The cyberwolf's carcass reeked of synthetic decay—a grotesque fusion of rancid meat and scorched circuitry. Its hackles were still raised, neon-green coolant oozing from the gashes in its titanium ribcage. You crouched over it, clawed fingers splayed against its half-organic throat, feeling the sputtering tremors of its defunct neural uplink. Pathetic. The RDA's toys grew weaker with each hunt. Your nostrils flared, catching the acrid tang of Quaritch's desperation on the breeze. This butchered hound was a message. A plea.

You rose, your Indoraptor form casting a jagged shadow across the moss. The forest here was silent—even the fan lizards froze mid-flight, sensing the predator in their midst. Throwing back your head, you unleashed a raptor's cry, the sound warping from guttural snarl to ultrasonic shriek. Above, the canopy shuddered. Kxetse plunged through the leaves, her wings folded tight, but this time, there was no hesitation in her obsidian eyes. No fear.

You pressed your forehead to hers, scales grinding against leathery hide. Her mind flooded yours—not through the sacred kuru, but through something older, darker. A dragon's bond. Images flickered: RDA patrols huddled near a smoldering drill site, their guns trembling; Quaritch's scarred face snarling orders in a neon-lit bunker.

"Send them," you hissed, the words slithering between your teeth like smoke. Kxetse trilled, a sound that once meant kinship, now sharpened to a blade. She tore back into the sky, her shadow swallowing the moon.

That's when you smelled him—sweat-salt and heartwood resin, undercut by the bitter musk of dread. Jake. You didn't turn. Let him see the cyberwolf's corpse. Let him count the claw marks.

"You're wasting arrows, sky people's savior," you purred, flexing your talons. "Or did you come to beg Eywa for another miracle?"

He stepped into the clearing, his spear trembling—not from fear, you realized, but fury. His braids were unkempt, his paint smeared. Human habits, clinging to Na'vi skin.

"They're coming for you," he said, voice raw. "All of them. Tsu'tey's united the clans. Mo'at's preaching purge the shadow. Even Neytiri..." He faltered, throat bobbing. "She's sharpening her tsurak blade."

You tilted your head, feigning curiosity. "And you? What's your blade for, ma Jake?"

He flinched at the Na'vi endearment, once tender, now venomous. "This isn't a game, Y/N! The RDA's mobilizing dragon-killer mechs. They'll burn the forest to reach you. The Na'vi—our people—are caught in the middle!"

Our people. The lie hung thick. You circled him, tail dragging deliberately across his thighs, the venomous quills grazing his skin. He shuddered, pulse rabbiting in his jugular. You remembered that rhythm—against your lips, in another life.

"Careful, Jakesully," you murmured, leaning close enough to taste his breath. "Your heart still bleeds for monsters."

He gripped his spear tighter. "You're not a monster. You're... lost."

You laughed—a sound like shattering glass. "Lost? No. I'm found." Your tongue flicked out, tracing the scar on his bicep from the Thanator hunt. He gasped, his resolve crumbling for one traitorous instant. "Tell me, when the clans march... will you stand with them? Will you plunge that spear into my heart?"

His silence screamed louder than any vow.

You stepped back, savoring the hurt in his eyes. "Run home, Jake. Kiss your mate. Pray to Eywa." Your wings unfurled, blotting out the stars. "And when the dragons come... burn prettily."

You vanished into the shadows, leaving him alone with the corpse and the ghost of your breath on his skin.

SCENEBREAK

The RDA's makeshift command center reeked of burnt circuitry and fear. Colonel Miles Quaritch paced like a caged thanator, his prosthetic leg clanking against the warped metal floor of the portable bio-lab. Screens flickered around him, their feeds choked with static—Y/N's last known coordinates swallowed by Pandora's electromagnetic wrath. A half-crushed coffee cup oozed sludge into the keyboard, ignored.

"You're telling me," Quaritch snarled, his voice a serrated blade, "that after we grafted her into that Indoraptor chassis, after we drowned her in Dragonborn serum—she just vanced?" He slammed a fist into the nearest monitor, sending sparks cascading over Lyle Wainfleet's hastily saluting form.

Lyle's jaw tightened, his eyes darting to the cyberwolf carcass propped in the corner—a "gift" Y/N had left at their perimeter. Its jaws hung slack, a shredded RDA flag stuffed between its fangs. "Signal's gone, Colonel. Scanners can't track her hybrid signature anymore. She's... evolved. Or devolved. Hell if I know."

Quaritch's eye twitched, the veins in his neck throbbing like live wires. Outside, the night echoed with the whump-whump of dragon-killer mechs patrolling the scorched treeline, their floodlights carving skeletal shadows into the ash. He leaned in, close enough for Lyle to smell the reek of stim-gum and rage. "That thing isn't 'evolved,' Corporal. It's a glitch. A billion-dollar glitch that's picking off my men like teylu snacks."

A tech nearby whimpered, her hands trembling over a console. Quaritch didn't blink. "You know what she did to Vargas?" he hissed. "Ripped his amp suit's cockpit clean out. Left him alive just long enough to watch her chew through his spinal cord. That's not a rogue asset. That's a message."

Lyle palmed his sidearm, its grip sweat-slick. "We've got the Ikran squadrons sweeping Grids 7 through 9. If she's hunting Quaritch loyalists, she'll hit the plasma refinery next. We can—"

"Enough." Quaritch backhanded a holotable, sending 3D terrain maps scattering into digital confetti. "I didn't claw my way back from the grave to play hide-and-seek with some gene-spliced banshee." He yanked Lyle's collar, dragging him nose-to-nose. "You find her. You pump her full of every neurotoxin in the armory. And when she's twitching at your feet, you call me. I want her skull intact—I'm gonna mail it to Sully in a lunchbox."

Lyle nodded, throat dry. "And if she's... ya know. Got the Dragonborn fire now?"

Quaritch's grin was a scar stretched taut. "Then we burn the whole damn forest down. Again."

As Lyle fled into the sulfurous night, Quaritch stared at the cyberwolf's corpse. Its one remaining eye, still glowing faintly green, seemed to mock him. He drew his knife—the same blade that once gutted a thanator mid-leap—and plunged it into the dead thing's skull.

"Should've stayed a lab rat, sweetheart," he muttered.

Somewhere in the dark, unseen, a scaled tail brushed the edge of a security cam. Then static.