Chapter 229: What Glitch Can Share

He tested it in Wave Thirteen and it worked in a way that made him sit up.

A burrower came in under Flicker from behind and she moved before it surfaced.

Jin had not said anything. Glitch had felt it, and Flicker had known, and she had stepped four meters left about a second before the ground broke where she had been standing.

She’s not waiting for me anymore.

He tried to reproduce it deliberately in Wave Fourteen and found the limits fast. The link had a range — he estimated it at ten or eleven meters — and outside it she lost the ground entirely and immediately.

There was no gradual weakening at the edge. One step inside the range gave Flicker Glitch’s clean structural picture; one step beyond it left her with only sight, balance, and whatever direction she had already memorized. Jin marked that boundary as carefully as any wall.

Wave Sixteen tested that properly and Jin failed the test.

A fast surface pack dragged Flicker out past the range while a Ridgeback committed under Glitch, and Jin had about a second to choose between keeping the link and keeping her alive.

"Flicker, break north — go, don’t hold the range."

She went. The link dropped. Glitch handled the burrower alone and it cost him nine points, and Jin brought them back together forty seconds later on his own terms rather than the pack’s.

Safety first, then reconnect. The boon doesn’t get to decide where she stands.

They arrived at the gate in the best shape he had ever managed and it was still not good.

[Pre-checkpoint condition]

[Glitch — stamina 44% | contusion, left shoulder]

[Flicker — stamina 41% | minor abrasion]

[Active boons: Steady Footing | Tithe | Bulwark | Shared Tremor (linked range)]

[Predator’s Tempo — Stage 4 active]

Forty-four and forty-one, against thirty-six and thirty-three last time.

Jin spent the ninety-second interval assigning jobs rather than plans.

"Glitch. You hold the Raptor’s attention and you read the network. When it commits, you make it come low. You do not chase the Tortoise and you do not go for the anchors."

"Flicker. You’re on the ground the whole fight. You use his read to find the live anchor and you break them. You do not engage the Raptor, ever, for any reason."

He said the last part out loud twice, because the previous run had died with her turning after an anchor attempt.

Neither of them beats their opponent alone. That’s the design. The anchors come down and then we put them back together.

The gate opened.

The Tortoise came up out of the middle of the floor and the six pylons rose around it in the same rough ring, and the Raptor crossed overhead at a speed that four stages of Tempo had made genuinely alarming.

And this time, when the Tortoise put its head down and the network went live, Flicker’s whole posture changed.

She could see it.

The first anchor died in ninety seconds and it proved the theory.

Glitch read the live connection the instant the network powered up, and Flicker — six meters from him, inside the leash — turned toward the pylon on the eastern arc without a single word from Jin.

She reached it while the Raptor was still completing its first circuit. She broke the external structure and kept going, and the flare went out.

[Anchor structure destroyed — 1 of 6]

The next strike Glitch landed on a descending wing did not disperse.

The Raptor’s indicator dropped and stayed down.

Confirmed. It’s the network.

Then the Tortoise rerouted and everything got harder.

The second anchor cost him the link and he chose to spend it.

The live connection moved to the far side of the arena, thirty meters out, and there was no version of that where Flicker stayed inside eleven meters of Glitch.

"Go. You’ll lose the read at about ten meters — take the bearing now and run it blind."

She took the bearing and ran it blind, and Jin watched her cross thirty meters of arena with the borrowed map fading behind her, working from a direction she had memorized four seconds ago.

The Tortoise attacked her on the way — a ridge of stone driving up under her line — and she was expecting ground attacks and got over it.

She broke the second anchor at forty seconds.

[Anchor structure destroyed — 2 of 6]

And that was when the bosses started reacting to her instead of to Glitch.

The Raptor stopped diving at the center. It began working the outer arc, targeting Flicker’s transitions, because she was the thing dismantling the system, and the Tortoise raised barriers across the paths between pylons so that every approach became a detour.

"Glitch — go to her. Restore the range."

He went, and the Raptor came down on him instead, which was the trade.

The third anchor nearly ended the run.

Jin called it correctly. Glitch had the read, Flicker was inside the leash, and the live connection was on a pylon fourteen meters north with a clean approach.

She started her run and the Raptor closed the distance faster than Jin had budgeted for, because Stage 4 Tempo did not care about his estimates, and the opening he had allotted her — about three seconds — turned out to be about one and a half.

Glitch got underneath it.

He crossed nine meters and put himself in the descent path with Harden up and took the whole of the dive, and it drove him into the arena floor.

[Glitch — stamina 21%]

Flicker broke the third anchor while he was getting up.

[Anchor structure destroyed — 3 of 6]

"Back to him," said Jin. "Now. Both of you, together, I don’t care about the fourth one yet."

They reconnected at the center and Bulwark came up and the fight paused for about eight seconds while the Tortoise shifted its configuration and the Raptor climbed.

Jin used that brief pause to think.

Three down and it’s still shielding. The network has enough live paths, but it can only reroute through something that’s intact.

The fourth anchor took both of them, and it was the cleanest sequence Jin had commanded inside the Event.

He did not send Flicker to it. He sent Glitch first — not to the anchor, but to a position between the anchor and the Raptor’s approach line, close enough to keep the link alive.

"Read it and hold there. Don’t move for anything."

Then he waited.

The Tortoise put the live connection into the pylon on the southern arc, because with three destroyed it had fewer choices and Jin had positioned Glitch to make one of them look safe.

Flicker saw it flare inside her borrowed perception and went.

The Raptor came for her, exactly as it had for the last four minutes, and this time Glitch was already standing under the line.

He took it on his shoulder and turned into it, and the Raptor’s dive broke on him and it had to level out low and slow and close.

Flicker broke the fourth anchor.

[Anchor structure destroyed — 4 of 6]

[Network integrity: critical]

The shield failed.

It was legible — the humming stopped, the two surviving pylons went dark, and when Glitch put a strike into the Raptor’s wing as it labored past him, the entire hit landed and none of it went anywhere.

The Tortoise pulled its head in.