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Lightning arched across the gradient sky above Argon. From the window of the stronghold, Beck and Tron both watched the lines spreading, faster than the water of the Sea in the distance, but slower than the beam that propelled the Solar Surfer trains from one city to the next.
Silence, between them, as they both stared out towards the horizon. Beck, helmet down, fidgeted with the cuff of his Renegade suit; Tron stood still, as he always did.
“Now Beck,” Tron said, looking down at him, and Beck abruptly stopped fidgeting to stand up straight. “Are you absolutely sure you can handle this mission? I don’t normally want you anywhere NEAR Dyson.”
“He’s requisitioned Garage equipment for whatever this project is. I have a unique in. I volunteered to be one of the programs who delivers it to him,” Beck said, resolute. “I’m the only one who can do this, unless you think you can impersonate me at work.”
Tron stopped at that.
“Hmph.” He looked away from Beck again towards the horizon. “You didn’t tell me that. Makes sense. But didn’t we just talk about sharing intel with one another?” His expression was stern, unreadable.
Beck sighed. “Yeah, we did, but I swear, I can handle this. This is my area of expertise--going in and figuring out how things work. And then, breaking them. I wasn’t coded as a mechanic for nothing.” He stretched his arms behind his head, making sure he was limber and fully operational, as usual, checking his status internally. It returned with affirmative checks inside his head, a firm echo that he was ready to take on the day.
“Just because you know how to do something doesn’t always mean you’re prepared, Beck,” Tron warned, still not looking away from the horizon.
Behind him, out of his sight line, Beck rolled his eyes. Course he’d say that. However long it had been of working with Tron, and he still didn’t fully trust his own apprentice to get things done. Great.
“I know you’re back there scowling at me, Beck.”
Users, does he have eyes on his disc??
Tron turned around slightly, the scar on his face illustrated in sharp relief against the dimming of another lightning strike out east, and Beck felt a twinge worse for complaining, even inside his own head. Of course he’s worried. It’s Dyson.
“I’m not trying to be distrustful, Beck. I’m being cautious,” Tron said, eyes still focused somewhere other than here. “Let me put it this way. If you’re ever confident going up against that program,” and Beck knew who he meant, of course, “you shouldn’t be. He’s the only other security program who could ever match me.”
And I’m not even you, Beck heard, without it having to be said. His shoulders slumped, even though he knew Tron was right, and that this was probably necessary.
“Yeah,” Beck said, eyes shifting to the side, “You’re probably right, there.” He looked up, though meeting his mentor’s eyes was uncomfortable. “I promise you I’ll be careful. I won’t linger. No goofy revenge stunts from me, just break the thing and get out.”
“What was that about goofy revenge stunts, kid?” Despite himself, the jab had gotten a rueful smile out of Tron.
“Just that they’re not in the action queue. You can count on me,” Beck said, doing the old “It builds character” arm swing they all used to do behind Able’s back when he asked them to carry something heavy. Tron’s eyes narrowed, but not in judgement, in humor instead.
“Go on along then. I’d wish you luck, but I don’t like leaving things up to that,” Tron said, fully turning around to watch Beck head out the door.
As his footsteps fell away and Beck reached the door out of the stronghold center-room, Tron called after him. “And just for the record, I probably couldn’t impersonate you at work. I’m too tall, they’d notice.”
“Wow, joke number two! We’re on a roll.” Despite the sarcasm, Tron could tell Beck was smiling as he headed out the door.
------
This had not gone as planned.
Beck had made it in without a problem, at least. He was the only one of his friends who had signed up to help deliver the parts for the device; the others were new recruits to the garage, betas he didn’t know very well. They were too cowed by the imposingness of the Occupation ship--wide, orange circuitry lines, tanks looming at every corner--to cause any trouble, and they had all quickly departed after dropping off the crate, leaving Beck to get his business done.
He had followed the transport truck carrying the crate deeper into the ship, having quickly donned his Renegade suit, mask up. The wheels rumbled along the hallway track, and the orange bars lining the walls darkened as it went, shifted to an alarming red. Dyson’s color.
Beck had stepped lightly, not making a sound, not even a squeak of shoes on the floor, as he waited for the transport to stop. Its trajectory seemed endless, and he definitely didn’t know the area of the ship it was heading to now. Past missions had sent him into Tesler’s stronghold many times, but this was a new route; he wondered if he was technically in a different ship now, docked just below or to the side.
A window porthole had confirmed his suspicions. The glass looked out on a vista of the Sea a lot further out into the harbor than the rest of Tesler’s ship had; he had guessed he was probably somewhere latched onto the port side of the ship, in a separate vessel. Explained the red lines.
The transport had been traveling steadily for a good while and Beck had started to get nervous by the time it rumbled to a halt at the end of the hall. Beck had tentatively poked his head out from behind the corner, eyeing the back door of the transport cautiously, waiting for some guard or someone else to come out and open it in time for him to figure out what they were for.
That didn’t happen. Instead, the wall he was leaning on clanked loudly and Beck found himself suddenly hoisted off his feet as bars emerged from it and clamped around his waist and arms, lifting him and restraining him firmly. His legs kicked uselessly several feet from the floor, as he tried to free himself, but to no avail.
He heard footsteps coming from around the corner and quickly stopped struggling, trying to draw as little attention to himself as possible in the fervent hope that the trap he’d just triggered was unintentional and not set for him specifically, as he suspected. If he was quiet, some still-rational portion of his processor told him, maybe the Occupation soldier just wouldn’t notice him--sometimes they really were that stupid--
The thought deleted itself instantly as he saw first the angular-silhouetted shadow approaching from down the hall, then the program following it--the formidable shape of the second-in-command of the Occupation himself.
Dyson .
All of Tron’s warnings raced in Beck’s head as the program stepped closer, helmet off, smug and self-satisfied. This was a program who did not have a saved definition of mercy , Beck thought. This was everything going wrong at once. This was a blue screen, this very well could be the end of it all right here.
The fear in his circuits kept him perfectly still as Dyson stood before him, smirking.
“Well, well, well,” he said, drawing out his words long and wide. “And here, I thought this was going to be difficult.”
He leaned back on his heels, still only a few feet from Beck’s helmeted face. The security program held in his hand a sort of remote device, a black fob with a single conspicuous orange button on it, which Beck assumed controlled the trap which he’d so carelessly fallen into.
“Would you believe I almost didn’t put this trap in here? Thought it was overkill, actually, beyond just the bait, but I did get your measurements when we fought last time, and it was easy enough to rig this together…”
Measurements? What the glitch is he talking about? Beck tried to get a sense of what was holding him. He could feel the wall had folded out three hard, solid restraints, which kept him stuck where he stood, like the times he’d seen Tesler rig up some sort of torture setup when he’d captured informants Beck later had to rescue. It seemed much more well-fashioned than anything Tesler had set up, though.
“It won’t be long before this ship is done refueling, and then we’re taking you right back to Tron City. I do believe the Administrator will be very happy to finally see you again in person,” and he paused, stepping way too close for Beck’s comfort to deliver his line, "old friend.”
Wait. Wait a second.
Beck ran a few processes very quickly, as Dyson continued to gloat.
“I really almost can’t believe it at all. I was all ready for this great big climactic fight between the two of us--”
I’ve never fought Dyson before. But Tron...Tron has! When I first had to pull him away from ripping the guy’s voxels out. And Tron said he’d scared the lights out of Dyson…
“And you just walk right into it!” Dyson tipped his head back and laughed a long indulgent laugh, though there was no audience. “The army should trust me to handle things more, really. I’m a lot better at this than anyone gives me credit for--”
He thinks I’m Tron, he realized. Not in the symbolic-Renegade-way, but like, he actually thinks I’m Tron himself. Figures, that the one program he least wanted to see was the most confident in his false identity. Because he fought Tron, but he hasn’t fought me face to face--
“What’s the matter, Tron?” Dyson taunted, confirming Beck’s suspicions. “This one a trap even you can’t break out of?”
A trap. What did he say about measurements? Beck looked down as subtly as he could, trying not to move his head.
He realized that his legs were completely free. While he still was uncomfortably hanging in the air several feet up on the wall, he could see two other restraining bars down at the lower part of the wall, where he guessed his ankles had been supposed to be lifted up to.
Users. The trap didn’t work properly because I’m shorter than Tron is!
Dyson was still rambling on and grinning in that dastardly way Occupation officers do when they think they’ve won something, but Beck wasn’t paying attention to that anymore. He ran spatial calculations in his head, quick triangulations of the space between his legs and the wall, his feet and the floor.
He couldn’t reach his disc with his arms trapped like this. But he could do something else, and Dyson clearly didn’t think he was any level of threat at this point if he was going full villain-speech on him.
Beck summoned his courage to his core, tensed his abdominal muscles and pulled both legs up, then shot them out directly into Dyson’s torso, kicking him into the other corridor barrier. The security program collided with the wall, knocked resoundingly off guard with a crash.
As if in slow motion, the fob flew out of Dyson’s clenched fist as he fumbled for a handhold on the wall. Beck watched as the rectangular shape tumbled in the air almost gracefully before landing-- yes!!!! some primitive Bit-instinct shrieked in his head--face-down on the glossy tile floor, pressing its conveniently large single button.
The wall restraints released instantly with the hiss of hydraulics and Beck was suspended by nothing in air for just a second before physics caught up with him and he fell to the tile floor, trying as best he could to land stably on the balls of his feet.
He didn’t stay still long. Beck ran, and he did not look back, in the direction he had came, frantically checking his render as he went just to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind (that disc-instinct still remained) as he raced down the dark corridors. He didn’t even expend the processing power to check whether anyone was behind him till he was far out of the red-tinted part of his path, out of the supposedly docked ship Dyson had mentioned, and back in the bowels of the Occupation galley.
He shot a prayer to the abstract idea of Users that he wouldn’t run face-first into any Occupation soldiers, and kept going.
It wasn’t long before he reached the main hangar bay, that wide-open space where all the tanks lined up and various soldiers milled about. Normally. What he saw now was a lot less casual than usual. Tanks were all pointed towards the mouth of the ship’s opening, but nobody was shooting. The air was tense, and there were no guards walking around freely.
Beck’s adrenaline ramped up again, and he tucked behind a tank, trying to get a look at what all of them were pointing at.
A huge, sickly yellow circuited ship hovered in midair in front of the entrance to the stronghold galley. It made something in Beck instinctively stop even just to see. Any program knew that color was the color of corruption, of sickness, of a virus. The edges of the ship were jagged and unnatural; pointed tails trailed off of it; its very presence a threat.
But then he blinked his eyes, and his rational processing turned back on, and he moved his head just slightly to the side and saw the cityscape of Argon quite obviously peeking through the ghastly apparition.
Are you fragging kidding me? It’s a hologram?
He and Tron had JUST been working on a distraction like this, but Tron hadn’t shown him any model that looked like this particular image. But it was definitely his mentor’s work. And it clearly had half the tanks in the stronghold fooled. Beck took advantage of this to edge around the side of a number of tanks, ducking just out of the sightline of the guards inside, until he reached the mouth of the ship.
With all eyes on the viruslike hologram, Beck jumped down silently off the edge of the ship, activating a lightjet baton and praying again to whoever was listening that no one would see.
-------
Beck made it back to the stronghold before Tron. The moment his mentor reentered the building, Beck felt himself straighten up nervously. No doubt Tron had sent that distraction to the ship because he’d figured out Beck hadn’t succeeded in his mission. He fidgeted with his gloves, worrying Tron would be mad.
Instead, Tron rushed into the room with all the urgency of a medic seeking a nearly-derezzed patient, hovering worriedly around his apprentice.
“Beck! Are you okay? I didn’t see you leave the ship, but I saw that lightjet go off, and I assumed it was you--Are you alright? Are you injured? Did Dyson hurt you?”
This was a franticness that Beck had rarely seen in Tron, and it scared him. This was “beta-nearly-ran-into-traffic” panic.
“I’m fine! I’m fine! I promise, I am alright, Tron,” he said, standing up to prove it, and circling around. “No injuries. Bruised a little bit, but mostly my dignity. And my ego.”
“Tell me what happened.” Tron sat down in his chair, still clearly on edge.
“Okay. First off,” Beck said, quickly, “I didn’t get to see what he was using the parts for. And I did get caught.” He paused to let Tron make an alarmed sound. “But I got out in like five seconds. It was honestly fine. I think I learned a lesson here. You were right about the not being prepared thing.”
Tron just sort of sat in stunned silence.
“Are we good now?” Beck prompted.
He was silent for a little longer before moving.
“Beck…”
“Yes?”
“Let me first say, I am mostly just grateful you’re not dead.”
“Well, that always is a good sign,” Beck said. He was aware by now that he was waving off his adrenaline with jokes, but he couldn’t really stop himself.
“Beck,” Tron said, and put his hand on Beck’s shoulder, noticing as Beck flinched for a second. “This is serious. You made it out, but--”
“But I might not next time! I know!” Beck jerked back, and scowled, before regretting it, and relaxing for a second, embarrassed at his reaction.
Tron paused again, trying to choose his words.
“Look. We can debrief about this later, if you’re not feeling up to it. I absolutely understand. Going up against Dyson isn’t just any mission. Please rest, Beck, get some recharge cycling in, and we can talk about it on the upcycle, alright?”
Something that had been holding taut inside of Beck snapped loose, like a flexible band around a mechanical part back at the garage, and he slumped, finally allowing himself to stop holding himself so stiff, stopped being ready to run away at any moment. He felt tears welling up in his eyes, unbidden and especially obvious now that his helmet was off, and tried to turn away from Tron, not wanting him to see.
Tron patted his shoulder reassuringly, even though Beck tried to turn away, and he felt himself leaning into it, even though a part of him was shouting shame and stress and failure.
“Yknow,” he said, after a long silence, after wiping away the tears as stealth as he could. “You were right about one other thing.”
“What’s that?” Tron said, with a slight upturn, sensing a little humor coming back into Beck’s voice.
“You are taller than me by a lot. And it saved my life out there, believe it or not.”
For the first time in a while, Beck heard Tron laugh, both a startled sound, and a relieved one.
“I wouldn’t doubt it.”