Chapter Text
Five years.
It’s how long the war continued until the RDA was permanently destroyed during a last bombing attack. Casualties among humans and Na’vi were both high as was the price of war. Neteyam was killed during one of the attacks and Neytiri killed the Recom responsible for his death as payback for the loss of her son.
Those were difficult times, times of pain and grief.
If Jake was truly honest, he never really thought about Spider. Until they learnt about his death at the hands of the RDA. Tortured to death. Quaritch told them the RDA had put Spider in a machine to extract information about their location but Spider resisted and then Quaritch was sent on a different mission and never heard of the kid again. The last news he got was that he kept on resisting and they insisted until the kid’s brain was completely fried and his body gave. As strange as it sounded, he didn’t seem very comfortable with the boy’s fate. There was something akin to remorse in his eyes (grief, Jake would have said, not so different from the pain he had felt with Neteyam’s passing) when he told them. It didn’t stop Lo’ak from pulling a bullet between the recom’s eyes, his face streaked with tears as he pulled the trigger without any hesitation.
They mourned him, Spider.
Jake tried to ignore his guilt-ridden heart for abandoning the boy to his fate. It’s not that he didn’t like Spider. He felt really bad for the boy who was destined to a hard life on a hostile planet he wasn’t built to be on. His kids were the first ones to see him and offer their friendship. But they were more or less the only people he had caring for him. His biological parents were dead and/or evil people. His foster parents neglected him completely and the scientists were not really good with children. Jake wasn’t stupid. He noticed how hard Spider tried to become one of them and fit. How hard he tried to get Jake’s attention. At the time, Jake found it kind of pathetic and he allowed the kid to stay mostly out of pity - not to mention that he couldn’t control his kids. Years later, with the news of Spider’s death, he hates himself for even thinking this way. The kid was taken away and died a horrible death and Jake will never forgive himself. Spider was a sweet kid. He didn’t deserve any of this. And Jake didn’t even try to save him once.
His children were inconsolable for a long time. Neytiri couldn’t find her words. She had never liked Spider. But to hear he was tortured to death by his own kind left her strangely empty of hatred for a moment. She hated him and everything he was but he was still a child in the end, trying to survive and be accepted which he never was.
In spite of it all, life continued.
They officially became Metkayina and the children grew and made families of their own. Kiri began to intensively train with Ronal to try and better understand her connection to Eywa and those strange powers she had. She found a mate in Rotxo who proved to be the support she needed.
As expected, Lo’ak bonded with Tsireya after a year of courting and from their union a baby girl was born. They were all happy even though Jake thought something was wrong with their relationship but couldn’t exactly tell what. There was something… empty. Something… fake. But yet again, Lo’ak had always been difficult. He was very admirative of Tsireya for putting up with his son’s temper. Eywa knows he never could.
Tuk had grown into a teenager and was ready to pass her Iknimaya. She wasn’t as sweet as the child she used to be however, having gone through the losses of Neteyam and Spider whom she truly considered like her brother. She was the only one who regularly visited the tomb Lo’ak, Kiri and the humans made for the fallen boy when he was declared dead. Jake avoided it and Neytiri probably didn’t care.
Everything was going as fine as it could, until they heard about a strange spot in the forest, found by the Omaticaya during patrol. Jake and a few warriors went to join them and they discovered an entrance among leaves deep into the forest that led to an underground facility no one knew about. It was a secret bunker with RDA survivors the Na’vi killed on the spot. Dozens of them.
And what they found left them speechless.
From what Jake could tell, it was a research facility with heavy advanced scientific machinery. They found cells with dead Na’vi and humans alike. Body parts, mostly heads in jars. Na’vi heads. Human heads. There were surviving Na’vi with severed kurus - the worst of fate for a Na’vi. Those Na’vi were alive but unresponsive, as if taken away from all life and Eywa.
“What the Hell is this place?” Jake asked as they advanced into the empty, acrid smelling white corridors.
The warriors with him only commented with grimaces of horror and a few cursed words.
They arrived in a room with a huge machine and several other impressive equipment Jake had no idea what to make of. At the center of the room, there was a round table covered with documents and drawings. Jake took one. It was the diagram of a Na’vi and a smaller one of their Tswin. There were several notes with numbers and scientific gibberish Jake didn’t understand. He scanned a few documents, trying to decipher them. Times and times again, there was the mention of Patient 13. He had no idea what this was. A patient? He looked at the severed heads of humans and Na’vi and at the bodies all around. Was this place an experimentation lab? Did the RDA experiment of humans and Na’vi? Knowing them as he did, it’s highly possible. They were fucked up enough for that. It was the kind of science Jake didn’t like.
There was another document with another drawing of a Na’vi kuru in different angles and the diagram of a human skull cross-section. Jake felt his heart miss a beat. He had a terrible feeling about that. The humans were already trying to steal from the Tulkuns to reproduce their extraordinary connection abilities. Could this be the next step? This sounded really, really fucked up and Jake already hated the place.
“Jakesully,” one of the Omaticaya warrior called.
Jake followed the warrior’s gaze and found a console, not different from the ones he used when he was still a human working with Grace and Norm - and that bastard of Quaritch. With a frown and a very, very bad feeling, he switched it on.
The screen flashed on a menu with different entries.
Most of them made no sense to Jake except for one that read, entry number 687, patient 13. Again with that patient 13. Intrigued, he pressed his thumb on the screen as lightly as he could not to put too much pressure on it with his Na’vi strength. The face of a woman came up on the screen. A middle aged woman with her hair tightly held in a bun and stern features.
“Patient 13 seems to be the only one with encouraging results,” she says on the video in an emotionless voice, “He’s barely responsive now but the new attempt at a connection gave us almost the reaction we needed. The ability to connect doesn’t seem to be the only vector of success. It appears that a compatibility between the human and the Na’vi must exist beforehand for the transplant to function. Patient 13 managed to keep the transplanted kuru for three minutes before going into a seizure that almost cost his eyesight. Those connections can prove fatal to human senses and organs. We need to try with a new Na’vi. Find a higher neuronal compatibility to see how that new transplant goes. We managed to stop the internal bleeding. But if the next time doesn’t prove successful, it could be fatal. For the moment, no information was shared on either side.”
The entry ended and Jake found himself sick to the point of throwing up. He swallowed up bile and pushed his hand over his mouth.
“Jake,” one of the Omaticaya warriors who understood English said, “Is this?”
“Yeah…” Jake responded, eyes wide.
He tried to proceed the fact that human scientists had apparently tried to transplant kurus on humans by mutilating Na’vi. It explained the heads in jars and diagrams. This was the fucking Dr Frankenstein base! And about that patient 13… Who was he? Was he a soldier from the RDA? Some stupid martyr who chose the mission above his own life and health? It was quite possible. Military loyalty could let you do strange things - and he was well placed to know about them.
He took a deep breath and mentioned for the warriors to gather all the documents and the recordings. This would go directly to Bridgeport for further study. But the little he got, he really didn’t like. Who knew what else those humans had done to the Na’vi? He fought back a surge of anger and rose back on his feet. They had defeated the RDA. Finally defeated them. He would make sure to destroy every one of those experiments left.
Strong with his resolve, his gun secured against his flank, he resumed his exploration of the base, two warriors behind him, one Metkayina, the other Omaticaya.
There were many cells along the way.
Most of them held dead, mutilated Na’vi. They all cursed and prayed to Eywa. Those bodies would have to be buried and returned to the Great Mother. A few dead humans laid in cells too. Jake paid them no heed. He grimaced and kept going. The smell was absolutely atrocious. This wasn’t a base. It was a tomb.
After a while, they began to hear something. A voice. Something barely audible. Broken. A whisper so low only Na’vi ears could hear it.
“One, two, three, four, Mary at the kitchen door. Five, six, seven, eight, Mary at the golden gate.”
Jake recognized it as an old human lullaby. He frowned. The last time he heard it… No. It’s just a popular song for human children. It has nothing to do with… He stopped his track of thoughts and silently gestured to the warriors to follow him, gun at the ready. They continued in the direction of the voice that kept whispering the same tune over and over again.
“One, two, three, four, Mary at the kitchen door. Five, six, seven, eight, Mary at the golden gate.”
Eventually, they arrived in front of a cell and Jake’s blood ran cold when reading the name on it.
Patient 13.
So this man was still alive. He gave the signal to his warriors to take position and took a couple of steps in front of the door, grimacing at the horrible smell that was only growing stronger the more they went on. The Na’vi around him had similar reactions and tried to shield themselves with their hands.
He pointed his gun right at the door and prepared to shoot. He took one last step, and forced the door down with his strength. The metal gave and the door bent, allowing him to push it away.
“One, two, three, four, Mary at the kitchen door. Five, six, seven, eight, Mary at the golden gate.”
He jumped forward, aimed, his finger ready to pull the trigger at whatever was in there.
And everything inside him froze.
The room was small, dark and extremely dirty. The stench of death and human dejections made him retch. The walls were covered in markings and dried blood. There were lines carved into the stone to mark the passage of time. He knew them. He had seen them plenty before during his time in Venezuela. This didn’t bring happy memories.
Against the wall in the room was a boy. Or a man. Jake couldn’t have told. He didn’t even know if it was human. It didn’t look human. It was the skinniest man Jake had ever seen. Crouched on the floor, in a dirty gown, the bones of his shoulders and collarbone jutting from the cloth that probably fitted him before but was now a few sizes too big. His bony arms encircled the bones that formed his legs. His head was shaved. His face emaciated and cheeks hollow. And as he was singing, he kept balancing himself back and forth, not reacting to Jake’s entrance in the least.
Jake’s heart stopped. His arm which held the gun fell limp on his side and he thought he was going to feel faint when he recognized the poor soul in front of them.
“Spider…”
The word left his tongue and dropped into the world as heavy as a bomb.
A couple of Omatiyaca warriors turn their heads toward their former Olo’eyktan hearing the name of this tawtute boy they were used to seeing run around in the camp long ago.
“Spider?” one of them repeated, haggard, “Eywa…”
Slowly, Jake entered the cell with shaking steps, putting the gun on the grime covered floor not to spook the boy. It felt as if every part of him wanted to run away, away from this horrible apparition and everything it meant.
With tears he hadn’t even realized started falling on his cheeks, Jake knelt in front of the skeletal human, ignoring the filth around them. The other Na’vi were staring at Jake from the distance of the threshold. An Omaticaya was also silently crying. The other offered a prayer to the Great Mother. The Metkayina however, not knowing anything about the boy, observed the scene with pained confusion.
“Hey, Spider, buddy,” Jake gently whispered in English, feeling even sicker as he took into what the RDA had made of the bright - annoying - child that used to stick around his family - like a stray cat.
There was nothing left of this boy.
Spider should have been around twenty by now. But he didn’t look like a twenty year old young man. With his hollow cheeks, sunken eyes and bony limbs that seemed way too long and disproportionate compared to the rest of him, he looked like one of those mummified monks. A walking corpse. Something stuck between life and death. And Jake felt bile rise up his throat. It was a sickening sight. Worst than anything he had ever seen in life - and he’d seen a lot.
Based on what Jake could see and what he knew, Spider had probably been kept in the dark, away from any source of light, for years. He’d been severely underfed to the point of having starvation stigmata of what Jake could make of his ribs. There were bruises on his thin wrists and around his neck as well as poorly healed scratches all over his dry skin.
“Spider?” he repeated, his voice breaking.
Spider lifted his head to meet Jake’s eyes but there was no light in them, no life or even the slightest sign that Spider was recognizing Jake at all. He just looked at Jake with a gentle, tired expression and just smiled softly at Jake.
“Tik, tok. It’s pasta time!” he said expectantly.
More tears fell on Jake's cheeks as he began to openly cry in front of that empty husk. The other Na’vi remained silent and observed the one-sided exchange grievously.
“Oh Spider,” Jake cried, gently reaching out to the broken boy he indirectly saw grow up, “What have they done to you?”
He cautiously embraced him. Humans were much smaller than Na’vi, Jake was used to it. But as he carefully took Spider’s body in his giant arms, he was taken aback by how frail Spider felt. One pressure too much and he’d fall into a pile of dust. He kept the boy against him, trying to convey all the remorse currently crippling him, all the while knowing Spider probably had no idea who he was and was no longer able to connect to any emotional level with anyone. And it was bitterly ironic this was the very first time he ever hugged Spider at all.
“I’m sorry,” Jake cried against the tiny body that barely jerked when he touched him, “I’m so sorry.”
He reached behind the boy's head, taking fatherly gestures he always used with his kids - the irony - and almost jerked away when his fingers breached against the hard spikes of Spider’s shaved nape and a hard and cold piece of something that shouldn't be at the back of a human's head.
He pulled away with wide eyes.
“What the…”
Gently, mindful not to freak the very unstable human, he checked the back of Spider’s head and frowned. He had no idea what he was seeing. It looked like a piece of metal with a strange plug, directly integrated into the human’s nape. Squinting his eyes, he saw that this plug was actually split into several tiny entry points and from a very close look, they were very similar to… tendrils.
His heart missed a beat so hard that it physically hurt as he suddenly mentally replayed the video log he had previously watched.
Patient 13 managed to keep the transplanted kuru for three minutes before going into a seizure that almost cost his eyesight. Those connections can prove fatal to human senses and organs.
A brutal tremor took over him as he realized the full horror of the situation and Spider’s fate. They tried to reproduce a kuru and used Spider - and probably other humans - as cobayes for their experiments. Spider was not just kept as a prisoner. He’d been horribly tortured and mutilated for their sick research. Turned into a lab rat.
All because Jake had abandoned him.
He’s a tough kid.
A tough kid…
How cruel of him to have even thought this way. Now this tough kid had spent years in Hell because of him. And from what Jake could see, the real Spider was probably long dead. Torture session after torture session. And whatever horrible thing the RDA made him go through.
“We’re gonna get you out of here,” he promised.
Spider blinked at him and smiled but it was the smile of a lunatic, senseless and empty.
“There’s no cat in the box,” he whispered, shaking his head, as if whatever he was saying had the most profound meaning, “I’ve already looked.”
Jake swallowed and closed his eyes, letting more tears join the ones which had already dried. He turned toward the other Na’vi, swallowing a sob.
“We need to call a doctor and get him out.”
Damn, how was he ever going to announce this to his Norm and Max? To his family? They’d have heart attacks when seeing him. It was impossible not to. Jake didn’t even know why he hadn’t had one himself. Spider’s fate was a vision of horror.
The Na’vi nodded.
“Jakesully,” one of them called, “Is the tawtute going to be ok?”
Jake took a deep breath. Beside him, Spider had started laughing to himself, displaying his rotten teeth and Jake felt sick again to see how bad Spider’s physical state was.
“No.”
No, Spider was not going to be ok. And there was a high chance he might never be ok again. But one thing was certain, he wasn’t going to abandon him a second time.