Chapter 190: Marks for Coming Back
Chapter 190: Marks for Coming Back
Mira spoke during the team’s response and did not soften anything.
"I was leader until 15:02. After that, Astor ran it." Her voice remained flat. "He never announced it, and he never told me to stop. He kept asking for surface reads, which was the correct use of me. I want that recorded accurately, because I’d rather be the person who got carried than the person who pretended she wasn’t."
Kellan said, "He stopped me twice. Both times I would’ve gone after something baiting me, and the second time I would’ve ended up forty meters from everyone."
When it reached Nia, she managed only, "I froze."
"Noted twenty minutes ago," Odgar said. "Sit down."
She sat.
[FIELD ASSESSMENT — TEAM 7 — RESULT]
[Route completion: INCOMPLETE — 5/7 units]
[Equipment: 1 communication pack lost; antenna positioner assembly destroyed (authorized improvisation, noted)]
[Extraction: alternate site]
[Survival: 5/5 students, 5/5 beasts]
[Judgment: HIGH]
[Adaptation: HIGH]
[Teamwork: HIGH]
[Leadership: HIGH — command transition, no formal challenge, assigned leader retained in support]
[Overall: PASS — Strong, with deductions]
The deductions were real. So were the four high marks and the leadership line that put Jin’s name beside all of them.
Marr caught him in the corridor afterward. That surprised Jin, because he had not been assigned to the assessment.
"Astor."
"Instructor."
"I read the file." Marr fell into step beside him. "You flagged the sensor call as low confidence on count and high confidence on presence?"
"Yes."
"Good." He stopped beside a window. "Your lizard is 4-Star."
"He is."
"How close to five?"
Jin considered the safest answer and settled on the truth. "Close."
Marr studied him for a moment. "You remember what I told you."
"If Glitch reaches 5-Star before the first-semester examination, you’ll recommend me for an early Third-Class review afterward."
"That’s the promise, and I’ll keep it." He folded his arms. "Understand what it means. I receive very few recommendation slots each cycle. One gets you a hearing, not a placement. Your complete record will still be judged: academics, beast care, contract stability, command, field discipline, mission results, and whether you can do this more than once."
"Understood."
"And Astor—5-Star on an Iron beast is not a formality. Many Iron beasts struggle to cross that threshold at all." His expression softened by a fraction. "Getting there before this semester’s examination would mean something."
"I know."
"Mm."
Marr walked away with the air of an instructor who had made a promise for motivation and had just realized he might need to spend one of his scarce recommendations honoring it.
Third Class was the first level Meridian treated as a serious professional pipeline. Classes One and Two produced the shelter’s elites, but Third Class trained the patrol leaders, response tamers, and small-unit specialists who kept sectors functioning and stood between ordinary residents and a breach. Its seats usually went to students with money and strong beasts, or scholarship students whose records overcame their backgrounds. Reaching it with an Iron first beast was almost unheard of.
Verrick had Flicker’s file open when Jin reached the neonatal unit that evening.
"She’s through it."
Jin stopped in the doorway.
"Her forty-eight-hour window ended at 05:00. Respiration has remained stable throughout, with no interference events and no interventions required." Verrick turned the display toward him. "She’s regulating her temperature better—not well, but better. Her vitality has crept up by about a point and a half, which is exactly what I wanted. Slow and boring."
"Slow and boring," Jin repeated.
"The best sentence in medicine." Verrick closed the file. "I’m discharging her. She goes home in a portable climate cradle, and you follow the instructions exactly. She isn’t out of the woods. She’s simply walking on a path instead of falling down a hill."
The instructions filled two pages: heat range, airflow rate, a three-hour feeding schedule, rest requirements, and warning signs. The final line read, Bring her back immediately. Do not assess it yourself.
Jin read every word.
"Anything else you want to ask?" Verrick said.
"About what?"
"The consent selections. Some owners reconsider once the animal is stable."
"No."
"I didn’t think so." Verrick handed him the cradle. "For the record, we honored them. No samples retained, no genetic analysis, and nothing shared for research. You can check the file. You should, because you’re the kind of person who will."
Jin checked it.
Verrick had honored every restriction.
Glitch had waited in the corridor because contracted beasts were not allowed inside the unit. He had waited badly, pacing the same eleven meters for forty minutes.
He stopped as soon as Jin emerged with the cradle.
Glitch crossed the corridor, pressed his snout to its transparent panel, and held there for six seconds. Inside, the tiny grey shape shifted toward him.
Flicker could not yet stand. Her legs folded beneath her at the same awkward angle, and her head rose perhaps a centimeter before sinking again. Her beak opened. A thin, reedy sound escaped, carried through the contract as a tired flicker of recognition.
Glitch’s entire body lowered by two inches.
Only then did Jin realize how tightly wound he had been. A wilderness sector, hours of Tremor Sense, real fighting, and a night on concrete had exhausted him, but none of those things had kept that tension locked through his shoulders.
He carried this the entire time.
"She’s fine," Jin said. "She got through it."
Glitch walked back to the dormitory directly beside the cradle, close enough that Jin had to adjust his grip twice.
Jin placed the cradle on the desk where the incubator had stood. He checked its readings against Verrick’s instructions three times and fed Flicker at 21:00 exactly.
She managed most of it.
Glitch settled in his old place at the desk’s corner, chin on his forelegs. Jin sat on the floor beside him with his back against the bed frame and opened the Engine once.
[Flicker — Recovery Trend: STABLE]
[Sync progress: accumulating]
He closed it without selecting Sync. Flicker had travelled in a vehicle, crossed a corridor, and entered a new room in a single day. She needed time to settle somewhere long enough for life to become boring again.
The climate cradle hummed softly and evenly while Glitch kept watch.