The battlefield smoldered in uneasy quiet. Smoke coiled from burning wreckage, shadows twitching in the green light that spilled from the Babel. The tower loomed as though it had fed well, its veins pulsing with grotesque satisfaction.
Aya stared at it, her breaths jagged in the soldier's chest she wore. That boy's body—his—still lay sprawled in the gutter, emptied of a soul that she had used up. The guilt clung to her like shrapnel.
> "Aya."
Hyde's voice whispered cold through her skull.
> "Don't stop. The opening is exposed. Now is the time. Enter the Babel. Destroy the heart."
Her borrowed lips trembled. "You knew. You knew what it would cost me."
> "Cost? No, Aya. You've been given purpose. Death is a statistic. Survival is the mission."
She almost tore off the earpiece that wasn't even there—it was in her head, always in her head—but another shriek rose from the tower. The narrow breach gaped like a mouth in the creature's folds of flesh.
Aya tightened her grip on her rifle. Forward, or everyone's screams would mean nothing.
She stepped toward the Babel.
Every pace closer made her stomach knot. The tower stank worse here—like rotting meat left beneath a summer sun. The air vibrated, humming as if alive with a pulse that wasn't hers.
At ten feet away, the tower *responded.*
A tendril uncoiled from the breach, quivering wetly against the cracked street. Its tip opened, tasting the air with a cluster of twitching cilia. Aya raised the rifle.
It lunged.
She fired at point‑blank, hot brass shells cutting the tendril in halves. The pieces writhed like severed snakes before dissolving into oily mist. The opening widened, flexing as though to swallow her.
Aya swallowed her fear. "Here goes nothing."
She crossed the threshold.
---
Inside, the world defied sense.
The Babel's interior wasn't a building, wasn't a nest. It was a **wound turned inward.**
Walls of slick tissue folded endlessly, each muscle ripple flowing like breath. Veins glowed faintly beneath translucent membranes, casting crimson light against her armor. Somewhere deeper, a heartbeat thundered, multiplied a thousandfold.
Aya gagged, one hand braced against the wall. It was warm. It *shifted* under her palm like living skin.
"This can't be real…" she whispered.
But it *was.* Every step dragged her boots through strands of congealed fluid, sticky as resin. Her rifle's flashlight cut through the dim, revealing shapes embedded in the walls—half‑digested corpses of cars, street signs, and worse. Human faces frozen in silent screams, their forms melted into the tissue.
Aya staggered back, bile rising in her throat. Not all of them looked dead. Some eyes still moved, pupils twitching at her as though begging.
"God help me…"
> "Move, Aya."
Hyde again, sharp, impatient.
> "The heart must be destroyed, no matter what grotesqueries lie in your way."
"Grotesqueries?" The word fractured into a sob. "They're people!"
> "They're remnants. Do not falter."
A screech echoed through the interior. Shadows stretched across the walls as more Twisted slithered into the corridor ahead.
Aya steadied her rifle, though her hands shook. She couldn't tell anymore where her fear ended and the soldier's instincts began. Was she truly Aya? Or just a parasite steering meat through a nightmare?
The first Twisted charged.
Aya pulled the trigger.
The recoil slammed through her arms. The creature disintegrated in a spatter of black. Another came, then another. She poured fire into the red‑lit corridor, choking back tears.
When the last shriek died, she was gasping, rifle nearly empty. But the heartbeat deeper in the tower still thundered, patient and eternal.
Aya wiped blood—her host's or her enemy's, she couldn't tell—from her cheek. Then, teeth clenched, she pushed deeper into the Babel.
If the truth lay at its heart, she had to face it. Even if it killed her.