Chapter Text
“–Beck. Hey. Can you hear me?”
Almost. Not really. Not clearly. Where is he?
“What’s going on?” He can hardly hear himself over the screaming sirens, the bright pulsing lights. “Who are you?”
“We don’t have much time – I cut the primary power, but that’s not going to slow them down for long.” Someone pulls him upright, studying him for a tick before making a decision. “We need to go.”
“…Where?”
“Home, Beck.” Watching him carefully, expression obscured by a mask, glowing dimly around the edges. It takes effort to remember, but yes, that is his name. “Do you remember where that is?”
He shakes his head. Home, bright and quiet and busy and hidden all at once, is a concept just out of his reach. A long way from here. All the way on the other side of the Grid… how does he know that? But anything more solid than that, any sense of place, is beyond him.
“That’s okay. It’ll come back to you. Now, come on. We need to get out of here before they realize what’s happened.”
Don’t move, something in him says. You’re right where you’re supposed to be. Stay here and everything will sort itself out – who knows what will happen if you leave?
And it’s right, of course. Outside this place is unfamiliar, and unfamiliar is dangerous. Like the program standing in front of him, blocking the path to safety. Someone who damaged the power conduits and interrupted the process of… what? Cleaning his code, fixing what was broken? He’d been away from here for such a long time… Why would they stand in the way of that? What does this program want from him?
“What? No. I’m not supposed to leave. If I leave, no one will be able to find me, and then…”
“And then you won’t have anyone to tell you what to do?” Something that isn’t quite a laugh, then. Too distorted, and not by the mask they’re wearing. This program, whoever they are – little more than a faint blur right now, and not much more than that in his memory – doesn’t seem to be one for light-spirited humor. “Yeah, that’s kind of the idea. You’ll get used to it, promise.”
That seems unthinkable. Blasphemous, even. Every bit of his code protests the concept. He wasn’t built to be autonomous or self-directed… right?
“What happened?” Everything is coming into focus a little more now. Beck winces, bracing himself against the flickering red light. Something loud and buzzing reverberates through his head and won’t leave… an alarm?
“You nearly got yourself killed, that’s what happened. Worse than that, even. Let’s go.”
What could possibly be worse?
No, there are things worse than death – life without direction, without purpose. And his purpose is… what?
“Who are you?” he asks again.
“You don’t remember?”
“No. Should I?”
“Yeah. You should.” That might be disappointment… or resignation. “Guess we’ll have to do this the hard way, then.”
Shattered glass crunches beneath his feet as Beck takes a step back in an attempt to dodge – not fast enough. “No–”
A sudden shock then as a hand closes around his wrist. He feels himself pulled forward, and although everything in him protests the movement, he doesn’t have the strength to resist.
::There… that’s better.:: A voice like static pulsing through his circuits, hollow and cold, sound that isn’t sound. ::Follow me.::
And as the quiet firmness of the command burns into his circuits, Beck finds that he doesn’t have much of a choice.
::…Alright. We should be safe here… for a while, anyway. Still got a long way to go.::
::You still haven’t told me where we’re going.::
::Yeah, I did. Back home, back to Argon. Just gotta let your lightcycle cool down for a little while. It’s not really meant to go long-distance. Nice, though. Fast. Quiet. I can see why you like ’em.::
::Why not? Is something wrong with it?::
::Well, it’s not like it was built for it. Not for this Grid, even. It’s just too old – might as well be an antique, at this point. I’m almost surprised you got it working… I’m guessing it was you, anyway. Something tells me it wasn’t Tron. He’s never had the patience for fixing things. Do you remember him, Beck?::
::No.::
::Hm. They must have scrambled your memories pretty badly. I mean… you don’t remember Tron, you don’t remember me… Whatever the Occupation did to you must have messed with your database. Looks like they were trying to reset your disc without losing anything. Everything’s still here, you’re just out of sync.::
::Why would they do that? I’m not…::
::Because you know things, but all things considered… they probably have most of it now. We’ll deal with that when we get there. Now, listen. We’re gonna be here for a little while, and I need to know what happened to you. So let’s start with this – how did you end up in a Recognizer all the way out in Tron City?::
::I don’t remember.::
::I kinda figured. But it’s all still on your disc. Let’s see if we can knock anything loose.::
::What was it like?:: Beck asks – not for the first time. ::Being a System Monitor, I mean.::
::Different. Better.:: The program in the stasis chamber next to him smiles, just a little. ::I wish you’d seen it.::
::It’ll happen eventually. Once this is over. Once we fix this.::
::What are we supposed to do? Fight the entire thing ourselves?:: She doesn’t laugh – Beck can’t remember, but he doesn’t think he’s ever heard her laugh. It’s not safe. ::Just two sentries… that’s ridiculous.::
::Two Monitors. We could do it. It’s happened before, right?::
::Yeah. I guess it has. But that’s not us. We aren’t supposed to…::
::Klax. Focus.:: She’s spiralling again – how does he know that? ::I don’t know what that thing’s telling you, but it’s lying. Don’t listen to it.::
::Sorry. I’m… I’m trying.::
::I know. It’s okay.::
Footsteps around the corner. He closes his eyes, takes measured and practiced breaths, counting them off. Four guards this time. They’re tightening security. Looking for something… or someone.
Sixty-four ticks later – you could set the system clock by that – and they’re gone.
::Klax?::
No answer. He doesn’t dare move, too much risk of setting off the surveillance system. The only reason they’ve never gotten caught is because the feed is grainy, video-only. Motion-sensitive. No sound. System resources are better spent elsewhere, after all, not watching newly-reprogrammed sentries when they’re supposed to be asleep. As long as they stay still and near-silent…
He can only hope that they’re not starting to catch on. She’d never survive it twice… and he’s not sure how many more times he can do this, either.
How many times has he done this?
::Sorry,:: she says again. ::You asked me something. I can’t remember what it was.::
::I asked you to tell me about being a Monitor.::
::You’ve heard all my stories already.:: That’s the repurposing talking, that creeping indifference she fights off every cycle… to increasingly diminished results. ::Don’t you ever get bored of them?::
::No. Never.::
::There isn’t much to tell, you know. It would be like telling you about this cycle’s patrols… it’s all the same thing.::
::No. That isn’t what you told me before. You said it was hard, the hardest thing you’d ever done, but there was something that made it worth it. You weren’t just doing your job. You weren’t just fulfilling your function. We’re more than that.::
::…What else is there? We’re sentries.::
::No. We’re System Monitors. Please, Klax. Just hold on for a little bit longer, okay? You promised that you’d fight it. You said we’d get out of here – together.::
::I was wrong. We don’t need to. This is what we were meant to do.::
That settles it, then. There’s no arguing with her, now. Just waiting – and holding onto the stubborn and foolish hope that she’ll still be there, still be herself, when she wakes up.
Barely a quarter-cycle’s downtime passes before the cold and increasingly-familiar inside-out shiver shock pulls Beck from sleep. And leaves him there for a while, ice and static in his circuits, listening for the telltale sound of the generators switching on. Louder than usual.
One, then another.
Another strange dream, one not his own. He’s starting to suspect he knows whose they are. Were.
His neck is sore.
I really need to stop falling asleep up here.
The shiver-shock is a power inversion. He knows that now, although Tron hasn’t said a word about it since they started, maybe fifty cycles ago. They really should do something about it – it’s putting a lot of strain on the generators, and the safehouse doesn’t have a very large power reserve. Maybe enough for a thousand cycles, if something were to go really bad, but it’s not renewable, either…
Not that he can bring this up to Tron. He’ll just have to do it himself.
Up here is a room that isn’t his, not exactly. One he shouldn’t have. An extra space behind a now-unlocked door, with tools and resources that he still isn’t entirely sure how to use to their full potential. He frowns at the imprint left by his arm on the drawing surface of the drafting table, cutting a line into the diagram below.
An acquired space, one not exactly freely given.
Swipes at the controls until everything is back to how he remembers leaving it. A lightbike, disassembled into its component parts and slowly coming back together, mirroring the machine on the lift platform behind him. He remembered to unplug the decompiler, at least. Last time, he’d ended up having to rebuild everything from scratch… again.
There should have been a third generator that came online. He’d only heard two. The datapad’s been sitting open all night. Must have fallen asleep reading again… not that it’s worth it, if he can’t remember what he was reading.
Search:>>> generator
> 3 generators, fed from green-crystal stacks in the power room. If one doesn't come back online, check the crystal stacks for connection issues.
Well, it’s still early enough that Tron won’t be awake – not that he notices the inversions anyway. Beck’s never been down to the power room before. It turns out that there’s a lot of places in the safehouse that Beck hasn’t been given access to. A lot of things that he didn’t know. Things Tron thinks he shouldn’t know.
“Wait. Never actually checked the generator status, did I?”
Talking to himself again. Gotta stop doing that.
atelier.wks.local
login: beck
password: ************
atelier.wks.local
1) Set environment variables
2) Scripts
3) Monitoring
4) Exit to shell
5) Logout
> 3
>> Monitoring <<
1) Sensor data
2) Power management
3) Comm link status
4) Everything else
> 2
>> Power management <<
Checking power status...
Unit 0: online
Unit 1: errors
Unit 2: online, standby mode
Unit 1 diagnostics failed with error code 2 (connection unstable)
“Great.”
But before he has a chance to grab his tools, the primary power kicks back on, that heavy grating sound as the generators spin down. Makes a note to check them in a little while. He’d read that it was better to let them cool down first, somewhere in this datapad. Another thing he hadn’t known about, hidden deep in macrocycles’ worth of information – about the safehouse, about the Grid, about the System underneath it.
At least it was only for a little while, this time.
He’s about halfway through the datapad right now, minus the things he’s skipped over. Technical details that go over his head. Fragments of anecdotes that bring up more questions than they answer – and those questions will never get answered, now.
Klax. That’s a name that feels familiar, in a distant way – Tron’s spoken about her a few times. A System Monitor, one of the programs he’d lost along the way. He’d made it sound like she’d been repurposed, reprogrammed in the immediate wake of the coup, but… Hasn’t he seen her name in here, at least once?
Search:>>> Klax
Comm loops:
- Able's garage (Argon City)
- Siv's prototyping lab (Gallium City)
- personal loop with Klax (Tron City)
Pulls a bottle of energy down, stretches out in front of the window looking over Argon. Wonders what Mara’s doing, whether she’s awake by now. She’s always been an early riser – even for a first-shift program.
She would know what to do with this bike better than he does.
::Looks like you’ve been busy. What have you been doing up there?::
::Working on that bike, I guess. I think… Tron didn’t know about it.::
::Yeah? Why not?::
::I never told him that I found it. Mara helped me fix it.::
::Hm. And you thought going back to the garage was a smart idea?::
::Why wouldn’t it be? It’s… home. I think.::
::It was for a while, yeah.::
::…Was? What happened?::
::You left. It wasn’t safe for you to stay. It wasn't an easy decision, but you did the right thing. You always do; sometimes I think you can’t help it.::
::You make it sound like a bad thing.::
::It is, sometimes. Makes things too complicated. –If they're tracking you, they'll find us soon. We should keep moving.::