Chapter Text
The first RDA signal didn’t come as a bullet or a drone or a roar of engines. It came as a sound Spider hadn’t heard in months: a human voice speaking English into open air.
“Kid. Over here.”
It floated through the mangrove roots on a warm afternoon when the tide was low and the saltflies were irritating enough that even Lo’ak had stopped talking.
The three of them - Lo’ak, Spider, and Kiri - were picking their way across the slick roots back toward Awa’atlu, their catch bags half full and Tuk already home helping Ronal clean fish.
Spider froze midstep. Standard English didn’t belong out here. It didn’t melt into the waves or bounce off mangrove bark. It felt like metal in the mouth.
Lo’ak’s head snapped up. “You hear that?”
Kiri heard it too—her pupils went huge, scanning the treeline. The air suddenly tasted wrong.
Spider swallowed. “Who..?”
“Over here,” the voice called again. Smooth. Measured. Not a yell, just someone who expected compliance.
Lo’ak reached for his bow without drawing. His whole posture shifted, relaxed shoulders gone tight, weight balanced on the balls of his feet.
Kiri put her hand on Spider’s arm, inching him behind her. “That’s not one of ours.”
“Yeah,” Spider breathed, heartbeat kicking up. “No shit.”
There was a swish of brush, then a man stepped out from behind a tangle of roots. Exopack, matte-black suit, weapon down but visible. Not shooting, yet. His visor glinted like a shard of sun.
Spider’s mouth went dry.
“Relax,” the man said through his speaker, like they were in a grocery aisle on Earth. “We’re not here to fight.”
Lo’ak barked a bitter laugh. “Oh yeah? You guys forgetting what happened last time you said that?”
The man’s gaze slid past Lo’ak and landed on Spider. Not hostile. Worse. Assessing.
“We need to speak with you,” he said. “Just you.”
Kiri’s hand tightened on Spider’s wrist. “He’s not going anywhere.”
The man didn’t look at her. He kept his visor on Spider like a scanner.
“We know what happened during the Ash event,” he said. “We just want to know how you're breathing the air.”
Spider’s skin went cold. He felt suddenly exposed and under the type of scrutiny that brought back memories of different kind of scanners and needles and tubes. He shivered while stepping closer to Lo’ak without meaning to.
“What makes you think we're going to tell you?,” Kiri snapped.
The man ignored that too. “We want to help you. There are labs. Scientists. People who understand your condition.”
Condition. The word tasted like sickness. Spider felt something coil tight in his chest; it felt like anger or fear or maybe both.
“I don’t need your help,” he snarled. Why was it always some bullshit about “wanting to help”?
The man tilted his head. “Maybe not today. But things change. You’re different. And difference is…isolating.”
That one landed like a dart.
Spider opened his mouth, but footsteps thundered from behind and Lo’ak moved so fast Spider barely registered it until there was an arrow aimed at visor-glass.
“Back,” Lo’ak snarled, fangs bared, tail rigid. “Now.”
The man raised one gloved hand in a slow placating gesture.
Then three more emerged from the foliage—silent, smooth, practiced. Two in full tactical plating, one carrying a compact net launcher that made Spider’s stomach drop. Kiri hissed through her teeth.
Lo’ak pulled the string tighter. The line trembled with barely-contained fury.
Before anyone fired, the first man spoke again—this time into his suit comm. “Asset located.”
Spider didn’t have time to flinch.
A high-pitched *pftht!* snapped the air and something wrapped Spider from shoulder to ankle. It was sticky, constricting and electric. He hit the mangrove roots hard, breath punched out of him in a soundless grunt. The net crackled, making his muscles spasm, his fingers seize around nothing.
Lo’ak shouted - raw and wordless - and fired, but one of the plated soldiers slammed a ballistic shield up, arrow skittering harmlessly off polycarbon.
Kiri lunged for Spider, but another net snagged her leg. She dodged it, ripping it off before it fullydeployed, shrieking a curse that Spider had never heard from her before.
Spider tried to speak (anything) but the net tightened with each breath, squeezing his ribs. His lungs stuttered, panic spiking fast and ugly as his diaphragm fought the shock current.
“Lo—” he choked, but it came out a strangled bark.
Lo’ak went feral.
He didn’t shoot, he *leapt*, slamming into one of the soldiers with enough force to crack the visor. They went down in the roots, tangled in limbs and curses. Kiri drove her elbow into the throat of another man, knocking him sideways, but there were too many. Spider’s ears rang with shouts, the whipping hiss of taser lines, Lo’ak’s snarling voice.
The first man approached Spider, stepping over roots and bodies like he was stepping off a curb. “Easy, kid,” he said, kneeling. “This will be faster if you don’t fight.” Spider fought anyway. He jerked and twisted, but the net cinched tighter, the electric current making his jaw clench so hard his teeth ached. Air burned going in and didn’t want to go out. His heart slammed against a ribcage that wouldn’t expand right. His vision frayed at the edges—white noise and salt and breathlessness.
Someone shouted his name, Kiri, breaking on the vowel but a soldier hauled her back with an armacross her chest, dragging her into the roots as she kicked and clawed.
Lo’ak broke free long enough to grab at Spider’s ankle, “DON’T TOUCH HIM!”, but two men tackled him from the side. His head hit wood with a sickening crack and he went slack.
Spider tried to scream but no sound came, his throat seized around dry air and static. Tears, stupid and involuntary tears blurred his vision.
The man leaned close, pressed something cold against Spider’s neck. A hiss from what could only be a tranquilizer.
Spider’s muscles liquefied. His thoughts scattered like startled birds. Every inhale felt thinner, edges fraying, gravity tugging at his limbs. The mangroves tilted sideways. Kiri’s voice twisted into something distant and underwater.
His last coherent thought was stupid and small: Please don’t let them take me. Please don’t make me go back to that.
Then everything went black.