Aya kept her eyes low as the automatic doors of the debriefing chamber sealed behind her.
The room was cold steel and glass, lit brighter than the infirmary, yet it made her shiver more. The conference table stretched sterile in the center, glowing softly with projected field maps. Hyde stood at the head like a judge behind a pulpit. Gabrielle leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, expression sharp as broken glass. Kyle lingered in shadow near the corner, silent, unreadable.
Aya sat when told. Her body felt foreign even in her own skin, as though she had never fully returned from the dive.
Hyde wasted no seconds. He tapped his tablet, an overhead display blooming with chaotic telemetry: spiking waveform lines, collapsing vitals, her Overdive signatures fraying like torn fabric.
"This," Hyde said, his voice flat with restrained contempt, "is the record of your failure."
Aya flinched at the word though she expected it.
"You allowed yourself to be distracted by hallucinations. You compromised the strike. The Babel responded by mutating. Your hesitation strengthened it. Every wasted second was bought with our soldiers' blood."
The map zoomed in on red blotches expanding outward from Ground Zero. The infection line pulsed as it crept across city districts.
Aya forced herself to meet his eyes. "I…" Her throat caught. "I couldn't—"
"You wouldn't," Hyde corrected with scalpel precision. "Do not soften it with weakness. You had a choice, and you made it. The wrong one."
Gabrielle pushed off the wall with a growl. "Enough. She was alone in that chamber. None of us had to see what she saw. Maybe it wasn't just a distraction. Maybe it was real."
Hyde turned on her, lip curling faintly. "Do you propose the tower harbors miraculous ghosts for Aya's amusement? That we halt operations until she has resolved her *personal attachments?*"
Gabrielle's boots struck the floor in three deliberate steps forward. "I propose you stop treating her like your damn instrument. You want results, fine. But she's still human. Push her until she snaps, and you won't have a soldier—you'll have another monster."
Aya's chest tightened. She wanted to thank Gabrielle, but the words shriveled in fear that maybe Hyde was right.
Hyde's eyes cut to Aya again. "Tell me, Brea. Do you think you are human? Or monster?"
Aya's breath fractured. In the fluorescent light, the table's reflection shimmered wrong—her own eyes darkened, vein‑laced, not hers. She blinked. The illusion vanished.
Her answer came as a whisper: "I don't know."
Hyde's tablet slammed against the glass table. The crack silenced the room. "Then until you do, you are a liability."
Gabrielle's fist clenched. "She's the only one who can even touch the Babel's core. Liability or not, you need her."
Hyde ignored her, still staring through Aya like dissecting flesh. "From this moment, Aya Brea operates under revised parameters. No unsupervised dives. No hesitation. Direct command authority routed through me alone."
Aya's lips parted. "You—you're taking away my choice?"
Hyde leaned forward. "Choice is an illusion. Soldiers obey. You obey. That is all."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Kyle moved at last, stepping partly into the light. His voice was cool, careful, each word weighed. "Control her too tightly, Hyde, and you'll break her. She's not replaceable."
Hyde scoffed. "I've studied her enough to know precisely how much strain she can endure before breaking. And if she does break? Then she was never worth the resources invested."
Aya's nails dug half‑moons into her palms. The ache felt like the only proof she still existed.
Gabrielle hissed, low but lethal. "You treat her like a tool. I see a person."
Hyde gathered his tablet, expression smoothing back into clinical stone. "Tools are dependable, Captain. People are expendable. Remember that distinction."
He exited with military sharpness, door hissing shut behind him.
The silence he left collapsed heavy.
Aya trembled in her chair, fists still clenched, breath ragged from holding it too long. Her gaze snapped to Kyle. "Do you think I'm… human?"
His eyes darkened with something she couldn't read. He did not answer.
That silence carved her deeper than Hyde's words could.
Gabrielle moved swiftly to Aya's side, kneeling to meet her eyes. The captain's voice lowered, rough but steady. "Listen. You're not Hyde's tool. You're not anyone's. You're Aya Brea. That's who you are. Hold onto that."
Aya blinked tears she hadn't wanted to show. Her whisper trembled: "What if I can't hold onto anything anymore?"
Gabrielle squeezed her hand. "Then I'll hold on for you."
Aya tried to believe her. She really did. But as the reflection in the table glass distorted again—eyes wrong, smile crooked—she feared Hyde's words might already be true.
---