Paige

**Paige** is a character in *TRON: Uprising*, voiced by Emmanuelle Chriqui. General Tesler's second-in-command, Paige has endured her share of tragedy. Separated from her "family" during a battle, she was rescued by the General. This resulted in a deep loyalty to him, which often blinds her to his darker side. She is Beck's chief antagonist and, eventually, the object of his desire.

## Synopsis

### Beck's Beginning

Paige was present during the takeover of Argon City, and when the young program Beck decided to turn renegade by blowing up a new statue of Clu, she gave pursuit that ended in a fierce duel atop a light copter. Beck leaped to safety after the machine's engines were damaged, leaving Paige to land the craft alone and return empty-handed. Faced with Tesler's disappointment, she boldly stated that the rogue program was good, but was "no Tron."

Paige later went down to Argon City, visiting Able's garage to tell the programs that Tesler was bringing the games to Argon. Lining the programs up without recognizing Beck, she informed them that they were being volunteered for the games and would be rounded up in a few cycles' time unless the Renegade was turned in. Before departing, she noticed a familiar tool in Beck's hand, similar to the one the Renegade had used to repair part of the damage done to the light copter they'd been fighting in. Able, however, diverted her suspicion by showing her a drawer full of similar tools, and she left in a huff.

Tesler, however, launched his plan prematurely and began rounding up programs immediately. Paige was worried for the programs' sake, but Tesler told her that if she hadn't failed to subdue Beck in the first place, he wouldn't have had to do it.

She got her own back after Tesler himself had suffered a defeat at the hands of Beck, chiding, "Told you he wasn't that easy to catch."

### The Renegade, Parts I and II

When two programs escaped on the way to their second match, Paige went out to track them down and bring them back. She discovered that the escapees were Beck and Cutler, who had defeated a team of Black Guards earlier in the Coliseum. She brought them back, cuffed them together, and put them back in the games against three Black Guards on light cycles. The two programs again defeated their enemies, and were matched against each other; when Cutler forfeited, Paige talked Tesler into setting the "winner" free, as he had promised, rather than derezzing both for their insolence. After Beck returned in his Renegade guise and rescued Cutler, Paige gave chase. When Cutler's disc missed her, she commented that he obviously hadn't been programmed for combat, but was taken by surprise when the disc glanced off a set of controls and caused a turbine to activate, blowing her off the roof -- the miss had been deliberate, and Cutler had been programmed for aerodynamics. Paige continued to pursue the fugitives, battling with them across Argon's docks until all three were exhausted. The fight ended only when a criminal gang on light cycles collided with them, knocking Paige off her feet. Rising, angry at the renegade programs' escape, she detained Perl, one of the gang members; when Perl protested, Paige kicked Gage and several other gang members to the ground and advised Perl not to finish her sentence.

### Blackout

Paige was tasked with overseeing a plan to drill energy, but, showing her compassionate side, she shut off the drill to stop the resulting blackouts from causing casualties in Argon City. Tesler removed her from her post, not caring if a few programs were being derezzed.

While exploring the tunnels under the rig, she discovered a Black Guard waking up after an altercation with the Renegade. Searching the tunnels, she discovered the masked program warning racers in the Argon Race to evacuate the tunnels because of a bomb he had planted on Tesler's drill. Paige raced back to the drill on her light cycle, with the Renegade hot on her heels, but she arrived too late to prevent the bomb from exploding. Both of them were then forced to escape as the blast and ensuing outpouring of raw energy poured into the tunnels. Paige's bike wasn't fast enough, so Beck pulled her onto his instead, and she escaped the blast only as a reluctant passenger.

Once Paige returned to Tesler, she suggested blaming the blackouts on the Renegade, gaining public trust for the Occupation and alienating her enemy from the citizens of Argon. Then she assembled a task force to catch the renegade, among which were Hopper, Bartik, and Zed.

### Identity

Paige appeared at Able's garage to see the weapon Zed had created. When the weapon failed, she said Zed was a joke and left.

### Isolated

Paige pursued the Renegade when he stole a data cube from Tesler's ship, but crashed and was stranded on an island with him. She called for Pavel to rescue her, but he saw a chance to get rid of her and left her on the island. Initially she continued her attempt to capture the Renegade, but when she learned that the island was disintegrating she reluctantly began to co-operate with him.

After repairing his arm, she began to reflect on her past. Paige had originally been a medic in another city, and had started a clinic with Rox and another fellow medic. She had once saved two refugees from the ISO War, Quorra and Ada, from a gang of roughs, and healed Ada's injuries, believing them both to be Basics; Quorra had complimented Paige's music and taught her a self-defense move, but Paige's friendship with them had changed to bitterness when both women had turned out to be ISOs. Angry at the deceit, she nonetheless acceded to Quorra's pleas and shielded the two, but her discomfort with the situation alerted her coworkers that something was wrong. While Quorra was later telling Paige that she and Ada would leave peacefully, recognizers surrounded the clinic, and Quorra knocked Paige out to shield her from accusations of collaboration. When she woke, the clinic was in ruins and her coworkers were dead, and General Tesler, seeing potential in her when she attempted to fight his soldiers off, told her that the ISOs had caused the destruction. He then offered her a chance to join the Occupation and avenge them, and Paige, bitter and grieving, asked how soon she could start.

While Paige was helping Beck make a raft to get the off of the island, the destabilized ground disintegrated under her, causing her to fall into the sea. Beck ran to get the raft so he could save her, leaving Paige to assume that the Renegade had abandoned her there to die. His attempt to help Paige was thwarted when Tesler and Pavel arrived in a light copter, airlifting her out before he could swim to her aid.

Paige, believing that the Renegade had left her deliberately, told Tesler that she had made a mistake in trusting her enemy, and should have killed him instead. She also mentioned that during her stay on the island she had recalled her first meeting with Tesler, and gathered strength from the knowledge that he would never betray her. Tesler agreed, keeping to himself the fact that when Paige's fellow medics had approached him to turn the ISOs in, he himself had ordered their deaths, both to cement Paige's loyalty and to perpetuate the myth of the ISO threat.

### The Price of Power

When the Renegade stole a powerful upgrade weapon that had been on route to Argon City, Paige took the lead in the recovery efforts, setting a trap with an apparently disabled rescue vehicle that turned out to be full of guards. Beck used the weapon to defeat them all, and though Paige chased him in a light copter, he easily escaped.

### The Reward

Paige disliked Tesler's plan to root out the Renegade by offering a reward for his capture, but went along with it until Pavel had Hopper arrested on the evidence of a program named Link. Approached by Mara and Zed, who had been with Hopper at the garage while the Renegade was fighting Pavel there, she confronted Pavel herself, angrily accusing him of arresting the wrong program to make Tesler look bad in front of Clu so that Pavel could take his place. Pavel sneeringly denied it, but Tesler refused to let Paige state her case, and even when Hopper turned out to be innocent, Tesler ordered them never to speak of the incident again.

### Scars I and II

When Dyson (Clu's right-hand man) arrived in Argon for a typical inspection of the city, Paige and Pavel were tasked by General Tesler to keep an eye on him, and to make sure his inspection was brief. Paige tried convincing Dyson that the Renegade was not as big of a problem in Argon as Clu thought, telling him that the Renegade was just a "petty vandal". Pavel told him that she was wrong, and that he was a substantial threat. Pavel's assurances were corroborated when the Renegade attempted to capture Dyson. Though he failed, Dyson's trust in Tesler's and Paige's word decreased.

Dyson's trust in Tesler and Paige decreased further when Paige admitted that the Renegade was more of a problem then she had admitted, but not something to worry about, right before the cooling plant they were touring was sabotaged. While Dyson assumed the Renegade was responsible, Paige realized that Pavel had sabotaged the cooling plant, and Pavel revealed that he was trying to make Tesler look bad in Clu's eyes so that Clu could potentially look at him better in comparison. Pavel offered Paige to join him, but Paige, being loyal to Tesler, refused in disgust.

### Tagged

As Mara and the Renegade were rescuing Moog and Rasket and trying to escape Tesler's ship, Paige tried to intervene and stop them; however, she was unsuccessful.

### Welcome Home

After a government scientist named Keller defected from Tesler's army, Paige was tasked with hunting down and capturing Keller. She boarded a light rail train headed to Bismuth Station, where she suspected Keller was located. However, while on the train, Beck (who was also on the train) started flirting with her to distract her from finding Keller. Paige dismissed him as a random obnoxious program, but did remember him as the program she had saved in the games by convincing Tesler to let the winner go free.

Pavel was eventually sent to join Paige in her search for Keller, though Paige insisted that she could handle it by herself. As they argued, one of Pavel's light copters (which had seen Keller) started firing on the train to derez Keller; from a hiding place, Beck threw his disk at the copter, but this led to the copter firing at the train's engines, severely damaging the train so that its speed exponentially increased and became uncontrollable. Pavel claimed the mission to be a success, as Keller was destined to die on this train which now had no way of stopping. However, Paige refused to leave with Pavel, as she was disgusted at Pavel's lack of empathy for the hundreds of other programs on the train, and she was determined to save them.

Beck then approached Paige, explaining how he could help stop the train and save everyone on it. Paige doubted his abilities until Beck was able to disable the bulkheads that had come down between each car; she was then impressed with Beck, and the two of them went to the engine compartment to see what they could do to fix the train. Beck realized the train couldn't be fixed, and he told Paige to move everyone to the rear of the train so that they could separate the rear from the rest of the train, thus leaving the rear of the train to drift safely to a halt. Paige complied, and ordered everyone over coms to move to the rear, which they did. Beck and Paige then set to work to separate the rear from the rest of the train. They were successful, but she spotted Keller jumping from the rear to the rest of the train, heading for the forward compartment which held the escape pods. Not wanted Keller to escape, she remained on the train while the separated rear drifted to a halt; to Paige's annoyance, Beck followed her.

Paige tracked Keller down to the forward compartment of there train, where she was hiding somewhere in the room. Though Paige didn't know where she was, she started talking to her, promising her that if Keller comes back to Argon, Tesler would allow her a second chance, as he did with Paige. Before Paige could continue, Beck entered the forward compartment, announcing that the train was going to fall into a chasm soon, and that they needed to hold on. Beck then tried jamming the train's engines with light cycle components by rezzing his light cycle inside the beam the train was riding on. The engines were subsequently destroyed, but he quickly realized the train was still going to fall into the chasm. He ordered Paige and Keller to the back of the train and they both jumped off. Beck, however, was on the train as it plunged into the chasm.

Assuming Beck was dead, Paige moved on to accept Keller's reentrance into the Occupation. After Paige turned Keller's circuit-colors back to the orange-red color of the Occupation, Paige saw that Beck had managed to survive and climb out of the chasm. She was elated to see Beck alive, and was impressed with him that he had managed to save everyone on the train. Keller even praised him as a "real hero", affirming that without him, none of them would've made it out alive. Paige's admiration of him being high, she revealed to him something she had never revealed to her soldiers: that she used to be a medic program, and that saving lives still deeply mattered to her. When Beck replied that that was impressive as well, she decided to ask him to "hang out" with her (meaning a date) when they got back to Argon, to which Beck agreed.

Unbeknownst to Paige (at least for a while), Keller was derezzed by Tesler when she returned to him.

### Rendezvous

Soon afterwards in Argon, Paige and Beck got together for their first date: skydiving with wing chutes through the skies of Argon onto a bridge that held a beautiful view overlooking the city. As they sat on the bridge, Paige told Beck that this is "where she comes to be alone, when I need to think." In response, Beck agreed that it's sometimes good to get away from it all, so that maybe one could see things from a fresh perspective; maybe the opposite perspective (unbeknownst to Paige, this was Beck's attempt to try to convince her to rethink her loyalty to the Occupation).

Paige considered and took Beck's words to heart; she decided to implement them by rethinking her leniency towards Pavel's dishonesty with General Tesler. Paige then discovered that Pavel had rebuilt the power upgrade weapon without informing Tesler; he was also derezzing programs with the disk to test it. Paige threated to derezz Pavel if he didn't turn the disk in, and gave him one day to do so.

Later on, Paige and Beck were on their second date in a club playing pool together; they were genuinely enjoying each other's company. Beck brought up the topic of programming, and at Paige's statement that discovering one's true programming is a journey, Beck suggested that maybe hers isn't over, and that perhaps she wasn't meant to fight for the Occupation. Paige then reiterated her loyalty to Clu, but did admit that she often times feels like she can't be her true self; that she feels like she has to "wear a mask all the time". When Beck said to Paige that she wasn't wearing a mask right now, they shared a profound moment. However, it was interrupted when Pavel stormed into the club with Tesler's soldiers and arrested Paige, accusing her of conspiring to overthrow Tesler. He also arrested Beck as a co-conspirator.

While in their jail cell, Paige refuted Beck's suggestion that they should break out, as she was confident that Tesler would see the memories on her disk and would know they were innocent. However, Paige was taken by a guard to Lomox, who inserted a code worm into her disk, which implanted in her disk a fake memory of her telling soldiers that she plans to overthrow Tesler. She was then thrown back in her cell with Beck. With hesitancy, Paige admitted that she was, for all intents and purposes, a guilty program. So, she and Beck broke out of prison together, and escaped together onto the streets of Argon. As they drove through the city on light cycles, Paige fell into despair as her face appeared alongside the Renegade's on wanted notices. She told Beck she was a "lost cause", and not wanting to drag Beck down further, she forced Beck to separate from her.

Paige then decided to figure out how she was framed; she went to Gorn's shop, as she knew that Gorn could modify disk memories. However, Tesler and Pavel were waiting for her at the shop, and Gorn insisted that Paige had come to her for an erasement of the memory that made her guilty. When Tesler saw the memory on Paige's disk, he grew furious and sentenced her to die in the Coliseum.

As Paige was an extremely skilled fighter, she was able to derezz every opponent that Tesler threw at her in the Coliseum. When Tesler demanded if there was any program in Argon that could kill Paige, Pavel volunteered himself to fight her. However, before Pavel fought Paige, he equipped the upgrade weapon, which exponentially increased his strength and agility. He was about to kill Paige when the Renegade rescued her in a Light Jet. Paige tried attacking the Renegade and demanded to be let go, as the Renegade was only making her look more guilty. As she shouted, an Occupation Light Copter shot at them, downing them on the same bridge that Beck and Paige had sat on during their first date. In anger, Paige started attacking the Renegade, but stopped as he stated that Paige didn't deserve what the Occupation did to her. The Renegade talked about how Paige's own allies framed her and tried to kill her, but that she would never do that because she's not like them. He offered her to join him, stating how they were "both trying to save the Grid, just in different ways". But Paige refused, spatting how all the Renegade does is rain down chaos in the Grid; she stated that she would never join him. With that, Paige left the Renegade.

Paige went to the Argon docks to try to escape the city, but was quickly apprehended again by Tesler and Pavel. Paige insisted that all she's trying to do is find out who framed her. Tesler, to her surprise, said that he already knew who did it, and that it was the Renegade. He took the now-arrested Lomox's disk, and showed Paige a memory of the Renegade telling Gorn to make Paige look guilty, and that he'll "enjoy watching Paige suffer".

Unbeknownst to Paige or Tesler, Pavel was the one responsible for framing Paige. He orchestrated the framing of Paige; then, in a bid to gain more respect from Tesler, "proved" with a fake memory that the Renegade was responsible for implanting the fake memory in Paige. Tesler congratulated Pavel on his excellent work and gave him command over his own district; much to Pavel's dismay, he was given control and responsibility over Purgos.

On Beck and Paige's third date, Paige only came to tell Beck that she made sure no soldiers would come after Beck. With a heavy heart, Paige also told Beck that they couldn't be together, since she listened to Beck's advice and grew too soft as a result. With that, she left Beck.

### Terminal

Paige didn't appear until the end of the episode, where Paige informed General Tesler of Clu's imminent arrival in Argon.