Cor nodded briefly and reopened the data, searching for any other type of encryption. “Oh, wow! Take a look at this.” he said as he showed her the more complicated encryption. “This might take a little longer to crack.”
Nora raised her eyebrows in surprise. "That's the most complicated code I've ever seen."
“Yeah… That's what’s making me nervous.” Cor nodded with a soft sigh as he continued to work on decoding it. “Though this does make more sense why they wanted me… Not to crack it of course, ” he added with a smirk. “But I never make a delivery without knowing exactly what I'm supposed to bring.”
"It looks like we might be here for a while," Nora noted, watching him work, and Bit concurred. She turned to it. "Bit, you're lookout."
Yes. Bit whizzed off.
Cor raised a brow slightly and glanced over at Aroura as he continued to decrypt the data. “I thought you said your Bit was trouble.” he teased.
"When it's in the mood," Nora said stiffly. Bit was usually more serious on their vigilante excursions, but that didn't stop it from showing its true, chaotic colours sometimes.
Cor chuckled a little, not stopping his work. “So what does that say about you…” he mused.
"It means," Nora said after a moment, "that I'm through discussing Bit and would rather discuss that code."
“Touchy, touchy.” he chuckled. “I’m almost done. Unless they packed any surprises in here.” Cor assured her. “I was just trying to pass the time.”
Passing the time. Nora understood that; it was natural for programs to want to talk, she supposed. She eyed him working, wondering what secrets the code held.
"If it's that encrypted," she noted aloud, "there will probably be some… 'surprises' in there." She eyed his hands. "Do you have code-protecting gloves? It might be wise to wear them in case they have programming corruptions."
She'd seen it before: encrypted code laced with reprogramming or other forms of data corruption, that if even touched, could infect you. It was like a sickness, and there was only one cure: cutting out all of the damaged code, even if it meant losing a limb or a major purpose. The only way to get it back was to be reprogrammed from scratch or to slowly regrow it, a very slow and painful process. ISO's were - had been - the only ones who could have sped up the process, but thanks to Clu, that was impossible now.
Cor barely suppressed a strong shudder at the mention of the corruption. He’d heard of the terrors that came from messing with that kind of code. Giving her a brief nod he took his hands away from the code and pulled out a pair of code-protecting gloves. “Got these as a payment for one of my earlier jobs.” he told her calmly. “I’m not as much of an amateur as I seem to be. I was once, a little more than halfway through Clu’s control, but I… I’m a self-taught hacker.” he admitted softly. After a moment, he derezzed part of his upper sleeve, revealing a decent-sized scar. “You can probably guess how I got that.”
Nora raised her eyebrows. "That's a bad one." She'd seen similar ones, but she'd been in charge of fixing them and had tried to get it over with as soon as possible: cubes turned her stomach. "Permanent damage, or is it fixable?"
Cor shrugged and fixed his sleeve before going back to work on the data. “Pretty sure it's permanent. But it's just surface damage now.” he told her. “The only one who I think can fix it would be Flynn… or an ISO and we both know how likely it is to find either one currently.” he added with a small scoff.
A small, slightly bitter smile touched Nora's lips. She knew how he felt. If not for Clu, the Grid would be a much better place. ISO's could have helped everyone.
She looked out towards the docks, wondering if anything like ISO's would appear on the Grid again. Far, far away, over the Sea of Simulation, glittered the stars, and she remembered what the portal had looked like, that endless column of light. Had Flynn really gone, she wondered? Surely he would have come back by now if he had.
Like any other program, there was a part of Cor that wanted to hope that Flynn was still around but by all logic… There was no possible way that he could be. The Grid’s only hope was if the boy, Sam, decided to fill Flynn's role.
“Can I be honest about something?” he asked, a little hesitantly.
"If you want to," Nora said, perhaps a little bluntly. Now that Clu's regime was over, it was considerably less dangerous for one to speak their mind, and she always had found it interesting when programs still asked permission.
“I don't get why Flynn made Clu.” he answered with equal bluntness. “I know he couldn't stay here… being a User and all, and he wanted someone to keep an eye on things here when he couldn't be, but wasn't that Tron’s job?” Cor explained with a note of exasperation. “Clu was just a supervisor. And didn't Flynn already know what happens to programs like that?!?”
Nora was taken aback by this sudden outburst. The subject of Flynn, and what he had done before the Grid, was something that nobody really talked about, and she didn't know much about the subject. It was common knowledge that this was not the first system Flynn had been to and that Tron had been brought over from that system as well, but apart from that, much of everything was shrouded in mystery. She had heard a few things involving a - what was it? It started with an M, but she couldn't remember now.
"He might have," she answered unequivocally, "but I don't think we'll ever know."
Cor took a deep breath, trying to calm back down. He hadn't meant to get so riled up about it… He was a curious program by nature and the history of Flynn had interested him very much. It was how he actually got into hacking, as not all the information he looked for was exactly public… but it wasn’t secret or restricted either until Clu took over.
“I… I’m sorry, Aroura.” he almost whispered, sounding a little awkward since he didn't often apologize sincerely in costume. “I didn't mean to snap like that. I just… You’re right though. But I have to admit that I don't like that fact.”
Nora nodded. While she understood his frustration, and his curiosity, she believed that the past was the past. It was unchangeable now.
Cor let out a soft sigh and finished decoding the data. “Here. Let's see what my client really wants.” he said, holding the data cube so they both could see it.
Nora's eyebrows contracted. "Program shipments?"
And suddenly, she realised what were in these crates. Programs. Repurposed programs. She felt sick.
"They're the remnants of Clu's army," she said aloud, looking around at the shipping containers. How many of them had come in? Ten? All filled with emptyheaded shells who had once had friends, a job, a life. "The ones that weren't shipped to the portal."
Cor’s eyes widened as he read and reread the data. “Th… This can't be right. Maybe… Maybe something translated wrong.” he suggested despite knowing that he didn't make a mistake with the encryption. “There… There's no way.” Of course someone like Clu wouldn't send all his forces in his crazy attempt to reach Flynn's world. And it had been strange that the most common remnants of that force were just the Black Guard… He had to have left something else behind. “Who in their right mind would want to be involved in something like this?”
Nora, slightly lightheaded now, took a deep breath. "I don't know."
She shook her head. "The worst part is that there's nothing we can do. We can't break into the containers because that's illegal, we can't restart them because they'll be programmed to only follow Clu, and even if we could uncover what's left of the original code, only Flynn or an ISO would be able to restore it…"
She looked uncertainly at the shipping containers, code cranking furiously in her head.
"We have three options," she said carefully. "Leave them here, open the containers and risk being derezzed… or we could try and track down who's behind this."
In truth, Astra wasn't the one behind the programs; it was still Clu, the echoes of his code. He had arranged for the programs to be shipped to the docks so they would be ready for further shipment to the portal; Astra had somehow found out and was now tracking them, planning to use them for her own purposes.
Cor’s brow furrowed as he let the data cube close. “I don't know about you, but I’d rather derezze than let some Clu follower use these programs.” he growled. “I pick the third option but we can't leave these containers here for anyone else to find.”