Outer Limits
By Nan00k
D: Guilty pleasure fic. LOL! I had such a terrible plot bunny attack after seeing the second film, I just had to give this a try. I may or may not continue with it. Depends if anyone wants to read it/how easy the chapters come to me. This is a what-if continuation of the newest film, brought on by Sam's comment on Wifi in Legacy. Sooo many options to go from there. The story will be a little slow moving, but there's a lot I have planned for it.
There will be a surprise pairing, but probably not what you're expecting. This was written for fun only. LOL. There will be OCs as main characters, but that's kinda unavoidable here. Bear with me; I hope to make this a fun read!
This story begins immediately after/during the final moments of Tron: Legacy. Spoilers ahead!
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Warnings: descriptive violence, mild language, alternative coupling, original characters, dark themes, SPOILERS for Tron: Legacy.
Disclaimer: Tron © Disney. I only write this mess.
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They all followed the laws set by their Creator. It was not a choice to make, no option in the matter, for which rules of their digital world that they would obey or not. Some things would never budge in programming or code, just because their world relied on the stability of those rules to exist.
There were programs and there were users.
The light cycles and land vehicles only worked on the Grid. Off-terrain vehicles were only creatable by the Creator.
The sky had its limits, as did the horizon. Their world was indeed a cage.
It was their cage, nonetheless, and they cherished it. They functioned as they should, as programs and data. Or at least… that's the way it had been.
Falling… falling…
They were no longer a proper system. Thousands of errors, insurmountable data loss, system failure was imminent—
Their Creator was dead.
Their system administrator was dead.
Their champion… he was… dead.
Oh… how did it end like this?
Warning: power levels dropping to unsafe levels.
He had no idea it was possible to have fallen as low as he had, to have destroyed everything he had cared to love, to protect—
His mission. It was over. There was no one left to protect. Or to hold the promises he had made up to.
Their world was dying.
As was he.
Warning! Critical energy loss has depleted internalized memory core. Permanent shut down imminent.
He tried to find the power to fight the inevitable… but his strength was gone, with the rest of his world. He could only hope that what came next for the world, which he once fought to save from people like he had become, would be more pleasant than what he had offered it in the end.
He had betrayed them all. He did not deserve a second chance. So… he let the Seas take him.
The Seas were the only thing that were beyond even the Creator's control. Unprocessed data, unprotected encryptions… just raw, raw material that someday, was supposed to become part of the Grid. Part of their perfect universe. It bore no life to anyone who wasn't in control of the User's controls, however. For a program, it meant oblivion to meet its touch.
So very just, in his opinion, that he land there, to be consumed by the abyss his mistakes and the mistakes of his one-time companions had made.
He did not fight his descent.
External stimuli affecting exterior shell. Deresolution event potentiality increasing!
But then… in the darkness… as his mind slowly unraveled as did his body…
He saw something.
Something bright.
Beyond the Seas. Beyond the Grid.
Beyond the edges of the Creator's laws.
Initiating file transfer.
Rinzler saw the hand of God—
Transfer complete.
—And took it.
00000
Twenty-Minutes Previous
"We are so screwed. Like, no, seriously? We're dead. We aren't even going to jail. We're going to be melted alive by the mere presence of the unholy law power these people are going to throw at us. Just like Raiders, man. Just like Raiders."
"If you keep chattering like that behind my head, I will punch you in the face, Tom," the black haired woman at the computer screen muttered.
Thomas stopped pacing in the middle of their bedroom, giving his girlfriend a wildly distraught look. "Amy, do you have any idea how much shit we're in right now?" he demanded.
"Yes."
"Do you really?"
"Yeah. You keep bitching about it, so yeah, I'm pretty acquainted with the fact."
Thomas groaned, collapsing onto their bed. "Jesus Christ…" He ran a hand over his face, frustration and exhausting battling for dominance in his mind. He glanced over at the clock. "It's almost two A.M. How much longer, you think?"
Sighing, Amy sat back from the computer desk, blinking bleary eyes. "I'm almost done the initial coding," she said, cracking her back. "Remind me never to drink with John or Greg again."
"Yeah. Same," Thomas replied, making a face of disgust. "Much less illegal that way."
Amy shot the programmer a cocky grin. "Oh, come on, this is fun," she teased. She turned back around to type away faster onto the keyboard.
The man behind her scowled. "We could be arrested for breaking into a Fortune-500 company's internal servers," he replied dryly. "We'd never see another penny for the rest of our lives… inside a jail cell."
"Only if we're caught."
Thomas sighed and got up off the bed. There was only one bedroom in their apartment and the space was compact as it was. There was barely enough room for their cat. "Listen, I don't like being called a pussy any more than the next guy," Thomas began slowly, stopping short behind Amy at the computer desk, "but accepting a dare, while drunk, to do this was pretty dumb, Amy."
"Yeah, well, it's too late to turn back now, Tommy," Amy replied, not hesitating in the least. The screen splashed a variety of color onto her face, highlighting her smile. "You set up the firewalls, I got the bug, we're both equally involved with hacking and federal law breaking."
If that was supposed to be comforting, Thomas really didn't think it was doing the job. He rested his chin on top of her head, watching the screen dully. "Man… I hate those guys," he whined, every worry and fear returning as he considered the possibility of their actions being discovered. "So much."
Amy snorted. "Oh, hush."
Thomas watched the woman type, knowing it really was too late to back out of their decision. A drunk night with fellow programmers had led to the unthinkable: a dare. Not just any dare, of course. Amy was right to say they were both incredibly capable hackers and programmers, but she boasted a bit too loudly in front of equally rowdy friends. A dare was tossed up and Thomas and Amy foolishly took it, both their pride and the inebriation clouding their better judgments.
He personally could handle a little hack here and there, mostly for fun. It kept their skills sharp. He could handle that.
Hacking into Encom's mainframe to steal a multi-million dollar program just to claim that they could? Not so much fun. More like heart-stopping and terrifying. He wasn't too sure he could handle too much of this.
They would be in and out, Amy kept telling him, but he was still nervous. If they got caught, everything was over for them. As much as he trusted his skills and the skills of his girlfriend, they were playing a gamble that could easily ruin the rest of their lives.
Briefly, he thought about his passport. He thought it was still good, at least good enough to get them into Canada. Always have a Plan B, I guess…
"Holy shit…"
Thomas froze and then glanced down at Amy, alarmed. "What?" he asked, mind flying to a million different reasons why she was suddenly staring at the screen in shock. Shock was better than panic, he had to reason.
Amy was watching the code on the screen with an incredulous, almost awestruck expression. "Dude… their servers just…" She let out a cry, jumping in her seat. "WHOA! The entirety of Encom's FLYNN division servers just spiked in bandwidth! Like… whoa."
That was not supposed to happen, not at all. "Wait, are we doing that?" he asked, leaning in closer to the screen. She was right; the monitor feed they had on the system input and outputs was picking up a massive amount of traffic. It was coming from inside the system, however, as if a large amount of programs had just been activated. For a hundred-terabyte system, that was pretty intense.
"No!" Amy sputtered, trying to keep up with the flow of information. "I haven't even gotten into the system yet! I'm just—" Amy froze and then attacked the keyboard with rapid typing. "Hold up. This could be what we're looking for."
"What?" Thomas asked, confused.
Amy was smiling now. "Their security system is completely down, Tom!" she laughed. "Ha ha! This is perfect! In and out, easy job, easy job…"
The nervousness return to Thomas's gut. "Jesus… be careful, Amy," he pleaded.
"Yeah, I will," she replied, distracted. She typed for another minute before going ridged beneath him. She inhaled sharply. "Holy crap. I… I'm in," she breathed, disbelief ringing in her voice.
Thomas stared blankly at the screen with her before it hit him that time was of the essence. "Quick, don't stop!" he said, pointing at the screen. He read off a small piece of paper taped to the side of the monitor. "The file is TR567-BN. It should be in Development."
Amy made a frustrated noise. "There's not a file with that name. Are you sure?" she asked, distracted as she fought through the code, writing in hurried terminal commands.
"Yeah!" Thomas replied, glancing at the paper again. "That's what Greg said."
The screen flashed as she scrolled through the data. "Wait… there's one called TR567-CN1." Amy hesitated. "It's the only one that's close to that."
Panic overrode patience. "Oh, fuck it, just grab it!" he sputtered, reaching for the monitor, as if he could grab it through there.
Amy obeyed, typing furiously. "Transferring… oh man, it's a big file," she said quickly. She stopped and seemed confused again. "Wait, never mind. Their systems are going completely nuts, Tom. Look at this."
Thomas leaned forward, looking at the screen carefully now. If he didn't know any better… the other data was disappearing. Rapidly.
"The files are being deleted…" he said quietly, eyes growing larger. To remove that much data at once would have been insane and difficult to do for a normal user. "Shit. Someone's hacking them?" Other than us, of course.
"No…" Amy murmured. She was typing again. "It's like… a system purge."
"Sucks for them," he said, frowning. Stealing was wrong, but this was a whole new level of criminal activity. He only hoped that Encom made backups of their older stuff. The files might have been twenty years old, but still. They were pretty valuable to just delete like this.
Amy made a small laugh. "Well, whatever this is, we got it," she said, triumphant. Windows were rapidly closing as the transfer completed and she began to shut down their hack.
"Wh—really? !"
"Uh huh."
Thomas jerked back, the panic alive again. "Get out now! Quick!" he said hurriedly, motioning at the screen. The terminal window closed—and then they were out. He sighed, entire body sagging with relief. "Oh, Jesus, we did it!"
Whirling around in the desk chair, Amy made a face up at her boyfriend. "Oh, relax, would you?" she said, teasing, leaning back confidently. "You always said you wanted to do something really illegal before you turned thirty."
"Yeah… like hacking into Google or something. Not a potential future employer's secret databases." Thomas sighed, rubbing his tired eyes. It was way too late at night for this; they had work in the morning, real work. "Let's hope the firewalls work."
Amy grinned. "They won't be able to trace this, not in a million years." She paused and then braced her legs against his legs, her grin slowly growing more suggestive. "So… how's it like to be a criminal, Mr. Devlin?" she asked, teasing more.
"Um." Thomas suddenly laughed, the adrenaline rush wearing off. "Pretty badass actually." If they lived to tell about it, they definitely proved their mettle in their line of work.
The black haired woman giggled. "Ha… I knew there was a reason I loved you." She reached up and kissed him gently, her eyes shining. "A nerdy, dorky and incredibly badass computer hacker."
Thomas smirked. "I prefer cyber pirate."
"Haha, right!" Amy said, chuckling. She tilted her head, considering. "So… we have in our possession an official copy of the prototype of Tron. As in, a priceless antique of computer simulations… as in, the most valuable vintage computer game in existence." She smirked mischievously. "What should we do next, hmm?"
Ah, the options. "I'd say destroy it, but that'd beat the purpose," he replied, wryly. "Let's hope Greg was telling the truth about knowing someone who'd buy it. Should we call him now?"
Amy considered it. "First things first," she said, leaning up further, pushing him back onto the bed. "Let's celebrate."
And that, he wasn't going to argue with.
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End chapter one.
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Your choice, readers. Continue or no?
A/Ns:
-"Raiders" - Thomas is referring to the film, "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
-None of the tech stuff is this chapter is probably right. Apologies if I screwed up any important details!