Chapter 339: Before the Next Step

Chapter 339: Before the Next Step

"It’s working," Dr. Alcott said. "It isn’t finished."

She had two images side by side on the wall screen of her office, both of Glitch’s channels, both taken that Friday morning. The left was from before his drill. The right was from twenty minutes after it.

Jin leaned forward.

In the left image, the old strain along Glitch’s shoulders was fainter than he’d ever seen it, reduced to a few thin, uneven threads of color. In the right, those same threads had brightened. Not dramatically, but noticeably. A faint flush along the paths that carried energy out from his Core toward his forelegs, exactly where the damage had been worst.

"That’s the load," Alcott said, tapping the right-hand image. "Six repetitions of a gentle drill, and the recovering channels light up. The healthy ones don’t." She brought up a third image. "This is ninety minutes after. It’s settled back down to baseline."

"So it’s straining?" Jin asked.

"There’s still a response to load," Alcott said. "What matters here is that it settles. His earlier images stayed elevated long after much lighter work. The tonic and his regeneration are helping, and the drills are giving us useful progress. But he isn’t ready for heavier work yet. Increasing it now could undo that progress."

Jin looked at the three images for a long time.

He found the pale marks from the first image on the second, then the third. Alcott hadn’t dismissed what he’d seen in the lane. The improvement was there. It simply wasn’t as far along as he had hoped.

I wanted her to say we could do more.

He sat back before she could catch him staring at the same spot again.

"I want to be clear about what comes next," Alcott said. "Because I know what you’re going to ask."

"Rank 2," Jin said.

"Rank 2," Alcott agreed. "He’s at the peak of 9-Star, so he meets the development requirement. A safe breakthrough also needs a sound foundation, a stable bond, sufficient energy, and proper preparation. His foundation still needs work."

She took a sheet of paper from her desk and wrote three lines on it in plain block capitals, then turned it round.

Finish the Stillwater course. All six weeks. No shortcuts. Pass repeated moderate-load checks without renewed strain. Show stable recovery after those checks, confirmed by follow-up imaging.

"Moderate-load work starts after he finishes the course, if the images show he’s ready," Alcott said. "Then he needs to pass more than once, with follow-up checks confirming stable recovery."

Jin read the three lines twice.

"And if he passes all of it?" Jin asked. "What does that get us?"

"Proper breakthrough preparation," Alcott said. "With a full readiness assessment at the end of it. We won’t set a date for the attempt before then."

"Okay," Jin said. He folded the sheet and put it in his jacket. "What should I keep recording between now and then?"

"The recovery after each session, especially anything slower than usual. Appetite, movement, and any change you notice through the bond. You’ve been doing that well. Keep the drill as it is."

Jin added those points to his phone before standing.

"Nearly three weeks left on the tonic," Alcott said. "We’ll review him again before we change the work."

His own follow-up was on the same corridor that afternoon.

The doctor who’d stopped his transfusions at an earlier follow-up checked his blood readings and put him through a stair test. Then she sat down with the results.

[Hemoglobin: within normal range]

[Recovery: good]

[Follow-up: 1 week]

"You’re almost there," she said. "Another week, if it keeps going the way it’s going, and I’d expect you to be back to your ordinary self. Stamina, all of it." She paused. "Feeling well for an afternoon doesn’t mean you can return to a full day of hard work. Give it that week."

"I’ll give it the week," Jin said.

"And Jin." She looked at the file, then at him. "I still don’t know why this happened. Your numbers coming back doesn’t tell me what knocked them down. If it ever starts again — tiredness you can’t explain, dizziness, anything — you come in the same day."

He promised. He meant it.

Out in the corridor, he put his hands in his pockets and smiled. A week. He’d walked from the stables without stopping, taken the stairs, and hadn’t thought about his legs until the doctor asked. He wanted to tell his mother that part before she asked whether he’d eaten lunch.

He thought about the Engine’s quiet record from Highmarch, the one with no explanation under it.

Getting better isn’t the same as knowing why, he thought, and went to find his beasts.

Crowe’s second exercise had taken him three attempts the week before. Rowan’s beast couldn’t hold the center, so Jin had kept his own piece back to protect both tamers and made the opposition approach them.

The aerial marker hovered beyond their reach. Jin had been tempted to chase it, right up until Rowan tapped the route it would take around him. He moved his piece back. Eventually they found a slower advance, keeping the injured beast sheltered as they moved together.

Crowe called it unexciting and gave him full marks. Rowan asked for a copy of his last layout. Jin sent it before he left the room.

He went to Coldwell that evening. It was Friday.

Elena had made soup. Arthur was at the table with a depot rota and a pencil, and when Jin came in, he moved the rota off the fourth chair without being asked.

Elsa was in her room with the door open, practicing.

She had the baking-paper circle on her desk and a leaf in the middle of it, and her hand held low and flat above it. Breeze sat in his pen on the other side of the room, well outside her range, watching the leaf with his whole body. His ears were straight up. His tail twitched.

The leaf lifted and turned a slow circle inside the line. One second. Two. Three. Four. Five.

It dropped. Still inside.

"Five," Elsa said, spinning around. "Did you see? It stayed inside for five whole seconds!"

"I saw," Jin said.

"Aldous is going to lose her mind," Elsa declared.

"Aldous is going to give you a smaller circle," he said.

Elsa opened her mouth to argue, then shut it, because she clearly suspected he was right.

Breeze, who had been waiting for the leaf to stop moving, launched himself at the side of the pen, fell over, and got up looking very pleased.

Jin told them about Glitch over dinner. The six turns, the stopping, the images. Arthur put down his spoon when Jin mentioned the next assessment. He had once been a tamer himself, and knew what his son wanted after 9-Star.

"Long way still?" Arthur asked.

"A while," Jin said. "But there’s a list now."

Arthur nodded as if that was the best news he’d heard all day.

Glitch was asleep when Jin got back to the stable block, with Flicker tucked under the curve of his jaw.

Jin took the folded sheet out of his jacket, flattened it against the stall door, and taped it under the dosing instructions he’d copied out just over three weeks earlier.

Glitch opened one eye at the sound of the tape. Jin rubbed the edge flat and stepped inside to check his water.

"Nearly three more weeks of this," he told him. "Then we’ll see about the next checks."

Glitch lifted his head. Flicker shifted beneath his jaw and complained, so he lowered it carefully again.

Jin crouched beside him. He could feel the interest through the bond, the faint eagerness at being told there was something ahead. He hadn’t mentioned Rank 2 aloud. That could wait until they were actually preparing for it.

He checked tomorrow’s appointment on his phone. Session five, eight o’clock, six repetitions. Then he set a reminder for the follow-up images and saved a copy of Alcott’s targets beside his care log.

The Engine was still accumulating growth whenever he made time for the familiar routes. For weeks he had been watching that bank rise while Glitch’s limits stayed the same. He wanted to use what he’d earned. More than once, he had opened the record simply to look at it.

Tonight he left it closed.

Instead, he looked at the second target on the sheet: repeated moderate-load checks without renewed strain. That was the step between these six easy turns and proper breakthrough preparation. Glitch would need to manage the work, then recover cleanly afterward, more than once.

Jin rested his hand on the lizard’s shoulder until Glitch settled.

His eyes returned to the second line on the sheet. Before Rank 2 could become a real plan, Glitch had to carry that heavier load without the strain returning.