Aya's finger hovered on the trigger.
Every nerve inside her screamed. Every beat of her heart mirrored the Babel's monstrous rhythm. The silhouette inside the core beckoned closer with every pulse, frail arms stretching as though yearning to be held.
*Eve.*
Her breath tore out of her chest like a sob.
Do it, Hyde urged coldly in her ear. *End the illusion. Pull the trigger.*
But Gabrielle's voice cut rough over the comms, desperate now: *"Aya, wait—don't move. Think before you—"*
Aya trembled so violently she thought the rifle would rattle out of her hands. The muzzle dipped, then rose. Her finger pressed tighter—one pound of pressure away from damnation.
And then the tower screamed.
Not in words. Not in sound. The **Babel itself convulsed.**
The walls split open in ragged lacerations. Veins snapped and sprayed black ichor in fountains. The heart contracted with such force the air imploded, sucking Aya forward onto her knees. She clawed at the floor, hands skidding against slick membrane, the rifle nearly yanked from her grasp.
Her breath strangled. The chamber seemed determined to swallow her whole.
The cords tethering the heart shuddered, tearing free. The entire sphere lurched downward like an anchor breaking its chain. From the ruptured walls, tendrils erupted—veined and slick, each tipped with bony hooks. They whipped through the air, shattering the bone‑like ribs of the chamber, searching for prey.
Aya scrambled back just as one slammed where she had been kneeling, gouging a crater into the floor.
The silhouette inside the heart writhed violently now, shape distorted by spasms of liquid and light. Aya's throat locked. She couldn't tell if Eve was reaching for her—or if the thing was merely imitating despair.
"Aya!" Gabrielle's voice again, urgent, breathless. *"We're losing telemetry! The Babel's shifting!"*
Hyde barked over the comm, his calm cracking for the first time: *"Stabilize, damn you! Keep firing, Brea!"*
Aya couldn't fire. Not with the figure thrashing inside. Her soul rebelled at the thought. She backed up instead, boots splashing in rising fluid as the chamber buckled around her.
A tendril lashed out. Reflex screamed through her veins. Aya released her body in a surge of light—**Overdive**—hurling herself into a soldier stationed at the threshold outside.
The transition slammed her breathless. New lungs filled with sour air. New muscles strained. Reflex made her raise the man's rifle, spraying bullets into the tendril before it cleaved the chamber wall apart.
But Aya heard it—the soldier's mind beneath hers, **shrieking at the invasion.** He wrestled her presence, trapped in his own skin as she moved his hands for him.
*Stop… get out of me…*
Aya ignored him, firing, firing, firing. The tendril shrieked in mirrored agony before retracting, leaving a rain of ichor.
She staggered, trembling. Her host's terror ripped through her chest until she couldn't tell if it was his or hers.
Then the **floor collapsed.**
The heart plunged, tearing its cords, dragging half the chamber down into abyss. Aya's scream joined the soldier's as weightlessness stole them both. She triggered another dive instinctively—fleeing mid‑fall, ripping into another soldier farther down the hall. His back arched, her vision stuttering with nausea as space inverted itself.
Her original host plummeted into blackness. Aya's last glimpse of him was his hands outstretched, begging for her to return. She hadn't even learned his name.
Every nerve burned. Her stomach threatened to rip itself out of her borrowed body.
The heart slammed into the pit below, a seismic convulsion rattling debris loose. From the void, a storm of screeches rose, chorus of a thousand broken mouths. Shapes stirred in the black ichor below, serpentine and insectile, rising to meet her.
Aya's breath heaved. The chamber was gone. Stability shattered. She was standing on the throat of a living nightmare.
Her rifle clicked empty. The soldier's fear clawed her throat.
"Aya!" Kyle's voice at last cut into the comms, sharp and jagged. *"Abort! We're pulling you out!"*
Hyde's snarl echoed in overlap: *"No! She can end it here—"*
The world split. Aya couldn't tell if it was the tower collapsing or her mind fracturing.
The last thing she saw was Eve—sister or monster—pressing her hand against the glassy membrane of the heart as it sank into the abyss. For one shimmering instant, the contact almost reached her.
Aya's scream ripped through her host's throat—anguish, fury, loss.
Then white light engulfed everything.
Overdive cut.
Her body catapulted back to her own, the chamber, the soldiers, the Babel itself all vanishing behind eyelids that snapped open in CTI's medical bay. Her chest heaved as though she'd left her lungs behind. The migraine from a dozen severed consciousnesses screamed through her skull.
Aya lurched, half falling off the bed. Hands caught her—Gabrielle's, firm, grounding.
She gasped, clinging to the other woman's wrist like a drowning survivor. "She was there—I saw her—I swear I saw her—"
Hyde stormed into the bay, tablet in hand, words like blades. *"You failed."*
Aya recoiled as though struck.
Hyde slammed the data onto the counter. "Your hesitation compromised the mission. The Babel adapted. Its growth is accelerating. Do you understand? Every second you waste, thousands die."
Aya covered her ears. "I didn't fail—I couldn't—if she's alive—"
"You saw what it *wanted* you to see," Hyde hissed. "You are letting your delusions get in the way of your only purpose. Do you want humanity erased because of your weakness?"
Kyle's voice cut calmer but edged as steel. "Enough, Hyde." He stepped between them, eyes hard on Aya's, softer than his tone. "She came back alive. That's what matters tonight."
Aya stared at him, searching for truth, for confirmation, for denial—anything.
But Kyle said nothing more.
Gabrielle squeezed Aya's shoulder, grounding her with a whisper. "You don't have to explain now. Rest."
Aya sagged back, trembling from marrow to skin. The chamber, the heart, the silhouette—all replayed behind her eyelids in an unending reel. Eve's hand pressed to the glass, her silent word *sister.*
Did she let her go? Did she damn her? Or had she been chasing nothing more than the Babel's cruel mirage?
Aya didn't know anymore.
And worse—she feared she no longer had the strength to find out.
---