Try to examine her diamond form up close while she's — look for any identifying features, markings, or clues about who she might be in her normal form.

I kneel beside her, my knees pressing into the grimy apartment floor, and study her up close for the first time without the immediate threat of ****. The diamond form is extraordinary — every inch of her surface is a lattice of crystalline facets that catch the overhead fluorescent light and scatter it into faint prismatic ghosts across the nearby walls. I lean in, examining the contours of her face through the gap where the lead helmet doesn't quite seal against her neck. The jawline is geometric, sculpted, with edges too sharp and symmetrical to be natural bone structure. No pores. No fine lines. No distinguishing marks — no moles, no scars, no asymmetries that would tell me anything about the woman underneath.

I move my attention down her body, keeping clinical focus despite the absurdity of the situation. Her diamond form is... anatomically exaggerated. The breasts are enormous — DD at minimum — and they hold their shape perfectly even with her lying face-down, pressed against the floor. No compression. No natural give. They're crystalline, solid, refracting light along their curved surfaces like two perfect gemstones. Her waist tapers impossibly, her hips flare wide, her legs are long and sculpted with musculature that looks carved rather than grown. There isn't a gram of fat anywhere. Not a fold, not a dimple, not a single imperfection.

"Why are we wasting time with this?" Dima's voice cuts in from behind me, tight with impatience. He's standing near the kitchen doorway, his crooked nose wrinkled, arms crossed over his grey hoodie. "Just take the helmet off. Look at her face. Done."

I turn on him so fast he takes a step back.

"Are you out of your mind?" My voice comes out harder than I intend — sharp, almost furious. The stupidity of the suggestion hits me like a slap. "If her identity was just sitting there on her face, visible to anyone, do you think we'd have waited through three burned hideouts to figure it out? You think nobody looked at the security cameras? Use your head, Dima. This —" I gesture at her prone, glittering body, "— is not what she really looks like. This form is a disguise. A shell. A transformation. Look at her." I point at the impossibly perfect diamond breasts pressing against the floor. "Even ****, nothing sags. No body fat. No human imperfection anywhere. Does that look like a real woman's body to you? This is an idealized shape — a crystal sculpture. Her real identity is hidden underneath this, and we can't get to it by just peeking under a helmet."

Dima opens his mouth, then closes it. He looks away.

"We have to crack this shell," I continue, standing up. "**** her back into her human form. That's the only way we find out who she is."

Razor is sitting on the floor against the wall, his knees drawn up, his straight razor resting on his thigh. He's been watching me with those narrow grey eyes, and now he speaks — his voice rough, uncertain. "You got anything that can do that? Because we can't keep her wrapped up in chains forever. And the day she gets loose..." He trails off, his jaw working. Then, with a mirthless half-laugh: "Guess I'll be meeting my mum in heaven."

I look at him. Something about the way he said it — the resigned humor, the crack in his voice — catches me off guard. I snort before I can stop myself.

"You think you're going to heaven?"

Razor's expression freezes. His eyes go flat and cold. In one fluid motion, he's on his feet, the pistol from his waistband leveled at my chest. The muzzle is a dark, unblinking eye pointed at my sternum. The room goes absolutely still.

I raise both hands, palms out. "Okay. Okay. Enough jokes. My bad."

Razor holds the aim for another two heartbeats — his finger resting alongside the trigger guard, not on it, but close enough that the distinction feels academic. Then he lowers the gun with a sharp exhale and shoves it back into his waistband. His hands are shaking.

"Don't push me, lab rat," he mutters, but there's no real heat in it. Just frayed nerves.

"Fair enough." I reach into my trouser pocket and pull out the device I built in secret during my marathon work session — a compact, cylindrical vibrator roughly the size of a thick marker pen, rigged with a small lithium battery and a variable-frequency oscillator. I'd assembled it from components scavenged from the centrifuge motor and an old electric toothbrush someone left in the apartment's bathroom, housing it in a section of copper pipe. It looks crude, homemade, almost absurd. "Yes, I have something. High-frequency vibration. Crystals — diamonds included — have resonant frequencies. Hit the right frequency, you can induce micro-fractures. Shatter glass with sound, same principle. If I can find her resonant frequency, I might be able to destabilize the diamond form and **** her back to whatever she is underneath."

Petro squints at the device. "That looks like a—"

A sound cuts him off.

It comes from the floor. A low, guttural groan that resonates through the diamond body like a struck tuning fork, the vibration traveling through the chain links and into the floorboards beneath. Every head in the room snaps toward her.

Diamond Girl's fingers clench. The chain links groan under the pressure, the metal biting into her crystalline wrists as her arms flex against the restraints. Her body shifts — a slow, rolling movement, her diamond shoulders twisting, her spine arching. The lead helmet scrapes against the floor with a harsh metallic shriek as she lifts her head.

"You... motherfuckers." Her voice is lower than I expected — smooth, resonant, reverberating through the crystalline structure of her throat and jaw with an almost musical quality, but right now it's ragged with fury. The words drip with venom. "I'm going to kill every single one of you. I'm going to turn your brains into fucking soup and watch it pour out of your—"

She stops mid-sentence. Her body goes rigid. Through the visor slit of the lead helmet, I catch a flash of glowing blue — her eyes, open now, blazing with fury. Her fists clench harder and the chains creak ominously. I can see the tendons of effort in her diamond forearms, the crystalline muscles straining.

Then — nothing happens.

Her head jerks. She strains again, her entire body tensing like a coiled spring, her jaw clenched so hard I can hear the crystalline surfaces grinding against each other. Another beat of silence. Another failure.

"What — what the fuck?" Her voice drops from fury to something rawer. Confusion. The first crack in the armor that isn't chemical. "My powers — I can't — I can't reach you. I can't feel your minds. What did you do to me?" Her diamond fingers scrabble against the floor, the chain preventing any real movement. "What's on my head? WHAT DID YOU PUT ON MY HEAD?"

The apartment is frozen. Petro has his rifle raised but his finger isn't on the trigger — it's hovering beside it, trembling. Dima has backed against the far wall. Razor is standing with his hand on his pistol grip, his face the color of old paper.

I'm the only one who hasn't moved. I'm standing three feet from a chained, furious, conscious Diamond Girl, holding a homemade vibrator in one hand, with dried blood still crusted on my upper lip from when she nearly killed me twenty minutes ago.

Her helmet turns toward me. Through the visor slit, those incandescent blue eyes lock onto mine. Even through the lead and the scratched plastic, the intensity of her gaze is physical — a weight against my chest.

"You," she says. Lower now. Quieter. More dangerous. "You're the one who made those chemicals. I felt them. You're the one who did this to me."