The city outside CTI had become a wound. Buildings sagged like broken bones, windows bleeding smoke, asphalt buckled where the Babel's crimson growth had split through. Aya rode in the back of the armored transport, hands clenched on her knees. The limiter hummed inside her skull like a captive storm waiting to break loose.
Gabrielle sat opposite her, helmet on her lap. Eyes steady, jaw tight. Every bump along the ruined road jolted Aya's body, but Gabrielle's presence steadied her fraying edge.
Hyde's voice crackled over the comm system built into the transport. "Phase three begins at target zone. Multiple Overdives, live host only. CTI units provide containment perimeter. Objective: total eradication."
Aya flinched. "Hosts… live?"
Hyde's reply came flat. "Civilian evacuation is incomplete. Diver adaptation requires stress realism. Survivors are collateral variables."
Gabrielle tore the headset off, cursing. "Collateral, my ass. If he's using civilians as your hosts…" She stopped, eyes burning across the transport until Aya met them.
Aya's chest constricted. "What if I hurt them?"
Gabrielle reached out, pressing Aya's shaking hand hard into her own. "Then you fight Hyde's leash. As hard as you can."
Aya swallowed, wishing strength could transfer by touch.
---
### Arrival
The transport dropped them in the north grid, what used to be a marketplace. Stalls lay overturned, fruit rotting black in pools of red sludge threaded with the Babel's growth. Twisted shrieked between the ruins—shapes crawling on too many limbs, eyes blinking where no faces should be.
CTI squads fanned out, rifles ready. Civilians huddled near shattered walls, clinging to scraps of hope. One boy stared straight at Aya as if he'd seen this nightmare before.
Hyde's voice commanded through her earpiece: *Prepare for first chain. Synchronization commencing.*
Aya felt the limiter burn across her nerves, iron tight. She gasped as gravity fell away.
---
### First Body
Her spirit slammed into a soldier crouched behind rubble. His heartbeat thundered into her own, his desperation seared clear: *Please, not again, I can't—*
Aya's hands—his hands—moved without choice, raising the rifle. Beasts fell in efficient lines, each motion sharpened by Hyde's control.
Civilians gasped behind the barricade, watching their rescuer's body jerk too fast, too perfect. Aya wanted to cry out *I'm sorry, it's not me,* but the limiter kept her lips frozen.
*Transition. Second host.*
---
### Second Body
Another wrench, another heartbeat. A young woman this time, armor still too big on her slight frame. Aya staggered in, memories bleeding: her first deployment, her mother's last hug before conscription. Aya reeled, nearly losing grip—but the limiter corrected sharp, electricity razoring her brain until her arms snapped true.
"I'm still here," Aya whispered inside her head, clinging to Gabrielle's voice, wherever she was on the battlefield.
Gabrielle's voice came faint across comms: "Aya—hold to me. Don't drown in him. Do you hear me?"
Aya's throat ached with unshed screams.
---
### Civilians Entwined
Then it came—the shift Aya had dreaded. Hyde pushed her out, hard, into a host that wasn't a soldier.
She landed in a civilian man, clutching a metal pipe as makeshift weapon. His terror flooded her instantly: *My daughter's out there—please God, don't let me leave her—*
Aya sobbed aloud. "No, Hyde, not him. Please—"
*Continue sequence,* Hyde ordered, cold.
Aya tried to resist, burning every nerve against the cord of his command. Static screamed in her skull. The limiter crackled, forcing her grip around the pipe, forcing her body to charge at a Twisted far stronger than the fragile flesh could endure.
The beast's claw slashed. Pain tore both Aya and host—and in the flash of agony Aya saw the girl, the daughter, wide‑eyed at the alley's edge watching her father collapse.
Aya ripped herself out mid‑scream.
---
### Third Body (Aya's Choice)
She threw herself not where Hyde ordered, but toward a dying soldier on the line. Fire engulfed her veins as the limiter punished the deviation, but Aya shoved deeper—this was her choice, not Hyde's.
Through blurred vision she fired clumsily, heart hammering. Inefficient. Dangerous. But hers.
Hyde's voice thundered: *Correction override! Subject deviating beyond tolerance!*
Gabrielle's shouted retaliation cut across comms: "Shut your mouth, Hyde! She chooses or she dies!"
Aya dropped another Twisted with erratic bursts, forcing herself forward, every breath proof against Hyde's command.
But her body convulsed as the limiter tightened, dragging her to the brink of seizure.
---
### The Anchor
Somewhere through the static, a figure broke through the smoke—Gabrielle, charging across the killing ground, gun blazing.
She planted herself in view of Aya's host, voice booming over the comms but also carried raw through the chaos:
"Aya! Forget Hyde! Look at me! You're still Aya Brea—you're *mine*, not his!"
Aya's trembling hands froze mid‑aim. Through the host's eyes she saw Gabrielle standing unshaken, fire in every line of her stance. Something shattered inside—the limiter's hum faltered one note.
Aya seized it.
With a scream she dragged herself out of Hyde's orbit for a heartbeat, lunging into another soldier by instinct rather than order. Bullets spat wild, cutting down beasts before they reached the civilians fleeing into evac trucks.
Her chest burned, vision tearing apart—but that one heartbeat was hers.
---
### Collapse
When the last Twisted fell, Aya collapsed back into her own body, heaving. Blood slicked her nostrils, her mouth, dripping down her chin. Every muscle trembled as if her skeleton might give way.
Hyde's verdict came through calm as ice. "Outcome: uncontrolled divergence. Efficiency sub‑optimized. Data retained for revision."
Gabrielle stormed across the rubble and slammed her fist into his chest rig before medics pulled her back. "You call that divergence? She *saved them*—your civilians are alive because she defied you!"
Hyde didn't flinch. "Collateral acceptable. Diver must learn obedience."
Aya weakly reached from the stretcher, voice shredded. "Gabi… don't."
But inside her own hollow shell, Aya felt it—that crack again, wider than before. Hyde's leash wasn't unbreakable. Each time she disobeyed, the control slipped, even for seconds.
And if seconds could save one girl watching her father collapse—maybe they could save Aya too.
---