Tron Legacy (8 page)

SAM, KEVIN, AND QUORRA SLIPPED OUT
of the cargo bay after their ship docked. The automatic loaders began working on the towed container, which gave them a chance to escape. Whatever had pulled them in here did not yet know of their existence.

Or so they thought.

As soon as they stepped onto the dock, Sam spotted trouble.

Rinzler was striding down the dock. Behind him, Clu’s throne ship hovered like a vulture eager to dive on its prey.

Rinzler homed in on Quorra, his pace increasing. She gasped. Fear momentarily shadowed her features. Then a quiet calm came over her as she accepted her fate. Sam stepped forward to face him. Meanwhile, Quorra detached her disc and handed it to Kevin.

“They can’t know you’re here,” she said calmly, and then she whispered, “good-bye.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Kevin said.

But Quorra took off. With preternatural speed, she bolted and then leaped on top of the cargo crates. Rinzler followed. But Quorra moved so fast Rinzler couldn’t catch her.

Jumping from crate to crate, Quorra headed for the throne ship. When she hit the access ladder on the ship’s outer skin, she climbed the rungs to reach the airship’s upper deck. Then she shattered the ladder with her baton so Rinzler couldn’t follow.

When he saw that the ladder had shattered, Rinzler paused—but just for a moment. Then the enforcer drew the disc from his back and split it.

He leaped onto the hull of the rectifier. With a metallic clang, he plunged the discs into the vessel’s hull. Using the disc’s sharp edges the way a mountaineer would use spikes, he climbed all the way up to the bridge.

Sam watched helplessly as Rinzler overtook Quorra.

“We can’t just let her go!” Sam cried as Quorra was dragged into the rectifier.

“We have no other choice,” Kevin said. “Come on!”

Sam followed his father to the end of the docking bay. They were in the off-loading zone now. Programs awaiting processing were stacked like fireplace logs.

Sam watched while a huge, spinning wheel emerged from the ground. A conveyor belt began feeding programs into the wheel’s path. The whirling disc held them and then twirled each program once. Then it spit them out on the other side, each program now clad in identical military uniforms and armed with a war disc.

“It’s a reeducation chamber,” Kevin said in horror.

“And Quorra’s going to wind up like one of them if we don’t save her,” Sam pointed out. They had to do something. Now.

CLU STOOD ON THE
rectifier’s hangar deck. He was about to address his elite Black Guard when Rinzler interrupted. Annoyed by the distraction, Clu faced his enforcer. He was surprised to find that Rinzler had a prisoner.

“Where’s your disc?”

Quorra’s silence was his answer. Clu touched her cheek with a gloved hand. “Where is Flynn?”

She still said nothing.

“Never mind. I have something special in mind for you.” Clu pushed Quorra aside to address Rinzler. “Take her away. And find them.”

Rinzler seized Quorra’s arm.

“I’ve seen what users are capable of,” Quorra cried. “You don’t belong with them, Clu!”

Clu ignored her furious charges. When Quorra was gone, he composed himself and ascended the podium. rumbling cheers from his elite Black Guard greeted Clu. He began to speak.

“Together we have achieved many things,” Clu said. “We’ve built a new world. Created a vast and complex system. Maintained it. Improved it. rid it of its imperfections!”

Rousing cheers greeted Clu’s words.

“Not to mention rid it of the false deity who sought to enslave us…” Clu paused and smirked as he raised his eyes skyward. “Kevin Flynn, where are you now?!”

Hidden away, Kevin heard Clu’s cry. He was dying to answer his treacherous creation. But he remained silent. He knew they had to stay hidden if they wanted to continue living.

Unfortunately, the more Clu talked, the more difficult it was for Kevin to listen. Clu’s voice sounded like his own voice. Clu’s face looked like his own face. But the words that echoed up from the hangar were not his words or his thoughts. They were twisted conclusions from a corrupted mind, full of arrogance and hatred. They had nothing to do with Kevin’s vision…

Or did they? he found himself wondering. After all, I created Clu. Is some part of me like him?

“There was a time I believed this was all there was, all we were capable of,” Clu declared as he continued to lecture his troops. “But I’m here to tell you that you’ve been kept in the dark too long.”

Clu raised his hands. “Fellow programs, let there be no doubt. Our world is a cage no more. The key to the next frontier is finally in our possession!”

Clu gestured to a point a few decks above where Sam and his father hid. A light appeared, illuminating the ship’s bridge. Kevin’s disc was up there. Clu had mounted it on a high-tech pedestal as if it were a sacred object.

The disc was glowing. Active. ready to lead Clu and his army through the portal and out into the real world.

“Unlike our selfish creator, I will make Flynn’s world open and available to us all!” Clu bellowed. “In that world, our systems will grow. There our systems will blossom!”

Clu raised his hands over his head. “Together, we have changed this world. Together, we can change the new world, too. So I ask you. Are you ready to receive your command?”

The massive Black Guard army nodded in unison. “Yes!”

“Maximize efficiency,” Clu commanded. “rid the new system of imperfection! rid the new system of the users!”

Cheers erupted from the Black Guard. The vibrations were loud enough to shake the catwalk under Sam’s boots.

Sam exchanged a horrified glance with his father. rid the new system of its users, Sam thought. But “users” are humans.

Clu wants to rid the world of people!

“WE
HAVE
TO GET YOUR DISC!”
Sam whispered, feeling almost frantic now. He pointed above them, to the shining object displayed on the ship’s bridge.

“No,” Kevin quietly replied, refusing to even look at it. “We must beat Clu to the Portal. You can shut him down from the outside.”

But Sam pointed out the army assembled below them. “Even if I make it out, by the time I find Alan Bradley, you’ll be long gone,” Sam said. “The disc is the only way!”

Kevin considered his son’s words.

“Come on, dad. We can do this.”

But once again Kevin shook his head. “If we go now, at least maybe you can get out. At least there’s a chance.”

“What about everything you created?” Sam asked.

“It’s just a program, Sam!” his father responded, finally losing his cool. “It can all be rewritten. You can’t. It’s not worth your life.”

“What about you? What about Quorra?” Sam asked. “You said it yourself, dad. Some things are worth the risk.”

Kevin blinked in surprise. His own words had come back to haunt him.

“I’m not going back alone, dad.”

Before his dad could argue, Sam took off toward the bridge—and his father’s disc.

THE MOMENT SAM EXITED THE ELEVATOR
, he was attacked by two Sentries. He hurled his disc at one, derezzing him instantly.

The other swung his disc. But Sam ducked in time and gripped the Sentry’s legs. With a heave, he tossed the armored guard over the rail.

Three more Sentries appeared. A warrior in action, Sam quickly reduced them to pixels. Then he crossed the bridge and stood before the pedestal. The disc glowed with an inner radiance. But as Sam reached for it, Counselor Jarvis rose in front of him.

“Stop!” Jarvis shouted.

Sam raised his disc with threatening fury, and the cowardly program shrank backward.

“At least I can say I tried to stop him,” Jarvis muttered to himself.

Sam returned to the pedestal. But he was back in Jarvis’s face a moment later. “I came with a girl—a program,” he said. “Where is she?”

A door opened. Sam saw Quorra standing there. He rushed forward to meet her.

That’s what Rinzler was waiting for—he stepped out of the shadows, surprising Sam.

“Sam! go!” Quorra shouted.

Instead, Sam faced Rinzler. dropping into a crouch, he reached behind him with his left hand while he raised his disc with his right.

Rinzler drew his own disc and split it. With a quick flick of his arm, he fired off the first. The toss was aimed directly at Sam’s head.

Sam deflected the first throw with his own disc, but the move left his torso exposed.

Rinzler smiled as he shot his second disc. The razor-sharp edge was coming right for Sam! He was going to be cut in two!

That’s when Sam brought his left hand forward. It was holding his dad’s disc!

Sam knocked aside Rinzler’s second throw. Then he sent his dad’s disc ricocheting off the ship’s hull. The attack surprised the enforcer. He had no time to react.

The sharp edge of Kevin’s disc struck Rinzler square in the chest. Pieces of his thick armor broke off and derezzed. Rinzler howled as the force sent him backward, over the bridge rail.

Sam put up his hand, snagging his father’s boomeranging disc in midair. Then he sheathed it beside his own and went to Quorra.

She threw her arms around Sam and squeezed him tightly. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Let’s go,” Sam said, pullingggg awayandsnatching some familiarfamiliar

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