Chapter 100: Taking It Was the Easy Part
Jin got both hands on it and learned that immediately. Two mechanical restraints held the relay in place, ordinary hardware—the kind of thing a field team could release in six seconds if nobody were trying to hit them.
Appraisal told him the left latch carried most of the load and the right one had taken damage. It did not open either of them. He did that himself, hands shaking, while Glitch held one side of the gap, Bristle held the other, and something metallic kept getting closer.
"Left!" Marek shouted from the terrace, voice ragged. "Two coming around the hopper—you’ve got maybe fifteen seconds—"
Jin threw the lever on the first restraint. It stuck, so he hit it with the heel of his hand and felt it give.
"Ten!"
The second restraint was the damaged one, and it fought him the whole way. He worked it off the strained edge, hauled the lever through its last few centimeters, then dragged the relay out of the frame.
It was heavy. Not impossible—he could carry it—but he could not carry it and do anything else. The entire second half of the assessment rearranged itself around that fact.
The quarry noticed.
Machinery groaned above them as an old conveyor assembly ground into motion, swinging across the mouth of the ramp they’d come down. Three constructs stopped guarding the empty mount and turned toward the thing in Jin’s arms. Behind the collapsed hopper, two more stood up that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
Designed.
The thought came with something between respect and loathing. The assessment had let them take the relay, then made taking it the easy part.
"Route’s closing!" Marek called, high and urgent. "The east ramp—that conveyor’s swinging across it, you can’t go back up the way you came!"
Jin turned with the relay and followed the direction of Marek’s voice. A narrower secondary ramp cut up through the quarry wall, half-buried in gravel, steeper and uglier than the first route but still open.
"Glitch. Left ramp. Clear it."
Glitch went. Jin followed at the fastest pace a sixteen-year-old could manage with an awkward grey box hugged to his chest, which was not fast. His arms burned almost immediately, and the relay’s edge dug beneath his ribs with every step.
Halfway across the open ground, his boot slid. He dropped to one knee and caught the relay against his thigh before it could hit the deck, then forced himself upright with his heart hammering against the box.
Behind him, Bristle was in trouble.
Two constructs had converged on the Ridgeback at the choke. He was holding, planted and stubborn, but they were pushing him backward one grinding step at a time. If he broke, the route closed behind them.
"Glitch—Bristle. Help him."
Protective resistance surged through the bond for half a heartbeat. Glitch wanted to stay beside Jin, not turn back toward someone else’s beast while Jin could barely keep the relay off the ground.
Then his gold eyes tracked the narrowing route, found Bristle holding it open, and he moved.
He didn’t slam into the constructs. Glitch came in low at an angle and drove one precise, hardened foreclaw into the nearer construct’s ankle joint, tipping it sideways into its partner instead of trying to break it. Both staggered, Bristle recovered his footing and shoved, and the pressure came off.
One route, held open by a lizard who yesterday had resented sharing Jin’s attention with another beast.
Near the base of the final ramp, Jin got a reading he didn’t like.
[Respiration: Baseline +34%]
[Muscular Strain: Elevated]
[Shoulder — Protective Tension Detected]
[Joint Stability: Normal]
[New Injury: None]
Nothing was broken or torn, and the joint was still clean. But tension had gathered around the bruise that hadn’t been there twenty minutes ago, Glitch’s body beginning to protect that side without being told.
It wasn’t the withdrawal threshold. It was getting close enough to matter.
Jin’s instinct offered him a clean finish: one big hit, break the last construct off the ramp, and walk out without letting it slow them.
He didn’t take it.
"Don’t engage," he said. "Screen me. Body between, no contact. We’re leaving."
Glitch spent the last thirty meters as a moving wall instead of a weapon. He shifted across attack lines, blocked sightlines, and kept his body between Jin and the final construct, making himself expensive to get past without absorbing another impact. It was less impressive than a finishing blow and cost almost nothing.
They came up the ramp with Bristle behind them and Marek waving them through. Jin crossed the marked boundary line with his arms about four seconds from giving out entirely, set the relay down, and braced both hands on his knees.
[Priority Objective Complete]
[Quarry Relay: Recovered]
[Opposition Bypassed/Disabled: Confirmed]
[Collaborative Contribution Recorded]
[Deployment Points Awarded: High]
[Merit Credit Eligibility: Provisional]
[Final award subject to extraction condition.]
Marek read his own display and made a strangled noise. "Defensive contribution and route support. That’s real points. I thought splitting it would gut my score."
"It records what you did." Jin straightened, still breathing hard enough that the words came between breaths. "Bristle held that choke against multiple units. That’s worth logging."
Bristle heard his name and wagged his entire back half.
Marek looked from him to the relay sitting on the gravel. "So which one of us won?"
Jin looked back at the quarry—the conveyor still grinding across the ramp, the constructs reforming around an empty mounting frame, and the teams below still paying full price for it.
"The two who got out."
Glitch was insufferable. He had clearly concluded that the grey box would now be converted directly into food and stood beside it with the confidence of someone waiting for the obvious next step.
Jin gave him the reserved field portion. The correct one, measured against what he’d actually burned, and not a scrap more, because there wasn’t a scrap more to give.
Glitch registered this as a betrayal of historic proportions and ate it anyway.
Jin ran him properly while he did. The joint was stable. The bruise was irritated and tender, but not meaningfully worse than it had been that morning. Hydration remained acceptable, while energy consumption sat well above the careful plan Jin had built the night before.
That was fine. That had been the trade.
The risk had been worthwhile because they’d kept control of it. Glitch had abandoned unnecessary fights, Marek had warned them before the route closed, and Jin had changed tactics the moment the shoulder reading shifted. The useful lesson wasn’t to take bigger risks; it was to choose one with an exit and use it before the cost changed.
He checked the clock.
[Time Until Extraction Window: 00:47:—]
[Beast Condition Weighting Remains Active]
[Merit Credit Award: Pending]
Forty-seven minutes remained until the window opened at Hour Five, with Pending sitting there in plain text.
Across the field, a new objective marker pinged. Glitch’s head came up instantly, victorious and hungry, every line of his body radiating the obvious suggestion that they go do that one too.
"No," Jin said.
This time, it wasn’t caution talking. They’d already gotten the return they came for. Every point past this one was a gamble against a payout he’d already earned, with Glitch’s condition as the stake.
That wasn’t courage. That was just greed with better marketing.
Jin tightened his provision pack, looked at his exhausted, delighted lizard, and started plotting the slowest, safest route to extraction.
He had won the food.
He still had to bring Glitch home healthy enough to claim it.