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Programs do not tire the way Users do.
That’s what he’s always been told, at least; the concept of a User little more than fancy to him, a story told to glitched-out programs for comfort while they recover from critical errors.
Some find it soothing. To believe in something that cannot ever be touched, something immutable, something sacrosanct. To believe that even then, the Users’ power is not absolute, coming at the price of frailty and fatigue, forcing them to disappear off the Grid for countless cycles at a time until presence becomes memory becomes myth.
The sort of belief that keeps your expectations low, just in case.
Just enough for programs to push ahead tirelessly, doing their jobs—doing what’s right—without a word of protest or the need for a break. Be it for the Users, or for themselves, or for whatever other inspiration—
It is a blessing, to know what you’re meant for. To be good at it.
Until it isn’t. Until it all goes to shit.
Until all that’s left in the programming is just the will to survive, to outrun the inevitable. Hardly feels programmed, really. Certainly doesn’t feel like a touch of some greater power. Feels like grief, and betrayal, and an ache so deep it must have been one of the very first lines of your code.
Beck doesn’t believe in Users. Not any more.
Rushing through the Outlands hurt and hopeless and hunted, he knows he’s ran out of miracles.
The first and only time he’d risked it, the sight of the four-point initial in the centre of Tron’s chest burning orange was enough to cut power to his limbs in an instant.
It must have been one of the last miracles granted to him, not getting spotted, caught, derezzed—for all he could do is lie there, hoping he could blink the unthinkable away from his eyes if he just tried hard enough. Hoping he’d come back online at the mountain safehouse, vision flickering and slightly pixelated from where he’d simply hit his head too hard, waiting for his mentor to call out, again, sharp, but not unkind.
Instead, he was still here, all subsystems frozen, hiding on top of a crane high over the docks.
Far below him, the sickly orange glow of Tron’s circuits refused to go away, searing itself into Beck’s memory even as he screwed his eyes shut in protest. In pain.
A hand slowly curled over Tron’s shoulder, index finger laced with gold stroking down the thin circuit on the back of Tron’s neck, a languid touch as possessive as it was mocking.
The other hand reached for his disc and Tron didn’t even flinch, the jet black helmet only turning to the side ever so slightly, the low purr of a damaged hard drive continuous, unbroken—unlike the man beneath the mask.
He’d believed in Users. Had fought for them as much as he’d fought for freedom.
It had changed nothing.
If a User was still in charge of their system, none of this would have happened. It couldn’t have. Not to Tron, of all programs—
Humming softly, Clu coded something into Tron’s disc like it was normal, like an afterthought, and slotted it back between Tron’s shoulders, easy, nonchalant. Tron—Rinzler—stood up a little straighter, the disc drawing him up; the slightest sheen of gold passed over his circuits before they faded again into that dull, wrong orange.
Clu leaned in close and whispered something to him.
Rinzler’s helmeted head darted up. Scanning, assessing the situation, listening in; once a security program, always a security program, no matter his new loyalties. Devastatingly effective. Lethal.
This time, he saw nothing; Beck was long gone, even though it didn’t matter. Not really.
Programs do not tire.
If Clu wished the Renegade of Argon gone and the uprising crushed—Rinzler would get the job done.
Disappearing without another word to Mara and Zed, or to anyone else at the garage, or to Paige, Beck hoped desperately it might be enough to grant them safety.
The Renegade truly was gone. From Argon. From Beck’s broken heart. Off the Grid.
Not that any of it would prove an obstacle for Clu’s favourite enforcer.
Tron was a strategist and a hunter and he’d know every move Beck could possibly make; him getting to know Beck had been as much part of the training as Beck learning his tricks and earning his friendship bit by stubborn bit.
They just ran out of time for Beck to surpass him.
Beck’s crashed out of his light jet, tearing through the Outlands on foot.
The chase is not dramatic, not grand like it could’ve been if it were a squadron of light jets after him, or a flight of recognizers, but the posturing would have meant nothing.
He should be flattered, really; the recognizers and armies and parades are for show.
The shadow closing in on him, that’s what’s real.
If you don’t get me out in time, I will become Clu’s greatest weapon against you.
Beck did get him out, the first time.
It just didn’t occur to him there would be a second.
He’s failed the symbol of the uprising, his mentor, his friend.
Even if he could outrun Rinzler, there’s no escaping that.
He’s out of a light jet and out of a snowmobile and out of options. He’s wearing Tron’s own white suit, too, carrying that last bright piece of his mentor on his back; a User’s portal beacon would’ve been less visible. Beck hoped against hope it might be the spark to jog Tron’s memory. Make him remember, make him fight the repurposing.
But Rinzler advances on him unmoved.
Beck knows he can’t fight him; they were almost evenly matched by the end, but it’s one thing to throw Tron against the wall in sparring practice—
It’s another to watch him reach for his disc and ignite it, that lethal strip of white at the edge the only light left in him. The distant glow of Argon City is traced over his silhouette, the blue so dim it’s barely a sheen of deep navy against his suit.
Black, really. Hopeless.
Beck ignites his disc anyway. Tron picked him exactly because he doesn’t give up. Because he’s different. Special. To consider himself chosen would perhaps be arrogant, but Tron did choose him.
And Beck’s going to make him proud.
Their discs clash once, twice—after that Beck quickly stops counting. Rinzler’s fast, ruthless. Where Tron would have allowed Beck to take breaks—sometimes, anyway; would have let Beck sit close with him in companionable silence until his vision stopped spinning—Rinzler’s strikes barely leave him time to breathe. The purr of Rinzler’s drive blends with the lethal whirr of both their discs, filling every channel of Beck’s perception to the brim like white noise.
In a moment of distraction the edge of Rinzler’s disc scrapes against the armour over his shoulder, the touch of it almost gentle even if it would’ve derezzed him in a nanocycle had his arm not been tucked close to his side. Beck hisses, more surprise than pain—somehow the shock of it keeps growing, rather than going away.
That’s Tron he’s fighting. Repurposed, broken—who knows what Clu might’ve done to him—but it’s still Tron. Beck bites back a pathetic sob, whirls around to knock the disc headed for his neck aside.
He doesn’t believe in Users because out here, like this, he can really feel the full weight of just how alone he is.
He only has himself to count on now.
Hardly a consolation—as he dodges another strike that misses him by pixels he believes in himself even less than he does in Users—but there has to be something that can be done. It can’t end like this. It—
Rinzler rushes towards him and Beck flips forward and above him in a perfect arc, upside down, head craned back almost as if he could meet Tron’s gaze through the impenetrable jet of his helmet. As his stunt takes him exactly where he realises he needs to be—a perfect mirror of the program below him—he twists into the movement, reaches out, splits the white disc from his own mid-air, and slots it perfectly between Tron’s shoulders.
He lands on his feet light and quiet, back to back with Tron, circuits pulsing with the effort of it, whole body aching from the sheer magnitude of sudden, impossible hope that overcomes him.
He hears the disc softly click into place.
Waits for the security subroutines coded into it to whirr into life again, for the failsafes to kick in.
He did it. He—
He turns and watches, his smile faltering instantly into a look of abject horror, as the white disc is slowly devoured by darkness. As its light flickers and dies down, then ignites again—orange.
The program, stood ramrod straight, reaches behind his back and picks the disc up.
A perfect match to the second one already held in his other hand. Its lethal edge lights up the same, too.
“No,” Beck whispers, the word coming out as an anguished wail.
It’s not fair. It can’t happen to him. Not to Tron. Not after everything they’ve both been through—
But the program that slowly turns to look at him over his shoulder, face unreadable—gone—beneath the jet black helmet, is not Tron. The glowing shape on his chest is no longer a promise, no longer a sign of hope, no longer a familiar warmth to press a hand to, to seek hard-earned solace against.
Now, it’s a verdict. A sentence. Tron’s lost, and so is his uprising, and so is his Renegade.
Programs do not tire; it’s something else that brings Beck to his knees.
Rinzler’s on him in an instant, pushing him onto his back against the cold hard voxels of gravel, the edge of one disc humming right at his neck, the other raised high above Rinzler’s head. His knee digs into the four-point emblem of hope Beck had programmed into his own suit what feels like a lifetime ago, the pressure so harsh he can’t breathe.
Little bursts of glitched light illuminate Rinzler in white, and tint Beck’s own circuits orange.
Pain crawls down his circuits tessellated, crackling; he still reaches out.
His fingers lightly curl around the knee pushing him down almost as if on instinct; his other hand climbs, slow, stubborn, until his fingers splay over Rinzler’s chest; the shape still familiar, the circuits still warm beneath his touch.
All he had to say, he’s said back when the program was hunting him, in the snowmobile chase and in the light jet dogfight and before Rinzler cornered him in this final, forgotten part of the Outlands.
Beck’s ditched his helmet, shown Tron his face, even forced a joke or two past the hard line of his own lips. Just like in training, right?
But neither the sight of his old suit, nor the face of his Renegade, nor his own disc brought him back.
Beck’s all out of tricks and all out of miracles. It’s over.
There’s almost a comfort in that. Almost a gentleness in how still Rinzler stays and for how long, letting Beck’s desperate hands cling to him.
His low purr sounds almost patient.
Beck’s not one to beg—and he doesn’t.
All he manages to get out is, “Tron,” on a caught, grief-stricken breath that’s almost inaudible.
The disc comes down hard, and Beck’s vision pixelates into nothingness.