Great — here's **Chapter 3** of the novelized adaptation (approx. 1,000–1,200 words). This chapter digs into Aya's first **encounter with the Babel structure*
The street was no longer a street.
Where Broadway should have been, the earth had ruptured into a wound. Asphalt twisted upward like torn skin, girders bent into grotesque ribs. From this corruption rose the **Babel**—a tower as tall as a cathedral, but alive.
Veins pulsed across its surface. Muscle rippled like the breath of some vast animal. The air reeked of copper and rot. At its crown, tendrils gathered into a spiral that clawed toward the heavens, vomiting a faint green light into the night sky.
Aya staggered beneath it, clutching the rifle of the man whose body she still wore. The others—soldiers, maybe a dozen of them—shifted nervously in a loose perimeter. No training manual prepared anyone for this. Guns seemed pitifully small compared to the thing.
"It's growing," one soldier muttered. "I swear it's bigger than an hour ago…"
Aya's pulse raced. She could feel **his** fear—Sergeant Lewis—flooding her veins like her own. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting to separate herself from the man she'd stolen.
*I shouldn't be here. This isn't mine.*
> "Aya."
Hyde's voice slid into her skull again, cold and commanding.
> "The Babel is the source. The Twisted feed from it. Destroy the heart, and the structure collapses."
Aya swallowed. Her throat burned in Lewis's body. "How?"
> "Find a way in. Your Overdive will carry you further once you breach its defenses."
She turned toward the monstrous tower, bile rising in her throat. Enter it? The thing looked like it was *breathing.*
A sudden screech tore the air. Shapes burst from the tower's side—smaller, leaner Twisted, like carrion birds swarming from a corpse. They fell on the soldiers with shrieks of hunger.
Gunfire lit the night.
Lewis's body responded before Aya could think—firing tight bursts, keeping the creatures at bay. One dove too close; Lewis rammed his rifle butt into its chest, bones cracking under the force.
But another twisted horror dropped behind a young private. Aya's breath caught; before she could shout, the creature struck, cleaving the man open. His scream cut through everything—and in that moment Aya felt it, sharp and invasive, as though the boy's last thought punched straight through her own mind.
Then silence.
The private's body collapsed in the gutter.
Aya froze, horror clawing her throat. She had felt his death—not physically, but intimately, a spark extinguished inside her skull.
"God…" she whispered.
Another Twisted lunged. Reflex seized her—Aya hurled herself into the dying boy's collapsing mind. The world bent, threads of consciousness tearing. The next instant she was inside him—no wound, no blood, body restored to combat, rifle raised.
But she was the only one who returned. His true self—the boy with a name, a family, a history—was gone. Obliterated.
Aya fired blindly, tears stinging her borrowed eyes.
*I brought him back only for me to use. He's gone, and I… I'm still here.*
> "Excellent," Hyde's voice murmured, clinical as ever. "Your adaptation rate improves. Death is irrelevant to you now. Make every soldier a vessel."
"No," Aya choked. "They're people!"
> "They're casualties already. You're the weapon, Aya. They're the shells."
A roar split the night. One of the giant creatures—taller than the trucks it crushed underfoot—lurched straight out of the Babel's gut. Tendrils whipped from its spine, wrapping around a fleeing soldier and dragging him screaming into the tower's open wound.
The Babel accepted him as if it had been hungry. Muscles clenched, swallowing him whole.
Aya's knees buckled. Her mind flashed with images—*hers,* but fractured: a wedding dress torn by blood, a scream that could have been hers or Eve's, hands reaching as someone was pulled away.
No—focus.
The moment she blinked, the Twisted giant was already charging her.
Aya dove instinctively, switching vessels midair—leaving the private's body in the beast's path as she catapulted into another soldier across the field. The transfer snapped her vision sideways; she landed in new skin just as the monster's claw obliterated the boy she'd left behind.
One heartbeat alive. The next, a corpse.
Aya's new body wrenched its rifle skyward. Fury carved into her. She squeezed the trigger until the gun sang dry.
The Twisted reeled. Black ichor sprayed over her boots.
The others followed suit—rockets, grenades, magazines of rounds emptying into the beast. Its flesh trembled, tearing at last. With a final shriek, it crumpled into dust.
Silence fell. Broken only by the tower's steady, endless heartbeat.
Aya's breath rattled. Her stolen body shook, her arms numb from firing. She felt everything too deeply—fear, fury, despair—all blended from herself and the soldiers whose bodies she wore.
Then she saw the boy again—the one she'd Overdived. His corpse still sprawled in the gutter, face turned to the stars.
Not revived. Not saved. *Just borrowed.*
Aya looked to the living tower. Its spiral pulsed brighter, as though mocking her.
How many more would die for her to claw her way inside?
For the first time that night, Aya understood the weight of Hyde's words: **she was not saving them. She was consuming them.**