Fic: The Devil's Dues [1/10]
Fandom(s): Tron: Legacy
Characters: Sam Flynn, Tron/Rinzler
Rating: T
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:
It wasn't so much that hope died, but that Sam realized it had only been wishful thinking in the first place.
For Winzler, and the prompt (misinterpreted):
The world ends. Nuclear wasteland, Mad Max style, etc. One day Sam comes out of the computer and everything is gone. The power will run out soon/the arcade is in danger/etc so Sam hurriedly brings a recovering Tron(zler) out to save him.
Tron is OK at first but slowly reverts to Rinzler under the stress of survival - and Sam eventually begins to lose it as well. In the end we’re left with 2 bugfuck crazy survivalist murdermachines roaming the wasteland together.
Notes:
I must be nuts, starting this before I've even made it halfway through The Sea Like the Stars. But I apparently revel in my illogic, as I have gone ahead and done it, and I'm making even fewer promises as to the updates to this tale. The premise had just seemed way too fun to let pass without something to mark it, even if I did misremember some details and then gleefully ignored the rest.
Part 1
The tableau was this:
Sam, laid out on his stomach, still spitting dust from when he had been mashed face-first into the yellow, packed earth next to the road. One arm wrenched up behind his back, someone's knee digging painfully into his spine just below that, and cold metal resting far too comfortably at the nape of his neck.
Tron, still standing, still free, but looking as miserable as if he was the one pinned like a bug on a board as he stared at Sam. His hands were clenched at his sides, arms half-cocked with tension - in one fist, a hunting knife, in the other, a long-tubed flashlight; long since broken, but whose heft with all the batteries inside was satisfying. On either side of him, two ragged figures stood a wary distance, their bodies crouched and cautious. Behind him lay another two dark shapes, unmoving.
"Jesus Christ, looks like your friend finally got the memo," a voice above Sam noted, the rasp of desperation turning the humor cruel, words muffled by a swollen nose; broken by Sam's elbow. "We were just gonna shake you down for your supplies, no harm, no foul, but you hadta go and lay in on poor Danny and Phil - "
Sam tried to crane his head that fraction of an inch higher, chin scraping painfully on the sandy grains, to catch Tron's gaze squarely. The former security program knew better than to give them away with a headshake, but his eyes pleaded with Sam.
" - can't leave someone like him at our backs, can we, boys?"
As soon as they had encountered the gang, Sam knew it would be their lives at stake - the only difference would be in how quickly the end would come if they did not manage to win out. If their meager supplies were taken, then it might be a few slow days of thirst or starvation if they didn't manage to find something else to scavange in that time. If the gang was particularly vicious, or looking for sport, then it would be even quicker than that. Thus, the grim outcomes already mapped, Sam had felt only the vaguest need to hold back.
Tron clearly still had reservations, though. He held Sam's wellbeing as his top priority, but what was he to do when defending one user meant fighting a host of others? Practicality had won out so far, but Sam knew, even if his captor didn't, that the two behind Tron were unconscious and most likely not seriously hurt. When he had the luxury, Tron knew enough about user anatomy now to ensure that much.
But when they couldn't afford that luxury ...
"Sorry," the man said, sounding anything but. "Get 'im, boys."
The men advanced and Tron tensed, but Sam could see the program's gaze fixed unblinkingly upon him - resigned. Waiting.
Sam licked cracked lips, drew a breath against the pressure upon his back, tried to ignore that ominous chill at his neck, and croaked, "Release Rinzler."
It had begun with the disorienting sensation of the universe blinking, as if reality itself had just shivered; like the after-image of lightning caught from the corners of the eyes, for a moment leaving the mind still and quiet, counting the seconds to see if thunder would follow.
Tron had broken off mid-word, so Sam knew he had not wholly imagined it, and he was just about to ask what had happened when the game arena's unhurried, dulcet tones rang out with the echo of dozens of other WAV players throughout Tron City. "Warning. Warning. Main power source interrupted ... switching to UPS. Attention, now running on UPS - "
"Sam - "
"No, Tron, it's okay," he answered quickly, struggling to swallow his heart back down his throat at averted catastrophes. UPS ... they were running on the uninterruptable power supply now. Thank god he had made time to crawl through some of the hardware just the month before and dragged in one of those overweight batteries - who knew what would have happened if he had been on the Grid and a blackout took down the aging systems. "At full charge, the UPS should give us at least another ten minutes top-side; plenty of time for me to get out and call the power company to see what's - "
" - now running on UPS. Warning, UPS charge at 70% ... 69.8% ... 69.4% ... power drain evaluated. Prioritizing. Molecular digitizing laser scheduled for shut down in twenty-five microcycles. Warning, main power source interrupted, now running on UPS - "
And Sam felt his heart leap right back up into his throat. There was not enough color definition for him to tell for sure, but he was fairly certain that Tron would blanch as pale as he felt, if the program was capable of doing so. "The portal," the security program breathed before he was snatching up both of his batons, flinging one to Sam.
He didn't bother protesting the presumption, reflex snatching the offering from the air before he could even think about going for his own, and almost before he could finally arrange his thoughts back into shape they were already speeding out of the arena, whipping by a group of bewildered-looking programs as they milled in confusion at the system-wide warnings. "You lead, I need to reprioritize!" he called out over the hum of the bikes.
"The priority is getting you to the portal!" Tron retorted with predictable stubbornness.
"We'll never make it in twenty-five microcycles! I need to shuffle the laser to the top of the priority list!"
Tron could make the calculations as quickly as he, and his conclusions caused the security program to falter just enough for Sam to catch up; the two of them now racing side by side through corridors so familiar that instinct alone was enough to put them on the shortest path to the city limits. "It will be close," came the anxious assessment.
"Very close," Sam had to admit with a grimace. Damn it, why hadn't he also factored in just how much power the portal and laser on standby would require from the backup in last month's setup instead of penciling it in for the next? At the rate that the laser was draining the UPS, if it was kept open with enough juice left over to reconstitute him on the other side, it would leave the UPS only a minute or so to shut down the server gracefully; give or take some comparatively big error bars. All computer-based estimations of time and power tended to slop a little, and they were already cutting it pretty fine. "Where's Quorra?"
"In Sector Epsilon-Three," Tron answered in heavy tones. Sam felt his own stomach drop as well; that was nearly clear across the city in the opposite direction.
"She won't have time, then," Sam verbalized both their thoughts as he grudgingly accessed his helmet's HUD. At least he had the reassurance that, as a true native of the Grid in a way that even Tron was not, Quorra would most likely weather the shut-down with no problems.
Just shy of twenty microcycles later, they were navigating the less traveled roads outside of Tron City and leaving the system messages behind; the steady countdown on the UPS charge levels evidence of his successful rearrangement of the shutdown prioritizations. "What would happen if you were still on the grid during the shutdown?"
Sam had known Tron wouldn't be able to leave that alone. "Doesn't matter," he gritted out, dodging the spirit of the question. "Ain't gonna happen."
"Hypothetically."
Stoic and stern, the security program made a frighteningly effective watchdog. Much to his chagrin, Sam had begun to discover over the last few weeks that the metaphor also stretched to cover Tron's inability to let anything go once he had sunk his teeth into a thought. "Look, I don't know and I'm not aiming to find out, all right? I mean, I've got an identity disc just like everyone else. It'd probably be the same for me as everybody," he dismissed as casually as he could.
Sam felt slightly guilty for the silence that followed his terse response, but he could always apologize later after he got the whole power situation sorted out. There were priorities, after all.