The straps felt tighter this time. Cold metal cut into Aya's wrists until she swore skin would split. She lay pinned on the cradle under the sterile floodlights of the *synchronization lab,* heart pounding like an alarm.
Hyde stood beside the console, immaculate uniform untouched by exhaustion. His tablet glowed with trays of Aya's biotelemetry, curves and lines pulsing in quiet rhythm.
"Subject Brea," he intoned, "phase two begins. Five sequential Overdives. Zero recovery breaks. Limiter control escalates with each transition. Objective: quantify neurological fatigue and adaptive capacity."
Aya's stomach turned. Five. Last time she had barely survived one hour.
Gabrielle broke the silence, arms folded tight across her chest. "She's not equipment, Hyde. Five is suicide."
Hyde's eyes flicked to her, full of polished contempt. "Suicide is sentimental framing. This is measurement. Humanity requires truth, not comfort."
Aya's whisper cracked. "And if the truth is that I vanish?"
"Then we inherit the weapon that remains," Hyde replied without pause.
Gabrielle's fists clenched. "You cold son of a—"
Aya cut gently through it. "Gabi."
Their eyes met. Aya shook her head faintly. "Don't waste breath on him. Just… stay."
Gabrielle exhaled sharply, rage leashed—but she moved to the cradle's side, close enough for Aya to feel the warmth of her presence. "I'm here. Eyes on me, not him."
Hyde's voice rolled: "Commence sequence."
---
### First Dive
The plunge hit like a thunderclap. Aya's spirit ripped out, hurled screaming into another soldier's body stationed outside. Her lungs heaved with air that wasn't hers; hands clenched a rifle with unfamiliar scars across the knuckles.
The battlefield swarmed. Twisted flesh‑beasts writhed through the rubble, shrieking through mouths that weren't mouths. Guns barked all around.
Hyde's limiter pulsed immediately. Aya's arms snapped precise, firing bursts without hesitation. Limbs moved before thought. Targets fell, blood steaming on broken asphalt.
Aya begged herself: *Don't fight yet. Save strength. One of five.*
The soldier's residual consciousness brushed hers, faint but still human. *She's in me… oh God, what is she—?*
Aya sobbed silently. *I'm sorry. Hold steady. I'll leave as soon as I can.*
Hyde's voice rang, satisfied. *Control optimal. Transition in sixty seconds.*
---
### Second Dive
Without warning, the limiter detonated. Aya was yanked from the host and slammed into another. Stomach lurched, vision blurred—then reset. New hands, new bones, new heartbeat.
No pause to breathe.
The Twisted here tore from sewer grates, long claws ripping men apart. Aya's rifle barked instantly, her body leaping to Hyde's mark. Blood splattered warm.
*Synchronization strong,* Hyde logged. *Variance under limit.*
Aya's skull throbbed from the strain. She could almost *feel* the limiter's steel strings in her veins, yanking like a cruel puppeteer.
Gabrielle's voice cut faint across comms: "Aya, you're still here. Don't let go. You're not just his numbers."
Aya clung to it like oxygen.
But the soldier she rode was screaming inside. *Please—I don't want your war—*
Aya wanted to answer, to comfort, but Hyde snapped another command: *Transition now.*
Pain ripped her apart again.
---
### Third Dive
This one landed crooked. Aya tumbled into the host sideways, vision doubled. She staggered, gasping, as her hands refused to grip the weapon properly.
Hyde's tone sharpened. *Instability detected. Correction spike initiated.*
Fire lanced through her brain, forcing muscles taut. Aya shrieked aloud, body convulsing until rifle aligned to Hyde's grid.
"Dammit, Hyde—" Gabrielle's voice roared through the channel—"she's not a damn circuit board!"
Hyde ignored. *Variance restored. Continue fire.*
Aya obeyed, but the cost was blood in her mouth and foreign tears streaming.
By the time the monsters fell silent, Aya wanted nothing more than to collapse into death. Instead Hyde pressed: *Two more transitions.*
---
### Fourth Dive
The slam nearly broke her. The host was a woman this time. Aya felt her fragility at once—narrow shoulders, shallow lungs. Memories bubbled like drowned dreams: a child's name, a husband's voice, fragments Aya had no right to.
*I want to live,* whispered the woman inside.
Aya cried, "So do I."
The limiter forced their shared hands steady. Guns fired. Beasts shrieked.
But cracks showed—Aya's aim flickered, her heartbeat skipped. Every sound blurred into echoes of Eve laughing, of soldiers screaming. She didn't know anymore which voice was hers.
When Hyde forced correction again, she bit her tongue until iron filled her mouth.
Gabrielle's voice cut fierce: "Aya, hear me! Don't drown in him. Look at me—me, not the static!"
Aya clung desperately to that rope of sound.
And somehow, for one brief volley, she chose her own target. Fires ripped through the beast, not Hyde's coordinate but her decision.
It was messy. Inefficient. But it was *hers.*
---
### Fifth Dive
The last leap was agony. Aya slammed into the host's body like a body dropped from high. Bones ached, nerves frayed. She could hardly feel her hands.
Hyde's commands thundered relentless: *Target core. Overdrive deeper. Strike now.*
Aya staggered through the host, body collapsing under weight of too many selves. Faces swam across her vision—Eve, Gabrielle, strangers she had occupied.
"I can't," Aya whispered.
"Yes, you can." Gabrielle's voice broke through, raw with fire. "Because you're still Aya Brea. Not Hyde, not weapon, not anyone else. *You.*"
The words lodged like nails in Aya's chest. She screamed, not against Hyde but *for herself.* She pulled against the limiter's choke with everything she had left—every shred of memory, every fragment of pain, every laugh of Eve she still clung to.
For one fractured moment, the limiter faltered. Aya chose a dive not ordered, she fired not directed.
The monster's core exploded.
Then blackness.
---
### Collapse
Back in the lab, Aya ripped awake with a choking gasp. Blood ran from her nose. Her skin trembled as though electricity still crawled beneath.
Hyde stood calmly at the console, reviewing data. "All five dives completed. Duration exceeded projection. Synchrony improving."
Aya wanted to spit venom, but words died in her throat.
Gabrielle pressed close, unfastening straps with furious hands. "She's done. She's had enough."
Hyde replied, voice cool. "Phase two continues tomorrow."
"Over my dead body." Gabrielle's tone could have killed steel.
Hyde finally looked at her. "Easily arranged."
The silence in the lab thickened to wires. Aya sagged in Gabrielle's arms, too weak to interrupt.
But in her pulsebeat she felt something new—a thin crack in the limiter's control. It had faltered, only for a blink, but enough for her to act. Enough to remember she wasn't only Hyde's weapon.
Her humanity was threadbare, burning—but not gone. Not yet.
Aya whispered with broken lips into Gabrielle's shoulder, for no one else to hear:
"I'm still here."
---