The ceiling of the world was alive.
That was my first thought as I stared up into the vast, spiraling canopy of Hometree— that was what I heard the the locals call it.
It wasn't just wood and leaves; it was a breathing, shifting mosaic of bioluminescent veins.
I had been awake for an hour, lying perfectly still on the woden hammock to which I was given before Eytulkan left, to which I appreciated.
It groaned slightly under my dense frame. Furthermore, my body felt heavy— heavier than it had been during the fight.
The adrenaline that had served as a temporary battery was gone, leaving me feeling empty.
"Okay," I whispered to the gloom, my voice echoing. "Let's try this again. Who am I?"
I closed my eyes, diving into the dark pook of my own mind. I reached a name, a face, a coordinate– anything that wasn't just the immediate sensation of pain.
Static.
It was like trying to tune a radio in a thunderstorm. I saw flashes— a sleek, white corridor. A hand (my hand) holding a goblet of something blue and bubbling. And then, a green flash. And a voice.
Warning. Hull integrity compromised.
Then the sky of pandora and my flaming ship flipping and burning in the atmosphere.
A sharp, blindng spike of pain drove a railroad spike through my temples. I hissed, my eyes snapping open. I rubbed my forehead, groaning.
"Right. Don't poke the trauma. Got it."
I let out a long, frustrated sigh. The laid-back persona was easier to wear than the cold current of anxiety currently flowing inside me.
I was stranded with no memory right before the crash happened. Furthermore, I am damaged and no idea if the people who caused my ship to be damaged were coming back to finish the job.
I looked at my hand. The skin was a pale, twilight purple, distinct from the vibrant azure of the locals. During the fight at the schoolhouse, I felt omnipotent like the world obeys me. Gravity had been a toy.
I focused on a small, smooth stone resting on the floorboards a few feet away. I narrowed my eyes, visualizing the space around the stone bending, warping, lifting. I reached for that deep internal hum.
Nothing.
Not even a flicker. It was like reaching for a limb that had fallen asleep. The stone remained stubbornly subject to Pandora's gravity.
"Out of juice," I muttered, letting my hand drop back onto my chest. "Fastastic. I'm a eleven-foot peperweight."
I was distracted from my self-pity by the sound of soft footsteps.
Sylwanin approached, moving with that fluid, feline grace. She carried a large leaf folded into a bowl, steaming with something that smelled vaguely of root vegetables and spices.
She stopped a few feet away, her golden eyes scanning me with a mix of reverence and wariness. The events at the schoolhouse had changed how she looked at me. Contrary to how she looked at me the day before.
"You are awake," she said softly in Navi tongue, to which I still have no idea how I understood.
'More questions with no answers.' I thought to myself.
"Hard to sleep specially when my ribs feels like its about to poke out," I quipped, offering a tired smile. I pushed myseelf up into a sitting position, wincing as my bruised ribs protested. "What's on the menu? Please tell me it's not bugs. I had a strict policy against eating anything with more legs than me."
'Though I don't remember shit.' I jabbed at myself.
Sylwanin's lips twitched and formed into a small smile. "It is teyluc. Grub. But cooked with herbs."
"Ah. I don't know what that is. But I'll take it." I accepted the leaf, my large hands dwarfing it.
I took a cautious bite. It wasn't bad— nutty, frantic, and warm.
As I ate it, I watched her. She sat cross-legged on the floor, her posture perfect. I looked past her, and into the bustling activity of the Hometree's commons. Other Na'vi were moving about— hunters sharpening spears, mothers weaving, children playing.
And then I saw it. The common denominator.
Every single one of them, male or female, young or old, had a long, thick brain of hair trailing down their backs.
I swallowed the last of the grub and pointed my finger at Sylwanin's shoulder.
"Question," I said, wiping my mouth. "The hair. Is it religious thing? A fashion trend? Because literally everyone has the exact same ponytail." As I rub the shoulder length hair on my head.
Sylwanin reached back instinctively, her hand cupping the end of her long, dark queue. She looked confused by the question, as if he had asked why she had two arms.
"This?" she asked, pulling the braid forward over her shoulder. "This is not just hair, Kaelen. This is the kuru."
"Kuru," I repeated, testing the word. "I did hear the chief mention it yesterday. What does it do?"
Sylwanin hesitated, seemingly struggling to explain a concept so fundamental to her existence that it defied simple definition. She carefully unraveled the very tip of the braid.
I leaned forward, my cat-like eyes narrowing in fascination.
At the end of the brain, hidden within the dark hair, were pink, fleshy tendrils. They moved slightly, pulsating with a rythmic life of their own, like the antennae of a sea anemone.
They looked raw, sensitive, and incredibly alien.
"It is the bond," Sylwanin explained. "We use it to make tsaheylu. The bond with the ikran to fly, with the pa'li to ride. And… with Eywa. With the ancestors."
I stared. "You… plug in?"
"It is how we see," she said touching her chest. "Not with eyes. But with… spirit. When we connect, we feel the other. The horse, the bird, the tree. We become one flesh. One mind."
I slowly reached up to the back of my own head. My hair was long, dark, and think, falling in a messy mane around my shoulders. I felt around the base of my skull, searching for anything that felt like a bump.
Scalp. Hair. Bone.
"Nope," I said, pulling my hand away. "Just skull. No bumps or a port."
I looked back at Sylwanin's kuru, my mind racing.
This was significant. Physically, me and the Omaticaya were remarkably similar— except the height and color, eveyrthing else such as the nose, the ears, the tails. It was convergent evolution on a galactic scale. But this… this was fundamental divergence.
The Omaticaya or even the natives of this world were built to connect. They were hired wired into the planetary network.
"Fascinating," I murmured, my tone losing its joking edge for a moment.
I looked at my hands again.
"Yoou are alone in your head, you cannot hear the voices of your ancestors?" Sylwanin said, a note of pity in her voice.
I chuckled, a dry, hollow sound. "Sweetheart, you have no idea."
Multiple miles away, the mood was anything but laid back.
The florescent lights of the Bio-Lab at Hell's Gatehummed with irritating buzz that usually droe Drr. Grace Augustice crazy. Tonight, she didn't even hear it.
She was standing in front of a bnk of high-definition monitors, smoke from her third consecutive cigarette curling up into the ventilation hood.
Her face, illumincated by the cold blue light of the screens, was a mask focus.
"Run it again," she commanded. Her voice was raspy, exhuasted, but wired.
"Grace, we've watched it twenty times," Max Patel sighed from the console next to her. He looked terrified. "Security is locking down the perimeter. Selfridge is screaming about liability."
"I don't care about Selfridge. Max. Run. It. Again."
Max tapped a key.
On the main screen, shaky footage from a helment cam played. It showed the chaose at the schoolhouse.
The screaming children. The smoke. She always flinched at this part, she felt guilty somehow.
And then, the arrival.
The camera jerked upward, tracking a towering figure stepping out of the treeline.
Grace leaned in, her nose almost touching the glass. She paused the video.
"Look at that," she whispered.
On the screen, Kaelen was frozen in mid-stride. The image was grainy, but the details were undeniable. The violet skin, darker more saturated than the Na'vi azure. The metallic, silver armor that seemed to be damaged. And the face…
"It's not an avatar," Grace muttered, taking a drag of her cigarette. "The proportions are… different. It is bigger. Denser. Look at the muscle insertion points on the neck. That's not human DNA mixed with Na'vi. That's something else entirely."
"Is it a mutation?" Max asked, adjusting his glasses. "Some kind of gigantism in the local population, like the ones living in the reefs?"
"No," Grace snapped. "Look at the tech, Max! It raised a hand and stopped kinetic rounds with a hard-light shield. The Na'vi use bows and arrows. This… thing is manipulating gravity fields like its bored. You don't learn that by sitting around a campfire."
The door to the lab hissed open. Parker Selfridge strode in, followed closely by a grim-faced Colonel Quaritch. Quaritch looked like he had chewed on a wasp.
"Augustine," Quaritch barked. "Tell me you identified the tango that engaged my squad."
Grace didn't turn around. "I'm working on it, Colonel. But I can tell you right now, your boys didn't engage a 'tango.' They picked a fight with something out of a comic book."
"My pilot says the thing lifted an AMP suit," Quaritch said, his voice low and dangerous. "Lifted it. Without touching it. Crushed the hydraulics like a soda can. I lost three men. Two in the ICU."
"You shouldn't have been shooting at kids," Grace shot back, finally turning to face him. "Maybe then you wouldn't have woken up the giant."
"What is it, Grace?" Selfridge asked, stepping between them. He looked nervous, checking his datapad. "is it… is it some kind of apex predator? A new species?"
Grace looked back at the frozen imge of Kaelen. The violet giant stood there, looking at the camera with intelligence. Almost dismissive.
"I don't think it's a predator," Grace said slowly.
"Atleast, not in the way we think. it's bipedal also the survivors said it spoke English. It has technology that makes our AMP suits look like steam engines."
She tapped the screen, zooming in on Kaelen's face.
"My working theory?" Grace exhaled a plume of smoke.
"It's a new species. Something native to Pandora that we've never seen. Maybe they live deep underground. Maybe they live in the upper atmosphere. Or maybe…"
She hesitated. The scientist in her hated speculation without data, but the evidence was screaming at her.
"Maybe it's not from pandora at all," Marx whispered, voicing the thought hanging in the room.
The room went silent.
"An alien… on an alien planet?" Selfridge scoffed. "That's ridiculous."
"Is it?" Grace asked. "Look at him, Parker. It doesn't have a kuru. I checked the zoom-ins. No neural queue. Every living thins on this moon connects to a central network. Its doens't."
Grace turned back to the screen, her eyes gleaming with the thrill of discovery. The fear of the RDA was a nuisance; this… this was the discovery of the millennium.
"We dont know it," Grace said softly. "And I want to meet It."
Quaritch tightened his grip on his sidearm. "You want to meet it, Doc? Fine but when you do, I'm going to be there. And I'm bringing the big guns."
Grace ignored him. She was already typing, pulling up maps of the Omaticaya territory.
"It's hurt," she murmured to herself.