| “ | Say it! Say I'm stronger than you! Say I'm smarter! | ” |
—Cyrus to Tron (his former mentor) | ||
| |
| Cyrus | |
| Biographical information | |
| Status | Alive |
| Physical description | |
| Circuitry Color | White
Red (former) |
| Gender | Male |
| Description | Irregular program appearance (covered in lines) |
| Other information | |
| Functions | Prisoner (former);
Renegade (former); Sentry (former); |
| Equipment | Identity Disc |
| Allies | Dyson (former); Tron (former) |
| Out of universe information | |
| Actor | Aaron Paul |
| Appearances | TRON: Uprising |
Cyrus is a recurring character and antagonist in TRON: Uprising, voiced by Aaron Paul. He was a guard at Clu's repurposing facility, from which he aided Tron's escape, and later became the first renegade.
Biography
Cyrus was one of the programs guarding the room where Dyson tortured his victims. He wondered why Tron didn't scream under the blade, as all the others had; his colleague's answer was simply, "He's Tron." Ordered to move Tron from the torture chamber to Clu's throne ship, Cyrus was horrified by the gaping injuries Dyson had left.
Cyrus as a guard
Tron, seriously injured and barely capable of speech, was shackled in the recognizer that was to transport him, but Cyrus released him and bailed out with him while the recognizer was left to crash. He dragged Tron to safety, encouraging him to take heart and telling him he'd be all right. Tron asked why he was doing this, and Cyrus answered with words that Beck would later echo: "We can't let the revolution end before it has a chance to start."
For an unspecified time Tron trained Cyrus to fight, and subsequently Cyrus became the first renegade. For reasons unknown, Cyrus went insane believing the only way to save the Grid and end all suffering within it was to destroy it. When Tron found out about Cyrus's plan, he managed to subdue his mentee and imprison him in a secret compressed-space construct located beneath an energy pool in the Outlands.
Long cycles later, Beck found Cyrus still trapped where Tron had left him. The former guard, nearly unrecognizable with thin white circuits all over his face and body, claimed that fate had brought them together, and led him deeper into the the construct.
Cyrus then revealed to Beck that he had reconfigured the construct into an energy collector with which Cyrus was preparing to generate an electromagnetic pulse that would wipe out a large portion of the Grid, thereby "freeing" the programs oppressed by Clu. When Beck objected, Cyrus revealed to him why he was imprisoned and that he had been the first renegade, something that Tron had never told Beck.
Cyrus used Beck, along with himself, as battery power to break out of the compressed space, but fell back into it when Beck broke free. Beck, seeing the door to the prison shattered after the device exploded, assumed that Cyrus had died and returned to Argon -- and so was not there to see Cyrus climbing out of the remains of the door with a maniacal laugh.
Personality
Cyrus showed compassion as a guard, going so far as to rebel after seeing Dyson's cruel treatment of Tron, but over the cycles his kindness was twisted into insanity, and he now believes that destroying the Grid and all life on it is the only way to end his fellow programs' suffering.
He was pleased to meet Beck and eager to convince him that destroying the Grid was inevitable and right, but when Beck opposed him, he was just as willing to overpower him and use him to power the escape device against his will. He did not seem to fear the terrible pain involved in escaping from the compressed space, and showed no real concern about putting Beck through the ordeal, though he fell back into his old habits of reassurance as Beck struggled to escape: "And now I need you to be brave, because this may hurt a little."
He showed a strong belief in fate, repeating several times that he and Beck were "meant" to meet one another. He was also the first program to directly address the concept of free will, a trait which Kevin Flynn did not believe programs possessed, asking Beck if he believed in it and cutting off any answer with "Yeah, neither do I." In No Bounds, Cyrus confirms his idea that programs have no free will, stating that "programs are just that, programmed."
Skills and Abilities
As a guard, Cyrus was capable of independent thought and quick decisions, and skillfully sabotaged a recognizer and landed himself and Tron safely in the Outlands with nothing but a Tron chute.
His combat skills are impressive; he was trained by Tron himself, and his fighting style is strikingly similar to Tron's, and just as effective.
He also has considerable engineering skill, possibly amounting to genius, as shown in his ability to retool the inside of his prison into an energy collector needing only the presence of another program as a catalyst to allow him to break free.
When he first appeared to have a unique ability to ignore gravity, walking freely on vertical surfaces while Beck was forced to seek footholds. However this ability seems to be limited only to his prison, since in No Bounds he was not able to do this in Argon City.
Trivia
- It is likely that both Cyrus and Beck, his successor as the renegade, were named after the Cyrus-Beck algorithm, a generalized line-clipping algorithm.
- He is the first program on the Grid to be shown with circuits on his skin (a trait which Dyson had found revolting in ISOs); he mentioned that his appearance hardly fit Clu's idea of perfection. The only other known Basic program with any visible skin circuits was Sark's Lieutenant.