Chapter Text
They staged the atmospheric suite the way you stage a mistake you can’t afford to name.
Pressure stable. Mix queued. Console awake but untouched, nothing yet turned against him. The room was too bright, too clean in the way RDA clean always was: surfaces wiped, corners sharp, a thin chemical smell that never quite covered what lived underneath.
Spider lay strapped to the transport bed at center, wrists and ankles, a broad belt across his hips. Bare-faced with air that tasted like nothing and a throat that didn’t trust it.
Under his sternum, the thing granted by Eywa that let him breath Pandoran air initiated irritated pulls, like a fist testing a grip. It wasn’t panic. It was awareness.
Kessler stood at the main console, tablet in hand, her other hand moving through checklists with clipped precision. Ramirez hovered at a counter laying out sealed packs and sterile lines. Two techs checked valves, ports, seals. Everyone moved like they’d rehearsed this with mannequins.
No one looked at Spider longer than necessary.
The intercom clicked.
“Doctor Kessler.”
Ardmore’s voice came through clean. flat, controlled, as if she were reading an inventory list instead of speaking over a 17 year old's body.
Kessler didn’t turn. “Suite staged,” she said. “No challenges initiated. Host stable.”
A beat.
“Good,” Ardmore said. “Then adjust. Corporate has advanced the deliverable.”
Kessler’s fingers paused above the tablet for the length of a breath.
“How advanced?” she asked.
“One hour,” Ardmore said. “Thirty minutes to prep. Then you begin.”
Ramirez went still with a sterile pack half-opened. One of the techs stopped mid-check, hand on a pressure gauge. The room held itself, listening to the sentence settle.
Kessler’s jaw flexed once. “General, we are not at a point where invasive sampling is—”
“You’re at a point where you either produce something,” Ardmore cut in, “or you get replaced by someone who will.”
Kessler’s voice sharpened. “If we breach near the interface, it will clamp down. We risk a total loss.”
“Then you learn faster,” Ardmore said. “The board isn’t paying for caution. They’re paying for results.”
Spider stared at the ceiling panel seams and tried to keep his breathing even—slow in, slow out—like he could control the shape of the next hour by refusing to give them fear on a platter.
Under his ribs, the symbiote tightened again, as if it heard "breach" and disliked the taste of it.
Kessler didn’t yield immediately. She leaned into the fight like it was the only leverage she had left.
“We can give you data,” she said. “Mapping. Blood gases. Gas-exchange curves. But if you force a cut attempting to extract Entity-01, you’ll get a dead host and a defensive collapse. You’ll get nothing usable.”
“You’ll give me something usable,” Ardmore replied, calm as a knife.
Kessler’s voice dropped—controlled, but edged. “You want product, General? Then you want the host alive long enough for the interface to behave.”
Silence on the line for a beat.
Then Ardmore: “Thirty minutes, Doctor.”
The channel cut.
The room exhaled. Not relief. Just motion restarting.
Kessler turned to her team. “Transfer,” she said. “OR suite.”
Ramirez blinked. “We haven’t—”
“We don't get to run the tests,” Kessler snapped. “Not now.” Her eyes flicked once toward the bay door, toward the corridor beyond as if she could feel the facility shifting. “Move.”
They unlocked the bed. The wheels whispered.
Spider’s shoulders pressed into the thin padding as the room slid past above him—lights, vents, a camera eye in the corner that watched without blinking.
They reached the airlock threshold.
And the intercom clicked again.
Sharper this time. No wasted syllables.
“Kessler.”
Kessler stopped them right there, before the inner door could cycle.
“General,” she said.
Ardmore didn’t bother with corporate vocabulary now. Her voice carried a new pressure, a quiet urgency that wasn’t fear—it was calculation.
“Sully is inside my facility.”
The air in Spider’s lungs seemed to thin on the words.
Ramirez’s face drained, as if someone had pulled a plug.
One tech’s hand went to the edge of the counter, steadying himself.
Kessler didn’t flinch. But Spider saw the shift in her eyes—attention narrowing, options collapsing.
“Confirmed?” Kessler asked.
Ardmore’s reply was immediate. “Confirmed enough.”
Then, as if she’d been waiting to say it:
“Host viability is no longer the priority.”
Kessler’s voice went hard. “If you kill him, the interface—”
“I don’t care,” Ardmore said, and the bluntness of it was its own kind of violence. “I want tissue. Anything Entity-01 built. Anything it leaves behind. If Sully takes the host from us, I want something on my desk when he does.”
Spider’s throat tightened. His fingers twitched against the restraints.
Under his sternum, the thing in him drew tight like a threatened animal.
Kessler stepped closer to the bed, but she didn’t look down at Spider—she looked at the airlock door, the corridor, the unseen paths Sully would have to carve through to get here.
“General,” she said, controlled, “you push invasive sampling right now, it will trigger a defensive response. You will get—”
“A dead host?” Ardmore cut in. “Fine. A dead host that leaves me a specimen is still better than an empty lab.”
Ramirez sucked in a breath and didn’t let it out.
Kessler’s mouth went thin. “You’re ordering me to do a rushed cut in a corridor bay.”
“I’m ordering you to move him to the surgical suite and begin,” Ardmore said. “Now. Security is already moving to your wing. If you delay, you will be reprimanded and I promise, it will not be pretty.”
Kessler held the silence for half a second longer than she should have dared.
Then she spoke like someone sliding a blade into a seam—stalling without looking like she was stalling.
“Understood,” she said. “We are moving him.”
“And Doctor,” Ardmore added, voice almost bored again, “don’t mistake my patience for yours.”
The channel cut.
For a heartbeat no one moved.
Then Kessler turned—sharp, economical. “Cycle the lock.”
The airlock hissed. The inner door unlatched.
And they rolled Spider out of the atmospheric suite into the facility’s throat.
---
The hallway was just hallway. Only the sound of wheels, the quick cadence of boots on polished floor, the deeper, softer pad of Kessler’s steps keeping pace at the head of the gurney.
Two armed security met them at the first checkpoint without a word and fell into formation—one in front, one behind, rifles carried ready but angled away from the bed like that mattered.
Kessler didn’t look at them. She didn’t need to. She looked forward, eyes pinned on the next door, the next badge scan, the next lock.
Spider watched ceiling lights drift overhead like a slow strobe. He tried to count them to keep his mind anchored.
One. Two. Three...
A distant thud trembled through the structure, faint enough that the guards pretended not to notice it.
Spider noticed it anyway.
The thing in his chest tightened again, like it recognized vibration and didn’t like what it implied.
They passed through the second checkpoint. A decontamination corridor with sealed vents. An inner door that opened into bright surgical light.
The OR suite sat nested behind reinforced frames, steel, glass, and clean surfaces that felt like a lie. A place built to keep contaminants out and secrets in.
The bed rolled in.
Spider’s eyes caught on the operating table and his stomach dropped.
They transferred him with brisk hands—lift, slide, strap. Wider restraints now, placed with purpose. Arms out. Palms up. Presenting him.
A monitor snapped to life with a series of crisp beeps.
Numbers climbed into place.
**HR 128**
**SpO₂ 95%**
**RR 20**
Kessler leaned in at his head for a quick assessment—eyes, jaw, the tension at his throat.
“You’re going to feel heavy,” she said, low enough that it was just for him. Information. “Fentanyl.”
Spider swallowed. His mouth was dry.
Ramirez was already drawing up the dose, hands too steady for how pale his face looked.
Kessler didn’t waste words. “Small dose,” she said.
Ramirez nodded once. “Copy.”
The IV line flushed.
And then the drug slid in.
At first Spider didn’t feel anything.
Then his limbs started to sink.
Not asleep. Not gone. Just…heavy, as if gravity had doubled and nobody told him. His eyelids wanted to close. His chest felt warmer, slower. The room’s edges softened.
His breathing changed before his brain fully noticed it.
The next inhale was smaller.
The one after that smaller still.
The monitor beep stayed steady, indifferent.
**RR 16**
**SpO₂ 94%**
Spider tried to pull a deeper breath and found his body didn’t want to spend the effort.
A thought arrived, slow and sticky: That’s bad.
He couldn’t make his hands clench properly. He couldn’t make his tongue shape words fast enough to matter.
Under his sternum, the symbiote pulsed once—tight, irritated, like it didn’t like this slow-down. Like it didn’t like anything that made breathing feel optional.
Kessler watched the monitor for half a second, then leaned in to Ramirez. “Hold there,” she said. “Don’t stack.”
Ramirez nodded, eyes on the numbers.
**HR 118**
**RR 14**
**SpO₂ 93%**
Spider’s eyes drifted. The surgical light above him looked too bright and too far away.
He tried to think of the reef—the taste of salt, the sound of water, the weightlessness of floating.
His mind kept sliding sideways.
A door clanged somewhere outside. Far enough that it might have been nothing. Close enough that everyone in the room stiffened.
Kessler’s voice cut clean through the tension. “Prep suction. Get the laryngoscope ready. We are not paralyzing until we’re at the point of no return.”
Ramirez glanced at her. “We’re really doing this?”
Kessler didn’t blink but added quietly. “We’re doing what keeps him alive long enough to stop being alone in this building.”
She didn’t say "Sully is coming". She didn’t say "please".
But Spider heard it anyway, in the way she kept her hands busy, in the way she didn’t let Ramirez reach for the next syringe.
His breathing went smaller again.
The beeps tightened slightly as the monitor updated.
**RR 12**
**SpO₂ 92%**
A tech murmured, “He’s dipping.”
Kessler’s hand moved—fast, practiced—reaching for an oxygen mask.
Then she stopped herself.
Because a mask meant equipment. Equipment meant time. And the room felt like it had stopped having time.
She did the simpler thing: “Jaw thrust,” she ordered.
A tech stepped in, hands at Spider’s jaw, lifting gently. Spider’s airway opened a fraction, enough that his next breath didn’t scrape.
The thing in his chest loosened, just slightly.
Kessler leaned in close enough that Spider could see the fine tension around her mouth. “Stay with me,” she said—quiet, with no emotion. A command to his biology.
Spider tried.
He really tried.
His eyes slid.
His thoughts came slow.
He caught fragments: a hand on his forehead—no, that was earlier, that was memory—Kiri’s face by water—Jake’s voice like thunder—
A distant alarm rose, not yet screaming, just waking up.
Then the sound that changed the room:
A blunt, concussive impact closer than before.
The OR’s door handle jerked once.
The security outside shouted something Spider couldn’t parse through the syrup in his skull.
Kessler’s head snapped up. Her eyes met Ramirez’s.
“Do not push the paralytic,” she said.
Ramirez’s hand froze above the tray.
The door slammed inward under a second impact, hard enough that the reinforced latch screamed.
A third hit—metal complaining, bolts shearing—
And then the door blew open.
Not fire. Force.
The first guard in the doorway didn’t get to raise his rifle.
An arrow took him in the throat and pinned him to the frame like a sign.
Neytiri came in behind the shot like the arrow had opened the air for her.
Not frantic. Not wild. Precision rage held in a shape sharp enough to cut.
Onsu was at the edge of the breach, spear already wet, his eyes cold and unblinking. Two Metkayina hunters flowed with him, low and fast, clearing angles like they’d been born into corridors. Tsyeru and Kalek were creating distractions on the other end of the compound.
Jake hit the room like gravity.
Bare feet on clean tile, silent and lethal. No hesitation, just a straight line to the table.
Lo’ak didn’t crowd. He did what a kid raised in a war does when the door becomes a threat—he spun to the doorway, shoved a cart hard into the opening, and turned the entry into a choke point. He planted himself there, blade out, eyes furious and bright.
He wasn’t there to talk.
He was there to make sure no one got past him.
Jake reached Spider in three strides.
Spider tried to speak.
He couldn’t.
His body was too heavy to carry words.
Jake’s hand landed on his forehead—firm, grounding, real.
“Hey,” Jake said, low. “I’ve got you.”
Spider’s eyes found Jake’s face for a second—just a second—and something inside him unclenched in a way his lungs understood better than his mind.
Kessler lifted her hands—empty, visible. “He’s dosed,” she said quickly. “Fentanyl. Opioid. Small, but he’s drifting. Breathing’s slowed.”
Jake’s gaze flicked to the monitor in a single, sharp cut.
**HR 110**
**RR 10**
**SpO₂ 91%**
Jake’s jaw tightened. “Can you reverse it?”
Ramirez swallowed, voice thin. “Naloxone. Yes. But—”
“But if we give him too much, his heart may give out,” Kessler finished, and her eyes flicked to the chaos at the door. “He's exhausted and reaching his limit.”
Jake didn’t argue with maybes.
“Give him enough to get him out of here,” he said. “No more.”
Kessler’s eyes held his for half a heartbeat, surprised at the precision.
Then she nodded once—fast. “Push.”
Ramirez moved like his life depended on it, which it probably did.
A tiny dose pushed into the IV.
Spider’s chest twitched.
His next inhale came a fraction deeper—still small, but his.
**RR 12**
**SpO₂ 92%**
Jake was already cutting straps—blade flashing once, clean and efficient. The restraint across Spider’s hips snapped free. His wrists loosened. His arm slid heavy off the table.
Jake hauled him up against his chest, one arm locked under Spider’s shoulders, the other under his knees—carry position that kept Spider’s airway open, kept his head from lolling back.
“Move,” Jake said.
It wasn’t a request.
Onsu and one hunter flowed out first, clearing the corridor. The second hunter stayed close to Jake’s shoulder—shielding without touching. Neytiri pivoted to the OR door, arrow already nocked, body angled so she could see the hall and still see Jake in peripheral.
Lo’ak held the choke point.
A rifle barrel shoved through the gap beside the cart.
Lo’ak’s knife flashed. The barrel dropped. A man shouted. Lo’ak didn’t wait—he kicked the cart forward hard, crushing fingers against the frame, and the scream that followed was cut off by another arrow from Neytiri that didn’t miss.
Brutal. Clean.
Jake didn’t look back.
He carried Spider out.
They didn’t run down the main artery.
They cut into service corridors—narrow, unglamorous, built for staff movement and equipment transport. The kind of place a big force hated because it turned numbers into useless noise.
Onsu signaled turns with a flick of two fingers. This was a tactical and precise exit.
Spider’s head lolled against Jake’s shoulder.
The world came in frames: ceiling lights…Jake’s braid…a smear of blood on tile…Neytiri’s silhouette behind them like a blade guarding the retreat…Lo’ak’s breath, ragged and furious, just behind.
Spider tried to stay awake.
His body wanted to sink.
He felt the drug still sitting on him—warm heaviness at the base of everything, like sleep with teeth.
Another breath came shallow.
Jake adjusted his grip without slowing, angling Spider slightly more upright.
“Breathe,” Jake said, low in his ear. “Come on, kid.”
Spider tried.
The thing in his chest pulsed, tight, annoyed, as if it could feel that the drug had its thumb on the scale.
His next inhale was still small, but it was there.
Behind them, the facility finally found its voice.
Alarms rose. Doors cycled. Boots thundered.
Neytiri answered with silence and arrows.
Lo’ak answered with teeth.
Onsu answered with spearwork that didn’t waste motion.
Jake answered by not stopping.
By holding Spider like the only law that mattered was home.
And Spider—heavy, half-drifting, lungs working on a thread—clung to the one clear thing left in his smeared mind:
They came.
The corridor turned.
Light shifted.
Air changed.
And somewhere ahead, the facility’s walls began to tremble with the larger response closing in.
Jake didn’t slow.
He carried Spider into the next stretch of shadow like the world owed him this one thing back.