Hal v. Stice, continued: the player they spent years building
Incandenza took a lot of bringing along. He didn’t used to quite have the complete game to be able to do this. [...] The kid doesn’t need pace, we’ve helped him find.
Context
The chess-on-the-run game isn't a gift; it's a manufacture. "Incandenza took a lot of bringing along" — he "didn't used to quite have the complete game," and the institution built the missing pieces, teaching him that "the kid doesn't need pace." The staff speak of Hal in the first-person plural of construction ("we've helped him find"): the player is the academy's project, assembled over years into something that can now torture.