Tron: Deliverance

ACCESSING ARCHIVE DATA: MOD ATTACK

"What was that!?" Zed groaned.

The leader laughed and gestured to his arm. "We needed a way to hack through the controls on our discs. Flynn didn't really want us changing ourselves too much as it turns out. But, he don't have a say here no more. I got a friend over in Purgos that provided us with a hack. It breaks down the firewalls on your code and lets you make changes. That is, if you got someone that knows how to work mods and can control the breakdowns" His face was in harsh shadow on one side from the light coming from his arm. Both his eyes were too focused on Zed to notice. But his comrades did. They muttered and backed away. Probably unsure of what was about to happen.

The program continued "Unless someone stabilizes it, those breakdowns wont stop. And you're gonna start glitching real soon and it ain't gonna be pretty"

Zed fought through the pain and managed to stand. The curling malware in his gut making his legs feel a bit disconnected.

"Well, I put those energy canisters on your arm into overload and uh. That's not gonna be pretty either" Zed dived under a work bench

The last he saw of the arm mod program was a look of confusion. Then a violent explosion rocked the air of the dockhouse. Zed skittered away beneath the bench and popped up on the other side.

There were yells and screams behind him. He didn't look back. He half limped towards the nearest boat that looked like it had any kind of speed. He fell into the hull and stumbled up to the controls.

"Come on come on come on" He groaned, pushing buttons and powering up the craft. Its signature sang to life in his head. Thank Users, it was in decent shape.

"Hes getting away!" A voice screamed.

The mechanic looked up and saw three or so of the mods charging his way. With a squeak he threw the craft into full reverse and zoomed backwards in the shallow water. Quite forgetting the rollaway doors.

He punched straight through with a horrendous shriek of protesting code.

Yells came from ahead of him and he saw blue fire licking the inside of the warehouse and shatter lines shooting out from the door he had punched through.

Oh Voxels, he might have destabilized the whole building.

With a grunt he spun the craft so the nose was pointed out into open water. He dialed the speed up to max and listened as the outraged voices of the mods faded in the night. His intakes slowed some when he turned over his shoulder and saw he wasn't being followed.

Error codes passed from the boat into his head. He had fragmented pieces of the boat putting it through that door. He patted the wheel.

"Sorry girl, didn't mean to damage you like that"

His concern of the boat faded as he felt the malware in his gut kick up a notch. His vision went fuzzy for a nano. He yelped and blinked hard.

He took hissing intakes between his teeth as he hunched over the wheel.

"I gotta get back to the garage" He groaned as he turned the boat back towards the shore.

............

Zed managed to ride all the way back to the garage. He rode straight onto the work floor, despite the rules about speed inside the building. He collapsed off his cycle, making a loud thud as he and the cycle both tipped over.

His vision flickered again. Not good. Those were getting the bad kind of frequent.

"Zed!" A male voice yelped. It was late. Zed dimly wondered what mechanics aside from Mara would even be up this late.