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 circumstances! 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."