These warning signs -

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Something in his mind is faulting and he’s not sure why.

He’s - flawless, Clu made him flawless, Clu made him Perfect, and his thoughts are skittering like marbles are like - these balls, man, they’re spheres, you play games -

Games. He’s at the games. He has two discs in his hands and he’s the best, he’s always been the best, and he’s staring down at someone who should, by rights, be nothing more than voxels now.

Someone who is staring back up at him in defiance, hand wrapped around his arm as he holds a disc to his throat, pinned down and helpless, and

and something - there’s - something - there’s something about - he’s -

The crowd is shouting - de-rez - de-rez - de-rez - but the screaming at the back of his mind is louder than the chants around him and for the first time in a long time Rinzler feels afraid.

“Well?” asks his victim, voice barely trembling, unhappy but clearly unwilling to show it. You sound just like him, y’know. When I finally show him the Grid - “Congratulations. You won. I’d rather you didn’t draw this out, for all our sakes, so whatever you’re about to do, make it quick.”

He’s still falling apart, splintering, but whatever part of him has thrown a spanner - what’s a spanner - into his - perfectperfectperfectFINISHTHEGAME - whatever part of him is still operating, spinning smoothly, yelling - not yet not here can’t show - can’t show imperfections - MOVE - instead reaches down and roughly jerks his victim to his feet, arm twisted up and behind, held in a grip that's firm but not as firm as it could have been.

Should have been.

“Identify yourself, program,” Jarvis calls out, and he’d never liked him before but now, now, he can feel himself seething, because there’s danger here, and for once, it isn't him.

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Clu stared at the guards. They kept their heads up, arms stiff, no emotion in their stance.

“And you thought this was worthy of my attention,” he said, flatly.

They, if anything, stood even straighter.

“Sir,” said one, and if there was strain in their voice they hid it well. “It rezzed into the arcade. Sir. Is it not a User?”

Clu knew they weren’t joking, in their question.

Somehow, that was worse.

“It is an orange,” he said, still flatly. “Do not show me anything like this again. Dismissed. Leave. Now.”

The guards could not have been said to flee, but they did, perhaps, leave the room a little quicker than regulation allowed.

Clu’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing, even as he assessed the orange carefully placed on the desk in front of him.

It sat there, unassumingly. He stared at it. It remained an orange.

He picked it up and threw it against the wall with all the force at his disposal.

It... exploded, leaving smaller bits of itself strewn across the room, stuck to the ceiling, splattered to the floor.

Even as he watched, one bit slowly slid down a pillar until it fell off with a wet splorch.

“Clean this up,” he said to the soldier next to him, and he strode out the room with as much dignity as he could muster.

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“Sir,” said the guard, carefully holding out a - rectangle, with odd edges. A book, Clu realised, as he assessed it. A User information device. “It rezzed into the arcade. It - has your name on it.”

Clu’s eyes narrowed again as he reached forward, roughly taking the book and examining the cover.

Downfall of the Roman Empire, read the title, helpfully, as a colourful square of paper seemingly attached to it underneath, read,

Clu -

Learn, pal.

- Alan.

Clu did not throw the book across the room. He rifled through it, noting that some pages fell open easier than others - with odd, thin rectangles placed in particular places, enabling for quicker references. Ruins of the Coliseum, read one rectangle, cheerfully. The Death of Julius Caesar, read another.

Quite a few sentences were helpfully underlined in that chapter. One was even marked with an exclamation point.

Clu snapped the book shut one handed. The guards flinched, minutely, before standing to perfect attention again.

“Do not,” said Clu carefully. “Bring me anything further from the arcade, unless it speaks. Are we clear?”

“Sir, yes, Sir,” said the guard.

“Dismissed,” said Clu, and the guards fled.

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Clu’s eye twitched.

“It speaks, Sir,” said the guard, almost defensively, as they held out a larger rectangle.

They also, Clu noted, held it out as far as it was possible for them to do so, as if trying to physically distance themselves from the sheer racket that the thing was producing.

“So it does,” said Clu.

There was a beat, where everyone just absorbed the sound.

“- ‘s new pussycat - wooOOOAAaaaaHHHHHhhhh -” warbled the boombox, at volumes previously unknown on the Grid.

Clu’s eye twitched yet again, as he strode forward and snatched it from the guard’s hand in one clean motion.

It hit the ground the second after, but unlike the orange, it didn’t explode - instead it bounced, landing again and sliding a little before coming to a stop against the guard’s foot.

“-wooOOOAAaaaaHHHHHhh-” the thing repeated, though a little more muffled this time.

Clu stared out at nothing for a moment and grit his teeth together.

“Take this and get it out of my sight,” said Clu. “Put it in the cells.”

“Sir,” said the guards, and turned hastily to leave.

The sound followed them all the way down the corridor and beyond.

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“What,” snarled Clu, as the doors slid open behind him.

“C’mon now,” said a voice, cheerfully, and Clu whirled around. “Is that any way to greet someone? Didn’t you like my gifts?”

Tron’s face, but not Tron’s circuits, the guards beside him holding him in a grip that Tron would have broken out of in an instant.

“You,” said Clu menacingly, and moved forward.

Tried to move forward. A hand, as if from nowhere, took his shoulder, and he found his disc - locked, his feet frozen, unable to move.

“Me,” said Alan cheerfully. “Hi.”

“What -” started Clu, and a voice behind him - the mirror of the one in front of him - said

“I rather think it’s more who.”

The guards beside Alan purged their red lights, dropping their grip and relaxing. Alan rolled his shoulders back, as if stretching, and said, cheerfully, as the room exploded into movement around them -