as she counters his every blow with her disk, her forearm, her elbow; it's a bit jarring, a bit intimidating, and it starts to wear her down. She pushes back against him as best as she can - her Users didn't write her on a whim, she's supposed to be able to hold her ground against unauthorized programs and system failures - but she blocks more than she strikes and she starts backing up, step by step, across the floor. The wall is coming up behind her and if he corners her, pins her down so that she can't fight back, he wins their match.
Not yet. She ducks a blow, twists away from the second, and drives her elbow into his side. Her foot catches on something, though, and she tumbles to the floor, losing her grip on her disk. It's within reach and she scrambles for it.
Tron's foot comes down on it and she looks up at the black helmet. It collapses away, revealing his face.
"Not bad," he says and nudges her disk to her. He waits for her to sit up and then extends his hand. She takes it and he hauls her back onto her feet. "You started slowing down towards the end. Why's that?"
The cage collapses around them and the walls meld back into the floor. A cold wave washes in, soothing her heated circuits, and she sighs in relief. She opens her eyes to see Tron walking towards the activated lift at the far end of the Training Grid and jogs after him.
"I'm meant to assist you, not challenge you," she says as she matches him stride for stride. "Will that be a problem?"
"Not yet," he replies. He turns sharply on his heels and folds his arms behind his back, looks straight ahead. She looks at his stance curiously as the lift sinks under the Grid's surface.
"Don't worry," she says while seeing if she can mimic him without being obvious. "I won't trip over my feet while monitoring the sectors."
Tron smirks as the lift stops at the Armory. Cyrus and Yssandra are waiting for them. "Cyrus?"
"Three weapon caches in Eta. Caix and Zaller are on their way to extract them. Enyo wants you to see her. It's about Zuse; she traced him back to the Library."
Tron frowns. "How'd he get in?"
"That's why Enyo wants to see you." Cyrus flicks at something on his data pad. "Activity at the border of Tau and Upsilon. Don't know if it's hostile."
"Azeri?"
She nods. "On it."
"Don't overstep your directive," Tron says as she steps off the lift and Cyrus takes her place. "Ixion should be on his way to assist."
She watches them leave and turns to Yssandra. "I need a baton."
The Siren motions to one of the walls; the panels retract, revealing seven batons and three beam katanas. Azeri takes one of each and attaches the katana's handle to the holster on her thigh.
"Good luck," Yssandra says as she leaves the Armory.
* * *
Writing a program for Tron wasn't the hard part. He could code blindfolded while hanging upside down off the top of ENCOM Tower if it didn't give Alan, the board, and all of the shareholders heart attacks. This code did require a bit of tweaking since the system Sam inherited was quite different from the system Flynn created which was quite different from UNIX. Actually, judging by how often Quorra shoved his chair away to review the code and do the tweaking, the program's code required a lot of it.
"Definitely not in Kansas anymore," he muttered as he soaked up the latest changes Quorra made.
"In what?"
"Kansas. Wizard of Oz. Swore I showed you the movie; it's a classic."
At the end of the day - the second day; he's going back to the Grid tomorrow, and why did tomorrow have to be a Friday and not a Saturday? - he joined Quorra and they walked down the hall to the elevator. He'd been entertaining an idea that almost made him miss his meeting with Legal but something about it just didn't feel right. He wanted her opinion on it.
"Say this works," he started.
"Of course it'll work," she said. "You wrote it."
"We wrote it. It's your program, too." Quorra smiled at the reminder, eyes bright and pleased. "Say this works, spectacularly. Would you add the program to our lineup?"
Her expression turned thoughtful. "It's a companion firewall; it's meant to coordinate with Tron, and we don't have the equivalent of Tron here."
"We can-tweaking it isn't hard."
She looked at him curiously and he wondered if he'd given himself away. He kept expecting her to rephrase herself - "You wrote it for him." - even though she never would because that's not who she was. It's what she kept saying in his head, though.
He used to not give a second thought to what he did for the Grid. The system was outdated and outclassed by the modern operating systems; he didn't have to worry himself with writing experimental code and not sharing any of it with the company. There was nothing particularly glamorous or innovative about repairing a broken twenty-year-old system. But now he and Quorra had written a brand new program, a firewall that could work in conjunction with and independently of the main security monitor program. It wouldn't be hard to modify some of the code, toss it to the programmers, and say, "What would you do with it?"
But the doubt in his head, wrapped up in Quorra's bright but wary tones, wouldn't stop pointing out that, "You wrote it for him." This was something he did for Tron, only because Tron asked. Was it right to take something he created as a gift and use it to help ENCOM? Tron wouldn't know. Tron wouldn't care, but Sam would.
"Besides," Quorra suddenly said, "there's Ixion.
Ed's pet project. The antivirus suite that's going on the market next month, compatible with all operating systems. It wouldn't look good if Quorra introduced a newer, better firewall program than the one in the suite within weeks of its launch. Sam shuddered at the idea of annoyed emails and phone calls flooding his inbox and overwhelming his phone.
"Alan said the only reason why the shareholders hadn't complained the past few months was because of Ixion," Quorra added. "Remember? They were worried about you. Thought you might do what Flynn did."
"I remember," he said with a heavy sigh. "Fine. Let Ed get all the glory. Have to test the program out anyway. Need to see if it works exactly as he wants it to."
He couldn't help but wonder how Tron would greet him tomorrow. Would he be all businesslike and ask about the status of the monitor program, or would he drag Sam off to a secured, secluded part of the sector? He shivered at the thought of the latter option and disguised it poorly with a not-too-casual roll of his sore shoulders. Next time, he told himself, he was taking Roy's advice and walking around his office every thirty minutes when he's programming and not juggling several meetings, phone calls, a hefty volume of passive-aggressive email, and people who keep walking in and acting all surprised when they see him there.
Six and a half months and they still couldn't get over him being large and in charge of ENCOM.
"So what are we doing tonight?" Quorra asked when they were somewhere between the fifth and fourth floor.
"Dunno. Wanna grab something at Philippe's?"
* * *
"Could've been worse," Enyo says, frowning at the crisscrossing footwork under the piles of cold broken code. She nudges a deactivated disk and Sen snaps it up.
"Could've gone a lot better," Cyrus replies. "There's just no way they could've gotten this far into the city without tripping something.'
The problem, Azeri thinks as she watches Enyo follows the general direction of the programs' trail down the street and left over the sidewalk and between two towers, is that this wasn't a random act of sabotage. They got this far because they knew where they were going and what they were targeting. Who, rather.
"Take these back to headquarters and trace them," Tron says, handing Cyrus three disks and Sen two. "Caix, Zaller, you're with me. Azeri, follow Enyo."
The footsteps lead them to the border of a defunct sector. Azeri looks up at the sky-high silhouettes while Enyo tuts quietly. She wonders when SamFlynn will bring this one back to life.
"How many times is it now?" Enyo asks as she steps over the distinct boundary between an active and an inactive sector.
Azeri takes a deep breath before following suit; there's no physical barrier she has to pass through, but she can feel the shift deep in her code. A distinct chill settles in and she becomes acutely aware of the emptiness, the lack of activity and life that usually throbs through the streets and hums underfoot. She rubs at a blue circuit on the inside of her arm as she follows Enyo deeper into the sector.
"The third," Azeri answers. The only hum she can feel comes from Enyo. They're the only distinct sources of light on this wide street, they and the footprints leading them deeper into the sector. "Different location, different programs, different tactics, but the goal is the same."
"Does he know?"
She thinks back, recalls the grim line of his mouth and the sudden stiffness in his stance and his words as he ordered the others to do a sweep of the sector. "He doesn't talk about it."
"Of course he won't," Enyo says. "Oh. This could be a problem."
"What?"
Enyo points at her feet and Azeri realizes that the trail they'd been following has ended at a pile of code. She steps forward and crouches down, sifting through the bits and pieces, but the disks are missing.
"There has to be another trail."
"Except I can't find it," Enyo says crossly. "It should be-" She lifts her hand and slides her fingers through the air. Her circuits briefly intensify and then they see it, a faint green trace making a straight line for a sector beyond this one. "Upsilon."
Upsilon is the sector infested with faulty programs. If one was looking for a seedy place to hide from the likes of Tron and Ixion, Upsilon would be it. Shaddox's best efforts to clear the clutter and make it functional only made a bigger mess of things, and it's been earmarked for SamFlynn to take on when he returns.
"Do we try," Azeri asks, "or do we make a note and return to Alpha?"
Enyo doesn't answer but she starts tracing the faint green path. Azeri sweeps around the immediate area - empty buildings, empty streets, a search program and a monitor tracking a light jet's trail - and follows her through the sector. Several minutes in, Azeri notices a tower partially destroyed by what looks like gridbugs. Then another appears, the jagged edges of the walls in sharp relief to the smooth and seamless rise of the others around it. Soon they're walking through a field of destruction, the ground littered with code and deactivated disks. Azeri moves to pick one up.
"Leave it," Enyo says tightly. "These are cycles old."
The search program sidesteps the debris with incredible precision, her feet landing here and there and nowhere else. Azeri follows her to the other side and they continue following the wispy trail. She wonders how Enyo can make it reveal itself if the program they're following reaches a higher altitude while making its escape to Upsilon but somehow the green line remains within reach of her fingertips.
Minutes pass as they weave through the sector. Then Enyo breaks the silence with, "Ever wonder what a program's User was thinking during the compilation process?"
Azeri blinks and the focused intent on Enyo's face shifts to open curiosity at her. "Compilation process?"
"Until I met Flynn," Enyo begins, "I never thought much of Users other than my own. Thanks to him I sometimes wonder what Julia-59 was thinking while she was compiling me. Anyone tell you what happened on the Grid?"
Flynn, Flynn, Flynn, not SamFlynn, not her User, but- "Cyrus told me."
Enyo nods. "A Codified Likeness Utility in the image of Flynn, but in the image of Flynn when he wrote CLU."
Azeri has no idea where Enyo's train of thought is headed. "I don't understand."
"Users are the most fascinating things," Enyo says. "They're not like us-"
"Of course they're not."
"They change, all the time. The Sam we talked with two centicycles isn't the same as the Sam who helped us deal with that massive gridbug swarm six centicycles ago. Which Sam do you think compiled you?"
Azeri shifts uneasily at the thought. She only knows one SamFlynn and that's her User, the one who flashes her a grin and a thumbs-up whenever she sees him. And there's the other User, Qu0rra. Azeri never met her, has no idea what she's like, but she can feel her guiding touch deep in her subroutines.
"I have two Users," she finally says.
"So which Sam and which Quorra," Enyo amends. She stops in her tracks and turns on the heels of her feet to tilt her head up to Azeri. "What do you think they wanted when they compiled you?"
"What they wanted - me. Why's this suddenly relevant?" Azeri asks.
"How a program's written affects her ability to function."
Azeri clenches her fists until her circuits throb in protest. Is Enyo questioning her competence? "I think I followed my directive to the code back there."
"Hey, hey, I'm not saying that," Enyo says quickly. "Everyone did great. Everyone did what they were supposed to do."
"So what are you getting at?"
"Just an observation," Enyo says. She turns around and picks up the trail again. "I just wonder why you took such care to protect Tron."
Azeri stares after her as she walks down the street to an intersection and makes a right, following the light jet trail towards Upsilon.
* * *
A massive code push, a gridbug attack, and a sweep of a section of the Outlands for any sign of a particularly troublesome group of Sentries devoured most of his time. Half a millicycle ago the rain started falling, the digital equivalent of water washing away the mess they made resurrecting half of a sector. It would be another two hours before the rain let up, and Sam didn't feel like heading back to the portal in this Grid weather.
"Not one for the rain, then," he said as Tron dragged him off the balcony. He grinned at the disapproving look Tron gave the sky and leaned in to lick the water off the program's lips.
Sometime between Tron pushing him down on the bed to suck rainwater out of his mouth and Sam straddling him to draw a long low sound out of his throat, the rain stopped falling. Sam paused at the sudden silence outside of his heavy breathing and Tron's loud thrumming, and then Tron growled and dragged purple-laced fingers down his chest.
"Just..." Sam mumbled a long while later, too blissed to move his arms the way he wanted them to, "it won't hurt..."
"No." Tron pressed his mouth to Sam's neck, to the curve of his jaw, closed teeth on his earlobe.
"You sai-" Sam hissed, writhed under the program, dragged fingertips down Tron's back. Tron shuddered and pressed his forehead to Sam's. It takes him a long time to say something.
"...not yet."
"I can't...port you out without it, you know."
Tron made a noise at the back of his throat and slowly sat up. Sam's hands slid down his sides and settled on his hips, thumbs pressing against the edges of the thin bluish purple nodes low on his front.
"I can't leave the Grid without someone to take my place in my absence," Tron said. He shivered when Sam curved his thumb and pressed it against the circuit. "Don't distract me, Sam."
"Hypocrite," Sam muttered.
Tron smiled, bent down, and kissed him. Sam stroked the curve of his hipbone and then lifted his hand to bury his fingers in the program's damp hair. Time slipped away as Tron slid up Sam's body to take full control of the kiss, as Sam relearned the shape and slick feel of Tron's mouth.
The first warning pulsed in the air and they reluctantly broke the kiss.
"Fine," Sam said. He stared up at the faint violet glow on the ceiling and then tilted his head to the right to look at the bright star over the cityscape.
"Next time I'm here, I'll have that security monitor."
* * *
Programs that don't have permission to perform certain actions and access resources will often simply be denied, and those that break through leave behind angry imprints, tracks that can be traced back to them. Most programs can't tell, but that's what security monitors and firewalls are for.
Azeri sits back on her lightcycle, helmet retracting from around her head. She stares up at the great citadel that houses the Grid's Library, tracing the sweeping cyan lines with her eyes. She then drops her gaze to the faint red traces around the Library's perimeter.
"Interesting," she says as she dismounts. The lightcycle collapses and she slides the baton into her thigh holster. She hops up onto the sidewalk and follows the circuit-lined walkway to the Library's entrance.
Only one of the Guardians is at the lobby when she enters. The trail abruptly disappears at the entrance and reappears at the edge of the chasm separating the lobby from the library deep inside. She frowns as she peers down at the bottom, glowing faintly with raw code, and then looks up at the long rows of resources.
"Is there something you need?" the attending Guardian asks.
"A log of programs that accessed the library in the last two millicycles would be nice," she says. "You should report unauthorized access to data."
"There wasn't any," the Guardian says as she holds out a data pad. "The only programs accessing the Library are utilities and ones granted permission by the User."
Azeri nods once as she scans the log. The list is short - understandable, since the Grid isn't capable of running complicated processes requiring several programs yet - and the names recognizable. Ixion was the last program to access the Library, and before him Enyo, Shaddox, Io, Nyx, Tron...
Of course the unauthorized access won't show up here. She sighs inwardly and hands the data pad back to the Guardian. The faint trail is unmistakable, though.
"I ask permission to cross the bridge, Guardian," she asks, "for I wish to obtain the resources necessary to my task."
"What do you need?"
"I need a new copy of the list of security and infrastructure risks SamFlynn and Qu0rra want me to monitor." She pauses, but the Guardian makes no move to grant her permission to access the Library. Another inward sigh. "Mine was damaged during the fight in Gamma."
A program did hack at her disk in a way that would've shattered it, but Caix's beam katana blocked the blow just in time. Afterward Azeri almost hugged her disk but managed to refrain from doing so. Thankfully there was no actual damage to it, but it was too close for comfort and it made her a little anxious about turning her back to unfamiliar programs. Not acceptable behavior for security programs, though, so she takes better care to wipe out the threats before they get to her or the others.
"Permission granted," the Guardian says and presses something on her control panel.
Behind her a bridge unfolds and extends across the chasm between the lobby and the library. Azeri watches it closely, and her circuits flare when she spies faint red footprints on the white surface.
"You have point oh three millicycles to get what you need," the Guardian says.
Oddly, the first thing on Azeri's mind as she slowly crosses the bridge is, Where's the other Guardian? She makes a show of walking down the nearest aisle and turning right towards the section of the Library holding infrastructure and security resources and data. Her eyes scan the environment as she moves, seeking out the faint but distinct trail. Wrongness hums in the air around her and intensify as her subroutines kick in. There was a definite intrusive presence in the Library, even if she can't find its route through this dizzy maze of shelves and code.
Red flickers at the edge of her periphery and she whips her head around. There's a glowing red mark on the side of a shelf; she tilts her head up and sees another at the very top. She glances around her to see if that Guardian is somehow monitoring her movements, and then quickly, quietly, pulls herself up until she's standing on top of a very long row of shelves among rows of shelves. Now she can see the footprints running down the row and hopping over to the next.
Three things immediately come to mind.
One, this program is extremely athletic and resourceful.
Two, this program was anticipating someone like her.
Three, this program knew what it's doing.
Something like a heady energy cocktail of anticipation and apprehension fill her as she follows the trail. Next to the ambush on Tron and the others during a routine scan of the Grid, this is the most coordinated security breach she's seen. Others might have something to say about that but she's new to the system; anything out of the ordinary is going to intrigue her, pique her interest and-
The trail stops here, in the infrastructure archives of the Library. She peers over the edge and stares at the maddening circle of red footprints under a deactivated disk. She straightens her back and scans the immediate area; there isn't another trail veering off into the maze of shelves, so this disk has to belong to the intruder. She hops down to the ground level and picks up the disk, holds it up and peers at its darkened circuits. She activates it to identify its owner.
Nothing happens. Access denied.
She sighs and hefts the disk, thinking of her next step. Take this back to Alpha, where either Tron or Shaddox can access its data and identify the owner. The only thing keeping her from leaving the Library immediately is the trail - it ends here and unless the intruder took extra care to retrace its steps precisely there should be a second path heading back out of the Library. Why did it leave its disk behind?
Azeri pulls herself back up on top of the shelves and follows the trail back to the bridge. The Guardian doesn't look up as she steps back on the lobby with a deactivated disk in tow and kneels down to bring up the Library's recent history. Luckily most of the programs on the Grid have no reason to use the Library, at least until the system becomes fully functional; it doesn't take long for her to figure out which program left the unauthorized trail. It circles around the other Guardian's panel...and runs alongside the glowing red trail on the bridge as its own action.
This makes no sense. Azeri stares at the Library's history for a second longer, then turns to the present Guardian.
"Where's the other Guardian?"
"Recharging, most likely," the Guardian says. "Did you retrieve what you need?"
Azeri glances down at the disk in hand. "For now. Goodbye, Guardian."
* * *
"What have you been doing with my project?"
Sam almost choked on his mocha latte but recovered admirably in front of Ed. He set his cup down and took a deep breath. "What project?"
Ed rolled his eyes. "I sent everyone a copy of the updated suite last week. You really have nothing to say about it?"
Sam very slowly and very deliberately picked up his coffee and took a sip. He did have a couple things to say about it, mainly how cocky it was and how infatuated it seemed to be with Enyo but that would questions of a different nature. Instead he said, "Do you really need that repair utility? Just seems like a waste of space and memory-"
"Did someone say something about it? It was Tom, wasn't it?"
His train of thought tripped over itself. "What?"
"Never mind." Ed pushed his glasses up his nose and dismissed the question with a gesture. "Anything else?"
"Yeah. Why's Ixion so closely linked to the system file manager? Don't think someone searching for a file is inviting security breaches." A thought crossed Sam's mind. "Unless it's also a key logger."
Ed flinched, and then crossed his arms, offended. "Of course not. It's for root kits. Anything else?"
"Get back to you on that. Bit busy answering mail right now."
He grimaced, then sighed heavily and stared down at the floor. "Did you even look at it?"
"Not as much as I want to," he replied. It was partially true; he wanted to compare and use the updated code on Ixion and his team at the Grid, but he did fly in late last night from the East Coast.
"Right, the new investors. Did they buy in?"
"That's why I'm answering email," Sam said with a pointed look at his table. There's a screensaver masking Azeri's updated code and the lack of a window of his stuffed inbox. Langley, he figured, could afford to wait a couple hours for his response.
"What did you pitch to them? That firewall program you've been writing?"
He stopped himself from flinching and giving himself away. There was no way Ed could find out; he kept quiet about it to avoid more of the suspicious questions about his commitment to ENCOM that just won't go away.
"If you must know," Ed said, "I overheard you and Quorra talking about writing one while heading to a meeting with Sales."
He mentally kicked himself. "It's about the attacks on our servers. People really wanna take your suite out for a spin."
Ed didn't look convinced but didn't pry into the gaps in his story. "Hey, I'm not saying anything about your personal projects. Just saying that you seem a bit distracted lately."
"You care?"
"For you? Hell no. The company, on the other hand..." He gestured emptily. "You know how ENCOM feels about scatterbrained CEOs. You figure it out."
Sam sat up and leaned on the desk, minimizing the screensaver and bringing up the shell with unfinished command lines. "That a threat?"
"No, a reminder." He gave Sam a mocking salute and turned to leave.
Sam felt that there was something else lurking underneath Ed's words and blurted out, "What's that supposed to mean?"
The sigh and look Ed sent him didn't reassure of him of the programmer's motive for this conversation. "I mean a lot of people here have long memories and you shouldn't give them reason to throw you out."
"It's been over seven months. You can't be serious."
"You're talking to the guy whose dad screwed yours over and created some really bad press. I had to get this high up the chain of command the hard way." Ed started sidling out of the room. "Do what you need to do, okay? I don't need to live through another shit storm, and neither do you."
* * *
She bursts into the club to find Enyo and Yssandra talking to a shaken green-lit program. Others huddle in a corner of the establishment, all looking terrified. Frowning she kneels down and presses her fingertips to the floor to pull up the-
"Azeri," Enyo calls out and she immediately stands up. The search program gestures for her to follow her to the other end of the club. Once they're far enough from the others Enyo turns sharply on her heels and says, "I need you to perform beyond your directive."
Her tone is sharp and cold, demanding cooperation. Azeri itches to touch the floor and see who was involved but Enyo beats her to the punch. "You need to mislead and disperse these programs."
"That's not my-"
"We can't afford a system failure. Something that shouldn't happen just happened, and in front of others." Enyo scrubs at her short hair in frustration. "I don't get it. He said he fixed it."
"Why would there be a system failure? What happened?"
Enyo looks up at Azeri and her pupils flash yellow. "You know what happened to Tron."
In a second Azeri pulls up the Grid's long and tumultuous history from her memories. "The rectification. Rinzler."
"Tron overcame the corrupt code near the end of Clu's reign but it didn't disappear. Only Users and sysadmins can add and remove code. Tron said Sam got rid of it...why's he lying? He knows how dangerous it is."
The dots connect so easily afterwards, but it's no less horrifying. "He reverted back to Rinzler."
"No, but the corruption was visible. They kept saying he was brutal when apprehending those troublesome glitches over there," Enyo says, pointing at two very shaken programs standing a little ways from the others. "He left after Yssandra stopped everything. I'm going after him. Reassign them, find Shaddox, and wait for us at Alpha."
The program darts away and slips out of the club, leaving Azeri to scan the wary programs and the anxious Yssandra. She then kneels down and touches fingertips to the floor to see the history of the programs involved.
She wishes she didn't. Watching the telltale blue footprints turn corrosive red, Azeri feels is the overpowering need to shut Tron down and that's the last thing she wants to do.
One step at a time, she reassures herself as she moves towards Yssandra. SamFlynn can fix this.