Another brush of fingers, a tug of lines, and Rinzler stills, a stiff and careful pause. Not done. Clu will correct the fault one way or another (except he'd said correction wasn't why the two of them were here). Clu will do whatever needs doing, and Rinzler knows better than anybody the consequence of interrupting. A docked disk means no buffer, and with his programmer wrist-deep in Rinzler's code, nothing to do isn't a platitude. It's an imperative.

Nothing, at least, but listen.

He's always been Clu's favorite. (Favorite weapon.) (Favorite tool.) Clu's enforcer, (Clu's pet,) Clu's very favorite project: to test, to task, to whittle down. He can run for longer on less power than any function on the Grid, maintain defaults regardless of damage or pain. He can kill anything his admin wants, with fluid grace or agonizing slowness.

Rinzler can. Rinzler could. But he's refused Clu's orders, struggled back, shattered defaults so thoroughly as to half-discard the set. Rinzler is so, so far from the perfect weapon that Clu made, and he...

...he hadn't thought Clu wanted him.

He's still not sure. You will be, though, and Rinzler doesn't move, but the stutter of his sound catches, a shiver of recycled breath behind the shell. Clu promised not to set him back. Clu promised, so that has to mean something different. A future value (forward), one he can't predict, but... maybe not so far away.

Maybe.

Trust is as impossible a command as always. But stacks pair and forks seal, values shift and realign, and Rinzler lowers his head, noise quieting as he waits for Clu to finish.