Chapter 93: The Falcon’s First Choice
Two constructs advanced across the shattered ground, each approaching from a different side. They were marked mechanical units designed for control rather than killing, but that hardly made them harmless. A scattered team or an exposed supply case would still be easy prey.
The Thunder Falcon sounded a sharp warning.
With Lucian draped across his shoulders, Jin had no way to fight properly. He lowered him as fast as caution allowed, keeping one hand beneath his neck and head until Lucian rested flat on a solid patch of ground. During those few vital seconds, the Falcon pressed close and covered them while Glitch remained harnessed to the case.
The constructs were almost on top of them when Jin decided.
"Glitch, halt the case. Quick-release, now. Hit the nearest one’s leg. Just put it down, nothing more. Protect your good side and come right back."
What traveled through the bond held none of the extra words: intercept, control, return.
The release snapped open, and Glitch slipped free of the strap and charged. Too much strength went into the opening move. It was the same old mistake, his body committing before his intent had caught up, and Jin felt the error through the contract at the exact moment Glitch recognized it himself.
Yesterday, that would have been the end of it.
Glitch corrected.
Before the lunge carried him too far, he checked his momentum. Instead of hardening his entire shoulder and plowing straight through, he focused the change into his claws and drove them into the construct’s leg joint.
The machine collapsed, still intact, and Glitch came away without injuring himself.
Better. There was room left to improve, but it was better.
The other construct came from an angle Glitch couldn’t possibly reach in time, its charge pointed directly at Lucian’s open side. The Thunder Falcon launched like a blade flung through the air.
Anything moving on its handler was an enemy. The bird struck with a shriek, wings and talons tearing across the construct’s sensor head. The blow knocked it away from its line, and the Falcon beat backward before the machine could catch it.
Glitch held one side. The Falcon guarded the other. Between them lay the same unconscious boy.
Then came the moment Jin would remember.
The first construct forced itself upright despite its damaged leg and lunged again. It ignored Glitch, ignored the case, and went for Lucian.
Glitch had already begun turning toward the tow strap. Jin’s order was finished. Lucian belonged to someone else, and Glitch had never been commanded to defend him.
He moved anyway.
One heavy stride put him between Lucian and the machine. Glitch turned his hardened flank into the impact and took the collision on his uninjured side, then drove forward, forcing the construct down and shoving it away from the motionless handler he had no claim on and plenty of reason to dislike.
The entire exchange took no more than a second.
The Falcon noticed.
Its head whipped toward Glitch. For a single beat, the bird studied him with the same hard reconsideration it had once aimed at Jin in the staging yard. This was the aggressive little Iron lizard who had bullied the supply case and tried to solve everything with his weight.
And he had just shielded a stranger.
There was no bow and no approving trill. The Falcon only shifted its wings slightly, but Jin understood the change.
Glitch had earned the first true piece of its trust.
Once the constructs were down, Jin needed information from above. He couldn’t keep carrying Lucian while managing Glitch’s pace and stumbling along a route he remembered only from a briefing. Moving blind would eventually get all of them caught.
His arm trembled as he pointed down the path.
"I need to know what’s ahead. Can you check?"
The Falcon rejected the request. It dropped beside Lucian again and folded its wings closer around him.
Jin didn’t raise his voice. He also refused to copy one of Lucian’s private signals and trick the bird into obeying. Any trust Glitch had gained would vanish the moment Jin tried that.
He left Lucian where he’d placed him and turned to Glitch.
"Stay with him. Guard this spot. Nothing gets close."
The contract carried the command in its simplest form. Jin spoke again, quieter this time.
"This is what I was talking about. You’re the reason the Falcon can leave him safely."
Glitch settled beside Lucian with his body held low, calm, and intentionally nonthreatening. Then he managed the hardest task Jin had given him all day.
He let a rival inspect him without answering the challenge.
The Falcon kept watching. Its gaze moved over Glitch’s lowered stance, the position he’d chosen, and the body he had already placed between Lucian and danger. The bird appeared to weigh whether the ground could be trusted while it abandoned the sky.
At last, for the first time since Lucian had gone down, the Thunder Falcon left him and shot upward.
Jin finally breathed out. It felt as though he’d been holding that breath since the assessment started.
When the Falcon returned, its warning was difficult to read. It refused to land on the broad route straight ahead and twice skimmed low over a second path on the left. Each time, it turned toward the main route, cried sharply, and veered away from the same section.
The obvious path held some danger visible from the air but hidden from Jin on the ground.
He started to shift toward the left route.
Glitch stiffened at once.
The contract carried a low, urgent warning, and this one had nothing to do with the sky. The ground beneath the left passage felt wrong. There was an odd vibration, an emptiness below the surface, perhaps a hidden plate where no plate should be.
The Falcon objected to what it could see on the main route. Glitch objected to what he could sense beneath the alternate one.
Neither warning felt mistaken.
Jin’s old response came immediately: stop moving, find certainty, refuse to act until everything was known.
He paused, but this time the hesitation lasted only a moment. He recognized it now. It always felt responsible at first, right until the delay became the thing that ruined him.
So he stopped asking which beast had the correct answer. Their warnings were separate parts of the same unfinished picture.
"Look at the left route again," he told the Falcon, pointing toward it. "Approach from the other side."
Jin moved to the edge of the left-hand path, crouched, and used Appraisal on the portion he could see.
[Surface Load: Irregular—Concealed Void Suspected, Left Corridor]
[Confidence: Partial]
[Overhead Hazard: Not Visible From Ground]
Partial. Naturally.
Appraisal confirmed that part of the left corridor was likely hollow underneath, but it provided nothing useful about the danger the Falcon had spotted over the main route. No single warning explained the entire obstacle.
Taken together, they were enough.
The Falcon’s movements outlined the unsafe section farther ahead, while Glitch’s senses identified the hidden void on the left. A slower line ran between those dangers, following the reinforced edge beside the left wall before crossing beneath the height the Falcon refused to approach.
It wasn’t quick, and it wasn’t clean.
It could work.
"That route," Jin said, drawing the path with one finger. "Stay against the wall, then cross over. Slow."
Before risking the case, he sent Glitch to test the edge. The lizard placed one hardened claw on the nearest floor plate and applied pressure a little at a time.
A crack split the surface. The center of the plate gave way and dropped into a black cavity beneath the alternate route, leaving only a thin reinforced strip along the wall. Glitch withdrew his claw and looked back at Jin with the pleased smugness of a beast whose warning had just turned into an actual hole.
The Falcon shrieked above the main route.
A suspended metal arm ripped across the open path hard enough to sweep a beast off its feet. It cut through the exact space they would have entered if Jin had chosen the direct route and dismissed the Falcon’s warning.
Both beasts had judged the danger correctly.
Jin hoisted Lucian back onto his shoulders. Pain and strain answered from his arms immediately, but he fixed his grip and started forward.
Glitch pulled the case along the narrow reinforced strip beside the wall, keeping every step and tug measured. Overhead, the Falcon circled close, then cried once as the metal arm began swinging back.
Jin stopped. He counted the timing, waited for the arm to pass, and guided them beneath after it cleared.
For a moment, the case wheels slid toward the broken plate.
"Stop. Small pull right."
Glitch adjusted without yanking. The case moved away from the drop, its stability undisturbed.
A narrow ledge underfoot, a metal arm sweeping overhead, and Lucian’s weight digging deeper into Jin’s shoulders with every step.
Then the four of them reached the other side.
The extraction gate stood ahead, built to force cooperation from them whether they had learned it or not.