Then some force threw Kira out of Jin’s head.She crashed back into her own body.Still in the process of lunging forward.
Time slowed, moving like honey.
“Jin!”Kira screamed.
She felt a surge from Jin.A tug went down their bond.There was a sucking sensation as her reserve ofkiabruptly spilled into him.Kira did nothing to resist the pull, letting him take as much as he wanted.
Suddenly, the air was filled with his mini-mes.Dozens of figures in all shapes and sizes.All orbiting in a protective halo around Jin.
They blocked the blow meant for him.
Caius’s brow furrowed in confusion.His hesitation made him slow and unable to defend as half of the mini-mes around Jin broke off to dart at his face.They sliced his skin to ribbons.Blood poured down his forehead, cheeks and chin to splash against the cobalt blue of his armor.
Then Kira was there.
She snagged Jin by the waist and threw them both backwards, turning in midair to protect Jin from the assailant.Even as, in the next second, Finn and Raider barreled into Caius from the side.
Kira and Jin hit the ground.
Finn and Raider shifted between her and Jin and Caius.Immovable walls as Kira dragged Jin to safety.
Isla appeared behind Caius a second later, her expression murderous as she lifted her sword.Caius’s head went flying.His body toppled.
“Holy shit.”Raider stared down at the former commander of House Roake with wild eyes.“I mean what the actual fuck?”
“Where have you been?”Sariah demanded with an accusing frown at Isla.“How did you let them get so close?”
Good question.Kira was interested in the answer herself.
Isla looked a little angry as she glanced down at Kira.“I think I know why those oshota you encountered were so combative.”
Kira followed her glance through the doorway to where Isla’s partner was in the process of wiping his en-blade free of blood, several bodies—three of them, in fact—at his feet.
“They’re impersonators.Their armor is fake,” Isla declared, her jaw flexing.
Not having time to process that statement, Kira rolled off a far too still Jin.She tugged him onto his back and started patting his face.“Jin?Wake up, Jin!”
When he failed to answer, her pats got harder and harder.
Jin started convulsing.
Forgetting about Isla, Caius and the emperor’s oshota, Kira flipped him onto his side and cushioned his head.
“What’s wrong with him?”Raider asked, crouching next to them.
Kira fought to keep her voice even as she tried to keep Jin from hurting himself.“He’s having a seizure.”
“Can you stop it?”
“If I could stop it, don’t you think I would have already tried?”Kira snarled in a momentary loss of control.
“You’re right.I’m sorry.”
Kira forced herself to swallow her anger, knowing that Raider wasn’t really the person she was mad at.That would be herself.This was her fault.No one else’s.When the oshota they encountered tried to stop them, she should have said to hell with the emperor’s rules and insisted they continue the hunt.Not led that person directly back to Jin.
Stupid, Kira.She’d known something was wrong and ignored it.
How could she judge the Tuann for their arrogance and then be guilty of the very same mistake?
