Morning never truly came inside the CTI compound. Fluorescent strips replaced sunlight, buzzing coldly across halls of steel and glass. Aya moved through them half‑awake, led by escort like a prisoner to trial.
Hyde had summoned her. Again.
The bitter taste of last night remained with her. Gabrielle's reassurance had steadied her for a few hours, but dawn brought the weight of Hyde's words back heavier than before. *Liability. Tool. Obey.*
The doors to his office parted with clinical hiss. Inside, everything was ordered, polished, devoid of softness—just like him. Hyde stood at the far console, back turned, reviewing streams of data.
"Aya Brea," he said without looking. "Sit."
She obeyed. The chair felt colder than it should have.
Hyde rotated at last, tablet in hand, eyes cutting through her. "You clung to sentiment in your last mission. You heard voices that were not there. That cannot continue."
Aya swallowed. "I tried—"
"You failed." His tone severed her words clean. The tablet flashed the jagged telemetry of her last dive. "Neural variance exceeded tolerances by forty‑two percent. Structural collapse imminent."
He leaned closer. "Do you understand what that means? It means while you indulged your delusions, thousands of lives edged closer to extinction. Do you think humanity can afford your weakness?"
Aya's breath trembled. She wanted to answer, but Hyde pressed on, relentless.
"I will not gamble the species on your fragile psyche. From this day, *control protocols* are in effect."
Aya's chest tightened. "Protocols?"
Hyde tapped his wrist. Panels around the office brightened; screens lit with biometric graphs. "A cortical limiter, keyed to my command. It will monitor every Overdive. Should instability breach threshold, I can force recalibration—painful, but preferable to collapse."
Aya's voice shook. "You want to put a leash on me."
"A safeguard," Hyde corrected. "I leash a weapon so it strikes where aimed. Without it, the weapon turns wild."
The words cut deeper than the threat itself. Aya lowered her head. "And if I refuse?"
Hyde studied her, gaze sharp as frost. "Refusal is not an option. Survival does not permit democracy. You will comply. Or the project ends."
Aya's throat burned with panic. For a moment she imagined standing, walking out, tearing the limiter free—but the hollow ruin beyond CTI's walls reminded her there was nowhere to run. The Babel's shadow stretched across the sky.
Silence hung heavy.
Then Hyde's voice, more clinical than cruel: "Understand that what I do, I do not from cruelty. I do it because humanity needs control more than hope. Hope cannot kill the Babel."
The office doors hissed violently open.
Gabrielle stormed in without clearance. "What the hell is this?"
Hyde turned calmly. "You interrupt."
"Damn right I do." Gabrielle's eyes locked on the glowing biometric displays. "You're talking about shackling her like a machine."
Hyde's expression never wavered. "A controlled instrument has greater survivability than a flailing one. Do you dispute logic itself?"
"I dispute you playing god." Gabrielle stepped to Aya's side, standing like a shield. "She isn't your weapon."
Hyde's patience thinned. "Remove yourself, Captain. Or you join her as an obstacle."
The air between them crackled, unspoken war sizzling across sterile light. Aya clutched the arms of her chair, her heart hammering louder than either voice.
"Stop!" she cried. Both faces snapped to her.
She forced herself upright, trembling but steady. "If I fight you, Hyde, you'll bury me before I can fight the Babel. And if I let you chain me, Gabrielle, I'll stop being myself. Either way, I'm already lost."
The words hung raw in the air.
Gabrielle's jaw clenched. Hyde's gaze sharpened.
Finally Hyde spoke, low and decisive. "Then prove you are not lost. Accept the limiter, and demonstrate to me that Aya Brea still exists. Reject it, and you prove yourself already gone."
Aya's knees buckled under the weight of choice. In Gabrielle's eyes she saw defiance, a plea not to surrender. In Hyde's she saw calculation, cold certainty.
Tears threatened but she swallowed them down. "If this… limiter is what keeps me fighting—" she whispered, "—then fine. Do it."
Gabrielle gasped. "Aya—"
"I need to fight. No matter what it costs me."
Hyde gave a thin, satisfied smile. "Wise."
He pressed a command across his console. The biometric grid pulsed. Aya's head throbbed—sharp, invasive, as though invisible chains wound themselves around her thoughts. She collapsed back into the chair, clutching her temples.
Pain like white fire surged, then subdued to a cold hum under her skull.
Hyde's voice resonated above it: "Control restored."
Aya gasped for breath. She felt hollow, like something intimate had been stolen. The hum of the limiter lingered—foreign, suffocating.
Gabrielle stared in fury. "You bastard. You stripped her freedom."
Hyde ignored the venom. He studied Aya clinically, as though examining a successful experiment. "You will thank me when the Babel burns."
Aya forced herself upright, sweat sliding down her brow. Her whisper barely reached the air: "But when it burns… who will I be?"
Neither answered.
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