A guttural growl ripped through the air, vibrating the very floorboards beneath Daska’s boots. The noise-beast, a writhing mass of raw acoustic terror with teeth like shattered glass, lunged. Brio shrieked, pressing himself flat against the gun rack. Daska’s throat was a raw canyon, choked with phantom pain, but Lekhan was already moving. He didn’t hesitate. A blistering, crimson arc of sound erupted from his chest, a baritone barrier that pulsed with defiant energy. It slammed into the beast’s gaping maw, momentarily stalling its ravenous advance. Lekhan stood his ground, legs braced, his voice a roaring torrent of power that felt less like a song and more like a challenge to the encroaching darkness. The air thrummed with the sheer force of his output, the armory lights flickering under the strain. He threw a glance back at Daska, his eyes alight with a fierce urgency. “*Sing!*” he commanded, his voice raw but unwavering. “Your *real* voice! That’s what shattered Zolok’s wards before!” Daska understood. The corset, for all its suppressive agony, had protected her. Now, exposed and aching, she had to gamble. She drew a ragged breath, the pain in her vocal cords a white-hot spear behind her sternum. The beast, reeling from Lekhan’s wall of sound, began to regenerate, its multi-mouthed form coalescing with renewed hunger. Then Daska released it. A pure, unadulterated soprano shriek, honed to a razor’s edge, erupted from her. It was a sound unbound, piercing the roar of the beast, bypassing Lekhan’s defensive ring. This wasn’t the constrained tenor 'Dask' had been forced to wield, nor the hybridized shockwave that had shredded her throat. This was the true, unbridled torrent of Daska Fane’s voice, a force of nature that echoed through the confined space, vibrating bones and loosening teeth. It was a sound that had once charmed kings and quelled riots, now aimed at an abomination of pure noise. Where Lekhan’s baritone was a blunt, protective force, Daska’s soprano was a drill of pure, focused intent. It struck the noise-beast’s rapidly re-forming shell, not as a concussive blast, but as an oscillation that found every micro-fracture, every weak point in its acoustic armor. The beast shuddered, a high-pitched whine replacing its guttural snarls. Tiny fissures spiderwebbed across its outer shell, glowing briefly before deepening. Lekhan, sensing the shift, drove his own voice higher, layering a sharp, focused over-tone into his baritone shield. His eyes locked onto Daska's, hard with sudden accord. Their voices, once competitive weapons, now wove together, two distinct registers creating a single, devastatingly effective whole. His chord held the beast steady, a target pinned, while her piercing notes tore into its very essence. The creature’s acoustic shell began to fragment, not exploding outwards, but collapsing inwards like imploding glass. Each piercing note from Daska, amplified by Lekhan’s focused pressure, chipped away at its integrity. The beast screamed, a sound of pure agony, as its form shattered into a thousand glittering shards of sound that dissolved into the air, leaving nothing but an acrid, ozone tang. Silence, sudden and absolute, descended upon the armory. Only the rasp of Daska’s breathing, the thrum of Lekhan’s rapidly subsiding pulse, and the whimpering of Brio filled the void. Brio, still plastered against the wall, stared at Daska, his eyes wide and unblinking. He had seen the corset beneath her torn shirt. He had heard the voice that was impossibly high, impossibly powerful, unlike any male trainee. He had seen *her*. “W-w-what…” Brio stammered, his face pale, his usual petty malice replaced by utter bewilderment. He scrambled away from the wall, his gaze darting between Daska and Lekhan, who stood protectively close to her. Lekhan gave a dismissive flick of his hand. “Later. We have bigger problems.” He turned his attention to Daska, his expression shifting to one of concern. “Your throat. Can you…?” Daska shook her head, a raw cough escaping her. “It’s…it’s recovering faster than before,” she managed, amazed. The pure power had been exhausting, but the suppression was gone, and her body was rebuilding the damage with incredible speed. Brio, still recovering, suddenly straightened, a flash of something other than fear entering his eyes. “Bigger problems, you say?” His voice, though still shaky, held a hint of his usual sharp-eared curiosity. “That’s what I was about to tell you, before that thing tried to make a snack out of me.” He pulled a small, battered comm-unit from his pocket, its screen flickering with static. “I was down here foraging for parts for my Sound-Blaster when all hell broke loose. But before that, I picked up… something. A rogue signal. Transmitting from the main concert stage.” He jabbed a trembling finger at the comm-unit. “It’s not just noise. It’s… a directed carrier wave. It’s Zolok. He’s running a mass-hypnosis loop. It’s targeting the Vanguard corps. Turning them into his personal chorus line.” A harsh knot tightened behind Daska's ribs, sharp with sudden clarity. This wasn’t just about her, or the Center spotlight, or even Lekhan. This was about the capital, the armed corps, about to be enslaved. Zolok hadn't loosed the beasts to destroy the Bastion; he’d set them loose to create chaos, a distraction for his true objective. “The debut concert,” Lekhan breathed, his face grim. “He was planning to use the debut concert as his stage.” “He’s early,” Daska rasped, finding her voice again. “The invasion… the beasts… it’s a cover. He needs to control the Vanguard before the city is overwhelmed, before they can fight back. He plans to seize total control.” Brio nodded vigorously. “Exactly! He aims to hijack their vocal cords, their minds. Turn them into puppets to sing his command.” Lekhan slammed his fist against a nearby rifle rack, the metal groaning under the impact. “We have to stop him. We have to get to that stage. We have to overwrite his carrier wave.” He looked at Daska, his gaze intense. “It has to be us. Our combined voices. The power we just showed… that’s the only way to break through his control and blast a counter-tone.” “A Center Duo,” Daska whispered, the words tasting strange and powerful on her tongue. The irony was bitter, yet undeniable. The lead rank she had fought for, the crown she had run from, was now the only way to save them all. Brio, who had been listening intently, interjected, “It’s not that simple. Zolok’s pitch is running through the main transmission node, under the stage. It’s heavily reinforced. You can’t just sing at it from the platform. You need to access the node directly. Override it. And the only way to do that… is to push enough raw, unfiltered magical energy into it to blow his signal clean out of the system.” He paused, his eyes falling to Daska’s chest, to the faint outline of the binding beneath her torn fabric. “And to do *that*,” Brio continued, his voice lowering, “you’d have to destroy that… that contraption you’re wearing. Permanently. The magic in it is the only thing strong enough to disrupt the node, but it would have to be completely discharged, burning itself out in the process.” Daska stared at Brio, then at Lekhan, her mind racing. Destroy the corset. Unshackle her full power. Access the transmission node. But doing so meant her disguise would be gone, irrevocably. She would have to step onto that stage, in front of millions of rabid fans, in front of the whole armed legion, as a woman. And in Harmonia, for a female to assume a combat role, let alone the Center crown of a frontline boyband, was not just unheard of. It was an act of treason.

Hijacking the Harmony