Tron: Deliverance

OVERLOAD DETECTED

Beck was nearly vibrating.

But really he had been half ready to malfunction since they'd reached the command hub. Burning, fragmented memories fought their way to the surface when he'd first laid eyes on the building.

CLU's programming was purged. Zed and Mara had seen to that. But his flickering memories from that time clawed their way forward. Making his processes stutter and his runtimes lag.

His whole head burned the longer he stood near the hub. Something very bad was going on inside. Something wrong. Something so destructive it ate the edges of his memories and left them frayed and fizzling.

Maybe this was why he'd missed it when Paige disappeared. So focused on keeping those memories at arms length, on keeping enough space in his head for the mission. He didn't know when he'd stopped feeling her steady pings beside him.

Not until it was far too late.

Tron's harsh question snapped him out of his processing. "Is Paige inside?" Precise with just an edge of annoyance.

"Yeah, probably" Beck responded.

"Does our plan change then?" Gem said without inflection. She was the last member of their party.

"No" Tron responded.

Laser fire was audible from the other side of the structure. They were too late to synchronize their infiltration with the frontal assault.

Gem was already bending back the metallic code on the roof of the structure. As soon as the hole was big enough, the ISO slid into the empty hallway below. Beck couldn't help the sheer anxiety pulsing through his systems. Paige was probably going for Tesler alone. And as formidable as he knew her to be. While both of them had come close to beating Tesler in a one on one  fight, he was guaranteed to have backup inside his own command center. She was going to get herself derezzed.

What came next only made his nerves buzz harder. A half delighted- half panicked voice came over the comm. It was Jet, oddly enough, who was supposed to be in the second wave with Mara and Zed. "Hey, who's this cool cat with inspector gadget arms? He looks feisty" the User asked.

"What are you talking about?" Beck responded. Too tense from the changing plan to ask in a more polite way.

"I mean there's a bearded dude out here with modded arms. That's what Tesler was supposed to loo..."

"Beck!" Mara spoke over the User impatiently "It's Tesler! He came outside!"

"Voxels!" Beck muttered. Tron and Gem slid back out of the hole in the roof.

"We go after Tesler" Tron instructed, already running towards the front of the structure.

"So much for stealth then" Beck groaned as he gave pursuit.

There were still Black Guards manning some of the roof turrets. They popped out of holes in the mess of a building. Discs raised. To Beck, running behind Tron meant they barely registered as a threat. The security monitor moved through them like they weren't there. His blows and strikes were almost lazy for opponents so far below his level.

Gem too left no opponents for Beck to fight. Her white staff less than a blur as she knocked sentries out of her path, off the roof or flat on their backs as the situation allowed.

Flashes of light were just visible around the corner of the roof. Tron didn't even check his speed as he reached the edge. He dived into the fog littered with lasers and screams. Beck grit his teeth and jumped too, deciding how to land after he was already in the air.