Kira dropped her gaze to study her friend’s still expression.“Just how long have you been able to do this?”
If he’d bothered consulting her, she would have warned him of the dangers that came with sharing or splitting his mind.The loss of self was disorienting, requiring practice and a fine-tuned control.
Jin had neither.Especially when afraid and in danger.
Gods, she hoped he hadn’t given himself permanent brain damage.
Forcing her concern away, Kira closed her eyes, concentrating on that spot in the back of her mind where the piece that she associated with Jin resided.
A massive electrical storm, its violence and breadth giving her pause, roiled where he should have been.
You idiot, Jin.
Kira plunged herself into that storm.Electricity bowed her spine.
Every muscle in her body clenched.Her bones threatened to break under the force.Her jaw clamped shut, her molars groaning with how hard she was biting down.A high pitched, pained sound whistled between her teeth as Kira struggled to navigate the dozens of branches her mind tried to travel down.
Vaguely, she caught Raider’s angry rumble and Finn’s concern.
It was disorienting trying to follow the paths that Jin had taken.
Pure, unrelenting madness.So many things competed for dominance.The sheer influx of information and stimuli causing microscopic brain bleeds.
If not for Kira’s familiarity with mind melding with Jin’s drone self, she would have been lost right then and there.
As it was, she could only just cope while sharing some of the stress Jin’s mind was under.
Her body started to shake and tremble.Colored lights fired across her vision.A part of her suddenly ended up in something else.Many something else’s.The mini-mes.Kira got several bird-eye and worm-eye views of her body slumped over Jin’s.A seizure jerking the limbs of both of them.
Raider grabbed her, lowering her onto her back.He held her head steady as Dylan did the same for Jin.
“What is wrong with her?”Raider asked.
His voice came at Kira from a dozen different directions.
“She’s sharing his burden,” Amaris explained.
Raider’s face held frustration and exasperation as he looked up at Jin’s maybe mom.“Lady, tell me something that’s actually useful.”
The oshota next to her frowned.
Amaris waved him away as she focused on Raider.“You are worried.”
“Ya think?”
Kira would have winced at Raider’s tone if she’d still been in her body and not spread out over dozens of machines.
“You needn’t be.They will both be okay,” Amaris said with a certainty that was strange.
Kira didn’t have time to delve into why that was as she turned her attention back to the task at hand.She gathered the pieces of Jin that he’d scattered across his mini-mes, dragging them along their shared connection before stuffing them all back into the body that acted as his current container and anchoring them in place.
In the process, she thought she understood what had gone wrong.
With how new Jin’s connection to his body was, he hadn’t had time to fully settle into his flesh.That was why his soul had gotten so easily lost.It had come loose from its mooring.
This would happen again.And keep happening until Jin found a way to bond with his body.To fully accept and embrace what he now was all the way down to his soul.
Sensation flooded Kira as she slammed back into her body.Exhaustion pulled at her.It felt as if she’d run ten miles and then lifted three times her body weight.
