Chapter 92: The Falcon Owed Him Nothing
Chapter 92: The Falcon Owed Him Nothing
The Thunder Falcon’s position over Lucian said everything it needed to.
It made no move to attack. That wasn’t necessary. Its talons were planted on either side of its silent handler, wings held half-open, one eye fixed on Jin without blinking.
The warning in its posture was obvious.
You aren’t his handler. You don’t get to touch him. I still haven’t decided whether you’re safe.
Jin couldn’t fault it for that.
This bird owed him nothing. There was no contract between them, no bond carrying intent from his mind to its own. He had no authority over it, and whatever let him guide Glitch was useless here.
Glitch stepped forward beside him.
Possessive anger rushed through their connection. He hated the Falcon aiming that threat at Jin, and the thought of Jin trying to direct someone else’s beast offended him almost as much. His stance shifted, weight settling forward as he prepared to answer the challenge.
Stop.
Jin drove the command through the bond without room for argument.
"Not now," he said. "Challenge him next to Lucian and he’ll never come with us. Get low. Look away. Stay nearby, but don’t move closer."
Along with the words, Jin sent calm purpose through their contract. They weren’t stealing Lucian from the Falcon. The goal was to leave this field with all four of them.
Glitch obeyed with great reluctance and made certain Jin felt every bit of that reluctance.
He lowered himself anyway. His stare moved away from the Falcon, and he settled into a crouch that meant he was staying close, not approaching.
There was no reason to use Appraisal.
Jin didn’t need a status window to read the bird. Its body already told him exactly what it wanted.
He addressed it as plainly as he could.
"I can’t order you," Jin said. "I’m not going to act like I can."
The Falcon continued watching him.
Slowly, Jin raised one hand. He pointed first to Lucian, then toward the distant side of the course where the extraction point waited beyond sight.
"I’m bringing him to extraction. You can stay here and guard him while I work out how to move him, or you can guard him while we go."
Nothing in the Falcon’s posture relaxed.
It gave no nod, no softened look, no sign of agreement at all. It simply watched Jin and waited, ready to place itself between him and Lucian the second he handled its master badly.
That was fair.
Jin had asked for nothing, and the bird had given him exactly that.
Under the casualty rules, Lucian had become literal cargo. He was still a teenage boy who could hear every sentence and would remember every mistake, but he couldn’t contribute in any way. No talking. No gestures. Not even a useful glance toward the correct route.
Whatever opinion he had about Jin’s plan would remain trapped in his own head.
That left Jin trying to solve a transport problem with too many moving parts.
There was Jin himself, Lucian, Glitch, the Falcon if it decided to follow, and the sealed supply case. Thanks to Glitch’s earlier enthusiasm, its stability sat at ninety-two percent.
He looked over the equipment mounted on the case.
Carry straps. Tow loop. Reinforced underside designed to slide over broken ground. Standard rescue gear, all placed where even a panicked student could locate it.
Jin’s first thought was to put Lucian on Glitch’s back. A dense 3-Star body could handle the weight far more easily than Jin could.
He rejected the idea at once.
Glitch’s shoulder was already deeply bruised and tender. One hard jolt might turn that into a serious wound. Broken skin would be bad enough. Worse, it might begin healing at an impossible speed in full view of the evaluators.
Arthur’s warning came back to him with uncomfortable clarity.
A place in a class isn’t worth his health.
Jin wasn’t sacrificing Glitch’s shoulder just to make the next section easier. Not for an assessment. Not for anything else.
He would take the worse option himself.
"I’ll carry him," Jin muttered. "You pull the case."
He crouched beside Lucian and carefully worked him into a rescue carry across his shoulders. Jin had only ever read about the technique. Once Lucian was positioned, he pushed himself upright.
The Falcon nearly launched.
Jin stopped moving immediately while Lucian’s full weight settled across him.
He gave the bird time to inspect everything. Lucian’s head had support. His neck wasn’t bent. Jin was lifting him properly instead of dragging him by the arms.
The Falcon flexed its talons. Its wings remained open.
It didn’t strike.
Jin stepped forward once.
Then again.
The bird followed every movement with enough focus to murder him in several different ways, but it allowed him to continue.
That wasn’t obedience.
It was permission.
Permission would do.
Next, Jin attached Glitch to the case. He drew the tow strap over the lizard’s chest, then shifted it until the load sat across his sternum and uninjured side. Nothing pressed against the bruised shoulder.
"Tell me the second it starts pulling wrong."
Glitch answered through the bond with the injured dignity of a beast who had no intention of admitting weakness for the rest of his life.
Jin took his first proper step with Lucian across his shoulders.
Only then did he understand how unpleasant this trip would be.
Lucian wasn’t heavy as an abstract number. He was heavy in the very immediate way of another person’s arms, torso, legs, and full weight pressing down on Jin’s spine.
Jin was sixteen. His usual physical preparation involved holding a phone for long periods of time, not carrying another teenager through an obstacle course.
His breathing turned rough after three steps.
By ten, his thighs had begun objecting.
He would need to stop several times, lower Lucian carefully, rest, and lift him again. There was no chance of doing any of that gracefully.
Superhuman strength would have solved the problem nicely.
Unfortunately, Jin remained aggressively human.
He kept walking.
At first, calling them a team would have been generous. They were four separate difficulties travelling near one another, each with a different idea of the correct pace.
Whenever Glitch started forward, he pulled too hard. His unfamiliar strength snapped the strap tight in sudden bursts, making the case’s stability reading twitch.
"Start gently," Jin told him. "Get it rolling before you pull. Take the slack out first. Don’t jerk it."
One precise correction followed another.
He had to manage Glitch, carry Lucian, watch the case, and keep an eye on a Falcon that had never agreed to cooperate.
The bird stayed close to Lucian and flew low.
It refused to return to the scouting line. It wouldn’t climb high enough to show Jin the ground ahead, no matter how effortless Lucian and the Falcon had made that look earlier.
That source of information was gone.
Lucian’s hazard display was locked with him, leaving Jin only the broad warnings he’d shared before the assessment. Jin remembered them imperfectly, and every location was approximate.
There would be no complete map.
Through the bond, Glitch’s irritation began to rise.
Jin’s attention was divided between his partner, the case, Lucian, and the Falcon. The real insult was that none of that attention was being spent entirely on admiring Glitch.
Jin dealt with it before the feeling could get worse.
"Nobody is replacing you," he said, pushing reassurance through the contract. "I need you to be the steady one. Right now, everything else in this group is causing problems. You’re the one I trust to stay solid."
Glitch’s resentment eased into reluctant interest.
"And this isn’t a competition with him." Jin glanced toward the Falcon. "You’re proving we can be trusted. That’s harder than beating him in a fight, so I’m giving that job to you."
Glitch still disliked the situation.
But he understood the responsibility Jin had handed him. More importantly, he noticed the extremely specific praise involved in being named the stable centre of the whole group.
His posture straightened.
The next pull didn’t snap the strap nearly as hard.
Instead of watching only the Falcon, Glitch began paying attention to everyone around him.
Jin couldn’t remember him showing this much maturity since the day he hatched and immediately tried to eat a diagnostic sensor.
Then the constructs attacked before the Falcon had agreed to help them at all.