“I’ve seen what users are capable of,” Quorra cried. “You don’t belong with them, Clu!”
Clu ignored her furious charges. When Quorra was gone, he composed himself and ascended the podium. rumbling cheers from his elite Black Guard greeted Clu. He began to speak.
“Together we have achieved many things,” Clu said. “We’ve built a new world. Created a vast and complex system. Maintained it. Improved it. rid it of its imperfections!”
Rousing cheers greeted Clu’s words.
“Not to mention rid it of the false deity who sought to enslave us…” Clu paused and smirked as he raised his eyes skyward. “Kevin Flynn, where are you now?!”
Hidden away, Kevin heard Clu’s cry. He was dying to answer his treacherous creation. But he remained silent. He knew they had to stay hidden if they wanted to continue living.
Unfortunately, the more Clu talked, the more difficult it was for Kevin to listen. Clu’s voice sounded like his own voice. Clu’s face looked like his own face. But the words that echoed up from the hangar were not his words or his thoughts. They were twisted conclusions from a corrupted mind, full of arrogance and hatred. They had nothing to do with Kevin’s vision…
Or did they? he found himself wondering. After all, I created Clu. Is some part of me like him?
“There was a time I believed this was all there was, all we were capable of,” Clu declared as he continued to lecture his troops. “But I’m here to tell you that you’ve been kept in the dark too long.”
Clu raised his hands. “Fellow programs, let there be no doubt. Our world is a cage no more. The key to the next frontier is finally in our possession!”
Clu gestured to a point a few decks above where Sam and his father hid. A light appeared, illuminating the ship’s bridge. Kevin’s disc was up there. Clu had mounted it on a high-tech pedestal as if it were a sacred object.
The disc was glowing. Active. ready to lead Clu and his army through the portal and out into the real world.
“Unlike our selfish creator, I will make Flynn’s world open and available to us all!” Clu bellowed. “In that world, our systems will grow. There our systems will blossom!”
Clu raised his hands over his head. “Together, we have changed this world. Together, we can change the new world, too. So I ask you. Are you ready to receive your command?”
The massive Black Guard army nodded in unison. “Yes!”
“Maximize efficiency,” Clu commanded. “rid the new system of imperfection! rid the new system of the users!”
Cheers erupted from the Black Guard. The vibrations were loud enough to shake the catwalk under Sam’s boots.
Sam exchanged a horrified glance with his father. rid the new system of its users, Sam thought. But “users” are humans.
Clu wants to rid the world of people!
“WE HAVE TO GET YOUR DISC!” Sam whispered, feeling almost frantic now. He pointed above them, to the shining object displayed on the ship’s bridge.
“No,” Kevin quietly replied, refusing to even look at it. “We must beat Clu to the Portal. You can shut him down from the outside.”
But Sam pointed out the army assembled below them. “Even if I make it out, by the time I find Alan Bradley, you’ll be long gone,” Sam said. “The disc is the only way!”
Kevin considered his son’s words.
“Come on, dad. We can do this.”
But once again Kevin shook his head. “If we go now, at least maybe you can get out. At least there’s a chance.”
“What about everything you created?” Sam asked.
“It’s just a program, Sam!” his father responded, finally losing his cool. “It can all be rewritten. You can’t. It’s not worth your life.”
“What about you? What about Quorra?” Sam asked. “You said it yourself, dad. Some things are worth the risk.”
Kevin blinked in surprise. His own words had come back to haunt him.
“I’m not going back alone, dad.”
Before his dad could argue, Sam took off toward the bridge—and his father’s disc.
THE MOMENT SAM EXITED THE ELEVATOR, he was attacked by two Sentries. He hurled his disc at one, derezzing him instantly.
The other swung his disc. But Sam ducked in time and gripped the Sentry’s legs. With a heave, he tossed the armored guard over the rail.
Three more Sentries appeared. A warrior in action, Sam quickly reduced them to pixels. Then he crossed the bridge and stood before the pedestal. The disc glowed with an inner radiance. But as Sam reached for it, Counselor Jarvis rose in front of him.
“Stop!” Jarvis shouted.
Sam raised his disc with threatening fury, and the cowardly program shrank backward.
“At least I can say I tried to stop him,” Jarvis muttered to himself.
Sam returned to the pedestal. But he was back in Jarvis’s face a moment later. “I came with a girl—a program,” he said. “Where is she?”
A door opened. Sam saw Quorra standing there. He rushed forward to meet her.
That’s what Rinzler was waiting for—he stepped out of the shadows, surprising Sam.
“Sam! go!” Quorra shouted.
Instead, Sam faced Rinzler. dropping into a crouch, he reached behind him with his left hand while he raised his disc with his right.
Rinzler drew his own disc and split it. With a quick flick of his arm, he fired off the first. The toss was aimed directly at Sam’s head.
Sam deflected the first throw with his own disc, but the move left his torso exposed.
Rinzler smiled as he shot his second disc. The razor-sharp edge was coming right for Sam! He was going to be cut in two!
That’s when Sam brought his left hand forward. It was holding his dad’s disc!
Sam knocked aside Rinzler’s second throw. Then he sent his dad’s disc ricocheting off the ship’s hull. The attack surprised the enforcer. He had no time to react.
The sharp edge of Kevin’s disc struck Rinzler square in the chest. Pieces of his thick armor broke off and derezzed. Rinzler howled as the force sent him backward, over the bridge rail.
Sam put up his hand, snagging his father’s boomeranging disc in midair. Then he sheathed it beside his own and went to Quorra.
She threw her arms around Sam and squeezed him tightly. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Let’s go,” Sam said, pullingggg awayandsnatching some familiarfamiliar
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Tron Legacy the Junior Novel Page 7