Chapter 236: Before the Button

Chapter 236: Before the Button

The note had four headings. Jin spent the morning turning them into things that existed.

Feed schedule. He pulled the sixty-day Bronze reserve figures from academy storage and set them beside the Engine’s projection. The arithmetic was better than expected.

The projection called for ten to fourteen days of elevated demand, whatever elevated meant in practice. Even if Glitch ate double for the full fortnight, more than a month of reserve would remain.

So I don’t need to buy anything. I need to divide it differently.

A beast consolidating a Star needed a steady supply its body could process, not two enormous meals a day. Five smaller feeds meant Jin’s schedule for the next fortnight would be built around a lizard rather than classes.

He wrote it out in half-hour blocks and it was ugly and workable.

Monitoring. He booked every reassessment window first. A slot he could not get was the sort of small problem that turned planning into improvisation.

Training reduction. He cleared the next two weeks: no sparring, contact drills, resistance hall, or Managed Rift booking. He kept two advanced-room slots for controlled positioning and cancelled the rest.

Date. He left that blank until the medic answered.

Doyen, the medic who had removed Glitch’s immobilization, listened to forty seconds of Jin’s request before she started writing.

"You think he’s approaching a developmental rise."

"My talent’s Data Appraisal. It’s not much use for anything, but it does read condition." Jin kept it exactly as true as it needed to be. "His numbers have been sitting at the top of what a Bronze 5-Star produces for a while and they’ve started moving again since the leg cleared. I’d like a safe plan around it rather than finding out afterward."

"That’s a more sensible request than I usually get." Doyen looked up. "Most students want me to tell them their beast is about to advance. You want me to tell you what happens if it does."

"Yes."

"Then I’ll give you a conditional and you’re not going to like how conditional it is." She pulled Glitch’s file. "I’ll do a full baseline. Foreleg, throat, temperature, appetite, gait, load response. If all six hold steady across several days of reduced activity, then an ordinary developmental advancement is medically reasonable and I’ll say so in writing."

"And if they don’t?"

"Then you wait. If that leg starts warming up again or the throat gets scratchy, you postpone, and I don’t care how good his other numbers look." She stood up. "Get him on the plate."

The baseline took forty minutes. Glitch’s foreleg tracked cleanly through its full range and loaded evenly at all three test weights; his throat was clear, temperature normal, appetite excellent, gait symmetrical, and load response better than his last recorded figure.

"That’s a good animal," said Doyen. "Come back in four days and we’ll see if it holds."

Glitch’s opinion of the following four days was consistent and increasingly loud.

He could move again, which in his assessment concluded the matter. Every clean walk and symmetrical corridor trot became evidence. On the second morning he demonstrated a perfect sideways brace against a doorframe, unprompted, then looked at Jin like a creature who had rested his case.

"You’re not sparring."

The bond conveyed that this was an unjust and possibly illegal restriction.

"You’re eating five times a day and doing about a tenth of your normal training. That is what recovery looks like."

Glitch conveyed that recovery had already occurred and that what was happening now was persecution.

He also took an immediate interest in the feed measuring. Every meal now involved scrutiny from about forty centimeters away by a hundred-and-forty-kilogram Bronze beast who had noticed the portions were different and drawn his own conclusions.

"It’s the same amount. It’s just spread out."

Glitch did not believe him.

Jin visited Flicker on the second and fourth days, and both times she was exactly where she had been.

Green on four lines. Stable. Verrick’s word had not changed in a fortnight and Jin had stopped waiting for it to.

She noticed something, though. On the fourth visit Glitch came up with him, and Flicker was out on the mat for her supervised circuit, and she stopped halfway along it and looked at him for a long moment.

She can tell he’s eating differently. Or she can tell something.

Glitch walked the length of the mat beside her at her pace, which took a while, and did not once put himself under her when she wobbled, because Verrick had been extremely clear about that a fortnight ago and Glitch had apparently filed it.

"He looks well," said Verrick, watching.

"He’s cleared for progressive load. His baselines are strong."

"Good." Verrick wrote something on Flicker’s sheet. "That changes nothing here, and I want to say that out loud before you ask me anything."

"I wasn’t going to ask."

"You weren’t going to ask today." Verrick tapped the sheet. "One beast doing well is not evidence about a different beast. Her restrictions are hers."

"Understood."

Doyen ran the four-day check and everything had held.

"Leg’s the same or slightly better. Throat’s clear. Weight’s up half a kilo, which is what I’d expect from your feeding schedule and not from anything worrying." She signed the sheet. "Medically reasonable. That’s my written opinion and here it is."

"Thank you."

"Post-advancement assessment is booked for the day after, which I see you already did." She raised an eyebrow. "Most students book that afterward, when they’ve panicked."

"I’d rather not compete for the slot while panicking."

"Mm," said Doyen. "Keep the reduced load going for another ten days on the other side of it, whatever happens. Advancement’s a start, not a finish."

Jin still did not use the clearance that night.

The written opinion meant Glitch could advance safely if the preparation held, not that four stable days had to become the earliest possible date. Jin gave him two more with the same five measured meals, light walks, and clean morning and evening readings.

Glitch objected to the delay on principle. He also slept through most of both afternoons, which weakened his argument.

On the seventh day, every line still held.

The night before, Jin dealt with the money.

Four thousand one hundred Credits, after Verrow’s had been paid off entirely and Flicker’s file had come back stamped with a zero balance that he had looked at for slightly longer than was reasonable.

He split it in about two minutes and then sat with the split for twenty.

Two thousand went to the family, with two thousand one hundred kept as a buffer. Glitch’s consolidation might need money, Flicker’s medical situation could change in either direction, and four months at three hundred Credits had taught Jin exactly what no buffer felt like.

He did not send the two thousand.

He looked at the transfer screen, and thought about Arthur asking him to come home and bring the map with the distances on it, and closed it.

Not as a bank transfer with a note on it. He asked me to come and explain it.

He put in the leave request for the following week instead.

The night itself was almost anticlimactic, which was how he wanted it.

Glitch had eaten his fifth meal at eight and was lying on the floor of the room with the specific heaviness of a well-fed animal. The next feed was measured and sitting in a sealed container on the desk. The post-advancement assessment was booked for the following afternoon. The training schedule for the next fortnight had one entry on it and that entry said positioning, light.

Jin checked Flicker’s ward monitor before he did anything else, and it was green on four lines.

Both of them. Right.

Then he opened the panel.

[Target: Glitch]

[Current status: Rank 1 Novice, 5-Star | Bronze Quality]

[Projected status: Rank 1 Novice, 6-Star | Bronze Quality]

[Controlled Sync conditions: prepared]

[Begin transfer?]

Jin looked at that for a moment and let himself feel it properly.

There had been a version of him — not a distant one, a version that had existed about three weeks ago — who would have pressed this the night the projection appeared, in a treatment bay, on a beast with a strained foreleg, because the button was there and the reward was real.

He had waited seven days. He had feed measured out for a fortnight and a medic’s written opinion in his file and a schedule with nothing dangerous on it, and every single one of those things had been boring to arrange.

And now I get to do it.

He crouched and put a hand on Glitch’s shoulder, and Glitch lifted his head.

"Told you. Properly."

He pressed confirm.