The first sound Aya Brea heard was not her own breathing, nor the pulse of her heart.
It was the world screaming.
A chorus of sirens—police, fire, ambulances, all shrieking in dissonance—bled through the cracked windows of the chamber where she woke. Beneath them came the deeper groan of the city itself: steel torn open, concrete collapsing, voices swallowed in the static of panic.
She sat up suddenly, drenched in cold sweat. The sheets tangled at her legs as though they meant to bind her here, to keep her chained in this sterile room of glass and machinery. Monitors glowed to life the moment she stirred, casting her face in a green haze.
The face staring back at her from the reflection was pale, too pale. Blonde hair clung damp against her temples. Her eyes—blue, haunted—gave nothing back.
Who am I?
The thought was not idle. It was raw panic. No answers came. Only a rush of half-memories: a white dress under stained light, fingers trembling on a trigger, a name whispered—Eve—and then everything shattered beyond repair.
The door hissed open.
"Aya. Can you hear me?"
The man who entered wore a dark coat lined with military trim. His presence filled the room effortlessly, too calm for a man in the middle of catastrophe. Sharp features caught the light like a blade. His gaze studied her as though she were an artifact.
Hyde Bohr, though she didn't yet know the name.
"You're awake." His voice was low, practiced. "Good. We don't have much time."
Aya tried to speak. The first words scraped like glass in her throat. "Where… am I?"
"You're in CTI headquarters. Counter Twisted Investigation." He spoke the acronym as though she should recognize it. Then, as if sensing the void in her eyes, he added, "It's 2012. The Twisted are consuming the city. Manhattan is nearly lost."
He reached forward, and she flinched before realizing he was only slipping a thin bracelet around her wrist. It pulsed faintly, syncing to the beat of her heart.
"You're special, Aya. Our weapon," Hyde said. "We'll explain more later, but right now we need you in the field. They're breaching Grand Central. If the Babel finishes rooting there, we lose the entire east coast."
Aya stared at him, choking on the words. "Weapon? I don't even know who I am."
"Then trust that I do," he replied smoothly. "We'll place you where you're needed. Just… fall."
Before she could question him again, the walls behind him trembled. Distant explosions rattled the windows. A soft chime rippled through the chamber, and at the center, a machine unfolded like a steel lotus—cables, arcs of blue light, and a chair that looked more like an execution seat.
Hyde gestured toward it. "Overdive. The key to our survival. Sit."
Every nerve in Aya screamed at her to run. But outside the windows, the night sky split open. Towering above the skyline was something that defied description—an organic spiral twisting into the heavens, its surface alive and writhing. It pulsed with a slow, terrible rhythm, as though it were breathing with the city's carcass. And from its base poured shapes—pale bodies, long limbs, jaws too wide for any human mouth. They scuttled and crawled like nightmares torn into flesh.
The Twisted.
Aya stumbled back, clutching her head as a piercing noise stabbed her skull. For an instant she saw herself—not in this chamber, but down there on the streets, trapped in a soldier's body, rifle shaking in her borrowed hands. She smelled burned asphalt. She felt the weight of armor that wasn't hers. Then it was gone.
Her chest heaved. "What was that—?"
"The link," Hyde said softly, watching with clinical fascination. "You've already felt it. That's Overdive. You can leap into another's mind, inhabit their body, fight through them. No one else can do this. We don't have the luxury of asking how—you simply can."
Another explosion shook the building.
Hyde stepped closer, lowering his voice as if coaxing a frightened animal. "Aya, you want answers. I promise you'll find them. But right now, people are dying. If you don't dive, Manhattan falls. And if Manhattan falls, humanity won't last."
Her pulse thundered in her ears. The white dress in her memories flashed—bloodied lace, a gunshot echo, Eve's scream. A fragment of her past that demanded she stand.
Aya nodded weakly.
Hyde's lips curved in faint satisfaction. "Good girl."
They guided her into the machine. Straps coiled around her wrists. The hum of power rose, filling the air with static, until sparks licked the edges of her vision. Hyde's voice called out, distant yet clear.
"Focus on the soldier near Grand Central. Trust the link. Let yourself fall."
The world fractured.
She gasped, and it was not her body that filled with air. Heavy fabric pressed against her shoulders, the grip of an assault rifle slick in sweating hands. Her gaze snapped upward to the streets of Manhattan—cars overturned, fires chewing their way through crumbling buildings. Above, the Babel loomed, a living wound in the sky.
Screams closed in from every corner. A shadow lunged from the wreckage—pale flesh, elongated limbs, teeth spilling in impossible angles. The Twisted.
Aya's borrowed body convulsed with terror, but her mind locked into place. The rifle came up. Her finger found the trigger.
The first shot cracked through the air.
And Aya Brea, weapon of humanity, stepped back into the world.