Chapter 9: Bait and Switch
The war room smelled of old paper, dust, and a faint, lingering trace of lamp oil. It was a cold smell, a thinking smell. Amiya stood just inside the door, her hands clasped behind her back to hide their faint tremor. The room was crowded with the grim faces of Section Commanders and senior officers, a sea of green cloaks that seemed to absorb the weak light from the single, flickering lamp above the central table.
Levi was already there, leaning against the far wall, apart from the others. His eyes met hers for a fraction of a second—a flat, unreadable glance—before returning to the large map spread across the table. Commander Erwin Smith stood at its head, his presence a calm, imposing force. His blue eyes were as placid and deep as a glacier lake.
“Now that we’re all here,” Erwin began, his voice resonating in the quiet room, “we can begin. The intelligence recovered from the manor has given us a pattern. The Female Titan’s behavior during the 57th Expedition was not random aggression. It was a search. A methodical, intelligent hunt for a specific target within the formation.”
A chill that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature crept down Amiya’s spine. She knew what was coming. She’d known since Levi said the word ‘bait’.
Erwin placed two markers on the map. One represented the Supply Depot. The other, a forested area to the east. “Our analysis suggests the Titan is drawn to signs of coordinated, large-scale human military activity. It learns. It adapts. It seeks to dismantle our command structure and isolate high-value targets.” He paused, letting the implication hang. “Specifically, it seeks Eren Yeager.”
A low murmur rippled through the room. Erwin silenced it with a raised hand.
“Therefore, our next expedition will serve a dual purpose. We will advance towards the east as planned. But we will also orchestrate a scenario. We will present it with an opportunity it cannot ignore.” His gaze swept the room, landing briefly on Amiya, then on Levi, before settling on the map. “We will create a visible, deliberate breakdown in the formation. A calculated weakness. A command squad, appearing isolated due to a ‘supply crisis,’ will divert from the main column here.” He pointed to a narrow pass on the map. “This squad will contain Eren Yeager.”
He looked up, his expression utterly composed. “And to sell the illusion of a true command unit, it will be led by a Captain, and include a recently injured officer whose presence suggests urgency and vulnerability. Captain Levi will lead. Eren Yeager will be the prize. And Officer Amiya Ito will be the visible wound that makes the trap believable.”
The air left the room.
Amiya felt the words land like physical blows. She’d known, but hearing it laid out so cleanly, so logically, was different. She was a variable in a tactical equation. The ‘recently injured officer.’ The vulnerability.
Before anyone else could react, there was a sharp, explosive crack.
Levi had pushed off the wall. His palms were slammed down on the heavy oak table, the impact shuddering through the wood and the scattered papers. The sound was like a gunshot in the silent room. Every head turned to him. His knuckles were white, his shoulders rigid. He wasn’t looking at Erwin. He was staring at the map, his eyes burning a hole into the parchment.
“No.” The word was low, stripped raw.
Erwin didn’t flinch. “It is the most logical configuration, Captain. Your reputation makes the squad a credible high-value target. Ito’s documented injury and her connection to the previous encounter adds a layer of plausible desperation. The Titan has seen her before. It may recognize her as a survivor, a loose end. The emotional resonance could be a factor in its targeting priority.”
“Emotional resonance?” Levi’s voice was venomous. “You’re talking about throwing a soldier who can barely lift a blade into a Titan’s path as a… a psychological garnish.”
“I am talking about using every asset available to secure humanity’s future,” Erwin replied, his tone cooling by a degree. “Officer Ito is a soldier of the Survey Corps. Her skills, her history, and her current medical status all contribute to the profile we need to create. The mission’s success probability increases by an estimated eighteen percent with this configuration.”
“She’s not an asset. She’s a person with broken ribs and a head that’s only just stopped swimming.” Levi finally tore his gaze from the table to look at Erwin. The fury in his eyes was a controlled, deadly thing. “Find another variable.”
“There is no time. And no other variable fits as precisely.”
The two men locked eyes. The rest of the officers held their breath. Amiya watched, her own heart hammering against her still-tender ribs. She saw the absolute, immovable wall of Erwin’s logic. And she saw the tempest in Levi, a storm of protectiveness and past losses raging against that wall.
Her mouth was dry. She unclasped her hands, letting them fall to her sides. The tremor was gone, replaced by a strange, numb steadiness.
“What are the specific parameters of the diversion, Commander?”
Her voice, quiet but clear, cut through the tension. Both men turned to look at her. Levi’s expression was one of sheer, furious disbelief.
Erwin gave a slight, approving nod. “The squad will consist of yourself, Captain Levi, Eren Yeager, and two additional elites. You will break from the main column at the predetermined coordinate, citing a critical ODM gear failure and depleted gas. You will proceed on horseback through the pass. Your pace will be deliberately slow, visibly hampered. We will have hidden observer teams in the trees. The moment the Female Titan takes the bait and engages, they will signal, and the net will close.”
“And our primary objective?” Amiya asked. Her mind was clicking over, shifting from person to patient to participant. “Is it to capture the Titan? Or to ensure Eren’s survival?”
“Capture is the priority. Eren’s survival is imperative. Your survival is a tactical desideratum.” Erwin’s wording was precise, cold, and honest. He wasn’t offering false comfort.
She nodded slowly, absorbing it. “The pass. It’s narrow. Limited verticality for ODM gear. We’d be fighting on the ground or in the trees at the edge. That plays to the Titan’s strength in close quarters.”
“Correct. The environment is part of the lure. It will believe it has you cornered.”
“And my role?” She forced herself to hold Erwin’s gaze. “Am I active combatant, or am I playing the invalid?”
“You will be armed and mobile. But your performance should sell your injury. Hesitation. Labored movement. It must be convincing.”
Levi made a sound, a harsh exhale through his nose. He straightened up from the table, his hands leaving damp prints on the wood. He looked from Erwin’s placid face to Amiya’s determined, pale one. The fracture in his composure was visceral. The protectiveness wasn’t just tactical; it was personal, and it was threatening to shatter the detached facade he wore like armor in this room.
He took a step back.
Then another.
“If this is the order,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet, “then I require the full dossiers on the selected elite squad members and the observation team coordinates. Now.”
“They are prepared for your review, Captain,” Erwin said, gesturing to a stack of files.
Levi didn’t move towards them. He looked at Amiya one last time, his eyes a storm of warning and something else, something raw and unchecked. Then he turned on his heel and walked out of the war room. The door didn’t slam. It shut with a soft, definitive click that was somehow louder than any outburst.
The silence he left behind was thick and uncomfortable.
Erwin continued as if nothing had happened. “The details of the formation change are outlined in section three. We will begin drills at 0600 tomorrow. Dismissed.”
The officers began to file out, casting curious or pitying glances at Amiya. She stood rooted to the spot, staring at the space where Levi had been. The map in front of her blurred into a smear of ink and parchment.
“Officer Ito.”
She jumped. Erwin was still there, gathering his papers.
“A moment,” he said. When the room was empty, he approached her. He didn’t offer sympathy. His gaze was analytical. “Your questions were appropriate. You are thinking like a soldier. That is good.”
“He’s right, though,” she heard herself say. “I am a liability in a straight fight right now.”
“You are a component,” Erwin corrected gently. “Every component in a machine has a purpose, even if it is to be a sacrificial fuse. The question is whether the machine’s function is worth the fuse. I believe it is. Captain Levi’s… disagreement… stems from his assessment of your value exceeding your function in this single scenario. It is not a weakness in his logic, but a difference in his weighting of variables.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder, a brief, heavy weight. “Convince him you are willing to be the component. Or the machine will not work.”
He left her alone in the cold, dusty room with the flickering light and the map of their own planned demise.
She found him on the rooftop, a place he often went for silence. The wind was sharper up here, carrying the distant sounds of the training grounds. He stood at the edge, looking out over the compound, his back to her.
She walked up beside him, not too close. The stone ledge was cold under her palms.
“You can’t storm out of war councils, Captain,” she said after a minute.
“I can do whatever the hell I want.”
“It undermines Erwin.”
“Erwin can withstand it.” He didn’t look at her. “You shouldn’t have agreed.”
“I didn’t agree. I asked for parameters. There’s a difference.”
“It’s the same thing and you know it.” His voice was tight. “You heard him. ‘Desideratum.’ A nice word for ‘expendable.’”
“I am expendable,” she said, and the truth of it was oddly liberating. “So are you. So is everyone. The only thing that isn’t expendable is the mission. The truth.”
He finally turned his head. The wind whipped his dark hair. The anger was still there, but it had morphed into a frustrated, weary intensity. “You haven’t seen what it does. You’ve seen it once, from a distance, right before it smashed you into a tree. You don’t know its speed. Its precision. It doesn’t just kill. It dismantles. It will look at you, with those… those empty eyes, and it will know exactly how to take you apart.”
“Then you’ll have to be faster,” she said quietly.
He stared at her, and she saw the fear beneath the fury. Not fear for himself. Fear for her. The same fear that had made him climb into a hospital cot and hold her together. It was the most vulnerable she had ever seen him.
“Why are you so willing to die for this?” The question was raw.
She thought of Petra’s laugh. Of the quiet trees that weren’t quiet. Of the sketch under her pillow of a courtyard that represented a peace she’d never really known. She thought of the numbers in the ledgers, the dust on the desk, the relentless, grinding need to push forward.
“I’m not willing to die,” she said, meeting his stormy gaze. “I’m willing to fight. This is the fight they’ve given us. I can either lie in my room doing forms with a letter opener, or I can stand in the pass. I choose the pass.”
He looked away, back over the sprawling, grey compound. His jaw worked. The tension in his shoulders slowly bled into a kind of grim acceptance. The protector was being forced to become the strategist.
“Your movements need to be convincing, but not suicidal,” he said, his tone shifting into something clipped and professional. The Captain was back. “We start drilling tomorrow. Not just you. The whole team. We’ll run the scenario until it’s instinct. You hesitate wrong, you die. You overplay it, the Titan gets suspicious. Every breath, every wince, has to be perfect.”
“I understand.”
“You’d better.” He pushed off the ledge. “Meet me in the south training yard at 0500. Don’t be late. And for fuck’s sake, wear something that doesn’t restrict your mobility. This isn’t a theoretical exercise.”
He walked past her towards the stairwell. As he reached the door, he paused.
“And Ito?” he said, without turning around.
“Yes, Captain?”
“The trees won’t be quiet this time. Be ready.”
He disappeared down the stairs, leaving her with the wind and the chilling certainty of what was to come. The trap was set. They were walking into it with their eyes open. She closed her own, feeling the ghost-ache of her healing bones, and planned her first, convincing wince.
The resolve she’d forged on the rooftop cooled and hardened overnight into a knot of dread lodged beneath her ribs. The ghost-ache became a sharp, insistent reality by dawn. Every breath was a conscious effort, a negotiation with the knitting bones in her chest. When the first grey light filtered through her window, she tried to swing her legs out of bed and a white-hot stitch in her side stole the air from her lungs.
She sat on the edge of the mattress, head bowed, counting breaths until the spasm passed. She dressed with slow, deliberate movements, her fingers fumbling with the buttons on her uniform. Each pull of the fabric across her torso was a fresh reminder of her role: the visible wound. By the time she fastened her belt, a cold sweat glued her shirt to her back. She looked at the door, five strides away. It seemed a mile.
She just needed a minute. Just one minute to let the room stop tilting.
The south training yard was a bare, dusty patch under a flat, pale sky. Levi stood with his back to the morning wind, checking the mechanism on his ODM gear with a tense, repetitive click. 0500. No Amiya. 0502. His jaw tightened. By 0507, a cold, familiar anger had settled in his gut. This wasn’t defiance. This was something else.
He turned on his heel, his boots striking the hard ground with sharp, quick taps as he marched back into the barracks. The hallway was silent, still holding the night’s chill. He didn’t knock. He shoved her door open, the wood thudding against the wall inside.
He found her sitting on the edge of her bed, fully dressed, boots on. She was bent forward, one hand pressed hard into her side, the other braced on her knee. Her hair, usually neatly braided, hung loose and damp around a face that was the color of old parchment.
“You’re late.” He snapped, the words cutting the quiet.
She didn’t jump. She lifted her head slowly, as if it were a great weight. Her green eyes were glassy, red-rimmed. The tracks of tears were clear on her cheeks, gleaming in the low light.
“Sorry…” The word was a thin exhale. She swallowed, her throat working. “I… can’t move right now.”
Her voice was strained, frayed at the edges from a pain she was clearly losing the battle against. He saw the rigid line of her shoulders, the tremble in her pressed hand, the way her entire being was focused on containing whatever was happening inside her. This wasn’t an act. This was the raw, unperformative truth of her injury.
The anger in him dissolved, leaving behind a clear, cold pool of assessment. He stepped fully into the room and closed the door softly behind him. The casual cruelty he might have wielded for mere tardiness died on his tongue.
“What did you do.” It wasn’t a question.
“Woke up,” she managed, a weak, pathetic attempt at a shrug that made her suck in a sharp breath. “That’s all. Just… woke up.”
He moved closer, his eyes cataloging details. The misaligned buttons on her jacket. The slight scuff on one boot where she might have stumbled. She had tried. She had gotten this far and then her body had simply revolted.
“The doctor cleared you for light duty,” he stated, his tone flat.
“Doctors are optimistic idiots,” she whispered, closing her eyes.
A muscle in his jaw feathered. He looked at her, this soldier who had stood in the war room and asked logical questions about her own potential demise, now rendered immobile by the simple, brutal mechanics of healing. The component was faulty. The variable was breaking down.
He could report it. Tell Erwin the plan needed revision. He saw the shame on her face, the frustration in the tight line of her mouth. She would hate that. She would see it as a failure, not of spirit, but of utility.
Without a word, he walked to her small washbasin, wet a cloth in the cool water, and wring it out. He returned and held it out to her. “For your face.”
She opened her eyes, looking at the cloth, then at him, with a confusion that bordered on disbelief. She took it slowly, her fingers brushing his. The contact was brief, cold. She pressed the cloth to her eyes, her breath shuddering.
“The drilling today,” he said, looking away, out her tiny window. “It’s formations. Walking the route. Theory. You can sit for that. You can listen.”
“I should be running it,” she said, her voice muffled by the cloth.
“You can’t even stand, Ito.” The truth was blunt, but his delivery lacked its usual edge. It was just fact. “Sitting and listening is your job today. The acting comes later.”
He gave her a moment, listening to her breathing gradually even out. The worst of the spasm was passing. He watched her lower the cloth, fold it neatly in her lap with trembling hands. The soldier reasserting order over the pain.
“Can you walk if you’re leaning on something?” he asked.
She considered, then gave a small, cautious nod. “Probably. If it’s stable.”
“I’m stable.” He said it like he was commenting on the weather. He stepped closer and offered his arm, not his hand, a solid, horizontal bar of support for her to grip. “We’re going to be late. Again. But at least you’ll be present for your own tactical dismantling.”
A faint, watery sound escaped her—not quite a laugh, but an acknowledgment of the grim humor. She reached out and gripped his forearm, her fingers digging into the leather of his sleeve. Her other hand pushed down on the mattress, and she rose, unsteady, a sharp hiss escaping her clenched teeth.
Once upright, she swayed, but held fast. Her weight against his arm was slight but total. He adjusted his stance, bearing it without comment.
“Slow steps,” he instructed, his voice low. “Don’t try to keep up with my pace. Set your own.”
They moved toward the door like that, a slow, shuffling procession. Her focus was on the floor, on breathing, on not breaking. His was on the doorframe, on the empty hall, on the precise amount of support to give—enough to prevent a fall, not enough to diminish her own effort.
As they crossed the threshold, he spoke again, the words almost lost in the shuffle of their feet.
“The first rule of selling a lie is knowing the truth inside and out. You’re learning the truth today. Remember how it feels.”
She nodded, her gaze fixed ahead on the long hallway. The trap was waiting. But for now, the walk to the training yard was the only mission that mattered. He matched his stride to her shuffling pace, an unspoken concession, and they moved forward together into the grey morning.
He matched his stride to her shuffling pace, an unspoken concession, and they moved forward together into the grey morning.
The training yard was less a yard and more a marked-out section of scrubland bordering the forest. The rest of the selected squad was already there: Eren, vibrating with nervous energy, Oluo Bozado preening his mustache, and Eld Gin looking calmly competent. Their eyes tracked the slow, awkward approach. Levi ignored them, guiding Amiya to a weathered crate beside the practice dummy.
“Sit,” he ordered, then turned to the others. “She’s observing. You’re running the sequence. From the top.”
The drills were merciless in their simplicity. Over and over, they practiced the break from the column, the feigned panic, the defensive circle around Eren with one side conspicuously weak. Levi’s voice was a constant, sharp correction. “Eren, you look like you’re waiting for a bus, not running for your life. Oluo, stop posing. The Titan doesn’t care about your profile.”
Amiya watched, absorbing the choreography of their intended failure. The pain in her side settled into a dull, ever-present roar. She noted the angles, the spacing, the specific tree markers Levi designated as observer positions. Her fingers traced imaginary lines in the dust on her knee.
During a water break, Eren wandered over, his canteen clutched tight. “You really think it’ll fall for this, Ito?” he asked, his young face etched with doubt.
“It’s not about it falling for anything,” she said, her voice low. “It’s about presenting it with an opportunity it’s already looking for. We’re just… making the opportunity obvious.” She looked past him to where Levi was scrutinizing a map with Eld. “The Captain thinks it will work. That’s what matters.”
Levi’s head lifted as if he’d heard her. “Break’s over. Ito, on your feet.”
The next part was for her. He walked her through the staggered retreat, the specific stumble she was to perform near a particular birch tree. “Not there,” he snapped the first time, catching her elbow as she teetered. “Three paces back. Your gas canister is supposed to be leaking, not your sense of direction.”
“Sorry,” she gasped, the real pain making the apology breathless.
“Don’t be sorry. Be accurate.”
They repeated it ten times. Twenty. Each movement was pared down to the essential tremor, the gritted-teeth grimace. He was a brutal director. “Your hand goes to your left side, not your right. The injury is here.” He poked a finger just below her ribs, making her flinch. “Sell it. Even to yourself.”
By week’s end, she could run the sequence without thought, her body co-opting the real ache into the performed one. She moved with the squad, a limping, integral part of the machine. In the evenings, she collapsed onto her bed, asleep before her head hit the thin pillow, the letter opener gathering dust on her desk.
The morning of the expedition dawned clear and cold. The air smelled of horse, leather, and the damp earth of spring. Amiya checked her gear with numb fingers, the routine movements a talisman against the fear coiling in her gut. She saw Levi across the bustling courtyard, checking his horse’s girth with a focused intensity. Their eyes didn’t meet.
The column moved out, a serpent of green and brown winding into the wilderness. The familiar dread of the open field was a taste in the back of her throat. For hours, there was only the rhythmic plod of hooves, the jangle of harnesses, the vast, watchful silence of the trees.
Then, the signal.
A flare, a pre-arranged misfire of green smoke from their flank. Levi’s head snapped up. “Now!” he barked, his voice cutting through the calm. “Gear failure! On me!”
The performance began. They peeled away from the safety of the column, five riders becoming a desperate, isolated knot. Amiya let her posture sag, one hand pressed to her side as they urged their horses into the narrow pass. Her breathing, part real fatigue, part acted strain, clouded in the cold air.
The world narrowed to the dank gullet of the pass. Shadows lengthened. The sound of the main corps faded, swallowed by thick pine and mossy stone. This was the stage.
They hadn’t waited long.
A tremor in the earth, subtle at first, then a deep, rhythmic thud. It came from behind them, blocking the way back. The horses shied, eyes rolling white. They turned as one.
The Female Titan stood at the mouth of the pass, sunlight glinting off its crystalline skin. It was exactly as she remembered: serene, monstrous, and utterly focused. Its empty eyes swept over them, lingering for a heartbeat on Eren, then flicking to Amiya. A recognition? Or just tactical assessment?
It charged.
The trap sprang in reverse. They scattered, not as a disciplined unit, but as a panicked, broken team. Oluo and Eld fired hooks, not to attack, but to feint and retreat, herding the Titan deeper into the kill zone. Levi was a blur, a distraction buzzing at its periphery.
Amiya played her part. She fumbled a gas reload, letting the canister clatter to the rocks. She stumbled backward, putting a gnarled oak between her and the Titan, her movements just slow enough, just clumsy enough. The Titan’s hand swept out, shattering the tree trunk above her head. She dove, the impact sending a bolt of genuine agony through her chest.
This was it. The moment of vulnerability.
A shrill whistle pierced the air—the observer’s signal. From the high trees on both sides of the pass, a web of cables shot down, not at the Titan’s limbs, but at the ground around it. Specialist teams, hidden until now, launched anchored nets woven with hardened steel threads.
The Titan’s foot caught. It stumbled, its incredible momentum working against it. More nets deployed, tangling its arms. Levi saw the opening. He shot forward, not with blades, but with a massive, spring-loaded clamp apparatus designed by Hange. He slammed it onto the Titan’s ankle. There was a sharp crack of released energy, then a piercing shriek as the crystalline flesh was pinned to the bedrock beneath.
It was over. The Female Titan thrashed, but the more it struggled, the more the reinforced nets constricted. A coordinated volley of flare guns erupted, painting the sky in success colors. The main corps, waiting just beyond the ridge, began to converge.
The silence after the cacophony was abrupt and ringing. Amiya leaned against a boulder, her whole body trembling from adrenaline and strain. She watched as teams secured the cables, as Levi stood before the captured Titan, his face impassive. They had done it. No one died. The component had functioned.
Levi walked toward her, his steps crunching on the broken rock. His grey eyes scanned her, a quick, professional once-over. “You’re standing. Good.”
“Told you I could sell it,” she said, her voice shaky. A weird, light-headed giddiness bubbled up through the pain. They had won.
“You looked like shit. It was convincing.” He almost sounded approving. He nodded toward the horses being led into the pass by the cleanup crew. “Mount up. The hard part’s over. Now we just have to get this thing back behind the walls without it breaking free.”
She pushed off the boulder. The world tilted slightly, a delayed wave of exhaustion swamping her systems. The fierce focus that had sustained her for hours evaporated, leaving behind the raw, unmediated truth of a body pushed far beyond its limits. The ache in her ribs was a deep, throbbing burn. Her legs felt like water.
She took one step toward her horse, then another. The distance seemed to stretch. Levi was already turning, his attention shifting to the containment logistics.
“Captain,” she said, her tongue feeling thick.
He glanced back.
The edges of her vision softened, darkening like paper held to a flame. A profound, irresistible weight pulled at her bones. It wasn’t like before. This was soft, a seductive plunge.
“I…I think I’m going to sleep.”
The words were a faint, almost peaceful sigh. Then her knees unlocked. She collapsed forward, a marionette with its strings cut, the hard ground rushing up not as a threat, but as an answer.