A Son for a Son - ironychan (2024)

Chapter 1: Behind the Scenes

Chapter Text

The Sully kids didn't visit Hell's Gate as often since the war had begun. For one thing, the Sky People knew where it was and might show up there at any time. There was always the danger that they might want to retrieve the technology and information they'd left behind – although as time passed it seemed less and less likely. They seemed to have brought almost their entire planet with them. The few scientists working on Pandora were irrelevant to them.

For another, there simply wasn't time. The area the Sky People controlled was expanding like a wildfire on the dry plains. Beating them back was a constant, exhausting task that left little opportunity for anything else. It was wearing on everybody, even Jake and Neytiri, but Neteyam could tell it was affecting the younger kids, too. They laughed less than they used to, and acted older. It didn't seem fair to them.

It wasn't fair to Neteyam, either, but he was the oldest. He had to act like it.

So it was a bit of a treat when the kids got to go stop by the lab. Spider could take his rebreather off for a while, Kiri could visit her mother, Tuk and Lo'ak could catch up with the people they knew there. And Neteyam could keep watch.

They arrived to find a group of avatars just getting back from an expedition. They were gathered outside the airlock, preparing to bed down and return to their human bodies. As the kids passed, Norm Spellman rolled up a towel and flicked it at Spider, who jumped.

"Your ass is mine!" Spider shouted back at the avatar.

"I'm right here!" Norm told him.

Kiri, Lo'ak, and Spider continued on into the lab, while Tuktirey stopped to tug on Norm's trousers. "Lift me up!" she said.

"Your Mom doesn't like when I do that," Norm reminded her. "She thinks I'm gonna drop you."

Tuk smile sweetly. "Mama's not here."

"Well, I won't tell if you don't," Norm said. He scooped her off the ground and turned her upside-down, dangling the little girl by her ankles. Tuk shrieked with laughter, lashing her tail in glee, while Neteyam shook his head and leaned against the stair railing. He hadn't promised not to tell, but he wouldn't as long as no harm came of it. It was good to hear his sister's giggles.

The airlock had closed behind the three kids, but now it opened again and a human girl leaned out. "Who had three?" she asked. "Dr. Spellman, are you in three?"

Norm shook his head. "I've got five," he replied. He turned Tuk right-side-up again for a moment, then dangled her again while she continued to laugh.

The girl stepped out and shut the door behind her. This was Max Patel's daughter Prisha, who was small even for a human and gave the first impression of being mostly a heap of wild dark curls on top of a pair of large spectacles that were the best that could be done for her on a world that didn't have the facilities to correct her poor vision. Of the four human children at the facility, she was the only one who was Spider's age, but they spent little time together. Prisha liked working with human technology and rarely went outside, which Spider found incomprehensible. Neteyam had to agreed. Why stay in those little sealed buildings when you could be outside under the sky?

He had turned away from the door to keep watching Norm and Tuke, so he was startled a moment later when he felt a tug on his tail.

"How about you?" Prisha asked. "Are you on three?"

Startled, he looked down at her, and she back up at him. For a moment, nobody spoke, and then she turned bright pink and covered her face with her computer tablet.

"Sorry!" she squeaked, switching to Na'vi. "I'm so sorry! I wasn't looking. I'm trying to figure out who's in bed three," she explained, talking very quickly to cover her embarrassment. "People using it had been complaining about numbness in their fingers and toes. I debugged the software and I think I fixed it but I wanted to know for sure! I didn't mean to..."

"It's fine," said Neteyam, taking pity. "I promise. Kiri pulls way harder."

Prisha giggled nervously, raising her tablet again.

"Margo has three," another avatar said, undoing his bootlaces. "She said she was going rock climbing at Red Velvet."

"Oh!" Prisha said. "Isn't she back yet?"

"Not yet. I'm sure she'll be along any moment." The avatar pulled his socks off and stuffed them into his boots.

"I'll call her," Norm offered. He set Tuk back on her feet and pulled his com choker back out of his locker.

Prisha sighed and sat down on the steps. "I hope she's okay," she said, and Neteyam felt a sudden sympathy for her. If anything had happened to Margo, she would feel like it was her fault.

Tuk wandered over, always intrigued by the human kids – other than Spider, she rarely saw them. "Do you have games?" she asked, pointing to the tablet.

"Not on this one." Prisha shook her head. "This is a work tablet."

"Aw."

"Prisha!" Norm called. They looked at him, and found him giving a thumb's up. "Margo says everything's a hundred percent. She just got distracted by some interesting minerals. She's on her way back now."

"Oh, good!" said Prisha. "Thank you, Dr. Spellman."

"Pleasure." Norm put his comm away again. "Okay, Tuk, I think I need to go inside and make sure your brother and sister aren't wrecking the place. I'll meet you inside."

He headed into the bunkhouse, and Tuk bounced up the steps to open the airlock. Prisha moved aside to make way for her, but remained sitting, looking wistfully at the sunset. "I wish I could do that," she said.

Tuk paused in opening the airlock. "Do what?"

"Go outside." Prisha gestured to the path that led down to the jungle.

Neteyam was a little startled. Hadn't Spider said she didn't like going outside?

"You're outside now," Tuk told her.

"Yeah, but... I wish I could go outside like you guys do," Prisha said, and tapped on her face shield. "Without this. I wish I had my own avatar. I could have tested number three myself instead of having to ask around."

"Why don't you build one?" Tuk asked.

"They can't make any more avatars," Neteyam told her. "They don't have the machines."

Tuk had a solution. "You know how everything works," she said to Prisha. "You could build it."

"I wish I could," Prisha said, "but it just doesn't work that way."

That was when Prisha's own radio crackled. Hey, where are you? a child's voice asked.

She put her fingers to her throat. "I'm outside, Viraj. Give me a sec." She stood up and explained to the two Na'vi: "my little brother needs me."

"I know what that's like," Neteyam told her.

She smiled and pushed a stray curl back behind her ear, then opened the airlock again to head back inside. Tuk bounced along after her. Through the door, Neteyam could just see the smaller human child standing on his tiptoes to peek through the round window on the inner side, until a moment later somebody lifted him up to see properly. This was Norm, now back in his human body. Viraj waved, and Tuk waved back enthusiastically.

"Neteyam, are you coming?" she asked.

"Nah," he replied, "I'm gonna stay out here and keep an eye on things." Somebody had to keep watch, to warn them and get them out if trouble started.

"You're never any fun anymore," Tuk declared, and shut the door.

That hurt a little, but Neteyam just sat down in the place Prisha had vacated, and kept his eyes on the sky. This wasn't a world with any time for fun. He was the oldest – he had to act like it.

The worst finally happened, only a few weeks later. The kids were hostages. Dad knew it was a trap – the invading Sky People considered him a traitor, and his capture was one of their top priorities – but could not just ignore it. Neteyam and his parents flew in under the cover of twilight and perched in the branches of a tree to survey the situation.

It was bad. There were a dozen or more avatar warriors there, with the kids in their grasp. Tuk was weeping softly, but that only prompted the man holding her queue to tug on it, making her gasp and hiccup. Kiri said something to comfort her, but from this distance it was impossible to hear what.

Dad's face was grim. He turned around. "Stay with the banshees," he told Neteyam.

Neteyam's stomach turned inside out. How could they expect him to just wait while Tuk was crying and any of them could be killed at any moment? "Dad," he protested, "I'm a warrior, like you! I'm supposed to fight!"

"I'm not gonna say it again," Dad told him.

"Neteyam," said Mother firmly.

He met her eyes for a moment, and then looked away, scowling. There was no arguing with Mother when she used that tone. Dad's anger was something Neteyam felt he could rebel against, but there was nothing to be done with Mother's disappointment.

"Yes, Sir," he said dutifully, but inside he was seething. He was an adult. He'd done his hunt, he'd tamed a banshee, he was a full-fledged warrior, and the only time they treated him like a grownup was when they needed a babysitter. Why did they always reminded him that he was the oldest, when as soon as there were adult jobs to be done he was suddenly a child again?

He put a hand on one of the banshees' necks while his parents silently dropped to the lower branches. Neteyam watched them carefully, keeping a tight grip on his bow. If any of the avatars tried anything, they'd find out just how good an archer Neteyam was.

His eyes were focused on the soft glow of his parents' photophores as they moved through the foliage, but then he heard a rustle that made his ears twitch. Neteyam fitted an arrow to his bowstring and, moving slow and smooth, looked over his shoulder. A flash of light caught his attention, bright and artificial amidst the low pulsing of the bioluminescence. There was somebody crouched on another branch, terrifyingly close, draped in something that resembled the moss on the trees for camouflage. Somebody who had doubtless seen them arrive, but who they hadn't noticed at all. A lookout for the enemy? Or a neutral party investigating the situation?

"Stay still," Neteyam told his banshee, and moved to the right, careful to make no sound as he got into a better position to see the individual silhouetted against the sky. From there, he could tell that the person was wearing complicated clothing like the humans did, and had a weapon slung across his back – but rather than using it, he was examining some kind of device in his hands that was projecting the flickering light. Neteyam raised his bow, aiming at the lookout's neck, and loosed the arrow. In the same moment, he blinked as for a split second the blue light shone directly in his eyes, and then...

... he woke up.

At first there was nothing but light and confusion. He was lying on something firm but not hard like wood or stone, while all around him was a white blur. Shadows were moving against it, but his eyes wouldn't focus on them. A white light was in his eyes, then it was gone, leaving spots behind it, and then it was back again. Voices were speaking, but he couldn't identify the language. Neteyam struggled to sit up, but it made his head spin, and multiple unseen hands pushed him back down again. Where was he? What had happened to his parents?

Then he saw something he could parse – a smudge of blue. A person. The image wavered as he squinted at it. He hoped to see Mother or Dad or Lo'ak, but instead, when it wavered into focus the shape became another avatar. He wasn't the same one that had been holding the blue light device, but it wasn't anyone familiar, either.

This individual met Neteyam's eyes and smirked. "Rise and shine," he said in English.

Neteyam's brain was finally starting to work. This guy was... he was new. The Sky People were making more avatars? Wait, no, he'd already known that – it was avatar warriors who'd been holding the kids. He must have been knocked out, maybe by the blue light thing or maybe something else while it had distracted him, and he'd been taken captive. Reflex took over. He sprang to his feet and...

... fell off the table to land in a heap on the floor. The avatar laughed at him as two humans in white took Neteyam's arms and helped him to his feet. He squirmed away from them and leaned on the table to maintain his balance as he looked up at the avatar.

It was a long way up. This man was a giant, nearly twice Neteyam's own height.

"Easy, Tiger," the avatar said. He leaned down to look Neteyam in the eye. "It's a shock, isn't it, waking up in a new body?"

New body? Neteyam's stomach turned inside-out as the world around him continued to clear. Something was horribly, sickeningly wrong here. The humans helping him stay upright... the one on the left was as tall as he, the one on the right even taller, and neither was wearing a rebreather. He felt weirdly bulky, as if his limbs were too thick. His balance was all wrong and he couldn't seem to correct for it. When he reached to move the hair that was hanging in his face, he saw something move in his peripheral vision. He looked to the right.

It took him a moment to realize the hand was his. Not only was it the wrong colour, it had too many fingers. There was the extra little one across from the thumb, like Lo'ak or Kiri. Or like Dad.

His heart was hammering. He could feel it in the sides of his head, in a place too low down to be his ears and yet... he grabbed at the spot and found a rounded, bendy structure that didn't feel anything like an ear.

The avatar towering over him smiled nastily and stepped aside, revealing a large window through which several more humans were watching. "Have a look," he said. "It's the first thing everybody does."

It took a minute. Neteyam could seen the reflection of the avatar and of the various humans in the room, but he couldn't find himself. Not until he realized he was right there in the middle. There was one there wearing a shapeless, pale blue tunic, instead of the full-body white of the others, which was staggering towards the window in time with his own steps.

The face staring back at him in astonished horror was in the middle of the spectrum of colours humans came in, neither brown nor pink but something in between. Neteyam had watched Dad's logs from back before he'd left his human body, and could recognize a resemblance to that face in the shape of his nose and chins. His eyes were at least still the familiar gold, although with the visible white all around the iris that gave humans their constantly startled expression. His hair was still long to just past his shoulders, though it was not in braids. It was still black, with a bit of curl that it hadn't had before.

He reached for the back of his neck, his insides twisting as he watched the reflection imitate him. His hand closed on the ends of his hair – and nothing else. He had no queue. Not even a stump where it had once been. If there had been anything in his stomach, he would have been sick.

Things got a little fuzzy after that. The humans helped Neteyam back to the table he'd been awakened on, where they pressed a cold disk against his chest and back, and shone another light in his eyes. One of them knocked on his knee with a tiny hammer and watched the muscles twitch in response. Another had him touch his nose, then her finger, over and over as she moved the digit back and forth. Neteyam wasn't sure why he did as asked. He ought to be fighting back, like a warrior should. He needed to knock the smug avatar's legs out from under him. He needed to find the door and run, and yet, he just didn't.

It was as if his mind wasn't quite connected to his body – as if Neteyam were still right where his parents had left him watching things that were happening far away. The difference was that instead of being angry or frightened, he was now totally detached. He could see his hands, but they didn't feel like they belonged to him. Moving them seemed to take enormous effort. When the humans decided to take him to another room, two of them had to help him walk. Doing anything above and beyond that was simply not possible.

The new room had a low bed, a table, and two chairs. The walls were bare white and the floor was covered with dark grey, rock-hard carpet. The humans gave Neteyam some clothing and helped him put it on. They gave him some unfamiliar food that he was not hungry for. He still felt sick.

Finally, everybody left except for three individuals: the towering avatar, a man in the dull green costume of a human warrior, and a woman in white with very short, shiny dark hair. The two humans got Neteyam settled at the little table and sat down opposite from him, while the avatar stood by the door, his head almost brushing the ceiling. A mask was hanging around his neck, and he casually lifting it to his face for a breath, then let it fall again.

The woman opened a notebook and clicked a pen. "There," she said. "That's much better, isn't it?"

Neteyam didn't know what she was referring to, so he didn't answer. He wasn't sure he could speak. He could feel the unfamiliar clothing rubbing on his skin, and smell the food on the plate in front of him – it looked like little tubes covered with yellow goo, and the aroma was flat and unappetizing – and yet he felt like he wasn't present. He stared at the two humans as if they were tiny figures a mile below as he flew over on a banshee. Even the huge avatar seemed like a drawing, or a memory, something that couldn't actually affect him.

"My name is Dr. Faye Nguyen," said the woman. "I work with the recoms, easing their transition. This is General Oakley Bush, in charge of intelligence."

The male nodded once.

"And I think you've met Colonel Quaritch," said the woman.

"I know his Dad," the avatar said, deadpan.

Quaritch. That was a name Neteyam knew – the leader of the Sky People from the stories his parents told. Mother had killed him, and yet here he was, as an avatar? How was that possible?

That was the moment when a really terrible possibility occurred to him. What if he hadn't been captured so much as...

"I'm sure you're very confused right now," Dr. Nguyen said gently, with a brief sideways glare at the males. "I'll explain a moment, but first I just need to ask a few questions to assess your memory. Can you tell me your name?"

"Neteyam te Suli Tsyeyk'itan," he replied formally. Neteyam of the Sully family, son of Jake. So he could speak. His voice sounded right, at least.

"And how old are you, Neteyam?"

"I'm an adult. I've completed all the rites of passage."

The avatar snorted.

"That's wonderful," said Nguyen, in the sort of voice one would use to a child who'd made their own toy bow that didn't work. "Your parents must be proud of you. How many years old, though?"

"Sixteen."

She wrote that down. "What's the last thing you remember before regaining consciousness in the lab?"

Neteyam had to think about that, and then he hesitated a little longer because he didn't think he should tell her. If she didn't know that the kids had been captured and his parents had gone to rescue them, then she shouldn't find out from him. But she was looking at him, waiting, so he had to say something. "There was an avatar with a blue light."

"Uchida," said the avatar. "You shot him. Don't worry, he returned the favour."

Nguyen scowled, then closed her notebook and gave Neteyam a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "You're doing very well," she said. "We've done much worse on much more thorough scans. You must have a very strong sense of identity and purpose."

That made no sense – or did it? If it did, it only seemed confirm that this situation was even worse than he'd initially thought.

The man called Bush spoke next. "You're probably wondering what you're doing here."

"We're getting there," Nguyen told him crossly before turning back to Neteyam. "You used the word avatar," she said to him. "Do you know the difference between one of those and a recombinant?"

He did not, so he said nothing. For all Neteyam knew, saying anything to these people was already telling them too much. He probably shouldn't have even told them his name.

"They're both engineered bodies," said the woman, "but an avatar is controlled by a living pilot. Recoms are permanently imprinted with the neural map of a deceased person."

There it was.

For a moment Neteyam couldn't think at all. Then the initial shock of being told that he was dead faded a bit, and he decided it made a weird sort of sense. Quaritch had died as a human and come back as an avatar, so in order for Neteyam to come back as a human, he must have died as a Na'vi. He probably should have been upset about that, but he just felt totally numb.

What about the others? His parents? Lo'ak, Kiri, and Tuk? Spider?

"We manage to get at least partial DNA scans and transoptic brain maps of the whole family during the counter-insurgency mission last year," Bush spoke up again. Quaritch wanted to grow and question the lot of you right away, but the scientists don't want to break the rules about not doing it with living individuals."

"It sets a dangerous precedent," said Nguyen, growing more annoying with the interruptions. "Will you please let me do my job, General?"

Quaritch straightened up. "Your job is to make him give us information."

"No, that's your job!" Nguyen shot back. "Mine is to help him adapt to a potentially traumatic change in his life circ*mstances! Not everybody can have one fit of hysterics and then insist they're over it!" She took a deep breath and faced Neteyam again. "I know this must be a shock, and I do understand that unlike the recoms, you didn't consent to any of this." She shot Bush another glare. "For the record, I..."

"Where's my family?" asked Neteyam. Had they done this to Kiri? To Lo'ak? Eywa help them all, had they done it to Tuk?

"We don't know," said Bush. "That's why we brought you back. We need your insight into what they're likely to do next. Where they're likely to go."

"I don't know," Neteyam told him. "Dad makes the decisions. He's Olo'eyktan. I follow orders. Even if I knew, why would I tell you?" These people were his enemies. They knew that.

Quaritch stepped forward and put his palms on the table, leaning far down to look Neteyam in the eye. "Look in the mirror, kid," he said. "You're one of us now. You live or die when we do. You think your folks want you back like this?"

Nguyen stood up. "That's enough," she said. "I think you should leave now."

"Make me," said Quaritch, sneering down at her. Standing straight, she only reached his waist.

Bush stepped in. "I think she's right," he announced. "This young man needs a meal and a good night's sleep. We'll have time to talk to him later, when he's not obviously in shock. That's an order," he added.

"Yes, Sir," said Quaritch. He began whistling as he ducked to go out the door, and then sang a couple of lines under his breath – but still loud enough for Neteyam to hear them: hey, you with the pretty face, welcome to the human race...

Nguyen apologized several more times before she left. Neteyam barely heard her. Her voice sounded hollow and distant, as if coming from somewhere in the depths of a cave. This was all seeming more and more unreal, more and more disconnected. Neteyam felt like he would leave his body and just float away into the sky.

General Bush did not apologize, but he did urge Neteyam one more time to eat and sleep. The former was out of the question – the stuff on the plate they left him did not look like food and he wasn't hungry. The latter didn't seem much better. He felt like if he fell asleep he might just drift away, losing any remaining connection with the events around him and never coming back. If he were supposed to be dead, maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

Neteyam didn't remember falling asleep, but he woke up with a shout, his heart hammering, and fell to land on something hard and rough. By the time he was fully awake, the memory of the dream had slipped away. He stared into the darkness, panting, unsure of where he was or how he'd gotten there.

Then he remembered. He'd pushed the tray of food out of the way and put his head down on the table, and there he must have nodded off. When he woke from the nightmare, he must have fallen out of his chair. The tray was upside-down not far away, and he could see by the dim glow of one small bulb that the plate of yellow goo had spilled across the floor. The Sky People had told him he was dead and they'd brought him back in a human body, like the one Dad used to have. They wanted him to tell them what his people were planning.

He was absolutely not going to do that, but the avatar, Quaritch, had implied that they would kill him again if he didn't. Where was everybody else? Bush had said they wouldn't do this to living people, but nobody had assured him his family was still free. If Neteyam didn't do as they demanded of him, would his family be hurt?

You're one of us now. You live or die when we do. You think your folks want you back like this?

Something had changed now. Neteyam had felt as if he weren't really there, as if he was watching things happen to somebody else. Now, however... this was starting to be real. He was very much here, in this body, lying on this floor with the palms of his hands skinned where they'd scraped over the carpet. He'd put his hand in the spilled food and there was thick, sticky goo on it. When he licked it off, it tasted as bland as it had smelled, with a revolting jellylike texture.

If all that were real, then somewhere out there, something else was equally real for his family. He had died, but had his parents saved the kids? If not, maybe they'd been captured, too. Maybe they were all in need of rescue. The clan would surely try, but Neteyam could hardly just sit here and wait, especially if everyone thought he was dead. Mother and Dad wouldn't wait for someone to come save them, they would escape. Neteyam had to do the same.

There were no windows in the little room, so the only indication that it was morning came when, some unmeasurable time later, the lights switched on by themselves. Neteyam, now lying on the bed, raised his head and blinked in the sudden illumination.

Dr. Nguyen was standing in the doorway looking at him. She was alone this time, or so he thought at first. When she opened the door a little wider, he saw a warrior standing behind her. This was not Bush from yesterday. This man was not so tall, and dark brown where Bush had been very pale.

"Good morning, Neteyam," said Nguyen. "How did you sleep?"

"I slept well," he lied.

She nodded, but her face was skeptical. "Sleep disturbances are a common symptom," she said. "Dreams are part of how we process our experiences."

She'd been watching him. That shouldn't have been surprising – this room probably had cameras everywhere – but the thought still gave him a chill.

"I can see you're not a fan of macaroni and cheese," Nguyen commented, with a glance at the mess on the floor. "Would you like to come to the cafeteria and pick out something else for breakfast? You must be hungry."

He was, but Neteyam still wanted to resist. Nguyen's attempts to ingratiate herself were just as insulting as Quaritch's open mockery. She was just as much a party to what they'd done to him, and pretending she wanted to help wouldn't make it any less of a nightmare.

"I don't want you to feel like a prisoner," she added.

"I am a prisoner," he pointed out.

"When you think about it, we're all prisoners here," she said. "If you can't go outside without a breathing apparatus, it's barely any better than living on Mars. I lived on Mars for four years, and I felt like a caged animal. At least here the sky is blue, but sometimes I'd do anything for a breath of fresh air."

The two of them looked at each other in silence for a few moments. Neteyam had nothing to say to that. She wanted his sympathy. She wouldn't get it.

"Come and eat," Nguyen repeated. "I know you don't believe me, but I promise it will make you feel at least a little better. Quaritch won't be there. Bush and Ardmore have asked him not to talk to you again."

She would keep insisting until he did it. Neteyam stood up.

Nguyen put a hand on his back and escorted him into the hallway. The warrior shut the door behind them, then followed as Nguyen led the way. "If I use any words you don't know, just ask me and I'll explain," she told Neteyam. "After breakfast I'm going to give you a jigsaw puzzle to put together. That'll let me assess your eye-hand coordination and spatial visualization."

"Did Quaritch have to do that?" Neteyam asked.

"Yes. All of them did. They complained about it, but the brain-body interface is very complex. We need to make sure everything is working properly, because small errors now can cause big problems down the line."

"What do you do if it does?"

"Sometimes it can be corrected surgically, or with magnetotherapy."

"What if it can't?"

"Don't worry," she assured him. "They've been doing this for years, they've got the hang of it. We're just being extra-cautious with you because it's the first time they've imprinted a non-human brain map on a human brain, rather than the other way around."

It took a moment for Neteyam to realize what that implied, and then he stopped for a moment to digest the first good news he'd gotten. If he were the first of his kind, that meant they definitely had not done this to the rest of his family. They might still be in trouble, but if so he might be able to help them.

"Are you coming?" asked Dr. Nguyen.

"Yes, I am," he decided.

She smiled. "That's wonderful."

Chapter 2: Many Conversations

Chapter Text

The cafeteria was an enormous round room, as big as the space under the roots of a mature hometree, with windows in the domed ceiling so the sun could shine in. Unfortunately, there was no sun today – the sky was grey and stormy, and rain was running down the curved windowpanes. There were no trees or mountains visible that might have given Neteyam a clue to where they actually were. Maybe he could get a chance to come back here at night, and could try to figure it out by the stars.

The far side of this space was a long, curved counter where people could go to choose their food. Dr. Nguyen handed Neteyam a tray and led him there, then stood back to see what he would select. A lot of it was only barely familiar, things he'd seen humans eating at Hell's Gate but had never paid much attention to. There was, however, identifiable fruit, several species cut up into cubes and mixed together. He took a bowl of that.

That seemed to satisfy Dr. Nguyen. She stepped up and pointed out something else. “I think your people make flatbreads out of some kind of ground-up nuts, am I right? Try the pancakes. They'll be similar, but sweeter.”

He took one. The man behind the counter offered a dark brown goo to pour over it, but Neteyam declined. Nguyen chose her own breakfast, as did the guard who had accompanied them, and then she found them a table to sit at.

“So, Neteyam,” she said, sprinkling a white powder onto her food. “Would you like to tell me about your family?”

He felt his heart beat a little faster. Did she know if they were okay? Or did she want to hear about them in order to confirm that the people they had captive were his family? After a brief moment of indecision Neteyam decided to simply say, “no.”

She appeared startled, then said, “oh! No, I didn't mean it that way. I'm not interrogating you. I just thought it would be a good place for us to start getting to know each other. I don't have any children, but my sister has two little boys. I'm told you have a brother and two sisters.”

Neteyam put a handful of fruit salad in his mouth and chewed it rather than answer her. He wasn't going to give her anything, he decided. Even if she really did just want to chat, which he doubted, other people listening might not have such innocent intentions.

Nguyen picked up her fork and speared a couple of pieces of her own fruit, showing him how it was done. “All right. We can skip small talk for now. As I mentioned yesterday when the soldier boys started getting ahead of themselves, my job is to help people like you make the transition to a new life that's going to be very different from your old one.”

He looked at his cutlery. Lo'ak would have kept eating his his hands, just to spite this woman. Depending on how ornery she was feeling, Kiri might have done the same. But Neteyam was the good one, the obedient son. He picked up his fork and tried it. It felt awkward and unnecessary, and Neteyam, not yet used to his altered proportions, almost missed his mouth. Was it really worth the effort for humans to do this, just to not get their fingers sticky?

Nguyen was still talking. “I told you yesterday that you had a strong sense of identity and purpose. That's good. It's easier to cope with changes if you know your values and goals. What do you think you'd like to achieve in your life, Neteyam? What are your ambitions?”

He thought of a couple of possible ways to answer that, and settled on the truth. He swallowed his mouthful and said, “I want to fight at my father's side as a warrior of the Omatikaya. I want to help defeat the Sky People, so they leave our world and never return.”

Neteyam had wanted to see how she would react to that. He was a bit disappointed: Nguyen's eyebrows quirked, but she nodded. “You have great admiration for your father,” she noted. “I understand he's a quasi-legendary figure to your people.”

“Toruk Makto appears only once in many generations,” Neteyam told her.

“I assume you know your father was born human,” said Nguyen. “Maybe you can consider this a way of understanding him better. Walking in his shoes for a while, so to speak.”

Neteyam picked up the pancake and bit into it. It was very sweet and spongey, almost rubbery.

“It was actually your father's choice to permanently imprint his mind on his Avatar that inspired the research behind the recombinants,” she went on, “so he's had a great effect on both our peoples.”

He didn't answer her, because it was at that moment that Neteyam realized he was sitting on his tail. He shuffled in his seat to free it, but the sensation of pressure remained. Without thinking, he reached to pull it free – but his fingers found nothing. Humans didn't have tails, any more than they had queues. He'd been imagining it.

“Are you all right?” Nguyen asked him.

“Yes,” he said. “I don't know where Dad is.” He was probably at High Camp, but technically Neteyam had no idea, which was good – if he didn't know, nobody could force it out of him.

“I wasn't asking,” Nguyen assured him.

Neteyam took another bite of pancake. If his mouth was full, he wouldn't have to talk. Lo'ak did that all the time. Their parents saw right through it... but Nguyen didn't know Neteyam the way Mother and Dad did.

“One of the hardest things for a lot of recoms is losing family connections,” Nguyen went on. “Those relationships often just don't survive. To start a new life you unfortunately have to leave the old one behind, but it's not good for people to sever themselves from it entirely. You just have to forge new kinds of links to your past, and you have an opportunity to do that in ways others don't.”

He studied her face. She was doing her best to look compassionate, but she was saying basically the same thing Quaritch had last night – you think your folks will want you back like this? At the time, the idea hadn't seemed any more real or relevant than anything else that was happening. Now he glanced down at the hands holding the pancake, the hands that were the wrong colour with too many fingers, and he wondered... assuming they were all okay, what would they think of this?

Would Lo'ak laugh at him, saying who's the little brother now? Would Tuk think it was funny that he was her size? Would Kiri tease him about being too small and slow to keep up, like she did Spider?

Would Mother look at him like she looked at Spider, as some alien thing that didn't belong with her family? Would Dad see him as part of something he'd turned his back on? Dad had become Na'vi and was now entirely loyal to the People. Would he assume Neteyam had switched sides?

“You look thoughtful,” Nguyen observed.

Neteyam put more food in his mouth, and did not answer her.

After breakfast, Dr. Nguyen took Neteyam to an observation room, overlooking a space set aside for the recombinants. On the other side of a large window, half a dozen of them were engaged in a variety of tasks, under the supervision of humans in breathing apparatus. Two were throwing a ball back and forth, another was arranging objects by colour, a fourth covering one eye and reading symbols off a chart. They didn't appear to notice the scientists looking down at them, or if they did, they ignored them.

The man called Quaritch was pacing up and down the middle of this room, as if supervising. At first Neteyam saw only his back as he walked away. Then he turned around to come back, standing up straight with his hands behind him, walking with both nonchalance and authority. He looked from one side to the other as he slowly made his way back towards the observation window, but it wasn't until he was nearly there that he happened to look up and saw Neteyam.

The infuriating smirk appeared on his face again, and he gave a mocking little wave.

Lo'ak would have replied with the rude gesture only he, Kiri, and Dad could do properly... which Neteyam supposed he could also do now. But that would have been childish, unbecoming of the oldest son, so he just turned away.

Nguyen escorted him to a table that had been set up in the middle of the observation room. It obviously didn't belong there, as the room was really too narrow for anything but people watching the recoms in the bigger space beyond. Maybe it was the only place available. She pulled up a chair, put a box in front of Neteyam, and lifted the lid off.

“First, let's see if you can put this together,” she said. “We try to make the tests a little fun.”

Inside the box were a collection of colourful interlocking pieces which, according to the picture on the lid, could be assembled into a scene of a beach with strange-looking trees.

“Start with the edges,” Nguyen suggested.

It looked like an easy enough task, but when he tried to carrying it out, Neteyam found that human fingers were short, thick, and clumsy, and the extra one at the end was distracting. At one point, he stopped working on the puzzle and deliberately flexed each finger in turn, to assert control over them. He discovered that the first two could each curl on their own, but if he tried to move the third the fourth would curl with it unless he made a special effort, and vise-versa.

Nguyen watched him do this and made notes, but did not offer information. She seemed to be waiting for him to ask questions. He refused to do so.

Once he had his fingers cooperating, the task of putting the pieces together was simple enough that Neteyam's mind could wander a little. In particular, his eyes kept darting over to what the recoms were doing behind the big window. He felt like there was something important there... and after a few minutes, he realized what it was.

Recoms were like avatars, or like the Na'vi themselves: they would need to breathe the air of Pandora to be comfortable for more than a few minutes at a time. Quaritch had been wearing a breathing mask, occasionally taking sniffs from it, when Neteyam woke up in this body. For strenuous tasks like they were doing now, proper air would be absolutely necessary. The exercise room must have some kind of passage to the outside in order to bring it in.

It took some effort not to get to his feet and go search right away. He couldn't do that now, not with so many humans in this room and so many recoms in the exercise area. Not to mention, he would probably need one of the breathing devices humans used when they needed to go outside on Pandora. If he wanted to escape that way, he would have to plan, and for that he would need information he didn't yet know how to get. It was at least an idea, though. That was a start.

All this time, Neteyam still felt like something was pinching his tail. He knew it wasn't real and yet the sensation was so convincing that he repeatedly moved in his seat, or reached back, without thinking, to try to move it. Neither did any good. It was annoying, uncomfortable, and rather worrying. Why did he feel that so strongly when he knew it couldn't be happening? Was he going mad?

“Look who's here!” a new voice said.

Neteyam looked up to see General Bush pull up a chair and sit next to Dr. Nguyen. Today he seemed to be in a friendlier mood, or at least he was pretending to be.

“How's he doing?” Bush asked.

“Very well,” Nguyen replied. “We've got some difficulty with manual dexterity but it's well within parameters, and he was a bit surprised by the function of the ulnar nerve, but he's overcoming it quickly. Other than that, he's a little fidgety but all things considered he's adapting well to the physicality.”

“Good news,” said Bush with a nod.

“I am not deaf,” said Neteyam. “I'm right here and I can hear you.”

Bush put a hand on his shoulder, which Neteyam quickly shrugged off. The General seemed momentarily surprised, but did not appear to take offence. “Of course you are,” he said. “You're not a soldier. You haven't been trained to sit quietly while people talk about you.”

“I am a warrior like my father,” Neteyam informed him.

“That's not the same as a soldier, though,” said Bush. “Soldiers are cogs in a bigger machine. Your people don't look at war that way.”

Neteyam had some idea what that metaphor meant, but he was losing patience fast. One human patronizing him he could put up with. Two was pushing it. He could have sworn he felt his tail twitching and his ears folding back, although when he touched the latter he found the rubbery disks fixed low down to the sides of his head had not moved. How did humans manage to communicate when essential body parts were missing or just didn't work?

“As long as we're talking,” Bush said, “I think somebody ought to apologize to you for Quaritch yesterday, and it's not gonna be him, so I'd better do it. I'm sorry you had to hear that. He's got a chip on his shoulder. He never forgave your father for going native, and wasn't thrilled to find out your mom had killed his old body, either. We kind of suspected he consider this an opportunity for some kind of revenge but we didn't think he'd cut right to the chase the way he did. Ardmore had a word with him, and we'll keep him out of your way.”

“Isn't it?” Neteyam asked.

Bush frowned. “Isn't it what?”

“Revenge,” said Neteyam. “Turning me into something my family hates.”

“Of course not!” said Nguyen, feigning shock.

“You're here because we need somebody to tell us how your people think,” said Bush, “and it's just easier to talk to you if we're eye-to-eye and breathing the same air.”

“Why would I tell you anything, if not because of what Quaritch said?” Neteyam asked. “That I have to be one of you now?”

“We're hoping we can show you that we're not as terrible as you've always been told,” said Bush.

“We aren't here to destroy everything,” said Nguyen. “There'd be nothing to gain from that. We're here because we need a place to live. Somewhere we can start over and not repeat the mistakes of our ancestors.”

“With your help, maybe our two worlds can come to some kind of agreement,” Bush suggested. “It's a big planet, you know. Lots of room for everybody.”

“My father says there can be no agreement with the Sky People. He says you will consume everything in your path until you have burned our world like you burned your own,” Neteyam replied coldly.

“Your father was sent to meet the Na'vi in order to help us make peace with them,” said Nguyen. “The problem was that nobody here listened to what he had to say. We've learned from that. We want to try again. In a way, you'll be finishing his work.”

“I'm a father, too, Neteyam,” Bush said. “I've got a daughter about your age. She and her mother are still in cryo. She loves this place. She's been reading about it ever since she was old enough. Watched all the documentaries, read all the books. Even talked about getting her degree in astrobiology so she'd be able to come here someday. She was thrilled to think she'll be spending the rest of her life here. I want her to have a world.”

“Not ours,” Neteyam told him. “Find another.”

Bush frowned and opened his mouth to reply, but Nguyen cut him off.

“I think that's enough for now,” she said. “Remember, Neteyam has just had a big shock. We can't be surprised if he thinks he's a prisoner.”

The general didn't get a chance to reply to that, either – at that moment there was a sudden dull thud as something hit the observation window, shaking the whole room. Everybody turned to look as the scientists who'd been watching staggered back in surprise, and found some kind of argument going on between two of the recoms. One, a female, had her male adversary in a headlock and was trying to wrestle him to the floor, while three humans and Quaritch moved to intervene.

“It's Bohan again,” groaned Nguyen. “I'd better go talk to her. Demarco,” she said to the warrior, who had remained standing over the table while Neteyam put the jigsaw puzzle together, “can you take Neteyam to... take him to requisitions. He can pick out something to decorate his room so it won't look so much like a hospital in there.”

“Yes, Ma'am,” said Demarco with a nod.

“Neteyam, I'm sorry.” Nguyen gave him a smile that didn't reach her eyes. “This is the sort of thing I'm here to try to prevent. Just go with Demarco, and I'll see you later, okay? I promise.”

There wasn't much else Neteyam could do. Nguyen put on a breathing unit and went downstairs to the airlock, and the man called Demarco led Neteyam back the way they'd come in. The puzzle remained on the table, unfinished.

“Does that happen often?” Neteyam asked, meaning the violent outburst among the recoms. Maybe they hated this whole thing as much as he did.

“Bohan's the troublemaker,” Demarco replied, “but it's her husband's fault. He won't let her see the kids. He says a big blue monster isn't his wife or their mother, even if it has her memories.”

Was that how humans saw the People? Big blue monsters? Did they think they'd done Neteyam some kind of favour by this transformation?

The requisitions desk had a few things on offer: colourful blankets, posters for the wall, curtains so that people could pretend there were windows, and soft toys of strange animals that must have come from Earth. Neteyam did not ask for anything. There was nothing there that would have made that little room feel anything like home. Home was a platform in the trees with the living, breathing forest all around them. This was so entirely artificial and sterile that for all Neteyam could tell they might be in space, or underground, or at the bottom of the ocean. The only windows he'd seen were the ones in the ceiling of the cafeteria, and even those had showed only sky.

Back in the room that was apparently his, Neteyam sat on the floor, which felt more natural than a chair, and stared at the blank wall. Was this really how humans lived? In these empty little rooms, where they never saw the sun or the moons or the great eclipse, never felt the wind in their hair or the earth between their toes? How did they stand it? Was that why they seemed so determined to destroy everything they saw, because they were angry they could not be part of it? No wonder Prisha Patel wished she had an avatar.

What would she have thought of this? Would she have pitied him?

That night, curled on the bed with no blankets or pillows so as to better approximate sleeping in the family's hammock in the trees, Neteyam noticed something else: the silence.

At home they would have been surrounded by the nighttime songs of the forest. There was the wind in the trees, the bubbling of water, sometimes the patter of rain or the distant shudder of thunder. The chirping and whirring of insects, and the hoots and cries of nocturnal animals. It had always been a comfort, being cradled in the arms of Eywa while her creatures sang them off to sleep.

In here, there was the low, constant hum of the red nightlight, and occasional sounds of somebody moving or talking in the hallway. That was all. It felt deeply unnatural. Dr. Nguyen had said she didn't want him to feel like he was in a cage, but how could he not, when he was shut away from everything that had always brought peace and comfort?

The quiet seemed particularly deafening when he woke to it after another nightmare. This time he managed to cling to a few scraps of it: he'd seen that blue light, and then some monstrous creature, like an amalgam of all the bizarre Earth animals in the requisition toys, had come roaring out of it to devour him. He woke up shaking and sweaty, with his ears ringing in the silence, and then promptly forgot everything but the fact that he was in agony.

The last time Neteyam had been seriously hurt was when he'd been grazed by a bullet while rescuing Lo'ak. That had been painful, but he'd gritted his teeth and gone on, because his brother needed him and because his parents would have a fit if he got hurt. Which sure enough, they had done, when Kiri eventually noticed the injury.

If it had hurt like this, he wouldn't even have been able to stand. It felt like every bone in his tail was broken, like somebody had forcibly tied the appendage in a knot, like it was on fire.

He tried to grab it and lessen the pain through pressure, but there was nothing to grab. The Sky People had trapped him in a human body which had no tail at all – how could something hurt when it didn't exist? How could it feel so real when he knew he was imagining it? Neteyam rolled over in the hope that pressing his backside into the mattress would bring some relief, but it didn't.

The door opened and Dr. Nguyen stumbled in, wearing pajamas and slippers. There were two other people behind her, but they stayed back as she knelt next to the bed and put a hand on his arm. “Neteyam, what's wrong?”

She'd been watching him again. Didn't this woman sleep? But all he could do in reply was hiss, “tail hurts!” through his gritted teeth. She'd said she was a dokter. That was the English word for somebody skilled in healing, right? Maybe there was something she could do for this.

“Your tail hurts?” she asked, seeming puzzled, and his hopes dropped like a stone. She knew he didn't have a tail. She just thought he was mad, and she was probably right. But then she looked over her shoulder at the others and said, “phantom pain. He needs anticonvulsants.” One of them nodded and ran off, and Neguyen squeezed Neteyam's hand.

“We're going to give you some medicine,” she said. “It might make you drowsy or dizzy, but it should ease the pain.”

Neteyam nodded. In that moment, in exchange for that promise, he might have told her anything she wanted to know.

The other human returned with a white tablet, like a small stone, and a glass of water to help Neteyam swallow it whole. He downed it, and then started to rub his face, only to stop when the unfamiliar shape of his nose sent a shudder through him. Why did humans need pointy noses? What were they for?

“There you go,” said Nguyen gently. “Is that why you were squirming today? Phantom pains?”

He nodded.

“You should have said something,” she chided. “Neteyam, I promise, I am here to help you.”

In this particular case at least, it seemed like she was telling the truth. It took about a quarter of an hour, but slowly the pain began to subside. That was one thing, at least, that humans were really good at: medicine. Neteyam could recall two or three times in his childhood when his father had called on the people at Hell's Gate to save a life. Once, it hadn't worked – the man who'd fallen from his direhorse and broken his neck had been beyond saving. But when Peyral's wound had festered and everybody had thought she would surely die, they had cured her, and when the second of Mimawey's twins had refused to turn, the humans had saved both her and the child.

Eventually, the fiery pain in the tail he didn't have settled down to a dull, manageable ache. Dr. Nguyen sat on the floor next to the bed throughout the whole process, telling him about how the brain had a map of what the body was supposed to be shaped like, and if it wasn't getting input from a lost part it sometimes misinterpreted that as pain. Neteyam couldn't tell if he were supposed to be remembering any of it, or if she just wanted him to know she was still there.

Finally she said, “better now?”

“Yeah,” he managed, and since he didn't want to be rude, he added, “thank you.”

“That's my job,” she told him with a soft smile that seemed more sincere than most. “If you need something else, anything, you can call me on that.” She pointed to a black square on the wall. “Sleep tight, Neteyam.”

With the humans gone and the lights off again, Neteyam curled up on the bed, on his side so it would be harder to imagine his tail was stuck somewhere painful. He felt more like a frightened child than he had in years... since the night she'd seen the Sky People's ships streaking across the dark sky. Neteyam wasn't scared of the Sky People when they were an enemy. He knew how to fight, and a warrior was brave. In this situation, he didn't know what to do besides drift along, doing as he was told.

The bed seemed so empty. What did a single person need with so much sleeping space? Neteyam should have asked for more pillows from requisitions. He could have arranged them around himself and at least pretended he had his family with him. It would have been a poor substitute without Dad's occasional snores. Or Kiri's nose whistle – which she'd insisted her brothers were making up to tease her about, even when Tuktirey said she could hear it, too. Without the sounds of their breathing there was only, once again, the silence.

What were they doing right now, he wondered. Were they sleeping at High Camp? Or had they been forced to abandon that site and move on? Or were they, too, as he'd already feared, being held captive somewhere? Did they know what had happened to him? If they did... when Quaritch said they wouldn't want him back, was it because he'd heard it from Mother and Dad himself?

That thought hadn't occurred to Neteyam yet, and it made him wince. He could picture Mother's face, with that look of disgust and disapproval she'd so often turned on Spider. What would he do if she looked at him that way?

Then he wondered... Neteyam was pretty sure he wasn't going to get any straight answers out of Nguyen or Bush, since both were trying to cozy up to him, but could he ask Quaritch? Bush had said that Quaritch wasn't supposed to talk to Neteyam again, because he'd just blurted things out. If Neteyam did talk to him, could he trick him into doing more of that?

That was the sort of thing Mother and Grandmother were good at... getting people to say things they didn't mean to say. Kiri could do it too, sometimes. All three women were, in various ways, tsahik, able to interpret the will of Eywa and to some extent see into the souls of others. Neteyam wasn't like them. He was a fighter, like his father. Just talking to people bored him. Could he possibly do this, even with somebody as volatile as Quaritch seemed to be?

“Great mother,” he murmured, “help me find a way out.”

But that didn't help. Here in this human place, so far from the trees and the water, he was pretty sure She couldn't hear him.

At breakfast, back in the big cafeteria with the man called Demarco still following them around, Dr. Nguyen asked him again: “Did you sleep better after the medicine? Any more nightmares?”

That made Neteyam wonder if the tablet had a purpose other than easing pain. His tail still felt pinched now, but he could ignore it. “Fine,” he said.

She nodded, pleased. “I'll give you another one before you go to bed tonight.”

He wasn't sure he would take them. Pain might be preferable to being drugged... but when he remembered just how much it had hurt, he reconsidered.

The weather was nicer today. Sunlight was streaming in the dome windows, and there were fluffy white clouds partially obscuring the pale crescent of the planet. As Neteyam watched, a small flock of flying creatures passed over, although he couldn't identify the species from this distance. “Where are we?” he asked.

“Site Nine. It's one of the old mining pits. The unobtainium seam turned out to be shallower than expected, so we put the area to a different use.”

That was more of an answer than Neteyam had expected, but less than would have been useful. The Sky People had dug those pits all over, dozens of giant scars in the landscape that the jungle had only barely begun to heal. It would take thousands of years for the roots and grubs to break the bedrock down into good soil and recolonize it. There was one interesting piece of information there, though.

“Is that why there are no windows?” asked Netayam. If they were mostly underground, there would be no point.

“That's why.”

Once again, he had to wonder how humans could live this way. The harsh glare of their artificial lights was no substitute for the sun.

“It's okay if you're a bit claustrophobic about it,” Nguyen said. “That's something you and I have in common, actually. You want to know another? We're both the eldest.”

Neteyam glanced up from his food and looked at her suspiciously.

She went blithely on, as if just making chit-chat. “I have two younger brothers. It was a pretty loud household, although not as loud as yours must've been with four kids.”

Neteyam took a big bite out of some kind of flaky sweet bread, and didn't answer her.

“It's a lot of work having younger siblings,” she said. “Sometimes you feel like you have to grow up too fast. Is there anything you wish you'd said to them or your parents, but never did?”

“Did you ask Bohan that about her children?” Neteyam wanted to know.

Nguyen straightened up, stiff with surprised. “Who told you about Bohan?”

Neteyam looked up at the man called Demarco, sitting next to him.

“Sergeant!” Nguyen said sharply. “That kind of information is confidential.”

“Everybody knows about it anyway,” Demarco complained.

“That doesn't mean you're allowed to gossip,” said Nguyen. “How is Neteyam supposed to trust us, when you just go around babbling other people's secrets?”

Neteyam took another mouthful so nobody would see him smiling. It was petty, but it felt good to get somebody in trouble. No wonder Kiri had used to snitch on Lo'ak so often when they were little.

“I ought to speak to your superior,” Nguyen went on, “but for now I'm just going to ask you to apologize to Neteyam.”

“Seriously?” Demarco whined.

Nguyen nodded once, short and sharp.

Demarco looked like he would rather crawl under the table, but he turned to Neteyam and said, “sorry, kiddo.”

“Go on,” prompted Nguyen.

The warrior grimaced. “It was, uh... it was wrong to tell you those things. I won't do it again, and I will keep anything you tell me private.”

Neteyam wondered if that meant not telling Bush, or even Nguyen herself. He doubted it. “I think I'll just not tell you anything,” he decided. He hoped it wouldn't be too difficult to stick to that, but he had a bad feeling about it. The longer he was here, the more they tried to ingratiate themselves, the more they would expect him to tell them things, or try to trick him into it like he'd thought about doing to Quaritch. He couldn't let his guard down for a moment.

Chapter 3: Falling and Failing

Chapter Text

There was a long silence after Demarco was chastised, and Neteyam almost started to enjoy it before Nguyen attempted to rally. “Well,” she said, “I think we can ask Bush to assign you a different bodyguard. Until then, let's do something a little more fun. Today I think I'll show you the recreation centre. Physical activity can be a good way to deal with stress, and it can also help reduce phantom pains.”

“That's what the recoms were doing yesterday,” Neteyam remembered.

“Partly, but they also have to stay in shape. That's important for soldiers.”

“I'm a warrior,” he reminded her. “I should 'stay in shape' too.”

“Wonderful,” Nguyen said. Perhaps she was pleased to have found a topic besides the local gossip.

After breakfast, she shooed Demarco away, telling him to report to his superior for reassignment, and escorted Neteyam to the recreation area. This was a set of rooms that included areas for running, for playing a couple of ball games, and even one full of heavy objects that people were just lifting and then setting down again. What was the point of that? And what was the point of the artificial lake for swimming? It contained no fish to catch, nor even an interesting rocks or animals on the bottom. It was as if the humans wanted to do the things the People did, but didn't understand why they did them.

There was one room, however, that caught Neteyam's eye. The far wall of it was covered with colourful lumps, and people in harnesses were using these as foot and handholds as they made their way up and down. Once again, there wasn't really any goal involved – there was nothing at the top to retrieve – but climbing was one of the things Neteyam knew he was good at.

Seeing his interest, Nguyen escorted him in. “Now, you'll want to go easy the first week or so,” she cautioned him. “Your muscles are new, remember. The growth stims count for a lot but they're not used to doing actual work, and...”

Neteyam wasn't interested in hearing anything more from her. He'd been doing nothing for a couple of days now, and it was driving him nuts. This wouldn't even be particularly challenging. The wall was built for climbing, so the holds were easily visible and wouldn't need careful testing like clefts in tree bark or cracks in stone. He wouldn't even need any of that silly-looking gear the humans were wearing. He kicked his shoes off and removed his socks to have his toes free, and ran to grab the first set of holds.

Nguyen was calling to him. He ignored her, and went up the wall like a prolemur. The humans on either side of him stared as he surged past them, and he realized that for the first time since waking up here, he was smiling.

Part of the wall jutted out in an artificial overhang, but even this was easy to climb. The bottom was covered with the hooked holds that were easy to put his digs into. He reached to get his toes into one and push himself up and over the bump, and...

... and after a moment of freefall he was lying flat on his back on the mat at the bottom, gasping for air with fireflies dancing in front of his eyes.

“Medic!” somebody called out. “Get a medic!”

“Neteyam!” Nguyen's face appeared, divided into two ghostly images, and then came back together into one again. Her eyes were wide and frightened. “Can you see me? Can you hear me?”

Neteyam tried to reply, but didn't have enough air. He was still fighting to refill his lungs after the impact had knocked the breath out of them. His memory replayed the accident in slow motion: he'd tried to grab a hold on the bottom of the overhang, but his foot hadn't gripped, and he'd fallen. Now that he began to sit up and looked at his feet, he realized why. Human toes couldn't grip like Na'vi ones. They all pointed directly forward. Dad, Lo'ak, and Kiri had feet like that, but they'd all grown up that way and knew how to cope with the handicap. Neteyam... it just hadn't occurred to him, and now he'd made a fool of himself.

The medic was a plump woman with frizzy dark hair who prodded Neteyam's neck and back and felt his skull, checking for injuries. Like Nguyen, her hair was very short – a lot of humans seemed to wear it that way, or to shave it off entirely like a couple of the climbers who had gathered around to see what was happening. Clearly it was not the sign of disgrace it would have been among some tribes of the People... but the short hair also seemed almost designed to draw attention to the smooth domes of their heads, without queues. As if they were proud of it.

Still a bit dizzy, he wondered if that were how they were able to live in this sterile place, because even if they were out in the forest they would not be able to make a real connection with anything there. Maybe it all looked all the same to them.

When the medic felt at the back of Neteyam's head, where his own queue should have been, the lack made him shudder. He could only hope it wouldn't start hurting the way his equally nonexistent tail did.

Finally, the woman gave Neteyam a clean bill of health, and only then did she ask him his name.

“Neteyam te Suli Tsyeyk'itan,” he replied formally.

His words made a picture and some writing pop up on a device the medic was holding. Neteyam could read a little, but not quickly – it had never been an essential skill. He wasn't fast enough to catch what this said before the woman started manipulating the display.

“I'm giving you a citation for not using safety equipment,” she said sternly. “If I have to give you a second one, you'll be banned from the climbing wall for sixty days. Understand?”

“He understands,” said Nguyen firmly.

That was it for the recreation area, at least for that day. Nguyen escorted Neteyam out, and set him to doing a bunch more strange and pointless tasks that she considered tests. He was shown a chart, like the one the recom had been reading off the other day, and was asked to identify in which direction rows of smaller and smaller arrowheads were pointed. This was supposed to tell them how well his eyes were working. A similar test involved quieter and quieter sounds. He was asked to count and do some simple mathematics, and to identify shapes and animals.

These were all easy things to do, which was good, because Neteyam was having a hard time concentrating on them. The image of the climbing wall flashing past him as he fell kept flickering in front of his eyes every time he blinked. He could he have forgotten something so obvious as how human feet worked? He knew that his father and siblings had to climb differently than he did, and yet he'd never even thought of it. He should have known better.

Next time, he vowed silently. Next time he'd stop and think first, and make sure he was prepared.

Before Neteyam settled down to sleep that night, Nguyen gave him another tablet and water to take it with. He wasn't sure whether to take it or not, but then he remembered waking up in so much pain the previous evening, and how he'd felt twitches and twinges in the nonexistent appendage all day, and he put the pill in his mouth and washed it down.

By morning, Neteyam felt like he was going to go mad. He woke up early, as he was used to doing, and lay there feeling like he wanted to roll out of it and just fall, just to feel the wind in his hair again. But it was only an arm's length to the floor, not enough for that, or for the thrill of catching the foliage on the way down. He'd just go thump, like he had at the climbing wall. Great Mother, what would his parents have said if they'd seen that?

Groaning, he reached up and rubbed at his face. The first thing he felt was the shape of his nose again, which made a shiver run through his insides again – but then he also felt something rasp on his chin. Something that shouldn't have been there.

Frowning, he sat up and ran a hand around the rim of his jaw. It was covered with tiny barbs, like a viperwolf's tongue. What was that?

Neteyam got up and went to the shiny black panel in the wall, the one Nguyen had said could be used to call her. The surface was a bit reflective, although it didn't give as clear or colourful a picture as the surface of a quiet pool. He didn't like looking at his new face, but he forced himself to examine the reflection as he ran a thumb across the strange sensation. It wasn't something stuck to his skin, because rubbing didn't seem to remove it.

It was hard to make out, but he could see a spattering of dark spots across his cheeks and upper lip. He touched it again, and finally figured out what it was – a growth of tiny, stiff hairs.

Neteyam swallowed a sudden mouthful of bile. Some humans had hairy faces – Max Patel did, and Dr. Spellman's came and went. It wasn't something he'd ever paid a lot of attention to, it was just what those particular individuals looked like, similar to how some people had darker stripes or more photophores than others. Now he suddenly had a dozen questions about it. Why did some have this hair and others not? Why did Dr. Spellman only have it sometimes? How long did it get? Did it get in the way while they ate? Could they be shaved away like head hair?

His first idea was to ask Nguyen – after all, she'd said he could ask her any questions he had. But that would be, in a way, letting her win, and anyway, only male humans seemed to have the problem so she might not even know. Demarco was male and kept his face bare, but he was no longer available, and after being told off once for providing information Nguyen didn't approve of, he might not be willing to say anything.

So Neteyam didn't speak during breakfast – but he couldn't ignore the new sensation. Over and over, he caught himself running his fingers over the little hairs. Nguyen seemed to notice this, but she didn't say anything – she was waiting for him to ask her. That made him all the more determined not to do so.

Shortly after the two of them had sat down, General Bush came and joined them. He pulled up a chair and put his own tray down on the table. “How are we doing?” he asked as he sat down.

Nguyen sighed. “I think we're bored, honestly. Would you like to go back to the recreation centre today, Neteyam? As long as you follow the rules this time, there'll be no problem.”

Neteyam didn't answer. The words recreation centre brought back that memory of losing his grip on the wall and hitting the floor, like a child climbing for the first time. He wanted to try again, but what if he fell? What if there were something else about this new body he'd forgotten? He put another piece of fruit in his mouth, and ran a finger along the edge of his jaw again.

“You're getting a bit whiskery there, son,” Bush observed. “Need a shave? The locals don't grow beards, do they? You probably don't know how to do that.”

Nguyen looked annoyed – she'd wanted Neteyam to be the one to bring it up. “He's right. I can take you to the barber today.”

“No, he needs to learn how to do it himself,” Bush said firmly. “It's a rite of passage.”

That got Neteyam's attention. If shaving the hairs away were possible he could probably figure it out for himself, but a rite of passage might be an opportunity. He had been through the rites of passage for a member of the Omatikaya Clan. If he could learn this task, maybe the humans would treat him with less condescension. “I want to learn,” he said.

“Good kid.” Bush patted him on the back. “Finish your food, and come with me.”

Once they'd eaten and put away their dishes and trays, Bush took Neteyam into one of the washrooms. These had been a strange idea to Neteyam at first, but he'd figured it out pretty quickly – humans lived indoors, so they had to make a place to deal with their bodily functions, not just find somewhere convenient. Bush set several implements on the edge of a sink, and then pointed to the spigot.

“Wash your face first,” he ordered. “Nice hot water makes the hairs easier to trim.”

Neteyam obeyed. The feeling of the whiskers brushing on his fingers and palms felt very unnatural. If they could be easily gotten rid of, why did anyone keep them?

“Now give this a good shake,” Bush said, picking up a metal container. It rattled as he shook it. “Hold out your hands.”

Neteyam did, and a button on the canister filled his hands with a white froth. It reminded him of the substance produced by certain fungi, which the Omatikaya used to clean fibres before spinning them into thread or wool.

“Smear it on where you're gonna shave,” Bush instructed. “Push it up, against the grain where the hairs grow.” The next tool he offered was the razor, which was a short blade on a stick, rather than the curved piece of obsidian the warriors used. “Short, light strokes. Start with your cheeks to get the feel of it before you try doing somewhere sensitive like your throat. You can puff up your cheeks to get a better surface.”

The bones and flesh were going to be more difficult to navigate than a scalp. Neteyam had never shaved his own head, but he'd watched mother help Lo'ak with the sides of his. He took a deep breath and focused, using the same care as he would have applied to delicate beadwork, or pulling bark into fibre for rope. Humans did this all the time, he reminded himself, it couldn't be that difficult. There wasn't even any blood involved, as there would be in piercing an ear or a lip. Yet his heart was beating hard against his ribs as he dragged the blade over his skin. Why was this so scary?

It must be because of his fall yesterday, he thought. If he could fail at something so easy and obvious as climbing a wall that had been built to be climbed, he could certainly slip and cut his own throat with a razor. If that happened, would the humans let him die, or would they just make him another body and start over?

“Short strokes,” Bush reminded him. “You're doing great.”

That was reassuring, but what would happen if Neteyam tried something like the climbing wall again and couldn't do it? What if this new body was just clumsier than his old one? Nguyen had implied that they were worried they'd made mistakes in creating it. What if they had? What if he failed at the climbing wall no matter how many times he tried?

“Good, good,” said Bush. “You missed a bit there, under your chin. Want me to get that for you?”

“No,” said Neteyam. If this were a rite of passage, then he had to do it himself. He wouldn't have let somebody else capture a banshee for him. He found the place and raised his chin, carefully drawing the razor across the taut skin. “There.”

His entire lower face looked redder than before, and it felt rather scraped, as if he'd taken a layer of skin off along with the whiskers. But when he ran his fingers along his jawline, it was smooth again. That was a relief.

“Good job!” Bush said. “Now rinse, and you're done. You're a quick study, Nate.”

Neteyam was about to splash water on his face, but then he paused and looked at the man suspiciously. “'Nate'?”

“It's a nickname,” said Bush. “Usually it's for the name Nathan or Nathaniel, but why can't it be for Neteyam?”

Neteyam bristled. Who was this man, to think he could address him by a shorter version of his name? That was reserved for close friends and family, the way they called Tuktirey 'Tuk'. “No,” he said. “Don't call me that.”

Bush looked startled, but then nodded. “All right. I won't.”

Nguyen was waiting for them outside the washroom, and smiled when she saw them emerge. “How did it go?”

“Very well,” said Bush. “He's a quick learner. Good thing, you're gonna be doing that every day for the rest of your life, kiddo,” he added to Neteyam.

This was spoken as if it were meant kindly, as if he were proud of the fact that Neteyam was ready, but it felt like a slap. It felt like more of Quaritch's mockery: you're one of us now. It made him want to do something to emphasize that he was not one of them, and Nguyen immediately provided him an opportunity.

“You might also want a haircut,” she said. “Or at least a trim.”

“No,” said Neteyam immediately. “The Omatikaya do not cut our hair short.” Not unless they were in disgrace, or in medical emergencies like an injury requiring trepanation.

He had expected Nguyen to gently argue with him, but to his surprise, she backed down. “Well, maybe we can find another way to keep it neat.”

“I want to braid it,” Neteyam decided.

Nguyen seemed to like that idea. She nodded. “I'll take you to the barber.”

The barber was a place where people sat in chairs to have their hair cut or their beards shaved. In many cases, head hair was being cut back to stubble with a buzzing machine, and Neteyam suddenly wondered if this were a trick. Were they going to cut it all off anyway? But Nguyen passed by all the chairs with the close cuts, and took Neteyam to a dark-coloured woman whose own hair was in many small braids, the way many of the Omatikaya wore it.

“This is Rosita,” said Nguyen. “You want your hair like hers, right?”

“That's right,” Neteyam said.

Rosita smiled and offered him a chair. “Have a seat.”

She got to work, and turned out to be surprisingly good at it. The braids were even and tight, like the ones Neteyam's mother had used to do for him when he was little, and she knew how to do it without pulling too hard. She offered beads to put on the ends of them, but he refused because they would click as he moved. If he wanted to escape, he didn't want something making noise to give away his position.

When she was finished, Rosita let Neteyam look at his reflection in the mirror. He still didn't like what he saw there. It was uncanny, watching that human face mirror his expressions and movements. But with the whiskers shaved away, the braids in his hair, and the gold eyes, it was almost starting to look like Neteyam. He felt like if his parents or siblings saw him, they would... well, they probably wouldn't recognize him, but they would think he looked familiar. He thanked Rosita, and walked out of the barber's with something approaching his usual swagger.

Bush had gone off to do something else now, but Nguyen was waiting for him, and seemed pleased. “It looks good on you,” she said, “and much tidier. Come on, I've got a few more things for you to try.”

This turned out to mean returning to the recreation centre. Neteyam recognized hallways and signs on the way and realized that was where they were headed, and after a moment's internal turmoil he squared his shoulders, determined. This was his chance to make up for that embarrassing failure yesterday. This time, he was going to go right up that wall to the top.

As they passed the row of windows that looked in on the climbing room, however, his stomach turned inside out. Once again, the memory hung in front of his eyes: the feel of his toes slipping from the hold, the sudden acceleration of falling, the air forced out of his lungs as he hit the mat. What would his family have thought of him? Kiri and Lo'ak would have never let him forget it – their big brother, the overachiever, unable to climb a wall that was meant to be climbed! And Mother and Dad... he could almost see the disappointment on their faces as they turned their heads away.

He was therefore a little grateful when Nguyen didn't take him to the climbing wall. Instead, she went into a room with an open-bottomed net fixed to a hoop high on the wall at each end, and gave him a large orange ball. Another test.

“We're looking at your binocular vision and coordination,” she said. “It's a game called basketball. The object is to throw the ball through the hoop.”

That seemed easy enough. Neteyam took aim, and threw.

The ball bounced off the rim of the hoop and dropped to the ground.

Nguyen reached to retrieve the ball for him, but Neteyam ran after it and caught it himself. “I can do it,” he said.

“You're allowed to try again,” she assured him.

He tossed it again. Again, it bounced off the rim. Neteyam went to catch it again, fumbled it, and had to let it bounce before he could grab it again. He licked his lips.

“Neteyam, relax!” Nguyen told him, a hand on his shoulder. “It's not a test.”

He pushed her hand away. “It is a test. You called it a test.”

“It's not a test of your abilities,” she corrected herself. “I'm just watching your coordination and how your eyes and body work together. You've been doing very well the last few days and you're doing very well at this. Your muscles are doing what you tell them, and that's all I want to see.”

Neteyam's muscles were not doing what he told them, because he was telling them to get the ball through the hoop. He tried again, and then again, and then again. Finally he thought it was going to go in, as it rolled around the edge of the hoop, but then it went over again and hit the floor, and he hissed at it in frustration.

That was enough to tell Neteyam that he had to calm down. He never did things like that. He was the oldest. He had to act like an adult, and adults didn't growl at inanimate objects. If they didn't get something right on the first try, they simply tried again. It had been a long time since Neteyam hadn't been able to do something on the first or second try.

No it hadn't. It had been yesterday.

“It's okay,” said Nguyen. “Do you want to go now?”

“No,” he said, scooping up the ball again. “I want to get it right.” He took a deep breath, focused, and threw it again. Again, it bounced off the rim.

“It's not as easy as it looks on television,” said Nguyen.

Neteyam picked up the ball again. He didn't want to ask her questions, because it was what she wanted him to do, but how else was he going to know? “You said this sometimes doesn't work very well, this new body thing,” he said. “Do you think you got something wrong when you, uh...” he couldn't quite make himself say the words made me. He didn't want to think of himself as something the Sky People had made.

She reached for him again, then changed her mind and kept back. “From what I've seen so far, no. Your results are pretty normal for somebody who's never tried this before.”

That was an answer, but how did he know it was true? He tried to get the ball in the hoop again. Again he failed.

“Your performance at physical tasks is very important to you, isn't it?” Nguyen observed.

“Sh...” Neteyam began, and then closed his eyes and stopped himself. He was not going to tell her to shut up. He was the oldest. He had to act like it. His parents weren't here, and he didn't know where they were, but he had to act in a way that would make them proud.

Especially after he'd also disappointed them by falling off the wall.

His hands were shaking as he threw it again. This time he missed entirely, and the ball bounced off the board and fell.

“You're too wound up now,” said Nguyen. “IF you want we can...”

“No,” said Neteyam. He was going to get it right. If he couldn't throw a ball through a hoop, how was he supposed to know he wouldn't just fall off again next time he tried to climb that wall.

Nguyen sighed and checked her watch. “Five more minutes,” she said. “We've got other things to do today.”

Neteyam took several deep breaths, trying to let the anxiety out. He could do this. He knew he could do this. It was such a simple task. He just had to remember that his arms were shorter than he thought. He could even use that extra finger to help stabilize the ball...

The device Nguyen wore on her wrist beeped, and she raised it to her ear. “This is Faye Nguyen,” she said.

The watch played somebody else's voice. Neteyam couldn't make out what it was saying.

“All right, I'm on my way,” she said, and lowered her arm. “I'm sorry, Neteyam, I have to go see about something.” For a moment she looked like she would just go, but then she seemed to realize that would leave him all alone. “Oh... I was going to request a new guide for you from General Bush, but he took you off to learn to shave and I totally forgot. Do you remember the way back to your room?”

“No,” he said. This place was a maze. He'd noticed enough landmarks to figure out where they were going, but he couldn't get back by himself.

“Then you'll have to come with me,” she decided, clearly reluctant. “Just stay where I tell you, and please don't ask questions. We need to respect people's privacy.”

Neteyam nodded once, and put the basketball back in the bin Nguyen had gotten it out of. He would come back and next time he would get it right. This one and the climbing wall, both.

Nguyen led the way through the halls, and Neteyam realized once again that he knew where they were going – back to the observation room above where the recoms exercised. They arrived to find a similar scene to the other day, with people jogging or doing other tasks under the supervision of Quaritch and another man whose head was totally shaved except for the hair braided around his queue. Was it Neteyams' imagination, or were there even more of them today? How many of their dead had the Sky People brought back in this form?

“Sit down,” said Nguyen, pulling a chair over for Neteyam to use. “I'll be back in a few minutes.” She went down a flight of steps and vanished.

Neteyam did not sit down. He didn't like chairs very much – crouching or sitting on the floor just felt more natural. When he looked around the room, he saw that the puzzle he'd started putting together was still on the table, which had been pushed to the back of the room to have more space. He could have kept putting that together. It would be at least one thing he could succeed at today... but maybe Nguyen had been thinking of that. Maybe she wanted him to be distracted so he wouldn't see what she was doing.

So instead, he went to the window and looked for her. Nguyen was not in the big room where the recoms were working, but when Neteyam pressed his face to the glass he found there was a door into another room right below the observation area. He could just barely see the top of Nguyen's head, almost directly underneath him. He continued watching as Quaritch led a sulking female recom up to the doorway, and as they passed, this individual happened to look up, right into Neteyam's eyes.

It was the one named Bohan. Neteyam wasn't sure why he bothered, but he raised a hand in acknowledgement. She nodded to him, then lowered her head and continued into the room.

Neteyam couldn't see what happened after that, so he raised his head and continued to watch what was going on in the rest of the room. The other recoms seemed to be interested in what was happening with Bohan. Their heads had turned as she was led past them. Now that she was gone, they held quiet conversations among themselves until the people in charge scolded them for it – and then, even when they returned to what they were doing, there were a lot of furtive glances towards the door.

A few minutes went by. The humans in the observation room were also talking softly to each other. Neteyam could hear snatches of their conversation. It included phrases like post-traumatic stress syndrome and permanent psychological consequences, often accompanied by glances either at the window, or perhaps at Neteyam himself, as if checking if he understood. He kept his face turned towards the window, giving them no clue how much he might have heard or grasped.

So this process wasn't as smooth as Nguyen insisted. There were people who were damaged by it, like this Bohan. Neteyam wondered if his fall and his bad aim were part of that.

More time went by. Neteyam rocked back and forth on his feet, bored and a little hungry. He suspected Nguyen hadn't thought it would take this long. Would she send somebody to deal with him, or would he just have to wait here?

Another woman entered the room. This one had long hair in a braid at the back of her neck, not unlike a Na'vi queue. Most of her hair was yellow, but the roots of it were dark. Perhaps she had spent a lot of time in the sun until recently.

She approached Neteyam. “Are you, uh... Ne-Neteyam?” she asked, stumbling over the name.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Dr. Nguyen wants you downstairs,” she said. “Let me get you a breathing unit.”

This was the same contraption he'd seen Sky People wearing in the past – a transparent shield that covered the whole face, with a strap that went tightly around the back of the head. When Neteyam put it on, this pushed his narrow braids uncomfortably into his scalp, and he had to lift them up and let them fall over it instead. The edges of the mask were a rubbery material that stuck to his skin, and the first few times he breathed the warm, stale-smelling air inside it, moisture condensed on the shield and blocked his view.

One that had cleared, the yellow-haired woman escorted him down a flight of steps and into a small room at the bottom, with white walls and no furniture. The woman put her own breathing unit on, then touched a panel on the wall. The door shut with a very heavy-sounding thud, and there was a hissing sound. A few seconds later, the door on the opposite wall opened, and they headed out into the exercise room.

Sounds in here were muffled by the breathing mask, which covered Neteyam's ears, but he could still hear how they echoed in the large open space. Two recoms were playing the game Nguyen had called basketball – the nearer one caught the ball, and both turned to watch as the yellow-haired woman and Neteyam passed by at their feet.

Neteyam tried not to show it, but it was a bad shock to be reminded just how big they were up close. Being surrounded by humans who were the same height as himself had started to feel almost normal, but the recoms towering over him was a sharp reminder of how small he really was. Was that the real reason he was having so much trouble with simple tasks like throwing a ball, because he just didn't have a good idea of his own size?

They entered the little room below the observation chamber. This was surprisingly comfortable, with couches and tables and even a refrigerator, and pictures of outdoor scenes on the wall. Everything in it was sized for the recoms, which made it seem gigantic from Neteyam's height. Quaritch was leaning in a corner drinking water out of a bottle. Nguyen was sitting on a human-sized chair in the middle of the room, facing the woman called Bohan, who was draped rather bonelessly over a sofa, legs spread and arms out across the back. It was a great contrast with the straight-backed, disciplined stances of the other recoms outside.

She sat up a bit when Neteyam came in, and Nguyen stood.

“There he is,” the doctor said.

“Neteyam,” he announced his name.

“Neteyam,” Nguyen echoed with a nod. “This is Emily Bohan. She asked to talk to you.”

Chapter 4: Trust

Chapter Text

Like all the avatars and recoms, Bohan was a little odd looking. She had smaller eyes and a more human-like, pointed nose than a normal Na'vi – Neteyam was used to seeing such features on the avatars at Hell's Gate, and on his father and siblings. People from other clans sometimes found their features uncanny, but seeing it on Bohan didn't bother Neteyam at all. Like most of the recoms her hair was tightly pulled back into the single braid around her queue, with no effort to style it, and he could see a couple of small tattoos on her arms, peeking out below her rolled-up shirtsleeves.

She offered a hand. Neteyam knew about this custom, and reached out to shake it. Her hands were twice the size of his and once again, it made him feel very small.

“I've been hearing about you,” she said.

“We're going to have a sharp word with whoever told her,” Nguyen added.

“We're ten thousand people living in a tin can, Faye,” said Bohan. “Gossip is the only thing keeping us sane.” She turned back to Neteyam. “You're Sully's kid, then. You should hear the way they talk about your Dad.” Her eyes flicked over to Quaritch.

“I don't know if that's appropriate...” Nguyen began.

“I can guess,” said Neteyam. “I know they think he's a traitor.”

“Hear that?” Bohan asked the psychologist. “He's not a child.” She leaned forward to focus on Neteyam, and gestured with her right hand, indicating his body from toes to head. “So what do you think about all this, kiddo? From what I've heard I doubt they asked your permission.”

“They didn't,” Neteyam confirmed. What if they had? If he'd found himself dying somewhere and the Sky People had told him that he could come back, but it would be in this alien body, what would he have said? Wasn't it better to simply return to Eywa as everybody did, rather than be forcibly dragged back into the world as something else?

He knew that made sense, but there was another way to look at it, too – the one that had been on his mind since this had first begun to seem real. “I'm not enjoying it. I...” would she understand how cut off he felt? She had probably never connected with Eywa or with any of her creatures. He settled for the general, “I can't do the things I used to do.”

“He's having trouble with the physicality,” Nguyen said, apparently thinking Neteyam was having trouble finding words.

“And none of these people are as nice as they're pretending to be,” Neteyam added, with a brief glance in Nguyen's direction. “But I'm glad I'm alive,” he decided. “If I'm alive, I can help my family,” he said.

In his corner, Quaritch snorted.

“What about you?” Neteyam asked. “You did give permission for this?”

“Yeah. It sounded like a good idea,” Bohan explained. “Make a backup in case something happens to you. You and I died in the same fight, you know, off in the islands. You got shot by Uchida. He was still mad you'd put an arrow in him last year. I got crushed when one of those whale things breached onto the ship and trapped me between the bent bulkheads – or so they say, I don't actually remember that.”

“What happened when you came back, then?” asked Neteyam. If she'd wanted this...

“I changed my mind,” Bohan said. “I can't get used to being way up here. I can't get used to my face in the mirror. Then there's how Randy reacted. He said he just couldn't take it. We've got two kids and he said he didn't want them to see this. Nobody does.” She shrugged one shoulder. “We're useful monsters, but we're still monsters. That's why they moved the whole program out to this hole in the ground. Because the normal people don't want us around.

“Faye says,” she pointed a thumb at Nguyen, “that I have to stop thinking of myself as the same person as Emily Bohan. I've got her memories, but I don't need to live her life. But then why do they expect me to use this person's name, if I'm only a memory of her? They want to keep everything of her that was useful to them, but they don't actually want to keep me. I knew that going into this, but it didn't feel personal then. I guess it wouldn't, when it was something that would happen to somebody else once I was dead.”

Nguyen was nodding. “Why do you feel you can trust Neteyam with this, Emily?” she asked. “You just met him. It took you weeks to open up to me.”

“Because I get the feeling he knows what the hell I'm talking about,” said Bohan. “You can get back to me when you've tried this for yourself.”

“I'm not eligible to apply,” said Nguyen. “I did check.”

“Should I do that?” Neteyam looked at Nguyen. “Should I be thinking of myself as a new person?” In a way, he could see the point of it, but the question was asked out of suspicion. It would be a useful idea to his keepers. If he wasn't actually Neteyam, then it wouldn't be a betrayal when he turned against the People. Why had Nguyen not brought the idea up?

“I'm not sure that would be helpful to you,” Nguyen replied. “You have a strong sense of identity and deconstructing it would be a painful process. You're also not in a position to interact with people you knew before and you don't have to deal with the dissonance of that.”

Quaritch was getting impatient. “Is this little pity party really going to accomplish anything?”

“You can leave any time,” said Bohan, without looking at him.

“No, I can't,” said Quaritch. “Because the folks in charge are afraid you'll go apesh*t on the humans if you're not supervised.”

“He's talking about Ježek,” Bohan said to Neteyam. “I threw him off the mezzanine. He deserved it.”

“Are you really pulling out the that was one time defence?” Quaritch asked.

“No. I'm not even talking to you,” said Bohan.

“Actually, Colonel,” said Nguyen rather sharply, “I don't think you're contributing much to this conversation. I think we might make more progress if you stepped out for a moment.” She considered what had been said so far. “You'll notice who's been doing most of the talking? I think that may be on your account.”

Quaritch rolled his eyes, but then he put his water bottle down, and walked out of the room. Nguyen hesitated a moment, then got up to follow him. “I'll be right back,” she promised.

Neteyam couldn't help snickering a little as she hurried out. The mental image of her telling Quaritch off while he scowled down at her from twice her height was amusing.

Bohan was not laughing. She crooked a finger at him, telling him to come closer.

“If there was something you wanted to tell me earlier, better say it now while there's nobody listening,” she said softly.

Neteyam looked around to make sure there was nobody lurking in the doorway. “Where does the air get in?” he asked her in a whisper.

Her brows rose in surprise, but after a moment she seemed to realize why he'd asked. “Vents in the ceiling. I don't know if you could climb the ducts... they're straight up and there are fans and filters on the way. You want to get out of here? Where do you think you're gonna go?”

“I have to find my family,” said Neteyam.

“You're just gonna go run off into the jungle and look for them?” Bohan sounded skeptical, but then she shrugged. “I guess you'd know how, wouldn't you?”

Neteyam himself honestly wasn't sure about that. The last few days had left him questioning whether he was capable of anything in this body. He knew he had to try, though, so he nodded.

“If you want my advice,” said Bohan, “you have to make them trust you. The more they think they can trust you, the less they'll watch you. I threw one guy over a balcony and now I need a twenty-four-seven babysitter. It works the other way, too.”

“Why did you do that, if now they won't leave you alone?” Neteyam asked.

“Because he was being a dick,” she said bluntly. “And because I don't give a sh*t anymore. Where would I go?” She spread her arms to encompass the entire complex. “My people don't want me and yours won't take me. I can't even die because they'll just grow another one of me in the basem*nt and pump my memories back into it. Have you been down there yet?”

“No,” said Neteyam warily.

“It's a hell of a sight, all those empty bodies floating in tubes.”

Neteyam thought of Grace Augustine's empty avatar, still in stasis at Hell's Gate because it didn't seem right to get rid of it. He imagined that, times... how many? Dozens? Hundreds? How many recoms were there? How many were they planning to make?

More importantly, was she right about trust? If Neteyam pretended to be more friendly to them, made it seem like he could be persuaded to turn on the People, would he be able to get out? Or was this just another trick, a way to manipulate him into cooperating?

“Just don't count too much on your family, kiddo,” Bohan added. “They probably say they'll always love you no matter what, but there's some things that are too much. Believe me, I would know.”

Nguyen walked back into the room then. Bohan glanced at her, then sat up straight again. “I think you need to get more exercise,” she said, as if this were what they'd been talking about the whole time. “You're twitchy. Run some laps.”

“I tried climbing the wall,” said Neteyam, playing along. “I fell.”

“I heard about that,” Bohan nodded. “We've have some of the same problems. Your arms and legs aren't always where you think they are. It takes a while. First time I tried to punch Hutchinson I missed entirely.”

Nguyen came and sat down again. “How are we doing in here? You two seem to be getting along.”

“He's a bright kid,” said Bohan, reaching down to ruffle Neteyam's hair. Her huge hand twisted his braids around, and he was glad he'd pulled them out from under the strap of his mask, or she might have dislodged it. “Not much of a talker, but I know I tend to monopolize conversations.” She looked down at him. “What do you think, Neteyam, do I talk too much?”

“No. You have a lot to say,” he said.

“Like I said,” Bohan grinned. “Bright kid.”

“That went very well,” said Nguyen, as she took Neteyam back upstairs for supper that night. “I haven't seen her smile in ages, and I'm astonished some of the things she told you. Would you like to speak to her again sometime? I think the two of you might do each other some good. Sometimes the best medicine is just talking to somebody who understands.”

Neteyam wondered if that meant he'd be seeing her regularly. He wasn't about to entirely trust Bohan, but he felt like she was more trustworthy than people like Nguyen and Bush. If nothing else, she wasn't overtly trying to get anything from him. When she said things like how it would take time to learn again how to do the things he used to do, he believed her more than he did Nguyen.

“If she's so unhappy, why don't you change her back?” he asked. “You made one body for her, why not another?” It seemed such an obvious solution to her problem, and to the Sky People's problems with her.

“There are policies about that,” Nguyen replied. “The politicians don't want this done with any living person, because it's not right to have two of somebody, and they don't want anyone brought back from the dead in the same form. The idea is,” she explained, “that if you do that for some people, you have to do it for everybody, and then where do you draw the line? What about people who die of old age? We're supposed to be building a world for our children and grandchildren, not for future incarnations of ourselves.”

“No exceptions?”

“No exceptions,” she agreed. “Not for Bohan, and not for you, either, if that's what you're asking.”

He had thought of that. “What if I give you the information you need?” So far nobody had really tried to interrogate him, but he was sure it was only a matter of time. They'd wait until they felt like they'd worn him down a little... like they had made him trust them.

Nguyen sighed. “It's not a transaction, Neteyam,” she said. “We want to come to an understanding with your people. We're hoping you can help us with that. Tomorrow I think I'm going to start showing you around a little more. You need to meet people, to see what we're doing here, maybe learn a little about the world we left behind. We need to understand you, but you need to understand us, too.

“In the mean time,” she added, “I think I've got something you'll like. Today is actually a special occasion.”

There were several things that a 'special occasion' might be, but it turned out to be a feast, like the ones the Omatikaya used to hold every year in remembrance of their victory over the Sky People. The festival had been on hold since their enemies had returned, but people promised their children it would be an even bigger celebration once they'd driven them off again.

Dad had never said that, and looked troubled whenever somebody mentioned it, so Neteyam himself had stepped up to reassure his younger siblings. He couldn't allow them to see Dad having doubts. He was the eldest – he had to take care of his sisters and brother.

There was a huge amount of food waiting in the cafeteria, some of it things Neteyam had seen before while others were strange. As well as slices of meat, there were mounds of pulped tubers in both white and orange varieties, green legumes, some concoction of jellied fruit, and a mash of bread and dried berries that was called 'stuffing', with brown meat juices to drench it all in. Nguyen usually let Neteyam choose his own food, but now she loaded up his plate for him with far more than he thought he could eat, and took him to table to sit down.

“It's called Thanksgiving,” she told him. “It's in memory of the first colonists in a New World, so you can imagine how relevant it is to our little operation here... but mostly it's just an excuse to get together and eat a lot of food. People on any planet enjoy that.”

She cut herself a piece of meat and dipped it in the juices before putting it in her mouth, and Neteyam picked up his own cutlery. He still found the tools awkward, though he was getting better with them, but with food as messy as this he could see how they were absolutely necessary. He started with something simple, and scooped up some of the orange tubers.

“Those are called sweet potatoes, or yams,” Nguyen told him after swallowing her mouthful. “And the meat is from a bird called a trr-ki. Let me find you a picture of one.” She pulled out her mini-tablet. “They make a very funny noise. I was absolutely terrified of them as a child.”

Somebody pulled out the chair next to Nguyen, and Neteyam looked up to see Bush joining them once again. “How's it going?” the General asked.

“Oh, very well,” said Nguyen. “I was worried Bohan was latching on to Neteyam as a substitute for her sons, but even if she is, his presence seemed to calm her down so much I think I'd like them to meet again. There's something I want to talk to you about, though,” she added. “I had to dismiss Demarco for gossiping, and I hoped you could assign us another bodyguard to replace him.”

“Happy to,” said Bush, “but we've got some problems of our own to deal with.” He looked at Neteyam. “Tell me something, Neteyam. You probably know the land around where your people live pretty well, I imagine.”

“Yes, I do.” Neteyam sat up a bit straighter. This was where they were going to try to question him about something, and he would have to be careful what he told them. Or... or was this an opportunity? Was it a chance to persuade Bush that he could be trusted, maybe without a guard to replace Demarco?

“There's a network of caves behind a waterfall,” Bush said. “I think your people call it the River Noro.” He pronounced it with a hard r, noh-row.

“Noro,” Neteyam corrected him, using the correct sound: noddo. But the description got his attention so that he could almost feel his ears prick up, even though that was impossible in this body. He did know that place. He knew it very well.

“Thanksgiving dinner is not a good time for an interrogation, General,” said Nguyen.

“What about it?” Neteyam asked.

Bush appeared to spend a moment thinking about what he was going to say next. “It's a pretty good place to hide things, isn't it?”

He was trying to make it sound like an innocent question, but Neteyam wasn't that stupid. “Yes, it is. We used to play in there when we were kids.” Mother and Dad had never liked it, fearing the children would get lost or hurt in there. Several times, Neteyam had to go drag Lo'ak and Kiri out to save them from another scolding. “What did they hide in there?”

To his surprise, Bush chuckled a little. “All right, you're not dumb and neither am I. Let's talk like grownups.” He leaned forward, resting his folded arms on the table. “On a raid a few weeks back, your people got a hold of some heavy explosives, the kind we use in mining. You've seen the old mine pits, right? We're in one. It's the stuff we use to blast those open. Our satellites detected gases escaping from the cave system that suggest it's hidden in there, and we want to retrieve it, but we can't locate it from the surface. Our seismic sonar has given us a layout of the first few metres, but to get any further we need to send somebody in.”

“I don't know where they would have put it,” said Neteyam. “There are a lot of hiding places in there. How much did they take?” That would give him an idea how much space they'd need.

“I'm not asking for a pinpoint location,” said Bush. “Just a map of the caves.”

Neteyam's heart was beating fast, but he knew he had to stay outwardly calm. This was an opportunity to win trust, but he had to do it right. After he'd been surly and uncooperative earlier, Bush would be suspicious if he jumped in to help now. Nor could he give them any really useful information, not without potential harm to the People. He had to tread carefully. He had to make them talk him into it, and then take great care what he told them in return.

“If I show you the caves,” he said carefully, “you're going to take the explosives and use them against the People.”

“No, no, like I said, it's a mining explosive,” Bush told him. “We were shipping it to the south pole. We're mining heavy water from the ice caps for use in our fusion reactors. It's not intended as a weapon, it's not controllable like one, and if your people tried to use it, they'd probably end up hurting themselves more than us.”

Neteyam wasn't fooled. They weren't worried about the People, they just wanted their stuff back. They must know that Dad knew how to use human technology and that he'd taught other warriors to do the same. An explosive was already a weapon whether used against people or against the earth, and it surely wouldn't be hard for either side to find a use for it in the ongoing war. But he had to let Bush think he'd been reassured, because he was starting to come up with a plan. “If I make this 'map' for you,” he emphasized the word as if it were something he didn't quite understand, “what do I get?”

Maybe that was too much. Bush frowned. “What do you get?” he echoed.

“Neteyam, I told you, this isn't a transaction,” said Nguyen.

He backed down. “I guess Quaritch would say I get to stay alive.”

Bush sat up straighter, as if a little offended by the idea. “Yeah, but I'm not Quaritch,” he said. “Okay, then. You're after something. What do you want?”

Neteyam glanced at Nguyen and found her eyeing him suspiciously – she thought she knew what he was going to ask for. He intended to surprise her.

“I want to know exactly how much you know about my family, and where you think they are,” he said.

Bush considered it, then nodded slowly. “You know what? That's fair,” he decided. “You deserve to know that anyway, map or no map.” He pointed to Neteyam's plate. “Finish your dinner, and then I'll show you something.”

On top of all the other food that night there was a dessert of pumpkin pie, which Neteyam found to be quite a nice flavour, sweet, savoury, and spicy all at once. He noticed several people taking second slices and might have joined them if he hadn't already eaten much more than he was used to. Instead, he left his dishes on the cart, and followed Bush into a small meeting room.

There was a big holo projector in the middle of the table, like the one at Hell's Gate, but instead of that Bush picked up a minipad and began bringing up images on that. He didn't turn it around right away, but Neteyam could see what he was looking at right through the transparent display, and it nearly made his heart stop.

The Sky People had pictures of all of them. Not just Mother and Dad, but himself and Kiri and Lo'ak. Even Tuk who was so young, and Spider, who wasn't really part of the family even if Kiri treated him like a brother. If these had been objects, instead of just floating shapes in light, Neteyam might not have been able to stop himself ripping them out of Bush's hands.

“Your parents, two sisters, and a brother,” Bush said, and proceeded to mispronounce everybody's names. “You, Loke , Kerri , and Tuck-terri. The older girl appears to be a parthenogenic clone of Dr. Grace Augustine's avatar, which wasn't something we knew your people could do.”

Neteyam didn't know what that meant, although he figured it had something to do with what Max Patel had once said, about Kiri having no father. Right now it wasn't important. Certainly not as important as the cold, crawling feeling of realizing that the pictures had been made the night the younger kids had been captured by the recom soldiers. The terror on their faces made Neteyam's chest feel tight. That awful evening was the last part of his old life that he remembered, although from what Bohan said he'd lived a little while after. They'd all gotten away again... right?

“The last time we located them, they were hiding in the archipelago off the east coast of the big continent.” Bush changed the view to a map. “With a people called the, uh...” he frowned at the name. “Metaky ... no, just Mitka ... Mit-ky-na.”

Neteyam looked at the letters, remembering the sounds that went with each. The Sky People had a system for writing down Na'vi words that was, for some reason, much easier than the one they used to write their own. “Metkayina,” he said. What were they doing there? Why would they abandon the Omatikaya, the clan Mother had been born and Dad adopted into?

“As far as we can tell, they all survived our last skirmish,” said Bush. “We've lost track of them since, though. We were hoping you could give us some idea where they might go next.” He glanced at Neteyam. “But not right now, obviously.”

If Neteyam didn't know why they'd leave the Omatikaya in the first place, he definitely didn't know what their next step might be. “Except me,” he said.

“Sorry?” asked Bush.

“They all survived,” said Neteyam. “Except me.”

“Well... yeah,” Bush admitted.

That wasn't something Neteyam had thought about in depth yet, not since that first night when nothing had seemed real... but as Bohan had said, Neteyam was dead. The human boy standing here looking at these images was just a memory of him. Maybe it was hearing about what the rest of the family was doing without him, but the idea seemed suddenly impossible to ignore.

He'd worried what his family would think of him returning in this body. Now he wondered, assuming he could find them, what they would think of him returning at all? Would they say the real Neteyam had gone back to Eywa, and he was just some monster the Sky People had made? If they did... they'd be right, wouldn't they?

“That's what we know,” Bush said, “and we should have shared it with you right away, I see that now. All you wanted was to know they're all right, and I can't fault you for that.” He turned off the holopad display, and then offered the device to Neteyam. “You can have this. They're not exactly the pictures you'd put on your Christmas cards, but they're something.”

“Thank you, Sir,” said Neteyam, accepting it. Was Bush actually being kind? He looked sincere, but maybe this was just an effort to make Neteyam trust him. Neteyam decided he didn't care. He did want those pictures.

“I won't ask you for that map right now,” Bush added. He put a hand on Neteyam's shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze, and Neteyam let him. “Just think about it, okay?”

Neteyam did think about it, but only after he'd lain awake very late, flipping through the pictures on the holopad. There were Mother and Dad, slipping silently through the foliage, the soft glow of their photophores merging seamlessly with the shine from the leaves and insects around them. There was Tuk, in panicked tears, and Kiri trying to stay calm to reassure her sister despite her own terror. There was Lo'ak with his chin up, defiant and rude. And Neteyam himself with an arrow on his bow, the muscles in his jaw clenched, his eyes focused, determined to do his part.

It probably wasn't a good idea to directly compare his old and new faces. It would probably just make him feel sick again. But Neteyam got up and went over to the wall panel that showed a reflection, and held up one of the pictures of himself next to it.

The first thing he noticed was that he actually looked a lot more like his old self than he'd thought. Ignoring the colour and just focusing on the shape of the features, he did look very much like Neteyam, even more so than he'd looked like those old recordings of his father in his human body. If his family saw this new face, they might well recognize him after all.

The second thing was much less reassuring. As alike as those two faces, Na'vi and alien, might be, there was still a distinct disconnect between them. One of them was animated, blinking when Neteyam did and turning as he turned. The other was just a frozen moment. Looking at both produced a powerful self-identification with the moving face – that was him, and the other was just a picture. The longer he looked at the still image, the less like him it seemed.

After a few moments Neteyam had to turn away from the reflective panel, his stomach in knots. When he saw Dad again, he would have to ask him what he felt about those old recordings.

If he saw Dad again. If Dad wanted to see him again. If he could get to them.

Getting there was going to be a challenge, Neteyam thought. He brought the map back up and lay down on the bed, staring through the display at the ceiling. Neteyam had a very general idea of his world's geography. There was a globe of Pandora back at Hell's Gate that he and his siblings had looked at and played with, but he'd never bothered trying to memorize any of the features or the names the humans had given them, because those didn't seem like something he would ever need to know. Now he looked at the hovering sphere and wondered what sort of scale it was at. What did a day's travel look like?

The world was a sphere, but it was so big that you couldn't see that from the ground. Only once you got into space was the curve obvious, and even then, it looked huge. If he had to turn the virtual globe with his fingers to get from the place marked you are here to the islands Bush had mentioned, it had to be a very long way. Days by banshee, which he didn't have. Even longer by direhorse...

... but that wasn't an option, either. He couldn't ride a beast he hadn't made tsaheylu with. He wouldn't be able to tell it what to do. It wouldn't know if he were a friend or an attacker.

He definitely couldn't go on foot, that would take weeks. What he needed was one of those flying machines the Sky People used. How could he get one of those? There were a couple of them at Hell's Gate and there must be dozens here, but everything in this placed seemed to be guarded.

Then he realized the answer was right there: Hell's Gate. That would have to be the first place he went anyway, wouldn't it? The humans who lived there were, and always had been, friends of the People. They would help him.

When Neteyam had first started coming up with his plan over dinner, it had been a very vague idea that started and ended with tricking the Sky People into letting him out of this complex. Now he had something to do after that. Now this was starting to feel like a real plan.

Getting to Hell's gate would be the easy part, though. It was getting out of here that was going to be hard. His plan was working so far. Bush had taken the way he'd said map to mean he wasn't sure what that was, and had explained, showing him an 'application' on the holopad that would help him make one. He probably didn't think Neteyam would know how to do anything else with the device – and he didn't know much but there were a few things he knew it could be good for.

In the mean time, he brought up the drawing application. Neteyam did know what a map was. He'd used ones humans had made, and he'd even scratched a couple of them in sand when explaining to somebody else how to find a place. If he wanted, he could probably draw a pretty good, clear map of the caverns above the Noro River.

But now wasn't the time to draw a good map. Right now, he needed to draw a really, really bad one.

Chapter 5: There Is No Try

Chapter Text

Neteyam was eager to get started, but he knew he had to contain his enthusiasm – after his earlier hostility, he couldn't seem too keen to help. If the humans became suspicious of him, he wouldn't get anywhere. It was probably best to wait until Bush approached him again, so he let a couple of days go by without mentioning the caves.

To fill the time, he took Nguyen up on some of her offers of things to make him more comfortable. He didn't really want any of these, but accepting them would make it seem like he was warming up to his captors. To start, he chose a couple of posters to decorate his room. Some of these were pictures of familiar sights in Omatikaya territory, but since Bush had said his family was last seen in the eastern archipelago, he took one that featured that landscape, too. It was a very strange-looking place to Neteyam's eyes, all shining sky, bright sand, and glittering water, very exposed when compared to the comfortable density of the jungle. He wondered why Mother and Dad had chosen that place, and how they felt about it.

He also picked out some new clothes. The ones the Sky People had provided for him were very basic, a white shirt and tan-coloured trousers that fit fairly tight. When Nguyen offered him the use of a fabricator to make some new ones, Neteyam chose vivid blues, greens, and golds that reminded him of home, and looser items that didn't cling to his skin and bunch up at his joints. He felt more free to move in these, even if they were more likely to catch on things. Then he asked to see Rosita, the woman from the barber's, again. She'd offered to put beads in his hair. Neteyam asked her for some, and strung them into a few simple necklaces and bracelets.

The annoying part was that Nguyen was right – doing these things actually did make him feel more comfortable. He still didn't that alien face in the mirror, but being able to dress this new body in items he had chosen made it look and feel a lot more like his. He found himself standing up straighter and taking longer strides, moving as if he belonged here.

The waiting also gave him time to fiddle with his cave map. It had to be bad, but it had to be plausible.

“I must say, Neteyam,” Nguyen remarked over lunch one day, “you're doing much better lately. You look a lot more confident.”

“I decided that if Dad could get used to his avatar, I could get used to this,” Neteyam told her.

That seemed to please her. “So you have a deeper understanding of what things were like for him at that time,” she said. “How's the phantom pain? Are you taking your medicine?”

Neteyam had found that the best remedy for the pain was just not thinking about it, so when Nguyen brought it up, he felt an immediate twinge in the tail he no longer had. At least with the pills, he hadn't been awakened in the middle of the night again. “It's not gone, but it's better.”

“I'm afraid things like that seldom go away completely,” she said, “but I'm glad we're able to manage it. Listen, Neteyam: I know your fall from the climbing wall upset you. Would you like to try it again? I'm sure you could do much better now that you're more used to your body... and with the proper safety gear, of course.”

Neteyam had a mouthful of sweet and sour chicken, and that suggestion made him stop mid-chew. Was she right? Could he do the climb properly now that he'd had some time to figure out how long his limbs were? When he tried to picture himself trying, however, that memory of falling flashed in front of his eyes again. What if he couldn't do it? What if he only cemented his earlier failure? Things like climbing had always come easy to Neteyam. What if that was no longer the case?

He couldn't think like that – not least because, if his plan worked, he might have to do a lot of climbing. It would be best if he knew for certain he was capable.

“I'll tr... I'll do it,” he said. That was one of the things dad sometimes said: do, or do not. There is no try.

They finished their lunch, turned in their plates and utensils, and headed for the recreation centre. Nguyen was in a good mood, talking cheerfully on the way.

“You're not the only one who seems happier,” she remarked. “I saw Emily Bohan this morning, and her colleagues agree she's been much more cooperative. I don't know what you two said while I was chasing Colonel Quaritch, but it seems to have done wonders.”

“Did she apologize to the guy she threw off the balcony?” Neteyam asked.

Nguyen blinked. “Um... not that I've heard. Who told you about that?”

“She did. You were there,” Neteyam reminded her.

“Oh. Oh, yes, that's right. Sorry.” She sighed. “I'm just so tired of nobody keeping anything private around here.”

They arrived in the hallway outside the climbing wall. Neteyam put a hand on the window and watched through the glass for a moment as people clambered to the top and were then let gently down on ropes. His insides clenched and he remembered again feeling the impact, the jolt through his bones, the air rushing out of his lungs. He thought of other things he'd climbed in his life – cliffs, trees, the floating mountains, that one bull sturmbeest that just wouldn't stay down. A fall from any of those could heave killed him in an instant, and yet he'd never been remotely frightened. He'd just done it. Now here he was, looking at this wall only a few times taller than one of the People, which he would climb while hanging from a rope just in case, and he was terrified.

His parents weren't here, but what would Nguyen say if he failed again? She'd said she was sure he could do better now. What if he couldn't? Would she realize he wasn't really settling in here, that it was all an act?

She noticed his hesitation. “If you feel like you're not ready...”

“No,” Neteyam said firmly. “I can do it.” He took a deep breath, puffing out his cheeks as he let it out again. Do or do not. There is no try.

Nguyen gave him an encouraging smile, then turned serious again as her watch beeped. She raised to her ear. “One moment, Neteyam. Yes, this is Dr. Nguyen.”

As before, Neteyam could hear only what sounded like whispering from the device. Even that gave him a prick of hope, though. Maybe he wouldn't have to make himself try the climbing wall today. Maybe Bohan wanted to talk to him again. Maybe they could distract Nguyen long enough that he could see what the recom thought of his escape plan...

“Right now?” asked Nguyen.

The other person spoke again.

“All right,” Nguyen decided reluctantly. “We're at the recreation centre, outside the climbing wall. We'll wait for you.” She turned off the connection, and told Neteyam, “General Bush wants to talk to you. He's on this way.”

Neteyam nodded, outwardly calm while inside he felt like he was vibrating, as if he were preparing for a hunt or a battle. Bush was even better than Bohan. Bush meant he could finally start putting his plan into motion... or at least, he hoped so. What if that opportunity were actually about to be snatched away? What if Bush wanted to tell Neteyam that they'd located and recovered the explosives without help? He would have to start all over.

Whatever the General wanted, it must have been important, because it was only a few minutes before he walked into the room. Bush looked surprised by Neteyam's changed appearance but said nothing about it – he just led him to a row of benches that overlooked the swimming pool, and they sat down there. People in the water were going back and forth, over and over, without actually getting anywhere. Neteyam felt like he'd spent his time here doing exactly that.

Bush didn't bother with a greeting. “Neteyam,” he said, “have you thought any more about that map of the caverns?”

Neteyam was suddenly glad he didn't have a tail or mobile ears anymore. He doubted he could have stopped them from betraying his excitement. “A bit,” he replied, as calm as he could with his heart pounding against his ribs. “Did something happen?”

“There was a bomb planted on one of our aqueducts this morning,” Bush replied.

The first thing Neteyam felt at hearing that was a deep, smouldering sense of satisfaction, like a hot coal in his chest. Of course there were some among the People who knew how to use the stolen explosive as a weapon, and Bush wasn't actually foolish enough to assume there weren't. Neteyam couldn't show that, though. He forced his face to remain impassive, and nodded.

“We managed to defuse it,” Bush said, “but we need those explosives back before somebody gets hurt. Do you think you can draw us taht map?”

“I can try,” said Neteyam. Do or do not. This was gonna be a do not.

“Good lad.” Bush patted him on the back. “I'll give you the afternoon to work on that. Doc!” He beckoned to Nguyen, who'd been standing a few feet away with her back turned to give them the privacy she complained nobody got. “Can we get him in conference room six at nineteen-thirty?”

“As long as he's ready by then,” Nguyen replied. “That's up to him.”

“I'll be ready,” Neteyam promised. Maybe Eywa could still hear him. Maybe he could really pull this off.

There was no attempt at the climbing wall that afternoon. Neteyam went back to his room and sat on the floor under his new posters, obsessively checking and re-checking his very bad map. There was a lot to account for. The first few caverns, the ones the Sky People had almost certainly already explored, had to be accurate... but not in a way that made the rest look shoddy by comparison. There had to be a logic to the way he represented things, or they would know he was doing it badly on purpose. Most importantly, it had to give the idea that Neteyam did know the caves very well, he was just terrible at drawing maps.

Being bad at basketball or climbing when he didn't want to be felt awful. Being bad at maps on purpose felt great.

He was still working on it when Nguyen came and collected him for dinner, and then he took the tablet with him and continued to fiddle with it. Later he would realize he couldn't even remember what it was they'd eaten.

“You're quite a perfectionist, aren't you?” Nguyen asked.

“If something's done right the first time, you never need to do it again,” said Neteyam. That was one of his grandmother's pieces of wisdom. He hoped it didn't sound too sarcastic, as he sat here doing the exact opposite, though in a way he hoped she would have approved of.

“That's one way to look at it,” said Nguyen, “but sometimes doing a thing badly is better than doing nothing at all. It's better to have a poorly-made patch than a hole in your shirt.”

“That's a completely different situation,” Neteyam told her. “I'm trying to work on this.”

“Sorry,” she said immediately. “I'll let you concentrate.”

She remained quiet for the rest of the meal, which was unexpected but nice. Neteyam continued tinkering with the map right up until the time came to meet with Bush, wanting to get it as close to perfect as he felt it could possibly be. His goal was that they would trust the map enough to try it, but after a couple of forays into the caves they would be confused and would come back and ask him to act as a guide in person. Once he was out of this underground compound, with his feet on real ground and breathing the free air, it would be easy to lose a search party in the dark and twisting passages. Then he'd be free, and could take the next steps to eventually reunite with his family.

What would happen after that? What would he say to them? How would they react to what he'd become? He didn't want to think too hard about it. He'd deal with it when the time came.

Humans liked to divide things into pieces and organize them carefully, and time was no different. Nineteen-thirty arrived, and Nguyen showed Neteyam the way to the conference room Bush had requested. It was in a part of the installation he hadn't visited before, so he paid attention as they walked, in case he needed to find his way back someday. On the first day the interior of Site Nine had seemed featureless, but now he was starting to recognize section numbers and the occasional decoration that could tell him where things were and which direction he was headed.

The room was fairly large, with a long, rectangular table running down the middle of it and pictures of strange worlds on the wall... a blue and green one that might have been Earth, but also a rusty orange one, and one girdled by a wide, flat white ring. Despite the many chairs, only four people were present waiting for him.

The first he saw was Quartich, standing at the back and towering over the seated humans, his breathing mask hanging within easy reach around his neck. The second was Bush, who was seated at the far side of the table in between two others: a dark-faced man with a snow-white moustache, and a woman with ringlets of dark brown hair escaping from under her military cap. The table in front of them had a holodisplay that currently projected a giant globe of Pandora, rotating slowly and with clouds sliding across its surface.

“And here they are!” said Bush, getting to his feet. “You both know Dr. Faye Nguyen, and this is her latest project. Neteyam, this is Anjan Chatterjee and Sapphire Collierville. They work for me in the intelligence division.” He then turned to his colleagues. “And this is our reverse recombinant, Neteyam.”

The man, Chatterjee, looked Neteyam over with a frown. “He's awfully young, isn't he?”

“All the recoms are young,” said Bush. “No point in recreating somebody in anything but the prime of life.”

“I'm sixteen,” said Neteyam.

Chatterjee looked like he'd been slapped. He stood up and glared at Bush. “Sixteen?”

“I'm not the one who sent him into a battle,” Bush replied.

“Nobody sent me,” Neteyam said proudly. “I chose to go, to rescue my family and friends. That's also why I want to help you find your bombs,” he added. “If humans are killed by these explosives, you'll retaliate, and many of the People will die.” He hoped that sounded reasonable without making him look foolish.

“Sit down, Anjan,” said the woman called Collierville.

Bush ushered Neteyam forward with a hand on his back. “As I was saying, Neteyam says he knows the layout of the caves under the Noro River.” He made an effort to pronounce it properly this time. “He doesn't know exactly where the insurgents might have stashed the explosives, of course, but he can give us an idea of what's where. Right, Neteyam?”

“Yes, Sir,” Neteyam said.

Chatterjee was scowling, his arms folded over his chest. Collierville sat up straight, her expression carefully neutral. Quaritch looked openly skeptical, possibly because he thought Neteyam would refuse to tell them anything useful, possibly because he thought Neteyam was too dumb to do so. Neteyam himself couldn't tell.

“Do you have it in your tablet?” Bush asked. “You can insert it here, and...”

Neteyam stepped past him and slid the tablet into the slot to connect with the holodisplay. He'd seen this done at Hell's Gate and he new how it worked – as children, he and his siblings had sometimes played games on their machines, though Mother always said there were better things they could be doing than looking at ghosts from another world. She would rather they learn archery and weaving, sing their songs and make themselves toys.

He found his files and brought them up one by one, trying to watch the humans out of the corner of his eye as he did. They were startled by the skill with which he manipulated the images, even though he made a couple of mistakes, opening things in the wrong order and once accidentally bringing up the photograph of Kiri with soldiers around her. Even Chatterjee looked grudgingly impressed, while Collierville leaned forward, intrigued. Quaritch lifted his mask to his face for a couple of breaths and then let it drop again, waiting to see what happened next.

“The cave complex under Kilvanoro is very complex,” said Neteyam, “and there are many dangers.” He spoke confidently, as if showing them something other than what looked like the scribblings of a child. “The first thing you need to be wary of is the well shaft, here.” That was close to the entrance, and they would already know about it. “If you fall down that, you'll go in the water, and current is very strong. There's a ledge on the left that will allow you to pass. You want to stay in the caverns that have glow-roaches on the floors. Any that don't will have snotworms on the ceiling instead, which will drop on you to inject venom.” They almost surely knew that, too... telling them things they were already aware of was how he would make them trust him.

“Your English is very good,” Collierville remarked.

Neteyam wondered what she'd expected. “My people needed to talk to the humans who stayed at Hell's Gate. Not all of them spoke our language.” He rotated the map. “From the top here there are three passageways. The top one is a dead end... oh, by the way, if there aren't any snotworms on the roof of a cavern there will probably be echowasps roosting. They're mostly harmless except the ones that suck blood, but those are more common further north. You won't want to take torches, though. Echowasps are scared of fire, nd if they try to escape in a swarm you might get hurt just because there are thousands of them.” He paused a moment, as if trying to remember where he'd left off. “This one is a dead end, anyway. The lower tunnel takes you to the spiral pits. My grandmother said that was dug out by the roots of a hometree, a long time ago...”

He went on, going through routes and chambers in no particular order, dropping back to revisit things he'd talked about before, and layering up maps into a mess. He emphasized dangerous things as much as he could, as if he were trying to discourage them as much or more than he was trying to help.

Neteyam could just imagine what his siblings would think of this presentation. They would immediately know he was up to something, of course... he could imagine Kiri standing there rolling her eyes dramatically, while Lo'ak did his best not to snicker and Tuk, not a fan of long speeches, tried not to nod off to sleep. Mother would probably think he was already telling them too much, and Dad... Dad would probably tell him his plan was reckless, but be proud of him for trying.

The people who were actually present showed a range of reactions. Nguyen sat on the near side of the table with her chair turned around to watch him, and seemed honestly interested. Occasionally she would glance over her shoulder to see what the others thought. Quaritch stood in his corner drumming fingers on his leg and making small noises of disapproval. Bush took notes, which he kept flipping back through and frowning at. Collierville sat with her eyebrows raised, paying attention but saying nothing. Chatterjee leaned his chin on his fist and glared, still more offended by Neteyam's age than anything else. What did Neteyam have to do to prove to these humans that he was an adult?

“This part of the caves would be a terrible place to store something flammable,” said Neteyam, “because of the damp. Water drips down from above and wells up from below. It flows out and joins Kilvanoro further downstream, and if the weather's bad it floods entirely. In wet years you'll find charniamorphs growing there, and there are venomous insects that feed on them.”

“You're very thorough,” Bush observed.

“Neteyam is a perfectionist,” Nguyen said, sounding almost proud of him.

“Once I decided I would help you with this, I didn't want you to think I might be leaving things out maliciously,” said Neteyam. “My father told me that humans feel the need to destroy everything they see because they don't know which things are dangerous and which aren't. The creatures in the caves don't want to hurt you, they're just doing what they must to survive. They don't deserve to die for that, so I'm telling you about it.”

Collierville's eyebrows quirked. “Do they really think like that?” she asked Nguyen.

“They do. I think it's something we could learn more about,” Nguyen observed, “especially if we're planning on staying.”

Neteyam shuffled the layers of his map, looking for a particular one. They'd been here quite some time, and he was starting to wonder if he'd put just a little too much work into this to make it believable. Maybe he had, because Bush stood up and put out a hand to stop him.

“Neteyam, can you step outside for a moment, please?” he asked. “I need to have a word with my colleagues.”

“Yes, Sir,” said Neteyam. He took the tablet out of its slot and tucked it under his arm as Neteyam escorted him out of the room. Nobody had told him to take it back, but he wasn't going to leave it, not when it had the pictures of his family on it.

Out in the hallway, they stood and waited. Through the glass door and walls of the room, Neteyam could see Bush, Colliervill, Chatterjee, and Quaritch having an animated discussion, possibly even an argument, but their words were not audible. A touch on his shoulder made Neteyam jump, but it was only Nguyen.

“Sorry, Neteyam,” she said. “I can tell you were very proud of that map.”

She was right, but not for the reasons she thought. Now he wondered if he'd blown the whole thing.

In the room, Quaritch straightened up to look back at Neteyam. Bush turned, too, and then both leaned back in to continue their conversation. Finally, all four returned to their seats, and Bush motioned for Nguyen and Neteyam to come back in.

“Neteyam,” he said, as the entered. “You uh... you put a lot of work into that map, we can tell. Do your people use maps?”

“Only since my father introduced them,” Neteyam lied. Most of the time the Omatikaya didn't need maps, because they knew every inch of their territory, but any excursion like an envoy or a scouting party would usually have a simple map of their destination. These were often just scratched in the dirt or on bark, although particularly important ones would be woven into textiles to keep.

“Mmm,” said Bush. He glanced at his peers. Chatterjee was still sulking, in protest of the whole project. Collierville shrugged.

It was Quaritch who took over. “I want you in the hangar no later than oh-eight-hundred tomorrow morning,” he told Neteyam. “Dress for a hike.”

Even without ears to prick up or a tail to lash, Neteyam was sure they all saw the tremor of excitement that ran through him at hearing this instruction. They weren't even going to try it and get lost? They were just going to take them with him right away? He would be out of this place tomorrow?

He fought that down and nodded. “Yes, Sir,” he said again.

Quartich came closer and leaned down a little. Don't think you can try anything funny,” he growled. “I promised Bush I would keep you in line, and believe me, kid – I keep my promises.”

“Yes, Sir,” Neteyam repeated.

In the morning he got up early and showered. The sight of his body, all that pinkish-brown and the extra fingers and toes and the unfamiliar build, still gave him a bit of a sick feeling, but he was getting better at ignoring it. He was getting used to this... just as his father, all those years ago, must have gotten used to his avatar until he felt so at home in it that he wanted to live that way for the rest of his life. Neteyam couldn't imagine getting that far, but even shaving was starting to feel a little more normal.

The humans had provided him with clothes for the excursion. There were stiff, dark trousers and a black tank top to go under a green button-down shirt, clothes to let air move around him and to protect him from thorns and branches while moving in the jungle. He rolled up the sleeves and left the buttons undone, tying the shirt in a knot at the front like he'd seen in old pictures of Grace Augustine's avatar.

The shoes were heavy and thick to prevent stepping on anything sharp. Neteyam wouldn't be able to feel the ground through them, but that was another thing that had begun to seem almost normal after walking around on all these smooth indoor floors. There were also pieces of armor for his knees and elbows, and gloves so he wouldn't cut his hands crawling around in caves. The breathing unit they gave him included a light mounted above his face, so he could see where he was going, and there was a hat to tuck his braids under.

The room they'd sent him to for changing his clothes had a mirror in it. When Neteyam looked at his reflection, he found himself staring at a stranger. With the braids and the new clothes, he felt like he'd started to look like Neteyam again. Now there was somebody else... somebody the old Neteyam would have put an arrow in without a second thought. Just another one of the Sky People.

When he stepped out, however, Bush looked very pleased. He patted Neteyam on the shoulder and smiled. “You look like a soldier,” he said. “Follow me.”

Neteyam's heart was beating hard as they took an elevator up to the very top floor, where the domed cafeteria was. Rather than head in there, however, they went into the outer ring of the facility, which was a series of hangars. These were huge, the biggest room Neteyam had been in so far, and open to the outside air, meaning all the humans in them had to wear breathing devices. The entire place was bristling with vehicles and armaments. Neteyam recognized the large guns the Sky People stationed around the perimeters to shoot down banshees, and there were dozens or hundreds of their flying machines.

What made him do a double-take, however, was a row of banshees roosting on a specially-built ledge down one wall of the giant wedge-shaped room. They were using banshees?

It seemed they were. The animals were wearing saddles and armor that had clearly been made by humans. As he and Bush approached a craft parked in one corner, a recom woman was feeding one of the banshees chunks of meat from a bucket and cooing at it, calling it her beautiful boy. A male came up behind her and clucked his tongue.

“You never talk to me that way,” he said with a pout.

“Well, you're not as pretty as he is,” the female replied, scratching the banshee's forehead. “Is he, Maverick?”

The banshee lowed and shook its head and neck. It was shifting its saddle to scratch an itch, but Neteyam could see how the female got the impression it was agreeing with her. She laughed and slapped its neck affectionately.

“I'd love to try that,” a familiar voice remarked.

Neteyam and Bush rounded the vehicle, and found Bohan there with one foot up on the running board, tying her bootlaces. Her eyes, however, were on the woman petting Maverick.

“You're coming?” Neteyam asked her.

“She sure is,” said Quartich. He tossed one final chunk of meat to another banshee, then came to look Neteyam over. “She's your new bestie, isn't she? So if you decide to lead us into a bottomless pit, you'll be taking her, too. You get my meaning?”

He got it.

Quaritch leaned down a little again. “I'll tell you something else, too. A neat little science fact that I bet nobody's let you in on yet. Na'vi bones have all that carbon fibre in them. Makes them very resilient. Human bones aren't like that. If you bend them...” he mimed twisting something in his hands, “they snap like twigs. So you mind yourself.”

“Yes, Sir,” said Neteyam, letting just a little sarcasm in this time.

“Well, you can cross threaten somebody off your to-do list for the day, can't you?” Bohan asked him cheerfully. “Come on, Neteyam, I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get some fresh air!” She offered him a hand to help him up into the craft, then remembered that he had to wear a breathing mask. “Oh, sh*t. Sorry.”

“It's all right.” Neteyam let her lift him, and then she showed him how to use the restraining harness. Outside, Quaritch and Bush had a brief conversation, then Quaritch checked and slung a weapon before going to climb on his banshee. “He has one?”

“Yeah,” said Bohan. “I was kinda looking forward to trying that, but only the elites get them. The original twelve and a few more hand-picked by Quaritch. They're risky to catch.”

“I know. I had one,” said Neteyam. “Her name was Pawk.” The word was a name for a musical instrument – his banshee had trumpeted like one. He wondered where she was now.

“What's it like?” Bohan wanted to know. They watched Quaritch make tsaheylu with the creature and fly out the open hangar door. How could he do that? How could he bond with one of Eywa's children, and yet still hate them so much? The female who called hers Maverick also mounted up and flew off, waving to her male friend as she did.

“I could feel her body along with my own,” said Neteyam. “Your breathing and heartbeat fall into sync with theirs. You become one creature and fly together.”

“Like the dragons of Pern,” said Bohan with a dreamy smile.

“What are those?”

“Nothing. Just a story for children.” She sat back.

Another recom climbed in to sit next to Bohan, giving Neteyam a sideways look. “This is our guide? He's what, twelve?”

“Sixteen,” said Neteyam.

The man co*cked his head and frowned, but sat down and did up his harness. Bohan put a hand to her com choker. “We've got Bohan, O'Donnell, and Sully, all present and accounted for,” she said.

“Roger,” another voice replied. “We're off.”

The giant rotors on either side of the craft began to roar. Bohan and O'Donnell put plugs in their ears, and Bohan handed Neteyam a pair of headphones that fit tightly to his head, and the roar of the blades suddenly blinked into silence. The vehicle rocked a bit as it lifted from the ground, and slid forward out of the hangar after the two banshees.

“Hey, Colonel,” he heard Bohan say – her voice somehow loud and clear despite everything else being quiet. “Konstopoulos calls her critter Maverick, and I know Thompson's is Drogon because he's a nerd who reads nerd books. Has yours got a name?”

The headphones crackled. “Blackbird,” said Quaritch. “Like the plane.”

Bohan shook her head. “I figured it'd be something like that.”

The ground dropped away below them, and for the first time Neteyam got a look at the outside of Site Nine. It was a giant round structure, most of it buried in the old mining pit, topped with the ring of hangars and the giant cafeteria room with the windows in the roof. All around it was a buffer zone, perhaps a kilometre or so, where the jungle had been cleared away so that anyone approaching would not have any cover. It looked like a giant pimple, Neteyam thought... a scar on the face of the world.

The banshees had been circling overhead, waiting for the craft to join them. Now they fell into formation on each side of it. The whole group oriented themselves, and the flying machine tipped forward a little as it began to accelerated. Neteyam leaned as far as his harness would allow to watch the ground go by underneath them, trying to get the lie of the land. If this were the direction to the caverns below Kilvanoro, then...

... then he did know where Site Nine was. Neteyam and Pawk had flown over the old mining pits repeatedly. Once he had that, his mental map of the Omatikaya territory fell into place. They were technically outside the clan's land, in areas that belonged to neighbours, but those weren't strangers or enemies. Warriors from those peoples had followed Dad as Toruk Makto, and their sons had joined the new battle against the Sky People. If he escaped into this area, he would find allies who...

... no, he wouldn't. They would take one look at him, assume he was an enemy, and kill him, especially if he were dressed like this. He would have to get where he was going without meeting anyone on the way. That was going to be difficult.

First things first. He had to get away from the recoms, and that couldn't happen until they reached the caves. For now, he just had to be patient a little longer.

Chapter 6: The Caverns

Chapter Text

It did feel good to be back in the sky, even if it weren't in the way Neteyam would have wanted. He didn't have the wind in his eyes or the beating of Pawk's mighty wings underneath him, but he could see the ground rushing by below and feel the giant machine rocking with the air currents. It wasn't the same, but it was something, like a distant memory of the familiar exhilaration. It made this all seem like less of a horrible dream. The real world was still out there. He'd only been shut away from it temporarily.

Across from him, Bohan was watching out the opposite window as the woman called Konstopoulos got dangerously close on her banshee before putting distance between them again. She was grinning, enjoying the agility of her mount. Bohan grinned back, as if the delight were infection.

“They roost in the...” it took Neteyam a moment to remember the name the humans used. “The Hallelujah Mountains. You have to climb the rocks and vines to get to them, and you bond with the first one to attack you.” He sat up a little straighter. “Very few succeed on the first try, but I did.”

“Congratulations,” said Bohan. “Must be a hell of an experience.”

“You can't know until you've done it,” Neteyam agreed. He swallowed hard – he would never do that again. His father had been Toruk Makto and his mother had been the first to ever tame a thanator, but he, Neteyam, who'd bonded with Pawk on his first try, would never truly fly again.

He turned away from Bohan and looked out the other side, where Quaritch and Blackbird were also flying alongside. They weren't nearly so close, but the man caught Neteyam's gaze and acknowledged him with a mean grin and a wave, and Neteyam's regret hardened into anger. Quaritch, riding his own banshee, must know what Neteyam was thinking right then, and was mocking him for it. He, at least, knew exactly what the Sky People had taken from Neteyam by putting him in this body.

“Look at that,” said O'Donnell, pointing.

Several more banshees had joined them, apparently curious about this odd group and where it was headed. Three of them were marked in the normal assortment of blues and greens, but the fourth was almost entirely black. Spots and stripes were still faintly visible when the light hit its skin just right. Neteyam had seen similar rare individuals among flocks of tetraptera, the odd one that was black instead of the normal purple. The human scientists had a word for it... melanism.

“Oh, he's gorgeous,” said Bohan. “Like a panther! Neteyam, does it mean anything special if somebody manages to catch the black one?”

“Yes,” he said. “It means he didn't eat you.”

“Are you thinking of trying?” O'Donnell teased.

“I just might,” Bohan replied.

Maybe she could. The banshees had been willing to accept Dad and even the recoms... Bohan could probably tame one if she tried. She hadn't earned it through a demonstration of hunting skill like the young warriors did, but none of these people could have done that. Bohan had as much right as any of them.

The little flock circled a few times and then, apparently satisfied, set out on their own again. The flying machine and the two mounted recoms continued on their way to the falls at Kilvanoro.

There was nowhere to land close to the river, so the pilot chose an open area about a kilometre away as humans measured distance. Hexapedes bounded into the foliage as the vehicle slowly lowered itself to hover about a metre off the ground. Bohan and O'Donnell hopped down and then helped Neteyam, for whom the distance was half his own height. He put his feet on the ground and closed his eyes as he breathed in deeply...

... only to realize that doing those things was entirely pointless. He couldn't dig his toes into the grass and soil because he was wearing thick, heavy shoes. He couldn't inhale fresh air laden with the familiar scent of the forest because he had to breathe the stale, recycled air in his respirator. He would never do either of those things again, and knowing that hurt even more than knowing he could never again ride a banshee.

O'Donnell put a hand to his choker. “O'Donnell, Bohan, and Sully on the ground,” he said.

“Quaritch and Konstopoulos at the falls,” the Colonel's voice came back. “We'll have the entrance secure by the time you arrive.”

“Roger,” O'Donnell nodded. “Okay, Short Stack,” he told Neteyam. “You go in the middle, so Trouble and I can make sure you're not falling behind.” He looked at Bohan with a toothy smile. “It's like hanging out with toddlers. Gotta keep in mind, they've got little legs.”

Neteyam bristled. Bush was not allowed to give him a nickname. Neither was this man he'd only just met. “My name is Neteyam.”

“Ignore him,” said Bohan. “Tiny Tim here was five foot six in his previous lifetime. He's still learning what the tops of people's heads look like.”

“You're in a damn good mood,” O'Donnell observed, narrowing his eyes at her. “You up to something?”

“I'm thinking about punting one of the shrinks like a soccer ball. It's gonna be great,” Bohan told him. Neteyam couldn't tell if she were joking or not.

“Am I going to have to listen to this all the way to Kilvanoro?” he asked the two.

Bohan cackled and started walking.

When Neteyam and his siblings had used to run around and play as children, Spider had almost always been with them. He'd been shorter than them from the start, and the height difference had gotten more and more pronounced as they all grew, but Spider had always been able to keep up, and the Na'vi kids had always taken it for granted that he would. Now Neteyam wondered if they should have been more considerate. O'Donnell and Bohan were moving slowly, but he still had to jog, taking two steps for each of the recoms' long strides.

As Nguyen had said, his new body wasn't used to this yet. Before long he was panting, and the faceplate on his breathing unit was fogging up. He held his breath and reached up inside to wipe the condensation away with his fingers. When he put the mask back and inhaled again, he got a brief whiff of a very unpleasant, sulfrous smell that made him gag.

“I remember that,” said Bohan. She took a deep breath, herself, then shrugged. Apparently she smelled nothing.

Neteyam swallowed to get the scent out of his mouth. So... even if the air wouldn't have poisoned this body, Neteyam still wouldn't have been able to breathe it because of the smell. He was estranged even from the air. He'd known that already, and yet that fact, too, suddenly seemed all the more real.

As they made their way up the slope towards the caverns, the forest around them also seemed more and more alien. If Neteyam ignored his companions towering over him as if he were a small child, the canopy trees and the animals flitting between them looked quite normal. Their tops were so far away the scale didn't matter. But then the group would pass a stand of warbonnet ferns or helicoradians, or even a fan lizard on a branch, something he was used to seeing up close, and it would reinforce once again how small Neteyam was.

Had this been a big mistake? Was escape simply impossible, because he could no longer survive in this environment that had always been home? The thought made the corners of his eyes prick, and though Neteyam managed to take a few deep breaths and suppress the urge to cry, condensation started forming on his faceplate again.

Then the forest parted in front of them, revealing the rocky banks of the Noro river. They picked their way along the shore, sometimes having to step from stone to stone above the rushing water. O'Donnell and Bohan, with their longer legs, could cross gaps Neteyam could not, and several times they had to stop to help him.

After an uphill hike that no machine could have made, they arrived at the deep pool below the waterfall. Dad had a story about the time he'd had to leap from the cliff at the top to escape a thanator. As a child looking up at the tumbling water, Neteyam had thought it was an awfully long way to fall. At the time Dad hadn't known the caverns existed, and wouldn't have been able to avoid their dangers if he had. Now they were as familiar to him as they were to the rest of the Omatikaya.

Which made him think of something. “If we find people guarding the explosives, they may not speak English,” Neteyam warned.

“It's fine,” Bohan told him. “The Colonel's Na'vi is actually pretty good. Mine's not great... what's the word for friend?”

“'Eylan,” said Neteyam.

“Then if we meet anyone, I'll say that,” she decided.

Neteyam shook his head. “Don't. You're clearly not one of them. They'll know it's a lie.”

“Yeah, you're right. The gun would be a clue, wouldn't it?”

The two banshees were perched at the top of the cliff on either side of the river, watching over the area. Konstopoulos was standing next to Maverick, the link between them still active so she could use the predator's keen eyes to look out for danger. Quaritch had left Blackbird at the top and climbed down, waiting now to the right of the waterfall. O'Donnell, Bohan, and Neteyam climbed the damp rocks to join him.

“We spotted a couple of points the natives could be watching from,” Quaritch said. “Georgia's gonna stay out here and keep an eye on those, and call in reinforcements if they're needed. This is just a scouting party. The kid shows us around, we map the caves with a scanner, and come back with a bigger salvage party later. If you find anything, mark it on the scan and leave it alone. If you meet resistance, fall back. The scientists like reminding me that we're expensive to replace.”

They started up to the cave entrance. Neteyam felt himself trembling a little, his heart beating hard in nervous excitement. This was it – this was the way to freedom. He hadn't felt like this since the day he'd climbed the floating mountains to tame his banshee. That had been a triumph. This... he wasn't sure. Could he do this, when he couldn't even climb a wall?

He stepped through the curtain of water where it was thinnest, and entered the cave.

The three recoms followed him in. Quaritch held up a lamp that gave off a blinding white light, illuminating the whole main cavern and the various branches that went off from it, throwing coal-black shadows on the walls. At the edge of the light, thousands of little legs could be heard as creatures fled back into the darkness. A dozen or so stingbats were hanging from the roof, and they squawked and stretched in annoyance as this intrusion disturbed their rest. Not far from Neteyam's feet, a sand eel slithered back into the pool.

Now Neteyam smiled. He knew exactly where he was, and exactly where he was going. “That top one's the dead end,” he pointed. “On the right there you've got the well shaft. We don't want to go that way.”

“Yeah, we do,” said O'Donnell. We'll lower the scanner down there and get a map of the whole thing.

“And that way leads to the spiral pits, which will take us to the rest of the caves,” Neteyam added. “That's where we'll want to go. There are a thousand hiding places in there.” And he knew every single one, while these people did not.

O'Donnell took out a device that flashed beams of red light in all directions, and connected it to a holopad that somehow translated this into a wireframe diagram of the space, even the parts of it that were under the water. Bohan watched the display while O'Donnell walked around scanning every nook and cranny, and then they tied the little machine to a rope and lowered it down the well shaft. There was something hypnotic about watching it descend, the ring of red light it drew getting smaller and changing shape on the way. Bohan manipulated the tablet display, watching the map appear.

“Damn,” she muttered. “That is deep.”

While they pulled the device back up, careful not to get it caught on the rocks, Neteyam sat and watched the stingbats. One of the animals lazily snapped out at a passing insect but missed, and eventually the whole little flock crawled away across the ceiling, looking for somewhere darker. The light seemed so unnecessary, when the cave was full of glow-worms and bright algae that would make it easy to see if they only let their eyes adjust. Then again, perhaps driving the animals away was the point. If there were nothing here, none of it could threaten them.

“We done?” asked Quaritch.

“Yep. Ready to move on,” said O'Donnell.

Glow-roaches scuttled out of the way as they climbed into the next cavern, then squeezed through a narrow passage into the spiral ramps. In the relative darkness before Quaritch brought the lantern through, it was possible to see the ribbons of bioluminescence from micro-organisms feeding on the minerals in the walls. Bohand ran a hand down it, and watched the light brighten under her touch.

“This planet is so beautiful,” she murmured.

“You should behave yourself. They might let you look at it more often,” O'Donnell said.

Quaritch had no time for such observations. “This is big enough to bring the explosives in... the individual packages would fit through that doorway. Be a hell of a job carrying it all down by hand, but those horses wouldn't fit.”

Branching off from the spiral were dozens of other cracks, caverns, wells, and even an old lava tube, but Neteyam was looking for one in particular. There was a narrow shaft that led all the way to the surface, where it emerged under the roots of a tree. It was one of Tuk's favourite hiding places, because her brothers and sisters were too big to get into it. The only ones who fit were her and Spider... and any space Spider could fit into, Neteyam now could while the recoms could not. If he made it to the shaft, he could climb out and escape.

On the way, however, they had to explore the other branches. They made their way through methodically, stopping to map and mark, and sometimes to look at things like colourful fungi, or the place where people long ago had chiselled pictures of animals and celestial bodies into the stone. The petroglyphs had been in the caves when the Omatikaya had first arrived in the area, before the first songs were written, and nobody knew what they meant.

Finally, they reached a tight tunnel that contained a series of ledges that could serve as natural stairs, although the ceiling was so low the recoms had to climb it on all fours. Even Neteyam had to hunch, and the risers were of course higher than he remembered, making the ascent difficult and tiring. The stone here was damp, too, which wouldn't have been as much of a problem if he hadn't been wearing shoes that made it impossible for his toes to grip. Even without the opposable one, being able to bend them would have helped.

“I've got you,” said Bohan when he began to slip. She grabbed him by the back of his shirt and pushed him up ahead of her, like a mother viperwolf carrying her cub. He scrambled to the top, and Bohan climbed out after him before turning around to help O'Donnell. Quaritch, last in line, brought the lantern in, and its light flooded a giant, roughly pyramid-shaped hollow in the earth.

This cavern was very different from the others. It was full of hexagonal crystals, some of them as big as a Na'Vi, with a shiny yellow metal that had formed around and inside them like moss, although it was not alive. Tuk's favourite tunnel was just beyond this and up a short vertical face. Neteyam stood on the side of one crystal that had fallen over and pointed up.

“See that?” he asked, as the light from their lamps shimmered off something in between the crystals, something translucent and in constant motion. “Those are the snotworms.” He reached down and picked up a large insect that had been scuttling across the floor – the humans called them stone weevils, for their habit of drilling into soft rocks to make places to lay their eggs – and threw it at the ceiling. It didn't go as far as he expected, but that didn't matter to the stretchy snotworms. Several darted down, and one snatched the insect out of the air.

Neteyam was fairly pleased with this demonstration, but when he turned to see what the recoms thought, he found them distracted by the cave's mineral contents. O'Donnell had crouched down next to a crystal and was running a hand along the shiny metal.

“Do you guys see what I see?” he asked.

“I think I do,” said Bohan. “I'm seeing a lot of it.”

O'Donnell took another device out of his bag – this one projected a blue-purplish light, almost painful to look at and unpleasantly reminiscent of that blue light that had preceded Neteyam waking up in this human body. The machine made a burbling sound, and some information came up on its screen, all numbers that meant nothing to Neteyam, but must have meant something very important to O'Donnell, because he swore.

“Do you know what that is?” he asked Neteyam, pointing to it.

“Metal,” Neteyam replied. “Some of the clans use it to make beads.”

“Mark it on the map and let's move on,” said Quaritch.

But O'Donnell was fixated on this discovery. “We gotta take some back with us or nobody's gonna believe it,” he declared. He picked up a stone and tried to break a piece of metal-encrusted crystal off by hitting it. It took several blows for it to start coming loose, and he raised his makeshift hammer for another try, then suddenly dropped it and shrieked like a female thanator in heat. Bohan yelped in alarm and pointed at something, and Quaritch pulled out a large knife, meant for hacking through the jungle, and used it to spear a centipede-like creature as long as a Na'vi's arm.

Neteyam knew what that was, though not what the humans called them. They had pincers in front that they used to grab prey, but it was their venomous fangs that immobilized their victims. This one had bitten O'Donnell in the leg, its powerful jaws going right through the thick fabric of his trousers. He was gritting his teeth and whimpering as the pain crawled up his leg.

Neteyam's hand went immediately for his knife, but of course he didn't have it. They hadn't given him any weapons. Lucky the recoms had them. He squeezed between Bohan and Quaritch and tore O'Donnell's trousers to expose the injury, which was already swelling. The photophores around the bite were pulsing as the neurotoxin took effect.

“Cut it open,” he told Bohan. “Don't let the venom get any further.”

“We'll do a tourniquet!” Bohan was already taking her backpack off to find supplies in it, but then she got to her feet and pointed. “There's another one!”

Neteyam looked, and felt his stomach twist as first one, then two, then four more of the shiny black arthropods scurried out from under the crystal. That wasn't right. The only time these creatures congregated was when they were protecting their eggs, but that happened in early spring, and right now it was...

... he had no idea what time of year it was. He didn't know how much time had passed between the night his siblings had been taken prisoner and the day he'd woken up on that table. It might have been months. “It's a nest,” he said. “We need to get out.”

He stood and moved to grab O'Donnell's arm, intending to hoist the man over his shoulder and carry him out, but in that adrenaline-fuelled moment Neteyam had forgotten how small he was. He couldn't possibly do that. Bohan dragged the man to his feet and pushed Neteyam towards the opening they'd come in by.

“Get out of here,” she said. “We've got him.”

Neteyam went to start climbing back down, and heard a clang of metal on stone. More of the arthropods were scuttling over the crystals to face down what they believed were predators trying to dig up their eggs and larvae. Quaritch was fending them off with both his machete and his boots. Their shells made sickening crunching sounds when he crushed them, and their watery insides glowed green when exposed to the air.

“You heard me! Beat it!” Bohan repeated. She was holding O'Donnell up with both arms, so to get Neteyam moving she gave him a gentle but still forceful kick. He stumbled forward into the descending passageway.

His foot in the heavy shoes slipped on the first damp stone and he fell down several of the steplike ledges, banging elbows and knees on the rocks and scraping his shoulder painfully against the wall. As he righted himself, he heard O'Donnell cry out again. It sounded like they were right behind him, so he quickly scrambled down to the bottom out of the way. A moment later, Bohan dragged O'Donnell out after him. Quaritch came last, his machete smeared with the glowing insides of the arthropods.

“Okay,” said Bohan, opening a first aid kit. “How many bites did you get?”

“Just the two,” O'Donnell said through his teeth. In the harsh light of Quaritch's lantern, his face was contorted by pain. “Both on the leg.” He took several deep breaths, trying not to hyperventilate, then suddenly screamed again and grabbed at his side. Bohan rolled him over and found another arthropod, which must have climbed his body or clung to his backpack. She kicked at it, but its many legs held on.

“Stop that!” Quaritch ordered, and drove his machete through the animal. The point clanked as it blunted on the stone beneath, and the blade barely missed O'Donnell's ribs. The arthropod continued to writhe and twitch for several seconds before it died.

Bohan leaned over O'Donnell again. “Tim, look at me,” she ordered, as he struggled to breathe. “Eyes open. I'm going to give you an analgesic.”

It was too late for that, though. The bits in the leg – those weren't necessarily fatal, although two of them might require an amputation. The one in the side, however, was paralyzing his diaphragm. His breathing got worse and worse, air squeaking in his throat as he fought to inhale.

“Eyes open!” Bohan repeated, fitting a needle to a syringe.

Foam bubbled up at O'Donnell's lips, and he went limp, his head sagging back into Bohan's lap. Neteyam looked away. O'Donnell was one of his enemies, and had insulted Neteyam a couple of times... but he hadn't done anything that deserved such a painful death, and Neteyam hadn't planned on any of these people dying. All he'd wanted to do was find Tuk's tunnel and escape, and he'd been so focused on that, he'd totally forgotten that the arthropods used the caves as nesting grounds. He should have asked about the season...

A large hand came down on Neteyam's shoulder. He paused in his thoughts and looked up into a bright light. It was Quaritch's lantern.

Quaritch seized Neteyam's arm and yanked him roughly to his feet, as if to pull his arm from its socket. “What did I tell you before we left?” he growled.

“I didn't do it on purpose,” Neteyam said. “I didn't know they were there, and even if I had, he would have been okay if he hadn't started hammering on their nest!”

“Like hell you didn't know!” said Quaritch. “What did I say about bones, huh?”

“I didn't...” Neteyam started to repeat, then cut himself off with a sharp gasp as Quaritch took him by the wrist and twisted it. Something inside made a snapping sound, and a lance of pain slashed through it, almost as bad as the phantom pain in his tail. Quaritch let him go, and he took an involuntary step backwards before stumbling over something that turned out to be O'Donnell's limp arm. He fell onto his knees.

“I can do worse than that!” Quaritch told him. “Look at him. Look at him.”

He was pointing at O'Donnell's corpse. Neteyam didn't look. He gripped his injured right wrist with his left hand, and raised his head to stare defiantly back at Quaritch, even though he knew that wouldn't help.

“We're leaving,” Quaritch ordered. “Now. Bohan, can you carry him?”

“I think so,” she said.

“Then do it. They'll want to extract any more memories they can before bringing him back.” Quaritch pulled out his holopad and brought up the map they'd made so far, then shoved Neteyam ahead of them. “You go first. Then if you lead us into any more death traps, you'll be the one who has to step into them.”

For a moment, Neteyam thought about just running. Having to carry O'Donnell would make them slow. They might let him get away in favour of saving their own lives. He couldn't go back to Tuk's tunnel now, though, because Quaritch was blocking the way. There were other ways out, but they didn't seem like good options, either. Neteyam could drop down the well shaft and let the river take him away, but that was dangerous at the best of times and he didn't know how long this body could hold its breath. He could scale the lava tube to where a crack let in sunlight, but not with only one functional wrist.

He felt paralyzed, as if he were the one slowly succumbing to venom. Nothing Neteyam had used to be able to do would help him now. He couldn't climb, he couldn't throw a ball, he'd slipped and fallen more than once in crossing a river and wandering through a cave he'd been exploring since childhood. He couldn't do anything except get up and lead the way out, as he'd been told.

Earlier they'd been moving slowly, stopping to scan, to make notes, and to point out dangers or items of interest. Getting out of the caves was much quicker. It seemed only minutes later they were at the exit, the sun now high overhead and the woman called Kontopoulos waiting for them at the waterfall. That had been enough time, though, for Neteyam's wrist to really start to hurt, and for the skin to get warm and tight as the inflamed tissues swelled up. He was going to need to see a doctor.

“What the hell happened?” Konstopoulos asked, as Bohan staggered out with O'Donnell's body on her back.

“Call the Kestrel, Georgia,” Quaritch ordered, without explaining. “We're going back.”

Those words made Neteyam's chest squeeze as he realized the ramifications – they were going back. He'd lost his only chance to escape. The Sky People would never trust him again, because Quaritch was going to tell them he'd led O'Donnell into the arthropod nest on purpose. Quaritch hadn't believed Neteyam when he'd said it wasn't on purpose, and neither would Bush or anybody else except possibly Nguyen, and even she was likely to say he'd done it subconsciously. They were going to keep him locked up and constantly supervised, like Bohan had said they did to her. He might never see the sky again.

Again, Neteyam thought about running, but Konstopoulos was following them with a weapon in her hands, and Quaritch was keeping on eye on Neteyam as he waved down the flying machine and he and Bohan heaved O'Donnell's limp remains into it. Running wouldn't get Neteyam far. They would shoot him down at once, or outpace him easily on their much longer legs. The time to flee would have been in the caves, but he'd missed it.

He couldn't go back, not to a prison he had no hope of ever getting out of again. Just thinking about it made Neteyam feel like he was suffocating. He didn't have a choice, though. Konstopolous and Quaritch were aiming guns at his back as Bohan reached down to take his arm – the left one, with the undamaged wrist – and helped him in. She strapped O'Donnell into a seat and sat down across from him, next to Neteyam. There she did not look at him, but stared over her left shoulder, away from the corpse.

The flying machine lifted off. As they rose past the branches, Neteyam could look down and see the other two recoms stowing their weapons before calling their banshees to follow.

Something nudged his shoulder. Bohan was offering him another set of headphones. Clumsy with only one hand, he took them and put them on.

“I didn't do it on purpose,” he repeated into the artificial quiet. He hadn't tried to hurt anyone. He'd just wanted to escape.

“I believe you,” said Bohan.

“You do?” he asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” she said. “You were as surprised as any of us. Nobody else is gonna think that, though.”

“I know.” Neteyam looked out the window again, but barely saw anything. The ground was flickering by under them. It had been a fairly long flight out, but he had a horrible feeling that, like the trip through the caves, it would be much faster going back. “What are they going to do to me?”

Bohan shrugged, and looked out at the sky again. Quaritch was following on his banshee. The animal's wings came down in strong strokes, putting on speed to rise above the loud machine.

“You've ridden one of those,” said Bohan. “You must know what to do if you fall off.”

Neteyam sat up straighter. “Yeah,” he said. Of course he did. Mother had taught him how to catch himself and reach the ground without major injuries. Could he still do that? With a broken wrist to demonstrate the truth of what Quaritch had said about brittle human bones, with a body now smaller than animals he'd once been able to overpower, without a weapon, not knowing if he were capable of even climbing a wall...

... the alternative, however, was going back to Site Nine, and he couldn't do that. This was the last chance for escape he was ever going to get. He took off his harness and pulled his headphones and com choker off. For a moment he met Bohan's eyes, and saw her finger flick a button on her handrest, unlocking the doors.

Neteyam threw them open and, without stopping to look down, threw himself out.

“Colonel!” he heard Bohan shriek. “The little bastard just com...” but the end of the sentence was ripped away from his ears by the wind.

The feeling of falling was almost like that of flying, and a thrilled rush passed through Neteyam's body for a moment before the things his mother had taught him took over. He could almost hear her voice telling him to spread out his arms and legs, give his body as much surface area as possible. Keep his eyes open despite the wind so he could see where he was going... that wasn't even a problem with the breathing mask on. Find a parachute tree, they were a particular shade of green...

There was one, its person-sized leaves swaying in the light breeze. Neteyam tilted his body to steer, aiming for the biggest and broadest of the leaves, the one best able to break his fall.

For a terrible moment he feared he was going to miss it. This smaller body didn't have as much air resistance as he was used to. He was falling too fast and he couldn't control his direction as well as he would have liked. At the last moment, however, he hit the edge of the leaf and rolled off it, falling onto the next one down.

Here, he impacted too close to the trunk, and instead of sliding off the leaf he tumbled into the crook of the stem, dislodging a bromeliad that was growing in the crotch. The stem snapped, and he was showered in the water and decaying plant material that had collected in the bromeliad's pool. From there he fell backwards onto another leaf, breaking that one, too.

On the fourth, Neteyam finally managed to catch a leaf properly and slide off, but then the whole broken mess came down on top of him. Something hit his wrist, calling him to hiss in pain, and he continued to crash through branches and scare flying animals from their roosts. Finally he hit the ground with the same bone-shaking impact as when he'd fallen from the climbing wall, landing in a patch of fungus that responded by throwing off a cloud of spores. He rolled out of the way, not wanting to breathe them in, and slid down a muddy hill to finally come to a stop among a patch of helicoradians, all of which immediately retreated into their shells.

There he lay for a moment, gasping for air. Somehow his breathing mask hadn't come off, although it was askew and he could smell a bit of sulphur. With his good left hand he reached to straighten it, and then let the arm drop across his chest as he passed out.

Chapter 7: On the Ground

Chapter Text

Neteyam wasn't unconscious for longer than a minute or two. After a moment of lying there limp with his mind adrift, he opened his eyes and blinked up at the sky. Through a fog of condensation and fungal spores on his faceplate, he could make out treetops waving against the blue and a hazy white patch that might have been one of the moons, all distant and blurry behind the curls of the helicoradians. For the moment at least, he could not hear the engines of the flying machine. He'd made it to the ground in one piece.

He rolled over and tried to get up.

This was a mistake. Neteyam was banged and bruised all over. Blood had seeped through his shirt on his right shoulder, where he'd scraped it on the stone in the cave and then hit it again as he'd crashed through the canopy. His chest ached, with a sharp pain under his left arm every time he inhaled. His right wrist was sore when he kept it still, but when he tried to put weight on it, it felt like it had been broken all over again. Raising his head made the world spin violently, until he felt like he was going to throw up, and his nonexistent tail was aching apparently just because everything else was. He was wet and sticky from the water in the bromeliad and the sap of the parachute tree. One of the giant leaves had come to rest on top of his legs, and in crawling out from under it he slipped and rolled into the stream.

He groaned and shut his eyes again. Never mind climbing, it seemed this useless human body couldn't even fall.

A few more minutes went by, and Neteyam's head started to clear properly, allowing him to crawl out of the stream and sit up, slowly this time. Yes, he felt like he'd been trampled by a sturmbeest, but at least he was still alive. That was lucky on several levels – first that he'd survived the fall, and second that nobody had found him lying there. The Sky People would have dragged him back to Site Nine, and anybody else who found an unconscious human in the woods would take the opportunity to kill it without stopping to ask questions.

The first thing he needed to do now, then, was make himself look less like an enemy to any of the People he might encounter. Clumsily with his one good arm, he pulled off his shoes and stockings, and peeled off the wet and bloodied button-down shirt. He was still wearing a dark tank top underneath it, and he tried to take that off, too, but with his injuries it was too awkward and hurt too much, so he decided to leave it. He rolled up the cuffs of his trousers, and then used the water in the stream to wash his bloodied shoulder and scrub the layer of sap and spores off his breathing mask so he'd be able to see again. The cold water was very soothing to both his injuries and his muddled head.

Now able to see and think clearly, Neteyam had to figure out where to go next. The Noro river was in Omatikaya territory, but Site Nine was not, and he didn't know how far along they'd been when he jumped. He needed to find a landmark.

The stream was a good start. It would almost certainly flow into the Noro, or if not, to the other large river in the area, the Kureyon. Once he came to either of those it would be easy to tell – the Noro was shallow and fast, the Kureyon deep and slow and full of fish. From there he could find his way back to Hell's Gate, and there he could borrow a flying machine and go east.

Exactly how Neteyam would pilot the machine, he wasn't sure. He had seen it done, of course – the human sat in the little co*ckpit and used levers and buttons to tell it where to go. It looked complicated, certainly much more so than flying a banshee, where rider and mount were thinking in unison and knew exactly what to do. Hopefully he could figure it out when he got there.

He turned downstream and climbed up from the muddy banks to the moss, taking a moment to savour the sensation. It was good to feel real earth under his toes, rather than just the soles of sweaty, confining shoes. Dad had once described how the first thing he'd done upon waking up in his avatar was to dig his feet into the ground, to feel a sensation he hadn't experienced since an injury had robbed his human body of the use of its legs many months earlier. Neteyam now had an inkling of how that must have felt.

Then he heard the sound of a flying machine. Neteyam looked up, but saw nothing. Even so, he crouched in the shadow of a tree as the noise got louder and louder, and stayed there until it faded again. He had no idea if that were the same craft he'd jumped from, but it would make sense if the Sky People were looking for him. He would have to be very careful.

Neteyam had only gotten lost once or twice in his life, and only as a small child. Now he had only a vague idea where he was, but as he set off along the mossy banks of the stream, he wasn't particularly worried about it. The hard part had been getting away from his captors, and now that he'd done that, even with his injuries this didn't seem so bad. Not being able to use his right arm wasn't great, but a useless arm was better than a useless leg, which would have kept him from walking. The forest was full of dangers, but they were dangers he knew, and it didn't feel as hostile as the human facility. The creek had to go somewhere, and sooner or later he'd figure out where.

The only thing that was really worrying was not knowing how far it was from anywhere. The humans' flying machines were very fast – they could be faster than banshees if they wanted to, although the one he'd ridden in had gone slow so the animals could keep up. A couple hours' flight from Site Nine might be several days on foot, and he now had some very personal experience with the fact that humans had short legs and were not fast. What was he going to do if he didn't make it to Hell's Gate by nightfall?

Water wouldn't be a problem as long as he kept close to the stream, as long as the Sky People hadn't been dumping poisons in it like they had the part of the Kureyon that flowed through their city. Food wasn't quite so urgent, as it was possible to go longer without it, but Neteyam hadn't eaten since an early breakfast that morning and he was already a little hungry. Humans could eat a few of the things that grew on Pandora, and he'd seen some familiar fruits and greens in the cafeteria at Site Nine, but most of their food they cultivated for themselves. The safest thing would obviously be to wait and get something to eat when he arrived at Hell's Gate.

The sound of rustling vegetation brought him out of his thoughts. Neteyam stopped and crouched down for a moment, not wanting to run into anything unfriendly, but then the foliage ahead of him parted to reveal it was only a small group of tapirus, three or four, coming to the water to drink. These were harmless creatures the Omatikaya had used to keep as livestock – they would eat nearly anything, and were a good way to turn scraps into meat. They'd had to leave them behind when they moved to High Camp, though.

Something seemed to nibble at the back of Neteyam's memory then, as if he'd forgotten something important, but when he tried to think about it properly it slipped from his grasp.

He stood up again and approached the group of animals, figuring they would flee. The tapirus did raise their heads and their kurus rose, but after looking at him a moment they returned to their drinking. That made Neteyam pause – these ones were used to having people around. None of them were decorated, as the ones that lived with the Omatikaya had used to have ribbons tied to their kurus or designs painted on their armoured heads and sides, so it had been a while since they were cared for. But they didn't mind his presence, or even get out of his way as he tried to pass them.

Neteyam slowed his pace as he continued down the steam. If he were near people, he would have to be wary – he might find help, or he might be taken prisoner or killed. The fact that Tapirus were waist-high on him was another sharp reminder that he no longer looked like one of the People.

He had expected the animals to wander off again, but instead they followed him. Maybe they figured anywhere a person was going might have food. They did not behave as if they were being herded, frequently stopping to pull up plants and dig grubs out of the soil, and Neteyam ignored them in favour of paying attention to his surroundings. He had a feeling he would soon see something familiar... and before very long, he did.

First it was a boulder in the stream that had cracked in two long ago, the cleft providing a safe place for amphibious organisms to lay their jellylike eggs. Then it was a tree where a fallen limb had left a scar that Neteyam and Lo'ak had used to snicker over because it resembled something obscene. Finally a stone covered with handprints where children had been playing with paint. He knew where he was... and nobody here was going to hurt him.

Smiling in triumph, Neteyam lengthened his stride, ignoring the pain in his ribs as he scrambled over rocks and fallen trees towards his destination. If he was right, it ought to be just up here.

The tapirus realized he was moving faster and began to trot, not wanting to be left behind if free food might be awaiting them.

Neteyam scrambled up a slope and parted a thick stand of ferns to reveal the remains of a path. It wasn't something constructed, just a place where hundreds of feet had walked over a decade and a half, pushing the vegetation back and compressing the soil. He followed that, and then, there it was. The Omatikaya village.

It had been abandoned for many months, of course. The dwellings had all been dismantled and many of the pieces had been taken away to High Camp, but there were traces. There were the paths where people used to walk, not only down to the creek for washing and drinking, but between dwellings and meeting places and storage. There were shards of pottery and scraps of textile that had been left behind, either forgotten or just old, broken, torn, and no longer useful. Carvings in tree trunks and drawings on stones.

Now Neteyam knew exactly where he was. If he'd wanted to, he could have climbed right back into the dwelling where he'd grown up. The one where Dad had carved lines into a pole to keep track of how each of the children were growing. The one where he'd first learned how to knap obsidian, and where Mother had shown him how to mix body paints, and where...

... but he didn't, because he found himself confronting something new.

The village had once ended at the fence that surrounded Hell's Gate. The fence had mostly been there to keep wild animals from raiding the humans' crops. The gates had always been open to the Omatikaya, and the jungle foliage had grown up both inside and outside the fence itself. Both peoples had come and gone freely.

There was no fence now. Instead, the jungle just... ended.

It was like a line down where the middle of the village had once been, where the grass, ferns, trees, and even the remnants of constructions gave way to bare, dry earth. The tapirus continued to nose around in the foliage, apparently unconcerned, but Neteyam pressed himself against a tree trunk so as not to be spotted across that open space. He moved cautiously from sheltered spot to sheltered spot until he reached the very edge of it.

There was Hell's Gate, looking much further away than it once had across all that bare ground. The gardens and fields the humans had once maintained were gone, and there was just that dead ground right up to the buildings proper. There were new things, too. Big towers had been put up, and new levels added to what had once been familiar structures.

Seeing this, Neteyam realized two things.

The first was that this sterilized ground was the same thing that surrounded Site Nine when he'd seen it from the air. It looked less flat up close. The lack of vegetation showed every little rise and fall of the landscape in sharp relief. For a moment he wondered why they'd taken the fence down, but he soon realized it was to deny any approaching person a place to hide. To get to the complex he would have had to cross this big open area, where the Sky People would easily see him coming. Even most animals wouldn't dare to try. A fence was redundant, and the materials could be used elsewhere.

The second was that this was familiar. It was a similar moment to Neteyam blinking in confusion at Quaritch shortly after awakening, only to remember that he'd already known the Sky People were making new avatars. He knew that they'd re-taken Hell's Gate, and yet somehow during all his planning that had slipped Neteyam's mind entirely. He even remembered letting his siblings spend some time with the humans after a long period when everybody was too busy for such things... Dr. Spellman had dangled Tuk by her ankles, Kiri had watched old recordings of Dr. Augustine, and Prisha Patel had pulled Neteyam's tail. Why did he remember that happening at Hell's Gate, when it couldn't have?

Did he remember it being there? Or... when he thought back now, had he been seeing metal walls, or stone caves?

Neteyam crouched down and held his head. Maybe he'd just thought of that as being Hell's Gate because that was where the humans had always been, and the setting was less important than the events themselves? Why hadn't he ever corrected himself? Was there something wrong with his memory?

With a chill, he remembered Nguyen saying that they'd gotten more of him back than they'd thought they would with a quick scan. But had they? Neteyam hadn't had any memory problems in the caves, but they hadn't gotten very far into them. Would he have reached where he thought Tuk's tunnel was, only to find he was mistaken? He had spent almost all his time in unfamiliar environments ever since waking up in this body. Now that he was in a place he knew, there was this awful mismatch between memory, assumption, and reality. What else might he have forgotten?

What would it mean when he got back to people he knew? What would happen when he spoke to somebody like Dr. Spellman or Dr. Patel, or even to Dad... what would happen if he told them I am Neteyam and they wanted him to prove it? What if he said you used to dangle Tuk by her ankles and told her not to tell Mother and Dr. Spellman said, no, I didn't?

This was so overwhelming and terrifying that for a few moments Neteyam couldn't move. He'd faced down all kinds of physical threats in his life, but this psychological one wasn't something he was prepared to handle. He sat there hugging his knees to his chest, his ribs aching in time with his quickened breathing, and gazing blankly out at that bare, exposed, ugly stretch of ground between himself and the place he'd thought he needed to go. He obviously couldn't go to Hell's Gate, and he'd wasted time trying. Now what?

Well, he knew where help was. Assuming the rest of his memory was accurate, at least, he had to get to High Camp.

That was a daunting prospect. High Camp was hours away on horseback, and Neteyam didn't have a horse and couldn't have ridden one if he had. Then he would have to climb the floating mountains to get there. Could he even do that when he couldn't even climb that stupid wall, when he was injured, when his arms wouldn't reach as far as they used to? Neteyam couldn't remember ever feeling like a task might be impossible for him. He'd always been good at things, ready for any challenge. But now...

One of the tapirus nosed at his injured shoulder and grunted. Neteyam hissed in pain, then reached over to push the animal away. “I don't have any food for you,” he said. “I don't even have any food for me.”

The interruption was, however, at least enough to get him to his feet, and he retreated back into the remaining half of the village. It was a good thing there was still some of the ruins left, because Neteyam was going to need a way to defend himself. The village was the best place to find one.

Sorting through the underbrush and digging around beneath where dwellings had been, Neteyam found several items that had simply been discarded, but which might now be useful. There was a length of leather that had once been a rein, which he used to tie his braids back out of his face. There was also a broken child's bracelet, which he carefully repaired with a piece of dry reed. Even then it was far too big for him. When Neteyam tried to put it on, it went up above his elbow and was still loose enough that it wouldn't have stayed in place.

Then he started to find the things he was actually looking for. When people abandoned a home, they would leave a gift behind for the place to remember them by. The Sully family had buried a pretty pottery bowl that the kids had all eaten from when they were little, but Neteyam didn't need that. He found what he was looking for under a former dwelling closer to the stream – an obsidian knife with a handle made of carved hexapede bone. It was huge in his hands, but the edge was sharp and it would be effective both as a weapon and for butchering. Neteyam tied the scabbard around his wist, since his shoulder hurt too much to put it in the usual position around his chest, and then buried the bracelet instead.

“I'm sorry I have to take the knife,” he said aloud. “I offer this as a replacement, and I'll return it as soon as I can. Thank you for your help.”

That done, he took a long drink from the creek, and set off towards High Camp.

Walking through the jungle alone could be dangerous, but Neteyam couldn't stop going through his memories, trying to find more gaps. It was an unnerving experience, because memories weren't always reliable anyway, and details were easily forgotten. Even so, there were things he was pretty sure he ought to remember that he definitely did not.

He remembered the attack on the train, and trying to talk Lo'ak out of going down to help. Neteyam knew he'd failed at that, and he knew he'd ended up getting hurt... but he didn't remember anything much of the actual events, just being scolded afterwards. He remembered how worried Tuk had been to see him bleeding, and he remembered telling her something Dad had once told him: blood was red because it had something in it called hemoglobin, which moved air around the body, while skin was blue because it was full of azuline, which kept the sun from burning you. The middle of the story, however, the actual injury and the events at the train, was missing.

He remembered Pawk, of course. He remembered the day he'd tamed her, and the first flight – those things were far too important to ever forget. She was the green colour morph, while Lo'ak's Tìtstew was blue. After the ceremony there'd been a festival to celebrate the new warriors, and Grandma had taken Neteyam aside and told him not to be too proud, because pride led to carelessness... or had that been at his festival? Because he seemed to remember seeing, out of the corner of his eye, Lo'ak sitting sullenly on the sidelines. Had that been after Lo'ak's failure? Was he conflating multiple incidents, like he might be with the visit to Hell's Gate?

None of this was reassuring, because it meant he didn't know if he'd forgotten something else important. What if Neteyam made it to High Camp only to find the People had moved on and he didn't know where they'd gone? Was it really just his own family who'd abandoned this land and gone to live with the reef people? Or was it the entire clan?

No, somebody still had to be there, because somebody had stolen and hidden the Sky People's explosives. But the more gaps he found in his memory, and with the knowledge that his family had lived for months among the eastern islands and he had no memory of that at all, he had to wonder... was he even Neteyam? Even if he could convince them he remembered most of his life, would they still think he counted as their son and their brother?

He was pulled out of these terrible thoughts by the sound of another flying machine low over the area. Neteyam slid down among the roots of a tree and pulled the leaves of a kettleflower over his head. Mother had taught him that these were warm because the heat attracted pollinating flies looking for carrion – which meant they could be used to foll the heat sensors the Sky People used to hunt. Why could he remember that, but not how he'd been injured at the train?

This time he caught a glimpse of the machine moving in slow circles over the remains of the village and the surrounding forest. The sound of its engines seemed to last for a very long time, and the longer Neteyam crouched there in hiding, the worse his ribs hurt from the uncomfortable position. When it finally moved away, he stood up and stretched, only to find that hurt, too. His wrist had swollen up until the skin felt tight, and his stomach was gurgling. He was going to need both food and medical care, probably sooner than he'd liked to think.

He couldn't waste time trying to remember things that probably didn't even matter right now. He had to focus on moving, covering as much ground as he could before nightfall.

So that was what he did, but progress was still slow. One by one he passed familiar landmarks – the sturmbeest trail, a tributary of the Kureyon River, the stone that looked like a face – but they seemed further apart and the terrain was more difficult than Neteyam was used to. He was definitely going to have congratulate Spider on being able to keep up, and maybe ask him for some advice on how to do it.

Spider was, he realized, also a possible source of advice about food. Neteyam could remember seeing their human friend snacking on fruit and eating a few things when the family had a meal, but he couldn't recall exactly what it was Spider ate. Was that another gap in his memory, or had he just never paid particular attention?

As the afternoon progressed, Neteyam's hunger became harder to ignore, and as he stepped from rock to rock across a stream, he reached to brush an insect off his arm and found the skin unexpectedly warm. It looked a little flushed, too – he held up the other arm to compare and they looked the same colour, but when he turned them over to see the inner surface, the one that normally faced his body, that was definitely less ruddy and not so warm. What was that? It didn't hurt, but there was something worrying about it that was all out of proportion to the actual discomfort. Maybe it was a human thing.

Shadows got longer, and finally the sun dipped below the treetops and the auroras began to light up the sky, dancing across it in blue and green curtains. Neteyam could see nocturnal-hunting banshees taking flight across the lights, and the tinier specks of stingbats. And then finally, he crested a hill and was able to see on the horizon, against the giant crescent of the planet, the irregular peaks of the floating mountains. They were still a long way away, but he was going in the right direction.

First, however, he was going to have to find a place to spend the night. The darker it got, the more the jungle echoed with the cries of viperwolves and other night-time predators. The tapirus had wandered off hours ago, finally accepting that Neteyam wasn't going to feed them, so he wouldn't even have them to alert him of an oncoming threat. The glow of the plants and insects around him was becoming visible in the gathering dusk. Soon he would be all alone in the dark, with no weapon but a knife.

That was what had happened to Dad after he'd jumped from the falls at Kilvanoro to escape the thanator. He'd ended up surrounded by viperwolves and would have been killed if Mother hadn't found him. What had he done to try to ward them off? It had been something foolish, something that had attracted more of the predators rather than frightening them away... but Neteyam couldn't remember that part of the story. Another gap. This was the tale of his parents' first meeting, of the moment his own birth became a part of their future, and he couldn't remember part of it.

He did remember that Dad had been determined to stay up all night and keep his avatar safe until a party could be sent to look for him in the morning. Neteyam didn't have that option. Nobody would be coming to rescue him except for the Sky People, who would only haul him back to captivity. He had to keep moving, but his injuries hurt worse and worse and his feet were sore. Breathing hard as he slid down a gravelly slope was particularly painful.

Neteyam's parents had taught him that if he were alone at night, he should get up someplace high, but he could hardly climb a tree with a broken wrist and his ribs and shoulder hurting. It would have to be somewhere on the ground, but if he just curled up among the tree routes the predators would find him at once.

The sun was well down, and the jungle was glowing all around him in a dozen hues of blue, green, and gold, when he noticed something through the trees. Something he recognized at once, but which he didn't think should be in this particular place – bioluminescence in a distinctive shade of blue-violet. Neteyam made his way towards it, and soon found the source: a young tree. The top of this still had leaves for catching sunlight, but the lower branches had started to put out the trailing tendrils through which Eywa could speak to her creatures. A sapling of the Sacred Tree.

Perhaps it wasn't surprising that Neteyam hadn't seen this particular tree before. It was clearly very young, and not yet able to get all the nutrients it needed from the network of underground roots and fungi that fed the adult trees. It might only have been in the past year or so that it had started putting out tendrils... or it could be another gap in his memory. Neteyam didn't know and, for the moment, he didn't care. He climbed over a pile of rocks, pushed back the overhanging branches, and stepped into the tree's light.

There he automatically took a handful of the tendrils and reached for the back of his neck, then had to stop as he found again there was nothing there, only dangling braids and skin with the same off-putting warmth he'd earlier felt on his arms. He couldn't talk to the Great Mother anymore, any more than he could ride a banshee. This body just wasn't capable. The tendrils were buzzing slightly against his palm as they always did, full of life and love, but he couldn't touch it other than to press it against his forehead, where the breathing mask left some skin uncovered. Maybe through that he could hear something.

Nothing. He stood there perfectly still for a long time, waiting, but Eywa was silent.

The grunt of an animal got his attention, this time something much bigger than a tapirus. Neteyam opened his eyes and looked over his shoulder, and saw a dark shape moving through the foliage – a female titanothere.

He froze. Males were, by and large, cowards that would back down from anything that looked like it would put up a fight, although Neteyam's human body might be too small to intimidate it. A female was another matter, though, especially if...

Sure enough, this one had a calf with her. The female stopped on the edge of the little clearing that was starting to form around the sapling, and lay down there, up against the rocks Neteyam had just climbed over. The calf settled next to her, and their kurus connected so it could feed.

Neteyam watched this in silence, and then wondered if Eywa was trying to tell him something after all. Was this a safe place to spend the night? No predator with an ounce of sense was going to come near a mother titanothere with a calf. The female would take on a thanator... but she didn't seem at all interested in Neteyam. It seemed like she hadn't even noticed him.

He took a handful of the tendrils again, hoping the Great Mother could hear him even if he couldn't hear her, and said, “thank you.” Then he found a place among the soft moss at the roots and lay on his left side, where he wouldn't be on his bruised ribs. His stomach was still grumbling, but it was just going to have to wait. He shut his eyes.

Neteyam's dreams that night were unusually vivid, things plucked from old memories. He was standing by the side of the creek near the village, where the water collected in a still pool, pulling a bow to shoot at a fish. Dad was behind him, whispering encouragement but not moving or speaking aloud for fear of scaring away their quarry. The string pulled tight, the bow quivered as Neteyam held it, and then when the moment was right, he loosed the arrow.

“Good shot! Go get him!” said Dad.

Neteyam hopped down into the water to pull out the fish, still alive and wriggling on the end of the arrow. He turned around and looked up at his father...

Then sat up suddenly as a beam of light and a roar of loud noise came down from overhead. For a moment he was confused, unsure where he was. He couldn't see anything clearly, just shapes and shadows and an explosion of pain in his ribs every time he took a breath, and...

Then the light moved on, and Neteyam saw spots for a few moments before his eyes adjusted to the softer glow of the tree. He was still lying at the base of the sapling, his ribs aching worse than ever as he panted from the scare. The sound of the flying machine faded.

Something moved around Neteyam, and he looked down. Tendrils of white ghost lichen, the same kind that grew over the dead when the People placed their bodies among the roots of the Tree of Souls, were retracting from his body. Had... had it thought he was dead and tried to consume him? He struggled to his aching feet and looked down at the ground.

The glow there went out, and the lichen shrivelled up and vanished.

Neteyam looked around. He could hear the sound of heavy breathing that was not his, and spotted the mother titanothere, sleeping with her calf not far away. They were still not interested in him. A fan lizard took flight from a branch and vanished into the forest. Other than that, everything was quiet, but something didn't feel right.

Then he heard the voices.

“This is ridiculous,” a male voice said in English. “He fell from the damn Kestrel. Even Emily thinks he's dead.”

Neteyam very slowly lowered himself back down to a sitting position and leaned on the tree, trying to look like part of it. He couldn't tell which direction the sound was coming from, and human ears couldn't swivel to check. He just had to hope they didn't notice him.

“Then we gotta find the body,” a second voice replied, this one female. “Quaritch wants to recreate him as soon as possible, and the scientists won't do that until we know for sure he's dead.”

A twig snapped under a foot. Neteyam hardly dared breathe.

“Stop!” the female ordered suddenly.

“What?” the male asked.

The titanothere gave a sleepy grunt, and Neteyam realized that the speakers, whether human or recom, were on the other side of the animal, blocked from his view – and he from theirs – by its hulking body. It began to get to its feet, awakened by the intrusion.

“It's a mother with a cub,” the female said. “Fall back.”

The titanothere bellowed a challenge, and there was an alarmed shout. “We need extraction!” the man exclaimed. “Extraction, now!” Then there was the sound of running feet as the intruders took off with the mother titanothere on their heels. The calf remained where it was, crouched among the undergrowth where it was less likely to be seen.

Neteyam sat down again with his back to the tree and breathed out. He'd interpreted the message correctly – he was safe here. The Great Mother was looking after him. With her help he could sleep the rest of the night and make it to High Camp just fine.

“Thank you,” he murmured into the darkness. “Great Mother. Thank you.”

Of course there was no reply, but there was a rustling overhead as birds took flight, as if she were acknowledging that she'd heard him. With that as reassurance, Neteyam closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

Chapter 8: Hallelujah

Chapter Text

Neteyam woke up very early the next morning. The sun had not yet risen, but its light reflected from the giant planet to light up the jungle almost as bright as dawn. The titanotheres had left hours ago, but other animals were rustling and calling in the foliage, and there was the familiar sense of peace that Neteyam always felt when waking up early, before the village truly came to life.

Into that moment of tranquil comfort came the unpleasant memories. The village was in ruins, half of it burned to bare ground, and remembering hurt almost as much as it had the day he'd first learned about it. The People had gone to High Camp, where not much light got into the caves and the only animal noises were those made by the banshees. Somehow, Neteyam still had to get there.

Before he could do that, however, he had to find water and food. He began to sit up, and groaned out loud. Everything hurt.

When he'd come to at the base of the parachute tree the previous morning, Neteyam had been in some pain. All those injuries seemed to have doubled overnight. His right wrist was uncomfortably swollen, the skin tight and flushed. Moving it was out of the question. His scraped shoulder felt unnaturally warm. His forehead and temples ached, and the places were the straps of his breathing mask rested were itchy. Neteyam reached with his good hand to scratch, and found the skin on his forehead unexpectedly tender. The same was true of the back of his neck, and the tops of his shoulders and arms – the areas that had been warm and ruddy yesterday now stung when touched. When he sat up, his ribs felt like they were stabbing into him. His tail still hurt, and his stomach was so empty that it, too, felt painful.

Even so, he said a thanks to Eywa for his survival through the night. Then he struggled to his feet and tried to stretch, but couldn't do so because his ribs hurt too much. His head swam a bit as he straightened up, but that went away after a few seconds. Neteyam was grateful for that. He had a long way to go today, and he wouldn't be able to climb the floating mountains while dizzy.

The idea of climbing still made him shiver. Neteyam told himself that Nguyen was probably right: he just hadn't taken proper precautions in climbing that stupid wall, and if he tried again, he would do much better. But he hadn't been able to try it, and after fumbling and barely surviving his drop from the flying machine, he felt worse about it than ever. What if he tried and he failed, again and again and again? Lo'ak often failed at things on the first try, but he would succeed on the second or third. Neteyam had always been the one who got it right the first time, and the idea of never getting it right made him feel sick.

That moment of nausea reminded him that he was hungry – food and water would settle his stomach and help his headache. He could worry about that now, and the rest later.

There was a pitcher leaf plant growing not far away. Neteyam bent the stems to drink the water that collected there, as Mother had taught him. Water was not a problem.

Food might be. When Neteyam thought about it, he was pretty sure he'd seen Spider eat fish with them. Catching fish was one thing Neteyam knew for sure he could do – he'd been doing it since he was very young. That had been part of his dreams last night, hadn't it? He'd dreamed that he was standing on the stream bank with Dad, shooting fish. Dad had towered over him... was that because Neteyam in the dream had been a child, or had he been a human?

It didn't matter. Neteyam didn't have a bow now, but he had the knife he'd borrowed from the village site, and he could use that. He'd have to do it with his left hand, since his right wrist was now absolutely useless, but it couldn't be that hard.

He followed the sound of moving water to a stream, and found a place where it pooled enough for fish. There he crouched for a while, letting his eyes learn to ignore the reflections on the surface in favour of the weeds and creatures moving around beneath. He could soon make out the fronds of charniamorphs and the little insect larvae scooting around, and then spotted something more like what he was looking for.

It was a creature the humans called a legged eel, long and flat but with six tiny limbs that it used to cling to the reeds it liked to hide in. They had a fierce bite, but their meat was flavourful and full of vitamins – as Mother had used to tell Kiri when she'd refused to eat it as a child.

Neteyam moved a bit so he wouldn't cast a shadow on the water to warn the animal of his presence, and tightened his grip on the knife. He'd done this before, though with a spear rather than a handheld blade. That was fine, he would simply have to adapt the technique. When catching something that wriggled, a hunter had to get it near the mouth so it couldn't bite. If Neteyam could get a finger in the eel's gills, he could hold onto that and it wouldn't be able to reach him with either its teeth or its tiny legs. Then he could cut its head off and bank the rest in the embers of a fire.

The eel dashed out and snapped up an amphibian, then retracted itself into its hiding place by tugging on the weeds with its little legs. Now, while it was subduing its struggling prey, was the perfect time. Neteyam's hand darted out.

In his head, the strike was perfect – he caught the eel by the gill, dragged it out onto the shore, then pinned it with a foot and cut its head off with the knife. All one, fluid, easy motion, just like he'd done a thousand times before.

The reality didn't work out quite so well. He grabbed the eel as he'd planned, but it was bigger and stronger than he remembered. Twisting against his grip, it ripped itself free, then turned around and sank its fangs into his hand. Neteyam yelped and kicked at it, which unbalanced him and he fell on his side in the water, his ribs feeling like he'd fallen on thorns. The splash was enough to scare the eel into letting go, and it flashed away through the weeds, leaving Neteyam knee-deep in the pool with his hand bleeding from several long, raking slices.

He said several words Mother would not have approved of, and squirmed back up on the bank to try to do something with his hand. He should have kept the shirt he'd been wearing – he could have torn it into bandages. The fabric of his tank top was all wrong for that purpose. All Neteyam could do was wash the wounds in the water, moving quickly so that the taste of the blood wouldn't attract more eels, then pull his face mask up to lick the wounds clean as best he could.

He'd been an idiot again. Of course the eel seemed abnormally large and powerful. It was the ordinary size, but Neteyam himself was half as big as he'd used to be. As when he'd tried to climb the wall and failed, he hadn't taken account of his new body before trying to do something that normally wasn't dangerous. Now he was injured in both hands, which was going to be very bad if he needed to defend himself from something larger than an eel.

Neteyam sat there on the moss a lot longer than he should have, scowling at his injuries and at the sting where the rising sun shone on his arms and back. He remembered now why those were painful – he'd been thinking about it just yesterday. The azuline in the People's skin reflected away the bad parts of sunlight that would otherwise have burned them. Dad had explained once that humans didn't have that, and so had to be careful about spending much time in the sun. Spider painted himself with woad partially so that he would look more like the other kids, but also partly so he wouldn't get sunburned. Neteyam had forgotten that, too.

It was something he wouldn't have allowed himself to feel back in Site Nine, where he was always being watched and he wanted the humans to think he was tough. But here, alone in the middle of the jungle... Neteyam felt small. He felt useless. He couldn't do the simplest damned things. Neteyam wanted to go home. He wanted his old body back, he wanted to be able to do stuff again, and the emotion almost overwhelmed him. He reached up to swipe away the tears in his eyes, only to realize he couldn't even do that because of the breathing mask.

Neteyam took a deep breath and pulled the mask off so he could wipe his face and nose, then put it back on again. A deep breath gave him another whiff of sulphur. Even the air, he thought again.

He sat there for a long time, taking deep, shuddering breaths and trying to ignore the pain of his various injuries. He was the oldest. He had to act like it. He couldn't cry, not even out here with nobody watching, not even when he'd failed at what should have been an easy task and now he was going to have to go hungry. How was he ever going to get to High Camp when he couldn't climb, couldn't feed himself, couldn't even fall out of a tree? It would have been so much easier if there'd still been friendly humans at Hell's Gate.

But there weren't. The only alternatives to going on were either letting the people from Site Nine find him – and they'd surely never let him out of their sight again – or just sitting down right here and starving to death. Neteyam was not willing to do either of those things. That meant he had to go on, and just figure things out as they came.

He got to his feet and washed off his injuries one more time. The eel was no longer visible among the plats in the pool. Either it had left, or it was watching him from hiding. His stomach gurgled, but he had nothing to give it. He returned to the sacred tree and took its tendrils in his hand one last time, then set off towards the floating mountains.

A kilometre or so from the tree, Neteyam found himself in a familiar place again – a Sturmbeest migration route, where the ground had been pounded bare by countless centuries of lumbering feet. Trees could not take root here despite the fertile droppings, leaving a wide trail through the jungle, coated with ferns, grasses, and other small, resilient plants. That led in roughly the right direction and was easier to navigate than the woods, so Neteyam followed it, though he kept to the shade of the canopy on the edges so as not to be seen from above. It wasn't just the Sky People and their machines he would have to worry about. An individual walking in the open would be a target for aerial predators as well.

As he walked, he noticed a plant with thick, flat leaves – another familiar sight. Grandma Mo'at had taught the children to squeeze the centres out of those to relieve the pain of wounds. Applying the sap smarted terribly for the first few seconds, but then the pain would ease and the area would go numb for a while. Neteyam moved towards it, thinking the poor plant might not have enough leaves for all his injuries...

... then he stopped.

Had Spider ever used this stuff? There were surely forms of medicine Neteyam would no longer be able to use, any more than he could eat anything the People ate, because his body was different. He remembered an incident when Kiri had tried to treat an injury on Spider and it hadn't turned out very well... but once again, Neteyam couldn't remember the details. Had that been this plant?

After a few reluctant moments, he decided to leave it. It wasn't worth the risk. Neteyam turned away, only to realize he was about to step on a very large forest centipede. Those were not only venomous, they would crunch unpleasantly under bare feet. He tried to avoid it, but the twisting motion involved pulled on the muscles attached to his sore ribs, and he stumbled and fell, banging one knee painfully on a stone. It was all Neteyam could do not to swear out loud. He put out his hands to catch himself, but did so on his bad wrist, and that hurt so badly his vision went white.

The world swam back into view a few moments later. The centipede was gone, and Neteyam's injuries hurt worse than ever. He picked himself up, and went back for the numbing plant.

When he squished a leave experimentally between his fingers, the pulp inside oozed out, shiny and transparent from the dark green tissues. It looked harmless enough. Neteyam got some on his fingertips and smeared it over his aching ribs. As expected, both those and his fingers stung at first, and he waited to see if it would go away.

It did not. In fact, within seconds the skin began to itch fiercely and turn red. He tried to wipe it off on his trousers, but that didn't seem to help, and horrifyingly, within a few minutes the skin on his hand and chest had started to blister. Neteyam threw the leaf away and found a puddle of water to try to wash the sap away. Even then, the itching remained.

He was starting to wonder if he were going to make it anywhere near the floating mountains.

After that, Neteyam decided he was definitely not going to try touching any plant or animal again. Apparently this body was just not capable. What were his parents going to say when he got back to them? Their eldest son, who'd always made them proud, could no longer do anything. Even if they believed it was him, even if Mother didn't look at him with the same distaste as at Spider, would they really want him back when he was clearly going to do nothing but disappoint them?

Even so, as he'd already observed he had no other real choice but to keep going, so he did. Several times, as the day passed, he noticed small animals he could have tried to catch, or fruit that was dangling there temptingly, but he always resisted. Right now Neteyam needed human food and nothing else, at least until he had a good understanding of what would and wouldn't hurt him.

The itching from the sap began to subside a little as he got into the foothills, where the terrain was rougher and the going harder, though the blisters remained painful. By sunset he was ravenous, thirsty, and his muscles were burning. He kept thinking back to Nguyen telling him that he had to build up to more strenuous activities because his body was still new... she would be shaking her head in disgust right now.

The most sensible thing for him to do now would be to find somewhere safe to spend the night. The hills below the floating mountains were full of caverns and cracks that predators might find it hard to get into. He knew Eywa was looking out for him. That was probably the only reason he'd made it this far. As long as Neteyam didn't do anything remarkably stupid, he ought to be fine.

Then again, over the past couple of days he'd done a lot of things that had turned out to be remarkably stupid once he'd actually tried them, or once his memory was jogged, starting with thinking he was going to Hell's Gate. There was no telling when the next mistake would be his last.

The mountains themselves were so close. A few of the smaller outlying peaks were right overhead, jagged black shapes against a sky bright with sunset. If Neteyam kept going, he might make it to High Camp by morning. There he would find help: food, medicine, rest, and a place where he could take off the increasingly uncomfortable breathing mask.

Of course, he might also fall to his death. There was still a long way to go, and unlike parachute trees or climbing walls, the mountains were in constant motion.

Neteyam decided to keep going. The climbing was hard work, especially with only one hand able to grip tightly, and he was soon breathing hard. This body had lived all its short life at Site Nine, which was not far above sea level. Neteyam had been gaining altitude all day, and the journey was getting steeper and steeper. His breathing apparatus couldn't extract oxygen as efficiently up here. Stopping to acclimatize would be a good idea.

But he continued. It was as if climbing were the default, and stopping something he would have to put effort into, rather than the opposite. Neteyam knew the mountains well, so it didn't take long for him to find one of the paths the young warriors used when heading up to tame their banshees. The ledges they had to climb were wider than he remembered, but for once that size difference worked in his favour – the extra space made it harder to fall. At the same time, the stone was much harder on his feet than the soil of the forest, and they were soon hurting worse than ever.

When he sat down for a rest, Neteyam checked the soles of his feet. They were soft, with the skin of a body that had always worn shoes. More blisters were coming up, on the heel and the ball of the foot. These were bigger than the ones on his fingers and his side from the medicinal plant, but at least they did not itch.

As he stood up again, the muscles in his arms and legs protested with twinges of pain. Neteyam felt like he was physically falling apart. Nothing in his life had ever been so difficult or painful for him, and he hated it. His old body was dead, but wasn't there any way he could get back to one like it? There had to be. If the Sky People could make him this one, if they could make avatar bodies for Quaritch and Bohan and the rest of them, there had to be away they could make another body for Neteyam – they simply wouldn't. Nguyen had said there were rules against it, and Neteyam dimly remembered Prisha Patel telling him that the humans at High Camp weren't capable. They hadn't even been able to do that when they were at Hell's Gate, because if they had, Spider would surely have insisted on having an avatar.

That was a gloomy thought. Even when he was out of their direct control, Neteyam was still very much the Sky People's prisoner.

Despite his protesting muscles, Neteyam continued on up as the sky grew darker. The planet was setting – tonight one be one of the rare, dark nights when the gas giant passed between Pandora and the sun. People on the far side of the world would see the great eclipse, while the ones on this side would have only the stars, the aurora, and the bioluminescence. That was still more light than Dad had said humans got on their home world, where there was only one dim moon, but it was less than Neteyam would have liked. He was aware that humans didn't see very well in the dark.

The climb took much longer on foot than it would have by direhorse, and longer still on feet that hurt, but after hours of exertion Neteyam reached the top of the last spire. There, the floating mountains truly began. Small boulders tangled in vines were making endless lazy circles in the magnetic field overhead, like vulturehawks circling a carcass. Despite the gaps in his memory, Neteyam could remember with great clarity the running leap he'd taken to grab a vine on his way up to tame Pawk. There was no way he was going to be able to repeat that feat now. Not with shorter legs, both hands hurting, and blistered feet. He would have to wait until one got really close.

His opportunity came when a knot of tangled vines slid directly across the top of the spire he was standing on, momentarily catching on a twisted tree. Neteyam braced himself and flexed his good wrist, timed it as best he could, and threw his arms and legs around the dangling plants. For a moment his grip slid, and the memory of landing on his back on the mat below the climbing wall seemed to run through his body like a physical impact. He tightened his grip even as his abused muscles protested, and then he was dangling in space, the bottom of the vine swaying like a pendulum below him with the bioluminescent forest spread out beneath.

A moment of sheer exhilaration passed through him, temporarily washing his exhaustion away. He'd done it! He could still do things! He just needed practice, needed to remember how long his limbs were and how high he could jump. He was getting better!

It was a good thing, too, because there was nowhere to go now except up.

The large slab of floating stone at the top of the first vine rocked back and forth under his weight as Neteyam scrambled up on top of it. A tail would have been very helpful in getting his balance there, but Neteyam eventually stood up straight and was able to look down at the landscape slowly rotating below him. Feeling on top of the world, he pumped his good arm in the air and let out a whoop of joy. It might take him all night to get to the top, but he was going to do it. He was closer than ever.

Neteyam waited for another vine to pass by and then grabbed it, less clumsily this time. If he paid attention, he could learn quickly. He headed up.

Progress was now even more painfully slow, partly because it really was painful. Neteyam's right wrist was only getting worse, swelling up so that he could not bend the joint or even wiggle the fingers. The best he could do with that arm was to clamp his elbow around vines, or wedge it into a crack in the stones so tightly it cut off the circulations and lever himself up. His shoulders, both the injured and uninjured ones, quickly became sore from the exertion.

He really should have tried that climbing wall. Rather than rushing to escape as quickly as possible, Neteyam ought to have heeded Nguyen's advice that his body was still new, and spent some time practising and building up his strength. Too late now.

He climbed from boulder to boulder until he reached a relatively stable line of larger rocks, like beads on a string. The vines here were broad and woody enough to walk along the tops of them, and that, too, was actually easier in this smaller body. He began to hop from vine to boulder to vine with something approaching his familiar agility.

Finally he found himself on one of the mountains proper, one big enough to have a name – the People called it Zekwä, the Finger, because it was long and narrow. It hung in the sky at a steep angle, so that he had to crawl along it on all fours as he went higher and higher. From its peak, cold high-altitude winds whipped Neteyam's hair and made his skin, damp with mist and sweat, prickle. Ahead of him, lit by the auroras, were the rest of the mountains, rippling with bioluminescent vegetation. After watching for a few moments, he realized there were also tiny points of light that was warm orange instead of cool blue-green. Those would be fires, not from High Camp itself, but from sentries posted in the surrounding mountains. He was almost there.

The moons drifted slowly across the sky as Neteyam continued. Sighting the fires had given him a second wind, but it didn't last. In the high thin air, he just couldn't keep up the pace he wanted. More and more often, he was having to sit down and spend a few minutes taking the deepest breaths his breathing mask could provide him with while the ache slowly leeched out of his muscles. These little breaks would make him feel better, but the pain and breathlessness seemed to return right away when he stood up. It began to feel like he was making no progress at all, and Neteyam started counting his steps – he had to take at least forty, he decided, before he could sit down again.

On the last of these rests, he had to sit there for what seemed like an awfully long time with the taste of blood in his mouth, breathing hard and yet unable to get enough air. Something in him desperately wanted to just rip of the mask off and breathe real air, and as much as he knew that was impossible it was a difficult urge to fight. Maybe he should just find a place to sleep and carry on in the morning.

But when he looked up and saw the fires again, Neteyam knew he couldn't do that. Stopping now would be almost like giving up. He didn't have to make it all the way to High Camp. Getting the attention of one of the sentries would be enough. Provided the lookout didn't shoot him on sight, he would be able to ask for help.

“Come on,” he said aloud to himself. “You can do it. You're so close.” Maybe when he arrived, somebody would be impressed that he'd managed it, alone and in this unfamiliar body. He heaved himself, slowly and stiffly, to his feet, and squinted at the flickering of the nearest sentry fire. The orange light appeared and disappeared again as the rocks moved around in the magnetic field, and it was hard to tell how far away it was. Was he close enough to call out to whoever was there?

It was worth a try. He tried to cup his hands around his mouth, but the mask was in the way, so he simply shouted at the top of his lungs: “Hello! Hello! Can you hear me?”

He heard a distant echo from the rocks, but no actual reply. Too far, then. He would just have to keep going.

Neteyam took several deep breaths in preparation, and was about to keep climbing when he heard the thunder of wings. He spun around, automatically dropping into a defensive position, and pulled the knife from his belt – just in time, as a banshee landed behind him.

He had seen the banshees in the hangar at Site Nine, and had watched them interact with the recoms, but at no point had Neteyam been close enough to get a real sense of how large they were. Banshees were a little bigger than a direhorse. When they they were on the ground or perched on a tree, their heads were higher than a person's, but not by much, and even knowing he was smaller, he still thought of them as that size.

The one that had alighted behind him now was enormous. It seemed as big as a sturmbeest, and it didn't help to think about that and realize how monstrous a real sturmbeest would have looked from this new viewpoint. The spiracles around its neck flared as it crawled towards him, extending a head that could have bitten him in half. It was like being face-to-face with toruk.

“Get back!” Neteyam ordered, holding up his knife, but he felt foolish doing so. He was so tiny, this creature would never be scared of him. “I said get away!”

Then he looked again. The banshee was a female, the green and yellow colour morph – and the shapes picked out by the photophores on its wings were curiously familiar. A sudden, vivid memory of running his fingers over them, connecting the dots into constellations, made the hair on the back of Neteyam's neck stand up.

“Pawk?” he asked.

The banshee snorted and opened its mouth to let scent into the vomeronasal organ, and Neteyam's heart quickened. It was Pawk! Did she recognize him? She must – she'd appeared after he'd shouted. She'd heard his voice! What was she doing here? Hadn't Neteyam taken her with him when he'd gone with his family to the eastern islands? Or... after his death, she must have returned to her flock, and now here she was.

“Pawk.” Neteyam lowered the knife. “It's me. You know me.” He put the knife back in his belt and reached out with his swollen left hand, not wanting to risk the right.

The banshee came a tiny bit closer, then flinched away, then leaned in again. She breathed in Neteyam's scent and tilted her head from side to side, taking in this strange creature that spoke like her partner.

“Mawey,” said Neteyam gently. “Mawey, ma Pawk.”

He wasn't sure what he planned to do next. He couldn't ride her when he couldn't make tsaheylu to tell her where to go. The thought of that made his heart feel like a knot in his chest, as when he'd realized he could no longer connect to the Sacred Tree. But Pawk was here, and Neteyam was longing for some kind of link to his old life. If he could touch her, if he could make her understand that it was him... she seemed just on the verge of getting it...

Then she suddenly reared up, trumpeting like the instrument he'd named her for. Neteyam stumbled backwards in surprise, and dropped to the ground moments ahead of Pawk lashing out with her teeth. She was confused. The being in front of her sounded like Neteyam but did not look or smell like him, and had not offered his queue. She didn't know what to do about it.

“Stop!” Neteyam ordered her. “Ma Pawk, ftang!”

Pawk appeared to balk, but then crawled towards him again. Neteyam realized he was perilously close to the edge of the mountain, and rolled forwards, trying to go underneath her. He hissed in pain where his injured shoulder hit the rocks.

Movement towards her startled Pawk, and she hopped into the air with a shriek. Neteyam sat up and watched her silhouette climb into the brightening sky. Was she leaving? He knew that was safer, but part of him desperately hoped she would stay. Unfortunately, she did. She wheeled around and dove at him again.

Neteyam scrambled away, but he was not fast enough. She came down on top of him, and pinned him with one wing. Her entire weight went right through his chest onto the sharp rocks under him, and the big claw on her thumb, while not a sharp talon, dug into him painfully. He could barely breathe. His ribs were on fire. Pawk leaned down, and he could feel the hot breath from her spiracles.

“Pawk, stop!” he ordered, just begging her to listen. With his chest compressed and painful, the words came out in a whisper. Neteyam could not die here, he thought, crushed by this creature he loved. He could not.

Then he heard the sound of gunfire, loud and terrifyingly close. Pawk squawked in surprise, and the weight was off Neteyam's back as she turned to face this new threat. He took the deep breaths the pressure had denied him, and then tried to get up and confront whoever had found them.

He found, however, that he could barely move. He wasn't injured any worse than he had been, besides possibly being badly bruised, but he was exhausted and hungry and breathless and in pain, and somehow being forced flat on his face on cold stone a kilometre up in the sky had been the last straw. His body simply refused.

“Stop, stop!” he pleaded as the gun fired again. He tried to shout, but the words came out in a hoarse whisper “Don't hurt her!”

Neteyam felt the rocks shake as another banshee landed. From his viewpoint lying on the ground, he could see tails and wings moving and hear snapping and hissing, but couldn't make much sense of it. A voice shouted similar words to ones he'd been saying a moment ago: stop, go away, leave that alone! With a shriek, one banshee and then the other leaped into the air again, and they were gone, leaving Neteyam lying there in the full light of the rising sun.

A pair of bare blue feet appeared in his field of vision, walking towards him. Their owner knelt down, and a hand touched Neteyam's back.

“Are you alive?” a voice asked in awkward English. “Can you hear?”

Neteyam's eyes didn't want to focus, but he forced them to take in the speaker's face. It was familiar, but he couldn't put a name to her at first, other than a feeling it started with a p sound. She must have been one of the sentries. Maybe she'd heard him after all.

The woman put a hand to her neck – she was wearing a comm choker. “This is Pa'ay,” he heard her say in Na'Vi. Of course, he knew Pa'ay! She was Va'ru's mate, and one of the best far-seers among the Omatikaya. She hadn't heard Neteyam, she'd noticed Pawk taking an interest in something unseen, and had gone to investigate. “I've found a human child in the mountains,” she said. “It is alone and injured.”

Neteyam could not hear whatever reply was made, but Pa'ay promised that she was on her way. She knelt down and picked Neteyam up, slinging him over her shoulder like a hexapede carcass. Then she whistled, and her own banshee returned to let her climb onto its back.

“I will take you to your own kind,” she told Neteyam.

Terror sliced through him. Did that mean back to Hell's Gate, or somewhere else where he'd be a prisoner again? He couldn't allow that. “High Camp,” he rasped out. “I need to go to High Camp!”

He felt a twitch run through her as she was startled he knew the place – or perhaps just that he spoke the language. “Srane,” she said. “I'll take you to High Camp.”

The banshee launched into the air, and Neteyam closed his eyes. He was safe now... he'd just have to explain to the humans at High Camp who he was and what he was doing here. That was a terrifying thought, but he knew that they, at least, weren't going to hurt him.

Chapter 9: High Camp

Chapter Text

It took only a few minutes for the banshee to reach High Camp, but that was enough time for a small crowd to gather outside the habitat modules where the humans lived, waiting for her. She brought her mount in for a landing, and a dozen pairs of hands reached out to receive Neteyam as the lookout let him down from the banshee's back.

"He's got no shoes on!" somebody exclaimed, as several sets of arms put him on his feet, then grabbed at him all over again to keep him from toppling. He could see a half-dozen faces behind breathing masks, but couldn't focus enough to recognize any of them. After what he'd been through over the past two days, his new and untrained body had no energy left even to see or stand up.

"What happened to him?" another voice asked, then switched to Na'vi. "How did he get up here?"

"A wild banshee attacked him," Pa'ay replied. "I'm surprised he was still alive when I got there."

"Not wild," said Neteyam. Between exhaustion and the pain in his ribs and back, his voice came out barely above a whisper. "Did you hurt her?

Nobody seemed to hear him, however. The humans continued to trade observations about his condition as they helped him up the metal steps and into the airlock, which hissed as it filled with the simulated Earth atmosphere. Once that was done, somebody pulled Neteyam's face mask off, and he could finally take deep breaths that didn't taste of sulphur.

The inner door opened, and the first voice that spoke was a child's. "What's going on?"

"Go back to bed, Viraj," replied a woman. That was Max Patel's wife, Reet. She was one of the medics.

The humans helped Neteyam into another room and lay him down on a medical bed, where he opened his eyes to find several faces gazing down at him. It reminded him violently of the moment he'd awakened at Site Nine surrounded by scientists, and in a moment of irrational terror he tried to get up and run, but several people forced him back down. Holograms lit up around him as they took a look at his injuries.

"I'm seeing cracked ribs and some kind of chemical burn," someone said.

Neteyam suddenly realized that one of the faces looking down at him was familiar. Without even really registering who it actually belonged to, Neteyam grabbed the man's arm. "I need..." he began.

From the other side of the bed, Reet pushed him back down again. "You need to lie down," she said firmly. "Prisha! Come and get your brother!"

Neteyam didn't let go of the arm he was holding. At Site Nine he'd begun to get used to being around humans that were the same height as him, but those had been strangers. The fact that he knew these ones made them seem like giants all over again. "Doctor Spellman!" he insisted.

Norm jumped, his skin twitching under Neteyam's fingers. "Yes" he asked.

"I need..." Neteyam repeated, trying to sit up again.

"No, no, lie down," said Norm firmly. He put his hands on Neteyam's shoulders and forced him, though gently, back onto the bed. "You need to tell us something. I understand that, but right now the most important thing is your injuries. You've got a broken wrist, three cracked ribs, first-degree burns..." h glanced at the nearest holoscreen. "And those bites on your hand are infected. Once we've taken care of that, you can talk to us, okay?"

"Can I help at all?" came the sleepy voice of Prisha Patel.

"You can take Viraj out of here," Reet replied.

"I'm going," Viraj complained.

"And wake up Suzette," Reet added. "And find out what's keeping your father."

"You heard Mom," Prisha said to her brother. "Come on."

"Did you see him? It's a booooooy," Viraj said to her, as she dragged him out of the room.

Norm's face appeared in Neteyam's field of view again. "Listen to me," he said. "We don't have an osteofabricator up here. We're going to have to drain the fluid from your wrist and set the bones surgically. In order to do that, we'll have to knock you out. Do we have your permission to do that?"

"Yes," said Neteyam.

"There are more chemical burns on his other hand," another man observed.

Reet Patel put a soft plastic mask over Neteyam's nose and mouth, similar to the ones the People used in the humans' air. He expected to smell something odd, but there was nothing.

"Breathe in and out," Reet ordered.

Neteyam obeyed. Almost immediately, the pain he'd been ignoring all day eased, and it was almost a shock. It was as if, without it, he wasn't even aware of his body anymore. He felt like he was floating...

The next thing Neteyam was aware of was lying on his back on a soft but uneven surface, with a blanket over him. He opened his eyes and at first saw only a blur, but after a moment it wavered into focus. He was looking at a low, flat ceiling. There were pictures fixed to it - photographs of humans, of Na'vi, and of avatars. The people and places were familiar. There was Dr. Spellman's avatar, with Prisha and Viraj Patel, both younger than they were now, sitting on his shoulders. There was Max Patel crouched between Dad and Grandmother at a ceremony. There was the old Omatikaya village on a festival night, with fires lit and dancers in costumes. Others featured people he didn't recognize, and there were places where scraps of adhesive showed other images had been taken down.

Neteyam lay there looking at these for what felt like a long time, although it was probably only seconds. He was brought sharply back to reality by the realization that he was about to throw up.

He rolled to lean over the side of the bed and retched. Somebody nearby cried out in surprise, and then a pair of hands gave him a plastic bucket to be sick into. The same hands, presumably, held his braids out of the way while he vomited a thin, sour fluid. The sound of it falling into the bucket was horrible.

When he'd finished, the hands offered him a tumbler of water. Neteyam took it and rinsed his mouth out, ignoring the metallic taste of the container as best he could, and spit into the bucket again. The hands patted him gingerly on the back.

"Mom said you might be sick," said a voice. "Morphine does that to some people."

Neteyam raised his head. He wasn't sure who he'd expected to see, but it turned out to be Prisha Patel.

He knew Prisha, and he knew she was small even for a human - but now he was sitting on a bed across from her, almost exactly on her eye level, and she seemed enormous. It made him wonder if she had, in fact, grown since he'd seen her last. She was around his own age, so it was possible. Other than that, however, she was reassuringly familiar. As before, she was mostly a cloud of curly hair around a pair of round glasses, set atop a body that was short and round, about as unlike a Na'vi as a human could possibly look.

She smiled at him, then quickly looked away and pressed a button on the wall.

"Mom?" she said. "He's awake. He threw up."

Okay, I'm coming, Reet's voice replied, the connection crackling. Give him some water.

"I did," Prisha promised. She let the button go and smiled shyly at Neteyam again. "Hi," she said.

"Hi," he replied.

"My name is Prisha Patel," she said. "Welcome to Kxayl Tì'awm... that's what the Omatikaya call this place. High Camp. I help maintain the life support systems and the link beds in the human habitats. Well, I say help," she added with a nervous giggle, "but since Dr. Przhevalsky died, I pretty much do it all by myself."

Neteyam nodded - he didn't remember if he'd met Dr. Przhevalsky. Maybe that was another gap in his memory, or maybe that particular human just hadn't made much of an impression on him. He took another swig of water, swallowing it this time, and then handed the empty tumbler back to Prisha.

She put it on the table next to her, and kept talking. "You know you've been asleep for thirty-six hours?" she asked. "They gave you fluids and some nutrient solution through an IV, but Mom and Dad figured you'd be hungry when you woke up. I can reconstitute something for you. Do you like macaroni and cheese?"

That was the name of the yellow stuff they'd tried to offer him at Site Nine, wasn't it? "No," said Neteyam.

"Oh," said Prisha. The answer had obviously surprised her, but she rallied. "Well, we've got lots of other stuff..."

She kept talking, which Neteyam registered as odd - he'd never thought of Prisha as chattery. Then again, he'd never spent a lot of time with her. Maybe she was and he'd just never noticed. He tried to listen to her while he took stock of his body.

His ribs still hurt, but not nearly as bad as they had. The same with his wrist. The latter was bound up in many layers of bandages with a hard coating on top to keep him from bending it. This wouldn't let him close his hand, but he could curl and uncurl his fingers with only minimal pain, and his elbow could rotate, though not as far as when it was not so encumbered.

He was wearing clean clothes. These were a pair of loose flannel trousers with a stripe pattern, and a dark blue henley shirt with the right sleeve rolled up above his cast. Both items were a bit too big for him. When he raised the hem of the shirt, he found his chest badly bruised. The skin had turned a dozen shades of purple, green, and yellow, and if Neteyam hadn't spent enough time with Spider to know that was how humans bruised, he might have worried something was seriously wrong to produce those colours. There were bandages on his lower ribs where the medicinal plant had blistered the skin, and more on his left hand where the eel had bitten him. His nonexistent tail hurt, but that was almost normal by now.

"You've been through a lot, huh?" Prisha asked, leaning forward a little for a better look. "Pa'ay said you got stepped on by a banshee. Did you really climb the floating mountains all by yourself?"

Neteyam raised his head and found her gazing at him with big, bright eyes magnified by her glasses. She must have considered this an amazing feat. For a human, it probably was, and doubly so for somebody who'd been trapped indoors her entire life. He vaguely remembered Prisha saying she wished she had an avatar. Did she dream of climbing the stones and vines?

"Did you?" she repeated.

"Yes," said Neteyam. "It took all night." He let his shirt fall again, and reached down the back of it to feel at his injured shoulder. There were sutures in it now. Had he cut himself worse than he thought sliding down rocks in the caves, or had that been done by Pawk's talons?

"Wow," Prisha breathed. "Even the avatars think it's too dangerous to be out at night. Weren't you scared?"

He wanted to scoff that of course he hadn't. The forest was his home. But... that would be a lie, wouldn't it? There'd been times when seeing these familiar places from this new, lower, weaker, unwelcome vantage point had been terrifying. "Yes," he said, "but I knew if I gave up, I would die."

Prisha nodded, eyes wide with admiration.

It was a foolish thing to be thinking about at that moment, but Neteyam actually felt a little better knowing that somebody thought he was impressive. Maybe it was quite an accomplishment that he'd made it here alive, but his catalogue of injuries didn't exactly leave him feeling like a mighty warrior.

Prisha's cheeks went pink, and she lowered her gaze and cleared her throat. "Anyway," she said. "Maybe when you're feeling better, I can show you around! It's a lot less space than we had down in the jungle, but we make do. We're not really used to having visitors, but we've been talking about how to make room for you, and my brother and I... oh." She fell silent and sat up straight as the door opened, as if she were expecting an enemy.

It was, however, only her mother, Reet. Dr. Manpreet Singh liked to wear colourful blouses, sometimes with glittering beads sewn on them. Today's was brilliant green, with flowers embroidered around the neckline. Prisha and Viraj had inherited their curls from their father. Reet's hair was straight, with streaks of silver in it, and she had it gathered up in a loose bun at the back of her neck. She shooed Prisha out of the way with one hand, while the other held up a holopad to re-scan Neteyam's injuries.

"Good afternoon, young man," she greeted him. "I don't know if I like you sitting up just yet, but you've clearly survived everything so far so I guess it won't kill you." She leaned in to scan his abdomen. "Ribs are looking better. Our medtech is a little primitive up here, so you're going to have to go easy on that wrist for a couple of weeks while the bones knit on their own. You're hydrated again, which is good, but I'm afraid there's nothing to be done for the sunburn but anti-inflammatories and patience. Don't worry, we're gonna take good care of you until your uncle gets here. Max and Norm have gone to find him."

Neteyam sat up straight, or at least, he tried to - the action made a sharp pain flash through his bruises, and he quickly slouched again. His uncle? What was she talking about? Had somebody at Site Nine realized he'd gone here, and was now trying to trick the humans into returning him with a story about a lost relative?

"My uncle?" he asked.

"They ran your DNA while you were out," Prisha said.

"We're sorry for the invasion of privacy," Reet told him, "but we needed to know who you were and whether you have any allergies or conditions that might affect your treatment. It came back with a three sigma probability that you were Jake Sully's son, which was a little confusing because he wouldn't be able to have human kids your age. Then, of course, Norm remembered he had a twin brother. That's what you wanted to tell us when you arrived, isn't it?"

Neteyam was dumbfounded. He looked at Prisha and saw her nod, and for a moment he didn't know what to do. He had expected that the humans wouldn't recognize him and he would have to explain who he was and what he needed from them, though he hadn't put together a plan for how he would do that. It had never occurred to him that they might come to their own conclusions before he could even try.

For a split second he considered just agreeing with them. Then he wouldn't have to tell them who he really was, or deal with how they would treat him afterwards. People here would be as happy to help Jake Sully's nephew as they would his son, and they wouldn't try to test his memory the way he'd been worried about. When his parents arrived, Neteyam could get an idea how they felt about having a human in the family before he had to break the bad news. They wouldn't be judging everything he tried to do now against what he used to be able to do - and if they didn't want him, the rejection wouldn't be so personal.

But that moment of madness passed, and Neteyam quickly realized it was a ridiculous idea. Grandmother always said that telling the truth meant never having to remember what you'd lied about, and such a charade would require so many lies that he'd never keep them all straight. As for his family, they would see right through it as soon as they spoke to him.

"Are you okay?" asked Prisha.

"No." Neteyam swallowed. If he were going to tell the truth, then the best thing would be to just do it. "That's not right. Jake Sully is not my uncle."

The two women frowned. They'd been sure they were correct. Neteyam had only a vague idea what DNA was, but he knew humans considered it infallible.

"Who are you, then?" asked Reet.

"He's my father. I am Neteyam."

Prisha's eyes widened until the white was visible all around the brown. She turned bright red and sucked in her breath with an ugly squeaking sound. Reet glanced at her daughter, then turned back to Neteyam and scrutinized his face. What was she looking for? A sign that he was lying? Or was she just trying to match his new features to her memory of his face?

"The Sky People brought me back in this body," he explained. "They wanted to ask me where my family might go, and to help them find their way around the jungle. I don't remember anything after the evening my sisters and brother were taken hostage, although I've been told we went east." Neteyam swallowed. "I also know that I'm supposed to be dead."

There was a long silence.

"I see," said Reet.

"If you want me to prove it, I can probably answer questions," Neteyam offered, "but I've got gaps in my memory. Dr. Nguyen said their brain scan wasn't complete because it had to be done at a distance." He did know of one thing he was pretty sure had happened, though. "Prisha, I remember the day I brought the younger kids to visit. You'd been working on one of the link beds and you were trying to figure out who was using it. You thought I was one of the avatars, and you pulled my tail."

Prisha, astonishingly, managed to turn even redder. She bounced one knee for a few moments, then mumbled something and got up to leave the room. The door shut rather hard behind her.

Neteyam lowered his head. That wasn't a good sign, if even the humans thought he was some kind of monster.

"Oh, dear," sighed Reet. She stood up. "I'd better call Max and Norm... no, I can't do that. The RDA might intercept it and then they'll know you're here... but we can't bring your father here expecting a long-lost nephew and then finding you!" She pushed her fingers through her hair. "Oh, this is going to be such a mess! Not that I'm blaming you," she added belatedly, holding up a hand. "This is absolutely not your fault of all people's, but... ugh!"

"When will they be here?" Neteyam asked.

"We're not sure," said Reet. "We have to keep radio silence because we know the RDA are listening. They left yesterday night, and we're not expecting them back until tomorrow morning at the earliest. It'll depend on how quickly they manage to find him. You said you know they went out east. Do you know what happened after that?"

"No," said Neteyam. "I know there was a battle, but the Sky People talked about it like it wasn't important."

"To them it probably wasn't," said Reet. She sat down again. "You need to eat and sleep. I'm gonna get you a nutrient shake and we'll see if you can keep that down. Then I want to take a blood sample and do some antibody tests, to see if they gave you your vaccinations. I can't imagine why they wouldn't, but I'd like to make sure. Do I have your permission for that?"

"Yes," Neteyam decided. "I don't need to sleep, though. Prisha said I've already been sleeping all day."

"We want to see if you can do it again. Sit tight. I'll be right back."

Reet left the room, and Neteyam pulled his legs up to sit cross-legged on the bed and looked around. This was one of the habitat modules the humans lived in, obviously. It had once been a base for avatars working in remote places, like Dad, Dr. Spellman, and Dr. Augustine had used. This one was long and narrow, with four sleeping bunks - Neteyam was on the lower of one of these - along a wall but no link beds, so the people who lived here didn't use avatars.

Of course, he realized. This space belonged to the Patel family. He should have known that from the photos on the bottom of the upper bunk - Max, Reet, and their children were in almost all of them. The table across from him had a computer and various half-disassembled technology on it, as well as stacks of programming books and technical manuals. On top of one of the piles was the obsidian knife he'd taken from the Omatikaya village. Next to the computer display was a soft toy animal, something like a small striped Thanator, which had belonged to Prisha when she was small.

This must be Prisha's bed. She'd mentioned they'd had trouble making room. She must have offered the use of it. She'd been very kind when she thought he was a stranger, offering him food and a tour... only to suddenly flee when she found out who he was. Neteyam didn't know Prisha very well, but that rejection still hurt.

Reet returned with another metal cup, this one with a straw in it. "Here we go," she said, handing it to Neteyam. "This one's berry-flavoured. Most of us here prefer the chocolate but theobromine is slightly toxic to Na'vi, so I figured you'd like this better. I also put some more painkillers in it. They're likely to make you sleepy."

"Thank you," said Neteyam, and took a cautious sip. It didn't taste bad. The sharp, sweet flavour was reminiscent of berries, but not identifiable as any specific type. The texture, however, was very odd, thick and with a bit of grit in it. Neteyam wasn't sure he liked it, but now that his stomach had settled a little it felt achingly empty. He kept drinking.

Reet sat down again. "Give me a finger," she said, holding out a hand.

Neteyam gave her his bandaged right hand, and she pressed a small device against the end of his middle finger. There was a sharp prick, then a beep, and she withdrew it.

"So," she said, connecting the small device to the side of a holopad, "you know that your family moved out east to get away from Quartich... I guess you know he's back, too. You'll have heard your parents talk about him."

"I've met him," said Neteyam. "Why would Dad leave the People?" This question had been weighing on him.

"It wasn't so much that he left the Omatikaya as that he felt like he needed to keep you kids safe," Reet explained. "He felt like he couldn't protect both his family and his clan, so he chose family."

"What did Mother say?" Neteyam asked. He felt like there was no way she would have stood for that. Neteyam himself had surely argued against it. They were warriors! They were supposed to protect their family and their clan.

"I don't know," Reet said, "but she must have agreed to it eventually. They headed out to the eastern edge of the continent and joined a clan there. The RDA kept looking for him, of course... did they tell you what happened to Miles? To Spider?"

Neteyam felt his stomach twist. Nobody had mentioned that yet. "No..."

The story went on, and it got worse. The recoms were able to use banshees and direhorses because Spider had taught them how. That had allowed them to expand their search area looking for the Sully family. He'd also taught them the language, allowing them to question people, and what the People considered valuable, allowing them to threaten. What had he been thinking? Had Mother been right about Spider the whole time?

"They finally tracked you all down after Kiri fell ill," Reet said. "She had a seizure after a very intense communion with Eywa, and your father asked Norm and Max to come take a look at her. She's fine," she added, seeing Neteyam's worry, "she's just got to be careful with tsaheylu. But the RDA intercepted the signal, that's why I can't call Max and Norm now, and why they couldn't call ahead to let your family know they were coming. Quaritch drew your family out by threatening the locals. From what I understand, when things came to a fight you saved your siblings' lives, but you didn't make it."

"Neither did Bohan," Neteyam said.

"Who?"

"Emily Bohan. She's one of the new recoms. She told me we both died in the same battle."

"That recent?" This was news to Reet. "How many more have they made?"

"I don't know," said Neteyam. "Dozens. She talked about seeing lots and lots of them in tubes. Where is my family now?"

"We're not entirely sure," Reet admitted. "They may have moved on again... we didn't think it was a good idea to know about it in detail, in case any of us are ever captured and interrogated."

Neteyam nodded and finished the last of his nutrient shake. There was more of it than his stomach had really been prepared for, and he felt a bit uncomfortable, although not actually nauseous. He set the tumbler on the beside table and sat up straighter, waiting to see if Reet had more questions.

Evidently she did, but not urgently. "You're going to have to tell us more about what they're doing with the recoms," she said, "but not yet - when you're feeling better. We'll get things all sorted out with your family first." Her holopad made a musical noise, and she lifted it to see what it had to say. "Oh, good news... MMR, polio, hepatitis, full-spectrum influenza... looks like you're fully immunized."

Neteyam hadn't thought about the possibility of catching human diseases. It was good to know he wouldn't have to worry about it.

"Do you have any more questions for us?" Reet put the holopad down again.

He had lots, but many of them would have to wait for Dad to arrive. If the humans at High Camp were trying not to know too much, Reet wouldn't be able to answer them. The first thing Neteyam thought of that she would know was, "whose clothes are these?"

"The pajamas? They're Dr. Spellman's," said Reet. "We had to cut yours off you. We saved your jewelry... it's around here somewhere." She looked at the objects on Prisha's desk, then shrugged. "I'll look for it."

"It's not important," Neteyam assured her. The beads hadn't meant anything, he'd just wanted to be wearing something decorative. "Where's Spider now?"

"With the rest of your family."

That was a bit of a surprise. Maybe Spider hadn't actually meant to betray them. Another thing to ask Dad about. "Are the rest of them all right? The Sky People at Site Nine said I was the only one they brought back because the others were all still alive, but I don't trust them." And just because they were alive didn't mean they were okay.

"As far as I know, they're all fine. You can ask your father when he arrives."

Neteyam nodded, and then one more question blurted itself out before he could stop it. "What are they going to think about this?" He gestured with his left hand to indicate his new body.

Reet didn't answer right away, and Neteyam was immediately sorry he'd asked. She wouldn't know the answer. There were people here who'd been closer to the family and might be better able to guess, but they wouldn't really know, either, would they? The only people who knew what the Sully family was going to say were the Sully family themselves.

"I don't know," Reet said finally. "What I do know is they're your family, and I think they'll be happy you're okay. They'll be proud that you made it this far."

Would they, though, when they knew he'd once been able to do so much better? What if Mother would rather he have died than have to live like this? Neteyam wanted to believe what Reet said, but he knew he'd just have to wait and see.

"I think that's enough for now. You've got a lot of healing to do," said Reet. She picked up the cup the nutrient shake had been in, and put a hand on Neteyam's shoulder to make him lie down.

"I'm feeling much better," he protested through an involuntary yawn.

"Good. If you lie down again, you'll feel better still." Reet pushed him down and pulled the blankets up over him. Her manner, gentle and reasonable but insistent, reminded him unpleasantly of Nguyen at Site Nine. That was probably something all human medics learned, he realized - how to talk to patients so they would obey instructions even when they didn't want to. And that, in turn, reminded him of something.

"Do you have any medicine for my tail?" he asked.

Reet stopped short. "Your tail? I... I'm not sure how to tell you this, but..."

"I know," Neteyam said. "It still hurts. Dr. Nguyen at Site Nine had some medicine for me. She said it was phantom pain."

"Oh!" said Reet. "It was probably a benzodiazipine... I'll see what's in the synthesizer menu. Anything else?"

"Thank Prisha for letting me use her bed."

"I will. You'll have to forgive her," Reet added with a sigh. "Her whole life the only boy her age on the whole planet has been Spider. She was excited to meet a stranger."

She had - only to be horrified when that stranger turned out to be a familiar person in a new form. Would Dr. Spellman do the same when he learned who he'd loaned his pajamas to?

"If you need anything else, you can call somebody," Reet said. "For now, just rest, and we'll sort this out as best we can."

"Will you wake me when Dad arrives?"

"Of course."

He closed his eyes as she shut the door. A warrior really ought to be able to press on despite injuries... but Neteyam was tired and sore and the medicine was starting to make him drowsy again. After two days of constant hardship and danger, this place was safe and quiet - and it was kind of nice to have a bed again. It wasn't a hammock with the familiar sounds and smells of the forest and his family around him, but it was more comfortable than sleeping sitting up against a sapling, and more welcoming than the one he'd been given at Site Nine. His bed there had been a bit bigger and less lumpy, but it had been part of a prison cell. Here he was a guest in somebody's home, even if the bed's owner was having some second thoughts about letting him sleep here.

Neteyam woke up again with the lights out and the shutters over the window closed. When he sat up and figured out how to open them, he found it was light out, and he could see people moving around. An avatar was speaking to one of the People, and there were children playing with a black-spotted ball the humans had given him.

He stood, unsteady on his feet, and stretched his neck, turning his head from side to side. Things still hurt, but he felt clearer-headed and he could smell something cooking in oil. Yesterday he'd felt unpleasantly full after nothing but that nutrient shake. Today, he was starving. Neteyam rolled his shoulders, wincing as the injured one twinged, and then shuffled towards the door. The bottoms of his feet were still all blistered and cut from climbing over sharp rocks, and he couldn't go quickly.

As he reached for the door handle, somebody knocked on the other side.

"Neteyam!" The voice belonged to Viraj Patel. "Mom wants to know if you want breakfast!"

"Yes, thank you," Neteyam replied.

The door opened, and Viraj, ten years old but another giant compared to how Neteyam remembered him, grinned up at him through curls in need of a trim. "Come on," he said. "This way."

Chapter 10: Weighed, Measured, and Found Wanting

Chapter Text

Viraj led the way through the maze of joined-up trailers, some connected end-to-end the way they were designed, others with flexible tubes where things needed to turn corners or climb slopes in order to fit in the caverns of High Camp. This twisting path led them to a bigger room that was set up as a cafeteria, although not nearly on the scale of the one at Site Nine. There were long tables for people to sit at, and dishes of food placed in the middle so the diners could help themselves. Viraj joined his mother and sister at one of these, and somebody else moved over to make room for Neteyam.

“Good morning,” said Reet, handing him a plate. “You look much more alert today. Don't force yourself to eat too much,” she added. “If you'd rather just have another shake, you can.”

“No, thanks,” said Neteyam. He hadn't liked the texture of the nutrient shake. Real food sounded much more appealing.

“You like pancakes?” asked the woman on his right. She was muscular in build, with very dark skin and thick hair that she wore in many small braids, much like Neteyam's own, only she liked to tie them up into complicated topknots or buns. He tried to remember her name... he'd used to know all the avatar drivers.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “Dr. Oladele?”

Margo Oladele nodded and put a couple of pancakes on a plate for him, and as he reached to take it, Neteyam realized that the room was eerily quiet. The cafeteria at Site Nine had been full of the sounds of clinking cutlery and conversation. Here, nobody seemed to be talking or eating. Neteyam looked around, and saw people quickly look back at their plates or at their dining companions, as if they hadn't been staring.

Of course, just as he'd used to know all the avatars, they'd all known him. They all knew that he represented something unnatural and out of place. At least at Site Nine there'd been so many humans that he'd been relatively anonymous.

Prisha was next to her mother on the other side of the table. She was not staring at Neteyam. Instead, she was looking at her plate, not taking her eyes off it even when she reached for a piece of fruit out of a bowl to her right.

“Peanut butter?” Margo asked, offering Neteyam a jar of thick brown nut paste.

“Thanks.” He took some and imitated her in spreading it on his pancakes. Nobody had offered it to him at Site Nine, but he liked nuts, and this turned out to have a rich, salty flavour that went well with the sweet pancakes.

“Pa'ay came and asked about you last night,” Margo added conversationally – a little too casual, as she tried to fill the silence left by others who suddenly had nothing to talk about. “I had to tell her you weren't awake yet. She's very impressed that you made it up here all by yourself.”

“Did you tell her who I am?” Neteyam asked.

“I haven't spoken to her since then, so no,” said Margo. “Do you want me to tell her, or would you rather do that yourself?”

“I'll do it,” he decided. He did need to thank Pa'ay, and it would be good practice for telling his family later. Her reaction would tell him a lot, and the more times he told people, the easier it would probably get. “Has anyone heard from my father?”

“No. We won't know he's coming until he gets here,” said Reet.

Prisha still had her head down, but as Neteyam looked at her again, her eyes flickered up and for a moment her gaze met his. Her cheeks turned fiercely pink again, and she quickly hunched her shoulders and focused on cutting up her piece of fruit. Neteyam recognized the type: it was a Pandoran stonefruit the humans had also eaten back at Site Nine. As much because he was curious what she'd do as because he wanted to eat, he pointed to the bowl.

“May I have a tskxmauti?” he asked.

Prisha closed her eyes and pushed the bowl towards him.

“Thank you,” he said. So she was still frightened or disgusted by him. Would that ever change? He hadn't known Prisha very well, but he had liked her, and her reactions hurt.

Viraj, however, seemed amused. “When's the wedding?” he asked Neteyam.

Neteyam stopped short in the act of biting into the fruit, and stared at him. “What?”

Prisha's shoulders hunched even further, and her head hung lower. “Shut up, Viraj,” she said.

“Viraj,” Reed added, in a warning voice.

Viraj was not discouraged. “Are you gonna have a ceremony?” he asked. “Or are you just gonna bone under a tree like the Omatikaya do?”

Prisha got to her feet and banged both hand son the table. “Shut up, Viraj!” she repeated. “I will seriously murder you!” She snatched up her plate, and ran out of the room.

The silence, which had only just begun to melt back into quiet conversation, fell once again. People looked awkwardly at each other, nobody sure what to say or do. Then Reet sighed heavily.

“Viraj,” she said. “If you can't be civil to your sister, you can at least stop making our guest uncomfortable. Next time you'll be eating in your room. Understand?”

Viraj shrugged one shoulder and smiled at Neteyam.

Neteyam was not amused. What in the world had given Viraj the idea that he and Prisha were going to mate? Especially when she kept running away from him. “Among my people,” he said, “we're taught to be respectful of our siblings.” Not that it was a lesson always taken to heart, he thought as he bit into his piece of fruit. Lo'ak and Kiri had fought constantly as children, and Neteyam himself never lost an opportunity to tease his little brother.

The statement did seem to make Viraj feel at least a little bad about it, though. He looked down at his plate.

“You need to apologize to her,” Neteyam added.

“Sure. Later,” Viraj decided. “Hey, you wanna learn how to play Revenant Rumble? It's a video game.”

Neteyam hadn't played a video game since he was younger than Viraj. Spider had used to like them, but had lost interest once he was eight or nine, preferring to be out in the forest. Tuk enjoyed the little matching or sorting games the humans played on their holopads, but she was only a child. “I'm too old for that,” he said, and turned back to Reet across the table. “What I'd like to do is talk to Pa'ay. I want to ask her what happened to Pawk. The banshee.”

“She won't have hurt it,” said Margo. “Not unless she thought she absolutely had to. I'll go find her after breakfast.”

“Thank you,” said Neteyam, taking another bite of fruit. The skin was thicker than he remembered, but the taste and texture of the flesh were comfortingly familiar.

When the meal was over, everybody scraped their leftover food into the organics recycling system, and put their dishes into the washing machines. Nobody had ever done this at Site Nine. They'd just left their used things in the designated places, and Neteyam realized there must be other people there who were responsible for the cleanup. He hadn't thought of that before, and now that he did, he wished he'd been a bit tidier with his leftovers.

Margo said she would meet him outside the airlock. Neteyam put on a new breathing mask, and found that the skin on his forehead was very tender after he'd worn the previous one for two days straight as he made his way back here. He had to move it around a bit to find a place that wasn't painful to wear, and even then it wasn't exactly comfortable. He took a few breaths of the artificial air, getting used to it again, and then pressed the button to open the exterior door.

He was shaking a little as the pressure seals hissed. What if Pa'ay were as repulsed as Prisha had been? What if she got up and paced, on the verge of panic, as Reet had done, or just sat there in horrified silence, like the other humans at breakfast? What if she were sorry she'd helped him?

Margo, in her avatar, was right outside, talking to Pa'ay and somebody Neteyam didn't initially recognize – a man in the regalia of the Omatikaya Olo'eyktan. Neteyam had never seen anybody wear that except for Dad, and Grandfather Eytukan in old photographs. To see it on a stranger felt like a kick in his sore ribs. The idea that Dad had abandoned the People had been only a concept until now, but here was the truth of it, staring down at him from far too high up.

It was only a few moments later that Neteyam looked at the face in the middle of the feathers and realized he did recognize it. That was Pa'ay's mate, Va'ru. He was young, but a wise warrior with a voice people listened to. Objectively, Neteyam knew he was a good choice, but seeing him there still hurt. Had he taken a new name like Grandfather had, or kept his own like Dad?

Neteyam himself would never wear that regalia now. His whole life it had always seemed obvious that, as the eldest son, he would someday inherit his father's leadership role, just as Mother would would inherit Grandmother Mo'at's position as Tsahik. Dad had never formally named him as successor, but people had talked as if it were already settled, and it had always been in the back of Neteyam's mind. It was something he would have to think about when he chose a mate, for example – he would have to find a girl who had the kind of connection with Eywa that Mother, Grandmother, or Kiri did.

None of that mattered anymore, though. When the family had left the Omatikaya, they'd relinquished those positions of authority, and it would be difficult to rise to a similar level in a new clan. But even if that hadn't happened, this version of Neteyam could never be a leader among the People. He couldn't ride into battle with the warriors of the clan. He couldn't make his voice heard above the din of battle. And he'd never even considered the idea of doing anything else with his life... so where did that leave him?

That was a lot to take in, and Neteyam would have liked to sit down and process it properly, but he didn't have the opportunity. Margo was leading Pa'ay towards him.

Pa'ay was tall and wiry, and kept her head shaved except for the hair needed to braid into her queue. She wore greaves and vambraces of multicoloured basketwork, lovingly repaired where it had been pierced in battle, and stacks of braided chokers around her neck, bright with beads. She was one of the tallest females in the clan, and had always been intimidating. Now Neteyam's new viewpoint made her seem a dozen times more so.

“Here he is,” said Margo cheerfully in Na'vi. “He specifically asked to talk to you.”

Pa'ay crouched, as it was polite to speak to humans on their own eye level, and touched her forehead. “I see you, little warrior,” she said.

Neteyam winced. He knew she meant it as a compliment. She was telling him how impressed she was that a lone human had survived climbing the mountains and being stepped on by a banshee, but when she was so much bigger than him, and didn't know who he was, it sounded like something she might say to a child. Neteyam had used to be capable of so much more.

“I see you, Pa'ay of the Omatikaya,” he replied formally. Whereas she didn't see him at all, did she? “Thank you for bringing me here. I owe you my life, and I hope to repay it someday.” This was just a formulaic phrase, but it was one Neteyam, as a warrior, would have normally felt bound by. Now he would probably never have the opportunity.

“You speak very well,” said Pa'ay.

Va'ru crouched next to her. “I am called Tarsem. Your father's brother chose me to succeed him as Olo'eyktan.”

The first thought Neteyam had about that was that Va'ru had chosen a new name, and Neteyam should remember to call him by it so as not to seem overly familiar. The second was the realization that while Margo hadn't told Tarsem and Pa'ay who Neteyam was, she also hadn't told them who he wasn't.

“I'm sorry,” Margo put in. “I was getting to that. Our DNA results weren't quite right. This young man is not Jake Sully's nephew.”

“A shame,” said Tarsem. “He would be proud to have him in his family.”

Margo grimaced. “Ah... I think I'd better let him explain.” She looked down at Neteyam.

Neteyam opened his mouth, and then closed it again without saying anything. The words seemed to get stuck in the back of his throat, and didn't want to come out. The idea of telling these two powerful leaders who he really was made him want to hide, or at least to lower his head like Prisha had at breakfast, so they couldn't look him in the eyes. It wasn't just that they looked like giants, although they did – he felt ashamed. In front of the People he was so small, so clumsy, so ugly, and had gotten beaten to a pulp doing things they did every day. He found he'd balled his fists, as if to hide that useless extra finger, and wished he'd remembered to check his chin for whiskers.

He couldn't run and hide, though – especially not from such important people as Olo'eyktan and his mate. They were still crouched there, waiting for him to explain himself. He had to say something.

“What happened to Pawk?” he blurted out.

The question startled everybody. “To Pawk?” asked Pa'ay. Perhaps she thought he was talking about the musical instrument.

Neteyam knew he should have waited to ask that, but now that he'd asked the question he might as well get an answer to it. “The banshee. Her name is Pawk. Did you hurt her?”

“I did not,” said Pa'ay. “Hoetsyal, my partner, chased her away. I didn't realize she was one with a name. Pawk was...” she looked at Tarsem.

“Pawk was Neteyam's partner,” Tarsem said, inclining his head in a brief nod. “Have you met Neteyam?” he asked the boy in front of him.

There was only one answer to be made to that, no matter how tempting it might be to lie. “I am Neteyam. The... the Sky People brought me back in this body.”

His prediction at breakfast had been incorrect. It was not any easier to say the second time.

Pa'ay covered her mouth with a hand and almost stood, then dropped to one knee to pretend she'd been merely rearranging her weight, rather than trying to back away in shock. Tarsem, too, straightened his back as if to avoid a threatening snake. Then he put one palm on the ground, and leaned closer to scrutinize Neteyam's face as Reet Singh had done, looking for something familiar. Neteyam wanted to shrink away. He imagined he could feel his cheeks and chin prickling as the horrible whiskers grew, but he forced himself to keep his head up and tried to stand tall... but standing tall was impossible in this body, and he felt very, very tiny.

“Why would they do such a thing?” asked Tarsem.

“They wanted my help. I didn't help them,” Neteyam added quickly. “I escaped as soon as I could, and came directly here.” They didn't need to know about his foolish detour... another thing his old self would never have done.

“He's brought some valuable information with him,” Margo put in. “He's told us they're making more resurrected warriors, some from as recently as a few months ago.”

“Then that is something we will have to prepare for,” Tarsem said.

“What about... this?” Pa'ay gestured to Neteyam, but she was looking at Margo. “Have they do this to others? Should we fear that any who die at the hands of the Sky People might come back in this form, rather than being allowed to return to Eywa?”

“I don't know,” Margo admitted, nervously lacing and unlacing her fingers. “Based on what Reet told me, it sounds like this was an experiment of sorts. Right, Neteyam?” she looked down at him.

“They said I was the first,” Neteyam agreed. That was what Nguyen had told him, something about the first time we've tried imprinting a non-human scan on a human brain. “They didn't say there wouldn't be more.”

“We will need to know more about this,” said Tarsem. He rearranged his feet to sit more comfortable as he spoke to Neteyam face-to-face. “What else can you tell us?”

Neteyam knew precious little, but he told them what he could – that when the Sky People's warriors died in combat, they were being brought back as recoms, and that this seemed to be something they could do more than once, as Bohan had complained they would make another one of her if she died. He explained that everything to do with this project had been moved to Site Nine so that the bulk of the human population at Bridgehead wouldn't have to be around the recoms, who made them uncomfortable. And he described the things they'd asked of him, the sideways questions about his family that Nguyen kept trying to sneak into their conversations, the tests of his physical and mental capacities, and how Bush had wanted him to help map the caves.

“And you said they were able to capture your soul from a distance?” Pa'ay said.

“Yes,” Neteyam replied. “That's... Nguyen said that's why there are gaps in my memory. I think they can get some from the dead, too, because they had to take O'Donnell's body back to Site Nine in order to get the last of his memories out before they recreated him.”

“We must take extra care to recover the dead, then,” said Tarsem grimly.

“I will go to the camp in the Kilvanoro Caverns,” Pa'ay decided, “and check on the warriors there. Eywa willing, the Sky People have not found them.” She glanced at Neteyam again, and couldn't hide the look of horror at the idea that the people guarding the stolen explosive might have been brought back like he had.

“They will have enough sense to retreat if the invaders get too close,” said Tarsem.

“We saw no trace of them there,” Neteyam said, shifting his weight uncomfortably. His abused feet were getting tired and sore, but he couldn't just sit down in the middle of a conversation without permission, and he wasn't about to ask for it. He didn't want to seem like a child, falling asleep in the middle of an important discussion. Neither Tarsem nor Pa'ay seemed to have noticed yet, but then, he didn't have a tail to droop in exhaustion, or tall ears that would fold back when he swallowed the urge to yawn.

“No wonder he was able to climb the mountains alone,” Pa'ay remarked. “He knew the way.”

“Indeed,” Tarsem agreed, “but why would his own banshee attack him?”

“I think she was confused,” Neteyam said. “She could hear my voice, but she couldn't find me.”

“But surely he would just make tsa...” Pa'ay cut herself off in mid-sentence, horrified anew as she realized what Neteyam had been grappling with this entire time. “The poor creature!” she exclaimed, looking at him with a mixture of pity and utter revulsion. “To have to live with that!”

Neteyam bristled. No, he could not make tsaheylu, and he'd been dealing with it by not thinking about it. Hearing it spoken aloud, even interrupted, was salt in that wound. Maybe he was just tired, but it made him too angry to let it go.

“I am not deaf,” he said loudly, as he had to the humans at Site Nine. They had looked at him the same way, as if he were some thing instead of a person. “I'm right here and I can hear you.”

Pa'ay's ears drooped in shame. “I'm sorry,” she said.

“Who is right here?” another voice called out. “Who is that?”

Neteyam's heart leaped for a moment – that was Grandmother! - but then it sank again, so hard it felt as if it hit the ground like a dropped egg. He was going to have to tell her what had happened to him, or worse, Tarsem and Pa'ay would do it for him, and he hadn't even thought yet about how she might react. What if she...

A piece of hanging textile was pushed aside, and Mo'at herself stepped into the courtyard space around the science shacks. She looked from Tarsem to Pa'ay to Margo, as if expecting one of them to speak to her. None did. They knew, as did Neteyam, what she'd heard, and what she was hoping it meant. Pa'ay and Tarsem both stood up, having come to a silent agreement.

“Tsahik,” said Tarsem, stepping towards her, “we are speaking to the boy Pa'ay found in the mountains. The one the humans believed was Jake Sully's nephew.”

Mo'at put up a hand to stop him coming closer, and looked at Neteyam. “Is he not?”

“He is not,” said Pa'ay, “but he is a brave and intelligent young man all the same.” She fixed her eyes on Neteyam and the message was clear: he was absolutely not to tell Grandmother who he was.

He glanced at Tarsem and found the same warning. For a moment Neteyam wondered what would happen if he told her anyway, but he also knew exactly why he shouldn't. Grandmother had lost her parents very young, her eldest daughter had been murdered by the Sky People, and her husband had been killed the same day the clan lost Hometree. Then, after Neteyam's memories ended, the rest of her family had abandoned the Omatikaya entirely... and then she must have heard about Neteyam dying. Finding him like this might be one shock too many.

So he said, “I am not. Pa'ay flatters me.”

Mo'at was in good control of her emotions and how she showed them, but Neteyam knew his grandmother well enough to notice the signs. There was a slight slump of her shoulders under her beaded smock, and a brief twitch at the end of her tail before the entire appendage fell completely still. She was not shocked, but she was disappointed.

“Your voice is very like one of my grandsons',” she said. “It is a shame you will never meet him. He died a few months ago.” With that she touched her forehead and then turned and left.

Neyetam felt rather sick. Would she just forget the incident as unimportant? Or did she feel like she'd lost him all over again?

Tarsem came and crouched again to speak to Neteyam, placing one large hand on his shoulder. “I'm sorry,” he said, “but your grandmother's life has been full of tragedies...”

“I know,” said Neteyam. He wanted to shrug the hand off as he had General Bush's over-familiar arm, but didn't dare be so rude.

“Perhaps if we have time to prepare her,” Tarsem said.

“No,” said Pa'ay. “She is no longer young. It might kill her, and we have no successor as yet.”

“She is not frail,” said Tarsem. “If we let her know that such a thing is possible, maybe she can get used to the idea.”

Neteyam said nothing, because he had nothing to say. He wanted to run away and keep on running until he went off the edge of the mountain and fell to earth. He wanted to crawl under Prisha's bed and hide. He wanted to go someplace where there was nobody else for miles and miles, get off his aching feet, and cry like a child.

It was Margo who came to his rescue. “Excuse me,” she said, “but I think it's time Neteyam got some rest. He's come a long way, remember, and we had to patch up some pretty nasty injuries. If you've got more questions for him, you can ask them later.”

Tarsem looked like a child who'd been caught being naughty. “Oh, of course. How thoughtless of me not to realize.” He stood up, finally taking his hand off Neteyam's back. “Go and sleep.”

“Thank you, Olo'eyktan,” said Neteyam formally, not sure whether to be relieved that he could now escape, or insulted that he was being told to go take a nap as if he were four years old.

“Reet's probably going to have my hide for letting them keep you out here this long,” Margo said. “In you go.”

Neteyam climbed the steps and closed the airlock. Once the green light came on to tell him atmosphere exchange was complete, he ripped his breathing mask off – he was really, really starting to hate that thing – and sat down on the floor.

Reet and Prisha had been shaken by finding out what had happened to him, but they'd at least been honest about it. Pa'ay and Tarsem, for all they'd tried to be polite, were clearly repelled. He had to wonder, if Pa'ay had known who he was when she'd first found him, would she have let Pawk kill him, in the belief that was a kinder fate?

Would Mother look at him that way, disgusted by the entire idea of him?

The inner airlock door opened, and Reet poked her head in. “Are you all right?” she asked.

Neteyam was not, but that wasn't what she meant and he knew it, so he grabbed a handle on the wall to stand up. His body felt bulky and heavy in a way it hadn't since he'd first awakened in that room in Site Nine, and it was another slap in the face to realize that being human had started to feel almost normal until now.

“May I have some water?” he asked Reet.

“Of course,” she said, ushering him inside. “You need to stay hydrated. Is everything okay?”

Margo was just inside, back in her human body with her link bed still sitting open. “They didn't want to tell Mo'at,” she said, filling a tumbler in the sink. “They thought it would be too much of a shock.”

“Oh,” said Reet. She took the container of water from Margo and handed it to Neteyam. “I'm sorry.”

“It's fine,” Neteyam lied. “They're probably right. Grandmother has been through a lot.” He took a big sip of water, letting the cool liquid linger in his throat as if it could leech the tension out of his body. Then he reached up and brushed his chin. “I need to shave.”

“You don't look that fuzzy yet,” Reet assured him.

“No, I need to,” Neteyam said. He had to do something to make himself look less... less human. There were many humans without beards, but this was the only thing he could do right now.

Reet probably didn't understand that, but must have heard something in his voice that made her take pity. “You can borrow Max' shaver,” she decided.

Neteyam disliked shaving both because it was a human thing and because it always made him think of Bush' attempt to ingratiate himself, but rather than the soap and razor Bush had used, Max Patel used a little buzzing machine that required far less care and concentration. With the whiskers removed, Neteyam then sat in the washroom while Reet smeared green gel over his shoulders, neck, and cheeks to soothe his sunburn. Then she wiped her hands and pointed towards the door.

“Do you know the way back to our cubicle?” she asked.

“I can find it,” he replied. The connected habitat modules snaked around and turned corners, but there weren't a lot of forks in the route. The maze-like arrangement was only necessary to make the trailers fit in the uneven spaces of the caverns.

“Then you can head back there and put your feet up,” Reet told him.

“I'm not sleepy,” Neteyam protested.

“You don't have to sleep, but you do have to rest,” she said. “You can read a book or... can you read?” she asked.

“Some,” said Neteyam. Humans considered it an essential skill, and all seemed to be able to read and write as fluently as they spoke. Neteyam could read but he had to focus on it, and the longer words were sometimes a problem. This had never bothered him before, but now he found himself suddenly embarrassed by it, almost as much as he'd been by his smallness in front of the tall, graceful Pa'ay and Tarsem.

“But it's not something you'd do just to pass the time,” Reet said.

Neteyam shook his head.

“Maybe Prisha can suggest something for you to do,” she decided.

As far as Neteyam knew, Prisha didn't want anything to do with him. “Maybe I could help you with your work,” he suggested. “Or help Dr. Oladele.” Margo had just returned to the room, carrying a microscope and a stack of notebooks. Her seven-year-old daughter 'Dora was behind her, very carefully balancing trays of fossil specimens.

“I don't think you'll be much help to either of us if you can't read,” said Reet, “and we can't ask you to do any physical work while you're injured. I know you don't like it, Neteyam, but you're just going to have to sit and entertain yourself as best you can.”

Having nothing to do was always the worst part of being sick or injured, and it was going to be so much worse right now, because there were so many painful things Neteyam didn't want to think about. But without any real choice, he limped his way back to the trailer where the Patel family lived. He didn't remember how far down the row it was, but the doors turned out to have family names taped to them, and while he couldn't read enough to help Reet or Margo, he could certainly identify the name Patel. He opened the door.

The first thing he saw was Prisha, sitting on the bed and working on some complicated computer code using both a holopad and a wall terminal. She looked up at him and her eyes widened in shock.

He stared back for a moment, not sure what to say or do.

“Don't you knock?” she asked.

“I didn't expect you to be in here,” said Neteyam.

“It's my room!” Prisha told him indignantly.

“I'm sorry,” Neteyam said, and shut the door again. He turned around, thinking that he would have to go back to the mess hall and ask Reet where else he could go. Instead, he found Viraj standing right behind him.

“Hi,” the boy said. “You wanna play games now?”

Although he'd said earlier that he was too old for that, Neteyam was now tempted by the offer simply because it would be something to do. But if he were going to spend friendly time with Viraj, he needed the boy to do something first.

“Are you here to apologize to your sister?” Neteyam asked.

“If I do, will you play?”

Neteyam nodded. “Fine.”

“Yes!” Viraj pumped his arms in victory. “I never have anyone to play with anymore.”

“Maybe if you were nicer to Prisha, she'd play with you,” Neteyam suggested.

“Oh, she'll play,” Viraj said, “but she beats me every single time and it's no fun anymore.” He knocked on the door.

“What is it?” asked Prisha from inside.

“Sorry I teased you at breakfast!” Viraj called out. He did not sound sorry. He was merely saying the words.

“Did Mom tell you to apologize?” Prisha asked.

“No, Neteyam did!” said Viraj. He looked up at Neteyam and wagged his eyebrows. Neteyam had never seen anyone do this before, not even Dad. He wasn't sure what it meant, but it looked very strange.

“Go jump off the mountain!” snapped Prisha.

Viraj turned away from the door and shrugged. “I tried,” he said.

“I don't think you tried very hard,” Neteyam pointed out. He'd always found that getting Kiri and Lo'ak to apologize to each other after a fight was like pulling teeth, but he'd rather have had that than Viraj's compliance without effort.

“She's gonna stay mad no matter what. Girls are like that,” said Viraj, with the sort of confidence only a nine-year-old could muster. “Come on, I'll teach you to play.”

Chapter 11: Jake Returns

Chapter Text

Revenant Rumble turned out to be a game in which each player had to amass an army of creatures described as 'undead minions'. These came in many types, each of which had different strengths and weaknesses. Once their armies were ready, players could do battle with each other.

“On Earth we'd just connect to the internet and be able to play with anybody,” Viraj explained cheerfully, “but on Pandora it's just us. You gotta either play with somebody in the room, or with the computer, and playing the computer isn't any fun. Oh, get that lich,” he pointed.

Neteyam wasn't doing well at the game. Pressing buttons on a controller wasn't how he was used to going about things, but he probably could have done it if not for the fact that both his hands were bandaged. Viraj was getting ahead of him very quickly.

He also didn't like the premise of the game. The creatures used as warriors had names like lich , zombie , and vampire , all of which had supposedly been raised from the dead – and all required something from the living to keep them going, whether souls, brains, or blood. It would have been an unpleasant concept anyway, but at the moment it also felt very... personal.

“Is this why Prisha's afraid of me?” he asked Viraj.

“What?” Viraj frowned.

Neteyam gestured to the screen. “Does she think I'm like these creatures, raised from the dead, and I'll need to feed on people to stay alive?” It was a wonder humans dared to create things like himself or the recoms, when they told stories like this.

Viraj laughed. “No, no, no,” he said. “She knows you're not a zombie. She's just freaking out because she's had a huge crush on you forever.”

This was news to Neteyam. “She has?”

“ Oh , yeah. You didn't notice? You're the only one,” said Viraj. “There's never been any boys around here except me and Spider, you know, and he's not interested in anybody who isn't seven feet tall and blue and named Kiri.”

Neteyam had noticed that, and knew his parents had as well, but nobody had ever worried too much about it because Spider and Kiri were both very young and would presumably grow out of it. Maybe Neteyam hadn't noticed Prisha because he didn't spend as much time with her as the family did with Spider?

“Then you showed up the other day,” Viraj continued, “and Prisha was all excited because this was the first new boy she was ever gonna meet. She was asking a million questions and it was so obvious she was going to hit on you the moment you woke up... and then it was just you. I honestly thought she was gonna die, she was so red!” He laughed.

“Because I'm not really human?” Neteyam said.

“No, because now you know ,” said Viraj. “She didn't want you to ever find out she had a thing for you. She said there was no point because you two couldn't get together any more than Spider and Kiri can, and you probably had like six Omatikaya girlfriends anyway. Then she was sitting there trying to flirt with you and she didn't even know it was you!” He grinned.

Neteyam didn't know how to react to that. He understood how it was embarrassing for Prisha, but that also brought up the idea of him someday taking a human mate. Neteyam had never quite understood how that worked for them. How could they have a mate when they couldn't make tsaheylu with each other? It must happen somehow, clearly, because they had no trouble reproducing themselves, but if they couldn't get their minds in accord, what was the point ?

“Do you like her ?” Viraj insisted.

“Prisha?” Neteyam shrugged. “Not... I never thought of her that way.” When he thought back to how she'd acted when he spoke to her in the past... how she'd smiled shyly and played with her hair, and looked away every time he met her eyes. Yes, the signals had been there, but he'd completely missed them. It just hadn't occurred to him to consider Prisha Patel a potential mate... and he still didn't want to.

“You want me to tell her that?”

“No!” said Neteyam.

“Look out! Here comes the dragon lich!” Viraj exclaimed, directing Neteyam's attention back to the video game. He'd totally forgotten about it during their conversation, but it seemed like Viraj could pay attention to both. “Quick, get it! Get it!”

Neteyam tried to do so, but Viraj had a head start and fingers unencumbered by bandages. It was impossible to hit the buttons fast enough. He hissed in frustration as Viraj claimed the prize.

“Man, you suck at this,” Viraj declared, but with a smile on his face.

It was a relief when, a few minutes later, Reet came in to remind Viraj that he had chores to do. The boy grumbled, but thanked Neteyam for the game.

“Maybe I can cream you at it again later,” he suggested cheerfully.

“You only want to play with me because you know I'll lose,” Neteyam accused him. “You said you didn't want to play with Prisha because she always wins.”

“And 'Dora never wants to play because I always beat her ,” Viraj nodded, and left the room with a smile on his face.

Reet shook her head. “As long as we're both here, I might as well give you another checkup,” she told Neteyam. “Sit down.”

He sat on a stool, and she scanned him again with the holopad. Images and text scrolled by too fast for Neteyam to follow – much like the video game. It shouldn't have bothered him when he'd never played before and had two bandaged hands, but Neteyam was not used to losing. It was a good thing Kiri and Lo'ak hadn't been there to see it – they never would have stopped reminding him of it.

“Hold up one hand,” said Reet. Neteyam raised the right one, and she scanned it. “We've been discussing the situation with the new recoms,” she added. “Are they... are they bringing people back who aren't in avatar bodies?”

Neteyam appreciated having something else to think about it. “Nguyen said no,” he replied. “She said they don't want to bring anybody back from the dead like that because... I'm not sure what the difference is.” That was a lie, though. Nguyen had talked like it was a moral issue, but Neteyam was pretty sure it was just that people like the recoms, or like himself, were stuck . They couldn't decide they wanted to do something else with their second chance at life. They had to do what they were made to do.

“I'm not sure that's a relief or not,” Reet remarked. “I imagine it's not every single person KIA, either, just the ones who have particular skills or knowledge that they want to keep. Other hand, please.”

He offered the hand the eel had bitten. Reet held the holopad over it, watching images of the bones coming up, and nodded.

“Looks like we've nipped that infection in the bud, at least. I'll keep you on the antibiotics a couple more days just to be sure, and when you're done those, I'll try you on something for the phantom pain you mentioned,” Reet promised. “Your wrist is also healing nicely. It's too bad we can't just print you a new bone, but we'll make do.” She turned serious again. “I want you to keep that cast on for a couple more days at least – no cutting it off yourself, like Spider tried to do when he broke his toe. And after that, it'll still take a few weeks to get back to full function. I'll give you some exercises to do.”

“Yes, Dr. Singh,” said Neteyam obediently.

“Good. Oh, and I found your necklaces and bracelets. Here.” She dug into her pocket and pulled them out to hand to him. As she did, something made a noise, and an icon popped up in the corner of her holopad. Reet paused with her hand still held out, and frowned at the alert.

“What happened to radio silence?” she asked, and gave Neteyam his jewellery before tapping the icon. An image of Max Patel's face filled the screen.

“Reet!” said Max. “Oh, good, there you are.”

“Why are you calling?” she asked. “You know they can listen!”

“Then we'd better not tell them anything they don't already know,” Max replied. “Listen: we're being followed. We've got recoms on banshees, and they're not anybody we know. That's bad news. It means they're making new ones.”

“Yeah, the...” Reet began, then cut herself off. She glanced at Neteyam, and then changed what she was going to say. “We'll make a note.”

“We're going to lead them away from the camp and try to lose them in the jungle,” Max said.

“Got it,” Reet nodded. “We'll let Tarsem and Mo'at know, and wait for more news.”

“Great. I love you.”

“Love you too. The kids are looking forward to you getting home.” Reet puckered her lips and mimed a kiss, then shut down the connection. “You heard that,” she said to Neteyam. “We've got a problem.”

Neteyam stood up. Under normal circ*mstances he would have grabbed his bow and called Pawk, but Reet probably wouldn't have let him do that right now even if he could have. “How can I help?” he asked.

“You can stay right where you are,” she replied, turning to another screen to spread the word.

He'd had a feeling she would say that, and he intended to argue. “There's going to be a fight,” he pointed out. “Even the injured can be some use in battle. I can help treat wounded, or act as a lookout.”

“There is not going to be a fight, because they're not coming here if we can possibly help it,” Reet told him. “If they get close, Tarsem will figure out what needs doing, but right now it's not an issue. If you must do something, you can go tell Prisha to tickle the avatars. We've got three out.” And with this bizarre statement, she left the room.

Neteyam didn't want to see Prisha if she didn't want to see him, but if he did as he was told now, perhaps he'd be allowed to do something more important later. He watched through a window as the outer airlock opened and Reet, in her breathing mask, went in search of the Omatikaya leaders. Then he headed back through the maze of trailers and passages to the Patel family's living space.

This time, he knocked, so Prisha would have nothing to complain about.

“Who is it?” she called out. She sounded calm now.

“It's me,” he replied. “Neteyam. Your mother wants you to, uh, tickle the avatars.”

The door opened and Prisha looked up at him, worried. “Is something happening?”

“She got a message from your father,” Neteyam explained. “They're being followed, and your mother has gone to let the People know.” Where was Dad right now? Down in the forest somewhere... so close, and yet not close enough to help. If only Neteyam could ride a banshee, he'd already be on his way down to look for them.

“Oh, no,” said Prisha. “Have they found the camp?”

“Not yet.”

“Let me find my stuff.” She turned away and started digging through a drawer.

“You're... less upset now,” Neteyam observed.

Prisha winced. “Yeah. Sorry about that,” she said. “Freaking out at breakfast, I mean. It was just... you know, it was a shock, and then Viraj was being a jerk about it all day, and... the whole thing is just really weird.”

“Yes, it is,” Neteyam agreed.

“Aha!” Prisha found what she was looking for – a small handheld device with a cord – and closed the drawer. As she stood, Neteyam noticed that the obsidian knife was still sitting on the pile of books on her desk. She followed his gaze to it, and handed it to him.

“This is yours,” she said.

“I only borrowed it,” Neteyam said. “I'm going to have to give it back.”

He tied it around his waist again. Prisha did not seem upset or embarrassed anymore as she looked something up on a computer pad in the wall, and then headed down three doors to another living area. Neteyam followed and watched as she knocked on the door just in case – when she didn't get an answer, she opened it and headed in. This was a living space for two people, and included link beds, showing it had one been part of a remote study site. Tables and shelves were strewn with paper and with strange objects like shards of smashed pottery and broken arrowheads, things most people wouldn't consider worth keeping. Why did the humans want those?

Prisha probably knew, but she was busy. She pulled up a chair and connected her device to one of the link beds.

“What's 'tickling'?” asked Neteyam.

“It's a way to let the avatar drivers know we need to talk to them, without having to wake them up or call them on the radio,” Prisha said. “I invented it myself. They say it feels like a pinch or a poke.” She brought up a symbol on the object in her hand, and touched it. The brain wave readings on the wall above spiked in reaction.

A few seconds later the link bed beeped, and the lid opened. The bearded man inside sat up, blinking, and looked at her.

“What's up?” he asked. “Don't worry, Keith's watching me.” He glanced at Neteyam, but said nothing to him. Neteyam tried to think of his name and finally recalled it: Robert Hathaway, an archaeologist. These objects weren't garbage, they were the remains of people who'd lived long ago.

“You need to come home,” said Prisha. “Dad's in trouble.”

Hathaway nodded. “We'll cover the site and head back right away. It's going to rain anyhow.” He lay down again, and Prisha closed the link bed and stood up.

“That's Rob and Keith,” she said, nodding at the opposite bed. “The third is Louise. She won't be able to ask why, because she's got nobody to watch her avatar, but she'll know to come back.”

They went back to the main room, where the link beds from the big lab in Hell's Gate were now housed. Prisha hooked her device to number two, which was being used by entomologist Louise Dulac. 'Tickling' her produced the same spike in the reads, and Prisha, satisfied, disconnected her device and gathered her things.

“You built that?” Neteyam asked.

“No, I just programmed it,” said Prisha, winding up the cord. “The software was originally for getting medical readouts on the avatars without having to actually bring them back to a scanner. If the avatar is in use, even at a remote site, we can use the biofeedback in the driver's human body to assess illness or injury. I just turned it around to use the body as a transmitter instead. We can even sort of send Morse code, though it takes ages.” She smiled, proud of herself, but then that faded. “I guess you're not very interested in that.”

Neteyam never had been. The humans' world, with all its glowing holograms and synthesized sounds, its walls and windows and processed air, had always seemed very artificial – and never more so than now he was trapped within it. But the idea that she understood these machines well enough to adapt them to new purposes, like re-shaping a broken spear point, was impressive. Suddenly, Neteyam wondered if he could learn to do something like that. He'd never even considered trying.

“Do you really run this place by yourself?” he asked.

Prisha turned pink and ducked her head. Neteyam held up his hands, worried he'd offended her again, but that didn't seem to be the case. “Not really,” she admitted. “Everybody does bits and pieces, but Dad says I probably know the overall system better than anybody except the people who originally built it.” She pushed her curls behind her ears, and looked at a point on the wall somewhere behind Neteyam's head. “Sorry.”

“Why apologize?” he asked.

“Because I was bragging. You know. I wanted to sound impressive.” She shrugged one shoulder. “I guess it's all pretty meaningless to you.”

“It is,” Neteyam agreed. “The only thing I know about it is that it's very complicated.” Dad had told him that over and over when they'd visited as children. Don't touch that. It's complicated and fragile .

“Oh, yeah,” Prisha nodded. “Everything here has hundreds of subroutines and mostly the programming takes care of itself, but every so often it does something weird. Like, we never had to use the heaters when we lived in the valley, but it gets cold up here so we had to turn them on and when we did the image generators on the big table got all out of sync. It turned out the AI had filed heating as a non-critical system and started using that part of the server to run video drivers because the board where they were originally stored had water damage and shut down, and it never bothered to tell us. It only takes half a day to fabricate a new circuit but it took ages to test them all and find the broken one, because we had to leave the...” she looked up at Neteyam again, and firmly shut her mouth. “Sorry,” she said again.

“It's like the forest,” Neteyam decided. “All the parts are connected and depend on each other, as energy flows between them.” That didn't help him understand it, but it did make him feel like it could be understood.

“Yeah, kind of,” said Prisha. She smiled awkwardly.

There was a beep and a clunk, and the link bed next to them opened to reveal Louise Dulac, with her short blonde hair and big hoop earrings. She sat up and looked at the two young people next to her. Prisha quickly stepped away from Neteyam, and he did the same, just because she had.

Louise's eyebrows rose. “Am I interrupting something?” she saked.

“No!” said Prisha. “You got back fast. Are you okay?”

“I didn't go far,” Louise replied, in her purring French accent. “I found some interesting specimens just a few yards down the rocks, and I wanted to observe their behaviour a bit before collecting them. With my luck I'll never see them again.” She scowled at the thought, but it passed quickly. “What's going on?”

“Dad and Dr. Spellman have somebody following them back,” Prisha told her.

“Merde,” said Louise. She stood up and stretched, and went to see if she could find out more.

Once Rob Hathaway and his partner, Keith Pacharanat, had returned, the humans held a meeting in the room where they ate, with Reet explaining the situation to everybody. Neteyam hoped somebody would suggest something they could do about the situation, rather that just sitting here and hoping it worked itself out, but nobody did. Instead, they all agreed to wait for word from Max and Norm, and then everybody got back to work.

The various humans went to their own workspaces or, like Margo, set something up in the big lab or the dining room. Rob and Keith pored of satellite photos of the area where they'd been excavating and ancient battle camp. Louise whispered to herself in a foreign language as she wrote out labels for a collection of dead insects. Reet and Viraj began taking inventory of their emergency supplies.

Through the windows, Neteyam could see that the People were also busy. They were checking weapons, repairing riding gear and armour, mixing paints... they were preparing for battle. The urge to just run outside and start something, to just choose one of the dozen tasks that must still be waiting for a pair of hands and set to work, was almost overwhelming. Neteyam had to remind himself over and over that he wouldn't be able to breathe, and even if he put one of those awful masks back on, a saddle would be as big as he was, an arrow longer than he was tall. He would be as useless out there as he was in here.

“Neteyam,” said Reet. “Please sit down. You're pacing like a caged animal.”

Like a caged animal was exactly how Neteyam felt. It was how he'd felt the whole time he'd been at Site Nine and now here, which ought to have been a safe place, was just the same. Since waking up in that lab with Quaritch looking down at him, the only time Neteyam had felt free was when he'd been finding his way through the forest and the mountains – and as Reet had pointed out, that had nearly killed him. He was as much a prisoner here as he'd been among the Sky People.

How long did humans live? Because Neteyam had a sudden horrific vision of the rest of his life, decades of this entrapment and boredom and uselessness stretching away before him into infinity. It made him want to be sick again.

Prisha looked into the room. “Viraj,” she said, “I've got the stuff to replace that holoscreen generator... can you come help me?”

“Sure!” Viraj put down the holopad he was holding and went to join her, but his mother stood up to stop him.

“What do you need him to do?” Reet asked.

“Just hand me tools and stuff,” said Prisha.

Reet nodded. “Neteyam,” she said. “Do you want to...”

He didn't even let her finish the question. “Yes!” Anything to feel useful, and to stop thinking about the horrible abyss that had taken the place of his future.

Prisha looked doubtful. “Do you know the difference between a flathead and a phillips?”

“No,” he said, “but you can tell me.”

Reet gave her daughter a pleading look, and Prisha gave in. “Okay,” she said. “In here.”

She took him to the far side of the main lab, opposite the link bed Louise had been using and near the gestation tube that still contained Grace Augustine's old avatar. As Prisha got her parts out of the fabricator, Neteyam paused to run a hand over the glass and look at the naked body floating inside, eyes shut as if it were peacefully sleeping. Mother and Dad had brought Kiri here regularly ever since she was little, wanting her to know where she'd come from even if the exact mechanism were a mystery. They'd wanted her to watch Grace's old logs and read her research, and feel like she knew this woman.

The body in the tube did not react to Neteyam's touch, any more than it had when Kiri would talk to it or even climb up on top of it. For the first time, he wondered why the humans kept it. Were they still hoping it might wake up someday?

“Okay,” said Prisha, moving a chair so she could crawl under a console. “The flathead screwdriver is the one that's a straight line, and the phillips is the one that's a cross. Can I get the phillips one first please?”

Neteyam looked at the implements she'd laid out, and found the one she'd described. “Here,” he handed it down to her.

“Thanks.” She vanished beneath the console and began taking it apart.

While waiting for his next instruction, Neteyam looked over his shoulder at the gestation tube again, and something tickled his memory. “Do you remember... I don't know if this was the same day you pulled my tail, but didn't Tuk once ask you why you didn't just make your own avatar?”

“Yeah, she did,” said Prisha. “I told her we didn't have the equipment here for that.”

It was reassuring to know that some of Neteyam's memories were accurate. “But if you know how all these machines work, couldn't you build it?”

He was pretty sure the answer was no. If she could do that, surely she would have already done so – why would anybody live their life in these glass and metal cages if they had a choice about it? Still, there was just enough of a nugget of possibility there, a faint, desperate hope, that he had to at least ask. An avatar wouldn't be the same as his old body, but it would be a lot better than this.

“Not here,” she replied. “Maybe I could have at Hell's Gate. The fabricators there had way bigger libraries. Not up here, though. Here.” Her hand came out, offering him the screwdriver and four black metal screws. “Hang on to these for me. Do not drop them. If we lose one we only have a limited number of spares.”

“Got it.” Neteyam closed his left hand around the screws, tightly so he could feel their presence through the layer of bandages. “Why didn't you make yourself an avatar at Hell's Gate, then?” She'd said she wanted one.

“I need the pliers with the blue handles now,” Prisha said. “Avatars take years. They used to grow them in transit, you know. They'd start the embryo before they left Earth, and by the time they got here, six years later, it would be mature and ready to use.”

“I don't think that's true anymore,” Neteyam said, handing her the pliers. “The last thing I remember... I'm not sure how long ago it was, but it can't be much more than a year.” Less since his actual death. He didn't know when they would have started this body, but it couldn't have been before that night when they'd captured his memories – or most of them, at least – in the blue light.

Prisha removed a circuit board from the console, trailing a tangle of multicoloured wires that looked distressingly like the machine's intestines. “Small flathead,” she said, giving him the pliers back. He took them and found the screwdriver she needed. “Maybe that's why they're making so many more recoms,” Prisha mused. “Because they've figured out how to do it faster. If it still took years, it wouldn't be practical.”

“Maybe,” said Neteyam.

That was when both of them heard a commotion outside. Prisha wriggled out from under the console and got up to look, but the view from here was blocked by Grace's gestation tube. Neteyam went around it and wended his way through tables and terminals to the window, where he opened the blinds to look outside.

People were gathering around a banshee that had landed, and somebody who had just climbed down from is back. Neteyam couldn't see anything through the crowd – it was like trying to see something going on in the treetops with a thicket of bamboo in the way. What he did see was Tarsem come up at a run, and people moved aside to let him through. After a few seconds, the Olo'eyktan reappeared, leading the newcomer down deeper into the caverns of High Camp, towards the area where they held their councils of war.

Neteyam only saw the man from behind, and only for a split second, but he recognized him. He would have recognized Dad anywhere.

This time, he couldn't stop himself. He grabbed somebody's discarded mask that was lying on a desk, and dashed for the airlock. On the way, however, he ran into the corner of a console, which dug right into his injured ribs. The air rushed out of Neteyam's lungs, and he dropped to his knees, holding the bruised area.

“Oh, god, what did you do?” Prisha ran to help him. “Mom! Neteyam's hurt himself again!”

“Skxawng!” he said through his teeth, beating a fist on the edge of the console. “Skxawng, skxawng, skxawng!” How was he still so clumsy and stupid in this body? Even for a human he was an awkward mess... Prisha had said again as if hurting himself were the only thing Neteyam ever did!

The other humans had also heard something happening outside. The ones who'd been working in the lab had moved to the windows to watch, and now more were arriving. Margo announced that she would find out what was going on, and climbed into her link bed to do so. Reet went straight to Neteyam.

“He just fell down out of nowhere,” said Prisha.

“No, I didn't!” said Neteyam. He wasn't that broken. “I hit my ribs on the corner. I need to get out there!” He grabbed Reet's sleeve as she knelt down to examine him. “My Dad is here!”

Reet looked up. “Margo, did you hear that?”

“Yes! I'll see if I can talk to him,” Margo promised. She began to lie down, then sat back up again. “Neteyam, do you want me to tell him you're here?”

Neteyam grimaced, both from the pain in his side and at the question. Telling people about this seemed to get harder every time he had to do it, and telling Dad would mean facing whatever his reaction was going to be. So far the reactions had not been good. What if Dad were disgusted like Pa'ay and Tarsem had been?

As tempting as it was, though, Neteyam shook his head. Having Margo do it for him would be the act of a coward. Neteyam was supposed to be a warrior. “No,” he said, “I'll tell him myself.”

“Got it,” said Margo, and shut the lid,

While Reet scanned his ribs, Neteyam watched through the window as Margo's avatar came running out to question the gathering warriors. Several people brushed her off, but then a man took pity and invited her to follow them to the council. She thanked him and fell into step with the crowd, and Neteyam's shoulders slumped. That meant he wouldn't find out what was happening until it was over, because she would not be allowed to leave until Tarsem and Dad officially adjourned.

“I'm sure you'll see him soon,” said Prisha.

“Lift your shirt,” Reet ordered, less sympathetic. “You haven't broken anything but I want a look at your bruises just in case.”

She prodded at the area, making Neteyam hiss with pain, but eventually seemed satisfied that he hadn't done any further damage. He was allowed to resume helping Prisha with her repair, but now he kept the blinds open and one eye on the outside, looking for signs of Dad coming back. Margo had said she wouldn't tell, but what if Tarsem did? How would he phrase it, and how would that shape Dad's reaction?

“Screws,” said Prisha, holding out her hand.

Neteyam frowned. What had he done with them? He must have put them down to grab the mask when he'd been about to go outside, but where? “I don't know where I put them.”

“What?” She wriggled out from under the console again. “I told you to hang on to them! We're low on metal right now. We don't want to make more.”

“I...” he looked around. “They've got to still be here somewhere.”

Prisha groaned. “We'd better look, then.”

Neteyam tried to retrace his steps. He'd gone around the tube to the window, and then he'd run over to here to get the mask, and then turned this way and banged his ribs... the screws had to be somewhere along that path. He got down on hands and knees and starting searching.

He was feeling around in the dark under a link bed when he heard the clunk of it opening. Neteyam backed up and sat up, just in time to barely avoid getting kicked in the face as Margo climbed out.

“Oh, my god!” she exclaimed, putting a hand on her chest. “You scared me! What are you doing down there?”

“Did you talk to Dad?” Neteyam asked, scrambling to his feet.

“I didn't get a chance to,” said Margo, “but he and Tarsem have a plan. They're going to lead the recoms into a trap.”

Neteyam breathed in sharply. So there was going to be a fight – and he wasn't going to be a part of it. Of course, Dad was always telling Neteyam to sit things out and let the adults handle it. He might be glad to know his son was trapped in this body where he couldn't do anything.

“Prisha, where's your Mom?” Margo asked.

“Mess hall,” Prisha replied.

Margo nodded and went to find Reet.

Prisha looked thoughtful. “I wonder if... if they want the avatars to help, we can use the Morse code tickle to coordinate things over distance from here!” She looked at Neteyam and grinned. “The RDA can listen in on the radio, but they can't intercept that!” Her screws forgotten, she followed Margo out.

That left Neteyam standing there, feeling more powerless than ever. Even Prisha, who was younger than him and hadn't gone through any warrior's tests, had a way to help here. Neteyam himself was just going to have to sit and wait for Dad to come back. He couldn't even talk to him by radio, because as Prisha had just pointed out, the Sky People might overhear...

Then, Neteyam could almost feel his ears prick up as he suddenly knew what he could do. “Prisha!” he called out, running after her. “Wait, I have an idea!”