Chapter 107: Glitch Remembered the Signal
Jin’s third window stayed unopened. The construct tried the same lure twice more and got the same result, until a Meridian recovery drone finally dropped in over the mannequin and the marker went from blue to clear.
Only then did Glitch turn and run for the beacon.
Sixty meters out, something activated behind him. Glitch spun to meet it on pure instinct, immediate and absolute, a beast unwilling to leave anything live at his back. Before he could commit, the course-wide withdrawal signal went off across the whole field.
Jin’s hand moved toward the last window, then stopped. Glitch had heard the tone, and he was thinking. Jin could see it in the turn of his head between the construct and the beacon, his body caught in the visible argument between finish it and the noise means go.
The withdrawal tone had been demonstrated once that morning. Glitch remembered it. After one last look at the construct, he began backing away.
He refused to turn his back on it. Instead, he retreated in good order, keeping the thing in view the entire way to the line, then crossed the extraction boundary facing the wrong direction.
Somehow, it was the most Glitch possible way to complete an assessment.
[Independent Response Course Complete]
[Extraction Achieved]
[Command Windows Used: 1 / 3]
[Evaluation Pending]
The barrier opened, and Glitch came out at a dead run. Jin got down on one knee just in time to absorb the impact against his chest.
Glitch was insufferable. He had completed almost the entire course without help, and his pride flooded the bond so strongly that apparently, he considered this proof that handlers were becoming optional.
"You used one of my three commands and you needed it," Jin said, his hands already moving over the shoulder.
Glitch declined to accept this framing.
[Joint Stability: Normal]
[New Impact Injury: None]
[Tissue Damage: None]
[Bruise: Tender — Mild Temporary Irritation]
[Recovery: Ordinary rest and treatment]
There was nothing new and nothing torn. The bruise was five days old, healing like an ordinary bruise because a lizard had felt his own shoulder complaining under a piece of framework and had, for once in his life, listened to it.
Kade found him while the technician was still working.
"He nearly hit a marked neutral," Kade said. "That’s the first thing on the sheet. Your beast leans toward hostile."
"He stopped."
"He did. It took him longer than it should have and he watched it leave like it owed him money, but he stopped—that’s a genuine pass on threat discrimination." Kade scrolled through the file. "His opening counter on the first construct had more force in it than the task needed. He corrected inside a second, which is better than Day Two, and it’s still there under pressure."
"Yeah."
"And he chased a retreating enemy away from his primary objective." Kade looked up from the screen. "That’s the real weakness. Your beast thinks in terms of clearing threats, not completing tasks. Where’d he get that?"
Jin kept his face and his pulse exactly where they were. "He doesn’t like leaving things behind him."
"Most good ones don’t. It has to be trained out, or at least trained around." Kade let the question go, because there was nothing there for him to pull on. A keen young beast that liked finishing fights was the least suspicious thing in the world. "You spent a window on it. Correctly."
He closed the file, but did not put it away.
"Here’s the part I actually wanted to say. When he loaded that shoulder under the framework, you were about to spend your second." It wasn’t a question. "I watched your hand."
"He fixed it himself."
"He did. And you saw him start to fix it, so you let him." Kade’s tone stayed level, though he held Jin’s eye. "You used one command correctly. The more important decision was not wasting the second when he was already correcting himself. Half the handlers out here can’t tell the difference between a beast that needs help and a beast that needs three seconds."
He tapped the file shut.
"He turns experience into habit fast. Faster than most. Keep giving him experiences worth keeping."
[Assessment Day Six: Complete]
[Component: Independent Beast Response]
[Standing Instruction Retention: High]
[Threat Discrimination: Good]
[Independent Tactical Response: High]
[Priority Management: Improved]
[Handler Intervention: Appropriate]
[Beast Condition at Extraction: Good]
[Final Result: Pass — Strong]
Priority management had improved again. Jin looked at the result and had no argument with it. He had spent one command, and he’d spent it dragging Glitch off a fight he should never have wanted in the first place.
He thought about that properly later that evening, sitting on the dorm floor with a cold wrap strapped over the bruise while Glitch dozed against his leg. The room had gone quiet around them, leaving nothing to distract Jin from the part the assessment had exposed.
The Engine had taught Glitch an enormous amount: how to survive, how to read an attack before it landed, how to find the seam in something bigger than him, and how to finish a dangerous enemy so thoroughly that it stopped being a problem.
It had taught him none of the rest.
The Engine had never shown him that an enemy could stop mattering, that an objective could outweigh a kill, or that an injury in the real world would still be there tomorrow. It had not taught him how to carry Jin’s judgment forward when Jin could not speak.
Rustwater had made Glitch dangerous. The last six days had started teaching him when that danger mattered, and that part had not come out of a screen.
The notice arrived while Jin was still turning it over.
[Assessment Day Seven]
[Component: Final Integrated Field Evaluation]
[Format: Four-Handler Unit]
[Prior Assessment Performance Used for Role Assignment]
[Unit Three Roster:]
[Jin Astor — Glitch]
[Lucian Vale — Thunder Falcon]
[Darren Holt — Rook]
[Marek Venn — Bristle]
[Assigned Role: Tactical Lead — Jin Astor]
[Full Scenario Available at Morning Assembly.]
Jin read it three times.
Lucian had led the earlier assessment stages and spent an entire day letting Jin see how a properly drilled pair moved. Darren had controlled most of their match yesterday and only lost because Jin used the pattern Darren himself had built. Marek would genuinely try to follow the plan, but he still had his own beast and his own judgment to manage.
Three handlers and three beasts. None of them were Jin’s, and none of them were his to command. All three belonged to people with their own judgment, their own scores to protect, and their own opinions about being led by the Iron-lizard kid.
Tactical Lead did not grant him a single point of authority over any of them. It only meant that if the unit fell apart, Meridian would know exactly whose call it had been.
Beside him, Glitch studied the roster, lifted his head, and flooded the contract with immediate satisfaction. Apparently, he had decided Jin had finally been assigned the additional subordinates he deserved.
"That’s not what this is."
Glitch was certain it was.
Day Six had tested what Glitch did without Jin’s commands.
Day Seven was apparently going to test what three other handlers did with them.