Tron: Deliverance

ERRRR.._____________

Throbbing. That was most of what Alan could understand at the moment. Everything was throbbing. Just pulsing with pain, his head, his chest, his whole body. He coughed and cracked an eye open. An white glow filled his vision. He blinked and realized he was looking at a barrier of some kind. Blank, dark walls made up the rest of the cramped space.

What had happened? They'd fought their way through a whole army of those dark cloaks. His most recent memory rolled in reverse as his brain caught up with events. Those dark cloaks had just kept coming. Then bluish light rippled across the catwalk. Electricity? His mouth tasted like metal. It might have been an electric shock to knock them all out. That would also explain why everything hurt so much.

A memory slammed him in the chest. Jet.

He had fallen.

It felt strange. His chest felt empty, numb. Jet wasn't gone. He couldn't be. It didn't make sense. They just had to go back, he he might have hit his head or something. That made sense. He was fine.

He had to be.

"Ah, everyone's up! Good, didn't want my audience to miss what comes next"

It was Cyrus. Alan felt hot anger burning in his chest. Hatred pulsed right next to the pain. He embraced that rage, it was a safe emotion. It would get him on his feet.

Devastation would knock him flat. Which he wouldn't feel because everyone would get out of this.

He coughed again and struggled to stand. He felt about a million years old. All his muscles quivering with strain. He wanted to bash the bastard's head in. Bring the whole building down on him. But at the moment, Alan felt like getting on two feet would be the limit of his capabilities. He managed it with the wall for support.

"Hey Uncle Alan, you OK?" Sam's hand settled on Alan's shoulder. The older man turned to see Sam was no worse for wear. Though his face was frozen in a mask of rage. "That psycho took our discs too" Sam nodded to the machine in the center of the room. The central node of it pulsed with light, hundreds of discs suspended there, pulsing along with the machine. The old programmer turned to see that their whole group was shoved into a small recess with a firewall between them and the factory's control room.

Trapped, it seemed.

Cyrus was on the other side of the wall. Some of his remaining zealots scurrying through the room. It appeared they were doing final preparations on the machine. Cyrus stood to the side, taking everything in with a satisfied smirk.

"This is nice. You'll all get to watch me finish my great work. Finally, finally, after thousands of cycles. I will free this system, and every program inside it"

Tron's voice cut through the growing monologue "It won't work Cyrus. Even if we don't have contact with them. The Users on the outside won't allow you to break the Grid. Give it up now"

"Oh Tron, you never could bluff. If the Users could stop me they would have by now. No, I'm afraid that I've bypassed them. Try as they might they won't be able to stop me from detonating this charge. I do wonder what it will look like in the User world. Will it look like an inferno that consumes all in its path? A storm of senseless data as the system breaks? I'm sure it will be quite a sight"

"You have to stop this Cyrus" Beck snapped.

"No Beck, fate demands that I continue" the program on the other side of the wall smiled.

Quorra, pale with a sheen of sweat on her brow, clenched her fists, assessing their containment. "This much energy will burn the whole Grid. It'll melt the components on the outside. There won't be anything left to pull us out of" she muttered, anguish and rage in equal measures on her face.