Tron Legacy Read Free Page B

Clouds, stars, even the moon had disappeared. The sky above him looked as black as outer space. Suddenly a crackling flash of lightning rippled across the firmament.
    Heat lightning again? he thought. But the weather seemed too cool for that. And since when was lightning blue?
    Sam’s heart was now pumping hard enough to drown out the strange electronic buzzing that was assaulting his ears. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. Nothing was as it should be. Even the buildings looked different—blank walls without any windows or doors.
    That’s when a blinding spotlight pinned him. Sam groaned. The police again? “This has to be a new record,” he said out loud.
    But this was no helicopter. Looking up, Sam’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, and his jaw dropped. Hovering over him was an upside down U-shaped recognizer—from the Tron game! The digital construct was blue-black in color, with orange piping.
    I’m inside, Sam realized in shock. I’m in dad’s digital world!
    The recognizer hovered overhead, its light probing Sam as if he were a specimen under a microscope.
    “Identify yourself, program,” a booming, metallic voice commanded.
    There was no way he was staying around to answer that question. He had to get back into the arcade. Sam tried to run, but the ground under his feet rumbled. Then the streets sank, transforming into deep canyons that surrounded Sam. In seconds, he found himself trapped on a concrete plateau with nowhere to go.
    The recognizer circled its prey then settled on the lone piece of raised concrete. The machine’s two legs straddled Sam. Hatches opened, and four guards—or Sentries as Sam remembered them being called—in blue-black armor and smooth, blank helmets walked out of a hangar and surrounded him.
    One of them pointed to Sam. “This program has no disc. Another stray.”
    The voice was electronic, but not without emotion. Sam sensed disdain, maybe even hatred, in the Sentry’s tone. A second Sentry seized his arm.
    “Wait!” Sam cried.
    The Sentries ignored Sam’s pleas. They dragged him into the recognizer’s hangar. The hatch closed, and Sam felt the craft lurch under his feet. He was trapped.

    ONCE THE MACHINE WAS AIRBORNE , the Sentries finally released Sam. But before he could take even a step, crackles of light energy slammed Sam against a bulkhead. More bands of power restrained his hands and feet.
    Sam ceased to struggle when the hangar floor became transparent. What he saw was unbelievable. It was the stuff of his father’s stories—but in living color.
    The recognizer was flying over a city that appeared to stretch for a hundred miles in every direction. The craft was dwarfed by impossibly high skyscrapers capped by towering spires that rose against the ebony horizon.
    The entire metropolis was laid out in a grid pattern. Sam tracked crackling bolts of energy as they raced between the buildings. Blue plasma traveled beside the streets through canals that flowed along every avenue and boulevard, like a river meandering through the forest.
    Those same energy beams roiled in the black sky. In one blazing blue flash of lightning a glassy onyx mountain range in the far distance was revealed.
    Dragging his attention back inside, Sam noticed other people in the hangar with him. They appeared dazed and frightened. Some watched the view through the floor, but most seemed disinterested.
    “Hey,” Sam called out. “does the name Kevin Flynn mean anything to you?”
    “Keep quiet if you want to live,” a teenager warned, causing Sam to raise an eyebrow. He’d just been asking a question. giving him a closer look, Sam saw that the kid wore a weird black bodysuitlike piece of clothing that glowed with lines of rippling energy.
    Sam looked back at the rest of the people. “Not the games, not the games, not the games,” one person chanted. Curled in a ball on the transparent floor, his eyes were hidden behind trembling hands.
    “What’s his problem?” Sam