Chapter Text
By the time Jake and Lo’ak got back from the mangroves, Awa’atlu had shifted into something else.
The sun still sat high enough to glitter on the water, but the village moved like a body bracing for impact—voices lowered, paths clearing without anyone being told, the usual laughter thinned into a tight, watchful quiet. Even the ilu in the shallows clicked and snorted under their breath, restless at the tension hanging over the reef.
Jake tasted it the way he’d tasted a battlefield before the first shot.
He stepped onto the main platform and felt a dozen eyes land on him in the same heartbeat—Metkayina and Sully alike. Tonowari was already there, broad shoulders squared. Neytiri stood a half-step behind him, bow in hand, her stillness more frightening than any pacing. Ronal was on the edge of the water.
Tuk hovered close to Tsireya, smaller than usual, fingers hooked into the weave at Tsireya’s hip like an anchor. Her eyes tracked Jake’s face, searching.
Jake didn’t slow. He didn’t let himself. If he stopped long enough to feel, he’d break something he couldn’t afford to break yet.
“West,” he said the moment he hit the center of the platform, voice carrying just enough to cut through the murmur. “Drag marks. Net filament. They moved him on foot to a pickup point, not a ship.”
Lo’ak stayed to Jake’s left, jaw tight, bruise blooming along his cheekbone like a storm cloud. He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. His whole body was an apology he refused to say out loud.
Tonowari’s nostrils flared. “How far?”
Jake flicked a glance at the reef line—measuring time and distance the way his old training still did automatically. “Not close,” he said. “But not Bridgehead. Forward lab. Old scar territory.”
Neytiri’s fingers flexed on her bowstring, silent tension in the cord. Her eyes didn’t leave Jake’s face.
Ronal took one step forward. “They will hurt him,” she said, voice flat and certain. Not dramatic. Just truth. “They always hurt.”
Jake didn’t argue. “We’re moving,” he said. “But we’re not running blind.”
Jake looked at Tonowari. “I need the comm hut.”
Tonowari’s gaze snapped to him, then he nodded once. “Go.”
Neytiri moved with Jake without being asked.
They crossed Awa’atlu’s woven walkways at a purposeful pace, ducking under hanging nets and shell charms that tinkled faintly in the salt breeze. People flattened out of their way without instruction. They knew what the Sullys looked like when they were going to war.
The comm hut sat tucked into the marui like a secret—human hardware lashed to reef architecture, cables threaded through coral brackets, old consoles humming under a canopy of dried kelp. The air inside was thick with humidity and faintly metallic, like storm air trapped in a box.
Kiri was already there.
She knelt by the console with the headset crooked over one ear, braid slipping loose down her back. Her hands were steady on the keys, but her shoulders were rigid in a way Jake didn’t like. Her eyes lifted when he stepped in—too bright, too sharp, like she was holding herself together by force.
“Norm’s on,” she said. No greeting. No wasted words.
Jake slid into the chair and keyed the mic. “Norm.”
The response came fast, crackling through static, Norm’s voice clipped tight with strain. “Jake.”
“Talk to me.”
Paper rustled on Norm’s end—maps, old schematics. Jake pictured him hunched over a table at High Camp with Max at his shoulder, both of them looking at the world like it was a math problem with a dead kid as the penalty for getting it wrong.
“They’re using Forward Research Bay Eight as intake,” Norm said. “Ventilation ties into lower atmospheric sim labs. Ardmore’s people are treating this like a time-sensitive project.”
“What’s their security profile?” Jake asked.
“Not Bridgehead,” Norm said, as if reading Jake’s mind. “But not soft. Roof turrets. Drones. Rotation of armed security. Main access is a raised corridor. Two viable ingress routes topside without getting turned into paste—service trench along the north ridge, or old waste uplink chute.”
Jake’s eyes flicked once to Neytiri, then to Lo’ak. Lo’ak was leaning against the frame like a caged animal, arms folded hard across his chest.
“Blind spots?” Jake asked.
Norm exhaled through his nose. “East side faces a cliff drop into a ravine. They never armored it properly. No one expects anyone to come from that direction. Too steep, too loose. Your best bet for staging.”
Jake didn’t hesitate. “Copy.”
Kiri was already shifting, rising as if her body couldn’t tolerate being still. “I’m going,” she said, voice low, fierce.
Jake turned his head toward her. The look was enough to make the hut feel smaller.
“You’re not breaching,” he said.
Kiri’s eyes flashed. “Dad—”
“Listen.” Jake’s voice stayed quiet, but it had that steel in it—the tone he used when he needed people to obey without breaking. “When we get him out, he may not be okay. He’s going to need you to steady him.”
Kiri’s throat bobbed, anger and fear tangling so tight they almost sounded the same.
“You want to do something that matters?” Jake continued. “You go to Norm. You make sure the Samson is where it needs to be. You make sure Max is ready. You make sure we don’t lose him in the last five minutes because we didn’t have the right equipment at the right time.”
Kiri’s hands curled into fists at her sides. She looked like she wanted to rip the headset off the wall and throw it.
Jake leaned in a fraction, lowering his voice further. “You will be the handoff,” he said. “You will be the reason he makes it home.”
Silence stretched thin.
Neytiri watched Kiri’s face like she was memorizing the expression.
Kiri’s jaw tightened. Then she nodded—sharp, once. “Fine,” she said, and it didn’t mean fine. It meant *I hate this and I understand why you’re doing it and I will carry it anyway.*
Jake reached out, squeezed her shoulder once—hard and brief—and turned back to the console before any of them could soften.
“Norm,” Jake said. “You and Max get airborne. Low and quiet. Kill your lights. Stay below their radar sweep. I’ll give you a signal when we’re ready for pickup.”
Norm’s voice dipped. “We can be wheels up in under an hour. We’ve got med gear—portable oxygen rig, seal kits, blood expanders. Everything we can carry.”
“Good,” Jake said. “We’ll clear you a patch of sky.”
Lo’ak’s voice finally cracked the air, rougher than usual. “They started yet?”
There was a beat on the line.
Norm didn’t lie. “They moved him into the atmosphere suite,” he said. “They’re doing gas challenge protocols. Trying to map what the entity does under stress.”
Lo’ak’s hands clenched, knuckles going pale.
Kiri went very still.
Jake felt something tighten behind his ribs—cold pressure and heat at once.
Norm’s voice softened a fraction. “We’re coming too,” he said. “He’s not alone in there.”
Jake killed the line before his throat could betray him.
He stood. “We meet at the water in ten,” he said, already moving. “No more than we need. Fast and quiet.”
Lo’ak followed. Neytiri followed. They didn’t discuss it. They didn’t have to.
---
At the ilu pens, the reef wind hit them clean—salt and sun and the slap of water against woven platforms. Skimwings cut the surface farther out, long bodies slicing through the swell with impatient grace. The ocean beyond the reef rolled heavy and open, deep-water swells lifting and dropping the horizon like a slow breath.
The hunters were already assembling.
Onsu stood nearest the waterline, tall and scarred, his gaze sharp and steady. Beside him were four other Metkayina—Tsyeru and Kalek, both with the look of experienced warriors Jake had fought alongside before, plus two more hunters Jake didn’t know by name but recognized by posture: shoulders set, eyes clear, movements economical. Their spears were checked and rechecked, bone tips wicked and clean. Their ilu waited in the shallows with reins coiled neatly, sensing the urgency and holding it in their bodies like coiled spring.
Tonowari arrived with them, presence filling the space like a tide. Ronal followed—silent, jaw clenched, eyes hard as reef stone.
Tsireya stood a little apart with Tuk.
Tuk’s fingers were twisted in Tsireya’s harness, small knuckles white. She didn’t cry. She didn’t speak. Her eyes stayed locked on Jake’s face like she was trying to count the minutes there.
Jake crossed to her and dropped to one knee so his face was level with hers.
“Hey,” he said softly.
Tuk swallowed. Her lower lip trembled once, then she pressed it flat, stubborn. “Bring him home,” she whispered.
It wasn’t a command. It was a prayer she was shoving into the air with everything she had.
Jake nodded once. “We’re bringing him home,” he said.
Ronal’s hand settled briefly on Tuk’s shoulder, grounding her. Tsireya’s gaze flicked to Lo’ak—quick, bright with fear—and then away again, like looking too long would break something.
Jake stood and looked at Onsu. “You know the scar territory,” Jake said.
Onsu nodded. “I have swum the old metal coast,” he said. “The places where the sea tastes wrong. We know paths the demons do not watch.”
Jake’s jaw tightened. “Good. We stage at the ravine. East side. If the sky gets loud, we go up, not back.”
Onsu’s mouth curled in a brief, fierce grin. “Go where they cannot,” he said.
“Exactly.”
Jake turned his gaze across his team.
Neytiri had painted herself—dark streaks across her cheekbones and eyes, the pattern she wore when it was personal, not just war. Her stillness was absolute. Every movement she made was a choice.
Lo’ak stood with his hand on his skimwing’s neck, murmuring low in Na’vi. The animal’s eyes rolled once, then steadied. Lo’ak didn’t look up, but Jake could feel the storm inside him like pressure before lightning.
Jake’s gaze sought the empty space where Kiri should’ve been.
It hit him like a missing tooth.
Then, as if summoned by the thought, Kiri appeared—fast and silent, slipping through the crowd with a coil of human cable in one hand and a battered comm tag in the other. She shoved it into Jake’s palm.
“For Norm,” she said, voice tight. “If the signal dies, I’ll find another way.”
Jake closed his fingers around her wrist before she could pull away. His grip was firm, not painful. A stop. A tether.
“We'll get him,” he said.
Kiri’s throat bobbed. “I know you will,” she whispered.
He released her. She was already turning, already gone—moving with that sharp, purposeful speed that wasn’t running so much as refusing to stop.
Lo’ak watched her go, something raw in his eyes. Then he looked away, jaw clenched harder.
Jake lifted his chin, took in one last sight of Awa’atlu—the marui clustered like living shells over the water, the reef glittering, the people watching with quiet, contained fury.
He clicked his tongue to his skimwing.
“Mount up,” he said.
One by one, they moved into the shallows. Water climbed Jake’s thighs, then his hips. The skimwing surged under him, eager for speed. He slid onto the saddle, hands settling into familiar grips, body adjusting automatically to the animal’s rhythm.
Neytiri mounted Sa'ata without a sound. Lo’ak followed on his ilu. Onsu and the four Metkayina hunters took position around them, formation tightening, purposeful.
They didn’t wave. They didn’t call out. Calling to hunters as they left felt like bad luck.
The moment Jake leaned forward, the skimwing launched.
Water exploded behind them. They cut away from Awa’atlu in a tight wedge, skimming along the reef edge before angling outward into deeper swells. The ocean lifted them and dropped them again, heavy and rolling—open water that made the reef feel suddenly small.
Salt spray hit Jake’s face like needles. The wind tore at his queue, at the loose ends of his top, at the thin edges of thought he couldn’t afford.
Somewhere beyond the horizon, Spider was strapped down in a white room being experimented on.
Jake kept his eyes on the dark line of distant coastline where the old human scars still cut into Pandora’s living shape.
Hold on, he thought, and the words didn’t feel like prayer so much as order. Hold on.
---
High Camp’s Samson lifted under the canopy on a low, careful roar.
At the controls was Mansk - an experienced pilot who stayed calm under pressure - hands steady on the yoke, eyes cutting between treetops and terrain like he’d flown this moon’s bad intentions before. Behind him, the cabin was dim—med cases cinched where troop benches used to be. Oxygen rig. Medication. Fluids. Enough to matter and not enough to feel like safety.
Max checked tubing by touch, jaw set. Norm worked a tablet, old schematics and dirty intercepts layered into one ugly map.
“Keep us low,” Norm said.
Mansk didn’t look back. “Already am.” Mansk banked lower. The canopy rushed up. The world narrowed to speed and shadow.
---
Across the water, a skimwing’s back rose and fell beneath Kiri as she cut through reef channels toward the ravine, braid snapped tight against her spine. Salt stung her eyes. She didn’t blink it away.
---
The reef fell behind Jake’s team and the swells turned mean, lifting the skimwings and dropping them again in slow, gut-deep lurches. Light flattened toward evening—gold thinning into something harder.
Above the coastline, Sa’ata banked wide and silent on cliff updrafts, wings carving air cleanly. Neytiri rode her like a drawn blade—still, balanced, gaze locked inland.
No chatter. No wasted signals.
Just movement and intent, and the knowledge that somewhere behind metal and glass, Spider was running out of time.