Tron: Deliverance

///WARNING//PATHOGEN DETECTED//

Paige was beginning to wonder if maybe they didn't have things under control.

It had been three cycles since the pathogen had appeared in the moat districts. Hardly anyone had cared at first. Pavel wouldn't care about give two bits about such a thing, though he spent most of his time in Purgos recently. Tesler? He preferred such issues stay out of his queue unless absolutely necessary.

But Paige was-emphasis on WAS- a medic. Even if she had buried her medic functions under skillpacks and training for combat, tactics, and troop administration. They were still there, screaming at her for attention every time she brushed a program on the street who had some injury. She blinked the notifications away with no patience to spare. She had a renegade to catch. A city to control. A cause to fight for. She didn't need those functions. She was no good to anyone with them anyway.

At least that's what she told herself.

But now she felt a crawling under her skin, her functions pinging her with low-grade dread as she marched into an infected district. Her sentries had cordoned off the area. No programs in or out.

But she entered anyway. For better or worse, medics came encoded with additional firewalls against viruses and the like. Treating sickness was what they were built for after all.

So she entered the empty street without fear. Warnings flashing across her vision the deeper she went. Some programs sat slumped against the outside of the buildings. Green shatter lines spreading up their necks and down their arms. Their eyes were white and empty. These were in the final stage of the sickness, preparing for shutdown. Others stumbled through the streets, hardly present in their own renders. One female-designate tottered towards the commander, eyes lined with green light.

"Don't tell anyone" she said, pressing a finger to her lips.

"What?" Paige asked, brow drawing down.

"Don't tell Enry I stole his favorite compiling array. I owed one of the dealers in Purgos. I needed something to trade. You can't tell him though"

Paige looked the program over thoroughly. She was upright, but upon closer inspection she was sicker than she seemed initially. Green shatter lines crawled up her sides, buried themselves deep in her render. Fine lines of green stood out around her eyes, digging deep into her central processing and her core. She swayed back and forth, like her equilibrium algorithms were failing her.

Hopeless dismay shot through Paige's processes. This program was beyond anything the –former- medic could hope to do. Maybe if Corre were here.....She cut the idea off savagely.

"Don't tell him OK? Don't tell anyone. He'd be so mad" the sickened program hummed.

Paige found she couldn't speak for a moment "I.....I wont tell anyone"

The program nodded, then turned. Her movements were painfully awkward, her limbs seeming slightly detached. She wandered into an alley. She was unlikely to last the cycle, the soldier in Paige calculated. The medic rebelled, demanding she stop the program, run a diagnostic. Do SOMETHING.

Paige kept walking down the street, taking note of common symptoms, shoving her medical proclivities down as far as she could. The farther she went, the more warnings flashed across her vision.

///WARNING////PATHOGENS DETECTED/////WARNING/////SYSTEM QUARANTINE ADVISED///

She had seen these messages only once before. When the Abraxas virus had burned through the Grid. In those chaotic cycles before CLU ousted the Users. That had been a terrifying time. There was hardly anything a medic program could do for a virus infected program. They had to be destroyed.