Tron: Deliverance

<REROUTING>

Beck as hit with a sudden burst of hysteric humor..

But well, it had been a long time since he had hauled Mara away from some fight that she was set on winning.

Thankfully, Zed has a very strong survival subroutine so he helped force Mara away from Able's garage.

Neither of them were able to do much about her protests though.

"We need to go back! What if Able's in trouble?!" She yanked her arm out of Beck's hold. But Zed wheeled around and pulled her into the shadow of a crumbling building.

"Stop dragging me both of you!" She snapped, yanking away from Zed too.

They had made it a couple blocks away from the shop. The avenues were empty save for some pathogenically controlled programs a street over. The three mechanics had been careful to stay out of their sights.

Beck crowded into the shadow and scanned the area.

"Look Mara, I don't like leaving him either. But he told us to. And this isn't exactly a good place for an argument"

Mara rounded on him, lines flashing bright and teeth gritted.

"Good. Because I don't want to argue either. So lets head back"

Zed jumped in front of her and spread his arms wide.

"No can do. To me it sounds like Able is in trouble with Tesler because someone saw us go into the garage. He's probably gonna have to convince them that we weren't there. So what do you think they'll do to him AND us if we bust in there, discs blazing?"

Mara shrunk back a bit. Zed's logic hitting her hard.

But she wasn't giving up "Don't tell me its not driving you crazy to leave him behind?"

Regret shot through Beck's frame, but he shoved it aside as best he could.

"We should really head back to the hideout. Our mission was to confirm the identity of the Mod leader and make contact if possible. We've done that so we should report back. I'm sure Able will be fine"

"Cant we at least watch?" Mara pleaded "Just make sure hes OK? We don't have to go back into the garage. But maybe we can watch from the outside and make sure nothing bad happens?"

Zed pursed his lips "Well, its not a crazy idea. We're gathering information so we might as well try to see who this Algol character is. I mean, it sounded like Able is scared of the guy and he's got a whole army of programs with battle mods on them"

Beck sighed, his shoulders slumping a bit. He was remembering now how infrequent it was to win an argument with Mara. And when Zed took her side? It was downright impossible.

"OK-OK fine" He straightened back up and pointed a finger at Mara "But we're gonna be careful and we're not gonna make contact again. Because to me it sounds like there's more players in this game than we know"

Mara snapped a nod, a grateful smile curling on her face "Works for me. Lets go!" She bolted away, climbing up the side of a building to get up onto the rooftops.

Zed gave a shrug before he zipped after his counterpart.

"Why do I feel like this is a bad idea?" Beck muttered as he followed his friends back towards the garage.

.....

It seemed that Mara's concerns weren't unfounded.

My the time their trio made it to a roof with a view of Able's new garage, flashes of light were visible through the windows and screams were just barely audible from inside the structure.