Chapter Text
The Outlands were far more empty than Alan had expected. He remembered Flynn's stories of gridbugs and wild ISOs, and had expected a world akin to the wild west movies his brother was always making. Instead, he was greeted by a cold, rocky wasteland not unlike the ski slopes he and his family spent copious amounts of time on during the winter. His lightcycle handled it well enough for him to not worry about not making it back to the hideout in one piece.
He smiled softly, remembering years ago when he used to ride with Flynn. It wasn't very often, seeing as Alan didn't have a bike of his own and always had to borrow one of Flynn's, but they had spent many hours away, skimming through the hills around the Bay Area. Occasionally, they'd spend a few days riding down the Pacific Coast Highway, but that stopped after Flynn found a new interest in the Grid, and because Alan had important people to make sure he stayed alive for – particularly his wife and then-newborn son, Jethro.
The little boy had been an accident, all things considered, but Alan and Lora had decided to refer to him early on as anything but. He was a blessing in every right, with crystal blue eyes like his mother and a shock of thick, dark hair like his father. Genetics had bestowed a curse upon him, though, leaving him with the same seizures Alan's mother had dealt with for the vast majority of her life. It was a sad situation, but not one Alan or Lora ever considered giving up on. As much money as Alan made with Encom, a solid portion of that went to research, not only for his own child but for every other blessing that had been dealt such a hand as he was.
Alan still remembered the night the young man had sat himself and Lora down, explaining to them that he couldn't stay. A whirl of emotions had wound through him that night – fear for his son's future, frustration at the fact that Jet had promised he wouldn't leave, and anger. Anger at the people who had been hunting Jet ever since he'd broken into that Dillinger offshoot to save Alan's life. Their relationship had been rocky at best at that time, and his rescue had proved to be the very thing they both needed to mend that tear.
Jet had tracked him for months through both the Encom and Dillinger systems, encountering all manner of dangers along the way. Alan himself had jumped into the Grid once or twice, having escaped the back room he'd been locked in, and had witnessed things he would prefer to acknowledge as dreams or hallucinations for the rest of his life. The worst of it had come, however, when Jet had attempted to send them both back. One of Dillinger's goons had redirected the stream, sending Jet back to the old Encom laser lab, and flinging Alan back out of the laser he'd escaped through. They'd beaten him, dragged him to an old warehouse, and drugged him within an inch of his life. It still chilled him to think that, had Jet been two minutes later than he was to save his father, Alan Bradley would have ceased to exist, and Jet would have been in a world more trouble.
He shook his head at the thought, at the very bare memory of that moment. His son had been strong, for him, and they'd won at least a small legal battle afterwards, but it had been far from over.
Soon after their return, Jet's seizures had started anew, an event that took a heavy toll on his mental health. It hadn't been obvious, but Alan had seen it – he'd become quieter, even as he planned to propose to Lilian, an event that would have made any other man giddy beyond belief. A spark of his son's old joy had reappeared after he'd taken the chance with an experimental implant that dampened whatever made the seizures happen, but it wasn't long before Dillinger's hunters caught up, and the fear of being found and locked away before ever being able to live his life overtook Jet once again.
It had been cold that night, uncharacteristically so for the Bay Area in November. Alan had just pulled a few of his plants inside, not wanting their delicate leaves to frost over and die, even if their time was nearly spent. Jet was standing in the light of the kitchen, shimmering with an almost sickly glow. Alan, immediately, had known something was wrong.
He didn't remember most of the conversation, admittedly. All he knew was that when they'd said their goodnights, he'd looked down at Lora's palm to find that his own short fingernails had dug crescents into her soft skin. They'd both cried that night, his face pressed into her shoulder, hers in his chest. Their worst fears had been realized – for years, they'd feared that Jet would simply up and run away, or remove himself from the pain of the world entirely. While the Grid was, quite possibly, the best solution to both of those things, it was still terrifying. Kevin Flynn had been missing for over fifteen years at that point. From the reports Enzo was bringing, the entire Grid was in turmoil. Jet would only be safe if he stayed with Enzo and out of trouble.
Jethro had promised he would do so. It was the only way Alan would let him. And he kept to his word, at least for a time. Cutting across a rocky outcropping, the snow spraying the few spaces of skin that remained open beneath his helmet and gloves, reminding him of Christmas three years later. The random page from Jet, his hasty drive to Flynn's, and the feeling of seeing the tiny patch he'd made all those years ago in person. She was still tiny, still in beta, but held every bit of his and Lora's resemblance – their stillborn daughter, forever remembered as one of the most important programs in the system.
Her discovery was just the beginning of what Alan considered to be one of the last great weeks of his life. Jet had spent Christmas in the home that had raised him. He and Lilian finally tied the knot in a quiet, small courthouse wedding – two months later, Lilian would find out she was pregnant with her own son, Enzo. It was everything Alan had wanted and more, and he found it hurting oddly less when Jet returned to the Grid that very next week, Peony curled happily in his arms. He had just moved away, Alan told himself. Just like Lora had done all those years ago.
And then he lost contact. One last page, a simple love note to Lilian, and he was gone.
Alan still didn't know where he was.
Because of that, he found himself searching the Outlands as they rode, his eyes on every crack and crevice and cave, waiting to see Jet's bright white-and-cyan lights gleaming from one of them, or following them mischievously as he often did.
"We'll split up," Beck's voice called over the helmet comms, its similarity to Jet startling Alan for a moment, causing him to shake his head. "I've seen her in all these caves. The hideout's a little further from here, but she doesn't seem to get very far. She just lurks here, like she's waiting for something."
Waiting for someone, Alan thought, the sudden realization dawning on him. Peony was staying hidden, sure, but she wasn't leaving the area Jet had left her in. Meaning that, unless Jet was with her, she was simply doing as any young child would be told – if you're lost, stay in the same place.
He watched as Beck and Enzo peeled away, wheeling off on their separate courses while Alan remained on his. He rode on for a while, not seeing anything, before something drew him towards a route up a rocky slope. Following intuition, he climbed, finding himself on the top of an outcropping that allowed him a view of the entire valley, and the cities and seas beyond. He sat up, balancing his cycle with his left leg, looking out over the valley. Occasionally, he'd see a trace of Beck's white light trail, or Enzo's mint-green one, but there was no pink.
Alan was about to call it off and round them in when a flash from a cave in his range caught his eye – pink on white, a suit glimmering against the snow of the Outlands as a tiny shape darted across the snow. "Peony!" he whispered harshly, immediately launching himself back onto his bike, soaring down the mountainside. "I've got her! She's in the middle set of caves – you two keep an eye out for threats while I pick her up."
"Roger."
"Copy that."
He pushed the cycle as fast as it would go, throwing snow as he careened down the mountainside. The distance between himself and the child seemed far more than it had from above, and he found a sinking feeling burrowing into his chest. Glancing behind himself on an odd whim – was he being watched? – he frowned as he saw the coast was completely clear. "Odd," he mumbled to himself, still unable to shake the sense that a pair of eyes was watching him from far away.
Peony was gripped in the same fear as she watched the lightcycle barrel towards her. Jet had taught her early on that white light was good, and orange wasn't, and she could clearly see the white lines on the bike, but how did she know this one was good? She'd felt the signature of the creature that had stolen Jet away from her. It was bits and pieces of her signature, marking her as the offspring code of such a monster – the daughter of Rinzler. She didn't understand. Had Clu created her? Surely something like that didn't have a User, and if he did, it wasn't a User Peony wanted to see. So, she kept running.
At least, until a lightwall cut her off. She shrieked, dropping to the ground, immediately digging her hands in and pushing herself up with all the strength a beta could muster, taking off again just to find herself facing another lightwall. The cycle was sweeping a circle around her, trapping her inside. She made a move to run, but he was faster, encircling her in a wide loop with his pure-white light trail. Fear clutched her core, even as a cry rang out.
"Peony!"
She knew the voice – Alan-One, Tron's User, and her Jet's father. Jet wasn't really her father, she knew – she'd called him that, but shared no offspring code with him. They were more like siblings, in a way, at least as far as Peony could understand. Jet had once explained User families to her, but they made no sense, so she resorted to simply referring to Jet as her father to keep things simple. But why was Alan here? Why was he trapping her in a circle of light, determined not to let her get away? Was he going to punish her for losing Jet, for letting Clu's monster take him away?
Alan gritted his teeth at the way her face turned from determination to fear to hopelessness as she sank to her knees. He drifted to a stop, barely derezzing his bike before he tumbled off, sprinting towards her. His helmet folded inwards as he ran towards her, but she showed no recognition, her tiny face buried in her tiny hands, her shoulders and head shrouded by a blanket of hair so bright blonde it was nearly white. Snow sprayed from beneath his knees as he landed and slid, catching her in his arms, his coat whipping around them both like a blanket. "It's okay, sweet girl," he hushed between breaths. "I've got you. You're okay. It's okay."
"He's gone!" was the first thing she sobbed, her voice melodic and low like Yori's, but younger, less troubled. "They took him! Alan-One…Clu…his monster took Jet!"
Clu's monster. Rinzler.
The thought lodged in his heart like a knife, every fear of his realized. He'd made Jet promise to stay safe, to stay hidden, to stay out of whatever mess Flynn had gotten himself caught in. He wondered if Jet simply hadn't listened, or if Clu had been so dogged in his quest for perfection that Jet's anomaly had caught his eye anyways. His own eyes now filled with tears at the realization that he may never get Jet back, especially if Rinzler and Clu had gotten their hands on him. "I'm sorry, little one," he whispered, his own voice choked with tears. "I'm so sorry. It's safe now. I've got you. We're going home – me and Beck and Enzo, we're staying with Yori out in the Sea, and she's fixing Tron. It'll be okay."
"But I let him take Jet!" Peony sobbed. "I'm in trouble, aren't I? That's why you cornered me – you're angry that Jet got taken and I didn't do anything to fix it!"
Alan sighed softly, settling into a much more comfortable sitting position, trying to ignore the feeling of the freezing cold snow beneath his suit. He was going to be here a while. "It's not your fault," he comforted, his voice low and gentle, his hand slowly rubbing her back. He glanced up as the rumble of lightcycles caught his attention, relieved to only see the mint-green and white of Beck and Enzo's cycles approaching. "It's not your fault, baby. Rinzler was…merciless. Clu made him that way."
"B-but he took Jet," Peony stammered, sniffing up a bubble of snot as she continued to cry. "And I couldn't do anything! I've been all alone now."
He curled the patch tighter against himself. "I know," he mumbled, "and I'm sorry. Ella and I should have come for you sooner. Enzo and Beck have been trying to catch you, but Beck…" He chuckled softly. "Beck's still scared of you, I think."
She giggled softly, looking up. "Why's Beck scared of me?" she asked with innocent eyes.
"You kept appearing and disappearing," he mused. "You were elusive, like a little ghost."
Peony giggled and snuggled into his warmth again, thankful for another User to keep her processors from freezing up. It had been hard work, by herself, finding a cave deep enough to protect her from the harsh cold of the Outlands. "Liked bein' a ghost," she mumbled. "But I'd like to go home now. Please."
"Of course." He stood, keeping the tiny program in his arms. "Enzo and Beck are here to help now too, see?"
"Enzo?" she squeaked, turning out of Alan's arms to look at the other lightcycles as they rolled to a stop. Enzo swung his leg over the side, his helmet fragmented away from his face, and he smiled. Peony brightened, rubbing at her eyes before reaching out a hand to Enzo, her other still locked in Alan's coat.
"Hi, piccola peonia," Enzo said with a soft smile, stepping over to her and kissing her tiny knuckles in a slight bow, as if he were reintroducing himself to royalty. Though, considering Peony was the second program of Alan-One, he might as well have been. The action made her giggle through the tears, and Enzo smiled, looking up as Beck appeared. "Beck's here too, see? Do you remember Beck?"
She nodded as Beck's helmet fragmented away. "I didn't see him a lot," she said quietly, "but yeah. I know Beck. Alan said he's scared of me."
Beck opened his mouth to protest, but Enzo held up a hand, stopping him. Let the little one believe whatever Alan told her, his glare seemed to say. Beck sighed and shook his head, wondering why he was always the butt of the joke.
Shivering slightly in the wind of the Outlands, Peony looked up at Alan, her crystal blue eyes pleading. "Can we go home now?"
Alan chuckled. "Sure thing, kiddo," he said with a smile. "You still remember how to ride a –" He froze mid-question, the remainder of the sentence hanging in midair, lost in the cloud of fog from his lips. On the ridgeline he'd spotted Peony from was another rider, dressed in solid black with sparse, orange lightlines. His head was covered in a solid helmet, and he watched them with slow turns of his head. Suddenly, the nagging feeling Alan had of being watched was back tenfold, especially as the program's helmet wheeled to him and locked. He couldn't see the program's eyes, much less the rest of his face, but he could feel the stare locked on him.
"We have to go," Beck said, his voice low and icy. He knew those patterns, and it made no sense. Their owner was gone, resting in his old suit in Yori's hideout. "Now. Alan, you need to get her on your lap and go."
"Let me take her," Enzo insisted. "Alan?"
But Alan was frozen, staring at the figure. His stance and build was familiar – shoulders broader than his own, a stance straighter and taller than his too. He could almost hear the whisper of a voice in his head, more familiar than Beck's, so similar to his own it made his skin crawl.
Run.
He did as he was told, rezzing his lightcycle before snatching Peony up, plopping her in front of him as he threw himself onto the cycle and tore off, Beck and Enzo flanking him so tightly their legs nearly brushed his back wheel. Alan threw a look over his shoulder as they skimmed away over the snowy Outlands, the tracks they'd left covered now by the ever-drifting snow. He watched as the solid black of the suit faded away, and the lights with it. Chest tight, he glanced back again and again and again, waiting for the lightcycle to approach through the torrent of snow, for its rider to fly off with grace and throw a disc with such accuracy it would end Alan's life then and there.
But the bike never appeared. The Outlands were silent, just as silent as they had been before. All that was left was the hum of his bike below him and the sound of his panicked breath rattling against the inside of his helmet. Closing his eyes for a moment – he had enough muscle memory to keep the cycle upright, and knew Enzo and Beck would correct him if he went astray – he took a few deep breaths, resituating Peony against himself. "We're safe, Pea," he said quietly, glancing at Beck and Enzo, who nodded.
"Who was that?" Beck asked. "It couldn't be –"
"Rinzler? No," Enzo interrupted. "His signature wasn't Rinzler's, and I would know. I hunted that bastard for cycles. It was…similar, but it wasn't his. Besides, Tron's safe with us now. I doubt Clu would have been able to make a copy, and even then, he would've shared a signature"
"Could Dyson have changed it?" Beck asked. "I know there's rumors that he's out and about again."
Enzo scoffed, helping herd Alan back towards the shoreline, his innate sense of direction proving more than useful. "I've heard the same," he said, "and I don't discount them, but I doubt he'd have the know-how to build a new Rinzler from scratch code. He's good at manipulating, it, sure – well, really only damaging it beyond repair, but I doubt he could build anything on his own."
Alan nodded. He knew who this Rinzler was – rather, he had a faint idea – but that wasn't anything to concern himself with. He had Tron's patch again, and was heading straight for the place where he lay. Yori and Elanor were probably nearly done with the repairs to his core. This anomaly was simply that – an anomaly.
"Yori? How did you find Tron?"
Yori looked up. She had been fascinated from the start at the way the young User could hold an entire conversation without ever looking her in the eye, focused on the work beneath her hands. "He found me, really," she said quietly. "I…I didn't really leave the island after he became Rinzler. It wasn't until Beck started hearing rumors of his return that I decided to join him in Argon one day, under heavy disguise. I knew if he was looking for me, he'd be able to find me even with my face hidden." She smiled fondly at the thought, blushing as Elanor looked at her in confusion. "We had each other's signatures memorized."
"Oh," Elanor said, smiling softly as she looked back down at her work. "That's…really sweet. Like memorizing someone's footsteps or voice."
"Something like that," she said, knowing it was far deeper than just a sound. It was something more akin to a sixth sense, a feeling that there was something nearby that knew you better than you knew yourself. She couldn't feel it now as she looked down at Tron, forcing herself to look away from the gaping hole in his chest. At first, Elanor had wanted to hold off on removing the old core, but it had begun to quickly deteriorate, forcing its removal early. Now, streams of color and light ran from vital spaces within his chest, sprawling over the floor and away to sources Yori had found within her small hideout.
Elanor hummed in acknowledgement. At first that had upset Yori, fearing she was being dismissed just as she had been with Clu or Flynn, but she quickly learned that a hum from Elanor meant the girl was still listening, but was either so concentrated on her work that she couldn't respond without losing her train of thought, or that she had nothing else to add, so Yori continued. "He appeared late one night. Beck and I were digging out someone's home, and I was there to try and repair it – that became my task once Beck deemed it safe enough for me to be out and about without anything covering my face.
"I could feel his signature instantly," she whispered. "It was him. Tron. My Tron, but…something was broken. He couldn't recognize me by name or memory, but I could feel some shard of him deep within calling to me. He wandered towards me. We were alone in an alleyway – the same alleyway where we crossed paths once before the worst of the Occupation took hold and he chose to disappear into the Outlands. I nearly had him in my grasp, and Beck…" She sighed and shook her head, a fond smile on her lips. "He didn't mean to come in and botch it all. He didn't really understand, I don't think, and was just terrified of losing someone else that had practically become family to him."
"He scared him away, didn't he?" Elanor asked quietly, a small smile playing at the corner of her lips. Sure, she didn't know Beck as well as the other programs, but she'd spent enough time around the beta to at least learn his personality – and his penchant for causing trouble where trouble was not needed.
Yori nodded, a small smile on her own face. "He did," she said. "Funniest thing was, Rinzler didn't fight. He simply let Beck drive him out of the alleyway, then gave me one last look, one last call, and took off. Oh, I was furious, Elanor. I felt horrible after the fact, but…I was so close. I was so worried I'd never see him again.
"And then…" Her eyes grew wistful, and she pressed her lips together to stop the tears. "He and Paige and Enzo were all here one night. Argon was nearly restored – we were celebrating, really. The weather was awful, and had it not been for my senses, he would've been left alone," she said, sighing quietly.
Elanor looked up from her work for a moment, watching Yori as she fought through the memory – apparently, a memory she had told to very few, especially considering all those she cared about were with her. "But he wasn't?" she goaded with a small smile. Yori shook her head.
"No," she said quietly. "I felt his signature touch mine, heard his name like a breath in my ears. I went scrambling down to the docks, with Beck hot on my heels, and found him lying at the bottom of the stairs. His fingers were just barely touching the lip of the third stair up – he'd tried to climb and lost all ability to.
"His lights were flickering, sputtering, unsure whether they were better suited in orange or white. His body was…covered in these gouges. Some I knew, some I didn't. Some I put there, the one time Clu threw me in the arena." She swallowed hard at that, and Elanor bit her tongue as she was about to ask more, realizing it was obviously a painful memory. "Beck almost turned him away again, until I reached down and touched his face. The recognition, oh the recognition!" she breathed, throwing her head back, her bangs shimmering in the low light. "He still didn't know my name, or what I meant to him, but he knew I could fix him. He knew he was home.
"Beck carried him up the stairs for me. Paige did what she could to keep him comfortable, and Enzo and I used what we had in our databases to fix him, but…" Her sentence trailed off as she looked down at the sleeping form of her beloved, eyelids folded over his soft grey-blue eyes, his flop of brown hair falling backwards against the pillow. "It just wasn't enough. There was nothing I had for him, nothing beyond basic patches and what energy I could spare."
"But you gave him everything you could," Elanor said softly, reaching out to take her hand. "And you brought us here to help."
Yori nodded, her eyes filled with tears as she gave Elanor's hand a squeeze back. "I suppose you're right," she said. "I wish I could help with the core, but…it's beyond my capabilities. I'm good at building solar sailers and skyscrapers, not really the intricacies of my fellow programs."
Elanor laughed softly, finishing the last few pieces of the core. She wrapped her hands around it, pulling from within to test it for energy output, before pausing. "Actually…you can help me with one more thing," she said quietly, holding the core out to Yori, who flinched away.
"I'm sorry, I don't think there's –"
"You can give him the life Clu stole away." Elanor's eyes were soft, watching as it took Yori a moment to pick up on her meaning.
"Oh," the program breathed. "I…are you sure?"
Elanor nodded. "Very. The lines we have set up for him would hold him long enough for me to rebuild another, if I had to," she said easily. "Yori, take it. His heart's not mine. It's yours. Always has been."
She nodded, eyes terrified as Elanor gently set the core in her hands. It was cool and smooth, far more than anything else she'd held on the Grid, and even without a program's energy flowing through it, it still felt alive. How a User like Elanor could construct such an intricate, detailed piece as this was beyond her, but she supposed most things concerning Users were.
"Here," Elanor said softly, moving her hands so each finger rested on a vein or valve. "Okay. Just a gentle pulse at first, as if you were waking something up, like your house."
Yori nodded, searching within herself for the soft pulses that emanated from her fingers every time she returned home and lit the tiny hideout she'd built all by herself with dozens of digital flowers and plants. It flowed from her fingers into the core, which gave a short, soft hum. Her jaw fell slack at the sensation, a breath she had been holding flowing out shakily.
"Good," the User said, her eyes alight. "Now, same thing, but make it steady. I think that level of energy is about what he's experiencing now."
She did as she was told, her own smile growing as the gentle humming continued, swelling close to the song she remembered on all those late nights in the glistening spire, before Sark, before the MCP, before Flynn, and long before Clu. It was a song that touched the deepest parts of her own core, a song that brought her feelings of safety like no signature ever could. It was a song she'd longed to hear, smooth and perfect compared to the horrid stutter she'd been laying against, her tears the only thing lulling her to sleep.
"Give it a little push," Elanor said, "just an easy windup to a punch of energy." The core held perfectly, and she smiled. "Alright, then. Help me get it into place and I'll put him back together."
Yori did as she was told, listening carefully as Elanor helped her reattach the core to its conduits, her stitching sure and straight as Elanor held her creation in place. The young User smiled as she watched Yori's brow knit in concentration, reminded of her own mother whenever Lora chose to take on needlepoint projects. Soon enough, the core was in place, already humming steadily but softly. Yori carefully closed her beloved's chest, her fingers carefully closing the space Elanor had left, leaving it as if nothing had ever happened.
Even that impressed Elanor, who smiled wide at her. "And you were worried about a scar," she teased, shaking her head as she looked at Tron. "Look at that. The color in his face, Yori. It's come back."
Yori felt tears pool in her own eyes as she looked. Sure enough, just as Elanor had said, the soft color of a program had returned. Every breath seemed easier, too, and it was almost as if he'd sunk further into the pillows around him, no longer tense and fighting for his own life. Closing her eyes, Elanor laid a hand on his chest, giving it one last burst of energy before helping Yori cover his torso with the blankets again.
"Perfect timing!"
Elanor turned to find her father in the doorway. His face was marked with an expression Elanor didn't particularly want to dig into, but the little program in his arms made it easy to tear her attention from it. "Peony!" she cheered softly and excitedly, the little program making a beeline for her as Alan set her down. "Hi, little one!"
"Ella!" Peony cheered just as happily, giggling as she was lifted into Elanor's lap with a grown. "I grew!"
"I noticed!" Elanor exclaimed with a soft laugh. "My, you're getting big for a beta. You'll outgrow Beck soon." She grinned as the other beta glared at her from the doorway. "Sorry, Beck."
He shrugged. "She's got Tron's code," he said simply. "Of course she'll be bigger than me. That's the first thing Yori did, actually – she reversed whatever mess Clu had made to shorten Tron."
"Clu did what?" Elanor and Alan said, almost in unison, though Elanor's tone was more laughing, and Alan's tone seemed to suggest a desire to derezz Flynn's pet program a second time. Yori nodded.
"It was part of a secondary virus," she said. "It was easy enough to clear off, though. It seems Clu didn't much like the fact that his enforcer was taller than him."
Alan scoffed. "Sounds like Flynn," he grumbled, remembering all the times Flynn had insisted on wearing heeled boots to trade shows and conferences after more than a few people had mistakenly called Alan "Flynn," solely because he had a few inches on the younger man. "Ella? How's he looking?"
Elanor smiled. "Everything went smoothly," she said. "He's all yours and Pea's now." She stood, helping Yori pack away all the supplies before snatching her baton off a nearby stand. "I'm going to go check on Sam and Quorra to see if they've made any progress on my project. Let me know if he starts to stir, okay?"
Her father chuckled, catching her in a hug as she skirted past him. She leaned against his shoulder, wrapping her own arm around his waist. "I certainly will. Be safe, will you?"
"I will. Don't worry." With that, she was out the door and gone.
"Dear Connor…pray, tell me, why are half of the original Encom sys-data floppies missing?"
Connor looked up as Ed Dillinger, Jr. half-leaned, half-sat on his desk. "I…believe someone checked them out, sir," he said, immediately turning to his screens, rattling off a few lines into the search bar. "Yep. Checked out last night by Dr. Elanor P. Baines-Bradley at around 10 PM."
Ed hummed. "And what exactly was Mrs. Baines-Bradley doing checking out floppies at 10 PM?" he asked, tilting his head.
Connor shrugged, wishing his boss would leave him alone to work through the multitude of emails that had been foisted upon him as Dillinger Jr.'s personal secretary. "No clue, sir."
"You were here, weren't you?" he asked, finally turning his face towards Connor, his cutting blue eyes barely visible beneath a swath of poorly-highlighted hair. Connor wondered why it was always the rich people that had the worst hairstyles – not including the Baines-Bradley family, of course.
"I was," he said easily, returning his attention to the actual task he'd been given, trying to remind Ed that he had other superiors besides the son of the disgraced once-senior-executive-VP of the company.
A heavy sigh left Ed. He was annoyed, to say the least. It was obvious that Connor Sato desired to be anywhere except in the seat he was in, ferrying emails to and fro for a section of the company he couldn't even understand, but it was the kid's fault. He was, Ed knew, a little timid when it came to putting himself out there in the art world. The kid had talent, that much he knew, talent that nearly any company in the Bay Area would be privileged to have. Not that Ed wouldn't fight him leaving, of course – he knew just how many secrets the kid knew from the time he spent around Ed's family. Why his sister had even dared to extend the first invitation, he would never know. Elizabeth had always been a wild card – he just hadn't expected her wildness to pin such a talented creature as Connor to the same spot for two whole years.
"Let me know what you find out when she comes back around to return them," he said dryly, adding under his breath, "whenever that is." He slid off the desk, heading for his own office, filled once again with disdain for Alan Bradley and everything he'd wrought on the company. Ed would have liked to say that Sam was his rival, but Sam was dumb and harmless. Ed knew, just as much as anyone else in the upper echelons of Encom, that very little of the company was actually run by Sam Flynn. Really, the original Encom that had been stolen from his father hadn't been run by Kevin Flynn, either. There was always someone far smarter, far more capable, pulling the reins.
At first, Ed and his sister had supposed it was not in fact Alan, but his wife. Not that Ed didn't think Alan wasn't incredibly brilliant, but the silence from Lora Baines after the '82 acquisition had rung in their ears as a sign that she was secretly pulling strings from behind. They knew government jobs existed, just as well as anyone, but the fact that the woman had up and disappeared to DC for months at a time, leaving behind a husband and child, spoke less of secret government projects and more of underhanded company-running.
Elizabeth had been the first to dig on her, of course, finding a record even more spotless than the one tied to Alan's name. It was surprising, considering how often Ed heard tales shared between Alan, Flynn, Roy Kleinberg, and their other friend Paul Bianchi of Lora's college mischief. She was good at not getting caught, it seemed, and Elizabeth was determined to finally be the one to do so. It had been her that made the suggestion to the board, then – to Raymond Cross, specifically, whom Elizabeth's young son was beginning to resemble closely – that Lora not be allowed to search for her Yori program upon her return to Encom. Lora Baines was determined to improve her laser, and Encom's board was suspiciously willing to give her everything she wanted.
She'd almost died that day. Ed still remembered it – his sister rushing into the home, her face wrought with fear. She hadn't expected the removal of a singular program to so interrupt the testing process, and if Ed didn't know any better, he would have thought his sister showed a sudden, mild concern for her rival. They'd immediately backed off from Lora, having noticed the sudden plummet in profitability.
Encom was sinking, and it was because Lora had nearly died, but it was not any direct influence of her own.
From that day onward, the sole target of Ed and Elizabeth's nagging had been Alan Bradley himself, the true heir to Encom after Kevin Flynn's sudden disappearance. Elizabeth's last act, a suggestion made just weeks before her first breakup with Raymond, had been for the board to evict Alan entirely. Raymond, ever-swayed by something Ed didn't think his sister could possess, agreed, and Alan Bradley was rooted out. Encom floundered further, at least until Ed Dillinger Jr. graduated college.
He smiled to himself as he remembered it. Alan, practically begging the board to create a data oversight department as technology soared ahead and Encom lagged behind, too bogged down in years and years of paperwork and digital footprints to make sense of anything. Ed had been hand-picked for the job by Alan himself, and though he certainly resented most of his time stuck in the cell blocks with the rest of the entry-level scum who simply wanted the Encom name – a name that acted like the key to the lock around every single tech company in the Bay Area – tied to their resume for the rest of time, he couldn't find it all that bad.
Besides, it let him stick his fingers in every crevice of creation since Encom's beginning. He'd heard whispers of the Grid, fueled first by Kevin Flynn's own writing and then by the movies and shows and comics and games that followed after it. Flynn's own work could be easily chalked up to the ramblings of an old man so bogged down by the New Age of the 1970s that he couldn't even think straight anymore, but once Hollywood had taken hold of it and made it real, it suddenly seemed like something that certainly existed.
Ed knew it did. He'd stumbled upon it late one night – nothing more than a conversation, but it wasn't like anything he'd seen. Lines of code, communicating with each other in real time, right in front of his face. Their words were not disguised by the usual jargon or binary, but were true conversations in normal English between two programs – one named Clu, which he recognized from the Tron franchise, and the other named Dyson.
He hadn't interacted with them then, seeing as Mackey was keeping tight eyes on the company in the wake of Sam Flynn's yearly famous stunt – not the one that would pit Ed against Alan in a mid-conference-room battle to shut down a buggy release system, though – and Ed knew it was best not to test his systems. Mackey wasn't the brightest creature, but he was ruthless, and if there was one thing Ed and Alan shared, it was fear and disdain for the board-chosen director who didn't even know Java from Python.
But about six months later, during a late-night with Connor as the two of them feverishly worked to unwind a set of particularly flagrant emails sent between the mailroom and the PR department, he'd seen them again. He'd quickly shooed Connor away, giving him a miserably large stack of the emails that he falsely claimed was half, and had settled down at the terminal. Almost immediately, Clu had locked him out of the system, yelling something about "no Users permitted." Ed had laughed it off and returned to his work before a separate ping a few seconds later caught his attention.
This system still needs a User, it had said. Flynn was unfit. Clu is much the same. Do you have the guidance we seek?
Ed Dillinger Jr., filled with the pride of his father before him, had answered almost immediately, his chest puffed out as far as it would go. Yes, he had said, I do.
Good, was the response, lightning-fast. I have nowhere safe to communicate with a User. The Grid is still in turmoil, the Luminary still reigns. But one will come to end him – I'm sure of it. When that time comes, I will build a tower for you, and I will purify the Grid once and for all with your direction alone.
Ed had been elated to hear those words. No one, not even his sister, had ever considered him high enough for such an honor. Even Alan had only placed him above the data collections teams, not as a developer, where Ed felt he belonged deep inside. This mysterious program, whose name and functions Ed didn't even know, was offering him that chance – the chance to turn the Grid inside out. For a moment, he balked at the offer – what would turning the Grid inside-out do for him? – before remembering that it was the Encom Grid. If he had control over the Grid, then he could control Encom from the inside-out.
He'd finally found a way to dethrone Alan Bradley, an elation that had kept him afloat for two whole years, and still did even as he sat at his computer terminal, fresh off his discussion with Connor over the files. If Elanor Baines-Bradley had taken a stack that large, he knew, she was certainly up to something. Oddly enough, most of them had something to do with Alan Bradley's flagship security program, Tron, a program that had been defunct for the same amount of time Kevin Flynn had been missing. That too told Ed that something was coming, a wave of a new era that he could not predict. But maybe, just maybe, he had a way to ride it out towards victory.
DYSON, he typed, settling at his keyboard. I HAVE YOUR NEW MISSION.
Yes, Great User? came the response, timid and shy as a program could be, a far cry from the confidence Dyson had possessed in his first contact with Ed just a few hours prior. It didn't bother Ed, though – a subservient program was a good program. He didn't need Dyson rebelling on him like Clu supposedly had with Flynn.
FIND ALAN BRADLEY, he said, REFERENCED IN THE GRID OFTEN AS ALAN-ONE. HIS DAUGHTER HAS TAKEN FILES PERTAINING TO THE PROGRAM TRON, DESIGNATION JA-307020.
Shall I hunt and destroy him, Great User? There was a bit more cheer and excitement in this one. Good.
NO, Dillinger assuaged, much against his own desire to snuff Alan out once and for all, especially if the man was on the Grid. It would just be another disappearance like Flynn, and if the tabloids spoke true, Alan had more than enough reason to disappear due to a mental break. SIMPLY OBSERVE, AND REPORT BACK TO ME WHAT YOU FIND.
Yes, Great User, Dyson replied quietly, waiting for the connection to end, pushing himself up from the altar. He startled as the door slid open, revealing his creation looming just outside. For not the first time, Dyson cursed himself for not altering the User-born's code to make him slightly smaller.
"May I help you?" he grumbled, staring up at Rinzler, his hands on his hips.
Rinzler's helmet remained clasped over his face – a good thing, Dyson thought, considering the scars he'd inflicted in a spar were taking far longer to heal than expected – but Dyson could almost hear the mischievous smile in his voice as he rocked from foot to foot. He nodded to Dyson. "We'll walk," he said, his voice modulated heavily by the helmet, but not so heavily Dyson couldn't hear the familiar, gravelly quality it held. That was the one thing he would withold from his User. It seemed the Great User was hell-bent on destroying everything tied to Alan-One, including the enforcer that now strode along beside Dyson. But Dyson needed him, and Rinzler made a good bargaining chip should anything go awry.
"I found something today," he continued, breaking Dyson out of his scheming thoughts. "In the Outlands. Four things, really, but…" He shrugged. Dyson wanted to snap at him, to tell him to stop wasting his time, but he reminded himself of just how silent the rest of his team was.
"And those things were…?" he pried.
Rinzler tilted his head. "Three programs – one scout, the Renegade, and a patch – and a User."
Dyson hummed, feeling a chill he couldn't explain rippling across his skin. "Which User?" he asked quietly.
The grin was back, crooked and gleaming in full force as Rinzler's helmet fragmented away from his face, revealing crystal blue eyes and a shock of dark hair tipped with blonde. "Alan-One."