Chapter 338: Enough for Today

Chapter 338: Enough for Today

Glitch came around the orange cone and stopped at the blue marker on Jin’s command, all four feet planted, his nose level with the line.

He looked back at Jin, head up and tail lifted. Through the bond came an unmistakable eagerness to do it again.

"Good," Jin said. His voice came out rougher than he’d meant. "That’s one. Back to position."

Glitch walked back to the start line with a swing in his step that Jin hadn’t seen in over a month.

The drill was simple on purpose. Dr. Alcott had laid it out on the covered exercise lane with four colored markers. A ten-meter approach at a walk, rising to a trot for the last three meters. A controlled turn around the orange cone. A full stop on command at the blue line. Then a calm return to the white square at the start and a thirty-second rest.

Six repetitions at most. Fewer if his heart rate or Core readings climbed faster than expected. No skills. No charging. Nothing that could be mistaken, even by Glitch, for a fight.

A monitoring strap ran around his chest behind the forelegs, feeding numbers to the technician’s tablet. Dr. Alcott stood by the cone with her arms folded. Flicker was perched on the lane rail, watching everything with her head tilted.

The second repetition was as clean as the first. On the third, Glitch took the turn too tightly, pushing hard off his outside foot.

"Easy," Alcott said.

Jin repeated the command. Glitch slowed, though his head swung toward the cone as if it had somehow disappointed him. On the next approach, Jin gave the cue sooner, and the turn was softer.

It was ridiculous how good it felt to watch.

For weeks, Jin had seen Glitch lying down. In the straw, in the imaging ring, on the lane after short walks, his sides moving slowly. He’d started checking where the pillows were before thinking about anything else. Now two hundred and sixty-one kilograms of lizard was trotting, turning, stopping on a word, and looking back to see if he’d done it right. Jin kept smiling whenever Glitch looked back. He couldn’t quite help it.

By the end of the fourth, he caught himself thinking: He looks fine. He could do eight.

He glanced at the technician’s tablet. The readings were still acceptable, but they had climbed since the first turn. He hadn’t noticed that while watching Glitch move.

Jin kept his thumb on the counter in his phone. Four completed, two left. He would follow the number Alcott had given him.

He stayed along the outside of the lane, where Glitch could see him without twisting his head through the turn. Alcott had corrected his position once already. Jin watched his own feet as he moved to give the next command.

The fifth repetition was fine, but slower. Glitch’s breathing had deepened by the return, and he stood in the white square for the full thirty seconds with his head a little lower than before.

The technician looked at her tablet. "Heart’s up. Core’s still inside range. He’s working now."

"One more," Alcott said. "That’s the sixth. Then we’re done regardless."

Glitch went through the sixth carefully, and well. The approach was even, the turn clean. He stopped on the blue line at Jin’s word, perfectly square.

Then, instead of turning back toward the start, he looked down the lane beyond the marker, at the empty stretch he hadn’t been allowed to use yet. His weight shifted onto his front legs. His tail came up.

Jin felt the surge of wanting through the bond. Glitch’s attention had moved beyond the markers to the long, empty stretch ahead. He wanted to run properly, with none of these careful turns breaking his stride.

For a moment Jin remembered the brief exchange in the semifinal when Glitch hadn’t listened. He had answered plenty of commands since, but that memory still made Jin tighten his grip on the phone.

"Glitch," Jin said. "Stop. We’re done."

For a long second, Glitch didn’t move. His head stayed turned toward the open lane. The monitoring strap ticked quietly on the technician’s tablet.

Then he let out a long breath through his nose, turned around, and walked back to the white square. He lay down in it without being told, stretched his neck out along the floor, and looked up at Jin sideways from under his brow ridge.

He was still watching the lane over Jin’s shoulder. When Jin moved closer, he gave a low, dissatisfied grumble, but stayed down.

Jin crouched down beside his head.

"Good work," Jin said, resting his hand on the broad plate between Glitch’s eyes. "I know you wanted more. Thanks for listening."

Glitch’s tail moved once across the floor.

Dr. Alcott wrote something short on her tablet. When Jin glanced up, she was looking at the two of them with an expression he couldn’t quite read.

"Six clean repetitions," she said. "And he stopped. I’ll take that."

Afterward, Glitch slept for most of the afternoon, stretched comfortably across the straw.

Flicker spent it on his back. She flew down from the lane rail as soon as he was settled in his stall — a short, easy hop — and walked the length of his spine to the ridge behind his horns, where she crouched with her feathers puffed and went to sleep too. Every so often, Glitch’s breathing lifted her a centimeter and set her down again. She didn’t seem to mind.

Jin sat on the feed crate in the corner with his lunch. Glitch woke once, lifted his nose toward the container, and settled when Jin showed him the greens. Flicker barely stirred.

He sent Elsa a picture. Her reply arrived almost immediately: Breeze wants that bed. Look at all the room.

Jin looked at the enormous lizard filling the stall and sent back, Tell Breeze to book ahead.

That evening, he logged into the Engine for twenty minutes.

The quarry rim again, the same worker patrols he’d been farming for weeks. Glitch’s avatar charged through the weaker patrols, turned, and shouldered the remaining workers aside. On this familiar route, Jin could keep him clear of serious threats. The avatar Flicker cut across the top of the fight in long fast arcs that her real body couldn’t yet begin to manage.

[Session complete.]

[Coins banked.]

[Accumulated development: banked]

Jin watched the avatar trot back to the start, then glanced at the banked development. Real Glitch was still asleep. Nothing had been transferred to him, and Jin intended to keep it that way until the medical checks supported it.

He closed the Engine.

The sessions settled into a routine over the following days.

Every other morning, the same lane, the same markers, the same six repetitions. Glitch’s turns grew smoother. The heavy breathing that had come on after the fifth rep in the first session didn’t arrive until the sixth by the third session, and by the fourth it was barely there at all. His breathing settled sooner during the thirty-second rests. He stopped on the blue line every time.

During the third session, Flicker moved to the far end of the rail. Glitch began angling toward her until Jin called him back to the marker. He returned without fuss. When she came down after the drill, he stretched his neck toward her and waited while she found her usual place.

Jin recorded the slower breathing and cleaner turns in the care log. The small changes were easier to miss than a new Star. He liked having somewhere he could look back and find them.

On the fourth session, Dr. Alcott stood beside him at the end of the lane while the technician removed the monitoring strap.

"His movement’s coming back well," she said. "Better than I expected at this stage."

"What about the energy readings?" Jin asked.

"They’re acceptable for this drill," Alcott said. "The imaging will show us how his channels are responding. That’s what we need before we consider increasing the load."

She put the tablet under her arm.

"Friday morning," Alcott said. "Full reassessment. We’ll find out whether the inside is keeping up with the outside."

Jin looked at Glitch, lying contentedly in the white square with his eyes half closed and Flicker already hopping down from the rail toward him.

Jin had just written best session yet in the log. He left it there, then added the reassessment time underneath.

On Friday, he would find out how much of that progress held up beyond what he could see.