Chapter 13
Thirteen
Kira
The sound of retching greeted Kira on the other side. She glanced to her right to find Jin bent over a fallen tree, Dylan rubbing his back soothingly.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, walking over to him.
His face was nearly green as he wiped his mouth and looked up. “I feel like my innards were just yanked out through my eyeballs.”
“Descriptive.”
“It’s the Mea’Ave,” Dylan explained as the gate closed. The energy powering it snapped off like someone had flicked a switch. “He must be sensitive.”
Call her crazy—but it kind of felt like she and Jin had traded places for a moment. She’d always been the one most affected by the Mea’Ave.
Though she tended to pass out rather than throw up.
“What’s the matter, Tin Can?” Raider asked, coming up to them. “Your body not obeying your brain?”
Jin slumped against the trunk. “How do people live like this?”
“I’m going to have so much fun with this,” Raider gloated.
“You’re an asshole.”
“Yup,” Raider agreed. “Every snide comment you’ve made about meat sacks. Every joke. Every insult. Prepare to have them revisited twice over.”
“Kira—stop him!” Jin demanded.
Nope.
Not a chance.
He deserved every bit of what Raider was about to heap on him.
To avoid responding, Kira looked around, Raider and Jin quickly forgotten as she got drawn into the scenery of an entirely different world than the one she’d been standing on seconds before.
As she’d suspected, they’d come out at the bottom of a large, rocky ravine.
The stairs she’d seen were more numerous than she’d originally thought.
Many of them led nowhere, stopping in midair or on top of platforms that served no purpose that she could see.
They were covered in moss and lichen. There was also a tang in the air that Kira couldn’t quite place.
Bez was conversing with a woman on a set of stairs part way up the hill. His face serious as he listened to whatever she was relaying.
Like Bez, she wasn’t wearing synth armor. Her outfit was a combination of browns and greens. Colors that wouldn’t make her stand out among the trees of the forest. Her hair was dark and pulled back from her face in a messy bun.
Maksym waved madly up at the woman, not bothering to keep his voice down since the steep hills of the ravine made it unlikely that sound would escape. “Az! Over here!”
The woman looked down at them with an expressionless face.
Maksym lowered his arm. “Thought that was you. How are you getting along?”
The woman said something in a low voice to Bez before heading up to the ridge line.
“Friendly bunch,” Kira remarked.
Movement among the trees at the top of the ravine showed that they weren’t alone. There were others up there. Tuann, Kira realized a second later as they exposed themselves to address Az.
One of them glanced into the ravine before repositioning themselves in the shadow of the nearest tree.
An overwatch.
At a second’s notice, they could turn the ravine into a kill box. Kira and the rest would incur heavy losses trying to escape.
Raider shot her a disgruntled look as he came to the same conclusion.
She offered him a helpless shrug. It was a good tactical move. One they themselves would have made in the same position.
“If you’re done lollygagging, can we get a move on? Caius doesn’t have forever,” Bez called.
“Sheesh, so grouchy,” Jin grumbled.
“Someone he cares about is missing. You’d be grouchy too,” Finn pointed out.
“I guess you’d know from experience,” Roderick quipped.
Everyone stopped and stared.
“Wow, you’ve got a big mouth,” Jin drawled, sounding impressed.
Maksym trained his gaze on the treetops, seeming like he was fighting against a smile.
Raider’s “what the fuck” look had Roderick gazing back in pure bafflement. As if he didn’t know what he’d done wrong.
“You’re correct,” Finn confirmed. “I do know that from experience.”
“I’ve already apologized,” Kira responded stiffly.
Many times.
When was he going to drop it?
“Have you? I don’t remember that.” Finn’s smile was savage. “Maybe the next time there’s a situation and you refrain from going off on your own, I’ll finally be able to accept that apology.”
Kira let out a soft tsk, knowing this wasn’t an argument she could win. “We should get going. Bez doesn’t seem like the patient sort.” Kira snagged Jin by the back of his shirt and pushed him in front of her. “Let’s have that chat we didn’t get to have before.”
Jin was looking a lot better as they began to make their way up the hill to the first set of stairs. It petered out into plain dirt a quarter of the way up. Long dead leaves crunched underfoot as they were forced to pick their way along the slippery slope to the next flight of stairs.
“What chat?” Jin wiggled in her grip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The one where you explain how you’re able to still control your mini-mes.”
Kira thumped her hand on the back of his pack. Encountering something hard, she squeezed it in several places.
Just as she thought. It was stuffed full with objects that could only be his spawn.
Jin shoved her hand away. “Hey, now. Stop that. They’re fragile.”
“Stop procrastinating. Spill. How long?”
“Since I woke up.”
“You control them with your consciousness?” Kira probed.
Jin’s nod held a trace of uncertainty that told her he wasn’t entirely sure how he was doing it. Just that he could—and did.
“Is it the same as when you were the drone?”
Jin shook his head, looking like he was thinking. “It’s different. Harder. I could split my attention dozens of times as the drone. Now, my max is three or four. You’ve seen what happens when I attempt more than that.”
“Is there anything else you’re not telling me?” Kira asked.
She saw from his hesitation that there was.
“I’m not ready to talk about it yet,” he mumbled.
“As long as you know I’ll be here when you are ready.”
Kira had figured there were a few things he was keeping to himself. She and Jin didn’t have a lot of secrets from each other, but there were some. They usually came out in the wash, but not always. Occasionally, they had to be dragged out kicking and screaming.
Jin had gone through a lot of changes lately. A few of them monumental. World upending, honestly. He needed space to properly process everything. As long as he didn’t let those secrets claw him up inside, she was happy to give it to him.
Honestly, drawing boundaries was probably the healthiest thing he could have done.
“Tell me more about this deal you struck with Torvald,” Kira ordered.
Jin groaned. “I don’t want to talk about that either.”
“Too bad. Your deal affects both of us.”
This wasn’t like whatever he was holding back. Wherever Kira went, Jin would follow. That meant Dylan would also be tagging along. It’d be like having another oshota. Only one she had no control over.
She wasn’t certain Jin did either.
“He made certain stipulations in return for not standing in my way,” Jin admitted grudgingly. “Dylan’s company being the first.”
“I heard about that one already. What else?”
“He wants to train me,” Jin mumbled.
Kira looked at him in surprise. “That may not be the worst thing.”
Torvald was the most powerful Tuann Kira had encountered. His insight could provide untold value. Especially now when Jin could use every advantage he could get.
She didn’t think that’s what was causing Jin’s pensive expression though.
“You’re leaving something out,” Kira guessed.
Jin’s shoulders slumped further. “That’s part of the thing I don’t want to discuss.”
“Ah. Gotcha.”
It was three steps before Jin caved. “He said I’m not allowed to make any more spawn without his permission.”
Kira sent the back of his head a sharp glance.
She found it interesting that Torvald hadn’t outright forbidden Jin from creating his mini-mes. Rather, he’d said he couldn’t do it without permission.
That was an important distinction.
He knew something about the spawn that they didn’t. Something important. Until now, part of her had suspected they were a product of Jin’s soul being trapped in the drone. Torvald’s request, on the other hand, had her reconsidering that assumption.
This might be something to do with the abilities of his family line.
Due to Jarek’s search through her memories during Jin’s trial, they now knew not all of her abilities originated with her. Some of them should have been Jin’s.
The burst was one such example.
There was another though. An ability Kira rarely used because of how unruly and difficult to wield it was. She’d only accessed it a handful of times. One such occasion was to save Wren’s life.
This was all speculation, of course.
But she’d be blind if she didn’t see the similarities in Jin’s ability to fuse a proximity of life into his creations and her ability to remove the essence of an item and use it to fuel the life of someone else.
One skill. Two applications.
All too quickly, Jin grew out of breath and was unable to continue their conversation. Struggling up the last third of the hill, he collapsed against the nearest tree as soon as he reached the top. “I feel like I’m dying. Why do people do this to themselves?”
“Come on, slow poke.” Raider strolled past Jin. “No resting on your laurels just because you’re no longer immune to gravity.”
Jin summoned the strength to glare.
Raider responded by snapping his fingers at him like he was a dog.
“I’m going to murder you one of these days, meat sack,” Jin promised.
Raider’s antics did the trick though and got Jin back on his feet. He staggered after the human, promising increasingly imaginative retribution.
“Your companions are a lot more interesting than I remember,” Roderick remarked, ghosting up beside Kira.
“You mean you didn’t notice their sparkling personalities while placing them under house arrest?” Kira asked as they walked toward where Az and Bez were waiting.
Roderick’s cheeks developed a slight flush of embarrassment. “I feel I should apologize for that.”