One thug gasp yes .. remove her helmet quick and see her ...

Petro is the first to break the spell. He takes a half-step toward Lina's **** body, his rifle lowered, and reaches for the lead helmet lying on the floor beside her exposed face.

"Yes — just take the helmet off, look at her face properly, see who she—"

"Stop." Your voice cracks across the room like a whip. Petro freezes, his thick fingers inches from the helmet. "Think about what you're doing. She's in human form. She's ****. The helmet fell off on its own. If she's faking — if she wakes up right now, without that helmet on, with all of us standing in a circle around her like idiots — she doesn't need diamond skin to kill us. Her psychic powers might work in human form too. You want to bet your life she can't pop your skull from three feet away just because she looks like a college girl?"

Petro's hand retracts like he touched a hot stove. He steps back, his face draining of color.

"Right," you continue, your mind racing, assembling the pieces faster than you can speak them. "Razor — question. She's in human form. We can see everything except her face. Fair point. But the only thing we actually need to see is covered by the one object keeping us alive. So we don't touch the helmet. Not yet. Not here."

Razor is staring at Lina's prone body — the gentle curve of her bare back, the **** hollow at the base of her spine, the soft swell of her hips where the loose chain has slipped off entirely. Her shoulder-length dark hair fans across the grimy floor. She looks impossibly small. His throat bobs as he swallows.

"So what do we do?" he asks, his voice stripped of its usual edge, flat and lost. "Just... stand here staring at her ass until she wakes up and murders us all?"

"No. We move. Drop Viktor a message — tell him we're coming to him at the next hideout. We're bringing her."

Razor blinks. "Bringing her? You mean—"

"I mean we load her in the van, tied properly, and we drive. She's at human strength right now. No invulnerability, no enhanced anything. Zip ties on her wrists and ankles, tight. The helmet stays strapped on — we use duct tape if we have to, wrap it around her chin, make it impossible to shake loose. And we go."

Dima finally peels himself off the wall. "I have zip ties in the kit downstairs," he says, his voice thin and mechanical, a man operating on autopilot.

"Get them. Now. And grab the duct tape too."

Dima vanishes down the stairwell. Razor fumbles his phone out and types a message to Viktor with clumsy thumbs, the screen glow illuminating his gaunt face. You kneel beside Lina and carefully, without touching her skin more than necessary, maneuver the lead helmet back over her head. It sits more loosely on her smaller human skull, so when Dima returns with the supplies, you wind three thick strips of silver duct tape around her jaw and the base of the helmet, sealing it flush against her neck. The tape pulls against her dark hair where it escapes the helmet's edge.

Petro and Dima zip-tie her wrists behind her back — the plastic ratchets biting into her slender wrists with a series of sharp clicks. Her ankles too. She doesn't stir. Her bare feet are small, the soles dirty from the apartment floor, her toes curling faintly in whatever dream or oblivion has claimed her.

Razor finds a moth-eaten wool blanket in the closet and, after a moment's hesitation, drapes it over her naked body. Not out of modesty — out of the unsettling dissonance of carrying a nude, **** young woman through a building and into a vehicle. It makes it worse, somehow. More real.

They carry her down three flights of stairs. Petro takes her shoulders, Dima her legs. Her head lolls in the oversized helmet, the duct tape holding firm. The blanket slips partway, exposing one bare hip and the smooth flat plane of her stomach before Razor tugs it back into place with a muttered curse.

The van is parked in the alley behind the building — the same battered white transit that brought you here days ago. The sliding door groans open. They lay her on the bare metal floor of the cargo area. Petro zip-ties her bound wrists to a D-ring welded to the van's wall for good measure. She's on her side now, the blanket half-covering her, her bare legs drawn up, the chains of the original restraints left behind on the apartment floor.

You climb in beside her. Razor follows, pulling the door shut. Dima takes the wheel, Petro rides shotgun. The engine coughs to life.

As the van lurches into motion, you reach into the pocket of your wrinkled button-up and pull out a small ziplock bag. Inside is something you assembled hours ago, during the long wait before Diamond Girl's arrival — a failsafe you hoped you wouldn't need but built anyway. It's a tiny device, no larger than a piercing stud: a miniaturized piezoelectric oscillator wrapped in surgical-grade stainless steel, with two micro-prongs designed to clip onto tissue and a lithium cell smaller than a watch battery powering the whole thing.

Razor eyes the bag. "What's that now? Another gadget?"

"Piezoelectric vibrator," you say, unzipping the bag and holding the tiny device up between your thumb and forefinger. The overhead dome light in the van's cargo area catches the polished steel. "In piercing form. Think of it as a leash. The diamond transformation requires concentration — a sustained mental effort to shift her entire cellular structure. This device delivers a high-frequency micro-pulse on a continuous loop. Normally you wouldn't feel it. But placed on the right nerve cluster..." You trail off, letting the implication settle.

Razor's eyes narrow. Then they widen. "You're not saying—"

"Her clitoris. Most concentrated nerve bundle in the human body. Eight thousand nerve endings in a space smaller than a pencil eraser. Every time she tries to initiate the diamond transformation — every time she musters the focus to shift — this jolts her. Breaks her concentration instantly. She physically won't be able to sustain the mental state required."

Razor stares at you. Then at her. Then back at you. His mouth opens, closes. He runs a hand over his shaved scalp.

"Jesus Christ, doc."

"Grab her legs," you say. "Spread them. Hold her steady."

Razor hesitates for exactly one second. Then the survival instinct that has kept him alive this long overrides whatever flicker of conscience surfaced, and he moves. He kneels at Lina's feet, grips her bound ankles, and pulls her legs apart. The blanket falls away entirely. Her body is laid bare on the cold metal floor of the van — the lean, natural proportions of her human form illuminated by the harsh dome light. Her breasts are modest and soft, rising with each shallow **** breath. Her stomach is flat, her hips narrow compared to the exaggerated diamond physique. Between her spread legs, her pussy is exposed — hairless, the labia slightly swollen and still faintly glistening from the involuntary arousal triggered by her **** reversion. The lips are a dusky pink, delicate, parted just enough to reveal the hooded nub of her clitoris nestled at the apex.

Your hands are steady. You've done delicate work before — micro-sutures, cellular scaffolding, nanoscale polymer threading. This is just another procedure. You tell yourself that as you lean between her spread thighs, the van rocking gently over potholes, and use your left thumb and forefinger to carefully retract the clitoral hood. The tiny bud beneath is pink and soft, barely larger than a pea. You position the piezoelectric piercing's micro-prongs on either side of the clitoris, centering it precisely, and press the clip mechanism. The prongs close with a faint click, gripping the sensitive tissue firmly.

Lina's **** body flinches. A small, involuntary moan escapes through the duct tape and the helmet — a soft, breathy sound that has no anger in it, only sensation. Her hips twitch once, her thighs tensing against Razor's grip, and then she settles.

You activate the device. A tiny green LED blinks once on its surface, confirming the continuous monitoring loop is live. The piezoelectric element is dormant for now — it will only fire when it detects the specific bioelectric signature spike that precedes her diamond transformation. A reactive leash, not a constant torment.

Razor releases her ankles and sits back against the van wall, wiping his palms on his jeans as though trying to scrub something off them. He doesn't look at you.

You pull the blanket back over her body and sit beside her as the van rumbles through the empty streets.

Twenty-three minutes later, she stirs.

It begins with a low groan — muffled by the helmet, distorted by the duct tape, but unmistakably human. Her bound hands flex against the zip ties behind her back, the plastic creaking. Her legs draw up, knees pressing together. Her head turns inside the helmet, and you hear the scrape of lead against duct tape as she tries to orient herself.

"Wh...where am I..." The voice is nothing like the diamond form's smooth, flirtatious contralto. It's small. Thin. Groggy. A young woman waking from a blow to the head, disoriented and afraid, her words slurring around the edges. "Ah... what happened..."

Her body tenses. You can see the moment cognition returns — the sudden rigidity in her spine, the sharp intake of breath, the way her fingers curl into fists behind her back. She remembers.

And then she tries.

You see it — a faint shimmer races across her bare forearm, the skin taking on a glassy translucence for a fraction of a second as the diamond transformation begins to initiate. The crystal lattice reaching out from within, trying to restructure her cells—

The piercing fires.

Lina's entire body jackknifes. A strangled cry tears from her throat — sharp, shocked, almost electric in its intensity. Her thighs clamp together, her hips bucking off the metal floor, and the nascent diamond shimmer on her arm shatters and recedes instantly. Her back arches, the blanket sliding off her trembling body, and for three full seconds she writhes against her restraints, her bound wrists straining, her bare feet kicking against the van floor.

"WHAT — nngh — what did you — I can't — " Her words come in gasps, fractured by the aftershock pulsing through her most sensitive nerve cluster. She tries again — another shimmer, another attempt at transformation—

Another jolt. Another choked moan. Her hips twist violently and she curls into a fetal position on her side, panting, her bare skin flushed and trembling.

"You... assholes..." she hisses through the helmet, her voice cracking between fury and something dangerously close to a sob. "This helmet — my hands — I can't reach — my powers won't — you fucking ASSHOLES." She strains against the zip ties binding her wrists, the plastic cutting into her skin, leaving angry red welts. "What did you put on me? What is that thing? Every time I try to — NNGH!"

Another attempt. Another jolt. Her body spasms, her knees drawing up tight, a ragged whimper escaping that she clearly hates herself for making.

"You will all suffer for this," she says, but her voice is shaking now, the threat undercut by the tremor running through every syllable. "When I get free — and I will get free — I will find each of you and I will turn your brains into—"

The shimmer flickers on her shoulder. The piercing pulses. She cries out — shorter this time, a bitten-off yelp — and the shimmer dies.

The van rocks gently over a speed bump. The dome light flickers. Razor sits motionless against the wall, his face unreadable, his hands clasped between his knees. Petro stares straight ahead through the windshield. Nobody speaks.

Lina lies on the metal floor, breathing hard, her bare body curled tight, the blanket pooled around her ankles. The tiny green LED on the piercing blinks steadily between her clenched thighs — a patient, tireless sentinel.