Chapter 102: Four Days of Food
The detour cost them eleven minutes and forced them into a longer loop around the channel. Jin checked the clock, ran the remaining distance once in his head, and decided it didn’t matter.
They would reach the extraction sector with margin. Not a comfortable pile of it, but enough.
Glitch objected on principle every time a faster team went past. He objected with particular intensity when a lean Silver something overtook them at a trot, its handler jogging beside it, both clearly racing to cross the gate the instant it opened.
"Extraction opening first doesn’t mean we have to be first through it," Jin said.
Glitch remained unconvinced, which was fine. Jin had stopped needing him to be convinced.
Somewhere along the longer route, Jin realized this didn’t feel like the hesitation that used to trap him. He had chosen the quarry without perfect information, and now he was choosing to stop with the same certainty. He wasn’t becoming braver or more cautious. He was simply getting quicker at deciding which direction made sense.
[Extraction Window Open]
[Remaining Deployment Time: 01:00:00]
[Proceed to any active extraction point.]
[Beast condition and provision management remain subject to evaluation.]
Ahead of them, four students broke into a dead sprint. Jin kept walking at the pace that left Glitch’s shoulder quiet, and they crossed the extraction line about nine minutes after the window opened.
Not first. Not close to last.
Marek turned up six minutes behind him, filthy, wheezing, and radiantly pleased with himself. Bristle trotted at his side with a recovery canister held in his jaws like a trophy.
"Got it," Marek panted. "Got the whole thing. Bristle didn’t even—" He bent over, hands braced on his knees. "I need to sit down."
"You did fine."
"I did great."
"You did fine," Jin said, "which is great."
The evaluators went over Glitch before they would release the result, and Kade supervised the inspection personally. Jin stood back, let them work, and kept his face bored while a technician ran hands and instruments over the shoulder he’d spent four days protecting.
The joint remained stable through the full arc. The old bruise was more irritated than it had been that morning—warm, tender, with Glitch flinching when pressure went onto it—but there was no new impact site, torn tissue, or structural damage. Nothing underneath had changed from yesterday.
Hydration was acceptable. Feed consumption, matched against exertion, came back appropriate, and when they asked to see his remaining provisions, Jin produced the sealed emergency portion he hadn’t touched.
It was exactly what a carefully managed beast looked like after a long day. Nothing more interesting than that, and nothing knitting shut in front of anybody.
Kade read the readout, then looked at Jin.
"You took the quarry," he said.
"Yeah."
"And then you took a hazard flag and a walk."
"The quarry was worth what it cost." Jin shrugged. "Nothing after it was."
Kade made a note without hurrying. "Most students understand when to start," he said. "Fewer understand when they’ve already done enough."
That was all. He didn’t smile, soften, or offer Jin so much as a minute of preferential treatment. He moved to the next student in line and began the same inspection again with the same flat attention.
The result posted a moment later.
[Assessment Day Four: Complete]
[Component: Sustained Field Deployment]
[Minimum Qualification: Achieved]
[Priority Objective Contribution: High]
[Hazard Identification: Confirmed]
[Beast Condition at Extraction: Good]
[Provision Management: Excellent]
[Final Result: Pass — Strong]
[Meridian Resource Credit Awarded]
Strong. Not first and not perfect; plenty of names sat above his on the board. Some students had stronger beasts, deeper provisions, or had simply completed more without exceeding what their beasts could safely spend.
The quarry carried Jin’s result, and the hazard flag added a little. Glitch’s condition at extraction hadn’t multiplied anything. It had protected what was already there, which was the entire reason Jin had spent forty-seven minutes doing nothing.
Two lines down the queue, Marek made a noise of pure delight at his own display and had to be told to stop blocking the inspection line.
Jin went to the resource counter before he went anywhere else. He put the credit against ordinary Iron-grade formulation, watched the total resolve, and did the division twice to be sure.
Four days.
Four days of Glitch eating properly at his ordinary requirement. It wasn’t a month, and it wasn’t the allowance restored. It wouldn’t cover another Sync or come close to fixing the hole the first one had torn, but it stretched the bin past the end of the assessment instead of stopping three days short.
Three days short had shaped every anxious calculation he’d run since the night he emptied it.
He didn’t hesitate over training access. There was nothing to think about.
The attendant handed over the sealed allocation, and Jin picked up the bags. They were heavy.
That was the part that got him. Not the notification, but the weight in his arms—the stupid, physical, unarguable heft of food that was going to exist tomorrow and the day after.
Glitch stared at the bags with open reverence.
Jin decided not to examine what that said about their contract.
"This is four days," he told him on the walk back. "Not forever. Four."
Glitch pressed his nose against the bags, flooding the bond with satisfaction and possessive approval. Jin chose to interpret that as congratulations on finally making a sound financial decision.
He let himself feel the loosening in his chest and took his first full breath since the Sync. Right beneath the relief, though, sat the problem he couldn’t put down.
The Engine could grow Glitch faster than Jin could feed him. Every point of growth the bank handed over became a body that needed real food, and real food came from a world that didn’t care where the growth had originated. He’d been treating stored growth as free because it arrived through a screen.
It had never been free. It had just been billed later.
Jin shifted the bags and kept walking. Beside him, Glitch caught the ease in the bond and went bouncy about it—not because of the food, or not only because of it, but because his handler had stopped humming with worry for the first time in a week.
At the dorm, Jin gave him the post-deployment recovery meal he’d planned for, in full, without measuring it three times first. Water came next, followed by the cold wrap from the medical station, strapped over the bruised shoulder while Glitch endured it with the tragic dignity of a beast making a great sacrifice.
"Twenty minutes," Jin said. "Then rest. Nothing tonight. No jumping, no wrestling the furniture, no proving anything."
Glitch was asleep within ten, which answered that.
Jin checked him once more before allowing himself to sit down. The joint was stable, the bruise cool beneath the wrap, and Glitch’s breathing had settled deep and even.
He did not open the Engine.
Seven dungeon signals sat unread at the top of his phone and stayed unread. The bank was empty and could remain empty. The four days of feed in the corner would not be converted into another growth surge tonight, or any night soon; that was exactly the mistake that had put him here.
Glitch needed to be a normal beast recovering from a normal day, just for one evening.
The notice arrived while Jin sat on the floor with his back against the bed.
[Assessment Day Five]
[Component: Controlled Combat Evaluation]
[Format: Individual Handler-Beast Matchups]
[Opponent Assignment: Pending]
[Declared-Skill Restrictions Remain Active]
[Victory Is Not the Sole Evaluation Criterion.]
Glitch, who had been unconscious four seconds earlier, lifted his head off the bed with his eyes already bright.
Jin read the notice twice. Individual matchups meant an actual opponent actively trying to win, with Harden as the only thing Glitch was allowed to use, while Jin could no longer protect the bruised shoulder by simply choosing the safest route.
Victory is not the sole evaluation criterion. He would think about what that meant in the morning, after the shoulder had been checked again and the opponent had a name.
He looked at the notice, then at the wrap, and finally at the lizard vibrating with anticipation on his bed.
Apparently, the reward for bringing Glitch home without another fight was being promised one tomorrow.