Chapter 270: Past the Easy Route

Real Glitch spent the next day being a large, warm, extremely hungry rock.

He walked when he wanted to walk. He ate four times. He lay in the sun-lamp corner for three straight hours with Flicker parked on his foreleg like she’d bought the spot, and the only exertion he attempted all day was rolling over.

Jin spent it inside the quarry.

Jin opened the lower-gallery routes and studied the patrol markers. He knew parts of the quarry well enough to picture the ledges without moving the camera. He also remembered how quickly the guards could shut those routes when the queen directed them.

He had stolen the fruit and escaped. That was considerably different from clearing a path through everything protecting it.

Faultline Rush, earned in the separate corridor trial of the Line, had made that escape possible. Since then, the avatars had kept grinding, and Jin had learned which fights were worth taking. The deeper patrols offered enough growth to justify trying again, provided he could split them before the guards pinned Glitch in place.

He chose the eastern approach. There was no reason to go anywhere near the queen.

He took them in along the eastern ledge, Glitch’s avatar grounded on the broken stone and Flicker’s running the high line above him. Glitch’s avatar still had the older frame. The fruit had changed his physical body; Jin wasn’t going to plan this run around horns and weight the avatar didn’t possess. He had its practiced Rush, its existing defenses, and the lessons from all those failed corridor attempts. Flicker’s avatar could range well ahead of him, carrying development her real body had received only in carefully limited amounts.

The first heavy patrol found them at the mouth of the second gallery.

Four workers followed two armored guards in a tight column. Flicker could harry the workers, but sending her against those thick shells would only waste an avatar.

Jin moved the camera up to the ledge. There was room above the column, and a side passage behind it.

Glitch’s avatar planted at the gallery mouth, where the walls prevented either guard from passing him. The first struck his Hardened shoulder. He yielded a short step into the wider junction, keeping the column’s attention while Flicker moved overhead.

Flicker went over the top.

She dropped onto the trailing workers from the ledge, hit one, and left before anything could turn — and then did it again eleven meters back down the passage, which was the part that mattered. The rear three broke formation to chase a bird they were never going to catch, and the column came apart into a front and a back with fifteen meters of empty gallery between them.

Jin backed Glitch across the junction. The lead guard followed, leaving the second struggling past a jut of stone at the entrance.

Come on. A little farther.

When it cleared the mouth, Glitch anchored and rushed into its exposed side. The shell struck the wall hard enough to buckle. Glitch continued past, braking on the clear strip Jin had checked before the pull, then turned to meet the second guard.

That one made him work. He took a pincer across the shoulder, caught the limb in his jaws, and hauled until Flicker returned along the ledge with the workers behind her. Jin brought both groups together in front of him for Acid Breath.

The spray caught the workers as they rounded the corner. It cost a visible portion of the avatar’s reserves, but it ended the fight before the second guard could free its pincer. Jin finished that one with a bite through the damaged joint.

Here, at least, using the breath didn’t endanger Glitch’s recovering physical throat or expose the skill to spectators.

Total elapsed time: under two minutes.

[Patrol cleared.]

[Route access extended: Lower Gallery — East.]

Jin sat back against the wall of his room and exhaled.

That’s the one.

He ran it eleven more times over the day and it did not become automatic.

The first three runs took nearly as long as the original. He lost Flicker’s avatar twice — once to a collapsing ledge she’d cut too fine, once to a guard group that came from a direction he had not accounted for. Both times she respawned ready to go back in. Jin checked the real Flicker resting beside Glitch before restarting. He liked seeing what her avatar could do, even when it made the small, careful movements of her physical body harder to watch.

The later runs needed fewer corrections, although Jin still had to choose when to split the patrol. An attempt with Auto had failed when the avatars advanced before a crossing group cleared the junction. He took control again, annoyed with himself for trying to leave the difficult part to the phone.

Glitch’s avatar accumulated damage across the runs — cuts through the plating, a bad landing on run seven, the general grinding wear of being hit repeatedly by things with pincers. Lesser Regeneration eased the minor damage between attempts and helped recover stamina, drawing down the same stored energy he needed for the next fight. Jin still checked the deeper injuries separately. On run ten, the reserves dipped too low to support another patrol, and he withdrew the avatar for a rest cycle.

He stretched his stiff fingers while it recovered. The real Glitch had rolled onto his side without disturbing Flicker. Jin was fairly sure the lizard had enjoyed the easier afternoon.

The yield was worth all of it. Coins came in at a rate that made the outer-rim circuit look like an allowance, and the development ticked up steadily behind it, banking into the same place all avatar growth banked, waiting for a transfer.

He saved the accumulated development for the controlled transfer. He would check real Glitch again in the morning before deciding whether to proceed.

He came out of the Engine in the late afternoon to find Verrick running Flicker through her permitted circuit in the yard.

Jin watched from the wall and did what he always did, which was read the readout over her shoulder without being invited.

"Her temperature’s flat," he said.

"It’s been flat for four days." Verrick didn’t look up. "So has her recovery interval. She did the circuit twice this morning and the second one was as clean as the first, which she couldn’t do a month ago."

"And she’s eating all right?" Jin asked.

"Steadily. Her weight’s up too." Verrick turned the readout so he could see. "She’s still on the same restrictions. Walking and brief fluttering. But look at how quickly she settles afterward."

He compared the traces, then looked at Flicker, who was inspecting Verrick’s shoelace.

"You think she’ll keep improving?"

"I have more reason to think so than I did last week," Verrick said. She smiled when he looked back at her. "You’re allowed to be pleased, Jin."

Later, alone, Jin opened the Engine and looked at the panel he’d been checking every night for a week.

[Recipient: Flicker]

[Stored development: substantial]

[Next Limited Controlled Sync: not yet available]

[Projection — following transfer: recipient may approach species-normal baseline]

May.

He read the word about six times.

He remembered watching her egg in the incubator, adjusting heat and airflow and hoping he wasn’t making things worse. Hatching had brought a different set of problems. For so long, a good day had meant stable readings and enough appetite to get through her next feeding.

He had wanted her to survive. Of course he had wanted more than that, but survival kept demanding his attention first.

Now he caught himself looking at the perch above her mat and imagining her reaching it without needing his hand underneath her.

You could just go wherever you wanted.

The projection wasn’t a promise. The transfer wasn’t ready, and he would still need to check what her body could safely accept when it was. But Verrick had seen the improvement too. He didn’t have to pretend the possibility meant nothing until it was certain.

He closed the panel and sat beside her mat. When she came to inspect his fingers, he lowered his hand and let her take her time.